Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 1891-92

Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1896. Good. Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 1891-92, John Wesley Powell, Government Printing Office, Washington D.C., 1896, 11.5 x 8.5 inches, 462 pp.

Dark olive green boards with gilt stamped illustration of an Indigenous person in a feathered headdress to front, gilt stamped lettering to spine, and blind stamped border to front and back boards. Spine and all corners bumped, moderately rubbed; light scuffing to front and back boards; 4 inch tear to first free endpaper. Good condition.

The United States Congress established the Bureau of Ethnology in 1879. Directed by surveyor, geologist, and U.S. Army Major John Wesley Powell, the Bureau collected European-American knowledge about Indigenous nations, motivated by the false "vanishing race" theory that Indigenous cultures and ways of life were naturally fading out of existence - though in reality they were being displaced by the westward expansion of the United States government and European-American settlers. The Bureau of Ethnology gathered thousands of photographs, illustrations, and other documentation of Indigenous cultures until it merged with other divisions of the Smithsonian Institute in the 1960s.

John Wesley Powell (1834-1902) was an American geologist, U.S. Army soldier, surveyor and explorer. He is most famous for his 1869 geographic expedition down the Green and Colorado Rivers, which resulted in thorough cartographic and scientific documentation of the rivers and surrounding canyon country, including the Grand Canyon.