John Wesley Powell | |
|---|---|
 Powell as he appears at theNational Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. | |
| 2nd Director of the United States Geological Survey | |
| In office 1881 (1881) – 1894 (1894) | |
| Preceded by | Clarence King |
| Succeeded by | Charles Doolittle Walcott |
| Personal details | |
| Born | March 24, 1834[1] Mount Morris, New York, U.S. |
| Died | September 23, 1902(1902-09-23) (aged 68)[1] Haven Colony,Brooklin, Maine, U.S. |
| Resting place | Arlington National Cemetery, Section 1 |
| Spouse | Emma Dean Powell |
| Relatives | William B Powell, brother.Walter H Powell, brother |
| Known for | TraversingColorado River of theGrand Canyon |
| Signature |  |
| Scientific career | |
| Education | |
| Fields | Natural sciences |
| Institutions | |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance | United States of America |
| Branch | United States Army |
| Service years | 1861–1865 |
| Rank | Major |
John Wesley Powell (March 24, 1834 – September 23, 1902)[1] was an American geologist, U.S. Army soldier, explorer of theAmerican West, professor atIllinois Wesleyan University, and director of major scientific and cultural institutions. He is famous for his 1869geographic expedition, a three-month river trip down theGreen andColorado rivers, including the first official U.S. government-sponsored passage through theGrand Canyon.
Powell was appointed by US presidentJames A. Garfield to serve as the second director of theU.S. Geological Survey (1881–1894) and proposed, for development of the arid West, policies that were prescient for his accurate evaluation of conditions. Two years prior to his service as director of the U.S. Geological Survey,[2] Major Powell had become the first director of theBureau of Ethnology at theSmithsonian Institution where he supportedlinguistic and sociological research and publications.
Powell was born inMount Morris, New York, in 1834, the son of Joseph and Mary Powell. His father, a pooritinerant preacher, had emigrated to the U.S. fromShrewsbury, England, in 1831. His family moved westward toJackson, Ohio, then toWalworth County, Wisconsin, before settling in ruralBoone County, Illinois.[3]: 3–51
As a young man he undertook a series of adventures through theMississippi River valley. In 1855, he spent four months walking acrossWisconsin. During 1856, he rowed the Mississippi fromSt. Anthony,Minnesota, to the sea. In 1857, he rowed down theOhio River fromPittsburgh to the Mississippi River, traveling north to reachSt. Louis. In 1858, he rowed down theIllinois River, then up the Mississippi and theDes Moines River to centralIowa. In 1859, at age 25, he was elected to the Illinois Natural History Society.
Powell studied atIllinois College, Illinois Institute (which would later becomeWheaton College), andOberlin College, over a period of seven years while teaching, but was unable to attain his degree.[4] While at Illinois College, he was a member ofSigma Pi Literary Society.[5]
During his studies Powell acquired a knowledge ofAncient Greek andLatin. Powell had a restless nature and a deep interest in thenatural sciences. This desire to learn about natural sciences was against the wishes of his father, yet Powell was still determined to do so. In 1860, when Powell was on a lecture tour, he began to feel that a civil war was inevitable; after enlisting, he decided to study military science and engineering to prepare himself for the conflict.[3]: 84, 87
Powell's loyalties remained with theUnion and the cause of abolishingslavery. On May 8, 1861, he enlisted atHennepin, Illinois, as a private in the 20th Illinois Infantry. He was elected sergeant-major of the regiment, and when the 20th Illinois was mustered into the Federal service a month later, Powell was commissioned a second lieutenant.
While stationed atCape Girardeau, Missouri, he recruited an artillery company that became Battery 'F' of the 2nd Illinois Light Artillery, with Powell as captain. On November 28, 1861, Powell took a brief leave to marryEmma Dean.[3]: 89 At theBattle of Shiloh, he lost most of his right arm when struck by aMinié ball while in the process of giving the order to fire.[4] The raw nerve endings in his arm caused him pain for the rest of his life.
