Beyond The Hundredth Meridian Part 6

In his way, Powell was one of our better namers. He had a flair for the picturesque, and his descriptive terms are sometimes extremely apt, as in Split Mountain Canyon, Flaming Gorge, and the Vermilion Cliffs. He did not plaster politicians across the map, he had no weakness for the cute. Some notion of propriety preserved him from extravagance except in the happy contrast of Dirty Devil and Bright Angel. One gathers that he expected the names he put down to last, unlike Gilbert, whose preface to the Henry Mountains Henry Mountains facetiously apologizes to Howell, Steward, Newberry, Marvine, Peale, Holmes, Geikie, Jukes, Scrope, and Dana for putting their names on insignificant details. The affront will never, he says, "be repeated by the future denizens of the region. The herders who build their hut at the base of the Newberry Arch are sure to call it 'the Cedar Knoll'; the Jukes b.u.t.te will be dubbed 'Pilot k.n.o.b,' and the Scrope, 'Rocky Point.' " facetiously apologizes to Howell, Steward, Newberry, Marvine, Peale, Holmes, Geikie, Jukes, Scrope, and Dana for putting their names on insignificant details. The affront will never, he says, "be repeated by the future denizens of the region. The herders who build their hut at the base of the Newberry Arch are sure to call it 'the Cedar Knoll'; the Jukes b.u.t.te will be dubbed 'Pilot k.n.o.b,' and the Scrope, 'Rocky Point.' "4 Gilbert was not entirely wrong. Even the beautifully named Aquarius Plateau is known locally as Boulder Mountain, the Tushar is called Beaver Mountain, and the Pahvant Sigurd Mountain. Gilbert was not entirely wrong. Even the beautifully named Aquarius Plateau is known locally as Boulder Mountain, the Tushar is called Beaver Mountain, and the Pahvant Sigurd Mountain.

Usage is freakish. Sometimes local names last, sometimes those of the explorer and surveyor, sometimes both. Powell's have shown a strong tendency to survive, and so, though they have been subjected to acid debate, have Dutton's.5 Down the vast 217-mile avenue of the Grand Canyon, that "mountain-range-in-a-ditch" any of whose subordinate b.u.t.tes is larger than the ma.s.s of any mountain east of the Rockies, Dutton left a legacy of names. The honoring of Survey members took care of a good many features, and the descriptive habit which has dotted our western parks with Inspiration Points took care of some more. The tourist who slakes his thirst at Hidden Spring, or walks out for the view to Cape Royal, Cape Final, or Point Sublime, is orienting himself by names that Dutton put there. But the major features of the canyon, the great amphitheaters and side gorges and b.u.t.tes, demanded something extra.

He might have used Indian names. But there were no existing Indian names for many of the things needing labels, and Dutton disliked Indian names anyway. He appears never to have learned Paiute, and he did not yield to the arguments of Fred Dellenbaugh that he make the Indians his source.6 The map shows plenty of Indian names, and has since the very first sheets that Thompson produced - s.h.i.+numo, Kwagunt, Kaibab, Paria, Kanab, Uinkaret, s.h.i.+vwits - but these were adopted earlier by the Mormons or by Powell. Dutton turned away from adding more, and began the series of oriental and architectural names that since the eighties have persisted and even spread. The map shows plenty of Indian names, and has since the very first sheets that Thompson produced - s.h.i.+numo, Kwagunt, Kaibab, Paria, Kanab, Uinkaret, s.h.i.+vwits - but these were adopted earlier by the Mormons or by Powell. Dutton turned away from adding more, and began the series of oriental and architectural names that since the eighties have persisted and even spread.

