Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 55, Number 2, 1987

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UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

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( I S S N 0042-143X) EDITORIAL

STAFF

M A X J . EVANS, Editor STANFORD J . LAYTON, Managing Editor MIRIAM B . MURPHY, Associate Editor

ADVISORY BOARD O F EDITORS KENNETH L . CANNON II, Salt Lake City, 1989 ARLENE H . EAKLE, Woods Cross, 1987

PETER L . GOSS, Salt Lake City, 1988 GLEN M . LEONARD, Farmington, 1988 R O B E R T S . M C P H E R S O N , Blanding, 1989 RICHARD W. SADLER, Ogden, 1988

HAROLD SCHINDLER, Salt Lake City, 1987 G E N E A. SESSIONS, Bountiful, 1989

GREGORY C . THOMPSON, Salt Lake City, 1987 Utah Historical Quarterly was established in 1928 to publish a r t i d e s , d o c u m e n t s , a n d reviews c o n t r i b u t i n g to knowledge of U t a h ' s history. T h e Quarterly is published four times a y e a r b y t h e U t a h State Historical Society, 300 R i o G r a n d e , Salt L a k e City, U t a h 8 4 1 0 1 . P h o n e (801) 533-6024 for m e m b e r s h i p a n d publications information.

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IIZSTORXCA.I:* axjiLBrrERvsr Contents SPRING 1987 / V O L U M E 55 / N U M B E R 2

IN T H I S ISSUE

103

BEFORE POWELL: E X P L O R A T I O N O F T H E C O L O R A D O RIVER C H A R L E S KELLY'S GLEN CANYON V E N T U R E S AND A D V E N T U R E S THE BERNHEIMER EXPLORATIONS IN FORBIDDING CANYON " L E S VOYAGEURS SANS T R A C E " — THE DECOLMONT-DESEYNE KAYAK PARTY O F 1938

M E L V I N T . SMITH

105

GARY TOPPING

120

HARVEY LEAKE AND GARY TOPPING

137

ROY WEBB

167

N O R M A N NEVILLS: W H I T E W A T E R M A N OF T H E WEST

P. T.

REILLY

181

BOOK REVIEWS

201

BOOK N O T I C E S

207

T H E C O V E R Glen Canyon Mile 37.8, 1955. Color transparency courtesy of Dick Sprang, Sedona, Arizona.

© Copyright 1987 Utah State Historical Society

Books reviewed E D W A R D L E O L Y M A N . Political Deliverance:

The Mormon Quest for Utah Statehood

, D . GENE PACE

201

R O G E R D A N I E L S , SANDRA C . T A Y L O R ,

a n d H A R R Y H . L . KITANO.

Japanese

Americans: From Relocation to Redress

FRED W . VIEHE

202

W A R R E N L . D ' A Z E V E D O , ed. Handbook of

North American Indians, Vol. II: Great Basin

JANICE W H I T E CLEMMER

203

R O B E R T W . L A R S O N . Populism in the

Mountain West

TERRY

204

HUTTON

205

GIBBS M . SMITH

206

ROBERT

L.

The American West in Film: Critical Approaches to the Western PAUL ANDREW

J O N TUSKA.

Desert Passages: Encounters with the

PATRICIA NELSON LIMERICK.

American Deserts

Willis Johnson below Navajo Creek, 1942 Kelly-Frazier river trip. USHS collections.

I n this issue If history and geography were proportional, two-thirds of Utah history would be devoted to the Colorado Plateau. Since history concerns people, though, things do not work out quite that neatly, and in fact that rugged and beautiful—but sparsely populated—region has attracted a lot less historical attention than its vast land mass might suggest. From time to time the Quarterly has attempted to redress that imbalance by featuring special issues devoted to the Colorado River and its environs, and the present issue offers some of the current scholarship on that subject by both young and veteran historians.

Without diminishing the importance of Maj. John Wesley Powell's historic 1869 voyage of exploration, Melvin T. Smith demonstrates that so many predecessors had explored so much of the river in piecemeal fashion that only some 250 river miles were still unknown by that time. Gary Topping studies the checkered career of Charles Kelly, a later would-be explorer whose several Glen Canyon voyages were marred by comical ineptness and personal friction, but nevertheless produced some solid achievements. Charles L. Bernheimer, a dapper "cliff dweller from Manhattan," was another apparent misfit in the convoluted canyons around Navajo Mountain, but Topping and Harvey Leake show that several of the expeditions financed and accompanied by him made substantial geographical and archaeological contributions.

River navigation is a central theme in the history of the Colorado Plateau, and the last two articles in this issue offer important new information on that subject. Roy Webb's study of the three French kayakers of 1938 is based on a newly discovered diary of one member of the party and additional original research. Finally, P. T. Reilly, veteran riverman and historian, contributes the first comprehensive study of the career of his friend and employer, Norman D. Nevills, who popularized commercial river trips in the 1930s and 1940s.

Map by Brian L. Haslam.

Before Powell: Exploration of the Colorado River

BY MELVIN T. SMITH

X H I S IS NOT A STUDY OF THE COLORADO RiVER ITSELF, b u t r a t h e r a n

examination of those portions of the Green and Colorado rivers later navigated by John Wesley Powell and his crew in 1869. It is a brief look at the pre-Powell history of the river through the Indians, the Spaniards, the fur trappers, the miners, merchants. Mormons, and the military and government surveyors, and an evaluation of those early explorers as makers and recorders of western history.

One of the most poignant stories of the Colorado River is related

by Catherine McDonald, a Nez Perce woman, who as a girl had traveled with a band of Indian trappers from the upper Green River in Wyoming south through Utah. When the party struck the Colorado at the mouth of the Virgin River, they killed horses to make hide boats to ferry across the river. Below Black Canyon the party, which included white men, possibly "Pegleg" Smith, attacked the Indians living there.

Her account tells of Indian women trying to swim the Colorado River with their children—sometimes two or three small ones at a time—and drowning. The party continued south to the Gulf of California before returning north through Arizona to the Crossing of the Fathers on their way back to Wyoming.^ Archaeological and linguistic evidence abounds confirming the Indians' long-time occupancy of many Colorado River canyons.

Indians swam in the river, floated on it, and crossed it on reed rafts.

Their knowledge of the river and its tributaries was intimate. Powell himself used the Indians' knowledge of the Grand Canyon area in his later surveys. In recent years mountain climbers have learned that

Dr. Smith was the director of the Utah State Historical Society from 1971 to 1986. iWinona Adams, ed., " A n Indian Girl's Story of a Trading Expedition to the Southwest about 1841," Historical Reprints Sources of Northwest History No. 11 (Missoula: State University of Montana, 1930).

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seemingly inaccessible peaks and mesas in the Grand Canyon had been scaled by their prehistoric counterparts.^ Most of the Indians' knowledge of the river was never consolidated. The old Indian's drawing of a map of the river and its peoples for Alarcon in 1540 apparently was not recorded on paper. Nevertheless, much of the Indians' information did pass to their historic contemporaries, the Spaniards, and later the American trappers. As one Native American in 1976 told a committee researching the route of the Dominguez-Escalante trail, "White men did not discover the American Southwest, because the Indians knew where it was all the time."^ So it was with the Colorado River.

Over a period of three centuries, the Spaniards discovered and rediscovered the Colorado River. The major force behind the earliest expeditions was the quest for wealth. Francisco de UUoa sailed north on the Sea of Cortez in 1539 and found that a large river emptied into the sea and that Baja California was a peninsula. A year later the Coronado expeditions reached the river at three points: Alarcon with ships upriver from the Gulf perhaps as far as fifty to eighty-five leagues (150-255 miles), though some claim only to the mouth of the Gila River (roughly 100 miles); Melchior Diaz overland from Sonora to approximately the same place; and Cardenas from Oraibi to the Grand Canyon. Coronado's men recognized that the " R i o T i z o n " of Diaz was Cardenas's river in the great canyon to the north and east and that it drained a vast interior.^ Spanish tenure in those early years was quixotic. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, J u a n de Onate traveled across northern Arizona to the Colorado River near the Needles. He followed its east bank south to the Gulf, which he reached on January 23, 1605. This expedition made Onate a well-traveled authority on the Colorado River, but unfortunately he misinterpreted the Indians' information 2Melvin T. Smith, " T h e Colorado River: Its History in the Lower Canyons A r e a " (Ph.D. diss., Brigham Young University, 1972), chap. 3; H . M. Wormington, Prehistoric Indians of the Southwest (Denver: Colorado Museum of Natural History, 1947); J o h n Wesley Powell, The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons (Washington, D . C . : Government Printing Office, 1875); J . Harvey Butchart, "Summits below the Rim: Mountain Climbing in the Grand Canyon," Journal of Arizona History 17 (Spring 1976): 21-38. ^George P. Hammond and Agapito Rey, eds.. Narratives of the Coronado Expedition, 1540-1542 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1940), p. 138. The old chief identified twenty-three language groups on the river. The other quotation comes from a meeting of the Dominguez-Escalante State/Federal Bicentennial Committee in Dolores, Colorado, in April 1975 at which the author was present. *Hammond and Rey, Narratives of the Coronado Expedition, pp. 119-26, 288. See also George P. Hammond and Agapito Rey, eds., Obregan's History of Sixteenth Century Exploration in Western America (Los Angeles: Wetzel Publishing Co., 1928), p. 22.

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about the area to conclude falsely that the Colorado River headed to the northwest and that Baja California was an island.^ A century later it was primarily the quest for souls, not gold, that brought Spanish explorers into the area. Paramount among the Jesuit missionaries was "the padre on horseback," Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, who by 1700 had explored from Sonora to the Colorado River.

During the next two years Kino crossed the river several times and explored southward to the Gulf. H e believed California was a peninsula and recorded quite correctly that "this Colorado River, which is the Rio del Norte of the ancients, carries so much water, it must be that it comes from a high and remote land as is the case of other large volumed rivers." Kino's successors speculated that the source of the Colorado may have been the "Sierras of the Great Teguayo, or Gran Quivira."^ One adventuresome Jesuit, Father Sedelmayr, traveled from the Gulf overland to the Bill Williams River and south along the Colorado in 1750 looking for settlement sites. Unfortunately, Charles I l l ' s capricious expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 occurred before any colonies could be established. J u a n Maria Antonio Rivera, leading a trading expedition, reached the Colorado River, which he called " R i o T i z o n , " near Moab, Utah, on October 20, 1765.^ The Spaniards' settlement of San Diego in 1769 brought urgent demands for usable overland routes to California from Sonora and Santa Fe. The Gila route to the south was pioneered in 1774. Two years later the intrepid Padre Francisco Garces traveled upriver from the Yuma crossing to the Mohave villages. During the next several months his travels would take him first to California, then back to the Colorado River and eastward into Cataract Canyon, past the Grand Canyon (which he called "Puerto de Bucarreli"), and on to Oraibi.

Garces spent the momentous Fourth of July 1776 searching for means to go east to Zuni and Santa Fe. Failing in this, he retraced his route to

^George P. Hammond and Agapito Rey, eds., Don Juan de Onate, Colonizer of New Mexico, 1595-1628 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1953), Part 2, pp. 1023-24.

6Herbert E. Bolton, The Padre on Horseback: A Sketch of Eusebio Francisco Kino, S. J., Apostle to the Pimas (San Francisco: Sonora Press, 1932); Rim of Christendom: A Biography of Eusebio Francisco Kino, Pacific Coast Pioneer (New York: Macmillan Co., 1936); and Spanish Explorations in the Southwest, 1542-1706 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1957), p. 450; Rufus K. Wyllys, ed., " P a d r e Luis Velarde's Relacion of Pimeria Alta, 1716," New Mexico Historical Review 6 (April 1931): 115.

7Hazel Emery Mills, "Father Sedelmayr, S. J . : A Forgotten Chapter in Arizona Missionary History," Arizona Historical Review 7 (January 1936): 3-18; a copy of the diary of J u a n Maria Antonio Rivera is in possession of G. Clell Jacobs of San Diego, California. See also Donald C. Cutler, "Prelude to Pageant in the Wilderness," Western Historical Quarterly 8 (January 1977): 7-14; and Leroy R. and Ann W. Hafen, Old Spanish Trail (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1954).

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the river and home.^ Traveling alone much of the time with only an Indian guide, Garces covered a vast amount of unknown country.

Attempting to open up yet another route from Santa Fe to California, Fathers Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante headed north in 1776 into Colorado, crossed the Green River near present-day Jensen, Utah, reached Utah Lake, and journeyed south along the Sevier River, where they decided to return to Santa Fe rather than continue west to California. Their route brought them eventually to Lee's Ferry, where they were unable to cross the river, then to the old Ute crossing in Glen Canyon, thereafter known as the "Crossing of the Fathers." A few days later the party reached Oraibi on their way back to Santa Fe.^ By 1777 the Spaniards knew that the Colorado River extended far north into the continent's interior and that it traveled through miles of deep canyons that could be crossed only with difficulty. Its major tributaries were known, named, and mapped. Don Bernardo Miera's beautiful map of 1777 provided a wealth of geographical data, though it also incorporated his miscalculations that the Green and Sevier rivers were the same, and that major streams flowed west from Sevier Lake and the Great Salt Lake.^^ Over a period of three centuries the Spaniards gave the Colorado River its name and accumulated a great deal of geographical knowledge about it. Only its discoverer, Alarcon, in his upstream voyage in 1540 from the Gulf, sailed any distance on the river, though Escalante launched a driftwood raft at Lee's Ferry. Except for contrary waves that forced him back to shore, Escalante could have become the first non-Indian to venture into Marble Canyon, and likely he would have become its first casualty.

The American explorers who began to supplant the Spaniards in the area of the Colorado River in the early nineteenth century fell heir to their predecessors' geographical knowledge. One of the most direct transfers came with Zebulon Pike's capture by the Spaniards in 1806.

While in Santa Fe he saw Father Ambrosio's map and library and later reported that the Colorado River was over one thousand mfles in sElliot Coues, ed.. On the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer: The Diary and Itinerary of Francisco Garces . . .

1775-1776 {Ne^N York: Francis P. Haufer, 1900), vol. 2, pp. 300-301.

9David E. Miller, ed.. The Route of the Dominguez-Escalante Expedition, 1776-1777 {^alt Lake City: Dominguez Escalante State/Federal Bicentennial Committee and Four Corners Regional Commission, 1976); Ted J. Warner, ed.. The Dominguez-Escalante Journal: Their Expedition Through Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico in 1776 (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1976). lODon Bernardo Miera y Pacheco's 1777 map is reprinted as part of Herbert E. Bolton's Pageant in the Wilderness: The Story of the Escalante Expedition to the Interior Basin, 1776 (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1950).

Exploration of the Colorado

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length and navigable from its mouth for at least three hundred miles.

He also proposed a transcontinental route up the Arkansas River, with a two-hundred-mile portage to the Colorado's navigable water.^^ In time the fur trade brought a new breed of men to the mountains from the northwest, from St. Louis, and from Santa Fe, and the mountain men quickly absorbed the Spanish and Indian facts about the river. For them the Rio Colorado meant furs and a possible route to ships at sea. The mountain men became the first white men to make serious repeated attempts to navigate the river. In the fall of 1824 four men from the Provost-LeClerc company outfitted a canoe and headed downriver several miles from the crossing near present-day Green River, Utah. On Apnl 19, 1825, William H . Ashley, with a government permit to trade with the Snake Indians " a t the Junction of the Buenaventura and Colorado River of the West," reached the Green River in Wyoming. With seven men he planned to float and trap downriver to determine the relationship of the "Sketskedee" (Green) to the Colorado and Buenaventura. ^^ Ashley's river expedition was epic. In a buffalo hide "bull boat" laden with supplies, he and his men pushed off on April 25, 1825. Because the boat was overloaded, the party stopped the following day to kill four more buffalo and construct another boat before continuing their trip. At Henry's Fork they cached the rendezvous supplies and then plunged into the "Slit cut into the Uintah M o u n t a i n " (Flaming Gorge). They almost lost their lives as they dashed over rapids and upended at Ashley Falls before emerging into the parklike area of Brown's Hole where the river was less severe. They reached Ashley's Fork of the Green on May 16, 1825, where they met two of the Provost trappers who related their river experiences of the previous fall. Ashley then shifted from his bull boats to dugout canoes but abandoned the river expedition at Minnie Maud Creek. His adventure may not have been as harrowing as J i m Beckworth recalled in his memoirs, but it was a remarkable trip through unknown country with less than ideal equipment. As a result of his experience, Ashley learned that the Sketskedee was not the Buenaventura flowing west to the Pacific Ocean but a major tributary of the Colorado itself, a 11 Donald Jackson, ed.. The Journals of Zebulon Montgomery Pike (Novmdin: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966), 1:403 and 2:25-26, 48-49, 174. i2Dale Morgan, ed.. The West of William H. Ashley (Denver: Old West Publishing Co., 1964), p .

112^ See also David S. Weber, The Taos Trappers: The Fur Trade in the Far Southwest, 1540-1846 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971), pp. 74-75; U . S . Congress, House "License to Trade with the Indians," 19th Cong., 1st sess. (1825-26), Serial 136, House Misc. Doc.

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relationship confirmed in 1826 by Jedediah Smith, who called the river he crossed at the mouth of the Virgin the "Seeds Skeeden."^^ In July 1826 Lt. R. W. H. Hardy of the British Royal Navy reached the mouth of the river in his schooner Brufa, but contrary winds and the tidal bore greatly restricted his attempts to explore the delta area. It has not been determined that Hardy was attempting to establish a trade route for Peter Skene Ogden and other Hudson Bay Company trappers, even though some writers believe the unlikely theory that Ogden trapped down the Colorado River to the Gulf of California in 1829-30.^^ Only a month later Jedediah Smith and his men explored from the Virgin River along the Colorado River through Boulder Canyon to the Black Canyon area. At that point lava cliffs and deep canyons forced them back from the river. The foflowing year Smith bypassed the Colorado's "Great Bend" by heading southwest for the Mohave villages. ^^ Late in 1826 trappers from Santa Fe, including James Ohio Pattie, Ewing Young, and Thomas L. Smith, reached the Colorado near the mouth of the Gila and began to trap upriver. Some of George Yount's men built dugout canoes "after the manner of the Indians in the area," and used them to trap upriver some distance. In so doing they became the first Americans to navigate this portion of the Colorado River. While it is difficult to follow the exact route of these trappers, it seems probable that some of them reached the lower end of the Grand Canyon before heading north onto the Virgin River or southeast for Santa Fe.^ÂŽ Pattie and his father returned in the fall of 1827 to trap with canoes from the mouth of the Gila River to the Gulf of California.

isMorgan, The West of William H. Ashley, pp. 106-7. See also Harrison Clifford Dale, The AshleySmith Exploration and the Discovery of a Central Route to the Pacific, 1822-1829 (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1941), pp. 135-317, 100-129. The size of the bull boats is uncertain, but Morgan estimates they were about twelve feet by thirty feet with a twenty-inch draft. Although not very maneuverable, they were rugged and held together remarkably well. Maurice S. Sullivan, The Travels ofJedediah Smith (Santa Ana, Calif.: Fine Arts Press, 1934), pp. 28, 120-23. i4Lt. R. W. H. Hardy, Travels in the Interior of Mexico, 1825, 1826, 1827, -Sf 752(9 (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1829), as quoted in Godfrey Sykes, The Colorado Delta (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior, 1937), pp. 13-14 and maps; Alice Bay Maloney, "Peter Skene Ogden's Trapping Expedition to the Gulf of California, 1829-1830," California Historical Society Quarterly 30 (December 1940): 310-12. See also Ted J . Warner, "Peter Skene Ogden and the Fur Trade of the Great Northwest" (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1958).

15 Sullivan, The Travels ofJedediah Smith, pp. 70-75. leCharles L. Camp, ed., George C. Yount and His Chronicles of the West (Denver: Old West Publishing Co., 1966), p. 33; Smith, " T h e Colorado River," pp. 110-16.

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D. Julien inscription in Hell Roaring Canyon, apparently chalked over to enhance photograph. USHS collections.

Trapping was excellent, but a tidal bore nearly drowned their whole party. ^^ During the next decade trappers' interest in the lower river continued but produced little new information. Antoine Leroux claimed to have built skin canoes at the mouth of the Virgin in January 1837 and floated down the river to a point where he found timber out of which he built seven wooden canoes and continued all the way to the Gulf. If Leroux's account is correct, and his later claim that the Colorado was navigable all the way from the Virgin River to the Gulf suggests it is, then his party was the first to navigate the whole of the lower river. ^^ Denis Julien left his name written on the rocks at points along the Green and in lower Cataract Canyon, indicating that he trapped there in 1836. Some French words and the date 1837 on the right bank of Glen Canyon opposite the mouth of Lake Canyon are of dubious 17 Timothy Flint, ed., The Personal Narrative of James Ohio Pattie of Kentucky in Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed.. Early Western Travels, 1746-1846 {Cleveland: Arthur H . Clark Co., 1904), pp. 190-95. isDaily Alta California, May 31, 1857.

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authenticity, though some have suggested a connection with Julien that would establish his presence in that canyon as well.^^ Other mountain men enjoyed less successful experiences on the river. According to one account, Louis Ambrois and Jose Jessum tried to canoe down the Green in 1831 but were forced to abandon the stream and climb the canyon wafls to safety. Joseph Reddeford Walker and others tried to travel on the frozen surface of the Green from the Uinta Basin to the Gulf of California.^o In spite of occasional unsuccessful attempts to navigate the river, the American trappers by 1840 had learned a great deal about the Colorado River below the Grand Canyon and the Green River. They had penetrated major canyons at several river crossings and explored lengthy portions of the river, though the extent of continuous navigability was as yet undetermined.

During the heyday of Manifest Destiny in the 1840s the quest for furs largely gave way as a motive for western exploration to the quest for gold, the search for good trails for settlers, and the need for information about the vast area claimed by the Mormons as the State of Deseret. The Mexican War (1846-48) heightened the urgency of afl of these quests by bringing into the public domain virtually the entire American Southwest and by making possible the discovery of California gold by Mormon soldiers.^^ Some of the early gold hunters attempted to use the Green River as a river route to California. One unidentified party left the Oregon Trail early in 1849, built a boat, and descended the Green below Ashley Falls. They became discouraged in the venture and left a note warning others of the hazards of the river before they themselves aban-

i^Otis R. " D o c k " Marston, "Denis J u l i e n , " in LeRoy R. Hafen, ed.. Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West (Glendale, CaHf.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1969), 7:170-90. On the supposed 1837 inscription in Glen Canyon, see C. Gregory Crampton, Historical Sites in Glen Canyon: Mouth of Hansen Creek to Mouth of San Juan River (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1962), University of Utah Anthropological Papers, No. 61, pp. 44-45. •i'^Daily Alta California, J u n e 28, 1858; Ardis M. Walker, "Joseph R. Walker," in Hafen, Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West, 5:370-75.

21 Gen. Stephen Watts Kearney's "Army of the W e s t , " which included a unit of topographical engineers under Lt. Col. W. H . Emory and the " M o r m o n Battalion" under Philip St. George Cooke, explored a route from Bent's Fort, Colorado, to Santa Fe and through southern Arizona along the Gila Trail to southern California during the Mexican War and added much to geographical knowledge of the Southwest. See Lt. Col. W. H . Emory, Extract From Report of a Military Reconnaissance Made in 1846 and 75^7 (Washington, D.C.: Beverly Tucker Printers, 1885), pp. 6, 17-20; Capt. A. R.Johnston, "Journal of Captain A. R. Johnston, First Dragoon," in U . S . , Congress, House, House Exec. Doc. No. 41, 30th Cong., 1st sess. (1847-48), pp. 609-10. Johnston believed the Gila and Colorado to be navigable and that the area might "one day fill a large space in the world's history." See also Ralph P. Bieber, ed.. Exploring Southwestern Trails, 1846-1854, by Philip St. George Cooke, William Henry Chase Whiting, and Francis Xavier Aubry, in Southwest Historical Series (Glendale, Cahf.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1938), 7:185-87. Cooke tells of sealing the wagon beds with pitch to make them waterworthy. Cooke's several guides included Antoine Leroux, Toussaint Charbonneau, and Pauline Weaver.

Exploration of the Colorado

113

doned it. A second party composed of William L. Manly and six companions put an old ferry boat into service that summer and set off on the river. Below Ashley Falls the hazardous Green pinned their boat to a rock, so the men built three dugout canoes and continued their trip to the Uinta Basin, probably near present-day Green River, Utah. Although the Ute chief Walkara warned the party of the dangers of the river, two of the men continued a little further before joining the rest in resuming their travels overland. Neither of these expeditions added significantly to knowledge of the river. ^^ In the meantime, California-bound emigrants on the Gila Trail needed a safe ferry at the Yuma crossing, and federal troops were sent to establish a garrison at that point. In 1850 Lt. George H . Derby, USN, brought the 120-ton schooner Invincible to the mouth of the river.

Although he explored very little, Maj. Samuel P. Heintzelman became well acquainted with the lower river during a trip in January 1851 from Yuma to pick up supplies for his troops at the mouth of the river and on another trip a few months later pursuing Indians upriver for 150 miles, all of which he believed to be navigable. Regular supply runs from the mouth of the river to Fort Yuma were begun by James Trumbull's steamer Uncle Sam in 1852. George A. Johnson ultimately became the primary figure in steam navigation on that part of the river. ^^ The military also looked to the river as a supply avenue for other posts. Capt. Lorenzo Sitgreaves, guided by Antoine Leroux in 1851, pronounced the river navigable south of the 35th parallel in high water, a conclusion confirmed by Lt. Amiel Weeks Whipple in his transcontinental railroad survey reports of 1853-54. Soon after this two other surveys were proposed, one upriver by Col. Randolph B. Marcy and a balloon survey by John Wise. Neither was funded.^^

22Milo M . Quaife, ed.. Death Valley in '49, by William L. Manly (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley and Sons Co., 1927), pp. 84-85, 86-125.

