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A Trip Down The Colorado River Martin Link
A TRIP DOWN THE COLORADO RIVER
By Martin Link
As a result of our war with Mexico in 184648, we gained some big chunks of territories including what is now our states of Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona, and the southern portions of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. Texas and California became states very quickly, but the vast, mostly unexplored country that lay in between took a while to become recognized.
An effort to establish a cross-country route along the 35th meridian between Albuquerque, NM, and Los Angeles, CA, even brought out a group of surveyors mounted on camels, but not too much interest was shown in the landscapes to the north.
In 1857-58, a military expedition following the course of the Colorado River north between California and the Territory of Arizona, and led by Lt. Joseph C. Ives, reached the area of the future town of Henderson, NV, and the site of Hoover Dam before turning east, and ultimately reaching Ft. Defiance. The trip was a struggle, and to quote Lt. Ives in his final report,
“Ours has been the first, and will doubtless be the last, party of whites to visit this profitless locality. It seems intended by nature that the Colorado River, along the greater portion of its lonely and majestic way, shall be forever unvisited and undisturbed. The handful of Indians that inhabit the sequestered retreats where we discovered them have probably remained in the same condition, and in the same number, for centuries. The country could not support a large population, and by some provision of nature they have ceased to multiply. The deer, antelope, the birds, even the smaller reptiles, all of which frequent the adjacent territory, have deserted this uninhabitable district. Excepting when the melting snows send their annual torrents through the avenues to the Colorado, conveying with them sound and motion, these dismal abysses, and the arid table-lands that enclose them, are left, as they have been for ages, in unbroken solitude and silence.”
However, following the Civil War, the son of Welsh/English missionary immigrants and a veteran of the Civil War, was determined to present a different side to Ives’ story.
His name was John Wesley Powell, and he was born in New York state on March 24, 1834. He was the oldest of eight children, and because the parents were itinerant missionaries they moved around a lot—1830s in Ohio, 1840s in Wisconsin, 1850s in Illinois, then Iowa. At an early age, he developed a curious desire to learn why plants and animals changed over the millennia, and began to collect fossils. To further study geology and to collect fossils, in 1855 he walked across Wisconsin. In 1856 he rowed the entire length of the Mississippi River, and the following year, he rowed down the Ohio River, all the way from Pittsburgh to St. Louis, again studying the geological record and collecting fossils. Although he acquired very little college learning in geology, environment, and natural evolution, he gained considerable knowledge in those fields through hands-on experiences. In 1859 he became Secretary of the Illinois Natural History Society.
When the Civil War broke out in early 1861, John Wesley became a Sgt. in the 20th Illinois Infantry. He later became a 2nd Lt. in an Artillery Company from Missouri, and at the 1862 Battle of Shiloh, lost part of his right arm when his wrist was shattered by a bullet. After his convalescence, during which time his right forearm was amputated, he returned as a Major and served with distinction throughout the rest of the war.
Following his discharge in 1865, he accepted the position of professor of Natural Sciences at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington. The following year he became a lecturer at Illinois State University. In 1867 he was appointed the administrative head of the Illinois Natural History Museum. In that capacity, and with funds generated by museum activities, Powell made several trips out west, with students, to collect fossils and geological samples.
In 1869, augmented by a $10,000 appropriation from Congress, Powell began to seriously plan an expedition down the Green River (in Wyoming) to the junction with the Grand River, at which point the combined flow became known as the Colorado River. He also planned to continue down the Colorado to the junction with the Little Colorado and then explore that segment of a complex series of tributaries and water systems never before successfully traversed by man.
With his congressional grant, he ordered four specially fabricated boats from a naval yard in Chicago. Three of the boats were made from oak, 21’ long, 4’ wide ,and 2’ deep with three watertight compartments fore, aft, and center. The fourth boat was made from pine, 16’ long with three watertight compartments. It needed to be fast and maneuverable to serve as the pilot boat in areas of treacherous rapids. (A bit of collateral history—on May 10, 1869, the golden spike joined the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads at Promontory, Utah.) On May 11th, the first western-bound freight-train stopped at the bridge spanning the Green River in Wyoming and unloaded Powell’s boats. The crew named the pilot boat the “Emma Dean” after Powell’s wife. The three larger boats were named, “Kitty Clyde’s Sister,” “Maid of the Canyon,” and “No Name.”
