Smithsonian Institution. Bureau of Ameri

The Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE), originally the Bureau of Ethnology, was established in 1879 by an act of Congress to transfer archives and materials on North American Indians from the Department of the Interior to the Smithsonian. Renamed in 1897, it focused on ethnology and anthropology under its first director, John Wesley Powell, until its records spanned 1879 to 1965. The bureau played a key role in the scientific study of Native Americans.