MOONEY, JAMES: 1861-1921.
Although little of his writing appears except in learned publications, serials, etc., James Mooney is worthy of far more than casual attention. The Dictionary of American Bioyraphy says of him, in part: "… [James Mooney], son of James and Ellin (Devlin) Mooney, was born at Richmond, Ind. He began his education in the common schools and later taught two terms. He was strongly interested in Indians, reading everything available on the subject, but his interest did not lead to any apparent avenue of support, and he entered the office of the RICHMOND PALLADIUM, where he worked both as a compositor and in an editorial capacity. After he had saved a little money he journeyed to Washington with a secret intent of going to Brazil to study the Indians of that country. In Washington he met Maj. J. W. Powell in 1885, and through him Mooney found an outlet for his enthusiasm in the Bureau of American Ethnology, where he remained for the rest of his life. His early Indian studies had taken the form of a list of tribes amounting to 3,000 entries and this came into use as material for the Handbook of American Indians … in the preparation of which he took an active part. In North Carolina he studied the language, folk lore, mythology, and material culture of the Cherokees (Myths of the Cherokees, Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology … 1895-96, 1900). At a fortunate juncture he discovered an ancient Cherokee ritual written in the Cherokee script (The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees, Seventh Annual Report … 1885-86, 1891). About 1890 the last ebullition of Indian raceconsciousness took place with the outbreak of the Ghost Dance–an endeavor to rehabilitate the Indian to his former status–and this phase of Indian life Mooney studied exhaustively (The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, Fourteenth Annual Report… 1892-93, 1896). Some of his best years were spent in the investigation of the Kiowa (Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians, Seventeenth Annual Report … 1895-96, 1898), and at the time of his death he was engrossed with a large work on Kiowa heraldry. He also investigated the seemingly page: 228[View Page 228] anomalous presence of Siouan language tribes on the borders of the Virginia Algonquians and his research went far to clear up the history of the migrations of this great stock (The Siouan Tribes of the East, Bulletin 22 of the Smithsonian Institute, Bureau of Ethnology, 1894).
"Mooney's parents had come from Meath, Ireland, and he was deeply ingrained with Irish lore. One of his first papers was The Funeral Customs of Ireland (Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 1888, vol. XXV, 1888, pp. 1-56). His scientific writing was mostly confined to large, thoroughly prepared monographs. A particularly lucid style characterized his writing …"
In 1897 he married Ione Lee Gaut of Tennessee.
He died in 1921.
W. H., Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XIII.
- Funeral Customs of Ireland.
Philadelphia, 1882.
- Myths of the Cherokees. Cambridge,
Mass., 1888.
- Cherokee Ball Play. New York,
1890.
- Cheyenne Indians, n.p. [Lancaster,
Pa.], 1907.