Enough provisions for ten men for ten months, blankets, extra clothing, medical supplies, ammunition, writing paper, and most important, scientific equipment (including compasses, sextants, chronometers, barometers, and thermometers) were loaded into the watertight compartments in the four boats, along with the crew’s personal items. The 9-man crew included
mostly seasoned hunters and trappers: John Sumner, William Dunn, and George Bradley; also, Powell’s younger brother, Walter Powell, a newspaper editor, Oramel Howland and his brother, Seneca, an adventurous Englishman, Frank Goodman, a former military cook, Will Hawkins, and an 18-year-old Scottish immigrant who was looking for adventure, Andy Hall.
About noon on May 24th, the expedition pushed off from the beach at Green River City, and the trip was underway. Their first major accident occurred on June 9th as they negotiated the rapids at the mouth of the Canyon of Lodore. The “No Name” was wrecked; the men were not hurt, but the supply of food provisions was lost. On July 1st, they camped at the mouth of the Uinta Canyon which had just recently been set aside as a reservation for the small band of Uinta (Paiute) Indians. Powell, Hawkins, and Goodman hiked up to the Indian Agency to see if they could re-supply some of the food they had lost. They were able to acquire some provisions, but Goodman used the opportunity to resign from the expedition and left for Salt Lake City.
On July 17th, they arrived at the junction of the Green with the Grand River. Powell made it official, from that point on, the river was to be known as the Colorado. Almost a month later, on August 10th, they arrived at the mouth of the Little Colorado and spent two days repairing the boats and drying the meager food rations.
On August 13th, the expedition entered the “Great Unknown,” the Grand Canyon, and Powell wrote in his daily log, “We are now ready to start our way down the Great Unknown. Our boats, tied to a common stake, chafe each other as they are tossed by the fretful river. They ride high and buoyant, for their loads are lighter than we could desire. 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. 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.”
For the next two weeks, despite the August heat, the men portaged the three boats and dwindling supplies around almost a hundred rapids. There seemed to be no end of the rapids and rough waters, but there was an end to the food and to the men’s determination. On the evening of August 27th, they made camp at the mouth of a canyon on the north side of the river that appeared to be accessible. The next day three men, William Dunn, Oramel Howland, and Seneca Howland, decided to quit the expedition and take the chance to climb out of this canyon and work their way to the Mormon settlement of St. George (now known as Separation Canyon). The five remaining men, under Powell’s insistence, voted to continue down the course of the Colorado River. Abandoning the
“Emma Dean” the six men and two boats returned to the river and in less than two days reached the mouth of the Rio Virgen (Virgin River). On the bank, fishing, were three white men and an Indian who immediately recognized them as being part of the expedition that the general news had been assuming had all drowned or the ships wrecked. The Mormons treated them with ready hospitality that Powell would remember for years to come.
It was September 1st, and an expedition that had taken 99 days to travel 900 miles on the Green and Colorado Rivers had now come to an end. John Wesley Powell and his brother accepted an offer from the Mormons for a wagon ride to St. Thomas. The other four men continued down the river to Ft. Mojave. Several months later, it was learned that Dunn and the Howlands had been accosted and murdered by a band of Shivwits Indians.
Undaunted, Powell let his feelings be known to the general public—the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River can be navigated, and it is an open book on the geological natural history of the Southwest. In 1871 he made a return trip, this time taking along a couple of photographers. He also fine-tuned some earlier geological compilations, for instance the elevation at the juncture of the Little Colorado is 2,715 feet above sea level, while 217 miles downstream at the end of the Grand Canyon, Grand Wash, the elevation
NATIVE FILM SERIES
Thank you…
Change is inevitable. The unnoticed passing of time can stop you in your tracks. It has been 6 years since our First Annual Native Film Series at the Historic El Morro Theatre. Throughout all this time, Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial has allowed us to be a part of it. I am grateful for its support of Native Film Series and can only hope that us being a part of it has brought a few more folks to town. It’s time for Native Film Series to take a pause and move forward with all its effort to help Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial usher in their 100th year anniversary with a bigger and better Native Film Series in 2021. With that said, I would like to thank all of our audiences throughout the past six years that have waited with anticipation the storytelling of great Native American films. Thank you for your patronage, each of you. Thank you to our City of Gallup with their years of Lodgers’ Tax support to see these stories get to our Gallup audiences.
Native Film Series will be working quietly and effortlessly to join in the interest of the 100th anniversary of Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial by giving of its time to bring a wonderful lineup of films to compliment this historical time and recognize this one-of-a-kind event in our State. Before you know it, the centennial will be on our doorsteps. Native Film Series hopes to join in on this great celebration. So as for now, wait and see what is inevitable.
