The Promise of the Grand Canyon

by John F. Ross

  When they limped into the Uinkaret village at sunset, the Shivwits had gathered. Powell was immediately struck by how primitive they appeared.

  * * *

  When the Howland party abandoned the river, they had headed up into the large, steep-sided Separation Canyon, which drains the entire Shivwits Plateau, an elevation of land so enormous that it bends the very Colorado, deflecting it south until it meets the plateau’s eastern flank, then west around the southern tip, to run northwest. Several tributaries feed into it, but its tall, steep walls would seem to doom most attempts to climb out. But Powell’s men were tough, experienced mountain men, who were also desperate.

  In the twentieth century, a hiker discovered possible evidence suggesting that the party did scale the walls. On the 7,000-foot summit of Mount Dellenbaugh, the very mountain at the base of which Powell would powwow with the Shivwits, lies a worn, faint inscription carved into the volcanic rock. The words “Dunn” and “1869” seem certain. A less-distinct word appears to be “water” with an arrow pointing north. Should this relic prove authentic, the men had indeed managed to climb out of the Canyon, some five miles southeast of the mountain, on the edge of the Canyon’s rim. Mount Dellenbaugh’s summit may have offered them the chance to orient themselves. This carving, some eighteen miles as the crow flies from the river, could be the last physical trace of the three doomed men. Powell was close—perhaps very close—to where they had disappeared.

  After dinner, Powell, Hamblin, the Shivwits, and Uinkarets gathered around a campfire. Powell lit his own pipe and passed it. When Powell accepted the Shivwits chief’s pipe, he found its mouthpiece wrapped in a saliva-soaked mass of chewed buckskin and sinew. He refilled the bowl, then passed it along without taking a puff.

  As Hamblin translated, Powell explained that he wished neither to trade nor negotiate for land, but only to travel in safety and be considered a friend. A quiet, reserved man, Hamblin spoke slowly and so softly that all gathered had to lean in to hear his words. Powell expressed curiosity about their traditions and habits, and also wanted to learn about high-desert animals and plants. As with Young, he wound a fanciful tale, regaling the Shivwits with stories about African and Chinese peoples, and strange creatures that lived in the sea.

  “Your talk is good,” replied the Shivwits chief, “and we believe what you say. We believe in Jacob, and look upon you as a father.” He described how his people owned no horses and had little to give: “You must not think us mean.” The white man was wise, and they were ignorant. Without missing a beat, the chief then voluntarily confessed to murder:

  “Last year we killed three white men. Bad men said they were our enemies: They told great lies. We thought them true. We were mad; it made us big fools. We are very sorry. Do not think of them; it is done; let us be friends. We are ignorant—like little children in understanding compared with you. When we do wrong, do not you get mad and be like children too.”

  The chief confided his dread about the prospect of white men coming in great numbers. “When they stop killing us, there will be no Indian left to bury the dead.” Indians required little, he said. “Our children play in the warm sand; we hear them sing and are glad. The seeds ripen and we have to eat and we are glad.” He ended by declaring, “We will be friends.” Presents were dispensed, all shook hands, and the council broke up. Powell watched Hamblin pull one of the Shivwits aside. The Indian told Hamblin that after his people fed the trio, they had pointed them toward the Mormon settlements and sent them on their way. An Indian from the other side of the Colorado implicated them as the same miners who had killed a squaw in a drunken brawl. Angry Shivwits warriors had pursued the white men and killed them with their arrows.

  These explanations and apologies satisfied Powell, who recorded that he slept well that night “although these murderers of my men, and their friends, the Uinkarets, were sleeping not 500 yards away.” He had taken the Shivwits’ confession at face value, although he must have confirmed the course of events with Erastus Snow on their recent journey to Kanab. Powell’s disinterest in pressing the Shivwits for exact details—for instance, where the bodies lay or whether the trio’s possessions might be returned—may have stemmed from his desire not to challenge the chief’s request to put the unfortunate business behind them. To produce evidence of the deed in the form of bones or artifacts would open up a path of possible retribution that neither Powell nor the Shivwits desired.

  Still the simple logistics bear a closer look. Would a generally timid band of southern Paiute, armed only with bows and arrows, attack three rifle-bearing backwoodsmen on the basis of a rumor passed along by someone from another tribe? By then, the Shivwits clearly understood that violence directed at white men would only bring misery crashing down upon them. That they might risk the wrath of these powerful white men to avenge the honor of a squaw from another band lacks plausibility.

