James Owen Dorsey

James Owen Dorsey (1848 to 1895) was an American ethnologist, linguist and Episcopalian missionary who described the Ponca, Omaha and other southern Siouan languages. Born in Baltimore, he was ordained deacon in 1871, served as a missionary to the Ponca in the Dakota Territory, and from 1880 until his death worked for the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution. He became the leading expert on the languages and culture of southern Siouan peoples, compiled dictionaries and word lists of Omaha, Ponca, Kansa and Osage, and did field work among the Tutelo, Biloxi and Quapaw. He was the last to record the Yaquina language in 1884. Much of his material on myths, oral histories and customs remains unpublished in the National Anthropological Archives.