Anthropology of the Numa: John Wesley Powell's Manuscripts on the Numic Peoples of Western North America, 1868-1880

Abstract

Between 1868 and 1880, John Wesley Powell conducted intermittent linguistic, ethnographic, and folklore studies among the Numic-speaking Indians of the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau areas of western North America. The data from these studies were recorded in over seventy unpublished manuscripts, deposited in the Bureau of American Ethnology manuscript collection of the Smithsonian Institution, National Anthropological Archives. Although Powell intended to write a general "Report on the Numa," his increasing administrative duties after 1879 precluded completion of the project. The Powell manuscripts relating to the "Numa" have been collated, edited and annotated, and presented herein. The materials include general ethnographic data, a variety of myths and tales, and extensive vocabulary lists of various Numic languages and dialects.