23Douglas R. Martin, Yuma Crossing (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1954); George H. Derby, Topographical Reports (San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1933), pp. 61-62; Godfrey Sykes, The Colorado Delta, p. 19; "Letter of Major Samuel P. Heintzelman to Major E m o r y , " San Francisco Daily Herald, October 22, 1851; Lt. Thomas W. Sweeney, " J o u r n a l , " Military Occupation of California, 1849-53, published In Journal of the Military Service of the United States (Ja.nvidiry-ÂĽehr\xa.ry 1909) and (March-April 1909); Arthur Woodward, Feud on the Colorado (Los Angeles: Westernlore Press, 1955), pp. 22-24. See also Francis Hall Leavitt, "Steam Navigation on the Colorado R i v e r , " California Historical Society Quarterly 22 (March 1943): 1-2.

2*Capt. Lorenzo Sitgreaves, Report of an Expedition down the Zuni and Colorado Rivers (Washington, D . C . : Armstrong Public Printers, 1853), p. 17. Sitgreaves did not explore upriver. Lt. Amiel W. Whipple, Reports of Exploration and Surveys to Ascertain the Most Practicable Route for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, 1853-1854 (Washington, D . C . : A. O . P. Nichols, 1856); Randolph B. Marcy, Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border (New York: Harper & Bros., 1866). pp. 280-82. Material on J o h n Wise's proposed balloon survey comes from John F. Hoffman, San Diego, California.

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Mormons in Utah read the government reports with interest.

When Brigham Young sent missionaries to the Indians at Las Vegas in 1855, he also instructed Rufus Allen and William Bringhurst to determine the navigability of the Colorado River. Aflen made a limited survey of the west bank of Black Canyon in June, and Bringhurst followed the river east from the Great Bend to Boulder Canyon in December. Both reported those portions navigable. ^^ Of greater consequence were the explorations of Lt. Sylvester Mowry, who had been too solicitous of one of Governor Young's daughters-in-law while in Utah and was encouraged to leave. Mowry reached Las Vegas at the same time the Mormon missionaries were exploring the river. Continuing on to Fort Tejon, California, he recommended an upriver survey to the high point of navigation, then overland to Salt Lake City. He offered to conduct the survey himself Mowry's request was not granted, though Capt. T. J . Cramm of the Department of the Pacific did ask for $10,000 for the purpose, the project to begin that September. In 1856 steamboat captain George A. Johnson asked Secretary of War Jefferson Davis for $50,000 for a survey. Maj. Robert Allen contacted Johnson regarding the project, but evidently deemed Johnson's fee of $3,500 per month for use of his steamer too high.^^ Miffed at his rejection by the army, Johnson decided to make the survey on his own. First he sent a Yuma Indian to the Mohave villages from which he floated downstream on a raft, noting sandbars and other navigational hazards. Johnson then enlisted the army's support, as reports of hostile Indians and Mormons upriver were rampant. The GeneralJesup steamed from Fort Yuma on December 31, 1857, with Lt. James White and a detachment of soldiers aboard, together with more than a dozen trappers. They eventually reached Pyramid Canyon above Mohave Valley, supporting Johnson's claim that the river was navigable for some 320 miles above its mouth.^^ The survey contract previously recommended by Mowry and Cramm and sought by Johnson went to Lt. Joseph C. Ives. As Ives's boat, Explorer, gathered steam, so did the Mormons' conflict with the 25Andrew Jenson, comp., " T h e History of the Las Vegas Mission," Nevada State Historical Society Papers, 1925-1926 (Reno: Nevada State Historical Society, 1926), pp. 119-284. Bringhurst's party arrived June 14, 1855, and Allen's party came at about the same time. See also Stanley W. Paher, Las Vegas: As It Began, As It Grew (Las Vegas: Nevada Publications, 1971), especially chap. 2 and pp. 201-2.

26Lynn R. Bailey, ed., "Lt. Sylvester Mowry's Report on His March in 1855 from Salt Lake City to Fort Te'ion,'' Arizona and the West 7 (Winter 1965): 330-39. The young lady's husband was absent on a mission for the LDS church. Woodward, Feud on the Colorado, pp. 61-62.

27Woodward, Feud on the Colorado, pp. 79-101.

Lithograph of Ives's boat. Explorer, was used in his Report upon the Colorado River of the West. Original sketch was made by H. B. Mollhausen. USHS collections.

federal government. As he began his upriver journey, a Mormon expedition moved south firom Las Vegas to near the Mohave villages with the purpose of investigating him. A meeting between Ives and Thales Haskell aboard the steamer in Cottonwood Valley reassured the Mormons of Ives's peaceful purpose, and Ives continued upriver to the mouth of Black Canyon where the boat struck a rock. While his crew repaired the damage, Ives and Captain Robinson rowed a skiff up through Black Canyon to the mouth of Vegas Wash, which Ives erroneously believed to be the Virgin River. Returning to the Mohave villages, Ives left the river to begin a pack train trip to Fort Defiance, stopping on the way to descend Diamond Creek to the Colorado. Ives's report of 1858 literally put the Colorado River from the Great Bend to its mouth on the map.^^ 28MeIvin T. Smith, "Colorado River Exploration and the Mormon W a r , " Utah Historical Quarterly 38 (Summer 1970): 212-21; see also Amasa Lyman Journal No. 16, in the Utah State Historical Society Library, Salt Lake City, pp. 111-12. Joseph C. Ives, Report Upon the Colorado River of the West

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Mohave Indian hostilities brought the military to Mohave Valley above the Needles in 1859. Many of the California volunteers were miners who quickly located promising ores along and near the Colorado River. Mining soon expanded steamboat service up the river, which prompted both merchants and Mormons to examine carefully the upriver navigational limits of the Colorado. This interest reached a high point in 1864.

Jacob Hamblin and his Mormon missionaries had crossed the Colorado River several times between 1858 and 1862 at Kane Creek and west of the Grand Canyon. In 1863 they took a sixteen-foot skiff built by Isaac Riddle to the river at the mouth of Grand Wash and rowed upriver two or three miles to the approximate later location of Pearce's Ferry a short distance below the Grand Canyon. Theirs was the first recorded boat on that stretch of water.^^ Reports of explorations multiplied. James Moss claimed that he and some Indian guides and soldiers had built a raft above the Grand Canyon and floated through it in 1861, though verifiable evidence for that unlikely feat is lacking. Samuel Adams, a perennial promoter of the river, claimed he floated from the Virgin River three hundred miles downstream on a raft in the spring of 1864. Adams's claim, too, seems doubtful, and even if true adds nothing of importance to the historical record, for it duplicates Antoine Leroux's trip of 1837. A reporter from El Dorado Canyon recorded on March 10, 1864, that "There has been a small steamer pass through Black Canyon above here." George A. Johnson was a likely person to have been making such a trip, but the report identifies neither boat nor captain.^° Another newspaper report a month later said that "Messrs.

Butterfield and Perry passed here [Fort Mohave] a few days ago to go upstream 200 or 300 miles." It would seem likely that Perry was James Ferry, who, the article notes, "had been on the Virgin River" before.

(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1861), pp. 5-6, 21, 39, 92-131. News of the Mormon unrest reached Ives via newspapers and letters given him by Captain Wilcox, who passed the Explorer on December 31, 1857, just after the steamer got under way. Haskell attempted feebly to conceal his identity from Ives, who reported that such behavior "did not argue well for the bishop's sanctity"; Ives was also well aware that the Mormons were making allies of the Mohave Indians for possible warfare against the federal government. See also letter of A. A. Humphreys to Joseph C. Ives, quoted in William H. Goetzmann, " T h e Topographical Engineers and Western Movement," New York Westerners Posse Brand Book, No. 4 (1958), pt. 3, p. 382.

29james G. Bleak, "Annals of the Southern Utah Mission, Book A , " at Utah State Historical Society, pp. 100-101.

30San Francisco Daily Morning Call, April 9, 1877; Samuel Adams, "Exploring the Colorado River and Its Tributaries," in U . S . , Congress, House, 41st Cong., 3d Sess. (1870-71), House Misc. Doc. No. 12, pp. 103; Odie B. Faulk, " T h e Steamboat War That Opened Arizona," Arizoniana 5 (Winter 1964): 1-9; Daily Alta California, April 6, 1864.

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Details of their trip were reported on June 12. The river was said to be navigable for 180 miles above Fort Mohave, and the party claimed to have been upriver some 250 miles and to have discovered sources of timber, a vein of coal, and salt. That mileage above Fort Mohave would have taken them through the Grand Canyon, which is improbable. Apparently Ferry and Butterfield made a second trip in June 1864. From El Dorado Canyon they rowed upriver to Vegas Wash and Circle Valley (Call's Landing) and on into the Grand Canyon, where Indians supposedly reported that the junction of the Green and Grand rivers was only 140 miles away. It is probable that this second FerryButterfield trip was in fact the Octavius D. Gass expedition of 1864 reported by Lt. George M. Wheeler. If so, Gass, Ferry, Butterfield, and an Indian were the first explorers by water from the mouth of the Virgin upriver into the Grand Canyon some nineteen miles. At that point they placed rock markers on each side of the stream, markers that Wheeler located on his 1871 trip.^^ When Mormons read James Ferry's claim that steamers could deliver goods to Circle Valley, which meant that freight could bypass the very difficult Virgin Hill on the regular freight route from California, they again focused their attention on the Colorado River as a transportation route for both goods and Utah immigrants. During the summer Jacob Hamblin was commissioned to locate a good road to the high point of navigation, which was presumed to be the Virgin River. Although that trip apparently was cancelled, he and some others launched a skiff, the Virgin Adventurer, on the Virgin River near St. George in an attempt to float down to the Colorado. They gave up when the waters disappeared underground in the Virgin Narrows.

Late in 1864 Mormons began building the short-lived settlement of Callville, but by mid-1865 their support for the project waned, in part because James Ferry had filed on the land on which it was located.^^ ^^Daily Alta California, May 14, July 4, and August 6, 1864. Capt. George M. Wheeler, Report upon Geographical and Geological Surveys, Principally in Nevada and Arizona (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1875), vol. 1, pp. 151, 163; Otis R. " D o c k " Marston, "Early Travel on the Green and Colorado Rivers," The Smoke Signal 2\ (Fall 1969): 233. Marston places leadership withjames Ferry and identifies markers nineteen miles inside the Grand Canyon. The fourth member of the party, he claims, was an Indian, not a Mr. Cowan. Further grouping is suggested in a letter from George Brimhall to George A. Smith, December 10, 1865, in the LDS Church Library-Archives, Salt Lake City, in which he reports his own arrival at the Colorado River in June 1865, where he met three men, " M r . Parry IJames Ferry], Mr. Gass [O. D. Gass], and Mr. Cowan."

32Bleak, "Annals of the Southern Utah Mission, Book A , " pp. 146-47, shows that o n j u n e 11, 1864, the High Council selected Jacob Hamblin, Isaac Duffin, David H. Cannon, and Leonard H. Conger, but apparently they did not go. Later the council gave the assignment to Hamblin, Angus M. Cannon, and David Cannon. Letter of Daniel Bonelli, Deseret News, March 1, 1865; Leonard J . Arrington, "Inland to Zion: Mormon Trade on the Colorado River, 1864-1867," Arizona and the West 8 (Autumn 1966): 239-50.

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The year 1866 produced new stories of river exploration. Samuel Adams claimed to have descended much of the Grand River of Colorado and to have gone above Boulder Canyon for a second boat trip down the Colorado. Several Montana miners reported embarking on the Muddy River, following it to the Virgin and on down the Colorado, though Mormon settlers on the Muddy did not note seeing them.

Col. Randolph B. Marcy reported that mountaineers in Utah told him of a party of trappers that built a large rowboat to descend the canyons but were never heard of afterward.^^ Marcy himself proposed a second survey using small rowboats, which he believed "would not be hazardous if the direction of travel were upstream," but his expedition was not funded. Lt. Anson Mills believed he could run a steamer upriver from the Gulf, through the Grand Canyon, to the Green, and on to Wyoming. When Col. James F. Rusling reported to Secretary of W a r William W. Belknap in November 1866 on the merits of the Colorado-Callville-Salt Lake City route, he added, "Should I continue in the service, I would like no better duty than to ascend the Colorado from its mouth upward and explore all these rivers (Green, Grand, San J u a n ) to the head of navigation." In May 1867 Rusling wrote from Fort Yuma about people who reportedly had gone into the big canyon. When he met Colonel Carter, secretary of Arizona Territory, he was told that Carter was going to pole upriver with ten or twelve men in two small boats past Callville and the mouth of the Rio Virgin, " a n d pass through the alleged Big Canyon, if possible, to the junction of the Green, Grand and San J u a n rivers above." Carter believed the Colorado to be no more difficult a stream than the Tennessee River. His expedition apparently was never launched.^* Mormon church leaders in St. George, still hoping to capitalize on the transportation possibilities of the Colorado River, sent an expedition to the river at Grand Wash. In April 1867 they launched a sixteenfoot skiff manned by Jacob Hamblin, Henry W. Miller, and Jesse W. Crosby. T h e men first rowed upriver a mile and a half, then turned downstream with Callville as their destination. They reported in detail on the river, noting rapids over which the skiff was lowered with lariats, and a large canyon below Grand Wash and another through the Virgin Range. They spent their first night at Tower Rock, reaching the Virgin 33Adams, "Exploring the Colorado River and Its T r i b u t a r i e s , " p. 3; "Report of James F. Rushing from Y u m a , " (May 16, 1867) in U . S . , Congress, House, 42d Cong., 2d sess. (1871-72), House Exec. Doc. No. 166, pp. 6-7; Marcy, Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border, pp. 280-82.

3*"Report of Colonel James F. Rusling," pp. 1-7.

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River the next morning. The following day they floated through the awesome cut of Boulder Canyon and landed at Callville, previously the high point of navigation for them. They were the first river travelers to report in detail about this part of the Colorado River, and their report became available to John Wesley Powell.^^ Finally there was James White, a controversial Colorado miner who was prospecting with two partners on the upper San J u a n River in 1867 when they made a fateful decision to move over to the Colorado River. After being attacked by Indians who killed one partner. White and the other companion built a crude raft to escape down the river.

The other partner was drowned, but White said he rode the raft all the way through Marble and Grand canyons, reaching Callville in an emaciated condition in September. White was undoubtedly confused in his geography, for the details of his description of his journey cannot be certainly linked with known features; but he has attracted numerous believers in his feat. Most students of the episode, though, have come to follow approximately in the footsteps of Robert Brewster Stanton, who concluded that White was simply lost when he first struck the Colorado River and in fact embarked somewhere downstream from the mouth of the Grand Canyon.^^ By the time ofJohn Wesley Powell's first expedition in 1869, then, a large body of reliable information on the course, nature, and tributaries of the Colorado River was available, much of which had passed into the literature from the earliest Indian and Spanish sources, from the mountain men who had guided later military surveys, and from the Mormons who wished to settle along the river and utilize its transportation potential. Consequently, when Powell and his men floated down some 1,000 miles of the river, they covered only 250 miles that were still completely unknown; and when they emerged from the mouth of the Grand Canyon, they knew where they were. Nevertheless, Powell's achievement was remarkable; the reasons the unexplored portions of the river had remained obscure are the same reasons Powell's venture was heroic. He and his men, though not the first to try, were the first to succeed through these remote and hazardous canyons of the Colorado River.

35 Albert E. Miller, Immortal Pioneers, Founders of St. George, Utah (St. George, Utah: Privately published, 1946), pp. 67-70; Deseret News, July 3, 1867.

36Robert Brewster Stanton, Colorado River Controversies (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1932), pp. 3-93. A modern supporter of the James White story is Richard E. Lingenfelter, First through the Grand Canyon (Los Angeles: Glen Dawson, 1958); a modern skeptical view is Otis R. " D o c k " Marston, " T h e Points of Embarkation of James White in 1857 [^zV]," Los Angeles Westerners Corral Branding Iron, 75 (December 1965): Iff

Charles Kelly. USHS collections.

Charles Kelly's Glen Canyon Ventures and Adventures

BY GARY TOPPING

WAS B O R N WITH A CHIP ON HIS SHOULDER. Quick to take offense, slow to forgive, arrogant, self-righteous, Charles Kelly (1889-1971) was a walking a r g u m e n t , a fight waiting for a place to h a p p e n . His photo-

H E

Dr. Topping is curator of manuscripts in the Utah State Historical Society Library.

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graphs reveal a man small in stature but compensatingly pugnacious, often with a week's growth of beard and a defiant cigar jutting from his mouth. Savagely antireligious, he lived squarely in the middle of Mormon Country and dared the Mormons to do something about it.

As one of the founding fathers of the Utah Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, Kelly hated even when there was nothing to hate, and confided to his diary that he hoped it would be good for business.^ And yet there was good in the man, too. He made friends as fiercely as he made enemies, and though he lost some of them through real or imagined affronts, he remained loyal to most. As a historian, he was a bloodhound on a trail, and if he occasionally followed a false scent, he more often treed his quarry. And he followed his quarry into some of the most remote country Utah had to offer: he took the first automobile across the Salt Lake Desert on the Donner trail, and he floated Glen Canyon several times in the years when it was not generally well known. If he later applauded the flooding of Glen Canyon and rushed into print with the suggestion that the reservoir be named "Lake Escalante," he was a formidable defender and student of the backcountry. As the first custodian of Capitol Reef National Monument, he compiled an immense body of interpretive information that fifty years later still serves rangers and visitors alike, and then resigned bitterly in the face of what he considered excessive Park Service bureaucratization .

The first great hate of Kelly's life was his father, a preacher in the mode of Elmer Gantry. Although Kelly danced on his father's grave, he ought to have recalled that he learned two valuable skills during his forced service to his father's profession: music and printing. Always employable through one or the other, Kelly was never without a job, even in the worst of the Great Depression.

Following service in World War I, Kelly settled in Utah with his bride, Harriette Greener. The marriage and the place of residence both lasted the rest of his life. His interest in history came later, as a result of an idle curiosity about the Donner emigrants, but it stuck just as deeply and resulted in a torrent of books and articles, both scholarly and popular, on a variety of subjects including trails, mountain men. Mormons, outlaws, and the deserts and canyons of the Colorado Plateau, all char-

1 Kelly's diary and autobiography are in the Charles Kelly Papers, Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City. See also A. Russell Mortensen, " I n M e m o r i a m , " Utah Historical Quarterly 39 (Spring 1971): 199-200. Kelly's Klan involvement is given in Larry R. Gerlach, Blazing Crosses in Zion: The Ku Klux Klan in Utah (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1982), pp. 28-31.

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Hoffman Birney participated in the Steward-Kelly exploration of Glen Canyon in 1938 and coauthored a book with Kelly. USHS collections.

acterized by exhaustive library research as well as interviews and onsite investigations.^ It is not clear just how and when Kelly became interested in Glen Canyon, but it matters little, since Kelly's omnivorous curiosity led him everywhere, and Glen Canyon, one of the earth's most endlessly enchanting places, worked its irresistible spell upon many. It is certain that the people with whom he would share his first river trip in 1932 came into his circle of friends through publication of his Salt Desert Trails (1929). The first of those was Hoffman Birney, a prolific writer on western themes, who was then living in Tucson and working on an article about the Mormons. One of his latest books was Roads to Roam, an entertaining account of an automotive odyssey through seven western states during the summer of 1928. Birney shared Kelly's love of the backcountry and its history, his irreligion and general irreverence for cultural sacred cows, and his racism. The two took to each 2Mortensen, " I n Memoriam"; Kelly diary, August 20, 1936; a full bibliography of Kelly's publications by Howard Foulger is in the Charles Kelly Papers at the Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City.

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other naturally and began a collaboration on a book about the Mormon avenger Porter Rockwell, which appeared in 1934 under the title Holy Murder. The Kelly-Birney friendship cooled after Birney allegedly took an idea Kelly suggested for a book about the Donners and published it on his own. But in 1932 their friendship was at high tide. " M y acquaintance with Birney last summer, which continues by correspondence," Kelly wrote, "was one of the high-lights of the year. He is a real g u y . " He further noted that they were talking about a river trip on the Green, though Kelly also wanted to run the Dirty Devil.^ That their plans shifted to Glen Canyon was a result of Kelly's meeting with Dr. Julian H. Steward, then professor of anthropology at the University of Utah. Steward (1902-72) was one of Utah's first professionally trained anthropologists and a creator of the department at the University. Trained during the 1920s at the University of California at Berkeley under Alfred L. Kroeber, Robert H. Lowie, and the eccentric Jaime d'Angulo, Steward developed " a broad orientation to the holistic aspects of anthropology, a concern for seeing mankind from the biological, cultural, historical, and linguistic viewpoints," and became, during his later career at Columbia and the University of Illinois, one of the important theorists in the profession. During his brief tenure at the University of Utah (1930-33), he accomplished some important studies in the Great Basin area, through which he met Kelly, and made two expeditions into southern Utah—one into Paria and Johnson canyons and the other through Glen Canyon with Kelly and Birney. It was, in fact, the archaeological promise of Glen Canyon and Steward's offer of university funding for the trip that led Kelly and Birney to change their river trip plans.* The party as finally constituted included, in addition to those three, Byron O. " B a r n e y " Hughes, whom Kelly identified as "some kind of assistant flunkey" Steward had taken under his wing during a previous teaching job at the University of Michigan, and John " J a c k " Shoemaker, a son of Birney's Philadelphia publisher. Personal conflicts developed almost immediately. " W h e n final arrangements were being made for the trip Steward acted so flighty that Birney took a great 3Kelly, Salt Desert Trails (Salt Lake City: Western Printing Co., 1929); Birney, Roads to Roam (Philadelphia: Penn Publishing Co., 1930); Kelly and Birney, Holy Murder (Nt^y^ York: G. P. P u t n a m ' s Sons, 1934); Kelly diary, February 3, 1931; J a n u a r y 4, 1932. On Birney's career, see New York Times, J u n e 4, 1958, and Who Was Who in America. ^Robert F. Murphy, "Introduction: The Anthropological Theories of Julian H. Steward," in J a n e C. Steward and Robert F. Murphy, eds.. Evolution and Ecology: Essays on Social Transformation by Julian H. Steward (\Jrhana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), pp. 1-16; Ste-ward, Archaeological Reconnaissance of Southern Utah (Washington, D . C . : Government Printing Office, 1941).

Members of the Steward-Kelly expedition prepare to leave Wolgamott ranch, Wayne County, on their way to Hite in 1932. USHS collections.

dislike to h i m , " Kelly noted. That dislike was hardly mitigated when, at Torrey, Steward claimed that there had been a misunderstanding and that he expected each one to pay his own expenses. Birney lost his temper and expressed the intention of leaving the party, but he later decided thirty dollars was a cheap enough fee for three weeks in Glen Canyon even if he had to pay it himself, and stayed. The damage was done, though, for, according to Kelly, the incident "caused a breach in the expedition, Birney taking every opportunity to rub it into Steward for the rest of the trip."^ As things worked out, he was to have plenty of opportunities.

Getting from Hanksville to Hite in 1932 was inevitably an adventure. The Kelly party built road and pushed the two cars and boat trailer over rough places until they reached the Wolgamott ranch, where they hired a wagon and some horses for the worst stretch of the journey, the roadless route down the floor of North Wash to the river.

Another adventure awaited them at the mouth of North Wash where an old prospector, John Young, had somehow heard of their impending arrival and awaited their assistance in ferrying a stranded partner, Harry Correll, from the other bank of the river. Correll and another 5ln addition to Kelly's main diary entry of July 31, 1932, which summarizes the river trip, he kept a separate diary during the trip, and it also is in the Kelly Papers at the University of Utah. A copy of Birney's 1932 river diary is also in the Kelly collection at the University of Utah. All passages quoted here are from those three diaries.

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friend, Sam Gates, had wrecked a raft trying to cross the river. Gates had fallen into the water and drowned, and Correll had been marooned on the other side for nine days with no food. Steward and Hughes ferried the dazed and starving man back to the right bank, fed him, and witnessed a recovery so remarkable that the following day he was ready to take up mining again.^ After spending a day in camp to get the boats ready and hike up to the mouth of the Dirty Devil River, the party embarked on July 6.

None were experienced boatmen. Their two boats, the Dirty Devil and the Bright Angel, were folding canvas craft borrowed from David Dexter Rust, an old riverman and guide from whom they also received their only information on what awaited them, beyond a set of 1921 USGS river maps Birney had gotten from their author, Col. Clarence H .

Birdseye, in Washington, D . C . At least they looked the part, for they banned razors by mutual agreement, and all soon took on the scruffy appearance characteristic of Kelly's style on the river. Birney, appraising the party's appearance on July 7, observed that "Kelly, Steward, and I, being darker, are the most savage looking, with little to choose between us. Steward, cavorting naked on a sandbar, looks like homo neanderthalis.''^'^ The neophyte rivermen ran their first rapid, a little riffle at the mouth of North Wash, with no trouble: " T h e 'rapid' didn't even joggle the boat," Birney reported. If that experience fed their confidence. Trachyte Rapid, a half mile below their camp at White Canyon, destroyed it the following evening as they unaccountably attempted to run it in the dark. Few experienced boatmen would have regarded Trachyte as a significant obstacle, but it nearly upset both their boats in a comic display of miscommunication, misunderstanding of the river channel, and poor vision in the darkness. Steward and Hughes, unaware that Birney, at the oars of the other boat, had managed to land above the rapid, ran it in the dark, hoping to rescue swimmers after what they presumed would be a capsize. All wound up safe, though separated, and the mutual accusations made tempers rise. "Steward and Barney swear the waves were six feet high," Birney jibed. " T h e y probably were all of twenty inches." "Everybody was m a d , " Kelly wrote. "Birney pulled out his bottle of Rainbow Bridge wine, and we killed i t . " This was a bottle purchased to celebrate their arrival at the 6Both Kelly and Birney record the rescue of Correll in their diaries, and Kelly wrote an article about it, "Gold Hunters Are Like T h a t , " Desert Magazine, July 1942, pp. 13-15.

7Birney diary, July 7, 1932.

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famous arch. Half of it already had been consumed after a rough day building road south of Hanksville.^ And so they continued down the river. " T o those who have passed through the perils of Cataract Canyon and the real rapids there, the tiny riffles of Glen Canyon would be a j o k e , " Birney thought. " T o us—utterly inexperienced watermen—the rapids of Glen Canyon seem quite serious. We stop and study them all." Unfortunately, their study seems to have produced little understanding, for they still ran everything the wrong way. At their first camp below Hall's Crossing, they became separated when they disagreed upon a landing site and spent the night apart. Much more serious, though, was a near disaster at the mouth of the Escalante River which, swollen by sudden rainstorms, was creating tricky waves and a large eddy below its mouth.

