American anthropologist and a foremost student of North American Indian (Native American) ethnology. His contributions to knowledge of the Indians of the southeastern United States significantly developed the discipline of ethnohistory.

Swanton studied with anthropologist Franz Boas at Columbia University for two years but received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1900. He immediately joined the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., remaining until 1944. His first fieldwork, in British Columbia (1900–01) and southeastern Alaska (1903–04), resulted in more than 20 monographs and articles on the ethnology, folklore, and languages of the Northwest Coast Indians. His study of one particular tribe, Contributions to the Ethnography of the Haida (1905), is still considered definitive. His studies also led him to oppose 19th-century views on the evolution of all societies through stages of cultural development based on certain systems of kinship.

About 1905 Swanton began studying the Indians of the Southeast (Southeast Indian). Touching on all aspects of the ethnology of the region, including linguistic and theoretical problems, he largely developed the modern techniques of historical anthropology. In 16 lengthy monographs and some 100 articles, he recorded virtually everything known on the history, movements, material culture, social organization, religion, and languages of a number of the Siouan and Muskhogean tribes, including the Natchez, Chitimacha, Caddo, Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw. Among his major works are Final Report of the United States DeSoto Expedition Commission (1939), Indians of the Southeastern United States (1946), and The Indian Tribes of North America (1952).