Despite the loss of an arm, he returned to the Army and was present at the battles ofChampion Hill,Big Black River Bridge, and in thesiege of Vicksburg. Always the geologist, he took to studying rocks while in the trenches at Vicksburg. He was made a major and commanded an artillery brigade with the17th Army Corps during theAtlanta campaign. After the fall of Atlanta he was transferred toGeorge H. Thomas' army and participated in thebattle of Nashville. At the end of the war he was made abrevet lieutenant colonel but preferred to use the title of "major".[4]
After leaving the Army, Powell took the post of professor of geology atIllinois Wesleyan University. He also lectured atIllinois State Normal University for most of his career. Powell helped expand the collections of theMuseum of the Illinois State Natural History Society, where he served ascurator. He declined a permanent appointment in favor of exploration of the American West.[6][7]
John Wesley Powell led an expedition into theRocky Mountains of theColorado Territory in 1867.[8] An expedition party of 11 men and one woman arrived inDenver on July 6 of that year. Among the men were five students (or recent graduates) from Illinois. The woman wasEmma Dean Powell, wife of John Wesley Powell. Eight members of the party (including both Powells) made an ascent ofPikes Peak in the summer of 1867. After further explorations, the expedition party disbanded in September but the Powells remained in the Rockies for two additional months before returning to Illinois in December.
Powell organized and led a second expedition to the Colorado Territory in 1868. In that year, Powell,William Byers, and five other men became the first white explorers to climbLongs Peak.[9] By December 1868, most of the expedition party had returned to Illinois but the Powells spent the winter camped on theWhite River, a tributary of theGreen River.[10] During that winter, Powell made excursions down both rivers. He also traveled south to the Grand River (now known as theColorado River), north to theYampa River, and around theUinta Mountains.[11] Preparations were made for a now historic voyage through theGrand Canyon of the Colorado River in 1869.
In 1869, John Wesley Powell set out to explore the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon.[12] Gathering ten men, four boats and food for 10 months, he set out fromGreen River, Wyoming, on May 24. Passing through dangerous rapids, the group passed down the Green River to itsconfluence with the Colorado River (then also known as the Grand River upriver from the junction), near present-dayMoab, Utah, and completed the journey on August 30, 1869.[7]
The members of the 1869 Powell expedition were:
The expedition's route traveled through the Utah canyons of the Colorado River, which Powell described in his published diary as having
... wonderful features—carved walls, royal arches, glens, alcove gulches, mounds and monuments. From which of these features shall we select a name? We decide to call itGlen Canyon.
Frank Goodman quit after the first month, and Dunn and the Howland brothers left at Separation Canyon in the third month. This was just two days before the group reached the mouth of theVirgin River on August 30, after traversing almost 930 mi (1,500 km). The three disappeared; some historians have speculated they were killed by theShivwits Band of Paiutes or by Mormons in the town ofToquerville.[13]: 131–2 [14][15][16]
After his 1869 navigation of the Colorado, Powell was awarded $12,000 from Congress to "[complete] the survey of the Colorado of the West and its tributaries." The Powell Survey operated alongside three other surveys of the western territories that were active at the time: theHayden survey, theKing survey, and theWheeler survey. Powell's appropriation was renewed annually until 1979 when these four surveys were consolidated into theUnited States Geological Survey.
In 1870, Powell scouted for locations to resupply a second river expedition. He employed the services ofJacob Hamblin, a Mormon missionary in southern Utah who had cultivated relationships with Native Americans. Hamblin introduced Powell to Chuarumpeak, a leader of theKaibab band of Paiutes, who in turn led Powell and Hamblin from the headwaters of the Sevier River to a potential access point. Chuarumpeak also facilitated a meeting between Powell and theShivwits Band of Paiutes, who had been accused of killing the Howlands and Dunn the year before.[3]: 211–213
The second expedition took place in 1871 and 1872, traveling the Colorado River from Green River, Wyoming toKanab Creek in the Grand Canyon.[17]: 111–114 Powell employed three photographers on this expedition; Elias Olcott Beaman, James Fennemore, and John K. Hillers.[18] This trip resulted in photographs (byJohn K. Hillers), an accurate map, and various papers. At least one Powell scholar,Otis R. Marston, has opined that the maps produced from the survey were impressionistic rather than precise.[17] The second expedition was cut short at Kanab Creek in September of '72 when word reached the party that "the whole Shivwits band was in turmoil over several killings of their people near Mount Trumbull and in St. George" and were threatening revenge against the whites[3]: 253 . They had traveled approximately 164 miles with 114 left to go.
