The Indian Man examines the life of James Mooney (1861–1921), the son of poor Irish immigrants who became a champion of Native peoples and one of the most influential anthropology fieldworkers of all time. As a staff member of the Smithsonian Institution for over three decades, Mooney conducted fieldwork and gathered invaluable information on rapidly changing Native American cultures across the continent. His fieldwork among the Eastern Cherokees, Cheyennes, and Kiowas provides priceless snapshots of their traditional ways of life, and his sophisticated and sympathetic analysis of the 1890 Ghost Dance and the consequent tragedy at Wounded Knee has not been surpassed a century later.
Author Bio
L. G. Moses is a professor of history at Oklahoma State University. He is the author of Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1833–1933.
Praise
"Moses has admirably assembled the sparse facts about Mooney's life to produce a coherent, interesting biography, from which it is possible to ascertain those areas where Mooney was a captive of the biases of his era as well as those in which his outlook was clearly ahead of his time."—American Historical Review
"The author brings to life Mooney's precedent-setting work on the Ghost Dance and his research on the peyote ritual and also documents an ignored period in the history of anthropological research, when a small group of ethnologists recorded vanishing Indian cultures. This book, written with grace and wit, not only restores to Mooney the recognition he deserves but focuses on interesting questions involving the definition of professionalism and the beginnings of anthropology in the United States."—Library Journal
“James Mooney, most and deservedly remembered for his classic book on the Ghost Dance, also played a prominent role in protecting the rights of early Native American Church members, which cost him heavily in his profession. . . . Moses points out flaws in Mooney’s work and even-handedly evaluates his standing in the field but shows his work to be invaluable and his character highly creditable.”—Darrell Rice, The Watonga Republican
