James Stevenson

Colonel James D. Stevenson (December 24, 1840 – July 25, 1888) was an executive officer of the U.S. Geological Survey and a self-taught ethnologist, anthropologist, geologist, and naturalist. His geological surveys included Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah. He collected extensively among the Zuni and Hopi, and also documented the Ute and Arapaho people.

Early life and education James Stevenson was born in Maysville, Kentucky. As a young man, he went on his first expedition to the Missouri River with Dr. Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden, where he began documenting "Indian customs" and learning aspects of local languages. During the American Civil War, Stevenson enlisted as a private and became second-lieutenant of the Thirteenth New York Volunteers in the Union Army.

In 1866, he resumed working under Professor Hayden, acting as assistant to the Geological Survey. He was a close friend to General John A. Logan, who helped to advocate for the establishment of the United States Geological Survey and government support of a series of surveys under Hayden's leadership, including the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871. In 1879, the Hayden Survey was disbanded, and the US government created the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE). John Wesley Powell, founder and director of the new organization, appointed Stevenson as a specialist in ethnological work, and he began (along with wife Matilda Coxe Stevenson) to conduct research among a number of Pueblos along the Rio Grande, and among the Zuni. Matilda Stevenson was appointed "volunteer coadjutor [sic] in ethnology."

Later Professional Career James Stevenson did not author many publications in his lifetime. James purportedly disliked writing. Stevenson's own book, now out of print, apparently referenced the theft. Leslie A. White wrote a book, Zia: The Sun Symbol Pueblo, which also documented the theft of the pottery.

Legacy

Artifacts collected by Matilda and James Stevenson are in the collections of the Department of Anthropology in the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution. Papers from Stevenson are in the Institution's National Anthropological Archives.