Abstract
At the foundations of the American colonial project was a profound trust and reliance on scientific methods and scholarly theories. Indeed, history itself was viewed as a quantifiable entity, which only required correct interpretation and accurate measurement to comprehend fully. To facilitate their scientific colonial endeavor, American administrators looked to the burgeoning field of ethnology. For many Western imperialists, ethnological studies represented a critical field in the post-Enlightenment project of universalizing and quantifying humanity via social sciences. Ethnology opened an avenue of inquiry that purported to construct an inclusive narrative that both accounted for and rationalized the heterogeneity of a