[2] He did ethnographic studies of the Ghost Dance, a spiritual movement among various Native American culture groups, after Sitting Bull's death in 1890.

He became a self-taught expert on American tribes by his own studies and his careful observation during long residences with different groups.

[2] In 1885 he started working with the Bureau of American Ethnology (now part of the Smithsonian Institution) at Washington, D.C., under John Wesley Powell.

[1] During the late 1800s Native Americans were under harsh attack in many areas, and essentially subjects of genocide by the United States of America.

The Indian Wars, intended to suppress tribal resistance to European-American settlement of the West, was generally presented as required because Native Americans made unjustified attacks on pioneers.

Mooney provides a preface with a historical survey of comparable millenarian movements among other American Indian groups.

In response to the rapid spread of the Ghost Dance among tribes of the western United States in the early 1890s, Mooney set out to describe and understand the phenomenon.

[7] "The desire to preserve to future ages the memory of past achievements is a universal human instinct,"Mooney said.

Mooney also worked with two other calendar keepers, Settan, or Little Bear; and Ankopaingyadete, meaning "In the Middle of Many Tracks", and commonly known as Anko.

[10] Published posthumously, this account of the Cherokee started with their first contact with whites and, through battles won and lost, treaties signed then broken, towns destroyed and people massacred, ended around 1900.

There is humanity along with inhumanity in the relations between the Cherokee and other groups, Indian and non-Indian; there is fortitude and persistence balanced with disillusionment and frustration.