John Wesley Powell
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| John Wesley Powell | |
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 Second Director of the United States Geological Survey. Served from 1881-1894. Portrait taken early in his term of office as Director.
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| Born | March 24, 1834 Mount Morris, New York |
| Died | September 23, 1902 (age 68) |
| Nationality | U.S. |
John Wesley Powell (March 24, 1834 – September 23, 1902) was a U.S. soldier, geologist, explorer of the American West and director of major scientific and cultural institutions. He is famous for the 1869 Powell Geographic Expedition, a three-month river trip down the Green and Colorado rivers that included the first passage of European Americans through the Grand Canyon. Morgan served as second director of the US Geological Survey (1881-1894) and proposed policies for development of the arid West which were prescient for his accurate evaluation of conditions. He was director of the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution, where he supported linguistic and sociological research and publications.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life and education
Powell was born in Mount Morris, New York, in 1834, the son of Joseph and Mary Powell. His father, a poor itinerant preacher, had emigrated to the US from Shrewsbury, England in 1830. His family moved westward to Jackson, Ohio, then Walworth County, Wisconsin, before settling in Illinois in rural Boone County.
Powell studied at Illinois College, Wheaton College, and Oberlin College, acquiring a knowledge of Ancient Greek and Latin but never graduating. Powell had a restless nature and a deep interest in the natural sciences. As a young man, he undertook a series of adventures through the Mississippi River valley. In 1855 he spent four months walking across Wisconsin. In 1856 he rowed the Mississippi from St. Anthony to the sea; in 1857 he rowed down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh to St. Louis; and in 1858 down the Illinois River, then up the Mississippi and the Des Moines River to central Iowa. At age 25, he was elected to the Illinois Natural History Society in 1859.
[edit] Civil War and aftermath
Due to Powell's deep Protestant beliefs and social commitments, his loyalties remained with the Union and the cause of abolishing slavery. He enlisted in the Union Army as a topographer and military engineer.[1] During the Civil War, he served first with the 20th Illinois Volunteers. At the Battle of Shiloh, he lost most of one arm when struck by a minie ball. The raw nerve endings in his arm would continue to cause him pain the rest of his life. Despite the loss of an arm, he returned to the army and was present at Champion Hill and Big Black River Bridge on the Big Black River. He was made a major and served as chief of artillery with the 17th Army Corps.
After leaving the Army, Powell took the post of professor of geology at the Illinois Wesleyan University. He also lectured at Illinois State Normal University, and helped found the Illinois Museum of Natural History, where he served as the curator. He declined a permanent appointment in favor of exploration of the American West.[2]
[edit] Marriage and family
In 1862 Powell married Emma Dean.
[edit] Expeditions
From 1867 Powell led a series of expeditions into the Rocky Mountains and around the Green and Colorado rivers. In 1869 he set out to explore the Colorado and the Grand Canyon. He gathered nine men, four boats and food for ten months and set out from Green River, Wyoming on May 24. Passing through dangerous rapids, the group passed down the Green River to its confluence with the Colorado River (then also known as the Grand River upriver from the junction), near present-day Moab, Utah. 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 it Glen Canyon."
One man (Goodman) quit after the first month, and another three (Dunn and the Howland brothers) left at Separation Rapid in the third. This was just two days before the group reached the mouth of the Virgin River on August 30, after traversing almost 1,500 km. The latter three disappeared; historians have speculated they were killed by the Shivwitz band of the Northern Paiute.[3] How and why they died remains a mystery debated by Powell biographers. Some, including Jon Krakauer in his Under the Banner of Heaven, have raised the possibility of a Mormon ambush.
Powell retraced the route in 1871-1872 with another expedition, with such results as photographs (by John K. Hillers), an accurate map, and various papers. In planning this expedition, he employed the services of Jacob Hamblin, a Mormon missionary in southern Utah and northern Arizona, who had cultivated excellent relationships with Native Americans. Before setting out, Powell used Hamblin as a negotiator to ensure the safety of his expedition from local Indian groups. Powell believed they had killed the three men lost from his previous expedition.
Members of the first Powell expedition:
John Wesley Powell, trip organizer and leader, major in the Civil War
J. C. Sumner, hunter, trapper, soldier in the Civil War
William H. Dunn, hunter, trapper from Colorado
W. H. Powell, captain in the Civil War
G.Y. Bradley, lieutenant in the Civil War, expedition chronicler
O. G. Howland, printer, editor, hunter
Seneca Howland
Frank Goodman, Englishman, adventurer
W. R. Hawkins, cook, soldier in Civil War
Andrew Hall, Scotsman, the youngest of the expedition
[edit] After the Colorado
In 1878, the intellectual gatherings Powell hosted in his home were formalized as the Cosmos Club. In later years, members were elected to the club for their contributions to scholarship and civic activism.
