Abstract

ROSA, Frederico Delgado. North-Amerindian prophetisms and colonialism: a forgotten chapter in the history of anthropology?. Etnográfica [online]. 2017, vol.21, n.2, pp.225-245. ISSN 0873-6561.

James Mooney started his “multi-sited” fieldwork in different Indian reservations of the US in 1890, aiming at a clarification of a prophetic-messianic movement. His ethnography disclosed its transformations on both sides of the Rocky Mountains and in relation with the colonial context. In parallel, Mooney worked in the archive and sent queries by mail that instigated an extensive documentation on new Amerindian religions of Christian influence, directly or indirectly connected to the Ghost Dance. The institutional rise of the Boasian school obfuscated the importance of Mooney’s anthropology, which is not sufficiently acknowledged outside Americanist circuits. The article aims at divulging this figure as a methodological and intellectual forerunner of preoccupations and themes that only much later would reach the core of our discipline.

Keywords : James Mooney; Ghost Dance religion; Mormonism; revivals.

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