X-Nico

5 unusual facts about Bureau of American Ethnology


James Pilling

In 1879, when Powell founded the Bureau of Ethnology (known from 1897 to 1965 as the Bureau of American Ethnology or BAE), Pilling became the bureau's chief clerk.

John Russell Bartlett

The word was included in the list of approximately 180 words that Bartlett archived in the Bureau of American Ethnology (now part of the National Anthropological Archives, housed at the Smithsonian).

Philip Drucker

The main Olmec expeditions were in 1940-42 when he worked for the Bureau of American Ethnology in Washington, D.C. His first Olmec period ended when he joined the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1942, seeing active service until 1945.

Truman Michelson

Truman Michelson (1879–1938) was a linguist and anthropologist who worked from 1910 until his death for the Bureau of American Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution.

William C. Sturtevant

He served first as a research anthropologist for the Bureau of American Ethnology before being appointed Curator of North American Ethnology in the U.S. National Museum (later the National Museum of Natural History), Smithsonian Institution.


Nacoochee Mound

The mound was formally excavated in 1915 by a team of archaeologists headed by Frederick Webb Hodge and George H. Pepper and sponsored by the Heye Foundation and the Bureau of American Ethnology.


see also

William N. Fenton

In his work as an ethnologist with the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology, Fenton drew attention to existing historic and ethnographic sources.