Geological Survey Professional Paper 669 The Colorado River Region and John Wesley Powell

In 1869 Powell was a relatively unknown professor of geology in a small Illinois college. He had been born in Mount Morris, in the western part of New York State, on March 24, 1834, the fourth child of Joseph and Mary Powell, who had emigrated from their native England in 1830 to carry the gospel of Methodism to the American frontier. He was named "John Wesley" in the hope that he would follow his father into the ministry, and his early training had a strong religions element.

The Powells moved to Jackson, Ohio, in 1838 and established themselves on a small farm. Jackson was at the crossroads of North and South, and feelings ran very high on the slavery issue. Because the Powells were strong abolitionists, the boy was unpopular with his schoolmates, and for a time, after he had been stoned by them, he was tutored by George Crookham, a successful farmer, an abolitionist active in the underground railway, and a self-taught naturalist. Crookham quickened young Powell's interest in nature, taking him on excursions into the fields and woods, sometimes with William Mather, who had been State Geologist of Ohio.

Powell's formal schooling was temporarily suspended when he was 12. The family moved to Walworth County, Wisc., and he had to take on the management of the farm. After 4 years of this he turned the farm over to his younger brother and left home in search of further schooling, but a year later he came back to move the family to Boone County, Ill.

In the fall of 1852, he obtained his first teaching position in Jefferson County, Wisc., and made great progress in his studies, especially in geography, as he endeavored to keep ahead of his students. Again, however, he was called home to help move the family, this time to Wheaton, Ill., where a new Wesleyan college was being established. His father promised to help him obtain a college education if he would study for the ministry, but he was already determined to become a scientist.

For a brief time he studied at Illinois College at Jacksonville, where he became acquainted with Jonathan Baldwin Turner, a well-known political liberal, who was committed to the improvement of education and agriculture, and to the advancement of the rights of the farmer. Only a few years before, Turner had developed the fast-growing osage orange as a means of fencing the prairie, a problem in which he had become interested so that a pattern of settlement could be established that would permit a common-school system. Turner also gave direction to Powell's development.

Except for a term at Illinois Institute at Wheaton and a few months at Oberlin College, Powell had no further formal education. His early twenties were spent in teaching, exploring (much of it along rivers), and collecting. Finally, he settled down to teaching at Hennepin, Ill., and when, in 1860, he was made the superintendent of schools, he set about organizing classes and preparing to teach mathematics and science.

With his strong convictions on slavery and the Union, Powell enlisted promptly when the Civil War began and gave distinguished service as a military engineer and artillery officer until January 1865, despite the loss of his right forearm, amputated after the Battle of Shiloh. He enlisted as a private and was discharged as Brevet Lieutenant Colonel, though the title of Major clung to him for the rest of his life.

After the war, he chose to become a professor of geology at Illinois Wesleyan University, a Methodist college at Bloomington. He was also curator of the Illinois State Natural History Society and gave courses at Illinois State Normal University. He was a popular teacher, for his students learned not only from books but through practical experience in the laboratory and in the field.

Some of the students accompanied him on his first trip West in 1867. To arrange this trip, he had to persuade the State legislature to provide a small endowment for the museum of the State Natural History Society and to be named curator by the trustees. Then, with his salary as curator, an allotment of $500 from the museum, an order for army rations from General U. S. Grant, railroad passes, and contributions from Illinois Industrial University and the Chicago Academy of Sciences, he equipped an expedition that spent the summer exploring and collecting in Middle and South Parks in the Colorado Rockies.

In 1868 he led a second expedition to Colorado. This time he devoted most of his attention to the geology, while the others, including his wife and his sister, Nell Thompson, engaged in collecting and other natural history studies. When fall came, the Powells moved over into the valley of the White River and established a winter camp. The winter was spent in exploring the canyons of the White River, the Green River, and the Yampa where it cuts through the Uinta Mountains. Many hours were also spent with the Ute Indians, who were camped nearby, while Powell learned their language and customs and traded with them to obtain items for the museums back home.

Finally, he made up his mind. The region to the south west was largely unexplored, represented on the Government maps as a blank. There were many and fabulous stories about the Colorado River which flowed through it, of explorers who had disappeared, of places where the river disappeared underground, and of great falls. The Indians were afraid of the river. They said that long ago a chief, who was mourning the death of his wife, had been taken by a god to visit her in the happier land where she then dwelled so that he would cease to mourn. The trail to this beautiful land was the canyon of the Colorado. On their return, lest others who were discontented with this life should attempt to reach heaven before their appointed time, the god had rolled a river into the gorge, a mad, raging stream that would engulf anyone who tried. But, Powell said, "the thought grew into my mind that the canyons of this region would be a book of revelations in the rock-leaved Bible of geology. The thought fructified, and I determined to read the book."