Hughes broke an oar, but Shoemaker plied a paddle and got the first boat across. Birney had a rougher time, getting caught in the eddy, shipping buckets of water, and in spite of portaging what seemed to be the worst of the rapid, finding he was still in jeopardy of a series of sand waves—temporary swells created by a false bottom of silt precipitating from saturated water.^ The combination of hazards proved to be too much for poor Steward, who simply lost his nerve. Birney and Kelly preyed upon his weakness, as reported in Birney's diary: Steward, incidentally, has gone pretty yellow. The river has his goat. The high water at the Escalante, plus the little experience with the sandwaves, seems to have him buffaloed. He was awake until after three last night, pacing up and down the beach, planting sticks at the water's edge so he could gauge the rise or fall of the Colorado, and otherwise indulging in a lot of useless worry. I entertain him with tales of San J u a n floods, their suddenness and terrific violence, which Kelly seconds most admirably.

Later, he confessed that he and Kelly rocked the boat in rapids to try to scare Steward, whom he described as being "like a hen on a hot griddle." In fact, according to Kelly, personal relations within the group had almost completely deteriorated by that time: Birney was aggravating and unnecessarily bossy, making trouble over trivial incidents. Steward and Hughes were flighty, kept to themselves, and acted like two old maid morphadites. In place of intelligent conversations around camp in the evenings, all but Shoemaker and myself spent

sibid., July 6 and 8, 1932; Kelly river diary, July 7, 1932. sBirney diary, July 8 and 13, 1932; Kelly river diary, July 13, 1932. Experiences such as these belie Kelly's claim in his article about the trip, " D o w n the Colorado," Utah Motorist, August 1932, pp.

5-8, that " t h e entire trip was made without accident of any k i n d " (p. 8).

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Map by Brian L. Haslam. the time singing and composing filthy limericks. . . . The scenery was marvelous and the whole journey intensely interesting to me, but would much rather have made it in different company.

To Birney the whole thing remained a big joke even years later. During a 1937 visit to Washington, D . C , he learned that Steward was there and tried to contact him, evidently with the main purpose of teasing the unfortunate man even more about the river trip. " W e called him twice," Birney reported to Kelly, " b u t he wasn't in his office and they didn't know where he was hiding—so that's that. I'd have liked to [have] shouted 'Horsecock' or 'Sandwaves, Barney' in his ear."^° Granted, then, that the trip in human terms was a miserable failure, was it of any scientific value? Birney and Kelly, predictably, give Steward low marks as an archaeologist. Kelly thought Steward lazy for his unwillingness to hike very far up side canyons in search of ruins and alleged that "So far I have shown Steward every site he has loBirney diary, July 15, 1932; main Kelly diary, July 31, 1932; Birney to Kelly, May 17, 1937, Kelly Papers, Utah State Historical Society.

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Above: Hoffman Birney and Frank Shoemaker in Glen Canyon, 1932. Below: Taking down the boats at the end of the Glen Canyon run. USHS collections.

excavated." Be that as it may. Steward's published report gives detailed data on twenty-eight sites he excavated in an attempt "to discover the place and manner in which those culture elements which had been chronologically differentiated in the San J u a n area had become blended into a single culture and spread northward into the Northern Periphery [of the Anasazi area]."^^ His conclusion was that Glen Canyon was not that place; rather, it was " a kind of no-man's land which had been very slightly settled by outposts from both Mesa Verde and Kayenta and which had come into contact with the North" M a i n Kelly diary, July 31, 1932; Steward, Archaeological Reconnaissance, pp. 281-82; 329; 354-56.

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ern Periphery but had not strongly influenced it." This, one would submit, was a considerable accomplishment for a scant twenty-three days in the canyon, many of which were archaeologically barren.

While Kelly and Birney were also interested in archaeology, their main stated purpose in making the trip was to investigate sites of historical interest. They found many: inscriptions, cabins, trails, and mining remains. Of greatest interest to them, however, was the point at which it was then supposed that the Franciscan fathers Dominguez and Escalante had crossed the river on November 7, 1776, on their return trip to Santa Fe after exploring much of Colorado and Utah.

Kelly was aware also of the Mormon pioneer Jacob Hamblin's crossings at Kane Creek and noted that it was understood that the two crossings were one and the same, a realization reached at about the same time by Dr. Russell G. Frazier (1893-1968), a Bingham Canyon physician who became a well-known river runner and Antarctic explorer.

After study of Escalante's diary, Kelly became convinced that the Crossing of the Fathers could not have been at Kane Creek, though he found nowhere else on the 1932 trip that met the description. Frazier visited the locale in 1933 and agreed with Kelly. There the matter stood for four years, until Frazier met a young prospector named Byron Davies, who reported having seen another set of steps cut into the rock about a mile below the previously known crossing. Frazier suspected that the steps were those cut by Escalante. Accompanied by Davies and Kelly, Frazier took a motorboat up from Lee's Ferry in August 1937 and determined that Davies's steps were very old but that they also did not exactly meet the padre's description. He returned in October with a pack train from Cannonville and succeeded in getting the animals all the way to the river via Davies's steps; on that occasion he found yet others that Davies had not previously noted. It was this last set of steps, at what he named Padre Creek, that best matched Escalante's diary. In a Desert Magazine article written by Kelly but appearing under Frazier's name, Frazier speculated that the first set of steps discovered by Davies were also Spanish in origin, but later, perhaps around 1800.^^ Kelly was on the river again in 1938, this time as part of an expedition led and financed by Julius F. Stone (1855-1947). It was not i2The Frazier Papers are at the Utah State Historical Society; Dr. Russell G. Frazier, " E l Vado de los P a d r e s , " Desert Magazine, July, 1940, pp. 3-5; Kelly's authorship of the article is claimed in his diary, December 11, 1939. Although the Frazier party correctly identified the Escalante steps, it was not an original discovery. Otis Marston, "River Runners: Fast Water Navigation," Utah Historical Quarterly 28 (July 1960): 307, proves that Dave Rust knew where they were at least as early as 1926.

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the first money Julius Stone had sunk in Glen Canyon. He had been a leading financial backer of the iU-fated Hoskaninni Company promoted by engineer Robert Brewster Stanton during the years 1897-1902. Stanton had located contiguous mining claims throughout the whole of Glen Canyon, gambling a great deal of his investors' money that he could extract the powdery gold from the river sands. He proved to be unable to deliver on his promise, and his immense wrecked dredge remained visible in the river just above BuUfrog Creek untfl the flooding of the canyon, a silent reminder of the elusiveness of Glen Canyon wealth. ^^ Stone lost a lot of money on the venture, but the river was in his blood. In 1909 he led and financed a trip down the entire river, guided by the celebrated riverman Nathaniel Galloway. It was perhaps the first such trip motivated purely by love of the country, with no ulterior scientific or economic purposes. Since Stone was financially independent, he could afford to devote attention to scenic and historic aspects of the river that others had to pass by. He was especially interested in the placing of plaques at Separation Rapid in the Grand Canyon, where the two Howland brothers and Wifliam Dunn had left the 1869 John Wesley Powefl party, and at Frazier's newly discovered Crossing of the Fathers in Glen Canyon. O n the latter trip, Stone also wished to investigate the 1642 and 1837 inscriptions near Lake Canyon.^* The Glen Canyon trip took place during late September and early October 1938 and included, in addition to Stone, KeUy, and Frazier, Stone's son George, their Ohio friend Wifliam Chryst, boatman Frank Swain (a river partner of Frazier), and Dr. A. L. Inglesby, a dentistturned-rockhound who had become a considerable expert on the backcountry of southern Utah. Stone was eighty-three years of age at the time, and Inglesby insisted upon making him comfortable by instafling an easy chair in his boat. The party carried the flag of the Explorers

i3The story of the Hoskaninni Mining Company is told by Robert Brewster Stanton himself in The Hoskaninni Papers: Mining in Glen Canyon, 1897-1902, C. Gregory Crampton and Dwight L. Smith, eds. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1961 [University of Utah Anthropological Papers No. 14A full account of Stone's 1909 trip is in his book. Canyon Country: The Romance of a Drop of Water and a Grain ofSand(Nev/ York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1932). Much of the story of the Separation Rapid plaque installation is told in correspondence in the Frazier Papers, and of its later removal to higher ground above the waters of Lake Mead, in the Harry L. Aleson Papers at the Utah State Historical Society. Stone's account of his 1938 Glen Canyon trip is "Another Fling at Colorado River R a p i d s , " Ohio State University Monthly, November, 1938, pp. 17-18. Stone not only paid for the entire trip, but even refused a check from Kelly for a share in the payment for the latter's Saturday Evening Post article. See Stone to Frazier, January 7, 1938, and J a n u a r y 27, 1939, Frazier papers; and Kelly diary, February 2,

^ Members of the Stone expedition, 1938. Left to right: Charles Kelly, Frank Swain, George Stone, William Chryst, A. L. Inglesby, Julius Stone, and Russell G. Frazier at Lee's Ferry, the end of their trip that began at Hite. USHS collections.

Club, of which both Stone and Frazier were members. Two of the three tin boats were named Amos and Buzz after Amos Burg and Haldane " B u z z " Holmstrom, who were at that very time making their historic voyage down the river. (Burg was using the first inflatable boat on the Colorado, and Holmstrom would become the first man to run every rapid on a single trip.) As Holmstrom's financial backer on the 1938 trip, Stone had a special interest in its success, and Holmstrom had acknowledged that assistance by naming his boat, in return, the Julius F.^^ In order to give him—as Stone titled an article about the trip— "Another Fling at Colorado River Rapids," Swain first turned the boats upstream from North Wash on September 24, motoring up through Narrow Canyon and then the lower reaches of Cataract Canyon in an attempt to top the mighty Dark Canyon Rapid which the 1909 party had elected not to run. Even with only Stone in the bow and Swain in the stern, the underpowered craft was unable to prevail isHaldane " B u z z " Holmstrom Papers, Utah State Historical Society, and the Burg and Holmstrom diaries at the Oregon Historical Society document the relationship with Julius Stone. The easy chair used on that trip by Stone is now at the Utah State Historical Society.

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against the current; with the throttle wide open, the boat remained motionless in the river, spray breaking over the happy old man for a few minutes until Swain recognized the futility of the venture and turned downstream. The party spent the night below the rapid, and one may well imagine that the sound of booming water in his ears all night brought Stone dreams of remembered rides through rapids in years gone by.^^ The drama done, oar power became the order of the day as the boats drifted back down the river and entered Glen Canyon. Memories rushed in anew as the boats passed Ticaboo, where Stone had met Cass Hite in 1898 and again in 1909, and Stone related the story of how the old miner had given him his only thermometer to replace Stone's broken one and enable him to continue recording temperatures during the rest of his trip. O n September 28 they drifted past C a m p Stone, Stanton's headquarters during the mining venture and, in a nowfamous episode, stopped at the wreck of the old dredge and built a fire from some of its boards to make some coffee. Stone quipping that he calculated that pot of coffee to have cost him five thousand dollars.^^ Frazier and Kelly stopped at Lake Canyon to look for a reported 1534 inscription but found instead the 1642 date, which Stone surmised " m a y and probably does have some historical significance if it can be identified and properly interpreted." Less mysterious were the inscriptions of the 1871 Powell expedition in Music Temple, and the Stone party varnished them over to protect them from further deterioration. Finally they arrived at their major goal. Padre Creek, where Frazier had found the Escalante steps, and Swain, working from a precarious footing on his boat, drilled the holes and affixed Stone's plaque at the mouth of the canyon.^^ They arrived at Lee's Ferry two days before their transportation to Salt Lake City was due. To their surprise and delight, they discovered that their history-laden trip offered yet another experience when they learned that the remains of Powell's boat, the Nellie Powell, were still visible at Leo Weaver's ranch, where they were camped.

What they found was a few charred fragments left from a brush fire, but they were still identifiable from the stout construction and blue

leStone, "Another Fling"; Charles Kelly, " A t Eighty-three He Is An Explorer," Saturday Evening Post, May 6, 1939, pp. 20-21. Kelly also kept a laconic diary of the trip. It is in the Kelly Papers at the University of Utah.

17lbid. isStone, "Another Fling," p. 18.

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paint as Powell's boat. "This midnight discovery of an old boat used by the first men ever to pass down the great river seemed a fitting climax to our journey," Kelly wrote.^^ Successful as the 1938 trip was, Kelly and Frazier were unsatisfied that they had located all the Spanish inscriptions in Glen Canyon. In fact, they had virtually no evidence of any such inscriptions at all, for a supposed Escalante inscription near Padre Creek had turned out to be meaningless erosional markings, and the reported 1534 inscription at Lake Canyon was nonexistent. All they had for their searches was the 1642 inscription, which they were unable to corroborate as genuine or to connect with any known person. Both men seem to have fallen under the romantic thrall of the area's popular legends of lost Spanish mines and trails, legends that have run far in advance of the meager solid evidence.

At any rate, they set out again in the spring of 1942 on what was to be the last river trip for both men, in search of Spanish inscriptions.

Their partner on this trip was Willis D. Johnson whose first river experience had come in 1938 when he had been selected from several applicants at Green River, Utah, to complete the voyage with Burg and Holmstrom as a general camp roustabout. Since that time, he had made other trips separately with both Burg and Holmstrom and had gathered considerable river knowledge, both through his own experience and from watching his partners, two of the most skilled boatmen of their day. Little of that skill, unfortunately, was in evidence on the 1942 trip, which turned out to be a genuine adventure. ..

Actually, skill was hardly a factor at all, since any skill the three may have possessed was negated by the unsuitability of their boats.

Perhaps Kelly and Johnson had been seduced during previous trips into thinking that Glen Canyon's mild rapids offered no serious challenge and that any type of boat could make the journey. Kelly, of course, should have known better from his 1932 experience, but Johnson and Frazier had only been through the canyon with skilled boatmen and superb equipment and probably underrated the hazards.

Their boats, at any rate, were ludicrously inadequate. Frazier's sixteen-foot rubber kayak was the only one that stood much of a chance of making the trip, and in fact he was the only one who escaped serious trouble. The others were far too small: Kelly had a six-foot inflatable boat and Johnson an eight-foot one. Frazier and Johnson propelled isKelly, "At Eighty-three He Is An Explorer," p. 77.

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Russell G. Frazier and Charles Kelly crossing the Fremont River near Caineville, April 10, 1942, on their way to Hite. USHS collections.

their boats with paddles, but Johnson switched to oars almost immediately when he got out of control in Trachyte Rapid. Even at that, the oars he and Kelly used were so short they offered little leverage and were attached to the boats only by means of hard rubber oarlocks glued to the tubes and inadequate to sustain hard rowing. To complete the problem, the boats were too small to carry all the gear and supplies they needed for the trip; they had to abandon some of their outfit at Hite and even then loaded the boats far too high for stability. They were floating accidents, and the old riverman Arthur Chaffin, examining their outfits at Hite, told them he thought they were crazy.^^ The first few days, however, were uneventful. Ticaboo Rapid was "all covered and smooth" in the high water, and Kelly estimated that they were being puUed along at about eight mfles per hour—fast current on any river. They noted a great deal of mining activity and stopped at Smith Fork where Johnson showed them the big petroglyph panel. It was one of the most impressive panels in the whole canyon country, weU known on the river, and one wonders that they had not found it before. O n their second day out (April 12) they landed at Moki 20Kelly river diary, April 10-11, 1942. Photographs of the equipment are in the Utah State Historical Society's general photograph collection and in two Kelly articles: " R i v e r G o l d , " Desert Magazine, October 1942, pp. 15-17; and " S a n d W a v e s , " Arizona Highways, April 1944, pp. 36-39.

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Canyon, their first major stop, where they intended to explore a supposedly untouched ruin that Johnson had noticed in 1938. The climb to the ruin presented a real challenge. It was, by Kelly's estimate, nearly five hundred feet above the canyon floor and required use of a series of "Moki steps" — footholds chiseled into the rock by the ancients and now eroded dangerously. Kelly and Johnson were admitted amateurs at rock climbing, and Frazier was probably not much better, though he had done some in the Antarctic. Equipped with only rubber-soled shoes (one of Frazier's soles came off during the climb), " a length of cotton sash cord" (probably not of a large enough diameter to permit an adequate handgrip), and a prospector's pick, they set off. Though the climb presented some tense moments, they negotiated it with no accidents—only to find " W . W. Jones, 1922" inscribed on the cave wall beside the ruin. They had risked life and limb to no purpose.^^ Drifting on down to Lake Canyon, they revisited the 1642 inscription and came to the decision that it was a hoax perpetrated by one C. Burt, whose name was just beneath the date and of the same apparent age and style. So vanished their last illusion of Spanish romance. Other stops produced more solid historic interest, as they took advantage of the rapid progress made possible by the fast water to stop more often than on previous trips and to explore more extensively. They explored some ruins, visited Dr. W. H. Schock's mining cabin, and climbed to the top of Hole-in-the-Rock where they found some artifacts associated with the 1879-80 Mormon emigrant party and noted the new automobfle road that had been built in 1941.^2 The trouble began just below the mouth of the San J u a n River as the additional silt began to produce sand waves. Johnson missed the first series, but Frazier and Kelly got into the midst of them, and Kelly shipped water in waves that, he said, seemed to be ten feet high. More sand waves and minor rapids gave them trouble; Kelly had difficulty landing at Aztec Creek for the hike to Rainbow Bridge and shipped water again. The big trouble was yet to come, though, and the terse prose of Kelly's diary tells the story well: Two miles above Wild Horse Bar ran into combination of rapid and sand waves. Tried to pull to left bank, but got sucked in. Doc was ahead, got into worst of it, but was able to pull through. Willis followed, was turned over by a big sand wave. Went under, but hung on to the boat. I tried to pull down to him, but no chance. Then I got dumped out, but boat stayed 21 Kelly, " W e Climbed to the Moki R u i n , " Desert Magazine, J a n u a r y 1943, pp. 5-8.

22Kelly river diary, April 14, 1942.

13^

Utah Historical Quarterly right side up. Crawled back in and tried to ride the waves, but got sucked into whirlpool on right bank. Went back upstream with the back eddy and tried to pull into rapid again, but was thrown out at same place. Fought it for half an hour, bouncing like a cork, but couldn't get anywhere.

Finally grabbed a rock and landed, then had hell of a time to pull boat along shore. Pulled it down to big flat rock and over into quiet water below. Couldn't see anything of Doc or Johnson. They couldn't get back to me. Willis swam ashore with boat, badly winded. Doc picked up two cans of food and landed, waited for me. When I got out we landed on bar below and built a fire to dry out. Had lunch. My pack partly wet. Bedding dry. Wilhs' stuff all wet. Both of us were pooped.^^

It was, fortunately, the last major trouble, though they put in another wet day and had to row for their lives in another set of sand waves. The gusto of rapids-running, if Kelly had ever felt it, was now gone: " C a m e on down," he noted, "taking afl the inside curves" (thus avoiding the main current tongue, which foflows the outside of river bends, and thus avoiding the sand waves that would develop there).

With this heightened caution, the trio made it the rest of the way to Lee's Ferry, but it is difficult to quarrel with Kefly's own assessment of the cause of their trouble: " O u r litde rubber rafts were much too small for the kind of water we found on this voyage. "2* The Kelly river trips, then, like most human endeavors, were a mixed success. Kelly's own personality was such that it took a particular type of companion to get along with him. Dr. Frazier was that t y p e — " H e is a good guy, and has helped me m u c h , " Kelly wrote, "besides being damn good company on desert trips" — as Steward and Birney, who were immensely capable people in their own ways, were not.25 Group compatibflity, though, seems to have been unrelated to the scientific results of his trips, for the conflict-ridden 1932 trip was also the one that produced the most and best findings. Kefly's personality, too, prevented him in some way from achieving compatibflity with the river itself, from feeling its rhythms and meeting its imperatives, as afl great boatmen, indeed outdoorsmen, come to understand their environment. Nevertheless, something kept drawing him back to the river, and the body of archaeological and historical knowledge he helped to bufld are an impressive monument to a man who left so little else.

23Ibid., April 17, 1942.

2*Ibid., April 18-19, 1942; " S a n d W a v e s , " p. 39.

25Main Kelly diary, February 2, 1939.

Charles L. Bernheimer writing his field notes, 1923.

USHS collections.

The Bernheimer Explorations in Forbidding Canyon

BY H A R V E Y L E A K E A N D G A R Y T O P P I N G

Glen Canyon was one of the last areas in the lower forty-eight states to be systematically exX H E RAINBOW PLATEAU REGION SOUTH OF

Mr. Leake, an electrical engineer in southern California, is a great-grandson of John Wetherill; Dr. Topping is curator of manuscripts in the Utah State Historical Society Library.

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plored. Extremely rugged and isolated, it was neglected by the great federal surveys of the late nineteenth century which brought most of the Colorado Plateau into public knowledge. Geologist Herbert E. Gregory, who named the Rainbow Plateau and conducted several expeditions into the area, called it the most inaccessible, least known, and roughest portion of the Navajo Reservation. . . . The deep canyon trenches are practically impassable and the buttresses flanking the cathedral spires are so narrow, smooth, and rounded that passage from one to another and access to the capping mesas have so far not been attained. Whether the ancient cliff dwellers made use of these mesa tops is yet undetermined. . . . The experience of my party indicates that exploration in this canyoned land may be accompanied by hardships.^

The deep and circuitous Forbidding Canyon nearly bisects the Rainbow Plateau. Its sculptor, Aztec Creek, flows northerly to the Colorado River, dividing the Navajo Mountain country to the east from Cummings Mesa to the west. Abrupt sandstone walls dominate the scenery along the length of the canyon, making it nearly inaccessible. Drop-offs and quicksand in the creekbed further discourage human intrusion.

The most famous of Forbidding Canyon's tributaries is Rainbow Bridge Canyon. Hidden from public knowledge until 1909, Rainbow Bridge was soon publicized by enthusiastic visitors such as Zane Grey and Theodore Roosevelt. Their popular accounts accentuated the mystique of the uncivilized Navajo Mountain region and extolled its scenic potential. There were few, however, who could afford the substantial effort, time, and money required to make the long trip to Rainbow Bridge despite the availability of commercial pack trips. In the decade following its discovery fewer than two hundred visitors signed the register at the arch.

A few of those who did make the trip included in their itinerary the narrow five-mile defile between the arch and the Colorado River, but there is no record that any of the early tourists explored Forbidding Canyon above its junction with Rainbow Bridge Canyon. That venture was the goal of the 1921 and 1922 expeditions of Charles L. Bernheimer, a goal that proved so elusive in its achievement that members of the 1922 party elected to change the very name of the canyon.

1 Herbert E. Gregory, The Navajo Country (Washington, D . C : Government Printing Office, 1916), USGS Water Supply Paper 380, pp. 44-45.

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WM^-M::^ Aerial view of Aztec Creek, looking upstream, and Forbidding Canyon.

Rainbow Bridge would be to left of mesa in upper center. U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, photograph.

originally known blandly as "West Canyon," to the more descriptive '' Forbidding C anyon." ^ Of all those who ventured forth into the canyon country by pack train, surely none was as improbable as Charles Leopold Bernheimer (1864-1944). Utterly unqualified by heritage, training, or physique for geographical and archaeological investigations in the harsh climate and terrain of the desert Southwest, Bernheimer nevertheless made fifteen 2Charles L. Bernheimer, Rainbow Bridge: Circling Navajo Mountain and Explorations in the "Bad Lands" of Southern Utah and Northern Arizona (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1924), p . 96.

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such expeditions during the period 1915-36. T h e wfld horses of Bernheimer's imagination fed upon the novels of Zane Grey and drew him again and again to the slickrock country where the eastern urbanite, who was at home in congressional hearing rooms and the drawing rooms of New York's most wealthy and powerful classes, became equally at home beside a lonely desert camp fire. Several of the Bernheimer expeditions reported previously undiscovered geographical features and collected important archaeological artifacts under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural History and other institutions of which he was an important benefactor.

Bernheimer, a German Jew, was born at Ulm-on-Danube, Wurttemberg, and educated in Geneva. H e came to the United States in 1881 to work in New York City as an office boy in the cotton cloth wholesaling business of his uncle Adolph. Through the years, Bernheimer rose steadily in the organization, serving as its president during 1907-28 and thereafter as chairman of the board of directors. T h e civicminded Bernheimer was an active Republican and achieved an international reputation as a leader in commercial arbitration. Though he scorned a newspaper article that referred to him as a multimillionaire, he became a very wealthy m a n only to lose most of it during the Great Depression of the 1930s.^ Bernheimer's marriage in 1893 to Clara Sflbermann, daughter of Jacob Sflbermann, a New York silk manufacturer, was an event of the highest significance in his life, for she was his true supporter and the marriage was a love match of the deepest order. Though she was unable to brave the rigors of desert life and join her husband on his southwestern expeditions, she understood the pull the desert had on him and encouraged him to follow his desires. "Charlie, go and see the Rainbow Bridge as soon as possible," she admonished him; "you won't rest untfl you have done i t . " Though he was away from her side and out of communication for periods of a month or more during the summers he spent in the Southwest, she was his constant partner. H e telegraphed and wrote to her whenever the rare opportunity presented itself and wrote his field notes in the form of a letter to her. "Dearest Clarchen," the early field notes begin, and other pet names are inter3Julius Henry Cohen, They Builded Better Than They Knew (New York: J . Messner, 1946), pp.

149-61; The National Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York: J a m e s T . White & C o . , 1938), vol. E, 1937-38, pp. 196-97; New York Times, J u l y 2, 1944; Bernheimer, Rainbow Bridge, pp. 28-29. In addition to his book, Bernheimer's major published writings are "Encircling Navajo Mountain with a PackT r a i n , " National Geographic 43 (February 1923): 197-224, and " C a v e Treasures of the L u k a i c h u k a i s , " Touring Topics 23 (September 1931), unpaginated photographic supplement.

