James Mooney was an American ethnographer whose extensive fieldwork made him an important early scholar of Indigenous histories, languages, religions, and ceremonial traditions. Born in Richmond, Indiana, in 1861, he joined the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology in 1885 and spent several seasons among Eastern Cherokee communities in North Carolina. He learned the Cherokee language and documented myths, medicinal practices, sacred formulas, oral traditions, and the work of Cherokee healers and ceremonial specialists.Mooney later conducted research among the Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and other Native nations. His major works include Myths of the Cherokee, The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, and The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Although his interpretations reflect aspects of nineteenth-century anthropology, the linguistic and historical materials he recorded remain important resources for scholars and Indigenous communities.