Bureau of American Ethnology
ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH ORGANIZATION BASED IN WASHINGTON, DC FOCUSING PRIMARILY ON THE INDIANS OF NORTH AMERICA
Bureau of Ethnology; Bureau of ethnology; Bureau of american ethnology; United States Bureau of Ethnology
The Bureau of American Ethnology (or BAE, originally, Bureau of Ethnology) was established in 1879 by an act of Congress for the purpose of transferring archives, records and materials relating to the Indians of North America from the Interior Department to the Smithsonian Institution. But from the start, the bureau's visionary founding director, John Wesley Powell, promoted a broader mission: "to organize anthropologic research in America.