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spersed throughout. The ultimate tribute to her was the naming of mesas discovered by him in 1921 for her and their two daughters, Helen and Alice, of Clara S. Bernheimer Natural Bridge, discovered in 1927, and the dedication of his book to her. She died in 1932.* Bernheimer was more than just a wealthy businessman; he was a man of considerable culture as well. His literary skill is amply demonstrated in his book, his articles, and his field notes, where he shows a fine ear for the nuances of the language in his depiction of the rigors of the trail and the beauties of the desert vistas, as well as for the intricacies of the personalities of his colleagues. He was an artist of considerable skill. He mentions carrying a sketchbook in which he frequently made pencil drawings of striking geographic features; and his field notes, particularly those of 1929, contain numerous sketches illustrating and supplementing his verbal narrative. Finally, he was a pianist of at least modest skill, who, at the request of a missionary, accompanied the singing at a religious service in Kayenta in 1921. " T o my sorrow," he reported, "years of neglect had made my playing rusty, but I agreed to do my best for him.'' In retrospect, Bernheimer recalled poignantly the religious feeling of the occasion to which his music contributed: "There were gathered Jew and Gentile, Mormon, Quaker, and Polytheist, but all were enraptured by a single thought, each was speaking to his Creator in his own way. On that evening I believe I was lifted more nearly heavenward than ever before."^ On his southwestern expeditions Bernheimer was the quintessential tourist whose Kodak recorded everything from the sublime Rainbow Bridge down to the most mundane details of camp life. Like most tourists he spent nearly as much time in front of the camera as behind it, and the dozens of snapshots in which he appears reveal a skinny, sunken-chested little man whose physique contrasts dramatically with the robust cowboys and packers who accompanied him. "If one met him about 1910, and saw his frail body," his colleague Julius Henry Cohen recalled, "one might have said that a man with such physical handicaps could, with good fortune, live to be sixty, but not much beyond that. To live to eighty, was a sheer triumph of spirit over body." Bernheimer exacerbated the handicap of his frail physique with

'^The National Cyclopedia, pp. 196-97; New York Times, October 13, 1932; Charles L. Bernheimer, Field Notes (hereafter referred to as CLB Field Notes), May 19, 1920; July 4, 1921, originals in American Museum of Natural History, New York City, copies in Utah State Historical Society Library, Salt Lake City. ^Bernheimer, Rainbow Bridge, pp. 14, 30-32.

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what, to the detached observer, is a nearly hflarious hypochondria.

Both his book. Rainbow Bridge: Circling Navajo Mountain and Explorations in the ''Bad Lands'' of Southern Utah and Northern Arizona, and his voluminous field notes record in detafl his alcohol rubs, his potions, poultices, and balms through which his obsessive concern for his health manifested itself. His medicine satchel, the contents of which he inventories in an appendix to the book, included such concoctions as Argyrol ("solution for eyes"), Aristol, Ichthyol Salve, and Eraser's Bismuth Sub. No. 2 ("for Dysentery")—surely the most elaborate apothecary ever seen in that country.^ Bernheimer dressed like a westerner, though his clothes always seemed too big for his bony frame. He wore the same heavy leather boots and high leggings as his guides, but his English riding breeches added a sartorial touch they lacked. With a loose wool shirt and weflworn campaign hat, his appearance was not radicafly different from his cofleagues. Eastern ways died hard, though, and his book contains a description of the process by which he experimented with different types of high Victorian coUars that would enable him to wear a necktie comfortably in the desert heat, only to yield in the end to the popular loose bandana. In his field notes for his 1919 expedition, a brief pack trip with Zeke Johnson into the Natural Bridges in southern Utah, he mentions that one of the pack horses carried his "dress suit case."^ The image of Bernheimer dressing for dinner in the wflds of White Canyon lingers in the mind.

Thus the easterner offered much to the ridicule of famously irreverent westerners. Florence and Robert Lister, biographers of Earl Halstead Morris, the archaeologist who accompanied Bernheimer on some of his most important expeditions, report that Bernheimer often regaled his companions around the campfire by reciting page after page of the hyperromantic prose of Zane Grey, whose novels had played a major role in luring him to the canyon country. His red wool skating cap, which he wore to bed on chilly nights, was a source of snickering amusement to the rough-hewn cowboys. And the nauseating aroma of his cheap "Between the Acts" cigars, which he kept properly moistened in a humidor packed with wet sheets of newspaper,

^Bernheimer's negatives and albums of photographic prints are in Natural History, New York City; duplicate albums are in the Utah State They Builded Better, p. 150; Bernheimer, Rainbow Bridge, pp. 180-82. ^Bernheimer, Rainbow Bridge, p. 101; see the photograph opposite heimer in a necktie at Inscription House; CLB Field Notes, J u n e 28, 1919

the American Museum of Historical Society; Cohen, p. 52, which shows Bern(p. 9).

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fumigated every trail and campsite. " H e smoked the worst kind of five cent cigar you ever heard of," Cohen recalled: He nearly killed me in Washington, D.C. during the winter of 1943 and the spring of 1944, staying up until the early hours of the morning while Paul Fitzpatrick (the night owl) and I worked over drafts and memoranda for Senate committee members. . . . through it all, Bernheimer smoked these "stinkadoras," as I called them. For Christmas I sent him a box of good cigars and suggested that he might smoke them, at least when he was with me in our dissipations. But, these he gave away to friends.^

It is noteworthy, then, that Bernheimer actually attracted little or no behind-the-back ridicule on his expeditions; in fact, he was both respected and loved by his associates. Clarence Rogers, who served as a packer on the 1930 expedition to the Lukaichukais, recalls with pleasure Bernheimer's genteel manners and the old man's sincere gratitude when Rogers helped him onto his horse: " T h a n k you, sir, thank you." When guide Dudy Thomas arrived in Kayenta after one of Bernheimer's visits in the 1930s, John Wetherill greeted her by saying, "You just missed old Bernheimer. He's a strange old duck . . .

But I like him. "9 The remarkable consistency in the personnel of the Bernheimer expeditions, especially the constant presence of the two guides, John Wetherill and Zeke Johnson, could be explained in economic terms: Bernheimer had plenty of money and spent it lavishly on his trips, and Wetherill and Johnson made major parts of their livelihood guiding such people. But there is every reason to believe that they continued to accept his bookings because they enjoyed his company, finding him an easy and appreciative companion in the rough country he loved as intimately and felt as much at home in as they did. And Bernheimer did literally feel at home in the desert: " W e camp on the precise spot we did last year," he wrote to his wife in 1921. " M y bed will be on the same precise spot. Does it surprise you then that it feels like a home—indeed like home? I am writing these notes sitting under the same pinion tree under which I wrote you last year."^° Part of their liking for Bernheimer resulted from their realization that he understood and admired their hard-won skills in negotiating the ^Florence C. Lister and Robert H . Lister, Earl Morris and Southwestern Archaeology (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1968), pp. 106-9; Bernheimer, Rainbow Bridge, pp. 36, 112; Cohen, They Builded Better, p. 150. ^Clarence Rogers Oral History Interview, January 8, 1974, Utah State Historical Society, p. 17; oral communication with Richard W. Sprang, Dudy Thomas's husband. loCLB Field Notes, July 9, 1921.

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rugged canyon country. He missed no opportunity, both in his published and unpublished writings, to pay due tribute to the skill of his guides. Upon arriving at Rainbow Bridge on July 5, 1922, after arduously blasting and hacking a trafl around Navajo Mountain to the south and west, a feat that Bernheimer regarded as one of the great achievements of his career, he awarded the glory not to himself, as leader of the party, but to John Wetherill: By our reaching the Rainbow Arch at 10 A.M. to-day we have succeeded to circumnavigate Navaho Mountain with 26 heads of stock. My chief thought at this time is that posterity may recognize and appreciate the ability of John Wetherill at finding and constructing the trail through Red Bud Pass which after 4 full days of labor yielded to his genius. ^^

Bernheimer's humility and self-deprecating sense of humor was no doubt another endearing quality. In the "Dramatis Personae" that introduces the characters at the beginning of his book, he describes each in admiring terms. John Wetherill: "Discoverer of Rainbow Natural Bridge, guide, student, geologist, and expert on matters relating to the American Indian"; Louisa Wetherill: " a woman of extraordinary ability in handling Indians"; Zeke Johnson: " M a n of great experience as guide, possessing extraordinary knowledge of the country and Indians of Arizona and U t a h " ; and on down the list. He lists himself last, as "Charles L. Bernheimer, Tenderfoot and cliff dweller from M a n h a t t a n . " When devising the text for the plaque which, at Wetherill's suggestion, the old guide installed for him in 1937 at Clara S. Bernheimer Natural Bridge in Monument Valley, Bernheimer apologized for listing Wetherill and Johnson as guides and himself as leader: " I did not like to use the word 'leader' next to my name, but I could not find any other in its stead. I assure you it was not done out of conceit, but for the purpose of indicating that I am the husband of Clara Bernheimer, without saying so."^^ It was deeds, not mere words, that earned the respect of both Wetherill and Johnson, respect they did not hand out lightly. Each, in his own way, tested him—tests Bernheimer welcomed—and gave him high marks for passing. He ran the Wetherill gauntlet in 1921 when he made the dangerous climb into Keet Seel, refused to dismount at steep places until the others did, and kept in the saddle for three hours after

11 Rainbow Bridge Register, copy in Otis R. " D o c k " Marston Papers, Huntington Library, San Marino, California. i2Bernheimer, Rainbow Bridge, p. xi; there are similar references in the Field Notes, e.g., July 1, 1921; Bernheimer to J o h n Wetherill, September 10, 1936, copy in Marston Papers.

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Al Smith, Charles Bernheimer, and Zeke Johnson at Betatakin, 1921. Note Bernheimer's necktie and two vests. John Wetherill photograph in possession of Harvey Leake.

Wetherill had suggested that " M r . B . " might like to stop for the night.

Bernheimer had met Johnson's challenge in 1919 when he booked the guide for the Natural Bridges trip. The Mormon Co-op at Blanding, Johnson's source for provisions, had run low on supplies, and Johnson was hesitant to take the frail New Yorker into the backcountry with only such spartan fare as he himself might subsist upon. " O f course if you are afraid to start with such supplies as are available, we shall have to wait," Bernheimer taunted. "Not I , " was Johnson's response. " N o r I , " said Bernheimer quickly.^^ The scientific successes of the Bernheimer expeditions were a result of the fortunate combination of his money and innocent enthusiasm for the remote canyon country, the archaeological sophistication of Earl Morris on the five trips of which he was a member, and the profound knowledge and backcountry skills of the two guides, John Wetherill and Zeke Johnson. The process through which Bernheimer met Wetherill and Johnson is unclear in each case, though it was inevitable, given his interest in the country, that he should have done so, for they were the two most famous and knowledgeable guides in the area at that time. Though the two were peers in skill, knowledge, and i^Bernheimer, Rainbow Bridge, pp. 17-18.

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experience, they were polar opposites in style and personality: the one a silent, stoical Quaker, the other a gregarious, voluble Mormon.

Why two guides? The answer is not entirely clear. Bernheimer quoted a ploy of Sir Walter Raleigh to the effect that it was a division of expertise: as Queen Mary was the best dancer in Scotland and Queen Elizabeth the best dancer in England, he said, so Wetherill was the best guide south of the San J u a n River and Johnson the best guide north of the river. It is, however, an inadequate answer. There is a certain symbolism lending support to Bernheimer's claim in that Wetherill was located in Kayenta and was official custodian of Rainbow Bridge and Navajo National Monuments, while Johnson, who lived in Blanding, was custodian of Natural Bridges National Monument; but in fact the knowledge of the two men overlapped greatly. Johnson had herded cattle, hauled freight, and prospected south of the river for many years, while Wetherill had an impressive record of archaeological investigation with his brothers in Grand Gulch and other canyons north of the river, as well as guiding the parties of Herbert E. Gregory, Nels C. Nelson, and Neil M. Judd through the area. Bernheimer's background in diplomacy seems to hold a more satisfying answer: though the two guides were friends and held high respect for each other, there was more than a little rivalry, too, and Bernheimer may have seen that his best interest lay in exploiting the friendly competition between them.^^ Bernheimer's modesty in ascribing most of the credit for the scientific achievements of his expeditions to Wetherill, Johnson, and Morris was appropriate. Although his contribution in financial terms was vital and his field notes and publications are highly important as historical records, the Bernheimer expeditions were actually the expeditions of his more knowledgeable and experienced colleagues. Thus, as one moves into an account of the country explored by the expeditions, the focus necessarily shifts from Bernheimer to the guides and the archaeologist.

John Wetherill (1866-1944), who operated a trading post at Kayenta, Arizona, was then considered by many to be the foremost authority on the trails and points of interest in the Rainbow Plateau country. His insatiable passion to learn what was around the next bend of the canyon often left his partner, Clyde Colville, in the position of having to mind the store. It is little wonder, then, that Wetherill was happy to accommodate such dudes as Bernheimer who were willing to iHbid., p . 13.

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' Hosteen John'' Wetherill at Tsegi Canyon, 1924. He ran a trading post at Kayenta, Arizona, and was considered by many the expert on the Rainbow Plateau country.

pay for the privilege of seeing the country—they not only provided him with income to supplement the meager returns of the trading business but also allowed him to pursue his favorite pastime.

John's father, Benjamin Kite Wetherill, was a Pennsylvania Quaker who headed west as a young man. His adventures included a

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position as arbitrator of disputes along the Chisholm Trail. President U.S. Grant had turned over the administration of Indian affairs to Quakers because of their demonstrated interest in the welfare of the natives, and the elder Wetherill's experience in that capacity served him well in later years when he finally settled with his family in the tiny frontier community of Mancos, Colorado. The year was 1880, and relations between the settlers and the local Utes were none too cordial.

The Wetherills, however, won the Indians' trust and were consequently allowed to run their cattle on Ute land. It was during the course of that activity that the great cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde were discovered. The passion of discovery soon took precedence over other family interests and destined all five Wetherill brothers to become inveterate explorers, each in his own way.

John and his bride Louisa Wade moved from Colorado to New Mexico where they were employed at a succession of trading posts. In 1906 they left New Mexico for the desolate Utah Strip south of the San J u a n River where they could start their own business without the burden of competition from other traders or the red tape required of traders who operated on the Navajo reservation. At Oljato (Moonlight Water) they built a crude structure that served as a house and store.

The site was chosen because of the good water supply and its proximity to the Navajo reservation but certainly not because of its convenience.

It is a testimony to pioneer courage that Louisa was willing to leave her friends and the benefits of civilization in order to establish a home in a location that was seventy miles from the nearest white neighbor. Before long, however, she and John established friendships with the local Indians. John acquired the title "Hosteen J o h n , " indicative of their respect for him. Louisa became known as "Asthon Sosi," meaning "Slim W o m a n . " While the Wetherills were living at Oljato, Louisa heard rumors of the existence of a large natural arch near Navajo Mountain. Byron Cummings of the University of Utah, who had been conducting archaeological investigations in the area, asked her to inquire among the Indians as to its location and in 1909 hired John to outfit and guide his " U t a h Archaeological Expedition" on a quest to reach it. Coincidentally, William Boone Douglass of the General Land Office was organizing his own party, and the two groups, which combined, rode under the arch on August 14.

Wetherill, who was appointed custodian of Rainbow Bridge National Monument, guided most of the expeditions to the arch from

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1909 untfl 1924 when Rainbow Lodge was built at the base of Navajo Mountain. In 1910 he moved about twenty mfles south to Kayenta, Arizona, where he buflt a trading post and sprawling house with accommodations for guests. He, Louisa, and Colville lived there for the rest of their lives.

Wetherill's standard tourist fare included an eight-day round trip over the hundred-mfle trafl to Rainbow Bridge with an excursion to the Tsegi Canyon cliff dweflings of Navajo National Monument. The trafl led from Kayenta up Laguna Creek to the head of the Tsegi, then northeasterly through Piute Canyon at the Upper Crossing, and around the eastern base of Navajo Mountain. Northeast of the mountain it merged with the trafl that was used on the 1909 expedition, a strenuous route that crosses a complex maze of canyons and slickrock domes before dropping into the head of Rainbow Bridge Canyon.

Untfl the 1922 Bernheimer expedition this section of the trafl was the only route into the monument that could be negotiated by a pack train.

Wetherill gained a reputation for his ability to pick his way across seemingly inaccessible country and to keep going even when the obstacles seemed insurmountable. Wifliam Boone Douglass, recafling the Rainbow Bridge discovery expedition, remarked, " I never saw any one who could get a party over as much ground in so short a time as [Wetherill]." According to Nefl J u d d , a budding archaeologist who was among Cummings's students in the summer of 1909, ' J o h n Wetherill was a determined man, especially on the trafl. He improvised but never turned back; he always fought his way forward to his intended destination."^^ Ezekiel Johnson (1869-1957), who was fifty years old when he met Bernheimer in 1919, had lived a rough and diverse life.^^ He was the twenty-fourth child of Mormon polygamist and Kane County pioneer Joel H . Johnson, a cold and tyrannical father. The rigors of life on the southern Utah frontier meant a harsh existence for children as well as adults, and the Johnson children were expected to grow up fast and assume a productive role in the family economy. As a very young child Zeke began helping the men in the fields, and at the age of fourteen he isWilliam Boone Douglass to Louisa Wetherill, September 19, 1909, copy in Marston Papers; Neil M . J u d d , Men Met along the Trail (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), p. 96. T h e definitive biography of J o h n Wetherill has not been written, but see Frances Gillmor and Louisa Wade Wetherill, Traders to the Navajos (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1934), and Mary Apolline Comfort, Rainbow to Yesterday (New York: Vantage Press, 1980). i^Unless otherwise ascribed, the Johnson biographical material given here comes from "Zeke: A Story of Mountain and Desert," anonymous M S in Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

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Ezekiel "Zeke" Johnson, raconteur and highly skilled horseman, at Cliff Canyon base camp, 1922. USHS collections.

worked for his older brother Nephi riding the mail route from Kanab to St. George. In 1886 he took up the life of a cowpuncher on the Arizona Strip, and two years later entered into an unhappy marriage with the first of five wives, most of whom he outlived.

Although Johnson abandoned the life of a cowboy briefly during the 1890s to join the gold diggers of the San J u a n Canyon, he spent most of that decade hunting wild cattle for the Bluff Co-op, an experience that enhanced his formidable and intimate knowledge of the San J u a n Triangle country. "See all those trees down there?" he asked a tourist party on Elk Ridge once. "Sure thick. And I've had a wild cow tied to every one of ' e m . " Catching wild cattle in brush country, as the writings of J . Frank Dobie and Ben K. Green attest, is a rough business, requiring not only special horses and horsemanship, but a high degree of plain toughness as well. Zeke Johnson was one of the toughest. Even in rough canyons where, one student of the wild cattle business on the San J u a n says, " a horseman here might well be frus-

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trated when trying to ride through this snaggled labyrinth at a jog trot," Johnson "rode at full speed, flinging himself violently from side to side of his horse's withers or ducking clear down below his saddle horn to avoid being swept off by low limbs as his eager cow pony strained to catch a fleeing critter. "^^ In 1898, presumably on one of his cattle-hunting expeditions, he saw the Natural Bridges for the first time. " I was just thrilled," he recalled, " a n d resolved that I would be their protector," a wish that came to pass when he was appointed the first custodian of the Natural Bridges National Monument, at a salary of one dollar per month with the guide and horse rental concessions.^^ It is one of the miracles of the human spirit that one such as Zeke Johnson could emerge from a life of hardship and sorrow with such a famously bouyant personality, for he became known in the canyon country as an unparalleled wit and raconteur. His stories, jokes, and songs were in ubiquitous evidence on the trails and in the campsites of the Bernheimer expeditions, to the latter's great delight. "Johnson is an incorrigible optimist," Bernheimer wrote. "If at a difficult place the mules kick and bite each other and slip their loads, he sings either some fancy song someone else composed or a dockerel [sic\ of his own. He laughs and jokes and is perpetual sunshine. "^^ Bernheimer even interrupted his narrative of the day's events in his field notes to record Johnson's songs: Put on airs—put on airs, Tis so everywheres; If you do as folks and fashions do; You got to put on airs.^*^

Although Earl Halstead Morris (1889-1956) participated in only five ofthe Bernheimer expeditions (1921, 1922, 1923, 1929, and 1930), his importance transcends mere time spent on the trail, for it was through Morris that most ofthe important archaeological contributions ofthe Bernheimer expeditions were made. The influence was mutual, too, for Bernheimer's money made it possible for Morris to spend extensive time in locales he would never have been able to visit on his i^Karl Young, "Wild Cows ofthe San J u a n , " Utah Historical Quarterly 32 (Summer 1964): 252, 254, 262-63. isUtah Writers Project, Utah: A Guide to the State (New York: Hastings House, 1941), pp. 501-7; Charles Kelly and Charlotte Martin, "Zeke Johnson's Natural Bridges," Desert Magazine, November 1947, pp. 12-15.

19CLB Field Notes, May 22, 1920.

20lbid., J u n e 1, 1929.

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Earl H. Morns, one of the great southwestern archaeologists, at Keet Seel, 1922. He excavated and restored the Great Kiva at Aztec National Monument in northwestern New Mexico. USHS collections.

own. Perhaps most important, it was through Bernheimer's guide, John Wetherifl, that Morris became acquainted with Canyon del Muerto where he made his first extensive studies ofthe Basketmakers.

When Morris met Bernheimer in 1921 he was already wefl on his way to becoming one ofthe greatest of southwestern archaeologists. ^^ He had begun his career at about the earliest possible age, uncovering his first Anasazi artifacts at the age of three whfle digging in some ruins in the Farmington, New Mexico, area with his father, Scott N. Morris, an ambitious young Pennsylvanian who had migrated to New Mexico to seek his fortune in the freighting business. The murder of Scott Morris in 1904 by a business associate was a profoundly important tragedy for the son. His mother became a recluse for the rest of her life (although Bernheimer found her to be charming, bright, and wefl educated) and dependent upon her son. Morris himself became bitter; his shyness and introspective nature intensified, and for the rest of his 21 Unless otherwise cited, the following material on Morris is based on Lister and Lister, Earl Morris and Southwestern Archaeology.

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life he knew few pleasures besides those he could dig from the earth.

Archaeology became his hobby, his profession, and his life. His skill with the shovel, the whiskbroom, the camel's hair brush, and the other tools ofthe trade became legendary, as did his seemingly preternatural instinct for knowing where to dig. Time and again he made amazing discoveries at sites previously thought to have been exhausted.

Morris entered the University of Colorado in 1908, an institution to which he remained deeply loyal throughout his life, even though he spent most of his career in the employ of more handsomely endowed eastern institutions. By the time he terminated his formal education with the M.A. degree in 1915, he had made the profound transition from pothunter to scientist and had come under the lasting influence of such then-prominent men as Edgar L. Hewitt, Jesse W. Fewkes, and Byron Cummings. Although the younger generation of which Morris was a part considered the work of men like Hewitt and Fewkes, who operated under a heavy romantic bias, to be shallow and misleading, he did learn from them professional field techniques that later served him well in his own work.

Morris was a part of virtually every important development in the infancy and early maturity of southwestern archaeology. Beginning in the summer of 1915 he worked with Nels C. Nelson ofthe American Museum of Natural History on a dig on the upper Rio Grande, where Nelson was devising ways to apply the principle of stratigraphy, previously developed on the ruins ofthe ancient Mediterranean, to southwestern sites. In 1919 Morris became converted to the dendrochronology dating project of Professor A. E. Douglass, an astronomer at the University of Arizona. Over the years Morris contributed innumerable tree specimens to Douglass from ruins in which he was working and helped in a major way to establish the basis for dating southwestern sites. It was, he asserted late in life, to his estimation his most imortant contribution to the field. Morris's role in the Pecos conference in August 1927, which established the basic terminology and chronology for the Basketmaker-Pueblo culture was of central importance. Finally, his work on the Basketmakers of Grand Gulch, Falls Creek, the Animas Valley, and Canyon del Muerto was of vital importance in establishing both the chronology and diagnostic features distinguishing the various stages of development and the fact that they represented an unbroken cultural continuity.

At the time he met Bernheimer, Morris's fame as an archaeologist rested upon his excavation and restoration of the ruins at Aztec, New

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Mexico, an ambitious and precedent-setting, though controversial, project. Morris gave his life to Aztec as to no other site. By an arrangement with the American Museum of Natural History in 1919, he actually buflt a home at the ruin and enjoyed, as the Listers point out, a situation previously known only by Richard Wetherfll at Pueblo Bonito, of an archaeologist living in the midst of his work. He lived at Aztec until 1955 when he retired and moved to Boulder, Colorado.

Morris's restoration of the Great Kiva at Aztec, though criticized by purist cofleagues as artificial and speculative, became a model for similar projects and was clearly one of the crowning achievements of his career.

Although Morris wrote a number of articles on southwestern prehistory and an important monograph on Anasazi basketry, his perfectionism prevented him from producing the quantity of publications on southwestern archaeology that his career would have supported.

Nevertheless, when he died in 1956 he was recognized as one of the truly seminal figures in the field, a reputation that has remained unchallenged.

Morris's relation with Bernheimer was respectful and cordial, though perhaps more formal than the relationships Bernheimer enjoyed with the other long-standing members of his expeditions, Wetherifl and Johnson. Wealthy patrons were obviously crucial to the success of southwestern archaeology, a fact that Morris vividly realized, and he was careful to cultivate Bernheimer and to keep his interests in the country alive and directed toward the most scientifically promising areas and projects. He first met Bernheimer through Clark Wissler ofthe American Museum of Natural History. Morris was the only employee ofthe museum located within the area of Bernheimer's interest, and Wissler referred to him Bernheimer's request for a trained professional who could explain the archaeological meaning of ruins such as Betatakin, Keet Seel, and Inscription House. In spite of his archaeological interests, Bernheimer at the time was captivated by the scenic attractions of Rainbow Bridge and the idea of making another trail to it south and west of Navajo Mountain. Morris's mission, from the perspective of the American Museum of Natural History, was to get Bernheimer interested in professional archaeology and to encourage him to finance expeditions into regions with more archaeological promise than the Navajo Mountain area.

The first significant Bernheimer expeditions were those of 1921 and 1922 on the Rainbow Plateau. Bernheimer's first visit to the area was a 1920 trip to Rainbow Bridge under the guidance of Wetherill and

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Johnson. Except for an excursion to the top of Navajo Mountain, it comprised little more than Wetherill's standard tourist itinerary.