  Others not present at this council would argue, when no bodies came to light or material objects surfaced, that non-Indians might be involved in the murders. Jack Sumner, although not a friend of Native Americans, concluded that the Mormons had perpetrated the crime. With the Mountain Meadows Massacre still unprosecuted, a case can be made that the Mormon militiamen mistook the three armed men for federal marshals and killed them—and then pinned it on the Indians. Only days before the powwow, Young had exiled John D. Lee to an especially forlorn corner of the desert. Had the chief confessed to the murders in exchange for valuable consideration from the leadership in Salt Lake City? Some conjecture that Hamblin purposefully mistranslated the chief’s statement to deceive Powell. While not as fluent as Hamblin, Powell credibly claimed to know some five hundred Ute words, so it is difficult to imagine that Hamblin could have accomplished such misdirection. A later missive from Hamblin to Young contains no whiff of conspiracy. Aside from the admission by the Shivwits chief, no definitive evidence exists one way or the other as to whether Indians or the Mormons did the slaughtering of Oramel, Seneca, and Bill.

  In the end, the most simple explanation probably suffices. The appearance of the three strangers in the remote Arizona Strip, far from any town, without supplies, water vessels, horses, or mules—as though they had been dropped from the heavens—most certainly would have alarmed the Shivwits. No one—white or Indian—wandered this land without support of some kind. Lacking means to communicate effectively, misunderstandings might well have caused the violence. Had for instance the desperate white men pointed their guns to demand water, the Shivwits could not be blamed for responding with arrows. Powell also knew that violence often erupted on the frontier for irrational reasons. Some tragic intersection had probably occurred—and Powell did not intend to continue the cycle of violence.

  * * *

  After meeting the Shivwits, Powell continued with his exploration of the Kaibab Plateau and search for an effective route to the river. But increasingly his fascination with the plateau Indians drew him away from his logistical planning. While only a handful of towns and roads interrupt the Arizona Strip even today, the signs of ancient human habitation abundantly reveal themselves: faint outlines of prehistoric adobe houses overlooking dry lake beds, tiny granaries tucked high in cliff walls, lines of broken rock walls, and enigmatic petroglyphs. They beckoned Powell and further inflamed his curiosity in the early Indian presence in the arid lands.

  The tradition of American explorers studying the Indians dated back to Thomas Jefferson, who had sent Lewis and Clark west across the Louisiana Purchase with elaborate instructions to gather ethnological and linguistic data on the natives they encountered. Every federally sponsored mission since—from Long’s 1819 Expedition to the Rockies to the railroad-route surveys of the 1840s and 1850s—were tasked to collect all sorts of relics of the aboriginal peoples. Powell had embraced the spirit of Jefferson’s directive with zeal. But unlike the earlier explorers, his interest did not stop at collecting Indian “curiosities” or making superficial observations ab
out Indian dress and appearance. Powell instead sought to understand the nature of those with whom he had shared campfires—and put on record descriptions of lifestyles and summaries of creation myths that were crucial to understanding the American Indian vision of the world. Powell would push beyond mere description to examine how the tribes treated their insane and elderly and raised their children. His accounts about Indians reveal not just compassion but also a genuinely deep interest, with a scientific distance highly unusual for his day.

  In mid-October Powell set out to visit the chain of Hopi pueblos perched atop high mesas south of the Colorado, sending ahead his two recent arrivals, some Indians, and Mormons down the Paria to the Colorado, their packs full of lumber, with instructions to build a crude ferryboat. After Powell himself reached the river, the whole party crossed, their horses swimming behind them. They worked their way along Echo Cliffs, traveling mostly at night to avoid Indian horse rustlers. After five days, they reached the largest of the Hopi towns, Oraibi, one of seven collectively known as Tusayan, a cluster housing some 2,700 inhabitants. Of all the Indians he would meet, the Hopi fascinated him the most. Perched securely on high cliffs, defensible against marauding Apache or Navajo, their multifloor stone-and-plaster houses sometimes reached six stories. The Hopi lived principally atop their houses, noted Powell, making “a merry sight to see a score or two of little naked children climbing up and down the stairways and ladders, and running about the tops of the houses engaged in some active sport.” He marveled at the young women, dark black hair parted in the middle, each lock carefully braided or twisted, then rolled into a coil and held by wooden pins over their ears.

