James Owen Dorsey

James Owen Dorsey (October 31, 1848 – February 4, 1895) was an American ethnologist, linguist, and Episcopalian missionary who contributed to the description of the Ponca, Omaha, and other southern Siouan languages. He also collected much material on beliefs and institutions, although most of his manuscripts have not been published. Some of the many stories he collected from the Ponca and Osage have been published, and are being used in an Omaha language curriculum project at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. James Owen Dorsey was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He attended the Theological Seminary of Virginia, and was ordained as a deacon of the Episcopal Church in 1871. That year he became a missionary to the Ponca Indians in the...