However, it aroused Bernheimer's interest in the region and set the stage for a number of subsequent expeditions that were far more significant. His summary ofthe accomplishments ofthe more daring 1921 trip is descriptive of all his later explorations: " M u c h new territory never visited by white men was traversed. Many erroneous reports can now be controverted. A large number of unnamed places, canyons and mesas, received appropriate names which we hope may become permanent. "^^ The dual objectives of the 1921 expedition were to explore the western half of the Rainbow Plateau and to blaze a new trail to Rainbow Bridge around the west side of Navajo Mountain. It is not clear who suggested this particular itinerary, but Bernheimer was obviously enthusiastic about it—especially about the challenge of locating a "Northwest Passage" to the arch. As a consequence, the 1921 Bernheimer expedition became the first to explore Forbidding Canyon systematically and to document many of its geographical features. The published accounts of the trip revealed to the nation that the West had not yet been completely conquered.

The personnel of the expedition included Bernheimer, Wetherill, Johnson, and two wranglers supplied by Wetherill: Al Smith, who had been on the 1920 expedition, and Shadani, a Navajo from Nokai Canyon.

After traversing the now familiar Tsegi Canyon, a visit to Inscription House ruin introduced Bernheimer to the Navajo Canyon drainge which forms the southern boundary ofthe Rainbow Plateau. A local mustached Navajo named Not-si-san (Navajo Mountain) was hired to lead the entourage to the Colorado River in an attempt to find the Crossing of the Fathers. Although the actual location of the ford was missed by about five miles, the reconnaissance ofthe country west of Cummings Mesa was of value in providing the explorers and those who read their accounts with a better perception of the geography of a section of the country that had been inadequately mapped and that had never been described in print before.

For some inexplicable reason Bernheimer found Navajo Canyon to be depressing. A campsite on Jay-i Creek, a northern tributary that joins Navajo Creek near its midpoint, he ungratefully named "Do-ya-

22CLB Field Notes, July 15, 1921.

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shon-da," which is Navajo for " N o Good." Camp No Good eventually proved to be more useful than first thought, serving as headquarters for the 1924 expedition to Cummings Mesa and the mouth of Navajo Canyon, but Bernheimer's feeling toward the area persisted. " I always dreaded Navajo Canyon, which may account for my being attracted to it as a fly is to the fire," he later admitted.^^ Before leaving Navajo Canyon for the uninhabited country to the north, it was determined that additional feed was needed for the livestock. Shadani was sent on an excursion to procure grain from the local Navajos but returned with the discouraging news that he was able to obtain only one bag of corn. This caused Bernheimer even more anxiety. "Now I understand, as never before, what it means to get out into wild, unknown regions, to depend on what one can carry along and what one can wrench from Mother Earth in her sternest mood," he wrote.2* Despite the risk, which perhaps was not as great as he imagined, the party proceeded northerly up Jay-i Creek toward Forbidding Canyon, following a primitive trail Wetherill had traversed approximately ten years earlier.

Beyond the divide of the two canyon systems they encountered a vast depression named " T h e Kettle." Morris described it as " a maze of tortuous canons winding in and out among dumpling-like knobs of rock, too hopelessly rough to be crossed by a pack train. "^^ To Bernheimer, "it had the characteristics of a crater but might have been a blowout of natural gas, an indication of the presence of oil."^^ It is actually the broad, deep head of the eastern branch of Forbidding Canyon. The outlet, a narrow slit, is barely detectable from the rim and gives the impression that the sides form a continuous bowl.

The party skirted the obstacle because, as Bernheimer explained, " n o one could climb down a kettle's side." Access to the drainage was possible via the western branch which they called "Ferguson Canyon" in honor of an earlier explorer who had left a record of his visit. "With the exception of Wetherill, Morris, myself, and a man by the name of Ferguson who had carved his name on a rock, I believe no white men have been in this vicinity," said Bernheimer.^^ 23lbid., J u n e 19, 1924.

24Bernheimer, Rainbow Bridge, p. 63.

25Earl H. Morris, " A n Unexplored Area of the Southwest," Natural History Tl (November/ December 1922): 508.

26Bernheimer, Rainbow Bridge, p. 65.

27lbid., p. 66. Bernheimer failed to notice the names of G. Emerson, J . P. Miller, and M. S. Foote inscribed in the cliff. It is likely that these men had come into the canyon from Navajo Mountain in the early 1880s in search ofthe rumored Mitchell-Merrick silver mine.

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Bernheimer, whose previous trips had been over established trails, was continually impressed by Wetherill's ability to find ways through rough country, although he did not view the skill as romantically as he had the year before. At that time he had written, " M r . Wetherill is of course a genius and has a sixth sense which one riding behind him feels guides and directs him."^^ In 1921 he observed that Wetherill's "memory ofthe faint and intermittent Indian trails is most remarkable. We strayed but rarely. He is beyond afl doubt the typical pathfinder or pathmaker."^^ Bernheimer's fear of becoming lost was perhaps diminished by the realization that the passable routes had already been discovered by the Indians and that it was not clairvoyance that was required of a guide but rather the ability to detect the sometimes subtle signs of earlier usage.

His confidence, however, was soon dashed: At six o'clock that evening we found we had lost our way. This was due to the fact that there were no trails hereabouts to be depended on. Such as there were proved misleading. They were merely old tracks made by sheep and goats that come into this region to graze when there is extreme drought elsewhere; and at best goat trails are notoriously undependable and far from serviceable for a packtrain.^^

And the next morning an event occurred that left Bernheimer even more bewildered: Wetherill this morning on foot went off early scouting for trails down West Canyon. . . . He, being a perfect type of the individualist, did not say why he went afoot, when he would be back, whether he would travel on the slick rocks to the right or left ofthe canyon, whether he was looking for a way out of it.^^

Shortly after lunch, Wetherill returned with the disheartening news that the lower canyon was impassable except on foot and that he had not been able to find an alternate route to the canyon rim. Morris best described the cause ofthe predicament: An adequate conception ofthe ruggedness of this particular region cannot be conveyed in words. . . . In looking from the foot of Cummings Mesa towEird Navajo Mountain, the foreground might be likened to a sea driven in the teeth of a hurricane, the waves of which at their height had been transfixed to salmon-colored stone.^^

28CLB Field Notes, May 22, 1920.

29Bernheimer, Rainbow Bridge, pp. 65-66.

30lbid., p . 66.

31CLB Field Notes, July 8, 1921.

32Morris, " A n Unexplored A r e a , " pp. 508-9.

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It was across that sea that they needed to pass, and it was Johnson who finally found a route that he described as "not so b a d . " Bernheimer quipped, "If Johnson's 'not so bad' signified anything at all, I should say his 'bad' must be impossible. "^^ The party covered only a few miles that day, but at the end of their trail they found a delightful glen in a side canyon. " H e r e was Goldenrod Canon, a natural garden," Morris noted, " a n d just across that ridge, Navajo Canon, desolation incarnate."^* But Morris had further reason for enthusiasm, for he observed prehistoric remains in several caves as they ascended the base of Navajo Mountain. Although the ruins were all small, they offered much more scientific promise than the sites in Forbidding Canyon. At the time, Morris suspected that Wetherill had bypassed larger ruins in the interest of later study by his more established clients such as Byron Cummings, but he later realized that there simply are no large ruins in the canyon.

To the north the men observed a saddle between Navajo Mountain and "the nameless mesa to the west of i t , " but Wetherill advised against attempting to reach Rainbow Bridge by that route because of the uncertainty of success and the limited provisions on hand. "Altogether it is difficult to describe the obstacles that must be overcome on a 'first journey' by which I mean a journey never before tried by white man under white man's conditions," Bernheimer said with disappointment.^^ If the arch was to be reached that year, it would have to be over the trail around the north side ofthe mountain. Although Bernheimer had already been over that route, they decided to proceed anyway. ' 'The bridge is not more than six or eight miles in an air line from Clematis and Goldenrod camps [in Forbidding Canyon], but to get there we had ridden fully fifty mfles, and in so doing had made almost the complete circuit of Navajo M o u n t a i n , " Morris wrote.^^ "Almost" was not enough to satisfy Bernheimer.

The following summer, 1922, he returned, and his dream finally became reality with the aid of determination, planning, and a mule load of "dynamite, T N T , and black powder." This accomplishment was a source of great pride for the now-seasoned explorer, and his popular accounts of the feat in a book and a National Geographic article were destined to create a generation of canyon country enthusiasts.

33Bernheimer, Rainbow Bridge, p. 70.

3*Morris, " A n Unexplored A r e a , " p. 509-10.

35CLB Field Notes, July 9, 1921.

36"An Unexplored A r e a , " p. 512.

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Earl Morris, 1922, beside the red bud tree after which the Bernheimer party named the pass on the trail to Rainbow Bridge. USHS collections.

many of whom eventually made the trip to the arch over the new "Bernheimer Trafl." Incidental to that achievement, and of greater scientific significance, was the Bernheimer party's exploration of Cliff Canyon, lower Forbidding Canyon, and No Name Mesa.

As Bernheimer's field notes reveal, the logistics ofthe undertaking were difficult enough to dissuade all but the most resolute: O u r cavalcade is very large this year. There is Wetherill, Johnson, Morris, Al and Jess Smith, . . . Sagi-nini-jazi, and myself. We have twenty seven animals . . . [and] tools, all very heavy, which we carry in order to work our way through. Three sledge hammers, three shovels and spades, two picks, drills, and other heavy iron tools . . . and . . . of course, feed.^'^

Although Morris participated in the 1922 expedition, he was not particularly happy to be spending another season in geographical reconnaissance on the Rainbow Plateau. He had proposed a trip into

37CLB Field Notes, July 1, 1922.

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the unexplored and archaeologically promising Lukaichukai and Carriso mountains on the border of Arizona and New Mexico. Bernheimer's mind was made up, though, and Morris yielded to his wishes in hopes of convincing his benefactor of the value of a future expedition devoted primarily to archaeology. Perhaps in an attempt to make the best of a less than ideal situation, Morris set off by himself into the upper tributaries of Forbidding Canyon while the rest of the group looked for a route to Rainbow Bridge. The most imposing ruin he visited had already been excavated by Cummings, but he found several smaller sites.

Meanwhile, the others scouted on foot to determine whether the pass they had seen the year before between Navajo Mountain and the mesa to the west of it could be negotiated by pack animals. The mesa, which stretches from high on the mountain to the sheer walls of Forbidding Canyon, was one ofthe major obstacles that had thwarted the 1921 plans. Bernheimer now referred to it as "Nameless Mesa," and later in the trip as " N o Name M e s a . " Given his penchant for naming geographical features, it is a mystery why he did not choose a less enigmatic title for such an imposing landmark.

Wetherfll climbed to the saddle and reported that although the route appeared to be traversable, it would require descent into a deep canyon north of No Name Mesa which they called "Cliff Canyon." A few cairns along the thousand-foot ascent marked an ancient trail. " I t was n o t , " Bernheimer commented, "the kind of trail we associate at home with woodcraft. "^^ The descent into Cliff Canyon was treacherous. The two thousand foot drop is still impressive and difficult, though eased somewhat now by a wefl-used trail. And many modern-day hikers have been tempted to echo Bernheimer's melodramatic exclamation upon discovering the dry creek bed at the bottom: " T o turn back was impossible[;] confronting us was the unknown!' '^^ Fortunately a perennial water source exists a few miles downstream.

The next day the group found a better campsite about a mile farther west near a Basketmaker site Morris had identified. They split up from there in an attempt to find a route into Rainbow Bridge

38Ibid., J u n e 29, 1922. The somewhat inaccurate 1892 Geological Survey " M a r s h Pass" topographical map shows a trail in the general vicinity, but the field records ofthe surveyors, Arthur P. Davis and H. M . Wilson, apparently have been lost or destroyed. It is possible that they, or members of their crews, utilized the trail during their 1883-84 field work.

39Bernheimer, "Encircling Navajo Mountain with a Pack T r a i n , " p. 213.

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Canyon, a tributary of which they correctly supposed to be the next canyon to the north. Bernheimer and Johnson foflowed Cliff Canyon to its junction with Forbidding Canyon and proceeded down the latter a few mfles untfl halted by a deep pool and steep wafls. Before turning back they observed an immense cave shelf at least three hundred feet long and one hundred and fifty feet deep, a perfect concave dome. Its floor space fully half an acre was strewn everywhere with charcoal. Dozens of ancient fire places large and small, some shrine-like, covered the floor."^^

The two men scratched their names into the sandstone at the back of the cave.

In the meantime, Wetherifl explored the area north of camp and Morris climbed to a high vantage point. In the afternoon the party reassembled, afl with discouraging reports. Wetherifl declared that the obstacles in Forbidding Canyon would have to be overcome, but after Johnson and Bernheimer reiterated the difficulties, he decided to look at the side canyon north of camp once more.

That route, which was to become known as Red Bud Pass, was already famfliar to Wetherifl, but he evidently hesitated to recommend it because of the difficulties it presented in making it passable for the animals. Wetherifl's initials are inscribed in the cliff near the northern terminus of the pass along with the date "3-14-1911," and a note added to a 1911 entry in the Rainbow Bridge register explains that he had "walked over mountain while hunting trail around to north and west of mountain. Found place where trail was afterward built by Bernheimer in 1922."*^ Although he had previously visited the area, he reserved the credit for the opening of the pass for Bernheimer.

Wetherill sometimes used such a means of honoring his clients for the accomplishments of expeditions they financed and downplayed the significance of his own contributions. " T h e Indians found it long before the white men c a m e , " he said of Rainbow Bridge.^^

40CLB Field Notes, J u n e 30, 1922.

41 Rainbow Bridge Register, photocopy in Marston Papers. The possibility of pre-1909 sightings of Rainbow Bridge is one ofthe most vexed questions of Utah historiography, and the present essay can only note that some ofthe supposed early visitors claim to have reached the arch by means of what later became known as the Bernheimer Trail through Red Bud Pass. J a m e s W. Black, for example, recorded a notarized statement on September 27, 1930, that in J a n u a r y 1892 he was prospecting in the Navajo Mountain area and "crossed over the mountain into a large canyon now known as Cliff Canyon, and through a pass now called Red Bud P a s s . " Copy in Marston Papers. An Indian trader, William Franklyn Williams, made the improbable claim that he and two others " h a d no trouble taking their horses through what is now known as Redbud P a s s " to a sighting of Rainbow Bridge in 1884. Weldon F. Heald, " W h o Discovered Rainbow Bridge?" Sierra Club Bulletin 40 (October 1955): 24-28. *2john Stewart MacClary, "Trail-Blazer to Rainbow Bridge," Desert Magazine, J u n e 1938, p. 34.

;<..•> • - A,

i'^^ic^k.^y'd^-'f'':'*'

.-^V-^M.

Members of Bernheimer's 1922 expedition on the rim of Cliff Canyon scouting for a way into Rainbow Bridge Canyon. USHS collections.

Four days of backbreaking work were required to clear the way for the animals and their packs. At one place the walls were only two feet apart and had to be chipped away. As Morris described it.

The major obstacle was a fissure between great vertical slabs of stone, perhaps 3 ft. wide at the bottom and thirty feet deep. We rolled loose blocks of stone down into it from the cliffs on the W. side, then shot down and sledged to pieces the two vertical leaves of stone at the W. side of the fissure, until the slit was filled and widened enough for the animals to climb down it.*^

Johnson was unable to help for the first couple of days because of a leg injury, though he proved to be " a recalcitrant patient" under the ministrations of Wetherill and Bernheimer. Bernheimer himself suffered— somewhat less, one suspects—from a back problem and mosquito bites, but his efforts to embrace western ways were beginning to enable him to look at such hardships philosophically.** Actually, Bern« E a r l H. Morris Field Notes, July 2, 1922. **CLB Field Notes, July 4, 1922.

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Red Bud Pass, looking east.

Bernheimer noted on this photograph: "at last wide enough to get through with a horse. " USHS collections.

heimer had it easy compared to the men who were doing the work.

While they spent long days wielding picks and sledgehammers in the hot sun he was resting in the shade, writing voluminous notes, and taking baths in a pool in Cliff Canyon.

On July 5 the pack train negotiated Red Bud Pass and proceeded down canyon to Rainbow Bridge. Bernheimer was almost ecstatic but credited the success to Wetherill's ingenuity. Wetherill, Morris, and Jess Smith continued on foot to the mouth of Rainbow Bridge Canyon and then up Forbidding Canyon. The rest of the men took the stock back through Red Bud Pass and met the hikers at "Charcoal C a v e " in Forbidding Canyon. Wetherill pointed out his initials on the slope above the creekbed opposite the cave which marked the southern limit of an earlier excursion up the canyon.

Morris described the major barrier there as "the largest pool in the entire country aside from the Colo. River." Although he was not unfamiliar with the occasional severity of desert weather, he recorded that conditions at that time were really extraordinary: The heat this day was the worst I have ever experienced. The wind blowing over the hot rocks actually burned one's eye balls and made one

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gasp for breath. The night was also hot. One could not lay naked because ofthe mosquitos, and beneath even a canvas perspiration ran in streams.

Water in the pails was above body temperature on the morning of the 6th.*5

Despite the heat, Wetherill set out in an attempt to ascend Forbidding Canyon to the point where he was stymied the year before.

He found that it was too hopelessly rough to be developed as an alternate route. In the meantime, Morris dug through the debris in Charcoal Cave and found a skeleton which he declared to be that of a Basketmaker. He considered it significant that evidence of this early culture was found so far west. The men also found some sandals at a site above the mouth of Cliff Canyon and named the place "Sandal Cave."

The ascent of No Name Mesa was the objective of the next two days. It was not evident that there was a way to breach its sheer sides, but Johnson found a cleft across from the mouth of Red Bud Pass which, with great difficulty, he used to reach the first bench above the canyon floor. Morris, Wetherill, and Jess Smith succeeded in reaching the mesa top the second day via "Johnson's H o l e " but found it to be " t h e most trying mountaineering experience that they ever h a d . " They saw no sign of prior human intrusion except for what appeared to be a cairn.*^ The Bernheimer party used Red Bud Pass again on the return trip to Kayenta, this time to gain access to the original Rainbow Bridge trail. Thus, in Bernheimer's words, " T h e rugged forbidding giant rock, Navajo Mountain, the War Gods' Dwelling Place was circumnavigated."*^ The only significant portion of Forbidding Canyon not explored by the 1921 and 1922 expeditions was the mysterious Kettle. The 1924 Bernheimer expedition discovered an incredibly rough trail to its bottom, and it too succumbed to Bernheimer's passion to go where white men had apparently never been. " W e followed Forbidding Canyon in its course to its beginning," he wrote in his journal. " I t s whole life history is like its birth place. Rough threatening life and limb. Comparatively narrow though the Kettle is, it was difficult to pick a way which did not necessitate retracing."*^ The 1924 expedition

45Earl H . Morris Field Notes, July 5, 1922.

46CLB Field Notes, July 8, 1922. *7lbid., July 14, 1922. *8lbid., J u n e 17, 1924.

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Bernheimer's party leaving Kayenta in 1924. USHS collections.

also accomplished the second recorded ascent of Cummings Mesa*^ and extensive exploration of Navajo Canyon and its tributaries.

Now submerged in its lower reaches by the Lake Powell reservoir.

Forbidding Canyon is the most-visited of afl the reservoir's tributaries, as tourist boaters by the thousand motor up as far as Rainbow Bridge Canyon and turn in to dock almost beneath the great arch. Many, too, proceed on up Forbidding for some miles to enjoy the dramatic scenery. Beyond the head of the estuary, though, the canyon stfll presents to hikers the obstacles that earned its name; one may still view the drop-offs and pools that brought the 1921 Bernheimer expedition to a halt and rendered necessary the creation of Red Bud Pass as an alternative overland route to Rainbow Bridge. In those upper reaches the canyon and its tributaries are today almost as little known as they were in Bernheimer's day, and without Bernheimer's field notes and publications they would be even today largely a geographical mystery.

The story of the Bernheimer expeditions, then, is an important record of hard-won geographical knowledge. Even more important perhaps, it is a story of man's love for nature's secret places, the rough country where one encounters nature's imperatives and her primeval forces directly. Bernheimer's exploration of Forbidding Canyon was only a phase of his nine major expeditions into the Four Corners region, but it aptly demonstrates the tenacity required to uncover the secrets of one of America's last frontiers. " M a n can do almost anything," the cliff dwefler from Manhattan concluded, "if he is persistent, wisely courageous, and has sufficient imagination."^^ *9The first recorded ascent of Cummings Mesa was made by Byron Cummings and John Wetherill in 1919. Lyndon Lane Hargrave, Report on Archaeological Reconnaissance in the Rainbow Plateau Area of Northern Arizona and Southern Utah (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1935), p. 14; Bernheimer, Rainbow Bridge, p. 178.

50Bernheimer, Rainbow Bridge, p. 95.

Antoine DeSeyne, Genevieve DeColmont, and Bernard DeColmont, photographed by Roy DeSpain. All photographs are courtesy of author.

*'Les Voyageurs sans Trace â&#x20AC;&#x201D; The DeColmont-DeSeyne Kayak Party of 1938

BY ROY WEBB

S E P T E M B E R 1938. The minds of most Frenchmen were on the events of recent weeks, as Europe teetered and finafly backed away slightly from the brink of war. At least three Frenchmen, though, had no thoughts of war or even of Europe. Bernard DeColmont, his wife Genevieve, and his friend Antoine DeSeyne were in southwestern Wyoming, camped just below the railroad town of Green River, Mr. Webb is assistant curator. Special Collection, Marriott Library, University of Utah.

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preparing their small boats a n d equipment for a r u n down the G r e e n a n d Colorado rivers. T h e i r minds were on the u n k n o w n dangers that lay ahead in the deep canyons and on the m u d d y waters swirling by their riverside c a m p . Bernard, the leader, was on assignment from the Paris M u s e u m of N a t u r a l History to descend the Colorado River and film a n d photograph the canyons. H e came well equipped for such a task, having already been on two expeditions to film the Indians of southern Guatemala. H e h a d his own reasons for wanting to go as well.

Bernard hoped to prove that small, collapsible kayaks could be used for descending wild rivers, instead o f t h e heavy wooden boats still favored by most explorers.^ A wide variety of craft h a d been used in the previous attempts to descend the turbulent G r e e n and Colorado rivers. T h e first explorers, forty-niners, and trappers used whatever was available, including abandoned ferryboats, bull boats m a d e of buffalo skins, a n d even dugout canoes. M a j . J o h n Wesley Powell, who led scientific exploring expeditions down the rivers in 1869 a n d 1871, was the first to give serious thought to the proper type of craft for r u n n i n g rapids. Powell h a d h a d some experience with boats and rivers, having been d o w n the Illinois and Mississippi. H e drew on that experience when it came to designing boats for his Colorado River exploring expedition; unfortunately for his long-suffering crews, he chose narrow, round-bottomed freight boats m a d e of oak a n d double ribbed for strength. T h e y proved to be sturdy enough, but they were extraordinarily heavy a n d all but unmaneuverable in rapids. M u c h to the crew's disgust, they portaged and lined the boats m o r e often than they ran them through rapids.

W o o d e n boat design improved considerably with the flatbottomed skiffs built by Nathaniel Galloway in the late 1800s, b u t a wooden boat was still a wooden boat: heavy, h a r d to handle, a n d prone to splintering if banged on rocks too often. Besides, Galloway was a trapper and prospector, not an explorer. His design did not gain wide acceptance until after the t u r n of the century. Most expeditions after Powell used the major's awkward design.

Bernard D e C o l m o n t wanted to prove that collapsible kayaks, a rubberized canvas skin stretched over a folding wooden frame, which he h a d already used on rivers in France, would work as well or better 1 Raymond DeSeyne Larlenque to author, July 21, 1986. All quotes in this article, unless otherwise noted, are from the journal of Antoine DeSeyne, August 28-November 9, 1938. A copy ofthe journal was graciously supplied by Raymond DeSeyne Larlenque, son of Antoine. The journal, other writings by both Antoine DeSeyne and Bernard DeColmont, as well as correspondence with Mr. Larlenque, were translated by Terry Fahy, University of Arizona Libraries.

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than the heavy craft used by most previous expeditions. They had many advantages: they were much more maneuverable, so that rapids could be run more often than portaged; they were lighter and therefore much easier to portage or line when that was necessary; and finafly they broke down into two bags that could be easily packed into a starting point.

Bernard's expedition almost failed before getting started, however, through no fault of his or his boats. When he conceived the idea for the trip in the spring of 1938, he wrote to the director of Grand Canyon National Park to formally seek permission. The reply was hardly encouraging: We formally discourage you from making the trip that you propose: it is extremely dangerous; you know that some have attempted it, and these expeditions most often end up in catastrophe rather than success. Nevertheless, if you persist in your plans, we inform you that you must deposit a sum of $10,000 to defray the costs of a rescue party that the government would most certainly have to send in search of you.^

Undeterred, Bernard wrote to the U . S . State Department, and after several exchanges, received assurance that he could go ahead.

Then, at almost the last minute, his other crew member (besides his young wife, Genevieve, whom he had just married on August 1) had to back out of the expedition. He then turned to his friend, Antoine DeSeyne, whom he had met while ski touring in the Pyrennes near their homes. Described by himself as " a good Frenchman who has no knowledge of geography," Antoine had one other problem: he did not know how to kayak. But he was willing to learn, and after Bernard subjected him to an "intensive apprenticeship" in a kayak on the rivers of southern France, he was ready to go.^ The trio arrived in New York on August 28, 1938. Because ofthe warning Bernard had received from the Park Service, they feared that the government might still interfere with their plans; so they told no one their intentions. They bought a big 1934 Lincoln (Antoine noted ruefully in his diary that the car got only 7.5 miles per gallon) to carry them and all of their gear across the country. O n September 8, after an uneventful drive across America, they crossed the Wyoming border, and "arrived in the land ofthe cowboys." In Green River, Wyoming, they learned about an abandoned ranch some ten miles below the 2DeSeyne journal, September 10, 1938.

3 Antoine DeSeyne was a landowner and agronomist whose home was in the south of France.

Bernard DeColmont was his neighbor. They often skied together.

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iWV Base camp at Green River, Wyoming. Photographs by Bernard DeColmont include caption: "For the first time a Kayak will attempt the rapids of the river.

town. This was the perfect place to ready their equipment and themselves for the voyage without the prying eyes of government officials or reporters. A week later, shopping and last-minute preparations completed, there was nothing left to do but get into their boats and go.

