make copies of such artifacts for their own collections. There was much discussion as to whether the mounds were the work of non-Native American peoples. A further example of the types of projects the SI pursued in its early years stemmed from the work of the Corps of Topographical Engineers and the various U.S. explorations in the West, first during the wars with the Mexicans in 1841 and then in the 1860s, particularly after the Civil War. These explorations had created an immense amount of geographic and ethnographic knowledge, and many of the collections and much of the information they produced eventually found their way into the Smithsonian.

Pioneers of Southwest archaeology, such as the ethnologists frank cushing and william h. holmes, became associated with the Smithsonian through the dominating personality of john wesley powell, who gained fame through his explorations down the Colorado River. Powell’s first voyage (in 1868) was conducted on a shoestring budget, but the scale of the discoveries made soon persuaded Congress to fund the project for three years, beginning in 1869, under the direction of the Smithsonian.

Important as those voyages of exploration were, great strides were also made by Smithsonian correspondents and staffers who patiently accumulated systematic data through the application of questionnaires designed to gather ethnological evidence. In February 1878 the SI, through Professor otis t. mason, from its Department of Ethnology, sought information about the nature and status of the archaeological remains of “American Indians” in order to update the earlier Squier and Davis study. Powell supported the great publication Contributions to North American Ethnology (which began with the Squier and Davis work); this series also served governmental ends in facilitating what was considered to be a more informed approach to the management of “Indian affairs.” For example, in 1879 Congress earmarked $20,000 for the publication of Contributions to North American Ethnology on the proviso that all primary documents pertinent to indigenous North Americans (no matter which agency had created them) be lodged with the Smithsonian. The Bureau of Ethnology, with Powell as the bureau’s founder and leader, was created to analyze and publish this vast amount of information. Of course the bureau performed other government tasks as well, as when Powell was put in charge of taking the census of the Indians in 1880. It changed its name to the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1894 to emphasize the geographic limit of its interests.

Notwithstanding these duties Powell continued to be interested in promoting primary fieldwork. He recruited Cyrus Thomas in 1881 to his Ethnology and Mound Survey, funded by what at that time was a large grant of $25,000 for continuing ethnological research among the North American Indians. Significantly, $5,000 of this amount was designated for archaeological investigations relating to mound builders and prehistoric mounds, directed by Thomas while he was based in the Bureau of Ethnology. The Smithsonian continued its commitment to North American archaeology after Powell left the scene. Among other projects, it conducted the River Basin Surveys, which were begun in 1945 and continued until 1969.

Although the place of archaeology within its institutional structure changed after the great days of the late nineteenth century, the SI has been served particularly well by its head curators of anthropology. Some of the major figures of North American archaeology, such as William Henry Holmes, Frank M. Setzler, Waldo Wedel, Richard B. Woodbury, and William Fitzhugh, occupied this position (in addition to chairing the Department of Anthropology). The appointment of robert m. adams to the post of secretary in 1984 was an eloquent statement of the significance of the institution in that it could attract an archaeologist of Adams’s caliber to such a post.

The Smithsonian continues to promote fundamental research into the archaeology of the Americas, and it is a major publisher of archaeological materials from around the world. But in recent years it has also been at the forefront of discussions in the United States about the repatriation of the indigenous cultural properties and skeletal remains in its collections. Although these discussions have provoked considerable soul-searching and anger (on both sides of the repatriation