George Amos Dorsey

Who was George Amos Dorsey?

George Amos Dorsey was an U.S. ethnographer of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, with a special focus on Caddoan and Siouan tribes.

Dorsey was born in Hebron, Ohio, to Edwin Jackson and Mary Emma Dorsey.

He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Denison University in 1888, then a second Bachelor's Degree in anthropology in 1890 at Harvard university, and finally PhD in 1894 on An Archaeological Study Based on a Personal Exploration of Over One Hundred Graves at the Necropolis of Ancon, Peru., the first PhD in anthropology from Harvard, and the second ever awarded in the United States.

In the 1890s Charles Frederick Newcombe, Dorsey and a Scottish guide named James Deans were travelling to gather artefacts that might be of ethnographic interest. Their methods varied, but they frequently held little regard for the native Canadians. The local missionary, John Henry Keen had to angrily take them to task after he found they had not only raided graves but also not restored them to their former state. Keen found hair and coffins strewn about from where they had dug to steal skulls and bones.