In 1881 Morgan was appointed the second director of the US Geological Survey, a post he held until 1894. He was also the director of the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution until his death. Under his leadership, the Smithsonian published an influential classification of North American Indian languages.[4]
In 1875 Powell published a book based on his explorations of the Colorado, originally titled Report of the Exploration of the Columbia River of the West and Its Tributaries. It was revised and reissued in 1895 as The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons.
[edit] Legacy and honors
- In recognition of his national service, Powell was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
[edit] Beliefs and Ideas
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As an ethnologist and early anthropologist, Powell was a student of the pioneering anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan. Powell divided human societies into "savagery," "barbarism," and "civilization" based on levels of technology, family and social organization, property relations, and intellectual development. In his view, all societies progressed toward civilization. He was a champion of preservation and conservation. It was his conviction that part of the natural progression of society included a combination of efforts to maximize and make the best use of resources.
Powell is credited with coining the word "acculturation," first using it in an 1880 report by the US Bureau of American Ethnography. In 1883, Powell defined "acculturation" to be the psychological changes induced by cross-cultural imitation.
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. His Report on the Lands of the Arid Regions of the United States proposed irrigation systems and state boundaries based on watershed areas (to avoid squabbles). For the remaining lands, he proposed conservation and low-density, open grazing.
The railroad companies, who owned vast tracts of lands (183,000,000 acres) granted in return for building RR lines, did not agree with his opinion. They aggressively lobbied Congress to reject Powell's policy proposals and to encourage farming instead, as they wanted to develop their lands. The politicians agreed and developed policies that encouraged pioneer settlement based on agriculture. They based such policy on a theory developed by Professor Cyrus Thomas and promoted by Horace Greeley. He suggested that agricultural development of land causes arid lands to generate higher amounts of rain ("rain follows the plow"). Powell's recommendations for development of the West were largely ignored until the 1900s, resulting in untold suffering associated with pioneer subsistence farms that failed due to insufficient rain.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Weiner, Americans Without Law (New York University Press, 2006).
- ^ Kemp, Bill (2009-01-17). "'Conqueror of the Grand Canyon' returned to Bloomington in 1896". The Pantagraph. http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2009/01/17/news/doc4972745bb421e057303122.txt. Retrieved 2009-01-17.
- ^ Stegner, Wallace (1954). Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West, University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-4133-X (and other reprint editions).
- ^ Reprinted in Boas and Powell, infra.
[edit] References
- Powell, J. W. (1875). The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons. New York: Dover Press. ISBN 0-486-20094-9 (and other reprint editions).
- Boas, F.; Powell, J. W. (1991) Introduction to Handbook of American Indian Languages plus Indian Linguistic Families of America North of Mexico, University of Nebraska Press, ISBN 0803250177
- Dolnick, Edward (2002). Down the Great Unknown : John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon (Paperback). Harper Perennial. ISBN 0-06-095586-4.
- Dolnick, Edward (2001). Down the Great Unknown : John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon (Hardcover). HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0-06-019619-X.
- Ghiglieri, Michael P., Bradley, George Y. (2003). First Through Grand Canyon: The Secret Journals & Letters of the 1869 Crew Who Explored the Green and Colorado Rivers (Paperback). Puma Press . ISBN 0-9700-9732-8.
- National Geographic Society (1999) Exploring the Great Rivers of North America. ISBN 0-7922-7846-1.
- Reisner, Marc (1993). Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water (Paperback). Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-017824-4.
- Stegner, Wallace (1954). Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-4133-X (and other reprint editions).
- Weiner, Mark S (2006). Americans Without Law. New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-9364-9.
- Worster, Donald (2000). A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509991-5.
- Reisner, Marc (1986). "Cadillac Desert: the American West and its Disappearing Water".
- Powell, J.W. (1876). A Report on the Arid Regions of the United States, with a More Detailed Account of the Lands of Utah"
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: John Wesley Powell |
- Biographical sketch (1903) by Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
- NPS John Wesley Powell Photograph Index
- Works by John Wesley Powell at Project Gutenberg
- John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference at Illinois Wesleyan University
- John Wesley Powell Collection of Pueblo Pottery at Illinois Wesleyan University Ames Library
- Powell Museum, Page, Arizona
- John Wesley Powell River History Museum, Green River, Utah
- "John Wesley Powell" by James M. Aton in the Western Writers Series Digital Editions at Boise State University
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