JOHN WESLEY POWELL

One Of Our First Generals In The Fight For Land Reformation JOHN WESLEY POWELL

BY JOYCE ROCKWOOD MUENCH “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood.” An architect named Burnham penned those words. Another man, named Powell, spent sixty-eight years living them. One of his plans, had it been put to work a century ago when he conceived it, would have made the United States a significantly different place today. Slightly more than half a century after his death, his vision can still stir the blood.

Conservationists hold Powell's name in high esteem, although he was an amateur in the field. Most people know him only for his great adventure on the Colorado River.

The reason mountaineers give for climbing a mountain is: “because it is there.” John Wesley Powell led an expedition down a wilderness stream to see if it was there. There was no ticker-tape welcome when he came back, although it has been termed “one of the greatest feats of exploration ever executed on this continent.” Ten men in four small wooden boats had snatched the veil of mystery from the heart of a region which covers four-tenths of the forty-eight states' land area.

Spanish explorers had glimpsed the stream and its biggest canyon, back in 1540. A later party from Spain, first white men to cross the river, had named it for the red color, in 1776. The name has stuck, but to many, particularly those who have followed the awesome trail he blazed between massive walls, it will always be Powell's River. He and his men named so many and so graphically the canyons, the monuments which mark the way, the cataracts, the falls, the meadow bottoms, and the cliff eminences above. Like familiar ghosts, the members of the two expeditions (the first exploratory, the second to map and record), seem to accompany the safe rubber pontoons which now make a holiday tour through the white water. There is still adventure on the big river. Long stretches intervene between the dams which try to control its elemental force. Flashfloods now, as then, may come down side canyons or the main gorge, to snatch away stores, or to sweep the unwary traveler from an unprotected bank. In the rainy season the heavens still open like sluice gates, winds can buffet boat and passenger. There are no fewer rocks to be avoided. Rises or drops in water-level make navigation a tricky affair, demanding skill, knowledge, and eternal vigilance. The Colorado River is still much more than a mere collection of raindrops in a hurry to join their salty mother, the Pacific Ocean. But there can be only one first time. Powell's own record gives us some idea of what it was like: "We are three quarters of a mile in the depths of the earth, and the great river shrinks into insignificance as it dashes its angry waves against the walls and cliffs that rise to the world above; the waves are but puny ripples, and we but pygmies, running up and down the sands or lost among the boulders. "We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not. Ah, well! we may conjecture many things. The men talk as cheerfully as ever; jests are bandied about freely this morning; but to me the cheer is somber and the jests are ghastly."

& Resources Conservation The Paranuweap

This was in a rare moment of doubting, not usual with the Major. He has been described as a man of prompt decision with a far-reaching mind, resolute, masterful, and determined to overcome every obstacle. If the men with him had less to gain if the trip was successful, they had their lives to lose, if it failed. Powell gives us a thumb-nail sketch of each, as they started from the city of Green River, Wyoming, on May 24, 1869. Handling his own boat, the Emma Dean, were J. C. Sumner and William H. Dunn. Jack Sumner had been a soldier in the recent war and an amateur hunter before that. Fair-haired and delicate-looking, he had had the hardihood to cross the Rocky Mountains on snowshoes one winter, after considerable experience in the "wilds of the Mississippi Valley." Dunn, who wore his black hair down to his shoulders, knew the wilderness too, from hunting, trapping, and mule-packing in the mountains of Colorado. Captain Walter H. Powell, following in Kitty Clyde's Sister, was the Major's brother. "Silent, moody, sarcastic," his brother notes. Perhaps capture in Atlanta by the Confederates and a subsequent ten months in a Charleston prison had given the artillery officer some reason for his temperament. In the same boat was another Civil war officer, G. Y. Bradley. He had been a lieutenant and then an orderly sergeant in the regular army, being discharged in order to make the river trip. The Major praises him as having a "ready hand, powerful arm, and in danger, rapid judgment, unerring skill." He adds that "great difficulty or peril changes the petulant spirit into a brave and generous soul."

Two Howland brothers and Frank Goodman manned the No Name. O. G. Howland was a "printer by trade, editor by profession, hunter by choice." His fellow members, with a copy of King Lear along to check it by, claimed he looked like that Shakespearean character with hat in his pocket, thin hair and long beard streaming in the wind. The younger Howland, Seneca, was much liked by the whole group as a "quiet, pensive young man." They shared the boat with an Englishman, Frank Goodman, who was stout with "florid face and more florid anticipations of a glorious trip."