Just before leaving, their plans finally became public. A correspondent from the Salt Lake Tribune sought them out and got their story.* So when they arrived at the Holmes Ranch, some forty miles below the town of Green River, M r . Holmes was waiting for them.

The Holmeses had seen many river expeditions come and go since settling the area soon after the turn of the century. Julius Stone and Nathaniel Galloway had passed there in 1909, the Kolb brothers two years later. Holmes insisted that they stay the night at the ranch. From him and his wife the Frenchmen learned that as they got closer to the canyons the unreasonable fear of the rapids they had noted in town gave way to a reasonable respect for the rapids and the power of the river. â&#x20AC;˘The story also made the front pages in the Green River, Wyoming, Star, and the Vernal, Utah, Express. There was a three-month period during the autumn of 1938 when every issue of both weekly newspapers had at least one front-page story on river runners; one issue ofthe Vernal Express contained accounts of no less than three separate parties.

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The kayaker's equipment included extra paddles, life preserver, helmet, and a tiny French flag on the bow. Photograph by Bernard DeColmont.

In their first sixty miles on the Green, the river ran slow and flat between arid clay hills. Before reaching Flaming Gorge, the first ofthe canyons they would encounter, the trio had time to get used to their boats, to balance their heavy loads of canned goods and camera equipment, and to steel themselves for the rapids they knew lay ahead. O n September 17 they had their first glimpse of the canyons they would soon enter: At last, the mountains came into view into which the river was about to entangle itself; it would flow through Flaming Gorge, Horseshoe Canyon, Kingfisher Canyon, Red Canyon, Lodore, etc. . . .

Here, in front of us, were one section after the other of magnificent colors crowned with beautiful clouds. Striking blues, ocherous violet, wooded settings, quite a change from the desert countryside these last few days.

In the evening, the sunset splendidly enriches the hues even more; the water is calm and reflects the indescribable magic of the softest and most sumptuous colors.^

The calm water that so entranced Antoine was the last they would see for some time, for the next day they entered Flaming Gorge and the

sDeSeyne journal, September 17, 1938

Map by Brian L. Haslam.

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rapids began — small at first, and easy to run. But two days after entering the canyons they came to Ashley Falls in the middle of Red Canyon. It was the first major rapid they encountered. After studying it, Bernard decided to run all three boats through himself, while Antoine and Genevieve took photos and made films from the shore.

After the successful passage Genevieve added their names to the "river register" where river runners have left their names ever since General Ashley passed that way in 1825.

The rapids came hard and fast after that, although that same afternoon they easily ran what they thought was Red Creek Rapid and were surprised that it had such a reputation. The next day, though, they came to the real Red Creek. Bernard, seeing that it was indeed much worse than even Ashley Falls, decided to line two of the boats past the waves and rocks and run the third himself. Just when they thought they were safely past, Antoine's boat broached on a rock and broke in half. It was a long walk back to Green River, and there was no way they could carry themselves and all the equipment and supplies in two boats. Nothing to do but try to repair the broken boat. It took them most of that night and part of the next morning, but they were able to rebuild the broken frame with driftwood and resew the torn canvas.

Antoine's boat was seaworthy again.

While they were finishing the repairs to the boat, another river party arrived at the head ofthe rapid. Seeing " U t a h Fish and G a m e Department and Utah Wild Life Research U n i t " painted on the side of one ofthe two boats, the Frenchmen were suspicious ofthe strangers, fearing that they were official inspectors, coming to order them to leave the river. Antoine recalled " I deliberately abstain [from greeting the Americans] and stay very absorbed in sewing the canvas ofthe b o a t . " They soon learned, however, that the party, led by Lee Kay of the Utah Department of Fish and Game, was going down the Green to look for and hopefully film bighorn sheep that lived in the canyons.^ Kay and the other members ofthe crew—Earl Clyde, Wes Eddington, Dr. Rasmussen, and Roy DeSpain (who built the two wooden boats) — were "frank, open, friendly from the start. . . . They visited with us for a long time, lingering to take many pictures. They offer us whiskey.

^Interview with Roy DeSpain by Roy Webb, April 20, 1985, tape recording in Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah. Antoine DeSeyne later explained to Lee Kay why the Americans were given such a cool reception. Kay in turn told DeSeyne that his group, knowing the stories about that area being a haven for outlaws, figured the French boaters had taken them for criminals. The river trip was one of the first wildlife surveys that are so much a feature of wildlife management practices today.

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1 ^ CAfir O E •T.

^ ' . •

Genevieve DeColmont with Utah Fish and Game officials on the Green River after the French party's suspicions of the wildlife researchers were allayed. Bernard DeColmont photograph.

leave us two loaves of bread, a dozen eggs and some apples."'' The Americans were fascinated by the safety gear used by the Europeans — protective helmets and life vests, and spray skirts on their boats—as well as by their folding boats, lightweight tents, down sleeping bags, and Primus gas stoves.

The next day, the French trio paddled through Browns Park. T h e calm water was a welcome respite from the rapids and dangers of Red Canyon and gave them a chance to rest and repack their loads for their greatest chaUenge so far—the Canyon of Lodore. Lodore, with its difficult rapids and narrow walls, had the most fearsome reputation of any ofthe canyons ofthe Green, and, as the French adventurers soon found out, it was well earned. After lining their boats past upper Disaster Falls, they portaged the boats and gear along the slippery boulders past the lower section, the more difficult part ofthe rapid. Just above Triplet Falls, the next big rapid, Bernard and Genevieve both capsized on a submerged rock. As they dried out that night in front of a big fire, Antoine wrote in his diary: " H a r d day. Bad rapids. Is it

^DeSeyne journal, September 22, 1938

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fatigue which prevents me this evening from recording more details in my logbook?"

After running a "whole set of lively, fun rapids" the next day, they came to Triplet Falls. There they encountered the Fish and Wildlife men, who had just rescued one of their boats from a rock in the middle ofthe rapid. That night, the two parties camped together at the head of Hell's Half Mile, the most feared of Lodore's cataracts. The Americans, in the interest of good international relations (or perhaps because attractive young Frenchwomen were a rarity in eastern Utah), invited the trio to dinner. The Frenchmen, in their small kayaks, could not carry much fresh foodâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in fact, their main load seemed to be canned beer.^ The French group was greatly impressed by the feast laid out by the Fish and Wildlife crew. When the latter found out that it was Genevieve's twenty-second birthday, "that [made] the camp m o v e . " All sang " H a p p y Birthday" to the young woman, and the celebration continued long into the night.^ The Frenchmen decided not to risk their frail boats and loads of camera gear in Hell's Half Mile, a raging maelstrom of rocks and waves. After portaging two of the kayaks, however, Bernard decided that it was too much work; he would run the last boat while the others filmed the attempt. For his pains, he capsized, losing his French flag and a small gear bag (which the other party recovered downriver), and was physically bruised on the rocks. Gamp that night was just below the rapid; they had made only about a mile and a half the whole day.

The next morning they floated down to Echo Park, around Steamboat Rock, and into Whirlpool Canyon. Although the rapids in Whirlpool are nothing like Lodore, at the low water of early fall the canyon is not without its dangers. Bernard hung his boat on a submerged boulder and freed it only with difficulty; Antoine scraped by a rock in the same rapid and tore a sixteen-inch slit in the canvas hull of his boat "so fine and so regular that one might think it were done with a knife. . . . " Nor were their troubles over. After being towed through Island and Rainbow parks by Wes Eddington, who had an outboard motor, they came to the mouth of Split Mountain Canyon and the last rapids before the Uinta Basin: 8Roy DeSpain interview. J u s t below Triplet Falls four of the Fish and Wildlife party ( K a y , Clyde, R a s m u s s e n , D e S p a i n ) painted their n a m e s on the east wall o f t h e canyon. T h e y can still be seen.

River historian Otis M a r s t o n c o m m e n t e d that the F r e n c h m e n " s e e m e d to fear bad d r i n k i n g water m o r e than bad r u n n i n g w a t e r . " ( Q u o t e d in This Is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country and Its Magic Rivers, ed. Wallace Stegner [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955], p . 68.)

9Roy DeSpain interview.

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Bernard DeColmont in Triplet Falls, Lodore Canyon, Green River. "The river roars at the bottom of sheer walls, " the caption reads. Bernard DeColmont photograph.

We untie at the moment the rapids start up again, but still exchanging jokes, smiles, thanks we ignore our technical maneuvers and we run the rapids a little too bunched together side by side with Kay's heavy boats. It was a bad move that could have had [serious] consequences. . . . In one of the strong rapids, Genevieve . . . just missing ploughing into [Earl Clyde's boat], got turned around in some troughs and passed by them screaming and yelling her head off. ^°

The constant danger, the rapids, the labor of portaging and lining, was beginning to tefl on afl of them by this point, but especiafly on the young Frenchwoman. Antoine noted that "Genevieve is almost at the end of her nerves. We lose a little time waiting untfl she recomposes herself."

They were soon out of Split IVIountain, though, and faced nothing more serious than sandbars and mosquitos for the next hundred river miles. While the French trio drifted the last few miles before Jensen, Utah, where they would store their boats and replenish their supplies, they were hailed from the shore by a horseman. A rancher, Robert Thorne, had heard of their voyage and invited them to have dinner with him. After days of canned food they were glad to accept his invi-

'"DeSeyne journal, September 28, 1938

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tation. The next day, a few mfles downstream, another hafl, this time from a woman in a car alongside the river. She turned out to be Mrs. Hatch, wife of pioneer commercial riverman Bus Hatch, and she insisted that they accompany her to Vernal and stay with her family.^* The Frenchmen were at first hesitant to accept but were won over by her warm hospitality. They spent four days with the Hatch family and only learned after they left that the family had moved into the basement so that the French kayakers could have bedrooms.

Finally, though, on October 3 it was time to tear themselves away from the friendly people of Vernal and Jensen and resume their journey. For the hundred mfles of flat water to the head of Desolation Canyon, Wes Eddington loaned them his outboard motor. They rigged a frame between two of the boats and towing the other behind were able to make good time through the slow current. By now the weather was starting to turn cold; winter was approaching, and the Frenchmen began to worry about the chances of finishing their trip before the cold weather really set in. O n October 10 they ran into the first rapids in Desolation C a n y o n — " p r e t t y bad but very photogenic," Antoine commented—and Bernard and Genevieve, hiking away from camp, encountered a wolf. They passed through Desolation and Gray canyons without mishap.

The French voyageurs found Green River, Utah, the last town before the confluence of the Green and Colorado, to be a "typical American town. Train Station. Bank. 2 gas stations. 2 drugstores."

Awaiting their arrival, however, was another pioneer in commercial river outfitting—Norman Nevills of Mexican Hat, Utah, who had begun taking passengers down the San J u a n River in 1934 and was already planning to try his hand on the upper Green. Anxious to meet the kayakers and get their impressions of the upper canyons, he took them to dinner at the Midland Hotel where they swapped river stories until late into the night.'^ When Major Powell floated through Labyrinth Canyon, below Green River, Utah, in 1869, he recorded the following description: " T h e r e is an exquisite charm in our ride today down this beautiful canyon. It gradually grows deeper with every mile of travel; the walls are

" I n t e r v i e w with Don H a t c h by Roy W e b b , M a r c h 10, 1984, tape recording in Special Collections, M a r r i o t t Library.

'2A full-length biography of Nevills, the pioneer in commercial river travel in the G r a n d C a n y o n and one of the first to engage in taking passengers down the rivers of the West, has yet to be written.

Printed sources about his career include the article by P. T . Reilly elsewhere in this issue as well as articles in Desert m a g a z i n e , local newspapers, and other periodicals.

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The French kayakers felt the same; they were enchanted by the beautifully arched walls and the mysterious side canyons. There was another factor to consider, howeverâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;it was getting colder every day.

Each morning they had to break ice out of the bucket in which they settled their drinking water. Still, the sun was warm enough during the day, and they were making good time, aided by the outboard motor.

O n October 21 they reached the confluence of the Green and the Colorado, which they called " G r a n d J u n c t i o n . " Below the confluence lay only a few miles before the start of Cataract Canyon, still known as the "Graveyard ofthe Colorado." Today, with Lake Powell backed up into the canyon, there are eleven miles of difficult rapids; in 1938, there were over forty miles of some of the wildest Whitewater in North America. The Frenchmen had to face Dark Canyon, Gypsum Canyon, and the lower Big Drop rapids, all of which are unknown to modern boatmen. Antoine DeSeyne described running rapids in his frail kayak: [Tjhe impression [was] of being a mouse in the paws of a cat, being rolled, beaten, smashed and ground, without being able to react, of being held under water, unable to breathe for seconds which seemed like centuries.

When you finally do emerge, it's just in time to see an enormous wave break over your head and immerse you once again beneath the water for another century. When it's finally over your breath is gone, your arms and legs battered, and your head is empty.^*

Running rapids was not the only danger to be faced in Cataract Canyon. While lining one ofthe boats past a particularly bad cataract, Antoine was dragged from the shore and forced to swim the rapid without his life vest. The boat was recovered later but not before it had crashed against a rock that broke its wooden frame.

The end of Cataract Canyon also marked the end of any warm weather, and in fact the last few rapids were made even more difficult by large blocks of ice floating down the river. The Frenchmen were unable to appreciate the beauties of Glen Canyon because of the race against the advent of winter. They did not want to get caught in Glen Canyon if the river froze over, forcing them to abandon their boats. It was a long walk to civilization. Each day they battled their way down ' 3 j o h n Wesley Powell, Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Canyons. ( W a s h i n g t o n , D . C ; G o v e r n m e n t Printing Office, 1875). p . 54. 'â&#x20AC;˘^''On the Subject of a K a y a k J o u r n e y on the C o l o r a d o , " u n p u b l i s h e d article by A n t o i n e DeSeyne, photocopy supplied to a u t h o r by R a y m o n d DeSeyne L a r l e n q u e .

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the shallow, icy river, dragging their boats off sandbars, sleeping each night huddled by a fire. Their thoughts constantly turned to the dangers they would face in the Grand Canyon. Finally, on November 9 they reached Lee's Ferry. After waiting three weeks for the cold weather to moderate, they were finally forced to admit that they could not continue into the Grand Canyon. T h e French kayak expedition of 1938 was over.

The "French T r i o , " as they were dubbed by American newspapers, returned to Europe justly proud of their achievements. They had proven that folding kayaks could be used for exploration of wild rivers by taking them down some of the roughest water in the world.

Genevieve had been the first woman ever to pilot her own boat through

Bernard and Genevieve DeColmont with their kayaks on the Green River. Bernard DeColmont photograph.

the rapids of the Colorado. And they had taken thousands of feet of film and hundreds of photographs. Bernard DeColmont published a small book of their photos and wrote several articles for French magazines. Antoine DeSeyne also wrote some newspaper articles and a long poem titled " L e s Voyageurs sans T r a c e " â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the voyagers without trace. Both men continued to run rivers in France, until World W a r II put a stop to such pleasant pastimes.

Left: Bernard and Genevieve DeColmont and Antoine DeSeyne near the end of their river journey. Below: Bernard and Antoine leaving the river with their folded kayaks.

Bernard DeColmont photographs.

Perhaps the item of greatest value they took home with them, however, was what still motivates river runners today â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a sense of having done something that few others will dare to do, a sense of pride in a shared accomplishment that nothing can ever erase. Antoine DeSeyne later wrote: Evenings around the fire, we often laughed long and hearty about the day's events, but we also told ourselves that we formed a team, and we knew what that word meant, how it represented the force, the cohesion, the common work, [the] mutual aid. . . . T h e Americans understood that: they baptised us the "French T r i o , " and when at last we arrived at the wall, near the end of Cataract Canyon, the wall on which the few navigators who have ever gotten that far have written their names, we, too, left behind our inscription, not our individual names, but instinctively, naturally and without thinking, we wrote our collective n a m e , the name o f t h e team: "French T r i o . "

Striking a note that no doubt expressed the feelings of the DeColmonts as wefl, he concluded simply: " I t was a team that had gotten that far, a French team, and that was enough. "^^ i^Ibid.

Norman Nevills running Joe Desloge through Ashley Falls, Green River, June 24, 1949. Photograph by P. T. Reilly.

Norman Nevills: Whitewater Man of the West

BY P. T. REILLY

commercial operator on the Colorado River and he was not a native of Utah, but he popularized the running of western Whitewater and made Mexican Hat, Utah, â&#x20AC;&#x201D; population less than ten â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the capital of the river runner's world during the 1940s.

N O R M A N DAVIES N E V I L L S WAS N O T T H E FIRST

Mr. Reilly lives in Sun City, Arizona.

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David D. Rust had boated in Glen Canyon in connection with placer mining since 1897 but he did not begin cruising the river for pleasure and profit until 1921. He had a charter river business established before Nevills came to Utah, operating entirely in Glen Canyon.

Nevills ran every major Whitewater river in the West and maintained commercial schedules on the San J u a n and Colorado River through Grand Canyon. The Snake, Salmon, upper and lower Green, and Cataract Canyon were run occasionally as his customers desired. In 1940 he retraced Powell's entire route.

Nevills undoubtedly was controversial and made enemies of several authoritative persons who have placed considerable prejudiced material pertaining to him in various archives. However, since his untimely death in 1949, nothing of a significant nature has been written about him. This account attempts to bring a measure of objectivity to the record.

Born in Chico, California, April 9, 1908, to William Eugene and Mae Davies Nevills, Norman received nominal schooling in the Golden State. He was not trained for any specific field of endeavor, although he leaned toward dramatics during the spring term of 1926 at College of the Pacific. But fate already had decreed that his talents would flower elsewhere.

Billy Nevills, a prospector and oil wildcatter, came to Goodridge in 1921, drawn by the most recent of several minor oil booms. N o r m a n and his mother joined him in December 1928, and the young man became work-hardened by the only activity available to him â&#x20AC;&#x201D; oilfield roughnecking.

Even at best, exploring for oil in the San J u a n oilfield was a startand-stop operation. Early wells were shallow, usually less than 600 feet, seeking synclinal pockets between the Rico and Hermosa formations.

Wells were drilled progressively deeper during the 1920s, some down to 3,000 feet. At least a dozen companies tried their luck but the deeper wells turned out to be dry holes. By 1931 all activity ceased.^ Operations closed down and most of the workforce drifted away, but the Nevills family remained. Billy had faith that the shutdown was only temporary due to the depression and the country had a positive future.

He hunkered down and waited in one of the most depressed corners of an economically prostrate nation.

'Arthur A. Baker, "Geology ofthe Monument Valley-Navajo Mountain, San Juan County, U t a h , " U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 865 (1926), p . 9 1 .

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For more than a decade conservationist g r o u p s h a d proposed that approximately 3,000 square miles encompassing Rainbow Bridge, Navajo Mountain, and Monument Valley be set aside as a national park. The idea gained momentum through the publicity generated by the Charles L. Bernheimer expeditions, 1919 through 1923, and the Nefl M .

J u d d explorations. Both received national exposure by the National Geographic Magazine in February 1923 and March 1924. The expedition in J a n u a r y 1931 in which Pat M . Flattum and J o h n Wetherill took an outboard- Norman Nevills and Bill Wood above Mexican Hat Bridge, August 1933. powered boat up the ice-filled Photograph by L. W. Lowery, courColorado from Lee's Ferry to tesy of Museum of Northern Arizona.

Hole-in-the-Rock was part of this effort. The men used the river road to visit the arch, and their backer, Frederic A. Stearns of Los Angeles, generated public interest through an article in the Pacific Mutual News in October. ^ T h e FlattumWetherill jaunt added little significant information about the region but did increase pressure to investigate it.

Although nearly a dozen explorers, archaeologists, geologists, hydrologists, and engineers had done field work in certain parts ofthe tract, Ansel F. Hall claimed the region was so little known that it was impossible for the government to admit or deny the recommendation for national park status; this lack of knowledge was the incentive for an official survey of the region. Thus was born the Rainbow BridgeMonument Valley Expedition of 1933.

Thorn L. Mayes, an Oakland engineer, devoted his 1929 vacation to exploring Monument Valley, made the acquaintance ofthe Nevills family, and obtained young Norman as a guide to the various places of interest. He used a Brunton pocket compass and the odometer of his '^Plateau 34 ( O c t o b e r 1961): 33-49. T h e original diary and a copy of the Pacific Mutual O c t o b e r 1931, are in the library o f t h e M u s e u m of N o r t h e r n A r i z o n a , Flagstaff.

News,

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car to map the locations of the impressive monoliths from the few primitive roads. He repeated this activity for the next three years, and was in charge of cartography when the prestigious survey took to the field in J u n e . As a result of their previous association, Norman Nevills was a field assistant to Thorn Mayes. The job was an undisguised blessing for the Nevills family.

Since the area to be surveyed was undeveloped, budget was provided for an airplane, pack animals, and a fleet of seven ten-foot rowboats that could be folded flat when the transoms were removed.

Made by the Wilson Fold-Flat Company of Los Angeles, the small boats were selected for their portability and were barely adequate for use on the San J u a n and Colorado rivers. They were constructed of marine plywood, open, shaped like a sadiron, and wide of beam at the stern. They did not carry much payload but could provide access from the rivers to some tributaries that otherwise were inaccessible. T h e boats were used from Nokai Canyon forty-four miles to the Colorado and thence to Lee's Ferry.^ At the survey's conclusion in mid-August Norm had a little money in his jeans, a wealth of experience, and had made some significant contacts. One was Ernest P. " H u s k y " H u n t , an erstwhfle Stanford University coach and a member ofthe archaeological team. H u n t was smitten by the country and envied Nevills the opportunity of living where he did. When they disbanded he had N o r m ' s address and resolved to gather some friends and return to investigate the desert river that coursed through this intriguing region. Although Norm had not participated in either the aerial or boating phases ofthe expedition, he was impressed by both and was overjoyed at being given one ofthe flat boats which had sustained some damage. Before the month was out, he and Bill Wood, another member ofthe mapping team, put the craft in the river at Mexican Hat Rock and ran 4.2 mfles down to the beach above the bridge.

Convinced that Congress would approve the proposed national park and that the country was on the verge of a tourist boom, Billy and Norm with three Navajos began constructing a building that fall, intending it to serve both as a home and as a possible hostelry. Using native stone and timbers salvaged from various defunct oil-drilling ventures, they completed the structure in 1934. Bold, engraved letters identified it as "Nevills Mexican Hat L o d g e . " 3Ansel F. Hall, General Report of the Rainbow Bridge - Monument Valley Expedition of 1933 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1934).

Above: "Nevills Mexican Hat Lodge, " Aprd 24, 1949. Photograph by P. T. Reilly.

Right: Billy Nevills, standing at left, directing three Navajos in building Mexican Hat Lodge, fall 1933.

Nevills family photograph.

While the flush of temporary, relative prosperity combined with the glow of potential success, Norm married vivacious nineteen-yearold Doris Drown at Green River, Utah, on October 18, 1933.

J o h n A. " J a c k " Frost ofthe U . S . Geological Survey accompanied Norm and Doris on a twenty-one-mfle run from Mexican Hat Rock to the Honaker Trail. Then on March 9, 1934, Jack's wife Nana joined the trio for a two-day run of sixty-seven miles to Copper Canyon on a low flow of 577 second feet.* Here they were met by the Taylor boys of Oljato and driven home. The boats were abandoned.^ The year 1934 proved to be one of record low runoff. Even in J u n e â&#x20AC;&#x201D; usually when the Colorado's drainage peaked â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the San J u a n was only a trickle of five second-feet. O n July 5 the river went completely dry and remained so for the next ten days.^ This was not encouraging for a man thinking of exploiting the stream for a livelihood. ^Surface Water Supply ofthe United States, 1934, Part 9: Colorado River Basin, W a t e r Supply P a p e r 764 ( W a s h i n g t o n , D . C : G o v e r n m e n t Printing Office, 1936), p . 89.

5 U S G S files and N a n a Frost D i a r y , excerpts in possession of a u t h o r . ^Summary of Records of Surface Waters al Base Stations in Colorado River Basin, 1891-1938, Water Supply P a p e r 918 ( W a s h i n g t o n , D . C . : G o v e r n m e n t P r i n t i n g Office, 1944), p . 170.

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Husky H u n t ' s ambition to traverse the unknown river began to be realized when he convinced two friends, Jake Irwin and Charles Elkus, to accompany him on the venture. Nevills agreed to pilot them in his boat from Mexican Hat to Lee's Ferry for a fee of fifty dollars.

The passengers mistakenly believed that their guide had made the trip previously, but the country below Copper Canyon was as strange to him as to his guests. The men did not think Nevills was serious when they saw the horse-trough contraption he intended to use, but he assured them it was river-worthy.

They shoved off March 24, The "horse-trough" boat Nevills used 1936, to launch the Nevills commeron his first run to Lee's Ferry, cial career. After the third day the March 24-April 1, 1936. passengers became painfully aware Photograph by P. T. Reilly, 1957. that they had something in common with the guide on which they had not counted — afl were seeing the country for the first time. N . J . Taylor had agreed to meet them with his Ford truck at Lee's Ferry on March 3 1 , but when they did not appear he spent the night with U . S . Geological Survey employee Frank Dodge. Taylor was apprehensive untfl the party landed the following morning. Dodge could not see why Norm bothered to haul the socafled boat back to the Hat.^ Norm and Doris became parents on October 7, 1936, when their first child, a daughter whom they named J o a n , was born.

Lack of finances and the continuing depression limited N o r m ' s river running to the planning stage during the following year. H e and LaPhene " D o n " Harris — then gauging the river at Mexican Hat for the U . S . Geological Survey—projected a future trip through Cataract Canyon, but it was very tentative. As 1937 drew to a close. Dr. Elzada Clover, professor of botany at the University of Michigan, stopped at Mexican Hat to discuss a river trip on which botanical specimens 'Ida Decker Diary, copy in author's possession, and interview with Frank Dodge, October 3, 1953, North Hollywood, Calif

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Map by Brian L. Haslam.

would be collected. She was especially interested in the theory that some varieties of cacti might exist solely in the river canyons. At that time she did not have a grant, so finances would be tight. Norm had no established business that would allow him to contribute his talents in the interest of science; in fact, he didn't even have an outfit. Clearly their greatest need was an " a n g e l " with venture capital, but they could get by if they found some passengers willing to pay in advance.

