Colonel[1] James D. Stevenson (December 24, 1840 – July 25, 1888) was an executive officer of the U.S. Geological Survey and a self-taught ethnologist, anthropologist, geologist, and naturalist.
As a young man, he went on his first expedition to the Missouri River with Dr. Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden, where he began documenting "Indian customs" and learning aspects of local languages.
During the American Civil War, Stevenson enlisted as a private and became second-lieutenant of the Thirteenth New York Volunteers in the Union Army.
On that trip, Stevenson organized the Snake River Expedition entering Yellowstone via the Teton Mountain Range.
Stevenson "nearly lost his life through slipping and falling several hundred feet on the snow, but miraculously escaped, and persisted in an effort to reach the summit, which he accomplished.
In 1877 they went to Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah; and in 1878 back to Yellowstone Park, where he made the most complete collection of specimens and scientific evidence relating to geysers there, which were transferred to the Smithsonian.
In 1878 James and Matilda Stevenson together began ethnographic study, focused on the Ute and Arapaho people.
The report of the Bureau of American Ethnology of 1881 details that the Stevensons collected over 4,900 pueblo items from Northwestern New Mexico and Northeastern Arizona.
White wrote a book, Zia: The Sun Symbol Pueblo, which also documented the theft of the pottery.