In the fourth boat, Maid of the Canyon, was their cook, Billy Hawkins and a 19-year-old Scotch boy, Andrew Hall. Hawkins had been a teamster on the plains, hunter in the mountains since the war, and was athletic, strong, and jovial. Andy had managed to crowd valuable experience in hunting and trapping into his few years, but was still playful and fond of embellishing his stories. Powell mentions his unusual head, inherited from some knight of the border wars, with beaked nose and deep-set, blue eyes.

The trip was full of excitement, danger, privation, and near disaster. Newspapers throughout the country printed a report of the entire party's drowning. The boats were tossed and tipped, some of the food stores were lost, more spoiled from dampness. Almost every day brought new problems to be faced for survival or progress. The daily challenge of nature was complemented by incomparable scenery. Powell, as have those who followed, bore witness to its sublimity. He saw beauty in the rocks and in their immensity. There was something new at every turn. Then, just as they had almost achieved the impossible, three of the men insisted upon leaving the river, climbing the cliffs, and crossing the desert to "safety." The elder Howland and Dunn tried to convince Powell that it was suicide to continue by boat. Seneca Howland felt he should accompany his brother. Ironically, the boats were through the worst of canyon and rapids. When the three left on August 28th, to mount the canyon walls, they were going to their deaths at the hands of Shivwits Indians. They were mistaken for three other white men who had recently murdered some of the tribe.

In one more day the boats were out of the Grand Canyon at the mouth of the Virgin River. In another two, their mission finished, the party separated. The Powells went to Salt Lake City, the others continued in the boats through the lowlands.

The Major was satisfied with having proved that the river could be navigated, but not content with the records they had been able to bring back. The journey had been shortened because of dwindling supplies, and some of their instruments had been lost or rendered inaccurate. In 1870 a second voyage was begun. Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, youngest of the eleven in the party, has recorded the trip in his volume: A Canyon Voyage. Commenting on three weeks of careful preparation, he justifies it while giving something of the size of their undertaking: "Below Green River City, Wyoming, where we were to start, there was not a single settler, nor a settlement of any kind, on or near the river for a distance of more than a thousand miles. From the river out, a hundred miles in an air line westward, across a practically trackless region, would be required to measure the distance to the nearest Mormon settlement on the Sevier, while eastward it was more than twice as far to the few pioneers who had crossed the backbone of the Continent. The Uinta Indian Agency was the nearest establishment to Green River. It was forty miles west of the mouth of the Uinta. In Southern Utah the newly formed Mormon settlement of Kanab offered the next haven, but no one understood exactly its relationship to the topography of the Colorado, except from the vicinity of the Crossing of the Fathers. Thus the country through which we were to pass was then a real wilderness, while the river itselfwas walled in for almost the entire way by more or less unscalable cliffs of great height.

This second trip, unlike the first, had financial approval of the government. There were other ways in which it was different. Wallace Stegner concludes that “few exploring journeys have been as thoroughly annotated.” There were journals kept by various members as well as field notes and photographs.

The Major alone had been through the canyons before. One gets the feeling that his busy mind was already more concerned with mapping and planning for the country. He left the party several times because supplies failed to come in at the agreed spots. It is easy to understand how this could happen in the rugged and little-understood terrain. Professor A. H. Thompson (the major's brother-in-law) was left in command, much of the time. He also achieved remarkable success in the geographical work under almost incredible difficulties. The men paid a considerable price for their adventure, suffering beri-beri, scurvy, and the aches of old war wounds.

The party this time included: S. V. Jones and Jack Hillers with Dellenbaugh, in the Major's boat, the Emma Dean. The Nellie Powell was manned by J. F. Steward, Captain F. M. Bishop, and Frank Richardson. The Canonita's Crew was E. O. Beaman, Andrew Hattan, and the Major's young nephew, Clement Powell.

From Green River, Wyoming, clear to the mouth of the Virgin, the two expeditions scattered names, colorful and intriguing. From Echo Park, Flaming Gorge, Cataract, Glen and Marble Canyons, rapids like Sockdolager, Lava, Separation (where the Howlands and Dunn left the party) the length of the eighteen scenic canyons keep lively the memory of the two Powell parties. The troubles they encountered, the hardships they suffered merge into the background. When the two expeditions were “on the record,” John Wesley Powell still had three decades to formulate and implement his great plan.