The fixed binoculars at the lookout points will, for a dime, bring you close up to the Hindoo Amphitheater, the Ottoman Amphitheater, Vishnu's Temple, s.h.i.+va's Temple, the Temples of Isis and Osiris, the Transept, the Cloisters. They will show you the Tower of Set, named by Moran on Dutton's example, and Vulcan's Throne down on the Toroweap, and Wotan's Throne and Krishna Shrine and Rama Shrine. Besides the ones given in Dutton's time there is a host of Apollo Temples, Venus Temples, Jupiter Temples - and fading badly as inspiration strains itself, King Arthur Castle and Guenevere Castle and Holy Grail Temple. Dutton named East Temple and West Temple in Zion, where a religious flavor was inevitable both because of the architecture of the canyon and because of the character of the Mormon settlers. The religious and architectural parallel was compulsive in the Grand Canyon too, for the similarity of the b.u.t.tes to paG.o.das with widening eaves, to temples "every inch carved," to the angular, ma.s.sive, intricately decorated buildings of Asia is extraordinarily impressive. Perhaps the true objection is not to the original series, which was discriminating, but to later elab orations, which have spread the contagion over Bryce, Zion, Cedar Breaks, and the rest of the canyon country. Yet the architectural names are all but inevitable; every explorer was compelled to them; every part of the Plateau Province bears them. Even the pioneers feeling their way down the Waterpocket Fold looked at the domes of white sandstone crowning the red cliffs and they named one red b.u.t.te Cathedral Rock and the ridge itself the Capitol Reef from its resemblance to the dome of the Capitol in Was.h.i.+ngton.

Look at Vishnu's Temple. If you don't call it something like Vishnu's Temple what would you call it? Kwagunt Peak? Ivanpah b.u.t.te? The Indians had no architecture to match the imaginative-ness of their religion or the majesty of these forms. Thunder Hogan would hardly do. You might take some elaborate descriptive phrase such as the Utes used for the country around the junction of Grand and Green, and try to cram "Toom-pin-wu-near-tu-weap" on your map. Or you might seize upon some translation and call your b.u.t.te "Standing Rock." But you would not have helped yourself much. Ute and Paiute do not strike us as especially euphonious tongues. Paiute mythical heroes are called S6-kus Wai-un-nats, or something worse; their chiefs labor under names like Chuarruumpeak or Nara guts ; some native placenames are said to be too obscene for translation onto any polite map.7 Perhaps Dutton did as well as another might have. Bizarre topography may justify exotic or even eccentric names. The "temple" habit that spread to Bryce repeats the Isis and Osiris motif, and Bryce throws in to boot a Wall Street, a Silent City, a Cathedral. In places it goes cute, as in Peekaboo Canyon. But what should one do for names in a geological funhouse? In the Grand Canyon, at least, Dutton's names are like his superlatives of description - admissible because they cannot be avoided.

Later surveys of the river have had less unnamed country to work with and less imagination to turn loose. Since 1923 the fas.h.i.+on has been strictly practical. As plans for reclamation dams have crept down the canyons, surveyors' instead of explorers' language has come with them. Now on the detailed maps you will find every previously unnamed gulch and wash labeled for its distance from the head of the survey, which for the Grand Canyon division was Lee's Ferry.

Now they are Six Mile Wash and One Hundred and Thirty Mile Canyon and Two Hundred Mile Rapid. At their very worst, Powell and Dutton did not name by transit or plane table or chain. Bright Angel Creek and. Sockdolager Rapid, or for that matter s.h.i.+va's Temple and the Ottoman Amphitheater, seem livelier than Hundred and Ten Mile Point or 38 40' Spring.

11. The Lunatic Fringe: Samuel Adams Again

THIS WAS THE continuing job of the Powell Survey - the careful acc.u.mulation of fact on many scientific fronts and the interpretation of fact without inordinate subjective distortion. As geography, geology, paleontology, ethnology, drainage, climate, resources of soil and water and timber and minerals, the Plateau Province emerged into the area of knowledge. Of the four Western surveys of the seventies, that of Powell was the most intensive. Hayden and Wheeler wandered hectically all over the West, with results that showed their haste and their lack of system. King, as systematic as Powell, had chosen to survey a hundred-mile cross section along the route of the Pacific Railroad from the Rockies to the Sierra, with reference princ.i.p.ally to its mineralogy. Powell devoted himself to a region and attempted to bring it cleanly into focus through a multiple study of its large problems.

Out of the studies of Powell and his collaborators came records: reports, photographs, sketches, geological sections, and the maps that were as essential to geology, Powell said, as a house was to housekeeping. Because the ideal of thoroughness made publication slow, not all the results of the Survey were immediately available, but through the seventies a growing body of accurate and careful information on Powell's chosen region began to appear. Contained in these maps and reports and in the field notes of the survey parties were not only geological, ethnological, and hydrographic data and the generalizations derivable from them, but the foreshadowings of larger generalizations that would eventually mature as broad proposals of policy. Something like organizing genius went into the Powell Survey. The apparent excitability and tendency to run in many directions at once which so irritated Thompson began to show itself for what it really was: a masterful capacity to keep many knowledges in mind, to group and retain facts by cl.u.s.ters and yet make them all contribute to a larger and more comprehensive whole. It was as if he forced every sc.r.a.p of knowledge acquired in years of study by himself and his collaborators to contribute ultimately to a purpose so clear that it looks - though it apparently was not - foreseen.

