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.