  Powell recorded Indian life neither exhaustively nor comprehensively but with openness, empathy, and a memorable absence of judgment. In Scribner’s Monthly, he described the Hopi as a people harboring a vast store of mythology and an elaborate, ceremonious religion. He climbed down into a kiva and sat naked for a twenty-four-hour marathon honoring the Hopi rain god, much of which he described in careful detail. His willingness to shed his clothes, join in the sacred event, and carefully recall the entire experience in detail, count among the earliest examples of American participatory anthropology.

  After two weeks of reveling in the Hopi culture, Powell agreed to join Hamblin on a visit to Fort Defiance, a U.S. Army outpost in northeastern Arizona, on his way to Santa Fe and back East. Hamblin wanted to talk peace with the Navajo, who would be gathering there to receive their federal annuities and rations. No Mormon had yet negotiated successfully with them and tensions between the two remained high.

  Powell agreed to ride ahead of Hamblin to the fort, with a twenty-five-year-old Mormon guide and translator, Ammon Tenney, and a Hopi guide, to arrange for a meeting with the Navajo chiefs. Not two hours after they had ridden out, two Navajos on fine stallions fell in behind them, horse and men alike bedecked in gaudy silver ornamentation. “[T]he glitter radiating in the noonday could be seen for miles,” wrote Tenney. The silent presence of these two powerful figures threw Tenney and the Hopi into a panic, but “the Major seemed calm.” They rode on.

  The trail soon descended sharply into a shallow valley, then moved parallel to an elevated benchland. Then all of a sudden, recalled Tenney, “our ears were saluted by a (terrible) war whoop which reverberated from one corner of this elevation to the next corner which made it appear to us that we were surrounded by an army of our wood be [sic] assassins.” They soon saw two other warriors leaping down toward them from rock to rock. Their two mute companions moved in close—a threatening action, thought Tenney. The Hopi guide’s face turned a “deathlike hue.” The young Mormon half cocked his repeater’s trigger.

  When the two approaching warriors came within twenty-five yards, the mounted Navajos rode forward and spoke calmly to them. The other two laid down their arms. The Major dismounted, pulling two sacks of tobacco from his pack, and held them out to Tenney, saying, “This is the kind of arms I carry. Put your guns down Mr. Tenney.” He walked over to the newcomers, thumped them on the shoulders, and with a loud and hearty laugh handed them the gifts. The tense moment defused, the party rode on for several days, reaching the fort at the end of October, a miserable collection of abandoned adobe buildings and a log stronghold standing on an elevation near the point where Bonito Canyon cuts through a swell of naked sandstone hills.

  The eight thousand Indians encamped before Fort Defiance created a wild spectacle, thought Powell, clumps of Indians gambling, others intent on horse racing. At night, the plain glowed with bonfires. In his later writings about this visit, Powell would end his description at that point, neglecting to record what happened next.

  The Indian agent Frank Bennett, known affectionately to the Navajo as “Big Belly,” informed the Indian chiefs that Powell and Hamblin desired to talk peace. No doubt Powell served as an important neutral buffer. By the time Hamblin rode into Fort Defiance, the plans were all set. “The throng was immense,” Tenney told his journal, adding that Powell represented the U.S. government—a stretch by any interpretation.

  At 2 p.m. on November 5, Powell, Hamblin, and Bennett joined the Navajo chief Barboncito and twenty-eight Navajo headmen in a spacious room inside the fort. Bennett called the parley to order; Powell opened the conversation by declaring his gladness at meeting the Navajo, then explained how white people now spread from ocean to ocean, their taxes supporting not only the government, but the rations and gifts that the Navajo received annually. He reported that the Great Father in Washington would send troops to protect the Mormons—and that he would make war for any depredations committed upon Mormons or any other settlers. He then introduced Hamblin, who spoke slowly and solemnly for about an hour. The Navajo, he said, had stolen many horses—Mormon young men had wanted the elders to declare war, but President Young was committed to peace.

  Barboncito spoke next, recalling how he had seen the massacre, betrayal, and starvation of his people over many years. He would do his best to stop Navajo raiding. By guarding the two Colorado crossings, the Mormons could turn back non-Navajos from raiding north into Utah.