As we shall see, Powell did not impose his view of the West, either his facts or his deductions or his policies, upon a glad and unresisting nation. The powers of darkness ultimately descended on him like disturbed yellow jackets. Those who resisted facts did not give ground without loud cries and protestations. Take their maddest representative, Captain Sam Adams. Powell was hardly on his way home after the successful traverse of the canyons before Adams was belittling his exploit in the press. Within two months he had hurried to submit a long report of his own activities to Secretary of War Belknap (who had not asked for it), listing the resources of the Colorado basin, which in Adams' version, as in William Gilpin's, sounded dimly and wonderfully like a combination of Canaan and Ophir. The report included Adams' diary of the harebrained plunge down the Blue and Grand, carefully edited and rewritten and with distances, alt.i.tudes, and other invented data filled in to make it scientifically accurate. Belknap turned the doc.u.ment over to General Humphreys, Chief of the Corps of Engineers, who found that though "useful to the public," Adams' information could not be of material value to the War Department, and hence should not be rewarded.1 A rebuff from the War Department stopped Adams no more than logic or reason had ever stopped him. Within four months he had persuaded Representative George W. Julian to introduce a House resolution granting $20,000 for his services in exploring and opening the Colorado.2 The course of Adams' various moves for governmental compensation through the houses of Congress is like the course of his boats down the Blue - a succession of rapids and upsets and undaunted renewals. Julian's resolution was lost in committee for two years, but shortly after Powell had returned to Was.h.i.+ngton in February, 1872, from Kanab, where he had left Thompson triangulating the area north of the Grand Canyon, he received a letter from Representative R. M. McCormick of Arizona, asking his opinion of Adams' claims. Somehow the indomitable Captain had blown the breath of life into them again, and got the question reopened before the Committee on Claims. General Humphreys was also questioned again, and replied as before that he did not favor compensation. Powell wrote a letter to McCormick itemizing his contacts with Adams. That letter, doc.u.mented and incontrovertible, should have sent Adams in splinters to the Gulf.3 But Adams did not splinter readily. He was more like a bag of wind, and now, like a windbag held under water, he kept popping resistantly to the surface. Between 1870 and 1877 his case appears in an even half dozen Senate and House doc.u.ments, and for a time it even seemed as if his efforts to "bring the true facts to the country" - and be compensated therefore - would be successful. On May 20, 1876, seven years after he had stormed off from Green River to take his "authorization" to the more pliable citizens of Breckenridge, and four years after Powell had completely discredited him, the House Committee on Claims recommended that Captain Adams be given $3750 in compensation. But Adams did not splinter readily. He was more like a bag of wind, and now, like a windbag held under water, he kept popping resistantly to the surface. Between 1870 and 1877 his case appears in an even half dozen Senate and House doc.u.ments, and for a time it even seemed as if his efforts to "bring the true facts to the country" - and be compensated therefore - would be successful. On May 20, 1876, seven years after he had stormed off from Green River to take his "authorization" to the more pliable citizens of Breckenridge, and four years after Powell had completely discredited him, the House Committee on Claims recommended that Captain Adams be given $3750 in compensation. 4 4 But circ.u.mstances were unkind to Adams - as he wrote to Austin Blair of the Claims Committee in 1873, even ten copies of the Sunday Herald Herald containing his last communication on the Colorado had been stolen from him. "It appears as if there was to be no end to the efforts to keep the facts from the country." Apparently there was not. Now the Claims Committee's recommendation was not accepted; on January 11,1878, Senator c.o.c.krell of Missouri submitted a report for the Senate Committee on Claims denying Adams compensation on the ground that whatever services he might have rendered had been unauthorized. containing his last communication on the Colorado had been stolen from him. "It appears as if there was to be no end to the efforts to keep the facts from the country." Apparently there was not. Now the Claims Committee's recommendation was not accepted; on January 11,1878, Senator c.o.c.krell of Missouri submitted a report for the Senate Committee on Claims denying Adams compensation on the ground that whatever services he might have rendered had been unauthorized.

