THE INDIAN CONGRESS AT OMAHA
By JAMES MOONEY
Interest in the science of anthropology has grown steadily and rapidly in the last twenty years. The work done prior to that time by various scientific bodies and specialists, although good so far as it went, was yet desultory in execution and ap- pealed only to a small circle of scholars, while it remained all un- known to the great body of educated people. The establishment of the Bureau of Ethnology in 1879 marked an era in the history of the science. Its Annual Reports, its Contributions and Bulletins, prepared by recognized experts and brought out usually in a high style of the bookmaker's art, have been distributed by tens of thousands to libraries, scientific bodies, and people of liberal in- telligence all over the country — and in fact all over the world — until today there is not in the United States a community of any importance where these volumes are not known by the sort of people who make public opinion.
Largely through this influence local research has been en- couraged and organized society effort stimulated, chairs of an- thropology have been established in our leading universities, ethnologic expeditions have been fitted out at private cost, and an intelligent public interest has been awakened which finds its reflex in congressional legislation. In 1879 Congress appropriated $20,000 for ethnologic research. In 1899 it appropriates $50,000 for the same purpose, and if, as now seems possible, we should be called on to make color studies in the tropics, we may yet live to see the sum reach the $100,000 mark. Last year also, for the first time, the management of a great exposition asked and ob- tained a special appropriation for ethnology.
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