  “Today,” summed up Powell, “peace and friendship is planted, but it will not grow unless the Navajos cultivate it.” Barboncito replied, “That is true.” They wrapped up some details of an agreement, which included a pledge that the Navajo would no longer cross into Utah. This unofficial pact would largely end Navajo raids on Mormon stock, ushering in a long period of trade and relative goodwill between Mormon, Navajo, and Paiute. While Powell never publically spoke of his part in the successful negotiations—perhaps because he had represented the United States without authorization—the affair bespoke a growing confidence in the former school teacher, as he boldly climbed into whatever role he was called to play. He could wear a personality to match the occasion: the practical scientist-philosopher with Brigham Young; the honest, steady go-between for the Navajo; the bluff backslapper calming two hostile warriors.

  But even more clearly, Powell felt responsible for telling new Americans about these native peoples—and shape how they might regard them. Too often, he observed, the white men viewed the Indians in one of only two ways. Some merely took into account Indian barbarities, seeing the Indians as demon hordes standing in the way of solid Victorian progress, and therefore to be destroyed. But others, however, idealized some concept of the noble savage, focusing only on virtues, and wondered “that a morally degenerate, but powerful civilization, should destroy that primitive life.” Neither perception did service to the Native American peoples, he argued. Here the college lecturer and school principal, honed by later efforts explaining geologic intricacies, turned that same eye to gain an unvarnished understanding of Indian cultures.

  * * *

  Powell left the fort for Santa Fe, instructing Hamblin to collect Hopi material and to continue searching for a lateral canyon that could serve as a resupply route for the upcoming river journey. In a couple of months, Hamblin would send Po
well “one Cochena suite, 6 fancy legging strings, 2 Cwawa’s or womans belts, one fancy belt, one stone mortar, one stone axe, 1 pr moccasins, one fancy Blanket, one large blanket, 2 images.” He had enticed the Hopi leader Tuba to come to Kanab with his wife and create a set of their people’s bridal clothes. But he had still not found a resupply route.

  Powell stopped in Denver to see Byers, who pronounced himself surprised and gratified to receive the now nationally famous explorer. No doubt Powell told him about his council with the Shivwits. For the Major, this report closed the case on the disappearance of the Howland party.

  This visit went far toward easing Byers’s irritation with Powell, which had mounted ever since his brother-in-law Jack Sumner had written bitterly about how Powell had left him without the means to overwinter and get back to Denver. Powell had a snippy note from Byers in December 1869 demanding that he repay a $7 loan, then informing him that “we hear nothing & fear the worst” for Sumner, who was “destitute” in country “entirely occupied with Indian difficulties.” Seven months later, Byers again wrote Powell, this time asking that he send Sumner a railroad pass from Owens Valley in California to Cheyenne. When Sumner finally arrived in Denver on August 8, nearly a year after the Colorado expedition had officially ended, Byers took out his frustration in the Rocky Mountain News. He praised Jack’s fearlessness, asserting that he had been the voyage’s “leading and ruling spirit, the commander of the signal boat which led the way through the canon and rapid, and torrent. . . .” He then took a direct shot at Powell. “The expedition was a success, thanks to the dauntless man who led it, as much as to him who has clothed a portion of its history in the elegant diction of the lecture room.” What’s more, Byers wrote mockingly, “We promise a new unwritten chapter in the history of the Powell expedition which will demonstrate that truth may really be stranger than fiction.” Byers would never write that story, keeping mum for the rest of his life. Something shut him up, very likely plain self-interest: Byers conceding that Powell’s work that past summer and fall had yielded promise in yet another sphere of inquiry. “He has found a practicable railway route from northern Nevada eastward, crossing the Great Colorado about midway between the mouths of the Little Colorado and the San Juan.” Powell had even outlined how the Colorado crossing would need to be “a suspension bridge of about twelve hundred feet span, three thousand feet above the water.” As land agent for the Denver Pacific, Byers had taken great interest in Powell’s explorations. His friend John Evans, lately the Colorado Territory governor who had joined Powell at Sulphur Springs in 1868, was currently serving as president of the Denver and Pacific Railroad, which was seeking to connect with the Union Pacific Eastern Division (Kansas Pacific) and, to the north, with the Union Pacific. Such likely connections suggest that Powell may well have supplied important survey information, possibly in some sort of exchange for the free railroad passes and other considerations he was receiving for his expeditions.