John Wesley Powell (March 24, 1834 – September 23, 1902) was a U.S. Army soldier, explorer of the American West, and director of major scientific and cultural institutions. He is famous for his 1869 geographic expedition, a three-month river trip down the Green and Colorado rivers, including the first official U.S. government-sponsored passage through the Grand Canyon.
Powell was appointed by US president James A. Garfield to serve as the second director of the U.S. Geological Survey (1881–1894) and proposed, for development of the arid West, policies that were prescient for his accurate evaluation of conditions. He also spent time among the Native Peoples of the Colorado Plateau and wrote an influential classification of North American Indian languages. Two years prior to his service as director of the U.S. Geological Survey, he had become the first director of the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution where he supported linguistic and sociological research and publications. He was also the first president of the Anthropological Society of Washington, founded in 1879.
Powell was a proponent of Lewis H. Morgan's stages of human progress, and regarded Native Americans as culturally savage or barbarian. He advocated for overthrow of indigenous societies and the gradual replacement of native hunting practices with sedentary agriculture, as well as the cultural assimilation of Native people into the United States. Powell was in favor of developing agriculture on water-rich public lands, leaving the rest for grazing animals.
From 1894 to 1899, Powell held a post as lecturer on the History of Culture in the Political Science department at the Columbian University in Washington, D.C. He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1898.
Early life 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 U.S. from Shrewsbury, England, in 1831. His family moved westward to Jackson, Ohio, then to Walworth County, Wisconsin, before settling in rural Boone County, Illinois.
As a young man he undertook a series of adventures through the Mississippi River valley. In 1855, he spent four months walking across Wisconsin. During 1856, he rowed the Mississippi from St. Anthony, Minnesota, to the sea. In 1857, he rowed down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh to the Mississippi River, traveling north to reach St. Louis. In 1858, he rowed down the Illinois River, then up the Mississippi and the Des Moines River to central Iowa. In 1859, at age 25, he was elected to the Illinois Natural History Society.
Powell studied at Illinois College, Illinois Institute (which would later become Wheaton College), and Oberlin College, over a period of seven years while teaching, but was unable to attain his degree. While at Illinois College, he was a member of Sigma Pi Literary Society.
During his studies Powell acquired a knowledge of Ancient Greek and Latin. Powell had a restless nature and a deep interest in the natural 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.
Civil War and aftermath Powell's loyalties remained with the Union and the cause of abolishing slavery. On May 8, 1861, he enlisted at Hennepin, 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 at Cape 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 marry Emma Dean. At the Battle of Shiloh, he lost his right arm below the elbow when struck by a Minié ball while in the process of giving the order to fire. 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 of Champion Hill, Big Black River Bridge, and in the siege 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 the 17th Army Corps during the Atlanta campaign. After the fall of Atlanta he was transferred to George H. Thomas' army and participated in the battle of Nashville. At the end of the war he was made a brevet lieutenant colonel but preferred to use the title of "major".
After leaving the Army, Powell took the post of professor of geology at Illinois Wesleyan University. He also lectured at Illinois State Normal University for most of his career. Powell helped expand the collections of the Museum of the Illinois State Natural History Society, where he served as curator. He declined a permanent appointment in favor of exploration of the American West.
Exploring the West Early expeditions John Wesley Powell led an expedition into the Rocky Mountains of the Colorado Territory in 1867. An expedition party of 11 men and one woman arrived in Denver on July 6 of that year. Among the men were five students (or recent graduates) from Illinois. The woman was Emma Dean Powell, wife of John Wesley Powell. Eight members of the party (including both Powells) made an ascent of Pikes 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 climb Longs Peak. By December 1868, most of the expedition party had returned to Illinois but the Powells spent the winter camped on the White River, a tributary of the Green River. During that winter, Powell made excursions down both rivers, traveled south to the Grand River (now known as the Colorado River), north to the Yampa River, and around the Uinta Mountains. He also "spent days and nights in the adjacent camp of the Utes, making a vocabulary of their language at 'the request of the Smithsonian.'" Preparations were made for a now historic voyage through the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River in 1869.