That about cooked Adams' goose. He ebbed away from Was.h.i.+ngton muttering about "as revolting a system of ingrat.i.tude and injustice as has ever been conceived and carried out by corrupt officials, who have singled me out as their marked victim." Eventually he settled in his home town of Beaver, Pennsylvania, and went , back to the practice of law. When he died at Beaver Falls in 1915 at the age of eighty-seven he was the oldest member of the Pennsylvania bar, and probably the craziest. But he went to his grave protesting and perhaps believing the tale of his wrongs and the fantasy of his discoveries in the West, and his obituary in the Beaver Evening Tribune Evening Tribune indicates that to the end he found some who would believe him: indicates that to the end he found some who would believe him: "... he spent a number of years exploring the Colorado River, being sent unofficially by Secretary Stanton, who died before Mr. Adams returned, and his claim from the government was never adjusted.For a short time he was employed by one of the Government Departments in Was.h.i.+ngton, resigning to stump the County for Horace Greeley in 1872 [go west, young man, by the Colorado water-level route]. He then engaged in the coal business in Somer set County, Pa., and later devoted much time to the invention and perfection of the Portable Oil Driller, but owing to encroachment upon his patents he failed to reap any reward from his efforts." 5 5 Poor Sam Adams was doomed never to reap the rewards, whether for patents or exploration. He was a preposterous, twelve-gauge, hundred-proof, kiln-dried, officially notarized fool, or else he was one of the most wildly incompetent scoundrels who ever lived. But fool or scoundrel, he was a symptom. In his resistance to fact and logic he had many allies who were neither so foolish in their folly nor so witless in their rascality as he, but whose justification and platform was the same incorrigible insistence upon a West that did not exist.

In 1878, just about the time when Adams was turned off by Congress for the last time, Major Powell was just coming to grips with the forces of Gilpin, in and out of Congress. But before we examine the proposals he made and the struggle that grew out of them, there is a year of uncertainty to look at, a year during which Powell and his survey could easily have lost the struggle to survive.

III.

BLUEPRINT FOR A DRYLAND DEMOCRACY.

1. 1877: The Problem of Survival

AT THE BEGINNING of 1877 the Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region, J. W. Powell in Charge, was the least of the official surveys operating in the West. It had not been recognized and accorded an appropriation until King and Hayden were well established and Lieutenant Wheeler had made his first field trip. Its annual appropriation had ranged from $10,000 to $45,000, less than any of the others had enjoyed. Its published results looked meager beside King's solid series, now about half completed, and the grab-bag releases, amounting to a general scientific magazine, by which Hayden had gained credit not only for his own work but for some done independently. The area trian gulated by Powell's topographers was small by contrast with the sweeping coverage of Wheeler's reconnoissance.1 In January, 1877, the Powell Survey could produce as evidence of its worth only Powell's own reports on In January, 1877, the Powell Survey could produce as evidence of its worth only Powell's own reports on The Exploration of the Colorado River of the West The Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and and The Geology of the Eastern Portion of the Uinta Mountains, The Geology of the Eastern Portion of the Uinta Mountains, the latter with an atlas, plus three brief progress reports and some magazine articles and photographs produced for private profit. It was not enough to impress a Congress interested in practical results useful to mining corporations, land speculators, and settlers the latter with an atlas, plus three brief progress reports and some magazine articles and photographs produced for private profit. It was not enough to impress a Congress interested in practical results useful to mining corporations, land speculators, and settlers2 - particularly since Powell's chosen region showed neither mineral nor agricultural potentialities. The reports then in preparation, Gilbert's - particularly since Powell's chosen region showed neither mineral nor agricultural potentialities. The reports then in preparation, Gilbert's Henry Mountains, Henry Mountains, Dutton's Dutton's High Plateaus, High Plateaus, and two volumes of and two volumes of Contributions to North American Ethnology, Contributions to North American Ethnology, had the impractical sound of pure science, and though Powell had projected for himself a study of the history, resources, and uses of the Public Domain, that study was hardly begun. Outside the Uinta atlas and a map and diagram accompanying the had the impractical sound of pure science, and though Powell had projected for himself a study of the history, resources, and uses of the Public Domain, that study was hardly begun. Outside the Uinta atlas and a map and diagram accompanying the Exploration, Exploration, the Survey had published no maps. the Survey had published no maps.