In the early 1900s the journals of the 71-72 expedition crew began to be published starting with Dellenbaugh'sA Canyon Voyage in 1908, followed in 1939 by the diary ofAlmon Harris Thompson, who was married to Powell's sister,Ellen Powell Thompson.[19] Bishop, Steward, W.C. Powell, and Jones' diaries were all published in 1947.[19] These diaries made it clear Powell's writings contained some exaggerations and recounted activities that occurred on the second river trip as if they occurred on the first. They also revealed that Powell, who had only one arm, wore a life jacket, though the other men did not have them.[17]: 48, 50–51, 53, 55, 57, 59, 63, 93, 107
In 1881, Powell was appointed the second director of theU.S. Geological Survey, a post he held until his resignation in 1894,[3]: 394, 534 being replaced byCharles Walcott. In 1875, Powell published a book based on his explorations of the Colorado, originally titledReport of the Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries. It was revised and reissued in 1895 asThe Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons. In 1889, the intellectual gatherings Powell hosted in his home were formalized as theCosmos Club.[3]: 437–439 The club has continued, with members elected to the club for their contributions to scholarship and civic activism.
Powell spent time among the Native Peoples of theColorado Plateau and wrote an influential classification of North American Indian languages.[20] He became the director of theBureau of Ethnology at theSmithsonian Institution in 1879 and remained so until his death.[13]: 239–40 He was also the first president of the Anthropological Society of Washington, founded in 1879.[21]: 340 From 1894 to 1899, Powell held a post as lecturer on the History of Culture in the Political Science department at theColumbian University in Washington, D.C.[22] He was elected a member of theAmerican Antiquarian Society in 1898.
During the winter of 1868, while preparing for his journey down the Colorado, Powell "spent days and nights in the adjacent camp of the Utes, making a vocabulary of their language at 'the request of the Smithsonian.'"[3]: 150 Many of Powell's subsequent anthropological writings, including his studies of Indian languages, draw upon his interactions with Native Americans during the 1870s as director of the Powell Survey.
After Powell assumed near-permanent residency in Washington, D.C. as director of the Bureau of Ethnology and the U.S. Geological Survey, his contributions to anthropology consisted increasingly of hiring others to conduct field research and abstract theorizing. Powell was a friend and follower ofLewis Henry Morgan whose 1877 bookAncient Society argued that all human societies progressed from "savagery" to "barbarism" and finally "civilization." These classifications were based on factors such as technology, family and social organization, property relations, and religion. Powell, like Morgan, believed that the course of human development was linear and universal.[3]: 451–55 [23]: 107–10 For example, inThe Exploration of the Canyons of the Colorado, he describes the subsistence practices of a group of Indians "more nearly in their primitive condition than any others on the continent with whom I am acquainted."[24]: 318 Although, as Wallace Stegner observes inBeyond the 100th Meridian, by 1869 many Native American tribes had been pushed to extinction, and many of those who survived had experienced significant intercultural exchange.[13]: 257
As many scholars have noted, Morgan's hierarchical schema was often used to justify the dispossession of Native peoples and to support theories of racial difference.[25] Indeed, the study of ethnology was often a way for scientists to demarcate social categories in order to justify government-sponsored programs that exploited newly appropriated land and its inhabitants.[26][25][27] Believing that "progress" was linear and inevitable, Powell advocated for government funding to be used to 'civilize' Native American populations, pushing for the teaching of English, Christianity, and Western methods of farming and manufacture.[24][28] However, Powell was not aSocial Darwinist.[3]: 462–3 [21]: 321–4 [27]: 122 Nor did Powell consider race a more important factor than culture for explaining differences between human groups.[3]: 455
Powell is credited with coining the word "acculturation", first using it in an 1880 report by the U.S. Bureau of AmericanEthnography. In 1883, Powell defined "acculturation" as psychological changes induced by cross-cultural imitation.[citation needed]
Powell's anthropological research often coincided with political advocacy as he sought to advise federal agencies, Native peoples, and politicians about how best to manage the influx of white settlers to the West.
In 1873, in response to tensions surrounding theModoc War, Powell temporarily left his directorship of the Powell Survey to serve as a special commissioner for the Department of the Interior. He and co-commissioner George Ingalls delivered a report in December of that year recommending a program to relocate members of theUte,Paiute,Shoshone, andWestern Shoshone peoples to reservations where, Powell and Ingalls hoped, they would practice Western-style agriculture and be insulated from further conflicts with white settlers.[28][3]: 272–86 Despite their efforts, "[n]either the whites nor the Indians followed the commission's recommendations in the next few years."[3]: 285
In his 1878 Report on the Methods of Surveying the Public Domain, Powell criticized US government efforts at assimilation for failing to recognize the structure and complexity of Native societies.[29] "Savagery is not inchoate civilization," Powell wrote; "it is a distinct status of society, with its own institutions, customs, philosophy, and religion; and all these must necessarily be overthrown before new institutions, customs, philosophy, and religion can be introduced."[29]: 15 He called attention to the democratic nature of tribal decision-making and Native aversion to land ownership by individuals, making the case that achieving assimilation would require government funding and a long-term commitment.