He wanted to make land-use possible for the people in the West, the “land of little rain” that meant different land-use than in well-watered areas. His plan included first the mapping and measuring of the entire country, then making the best use of it. Swamp-drainage in the South, dams and irrigation in the West, careful use of the grassy range lands in the plains. But, as Stewart Udall says in The Quiet Crisis: “His report on the arid regions was too sweeping, settlement was too sparse, and experience too meager, for Powell to win his argument in the late 70's. However, his book was dusted off when the toll of human disaster taken by the droughts of the 80's and 90's drove his points home. He got a second chance when Congress passed crisis legislation in 1888 and he was put in charge of an Irrigation Survey to select reservoir sites, determine irrigation project areas, and carry out part of his General Plan.” The Irrigation Survey was not finished. Powell's big plan has yet to be completely accepted. His breadth of vision was rare, and it was based on knowledge he gained first-hand. If he did not succeed completely, he did do much. The historian, Bernard de Voto, says of his report on the arid lands, “In the whole range of American experience from Jamestown on there is no book more prophetic.” Udall names Powell, along with President Rutherford Hayes Secretary of the Interior, Carl Schurz, “in a real sense, our first field generals in the crusade for land reform and land reformation. As reformers, they lost the battle with their own generation. As land prophets, they won, and their insights have become basic concepts of the conservation movement.” With the passing years John Wesley Powell's ideas seem to take on increasing vigor and meaning. The person behind them is apt to become increasingly vague. What kind of background produced this man who was so effective yet only an amateur: explorer, ethnologist, teacher, soldier?

PHOTOGRAPHS AND ILLUSTRATIONS FROM ARIZONA PIONEERS HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TUCSON.

He was born in 1834 in Mount Morris, New York. He moved West, with his family, laboring variously on farms in Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois. It was frontier life, all the way. Books were hard to come by, so he read avidly, any he could lay hands upon. He was interested in everything (except becoming a minister) and since frontier life was rich in natural history, this bent needed only the encouragement from those fortuitous contacts which seem provided the inquiring mind. His father's disapproval of natural history and science probably stiffened the boy's determination. At thirteen he had left school to work on his father's farm, but his self-education went on. He attended several colleges, but only briefly, because they did not offer the subjects he wanted. He taught school and gathered both specimens and knowledge, and experience up and down the watery paths of the Mississippi River system. At twenty-four, when he was teaching in Hennepin, Illinois, he became secretary of the newly chartered Illinois State Natural History Society. Less than a month after guns at Fort Sumter opened the Civil War, Powell enlisted as a private in the zoth Illinois Volunteer Infantry. By June he was a second lieutenant, but it was as a captain and expert on fortifications that he took a few days leave in November to marry his cousin, Emma Dean. He was on General Grant's staff and riding a general's horse in the Battle of Shiloh the following April. A minie ball struck his right arm, crushing it, so that amputation was necessary several days later. If one needs any pointer to the temper of this man, the loss of his right arm might serve. There must have been a period for recuperation, and for the rest of his life pain, but he permitted its loss to handicap him not at all. His own disregard is echoed in accounts about him. One has the impression that the only reason Dellenbaugh even mentions it, is in order to justify the use of an arm-chair, fastened to the boat deck.

After a short leave and a period of recruiting, he was back as an artillery officer, serving under Grant, Sherman, and Thomas. When he left the army in January of 1865, it was as a brevet-lieutenant colonel in command of artillery of the 17th Army Corps. With the close of the Civil War, Powell was able to turn back to his professional career. He pursued many interests, among them the study of Indians and their languages. He directed the Bureau of American Ethnology and was responsible for the first definitive analysis of North American Indian languages. There will be no more John Wesley Powells. That particular mould was broken, along with the frontier and the wilderness which fostered it. The "wilds of the Mississippi Valley" are no more. In places, the Colorado River goes underground, just as early legend and rumor declared. That happens where a dam and powerhouse slows the river down, sucks in water to produce power, then releases it below. Powell's party would have to portage their boats more places than they did in '69. If, however, he were to travel again in the still pristine canyons, he would not have to take back this paragraph about one of them: "The Grand Canyon . . . is a land of music. The river thunders in perpetual roar, swelling in floods of music when the storm gods play upon the rocks and fading away into soft and low murmurs when the infinite blue of heaven is unveiled. With the melody of the great tide rising and falling, swelling and vanishing forever, other melodies are heard in the gorges of the lateral canyons, while the waters plunge in the rapids among the rocks or leap in great cataracts. Thus the Grand Canyon is a land of song. Mountains of music swell in the rivers, hills of music billow in the creeks, and meadows of music murmur in the rills that ripple over the rocks . . ."

Kanab Canyon