First Colorado River expedition
In 1869, John Wesley Powell set out to explore the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon. Gathering ten men, four boats and food for 10 months, he 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, and completed the journey on August 30, 1869.
The members of the 1869 Powell expedition were: John Wesley Powell, trip organizer and leader, major in the Civil War John Colton "Jack" Sumner, hunter, trapper, soldier in the Civil War William H. Dunn, hunter, trapper from Colorado Walter H. Powell, captain in the Civil War, John's brother George Y. Bradley, lieutenant in the Civil War, expedition chronicler Oramel G. Howland, printer, editor, hunter Seneca Howland, soldier who was wounded in the Battle of Gettysburg Frank Goodman, Englishman, adventurer W.R. Hawkins, cook, soldier in Civil War Andrew Hall, Scotsman, the youngest of the expedition
The expedition's route traveled through the Utah canyons of the Colorado River, which Powell described in his published diary as having
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 the Virgin River on August 30, after traversing almost . The three disappeared; some historians have speculated they were killed by the Shivwits Band of Paiutes or by Mormons in the town of Toquerville.
The Powell Survey 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: the Hayden survey, the King survey, and the Wheeler survey. Powell's appropriation was renewed annually until 1879 when these four surveys were consolidated into the United States Geological Survey.
Second Colorado River expedition
In 1870, Powell scouted for locations to resupply a second river expedition. He employed the services of Jacob Hamblin, a Mormon missionary in southern Utah who had cultivated relationships with Native Americans. Hamblin introduced Powell to Chuarumpeak, a leader of the Kaibab 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 the Shivwits Band of Paiutes, who had been accused of killing the Howlands and Dunn the year before.
The second expedition took place in 1871 and 1872, traveling the Colorado River from Green River, Wyoming to Kanab Creek in the Grand Canyon. Powell employed three photographers on this expedition; Elias Olcott Beaman, James Fennemore, and John K. Hillers. This trip resulted in photographs, a 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).
Powell himself accompanied the second expedition only intermittently. The boats launched on 22 May 1871, but Powell departed in early July to visit Emma Dean, who was experiencing a difficult pregnancy in Salt Lake City, Utah. He briefly rejoined them on 24 July at the mouth of the Uinta River but left again to look for a resupply point on the Dirty Devil. He joined them once more at Gunnison's Crossing on 29 August, and together they reached the Crossing of the Fathers on 6 October.
From there, Powell and Hillers traveled to Salt Lake City where, on 8 September, Emma Dean had given birth to the Powells' only child, Mary Dean Powell. The rest of the party continued downstream to the mouth of the Paria before being summoned by Powell to their winter quarters in Kanab. That winter and spring, they completed various overland explorations, and Powell attended to business in Washington. They returned to the river on 13 August 1872, running the Grand Canyon and encountering strong rapids. On 3 September, they arrived at Kanab Creek, where 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. Here, Powell decided to end the trip. They had traveled approximately 164 miles with 114 left to go.
Special Indian commissioner
In 1873, in response to tensions surrounding the Modoc War, Powell was asked to temporarily leave his surveying duties to serve as a special commissioner for the Department of the Interior. He and co-commissioner George Ingalls were tasked with examining into the condition of the Utes of Utah; Pai-Utes of Utah, Northern Arizona, Southern Nevada, and Southeastern California; the Go-si Utes of Utah and Nevada; the Northwestern Shoshones of Idaho and Utah; and the Western Shoshones of Nevada; and for the purpose of consulting with them concerning the propriety of their removal to reservations. In early May, Powell and Ingalls arrived in Salt Lake City and met with representatives of the Ute, Goshute, and Shoshone peoples, after which Powell returned to Washington, D.C. to offer their preliminary recommendations.