Some of Powell's most dismissive remarks about Native society are recorded in an 1880 letter to Senator H.M. Teller of Utah, in which Powell states that the removal of Indians from their ancestral lands "is the first step to be taken in their civilization."[30] Attorney and historian Charles Wilkinson calls this letter "treacherous" and "the darkest episode" of Powell's career."[31]: 220
Powell's descriptions of Native land-use practices were sometimes inaccurate and served to advance settler colonial goals. For example, in his 1878 Report on the Lands of the Arid Region, Powell attributes widespread forest fires to Native agency and concludes "[t]he fires can, then, be very greatly curtailed by the removal of the Indians."[32]: 18 William deBuys notes that Powell's claims about the extent of the fires is "surprising" and that Powell himself later blamed such fires on white settlers.[21]: 174–76, 290–91
InCadillac Desert, Powell is portrayed as a champion of land preservation and conservation.[33] Powell's expeditions led to his belief that the arid West was not suitable for agricultural development, except for about 2% of the lands that were near water sources. HisReport on the Lands of the Arid Regions of the United States proposed reforming the system by which the government distributed land to settlers by taking into account topography and access to water in determining the shape and size of parcels. "Irrigable lands" would be organized into self-regulatingirrigation districts to prevent the monopolization of water by those lucky enough to acquire riparian parcels. For the remaining lands, he proposed conservation and low-density, open grazing.[32]
The railroad companies owned 183 million acres (740,000 square kilometers) – vast tracts of lands granted in return for building the railways – and did not agree with Powell's views on land conservation. They aggressively lobbied Congress to reject Powell's policy proposals and to encourage farming instead, as they wanted to cash in on their lands. The U.S. Congress went along and developed legislation that encouraged pioneer settlement of the American West based on agricultural use of land. Politicians based their decisions on a theory of ProfessorCyrus Thomas, a protegé ofHorace Greeley. Thomas suggested that agricultural development of land would change climate and increase precipitation, claiming that "rain follows the plow", a theory which has since been largely discredited.[citation needed]
At an 1893 irrigation conference, Powell would prophetically remark: "Gentlemen, you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not sufficient water to supply the land."[34] Powell's recommendations for development of the West were largely ignored until after theDust Bowl of the 1920s and 1930s, resulting in untold suffering associated with pioneer subsistence farms that failed because of insufficient rain and irrigation water.
In recognition of his national service, Powell was buried inArlington National Cemetery,[3]: 570 Virginia. TheJohn D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act, signed 12 March 2019, authorizes the establishment of the "John Wesley Powell National Conservation Area", consisting of approximately 29,868 acres of land in Utah.[36] Green River, Wyoming, the embarkation site of both Powell expeditions, commissioned a statue depicting Powell holding an oar, in front of the Sweetwater County History Museum. In Powell's honor, the USGS National Center inReston, Virginia, was dedicated as the "John Wesley Powell Federal Building" in 1974. In addition, the highest award presented by the USGS to persons outside the federal government is named theJohn Wesley Powell Award. In 1984, he was inducted into theHall of Great Westerners of theNational Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.[37]
The following were named after Powell:
An article inScientific American notes the following awards:[42]
Powell was also an elected member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences and theAmerican Philosophical Society.[44][45]
On November 28, 1861, while serving as captain of Battery 'F' of the 2nd Illinois Light Artillery atCape Girardeau, Missouri, he took a brief leave to marryEmma Dean.[3]: 89
On September 10, 1871, Emma Dean gave birth to the Powells' only child, Mary Dean Powell inSalt Lake City, Utah.[46] She was active in the Wimodaughsis, a national women's club in Washington, D.C., started byAnna Howard Shaw andSusan B. Anthony.[47][48][49] Emma Dean Powell died on March 13, 1924, inWashington, D.C. She is buried along with her husband inArlington National Cemetery.[50]
The early photographs are by E. O. Beaman, James Fennemore, John K. Hillers, photographers on the 1871 Powell expedition. The collection includes ... photographs, evidently created for inclusion in Dellenbaugh's books on the Colorado River and the West.
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| Preceded by | Director of theUnited States Geological Survey 1881–1894 | Succeeded by |
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