Norm found a customer in William C. Gibson, a photographer he had met in Monument Valley. Clover came up wdth W. E. Atkinson of Ann Arbor and Lois Jotter, a postgraduate student. The three passengers and Clover advanced $250 each to make the expedition possible, and Norm went into action.

His problems were enormous, his experience limited. H e had no boats for big water nor boatmen to oar them. H e needed a camp outfit, supplies, and a trailer to transport the boats if and when they were built. Doggedly he set about to pull himself up by his bootstraps.

Part of his problem was solved by Don Harris, who agreed to lend him $230, help build three boats for ownership of one, and to handle it

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on the expedition until his vacation expired. After that Harris would be reassigned and Norm would need another boatman.

Nevills generally is credited, even by his critics, as having made two major contributions to Whitewater boating. These supposedly were the use of marine plywood and the extreme breadth of beam.

Although he was the first to use these improvements in the major rapids, he did not bring them to the Colorado drainage, and he made two other contributions that have not been recognized.

The Rainbow B r i d g e - M o n u m e n t Valley Expedition of 1933 used marine plywood and the sadiron-shaped, wide-beamed hull in the flat boats on the San J u a n and in Glen Canyon. Norm borrowed these features when he made his proportionally larger cataract boats in 1938.

The feature that he introduced—which made his boats the most maneuverable up to that time — was the extreme rake built into the craft's bottom and the unusually stout oars. A closer look at these improvements is justified.

Powell, Brown, Stanton, and Eddy used keeled lake boats that were not maneuverable in fast water and had little pivoting ability. In fact, the boating techniques of their parties ignored maneuverability.

Flavell used an open, high-prowed, flat-bottomed skiff that might have been a dory, but no photographs or exact descriptions of it exist. T h e meager descriptions available say it was wide of beam, but rake is not mentioned. He sat on a box to row and — seaman that he was—knew that a prow attacked the waves better than a stern, so he reversed his rowing position to face both his bow and downstream. This was a major revolutionary step in Whitewater boating, although its impact would not be recognized for more than half a century.^ Nathaniel Galloway is credited with introducing the stern-first technique to the Colorado drainage, which is true, but it was not as efficient as Flavell's practice. The Kolb boats were buflt to the Galloway design and contributed nothing new. T h e 1903 E. B. Woolley boat was so close to Galloway's design that it probably was developed as a near copy after he viewed it at Needles.

Nevills struck a deal with Harbor Plywood and obtained special mill-cut material so that bottoms, sides, and decks would be single 8S. M. Fulmer designed and built ihe Moja in 1946. Moja was pointed at both ends, had 15 inches of rake, with the weight concentrated close to the pivot axis. He never used the boat in Cataract, Marble, or Grand, but made successful trips on the San Juan, Yampa, and Desolation-Gray of the middle Green. It handled so well that he was confident it could take on the major rapids.

The author never saw the Moja when he designed and built his first dory-type cataract boat in the spring of 1954. It, too, was pointed at both ends, had the weight concentrated about the pivot axis, and had 12 inches of rake. However, it did not have the dory flare. It was used for repeated trips through the big-water canyons of the Colorado.

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189

Left to right: Frank Masland, Norman, Dons, and Joan Nevills at Granite Park, Grand Canyon. The Nevills cataract boat was not designed for comfort. In rough water the bow passenger sat on a coil of rope while the stern passengers rode on the aft deck. More than one rolled off. P. T. Reilly photograph, July 29, 1949.

pieces with no lapping or splicing. The bottoms were sheets of marine plywood 9/16" x 5 ' x 16', protected by 3/8 " x 4 " oak rubstrips that ran lengthwise. Bow blocks, internal ribs, and posts were solid oak.

Everything was joined by cadmium-plated steel screws. No glue was used but caulking was. Fore and aft decks were flat, with hatch frames projecting 1 V2 " above the surface. Hatch covers were fastened with standard hardware hinges and refrigerator clasps. Billy Nevills advised while Norm and Don Harris built three boats from this design in the spring of 1938. The craft were painted white, the interior cockpits a utflity green. Six-inch block letters in r e d â&#x20AC;&#x201D; N E V I L L S E X P E D I T I O N â&#x20AC;&#x201D; adorned both sides. The boats were identified on both sides of the bow: Wen (after W. E. Nevills), Botany, and Mexican Hat. A recurring weakness of previous river expeditions was the routine breaking of oars. Norm had never before had the benefit of factory-made oars, having gotten by with road signs nailed to wooden handles. Now he ended his own frustrations and contributed a solution to the old problem by ordering special oars from a New York firm, DeGrauw, Aymar & Company. He had 12-foot sweeps shortened to 8 }/2 feet. The 2 Vi -inch diameter of the longer sweeps was left intact to

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provide heavier than normal looms. New hand grips were turned, and he had a sturdier oar than had ever been used on the Colorado. As far as is known, no Nevills oarsman ever broke one in normal use, although they were broken in prying.

The party left Green River, Utah, at 9 A.M. J u n e 20, 1938, on a flow of 17,400 second-feet. Norm had never been down this river and did not know it or the canyons. His reliable aids were the U S G S Plan and Profile maps. H e had cut the sections out and glued them end-toend on a rofl of brown wrapping paper. The various strips did not match the cardinal directions but they gave him the configuration of the river canyon, the major tributaries, and the mile points. H e thus had a fairly good idea of his location and what was coming up. H e wrote his brief notes on the margins of the wrapping paper and completed a log of the trip at its conclusion.^ Once they were in Cataract Canyon, the magnitude of 52,000 second-feet pouring down the declivity made Norm's companions aware that the mantle of leadership did not rest gracefully upon their captain. A poor tie-up at the first rapid resulted in the Mexican Hat running several riffles without benefit of an occupant. The craft came through right-side-up and was found circling in an eddy. Confusion was rampant. Inexperienced, Norm undoubtedly took himself too seriously. H e was inclined to be authoritative, guided more by emotion than reason. These deficiencies distorted his judgments and decisions.

He described waves of fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five feet height.

Once he regretted leading the party but was brave and stepped up to it as best he could. O n J u n e 25 at the head of the Big Drop he courageously resorted to prayer before casting off. T h e Botany capsized in another rapid. They lined and made backbreaking portages but finally put Cataract behind them. The difficult traverse of Cataract pointed up dfferences between Norm and Don Harris that never healed.

They arrived at Lee's Ferry the morning of July 8 to encounter reporters and photographers. A Path^ cameraman came late so they made a second landing to accommodate him. T h e presence ofthe two women made the trip more noteworthy than if the party had been all male. Harris had run out of vacation time, and Atkinson quit here; Norm replaced them with Lorin Bell and Del Reed, who rowed the Mexican Hat and Botany when they shoved off on July 13. They were at ^Dates and descriptions of this river trip were obtained from the log of N o r m a n D . Nevills, copy in a u t h o r ' s possession. T h e water volumes were obtained from Surface Water Supply for the United States, 1938, W a t e r Supply P a p e r 859 ( W a s h i n g t o n , D . C : G o v e r n m e n t P r i n t i n g Office, 1939), p p . 16, 8 1 .

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191

Bright Angel on July 18, and when they departed on July 23 Emery Kolb was a guest for the final leg. By August 1 they were on Lake Mead where Buzz Holmstrom met them in a power boat and towed them seventy-five miles to Boulder Beach. They had traveled 614 mfles, and the first women had traversed Grand Canyon.^° The media people ate it up and Norm thrived on the publicity.

His river career was launched. Ofthe initial one hundred individuals to make the river traverse through Grand Canyon, Nevills and his party comprised numbers fifty-eight through sixty-four.

Harbor Plywood acquired the Botany to exhibit in the promotion of marine plywood, while the Mexican Hat was left at Lake Mead for Harris to pick up; hence. Norm had to trailer only the Wen back to the Hat. He had become commodore of a single-boat fleet.

In mid-1939 chance brought an unexpected visitor to Mexican Hat who was destined to pick up where the Las Vegas media corps had left off. From 1935 to 1940 Ernest Taylor Pyle and his wife, Jerry, crisscrossed North America in search of material for a daily column that he wrote for the Scripps-Howard Newspaper Alliance. As the chain published Pyle's column in twenty-one newspapers from New York to San Francisco and syndicated it to others, any subject was guaranteed a large audience.

Ernie and his wife arrived at the Nevills Lodge on July 28, 1939.

Next day Norm took them on a six-hour boat ride from the mouth of Comb Wash 19.5 miles to the landing above the Mexican Hat bridge.

That evening Pyle employed considerable hyperbole when he typed his dispatch. He probably figured that since he had covered so much tortuous country to reach this godforsaken place, his subject could not possibly be a normal h u m a n being but a heroic figure who routinely performed great feats. Thus he presented a distorted view ofthe river, the rapids, and the man who prevailed over them.

Scripps-Howard readers absorbed and accepted Pyle's image immediately and the picture became indelible. No one took it more seriously than Norm himself, and forever after he attempted to fill the shoes of a river-running Paul Bunyan. Pyle had sacrificed his subject to his column.

During the winter of 1939-40 Nevills built two more cataract boats after the Wen designâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Mexican Hat II and foan. H e made no improvements because he was sure he had the perfect craft for his purpose. loMileage compiled from USGS plan maps ofthe Green and Colorado rivers.

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Expedition Island, Green River, Wyoming, June 20, 1949, with four Nevills boats preparing to depart. Photograph by P. T. Reilly.

Meanwhile he had promoted a trip to follow the river trafl blazed by Major Powell in 1869 and, mindful of the publicity generated by Clover and Jotter in 1938, included his wife, Doris, and Mildred E. Baker. The three boats were oared by Nevifls, Del Reed, and Dr. Hugh Cutler. Other passengers were B. V. Deason, J o h n S. Southworth, and Charles W. Larabee.

The party shoved off from Expedition Island, Green River, Wyoming o n j u n e 20, 1940. A goodly crowd was on hand, but the river's flow was only 1,400 second-feet, a quarter of what had been expected. Low water continued with them in the middle Green, but the passage was uneventful to Green River, Utah. Here Deason took a temporary leave for a business trip to Salt Lake City, as Ann Rosner of Chicago and Barry Goldwater joined.

Headed downstream again July 10 on only 2,140 second-feet, the party still was hampered by low water, mosquitoes, and a merciless sun. The low water actually helped them in Cataract Canyon, the rapids offering rock-dodging sneaks down the sides instead of the booming maelstroms of two years previously. Th^Joan was pinned on a boulder at Mile 202.2, capsized, and had a hole smashed in the port

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gunwale.^^ Nevertheless they came through Gat in fine style and on the tenth day after leaving Green River, pulled ashore at Hite where Arth Chaffin welcomed them for lunch.

They reached Lee's Ferry August 2, resupplied, and were headed downstream on August 4 on only 3,000 second-feet. Arriving at Bright Angel on August 9, Norm shuffled his party; Deason rejoined while Ann Rosner was sent up the trafl because the skipper said he could not carry them both due to the extremely low water, and Deason had priority. Arriving at Separation Canyon on August 21, they met Harry Aleson and a friend, Lewis West, with some badly needed supplies.

With his outboard, Aleson pulled them to Quartermaster Canyon where they met the government boat and all were towed to Boulder Beach that evening. ^^ Nevills not only had retraced Powell's full route but conducted two women on it. H e added 1,196.8 mfles to his recordâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the distance from Green River, Wyoming, to Grapevine W a s h â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a n d had run every rapid. He now had a total of at least 2,900 river mfles to his credit. ^^ H e and Reed became the sixth and seventh persons to make a second traverse of Grand Canyon, standing with Galloway (1897 & 1909), Emery G. Kolb (1912 & 1923), F. B. Dodge (1923 & 1937), Clyde L. Eddy (1927 & 1934), Buzz Holmstrom (1937 & 1938).

Norm and Doris Nevifls became parents a second time when another daughter was born March 18, 1941. She was christened Sandra J a n e , and Harry Aleson was named her godfather. The spring of 1941 also brought more customers, and Norm made seven San J u a n trips, the total adding 1,363 fast-water miles to his record.

His third Grand Canyon traverse consisted of three riding passengers plus Alexander G. " Z e e " Grant, who elected to handle his own craft, a foldboat he called Escalante. The party embarked at Lee's Ferry July 15, 1941, and was met by Harry Aleson on upper Lake Mead August 1. At Boulder Beach, Zee Grant proved to be the main

" S e e Barry M . G o l d w a t e r , Delightful Journey down the Green and Colorado Rivers ( T e m p e : A r i z o n a Historical F o u n d a t i o n , 1970), p p . 30-35. ' 2 l b i d . , p . 180. T h e G o l d w a t e r diary, although slightly edited for Delightful Journey, is the most reliable account o f t h e 1940 traverse, but it begins at G r e e n River, U t a h , and ends at Lake M e a d . Doris Nevills wrote a diary of the full trip from W y o m i n g , which was edited for an article in the G r a n d J u n c t i o n Daily Sentinel. N o r m a n Nevills compiled a post-trip account of the full traverse. Both Nevills diaries are in the possession of J o a n Nevills Staveley.

'3This includes his various runs on the San J u a n . T r a v e r s e s to Lake M e a d are credited to G r a p e v i n e W a s h , 279.4 miles below Lee's Ferry. Lake M e a d can extend 44 miles into western G r a n d C a n y o n , d e p e n d i n g on its elevation. T h e a u t h o r has experienced a c u r r e n t to Iceberg C a n y o n , nine miles d o w n s t r e a m from G r a p e v i n e W a s h . G o l d w a t e r , in his introduction to Delightful Journey, gives the distance from Green River, W y o m i n g , to p r e s u m a b l y H o o v e r D a m as 1,463 miles.

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interest for the reporters and cameramen, although Nevills and Reed had become the first boatmen to have made three traverses of Grand Canyon.^* Sandwiched between the San J u a n trips that began in M a y and ended in September, Norm made his fourth Grand Canyon run July 15 to August 1, 1942. Two of his passengers, Ed Hudson and Otis R. Marston were destined to have an impact on river history, while cinematographer Ed Olsen made a hyperbolic film that won the Academy Award for the year's best one-reeler.^^ Aleson met the party and towed it in, although he raised his price from $30 to $75.

The war stopped the burgeoning river business but it favored Nevills in another way. In February 1943 he was appointed hydrographic field assistant for the U S G S at Mexican Hat, and in October he was raised to an engineering aide earning $1,800 per year. It was an ideal job for a resident of such a remote location.

Still, gasoline rationing prevented most public travel, and N o r m ' s little potboilersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the San J u a n tripsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;stopped entirely. An exception was when Life magazine photographer Dmitri Kessel appeared at the Hat and chartered a trip to Lee's Ferry in late M a y 1944. A week later, Otis Marston and six others ran the San J u a n . This was Marston's first effort as a Nevills boatman. A Twentieth Century Fox crew for Movietone News ran when only 732 second feet were flowing and lost a $6,000 camera when Lynn Lyman impinged on a midstream boulder.

Schedule had been held but production was nil.

Harry Aleson and Nevills enjoyed a friendly working arrangement for about four years. Apparently Aleson had resented Norm although he kept his feelings bottled until 1943 when the smoldering embers of acerbity burst into open flame. Aleson re-evaluated their relationship in an "onionskin letter" to which Nevills made a gentle refutation on December 16. From this time on they became rivals and their relationship deteriorated.^^ T h e war in Europe was concluded officially M a y 8, 1945, gasoline rationing ended overnight, and America's pent-up chaffing at travel i*A. G. Grant wrote his version ofthe traverse in Appalachia, December 1941, pp. 485-94. The Escalante is on exhibit at the Grand Canyon visitor's center. Weldon Heald wrote chap. 8, "Riding Grand Canyon Rapids," in The Inverted Mountains (New York: Vanguard Press, 1948). Nevills compiled his usual notes on the wrapping paper that held his maps. i^The movie was Danger River, photographed and produced by Edwin R. Olsen and released by Dudley Productions, Culver City, Calif. The author has a copy. leSee Harry Aleson to Mildred Baker, September 17, 1953, Aleson Collection, Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City. The "onionskin" letter is in the Nevills Collection in the possession of Joan Nevills Staveley, Page, Arizona. Nevills's reply is in the Aleson Collection.

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restrictions exploded. It was too ' "-''"Wti: late to advertise for 1945 but Norm worked the post office overtime. He put two trips down the San J u a n in J u n e , then one from Moab to Lee's Ferry in July on which Otis Marston rowed the foan and experienced his first big water in C a t a r a c t Canyon.

J a p a n ' s surrender September 2 removed all wartime barriers, and Norm prepared for a postwar boom in 1946. One thing he had not counted on was the ready availability of s u r p l u s w a r equipment, including inflatable life rafts.

The San J u a n was a unique trip that some people took Norman Nevills and a chuckwalla at Glen Canyon Mile 68. 7, June 9, repeatedly. Passengers came from 1949. Photograph by P. T. Reilly. all parts of the United States, from all walks of life. There were energetic teenagers, school teachers, active and retired executives, engineers, scientists, geologists, doctors, lawyers, artists, politicians, and blue-collar people. Some of them had read about Norm; others learned by word of mouth. Most newcomers considered him to be a famous person and hung on his words. A few were turned off by his overweening ego.

Norman Nevifls was smafl in stature yet impressive physicafly. H e was not taller than five feet seven inches, weighed less than 140 pounds, but he had the arms and torso of a man thirty pounds heavier.

He had unusually large forearms and beefy, horny, capable hands. H e was quick as a cat and was aware of it. H e was affable but impersonal.

One had to know him before realizing his amiable exterior was a facade that disguised a shy but highly competitive person with unresolved doubts about many things. He had no use for alcohol, barred it on his trips, but was a heavy smoker. His wife and chfldren adored him â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a claim not all men can make.

Business was so good in 1946 that Norm had made eight San J u a n trips by mid-June, then traflered his boats to Salmon City, Idaho, and ran down the Salmon to Lewiston. H e took the outfit around to

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Utah Historical Quarterly

Doris and Norman Nevills with Cherry 11, at the Mexican Hat airstrip, April 24, 1949. Photograph by P. T. Reilly.

Brownlee Ferry and ran the Snake through Hefl's Canyon to Lewiston.

Otis Marston rowed ih^ Joan on both occasions.

It had been a profitable season; there was money in the bank and Norm prepared to spend some of it. H e had learned to fly but had no plane. That fafl he constructed a strip about 100 feet wide by 2,300 feet long, with an open hangar at the southwest edge. The facflity was completed in J a n u a r y 1947. Then he bought a Piper J 3 Cruiser and named it Cherry II after his wife, Cherry being his pet name for Doris.

Early in 1947 relations with an old customer, Charlie Larabee, were ruptured when Nevifls rejected his request for a special charter for his Boy Scout troop. Norm was justified because his five San J u a n trips were nearly full and he lacked boats to accommodate forty teenagers.

Angered, Larabee gave the charter to Aleson and advanced money to purchase ten neoprene life rafts. Harry brought the forty-six-person party to a landing at Lee's Ferry on Aprfl 5, 1947.^^ T h e foflowing year Larabee and Aleson formed Western River Tours, and Nevifls had a competitor.

After the Last San J u a n trip, the boats were traflered to Green River, Wyoming, and run 205 mfles to Jensen, Utah. Then the outfit was taken to Lee's Ferry, and Norm led his fifth traverse of Grand Canyon.

Although inflatable boats appeared in Glen Canyon in 1946, their numbers increased the following year. Any novice, for a relatively smafl sum and with little outdoor experience, could purchase a war '7"Lee's Ferry Station History," USGS Office, Tucson, Arizona.

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surplus life raft and run Glen Canyon. In 1947 several parties with inflatables put in at Bluff or the Mexican Hat bridge to run the San J u a n and thence down to Lee's Ferry. T h u s the neoprene revolution was brought to Norm's back yard. H e placed himself unequivocafly on record when he stated that amateurs could get by using neoprene on the tranquil water of Glen Canyon but it would never be of commercial value in the big water of Cataract, Marble, or Grand canyons.^^ Several writers publicized Norman Nevifls in magazine articles or chapters in books.^^ It undoubtedly brought him business but also distorted his sense of values and caused him to assume a position that was beyond his capacity.

Nevifls completed his sixth Grand Canyon traverse August 1, 1948. It was on this voyage that he decided Otis Marston had made his last run with him. Marston refuted his yarns to the passengers, belittled his leadership, and continuously advanced his own status as an authority. Norm did not actually discharge him; he simply did not include him in his plans for 1949. Strangely, Marston had no inkling that he had offended his leader.

Norm was generous with his airplane. H e flew pregnant Navajo women or Indians too fll to stand the rough trip by car to the hospital at T u b a City. In the spring of 1949 he flew to Hite to give Arth and Delia Chaffin, the teacher Mrs. Gearheart, and her twelve students flights over Glen Canyon.^° The year 1949 was a busy one. Water was high and the San J u a n trips started May 1. Yet there was time for only five because the boats were trailered to Green River, Wyoming, where the eightieth anniversary of Major Powefl's 1869 voyage was being celebrated and a monument dedicated. Departure ofthe Nevills party was the culmination of the celebration. The nine-person, four-boat party landed at Jensen July 2, and the outfit was then taken to Lee's Ferry. There N o r m ' s seventh traverse of the canyon began on July 12 and ended at Lake Mead August 1. This year the head count of those traversing the Colorado through Grand Canyon reached one hundred. Of this number Nevills had taken thirty-seven. U p to that time no riverman had come close to

' s T h e s e sentiments were expressed orally to the a u t h o r and others on several occasions. "'See Barry M . Goldwater, An Odyssey on the Green and Colorado Rivers (Phoenix, 1941), republished as Delightful Journey; G o l d w a t e r in Arizona Highways, J a n u a r y 1941; Desert Magazine, S e p t e m b e r 1945, N o v e m b e r and D e c e m b e r 1947, J a n u a r y and FeJDruary 1948; Neil M . C l a r k in Saturday Evening Post, M a y 18, 1946; A. M . Bailey in National Geographic, August 1947; Wallace Stegner in Atlantic Monthly, J a n u a r y 1948; Ernie Pyle, Ernie Pyle's Southwest (Palm Desert, C a l i f , 1965), p p . 30-32, and Home Country (New York, 1947), p p . 397-401; Heald, Invested Mountains.

20Related by A r t h u r Chaffin, S e p t e m b e r 19, 1972. T h e a u t h o r m a d e m a n y flights with Nevills.

198

Utah Historical Quarterly N O R M A N D . NEVILLS BOATING R E C O R D C O M P I L E D BY P. T . R E I L L Y Miles

December August

1933 1933

March Late

1934 1935

March-April September October March June-August August-September June

1936 1936 1936 1938 1938 1938 1939 1939

July 29 September October June June-August May-June

July May-June

July May-June June September June June

1939 1939 1940 1940 1940 1941 1941 1942 1942 1943 1944 1944 1944 1945 1945

San J u a n , Mexican H a t to H o n a k e r Trail 20.8 San J u a n , Mexican H a t Rock to Mexican H a t Bridge in Fold Flat 4.2 Mexican H a t Bridge to C o p p e r C a n y o n 66.7 San J u a n , two trips. Bluff to Mexican H a t @ 30.6 each 61.2 Mexican H a t Bridge to Lee's Ferry 192.0 Mexican H a t Bridge to Lee's Ferry 192.0 San J u a n , Sand Island to Mexican H a t 19.5 San J u a n , Bluff to Mexican H a t 31.0 Green River, U t a h , to Lake M e a d 614.0 Mexican H a t to Lee's Ferry 192.0 San J u a n , Bluff to Mexican H a t 31.0 San J u a n , Nevills ran Ernie Pyle from C o m b Wash to Mexican H a t 19.5 San J u a n solo, Bluff to Mexican H a t 31.0 Mexican H a t to Lee's Ferry 192.0 San J u a n , Shiprock to Aneth approx.

45.0 Mexican H a t to Lee's Ferry in new boats 192.0 Green River, W y o m i n g , to Lake M e a d 1,005.5 Seven San J u a n trips, plus one from Sand Island to Lee's Ferry 1,363.0 Lee's Ferry to Lake M e a d 279.4 Four trips, Mexican H a t to Lee's Ferry 768.0 Lee's Ferry to Lake M e a d 279.4 No recorded trips due to war Mexican H a t to Lee's Ferry 192.0 Mexican H a t to Lee's Ferry 192.0 Mexican H a t to Lee's Ferry 192.0 Mexican H a t to Lee's Ferry 192.0 Mexican H a t to Lee's Ferry 192.0

this record, and it was considered that no one ever would.^^ H e was the Whitewater king ofthe river and thought his monopoly ofthe commercial business would continue indefinitely.

He retired his three oldest boats and ordered material for replacementsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; duplicates of the Wen with no changes. Frank Masland was given Mexican Hat II and had it shipped to his company museum at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. T h e Wen was dropped off at Grand Canyon 21 Several commercial boatmen using neoprene infiatables make that many traverses in one year.

Some dory oarsmen have exceeded Norm's record by several times. Starting in the early 1970s, about 15,000 people make the Grand Canyon traverse annually.

199

Norman Nevills July

1945

April-June June-July

1946 1946

June-July

1946

May-June June

1947 1947

July May-June July-August May-June June-July

1947 1948 1948 1949 1949

July-August

1949

M o a b , through Cataract and Glen C a n y o n s to Lee's Ferry 282.0 Eight trips, Mexican H a t to Lee's Ferry 1,536.0 Salmon and Snake, Salmon City to Lewiston, Idaho 270.0 Snake River, Brownlee Ferry to Lewiston, Idaho 135.0 Five trips, Mexican H a t to Lee's Ferry 960.0 U p p e r Green, Green River, W y o m i n g , to Jensen, Utah 205.0 Lee's Ferry to Lake M e a d 279.4 Five trips, Mexican H a t to Lee's Ferry 960.0 Lee's Ferry to Lake M e a d 279.4 Five trips, Mexican H a t to Lee's Ferry 960.0 Green River, W y o m i n g , to J e n s e n , Utah.

4 boats 205.0 Lee's Ferry to Lake M e a d 279.4 12,917.3

Note: Traverses of G r a n d C a n y o n are counted from Lee's Ferry to the m o u t h of Grapevine Wash, a distance of 279.4 miles. T h e spillway at Hoover D a m is at elevation 1,223.6, which is the river elevation at Mile 235.12. Therefore, the elevation at Lake M e a d governs the point at which river current is dispersed by the reservoir. T h e author has experienced river current from Mile 238 to the head of Iceberg C a n y o n , Mile 288.

