James Mooney (1861-1921) was a notable anthropologist who lived for several years among the Cherokee. His most notable work was his ethnographic study of the Ghost Dance, a widespread religious movement among various Native American culture groups that ended in 1890 with a bloody confrontation against the United States Army at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

D. W. "James" Mooney (d. 1882) was a mining prospector and one of the early Grand Canyon explorers. He lost his life trying to find a route down into the canyon in the area that was named Mooney Falls after him. Along with Alphonso Humphreys, H. J. Young, W. C. Beckman, Mat Humphreys and W. W. Jones filed Cataract Canyon Mining Claims from the Department of Mineral Resources in Phoenix 1879. The claim ran through 1883.

Tales of his death were apparently elaborated by G.W. James in In and About the Grand Canyon, which tells of Mooney hanging suspended from a jammed rope for three days. There is apparently no evidence for this - in a letter, Alphonso Humpreys wrote:

I well remember the trip that Mooney fell. We had been down in the canyon about three days when Mooney fell and was killed, and we had no way to get down to bury his remains till eleven months and a day. The day Mooney fell we were all down in the canyon except Beckman, and when we returned to camp there was no levity amoung [sic] us. Beckman noticed that, and not seeing Mooney he asked about him, and Doheny told him he fell and was killed. The next morning before any of us was up he went down to the cliff to see if Mooney had moved. He untied the rope and tossed it down with his boots and said, this is all the funeral I can give you this time. Mooney, before starting down on his rope had pulled off his boots and asked me to lend him my belt which was a wide one. I have never seen the belt to this day, but Mooney's boots showed us the way to go down and bury him. We noticed the boots on an Indian. We asked him how he got the boots. To make a long story short, Young went with the Indian, who showed him the way he went down - a dangerous trip along a crevice in the wall of the canyon part of the way. Young wouldn't try that trail, but the Indian showed us some little caves, and we made the tunnel thru [sic] the cliff.