Mooney, James (1861-1921). Self-taught anthropologist and researcher of American Indian tribes of the Great Plains and southeastern United States. Mooney worked as an ethnologist with the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology from 1885 until 1921. ALS, 2pp, 8 x 10.5 in., on "Smithsonian Institution/ Bureau of American Ethnology" letterhead, "Anadarko, Okla." October 20, 1901. Addressed to Captain G.E. Albee (1845-1918) in New Haven, CT. Accompanied by the original Smithsonian Institution cover. Written from the field, the letter addresses the exchange of historical data between Mooney and Albee, an Indian Wars veteran familiar with the Kiowa tribe, the subject of Mooney's current research project. Indeed, Mooney writes that he is "again with the Kiowas - on the very site of the old Tonkawa massacre." This massacre took place October 23-24, 1862, when a group of pro-Union American Indian tribes attacked the Confederate-held Wichita Agency, where the Tonkawa tribe had been relocated in 1859. The Tonkawas were outcasts among the southern plains tribes not only because of their loyalty to the Confederacy, but also by dint of their ritualistic cannibalism, which Mooney addresses in his letter. Surprised at Albee's unfamiliarity with these claims, he writes that "no fact in southwestern Indian history is better establisht [sic] than that of the Cannibalism of the Tonkawas and other tribes of the Texas and Louisiana coast. . . Further, the only name of which the Tonkawas are known to the other tribes is that of 'Man Eaters.'"Â