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Home  »  Volume XVII: American LATER NATIONAL LITERATURE: PART II  »  § 22. The Bureau of Ethnology

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21). rn VOLUME XVII. Later National Literature, Part II.

XIV. Travellers and Explorers, 1846–1900

§ 22. The Bureau of Ethnology

Powell established the Bureau of Ethnology and from this issued the large number of volumes before referred to, a mine of information on the North American Indian. Many workers were in the field. One of the most picturesque of these labours was Frank H. Cushing’s initiation into the Zuñi tribe described in his Adventures in Zuñi (1883). He wrote, too, Zuñi Folk Tales (1901); and, in the Bureau reports, other articles on the Zuñi. A remarkable ceremonial of another Puebloan group was written down by Captain John G. Bourke inThe Snake Dance of the Moquis [Hopi] of Arizona (1884). The Puebloans for many centuries have built villages of adobe and stone in the Southwest in canyons, in valleys, and on mesas. One of these cliffbound plateaus, the Mesa Encantada, was the source of some controversy as to whether or not its summit was once occupied. Its walls were scaled and some evidences of the former presence of natives were found. Professor William Libbey and F. W. Hodge both have written on the subject.