Seventeen cataract boats can be documented as having been built to the Nevills design. Significantly, no basic changes were made by the nine individuals or agencies doing the construction. Follow-on builders recognized no deficiencies, made no corrections or improvements, although means of fastening an outboard motor to the stern were incorporated in the last models.

According to the mileage Nevills compiled on the Snake, Salmon, Green, and Colorado, the Wen can be credited with 4,115.5 whitewater miles. Don H a r r i s compiled about 6,200 miles in the Mexican Hat from 1938 to 1953. H e gave her to the National Park Service at Boulder City in 1955.

where the National Park Service planned to put her on display. T h e Joan was presented to the state of Utah and exhibited at the Capitol.

Tragedy ended Norm's plans. Early on the morning of September 19, 1949, a telegram requested that Doris hurry to California because of an emergency. Norm decided to fly her to Grand Junction where she could catch an airliner. Cherry II barely had attained flying speed but was airborne when the engine died. Too close to the end ofthe strip â&#x20AC;&#x201D; which ended in a twenty-foot drop â&#x20AC;&#x201D; to stop and lacking sufficient speed to circle back to the strip, Norm evaluated his options and made a quick decision. H e could have continued his course and crash-landed

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Utah Historical Quarterly

in the brush, probably wiping out the prop and landing gear but escaping unhurt. This solution would have eliminated any chance of getting Doris to Grand Junction, so he chose to bank left toward a sandy wash before it plunged over the cliff. From here he could pick up the empennage and walk his plane to the hangar where the fuel line could be cleared. It was a fatal decision.

Having little speed, he lost elevation when he banked; instead of clearing the ledge and landing in the wash, he crashed head-on against the cliff just below the I ^ H J ^ ^ H J j j ^ ^ l ^ H H B B rim. T h e ship was consumed by fire as eight-year-old Sandra Last photograph of Nevills on a river trip, Lake Mead, August 1, 1949. waited in vain for the flyover.

Photograph by P. T. Reilly.

T h e cremation was completed in Grand Junction, a service was held, then J i m Rigg scattered the ashes over the canyons ofthe San J u a n and Colorado.

Frank Masland commissioned artist M a r y Ogden Abbott to execute a bronze cenotaph for Norm and Doris. Both had been passengers on the last Grand Canyon voyage. T h e memorial was fastened to a large boulder overlooking the river at the west end of Navajo Bridge and dedicated on July 11, 1952. Barry Goldwater was master of ceremonies. Nearly everyone connected with the river attended.

Norman Nevills was a transitional figure between the occasional river expedition and the financially rewarding commercialism of today's operators. He failed to recognize the neoprene revolution or its impact on his river business. He did not see the need to improve his boats or increase his payload. Without these changes, however, he could not have competed in the market that followed his operation. Far from being the ultimate answer to the Colorado's " b i g water" or being reversionary, the Nevills boat design should be regarded as an important evolutionary step between the keeled lake boats and the sporting dories of the 1960s. His contributions were necessary and worthy.

They provided many people the unique pleasure of whitewater boating before it became the popular sport it is today.

Book Reviews Political Deliverance: The Mormon Quest for Utah Statehood. By EDWARD LKO LYMAN. ( U r b a n a and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986. x + 327 pp. $22.95.)

Edward Leo L y m a n ' s Political Deliverance is easily the finest study ever published on the protracted fight for U t a h statehood, which was finally achieved on J a n u a r y 4, 1896. L y m a n builds on, but goes far beyond, earlier works by such scholars as Brigham H .

Roberts, Gustive O . Larson, Richard D. Poll, Leonard J . Arrington, and Klaus J . H a n s e n . His study provides an overview of the L D S church's efforts to achieve statehood during the Saints' first four decades in the Great Basin, but the study focuses primarily on the crucial final decade prior to statehood.

T h e author deals with the common theme of Mormon-gentile disharmony but also addresses the less common topic of Mormon-gentile cooperation.

L y m a n relates U t a h ' s political conditions to the political scene in the nation's capital. Symbolic of this ability to blend local and national history is the author's insightful treatment ofthe political relationship between the L D S general authority George Q . C a n n o n and the nationally famous Congressman J a m e s G. Blaine. It is enlightening to learn what position Blaine and other important figures in American history took on the statehood issue.

Likewise, it is fascinating to view the roles important players in the d r a m a of Utah territorial history played on the stage of national politics.

L y m a n traces the development of the various political parties in terri-

torial Utah, including the painful shift toward the national two-party system.

H e chronicles how the L D S church eventually looked to the Republican party, which previously had caused the church more grief than the Democrats had, for assistance on statehood.

L y m a n describes how some congressional Democrats, disgruntled with President Cleveland's tariff reform program, sided with the Republicans on the statehood question, thereby forming the coalition that finally secured statehood for U t a h .

L y m a n ' s work is superb on proM o r m o n lobbying efforts in Washington, D . C . T h e book unveils nearly a half-century of efforts by M o r m o n and n o n - M o r m o n lobbyists to reach the long-elusive goal of statehood. T h e study correctly demonstrates that the First Presidency, not the Council of Fifty, led the church's pro-statehood fight. T h e book effectively portrays Isaac T r u m b o , a n o n - M o r m o n , as the key lobbyist in the final push for statehood. In gaining their objective, however, T r u m b o and other lobbyists passed on unanticipated economic and political debts to the First Presidency, who were grateful for statehood but chagrined at the entangling methods sometimes employed.

L y m a n argues that the polygamy issue was indeed the key obstacle to U t a h statehood; it was not simply used as a pretext to wrest political control from the Saints, although opponents

202 certainly exploited the issue for political purposes. T h e author shows how the church's public renunciation of polygamy effectively paved the way for statehood.

L y m a n ' s detailed analysis generally does not make for easy or casual reading. At times the narrative is captivating and intriguing; yet the detailed, heavily factual nature of much of the book sometimes makes for difficult, even tedious, reading. Perhaps this is a necessary trade-off for a book that includes not only important interpretations but also basic factual material

Utah Historical Quarterly never before published. Yet, overall, the balance between readability and heavy detail seems reasonable.

T h e publication of this fine work on Utah territorial politics establishes L y m a n as the leading authority on U t a h statehood. Like the acid-free paper on which the book is printed.

Political Deliverance should provide an enduring resource for future students of U t a h ' s past.

D . G E N E PACE

Alice Lloyd College Pippa Passes, Kentucky

Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress. Edited by R O G E R DANIELS, SANDRA C .

TAYLOR, and HARRY H . L . KITANO. (Salt Lake City: University of U t a h Press, 1986. xxii + 216 pp. $24.95.) \n Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress, editors Roger Daniels, Sandra Taylor, and H a r r y Kitano have taken a considerable step in filling the void concerning the most disturbing civil rights issue o f t h e 1940sâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the incarceration of American citizens of Japanese descent in concentration camps during the Second World W a r .

These essays, written by "scholars, experts in the field and people whose lives had been affected by the relocat i o n " (p. vii), originally were presented at the International Conference on Relocation and Redress held in Salt Lake City in 1983.

There are two main themes found in this volume. T h e dominant theme concerns what happened to J a p a n e s e Americans following Pearl H a r b o r .

Excellent firsthand accounts from both the relocated J a p a n e s e and the AngloAmericans employed at the concentration camps suggest that these two groups developed attitudes towards each other previously found in works concerning the master-slave relationship in the antebellum South and the

conqueror-conquered relationship in the American Southwest.

Another series of essays written mostly by historians and social scientists analyzes the reasons behind relocation and its impact on J a p a n e s e Americans. In these essays a strong case is made that racism, not military necessity, inspired relocation. Perhaps the most convincing evidence was the refusal to relocate J a p a n e s e Americans in Hawaii while their contemporaries in California, O r e g o n , and Washington were sent to concentration camps in the western interior. T h e reason for this discrepancy was the military who controlled the islands knew the J a p a nese were loyal, while politicians on the mainland succumbed to "yellow p e r i l " xenophobia. O t h e r convincing evidence appears in the 1984 decision of J u d g e Marilyn Hall Patel that the government not only withheld evidence but provided misleading information in the Korematsu case during W o d d W a r II. Unfortunately, the second theme concerning the redress movement is

203

Book Reviews and Notices not as well developed. This section is too brief; it is also too one-sided. Since there is considerable dissension within the Japanese American community concerning redress via the proposed payment of $20,000 to living concentration c a m p survivors, essays should have been presented from the opposition as well as from government officials who were responsible for relocation following Pearl H a r b o r . T h e letters from J o h n J . McCloy and Karl R. Bendetsen fail to fill this void.

These criticisms are minor in comparison to the contributions Professors Daniels, Taylor, and Kitano have made in describing the tragedy that befell J a p a n e s e Americans during the Second World W a r . This volume is required reading for both laymen and scholars interested in civil rights, ethno-cultural studies, and American social history.

FRED W .

VIEHE

Youngstown State University Youngstown, Ohio

Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. II: Great Basin. Edited by W A R R E N L .

D ' A Z E V E D O . (Washington, D . C : Smithsonian Institution 1986. xvi + 852 pp. $27.00.)

T h e Great Basin, volume eleven of the projected twenty-volume series of the Handbook of North American Indians, is the seventh book to be published.

Originally conceived to be a onevolume work that encompassed both the Great Basin and the Plateau regions, the 1965 plans were reworked and by 1970 data on the two regions were separated into two volumes.

At the urging of George Peter M u r dock and Harold E. Driver especially, delineations were clearly drawn recognizing the Great Basin as a distinct culture area that had been well established in American anthropology.

With the loss of J u l i a n H . Steward in 1972 there seemed to be an urgency to spur on the designated fifty authors to complete their contributions to this important work without further attrition of scholars. Nevertheless, a variety of factors caused a n u m b e r of delays so that by M a r c h 1983 all authors were asked to revise and update their manuscripts to reflect the state of knowledge in the mid-1980s rather than the preceding decade. By spring 1985 the manuscripts were ready to be published.

T h e latest handbook offering has expanded, updated, and correlated a vast body of knowledge encompassing geographic and cultural information for academicians and lay persons interested in the Great Basin region. T h e authors cover prehistory, ethnology, history, and special topics such as population, kinship, mythology and religious concepts, oral traditions, music, and ethnographic basketry.

Tribal focus includes Western Shoshone, Northern Shoshone and Bannock, Eastern Shoshone, Ute, Southern Paiute, Kawaiisu, Owens Valley Paiute, Northern Paiute, and Washoe. N u m e r o u s charts, illustrations, photographs, and maps enhance the text. An itemized list of illustrations provides a handy, quick reference of materials and persons depicted in the volume. Every identified individual can also be found in the index, a unique opportunity for relatives to validate historical authenticity.

Over 2,700 bibliographic citations are listed, verifying the tremendous professional ability of handbook bibliographer, Lorraine H . J a c o b y , who corrected inaccuracies and omissions and

204 checked direct quotations against the originals. T h e bibliographic abundance is an excellent resource for a variety of topics.

Inasmuch as the handbook series is built on Native Americans, it is interesting to note that the Great Basin volume features only one Native American author, Edward C. J o h n son, a Northern Paiute. Volumes nine and ten, The Southwest, edited by Dr. Alfonso Ortiz (San J u a n Pueblo), has utilized n u m e r o u s scholars of Native American heritage. Inevitably, the question of who can and should be involved in research and writing regarding Native Americans solicits heated arguments in many academic and nonacademic circles. U p and coming young historian Dr. J o h n R. Alley, J r . , Department of History, University of Santa Barbara, points out in his contribution, " T r i b a l Historical Projects," the numerous ob-

Utah Historical Quarterly stacles and challenges facing tribal people desirous of adding their voices to the record. Alley's chapter perhaps best explains why F. W . H o d g e , ed..

Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico (2 volumes, 1907-10), had no Native American authors and, to a certain extent, why the current ambitious handbook series will also become a standard reference for another halfcentury without contributions from scholars of Native American heritage woven throughout the volumes.

T h e n u m e r o u s authors have labored long and hard to produce a worthwhile, quality work of value that crosses a variety of disciplines. For those who want to emphasize U t a h , the handbook is an excellent companion to the Atlas of Utah, 1981, edited by W a y n e L. Wahlquist.

JANICE W H I T E CLEMMER

Brigham Young University

Populism in the Mountain West. By ROBERT W . LARSON. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986. x + 210 pp. $27.50.)

There is no doubt that the farmers and laborers who made up the rank and file of the People's party had the clear intention of changing the m a n n e r in which this country conducted its political and economic business. T h e fact that these aims were achieved only in the decades after the party had ceased to exist has never diminished the interest of historians in what was one ofthe first systematic challenges to the laissez-faire oriented, near plutocracy that was the United States of the 1890s.

O u r understanding of the nature and purpose of these early radicals has been aided considerably by the works of C . V a n n Woodward, J o h n D .

Hicks, Robert D u r d e n , Walter T . K. Nugent, N o r m a n Pollack, and others.

But until now there has been a mis-

conception concerning the aims and goals of the People's party (or Populists) in the states and territories west of Kansas and east of California. Largely ignored by most historians, the westerners, when mentioned at all, were dismissed as mere fair-weather crusaders who rode the third-party bandwagon only insofar as it would aid them in achieving their goal of free coinage of silver.

Now comes a new and significant contribution to the field by Robert W .

Larson who earlier distinguished himself with his New Mexico Populism: A Study of Radical Protest in a Western Territory. T h e present work, Populism in the Mountain West, recasts the image of the w e s t e r n P o p u l i s t s from narrowthinking free silverites to full-fledged party enthusiasts who supported, with

Book Reviews and Notices elan, the goals ofthe O m a h a Platform.

More to the point. Professor Larson has revealed a complicated and embracing group of individuals who varied greatly from region to region according to their particular needs.

Nonetheless, bound together in a common opposition to monopolies and an acclamation to a belief that the only conduit to genuine reform must be strength through cooperation, they supported an agenda of specific reforms that would link together farmers and laborers in a cause of mutual improvement. T o say it another way, the Populist of the M o u n t a i n West differed little from his counterpart in the South and on the High Plains when it came to fundamental political and economic goals.

Where does this leave free silver? N o d o u b t it was i m p o r t a n t in the M o u n t a i n W e s t â&#x20AC;&#x201D; t h o u g h less in some areas than in others. But in general the

205 passion for silver a m o n g Populists in this region followed the same course that it took a m o n g other Populists.

Only by the mid-1890s had silver become a panacea, obscuring the commitment for other planks ofthe O m a h a Platform. " P o p u l i s m in the M o u n t a i n West was part of this familiar metamorphosis. . . . But in most basic considerations its similarities to the movements in the Midwest and South were striking," Larson avers.

Beyond the central thesis of his book, the author has provided a lively narrative of individuals confronting the problems of their own time and place. Nowhere does he succumb to the temptation to interpret the past from the political and ideological framework of the present.

ROBERT L . TERRY

Salt Lake City

The American West in Film: Critical Approaches to the Western. By JON TUSKA. (Westport, C o n n . : Greenwood Press, 1985. xx + 303 pp. $29.95.)

J o n T u s k a ' s The American West in Film lacks the saving graces that made his 1976 book, The Filming of the West, not only informative but enjoyable.

T h i s latest effort is disjointed, pretentious, and polemical; and while it may prove of interest to serious students of the western film who respect T u s k a ' s opinions, it will only confuse readers who are not well grounded in the history of this film genre.

T u s k a believes that historical western films have an obligation to be truthful and to recreate the past as accurately as possible. H e believes that " t h e r e is such a thing as past historical reality and that we are capable of constructing a comprehensible model of it which approximates what it once w a s " (p. 214). H e is unrelenting in his

attacks on those writers who have approached westerns as fables, or as the romantic fictions that they actually are, and feels there is no value in studying the changing images of historical interpretation in order to comprehend altered tastes and values in American society. H e thus dismisses the work of scholars such as H e n r y Nash Smith, Brian Dippie, and Stephen T a t u m .

T o prove his point T u s k a presents several rather flawed historical sketches of western figures such as Billy the Kid, Wyatt E a r p , and George Custer and follows them with a litany of brief, often mindless, stream-of-consciousness plot summaries from movies made about them. H e contends that these films were reflective of a clear intent on the part of moviemakers to

206 distort history for their own political, racial, or social ends. H e does not seem to comprehend that his position is really not far from that of the authors he so bitterly criticizes.

T h e section of the book on six film directors is at least more interesting, although often as infuriating. T u s k a ' s insider's view of the film world can often be enlightening, as in his fivepage recitation of a meeting with Sam Peckinpah in Yugoslaviaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;fascinating, although it has absolutely nothing to do with the western film.

Utah Historical Quarterly The American West in Film, while of some interest to specialists on the western, will not prove of much use to other readers. It is not particularly well written, seems hurried in construction, and often consists of little more than brief plot summaries strung together page after page. T u s k a , as he has proven in the past, can do much better.

PAUL A N D R E W H U T T O N

University of New Mexico

Desert Passages: Encounters with the American Deserts. By PATRICIA NELSON LIMERICK. (University of New Mexico Press, 1985. vi + 218 pp. Cloth, $22.50; Paper, $12.95.)

This is a marvelous book of opinion and analysis of opinion and attitude regarding the desert environment in America. W h y marvelous? Because the author is bold, intelligent, and insightful in each of the eight chapters and two introductions. I have not read another book that more clearly and cogently expresses the shifting sands of desert thought.

Part O n e , containing the first four essays, deals with J o h n C. Fremont, William Lewis Manly, M a r k T w a i n , William Ellsworth Smythe. These people depict the idea that the desert is a wasteland to grimly endure as one travels from the East and Midwest to the Promised Land of California. T h e call of civilization, to the way of thinking expressed in Part O n e , is to irrigate and " r e c l a i m " as much ofthe desert as possible, and then to accept the remainder as land of little value except for its function as connective tissue.

Part T w o contains the thought that the desert has its own aesthetic and spiritual value. At the turn of the

century, representing this point of view, are J o h n V a n Dyke, George Wharton James, Joseph Wood Krutch, and Edward Abbey. Deserts are breathing spaces in a congested and polluted world where h u m a n s can both feel their individuality and their oneness with the earth and with its plants, animals, and rocks; a place where the h u m a n spirit can be refreshed and nourished and where the eye can delight in the refracted and reflected colors of atmosphere and land. T h e desert is a place where the h u m a n can discover himselfâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a place for spiritual quest. It is a landscape of greatest value that should be preserved as desert with no attempt to "civilize" it.

T h e author concludes with a fine essay on " T h e Significance of Deserts in American H i s t o r y . " I regard the book highly and applaud the advanced thinking it contains.

GiBBs M . SMITH

Layton, Utah

The Roll Away Saloon: Cowboy Tales of the Arizona Strip. By ROWLAND W .

R I D E R as told to DEIRDRE M U R R A Y

PAULSEN. (Logan: U t a h State University Press, 1985. xviii + 114 p p .

Paper, $9.95.)

Originally published by Brigham Young University Press in 1980 under title Sixshooters and Sagebrush, this collection of stories has won significant acclaim from historians as well as folklorists. A foreword by William A. Wilson a n d an introduction by Dierdre M u r r a y Paulsen will enlighten the reader; Rider's stories will entrance him.

Mormon JAMES

Settlement H.

in Arizona.

MCCLINTOCK.

By

(Tucson:

University of Arizona Press, 1985. xxiv + 307 p p . Paper, $9.95.)

In his foreword to this reissue of the 1921 classic, Charles Peterson places McClintock into a historiographical context and summarizes the importance of the book: "Significantly, McClintock makes Arizonans of the M o r m o n s in this work, claiming them proudly and giving them ample a n d fair treatment. . . . H e also pioneered in presenting M o r m o n history in a secular context, a method that has been employed in most of the successful M o r m o n histories s i n c e . " Peterson also helps McClintock pay a long-overdue debt by mentioning LeRoi C . Snow's important role in the preparation of this history.

Working the Range: Essays on the History of Western Land Management and the Environment.

Edited by J O H N R .

WUNDER. (Westport, C o n n . : Greenwood Press, 1985. xvi + 241 p p . $29.95.)

T h e twelve essays in this collection are evenly divided a m o n g four sections â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the first dealing with Native Americans, the second with land speculation, the third with entrepreneurship, and the fourth with land m a n a g e m e n t and environmental issues.

Of particular interest to readers of U t a h history is D a n L. Flores's highly compressed b u t perceptive " A g r i culture, M o u n t a i n Ecology, a n d the Land Ethic: Phases of the Environmental History of U t a h . " Arguing that U t a h ' s first generation of M o r mons h a d the right impulses, values, and organization to carry out a J u d e o Christian stewardship ethic, he sees their fatal error as underestimating the fragile n a t u r e of t h e s u r r o u n d i n g mountain lands. H i s reflections on developments during the past generation offer little comfort to those who h o p e that m a n l e a r n s from past mistakes.

The Salvation Army Farm Colonies. By CLARK C . SPENCE. (Tucson: Univer-

sity of Arizona Press, 1985. vii -i151 p p . $19.95.)

T h e history of antebellum Utopian colonies in America is well documented, but much less has been writ-

208

Utah Historical Quarterly

ten about back-to-the-land movements in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries. This book describes an experiment in communal living conceived by G e n . William Booth of the Salvation Army and directed by his daughter E m m a and her husband, Frederick Booth-Tucker. Their turnof-the-century effort aimed to relocate urban poor people on farms in California, Colorado, and Ohio.

The Living History Sourcebook. By JAY ANDERSON. (Nashville: A m e r i c a n Association for State and Local History, 1985. x + 496 pp. Paper, $19.95.)

A valuable reference work for historic sites personnel, the Sourcebook contains some 360 selected and annotated entries describing m u s e u m s , events, magazines, books, articles, organizations, suppliers, sketchbooks, games, and films. T h e book's size and scope indicate how much the living history movement has grown in recent years. T h e author, a leading figure in the m o v e m e n t , is director of the Ronald V. J e n s e n Living Historical Farm and professor of folklore a n d museum studies at U t a h State University. T h e book is available only by mail from A A S L H , O r d e r D e p a r t m e n t , 172 Second Avenue North, Suite 102, Nashville, T N 37201. Include $1.50 for postage and handling.

Arches National Park: An Illustrated Guide.

By J O H N F . HOFFMAN. (San

Diego:

Western Recreational Publications, 1985. viii + 128 pp. Paper, $14.95.)

This very handsome, large format guide to Arches is illustrated with n u m e r o u s color and black-and-white photographs, line drawings, and maps.

The park's geographical setting.

geology, flora a n d fauna, prehistory, and history are presented in a highly readable format. Even frequent visitors to this U t a h wonderland will likely find much of the information new to them and fascinating as well.

At Home on the Range: Essays on the History of Western Social and Domestic Life.

Edited by J O H N R . W U N D E R . (West-

port, C o n n . : G r e e n w o o d Press, 1985. xiii + 213 p p . $29.95.)

T h e nine essays in this collection present domestic a n d technological details of pioneer life on the High Plains. Included are such topics as early ranching and farming in the Rio G r a n d e Valley a n d the Staked Plains, the impact on Native American and settler women of life on the agricultural frontier, the response to perceived threats by agriculturalists after the Civil W a r , and the agriculturalists' entry into the twentieth century via their response to cultural change. T h e final chapter, a speech made in 1890 by a Scottish traveler, contains a contemporary observation of the real a n d mythical qualities o f t h e frontier.

Guide to Railroad Collections in the Intermountain West. Edited by RONALD G .

W A T T . (Salt Lake City: Conference of I n t e r m o u n t a i n Archivists, 1984. ix + 98 p p . Paper, $10.00.)

This compilation includes 656 entries leading researchers to railroad records a n d papers in thirty-three i n s t i t u t i o n s in the I n t e r m o u n t a i n West. It will be invaluable to anyone interested in railroad historyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;buff or scholar. Copies are available, postpaid, from: Linda Thatcher, U t a h State Historical Society, 300 R i o G r a n d e , Salt Lake City, U T 84101.

U T A H STATE H I S T O R I C A L S O C I E T Y Department of Community and Economic Development Division of State History BOARD OF STATE HISTORY THOMAS G . ALEXANDER, Provo, 1987 Chairman LEONARDJ. ARRINGTON, Salt Lake City, 1989 Vice-Chairrrmn MAX J. EVANS, Salt Lake City Secretary DOUGLAS D . ALDER, St. George, 1989 PHILLIP A. BULLEN, Salt Lake City, 1987 ELLEN G . CALLISTER, Salt Lake City, 1989 J . ELDON DORMAN, Price, 1987 HUGH C . GARNER, Salt Lake City, 1989 DAN E . JONES, Salt Lake City, 1989 DEAN L . MAY, Salt Lake City, 1987 WILLIAM D . OWENS, Salt Lake City, 1987 AMY ALLEN PRICE, Salt Lake City, 1989

ADMINISTRATION MAX J. EVANS, Director JAY M . RAYMOND, Librarian STANFORD J . LAYTON, Managing Editor D A V I D B . M A D S E N , State Archaeologist A. K E N T POWELL, Historic Preservation Coordinator P H I L L I P F . N O T A R I A N N I , Museum Services Coordinator C R A I G FULLER, Administrative Services Coordinator T h e U t a h State Historical Society was organized in 1897 by public-spirited U t a h n s to collect, preserve, a n d publish U t a h and related history. T o d a y , u n d e r state sponsorship, the Society fulfills its obligations by publishing the Utah Historical Quarterly and other historical materials: collecting historic U t a h artifacts; locating, documenting, a n d preserving historic a n d prehistoric buildings a n d sites; a n d maintaining a specialized research library. Donations a n d gifts to the Society's programs, m u s e u m , or its library are encouraged, for only through such means can it live u p to its responsibility of preserving the record of U t a h ' s past.

This publication has been funded with the assistance of a matching grant-in-aid from the Department of the Interior, Nationeil Park Service, under provisions ofthe National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 as amended.

This program receives financial assistance for identification and preservation of historic properties under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The U.S. Department of the Interior prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, or handicap in its federally assisted programs. If you believe you have been discriminated against in any program, activity, or facility as described above, or if you desire further information, please write to: Office of Equal Opportunity, U.S. Department ofthe Interior, Washington, D.C. 20240.

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