James Murie

James Rolfe Murie (1862 – November 18, 1921) was a Native American anthropologist, ethnographer, and educator. He was Skidi Pawnee and reached Pawnee culture, history, religion, and worldviews.

Murie wrote the Ceremonies of Pawnee, which included accounts of songs utilized in three South Band ceremonies, constituting one of the most extensive song collections for any Native American tribe ever described. Murie also collaborated with anthropologists Alice Fletcher, George Dorsey, and Clark Wissler. was born in 1862 in Grand Island, Nebraska to a Skiri Pawnee mother, Anna Murie, and a white father, James Murie.

During the summer of 1869, Murie's father suffered from what was later identified as a mental illness and in 1871, was admitted to a mental institution. Murie claimed that his father died from a lightning strike while scouting with the battalion, but Murie's father was moved from the mental institution to the Soldiers and Sailors Home in Nebraska in 1888 and died there on December 26, 1910. The United States government removed the Pawnee from their Nebraska territory to Pawnee County, Oklahoma over a three-year period starting in 1874. By 1890, most of the Skiris lived in houses on their own farms and spoke English. Murie also remarks in a 1902 letter to Fletcher how "my people at this time have full confidence and trust in me." in which she transcribed and translated each Hako song and included its interpretation by a Pawnee Ku'rahus.

Collaboration with George Dorsey Anthropologist George Dorsey was a curator of anthropology at the Field Museum between 1899 and 1915 and focused on the tribes of the Plains Indians between 1901 and 1907, including the Pawnee, Arapaho, and Cheyenne. Van de Logt address how Murie's family relationships as well acculturation through schooling and religion affected his collaboration with Dorsey like Warden.

After his work with Dorsey ended, Murie continued to work for the Bureau of American Ethnology and the American Museum of Natural History. The Pawnee had identified 24 stars and 15 constellations on a star chart painted on a buckskin hide that was currently housed in the Field Museum.

Ceremonies of the Pawnee (1981) Murie also described Pawnee cultural material in a book produced in collaboration with anthropologist Clark Wissler, Ceremonies of Pawnee.

This two-volume work was supposed to be published by the Smithsonian in 1921, but the length of the manuscript delayed publication until 60 years later in 1981. and an obituary about Murie's life appeared on the front page of the Pawnee Democrat (newspaper from Pawnee, Oklahoma) on November 24, 1921.

The National Anthropological Archives contains correspondence between James R. Murie and Alice Fletcher in the Alice Fletcher and Frances La Flesche papers between 1898 and 1905, even when Murie was working for Dorsey.