James Constantine Pilling (16 November 1846, in Washington, D.C. – 26 July 1895) was a Congressional stenographer-transcriptionist and a pioneering ethnologist chiefly known for compiling a series of extensive bibliographies of the cultures, mythologies and languages of the North and Central American aboriginal peoples.

[1] Pilling attended Gonzaga College, at the time chartered by Congress to offer university degrees but today a Jesuit high school.

In 1875, John Wesley Powell hired him to help administer the United States Geological Survey (USGS) of the Rocky Mountain regions.

[2] In his unpaid hours over the next 15 years Pilling compiled an extensive bibliography of books and manuscripts on North American languages.

[2] Organizing his data sets in card catalogues and using a cross-reference system, between 1887 and 1894, Pilling published revised bibliographies of Eskimo–Aleut, Siouan–Catawban, Iroquoian, Muskogean, Algonquian, Athabaskan, Chinookan, Salishan, and Wakashan language families (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletins 1, 5, 6, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 19).