Sincere gratitude,
Native Film Series
is 865 feet above sea level. This averages a drop of 8 feet per mile of the river channel (in contrast to the Mississippi river which drops one foot every 29 miles in its course from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico).
In 1875 Powell set out on his third and final trip through the Grand Canyon, and by then had brought its stark and awesome beauty to the attention of the entire nation, destroying forever Lt. Ives conclusion that “these dismal abysses and the arid table-lands that enclose them, are left, as they have been for ages, in unbroken solitude and silence.”
In the 1880s, Powell changed his focus to the study and understanding of Native American languages and cultures, especially those of the Southwest. In 1881 he conceived and organized the Bureau of American Ethnology, and became its administrative director, as an affiliated agency of the Smithsonian Institute. A couple of years later, he repeated his efforts in creating the U.S. Geological Survey, also affiliated with the Smithsonian.
Due to failing health, John Wesley Powell retired from both positions in 1896. He died at his home in Haven, Maine, on September 23, 1902, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
The second major dam built on the Colorado River was in Glen Canyon and completed in 1963. The 583-foot-high arch now backs up the second largest man-made lake in North America; a lake named to honor John Wesley Powell.
In 1968, as the centennial of Powell’s first trip down the river loomed on the horizon, the community of Page, Arizona, the Arizona Academy of Science, and the Navajo Tribal Museum bonded together to jointly sponsor several activities to celebrate Powell’s feat. The event that was of main concern of the Navajo Tribal Museum was coordinating and conducting the official boat trip through Marble Canyon and Grand Canyon, tracing the 1869 passage of Powell and his 9-member expedition. Since I was the director of the museum at the time, I inherited the awesome task of putting all the pieces together.
The two-dozen people who had signed up for the Centennial River trip all met at a hotel in Page, on Friday, June 6, 1969 and went through orientation that evening. Early the next morning, we loaded our gear on charter buses and headed down to Lee’s Ferry where our two pontoon boats furnished by Sanderson Bros. River Expeditions were waiting. By noon, we were on one of the most unforgettable experiences any of us could fathom.
With such a wide variety of scientists aboard, we designated a specific topic for each evening’s camp-fire presentation. Our first night’s camp was near Stanton’s Cave, so the topic naturally was the archaeology of the canyon. Subsequent campsites heard discussions of history, physical geology, Pleistocene ecology, flora and fauna, hydrology, and volcanology.
On our eight day, Saturday, June 14th, we had completed our 225-mile excursion and arrived at Diamond Creek where vehicles managed to get down to the river’s edge and load the boats, our gear and us and transport us up to the highway and eventually Flagstaff, where we spent the night. The next day we went back to Page to retrieve our vehicles. For the next two weeks, I was busy helping Ken Hughes, who accompanied the group as our official photographer, develop the nearly 4000 feet of 16mm color film that he had exposed, and edit it down to a 45-minute documentary. We made the first showing of the film on August 1st at the museum in Page as part of the festivities commemorating the Post Office’s First Day of Issue of the Powell memorial stamp.
Those who participated in that Powell Centennial River trip included Roger Tsosie and Huskie John Boyd, Navajo Tribal Rangers; Howard and Marcelette Dana, Perry Hurlbut and Ken Hughes all of Gallup; Carl Cords, Marion Perce and George Perce, Ft. Defiance; Paul Martin, Marian Martin, Garrett Soulen, Jim Mead, Robert Dennis, Robert Dennis, Jr., and Russell Dennis all of Tucson, AZ.; John Cunningham, Charles Chapin, George Evans, Charles and Phyllis Nuckols, Howard Mullins, Elias Moe, and James Mosimann from a number of locales. And yes, me, Martin Link, who organized the whole thing 50 years ago.
Hózhó for Future Generations
Little Colorado River Tribal Park PO Box 459 928-679-2303 navajonationparks.org
2019 Navajo Parks Race Series
LCR Trail Half Marathon & 10K - February 9 Monument Valley Ultra - March 2 Shiprock Marathon - May 4 Asaayi Mountain Run - July 13 12 Hours of Asaay - August 17 Code Talker 29K and 10K - September 8 Naatsisaan Trail Ultra -October 26-27 Monument Valley Marathon - November 15-17 4C Quad Keyah Marathon Series - December 5-8
Kids Marathons at Shiprock and MV Marathon Community Runs at LCR, MV, 4C and Naatsisaan
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