Moreover, the Congress that convened in January that year had its eye on the inauguration of a new President, Rutherford B. Hayes, in March. At least until the politicians had tried out the new ground, this Congress would be reform-minded. It had two full Grant terms, a chain-reaction of scandals, and the splitting of the Republican Party for warnings. It had investigated the Western surveys without clear result in 1874,3 haling Wheeler, Hayden, and Powell before its committees and airing all the private jealousies and public rivalries of the War and Interior Departments. The rivals were certain to come under scrutiny again. If Congress did not itself raise the question of consolidation and reform, Hayden or Wheeler would, for both were ambitious and had powerful friends, and Hayden in particular was beginning to have his withers galled by compet.i.tion. haling Wheeler, Hayden, and Powell before its committees and airing all the private jealousies and public rivalries of the War and Interior Departments. The rivals were certain to come under scrutiny again. If Congress did not itself raise the question of consolidation and reform, Hayden or Wheeler would, for both were ambitious and had powerful friends, and Hayden in particular was beginning to have his withers galled by compet.i.tion.4 During the hearings back in 1874, Powell had alienated Wheeler by advocating consolidation of all the surveys under control of the Department of the Interior, but his temporary alliance with Hayden on that issue broke down the moment Hayden began to view him as a dangerous rival for appropriations, publicity, or the directors.h.i.+p of the combined surveys. King was not a true party to the rivalry: he had completed his field work along the 40th parallel and was still in business only to finish and publish his series of reports. Though an employee of the War Department, he was personally friendly to Powell and to Powell's ideas. But from either Wheeler or Hayden, Powell could expect only the knife.

It was in the interest of simple survival that he spent much of 1877 mending his fences, trying to insure the continuation of his own survey, balk the ambitions of Hayden and Wheeler, and at the same time bring some system into the chaos of the geological and geographical surveys. This last, since he had no power to reorganize and could work only by influencing members of Congress, was only a hope, but it was not a dim one. He had a powerful organizing mind. It hurt him, quite apart from his own survival, to see dissension, duplication, and waste in an area where there was important work to be done. When Hayden's field parties clashed with Wheeler's in the Colorado mountains and precipitated a disgraceful squabble about priorities, all the surveys suffered. Such influence as Powell had, and such experience and information and persuasiveness as he could bring to bear, he would use in the direction of unification. Whoever ran them, and under whatever jurisdiction, the surveys had to be raised out of their year-by-year, hand-to-mouth, unco-ordinated and compet.i.tive state, and brought into some sort of permanent system.

The wider and less personal interest in the future of government science led him to expand a simple struggle for survival into something much larger. Events and the development of his own ideas pushed him that way, and so did his contempt for Hayden, his pa.s.sion for order, his knowledge and experience of the West and his swiftly clarifying vision of what the West must do to grow into a strong part of the American commonwealth. What perhaps began as mere opportunistic tactics shortly became grand strategy.

The general engagement to which he finally forced the reform party and the Western Congressmen adamant against change or planning resulted eventually in a stalemate, or at best in the most limited sort of victory, but the way in which he fought it showed Major Powell already cunning and effective in behind-the-scenes political maneuver, and with a very clear idea of his objectives. As Henry Nash Smith has remarked,5 his activities during 1878 and 1879 indicated a voluntary acceptance of public responsibility rare in public life at any time. In the Gilded Age it was close to unprecedented. his activities during 1878 and 1879 indicated a voluntary acceptance of public responsibility rare in public life at any time. In the Gilded Age it was close to unprecedented.

He was David against Goliath, Beowulf against Grendel's dam. He challenged odds and he met the enemy on his own ground. Behind him was none of the automatic support that many of his contemporaries, including some of his opposition, could count on. He was not wealthy and well placed like O. C. Marsh, socially prominent and much-befriended like Clarence King. He had not Hayden's well-developed lobby and no long-term friends in high places, and he could count on the backing of no university. From the only university with which he had had important contacts - and that a one-horse college in the West - he had departed abruptly in 1873, looked upon as one grown too big for his breeches.6 What he had to fight with was what he had always had: his clarity of understanding and his personal vigor, plus the general support of disinterested scientific men. He could also depend upon a few interested ones, especially the personal enemies of F. V. Hayden. His campaign of 1877 and 1878 he ran as he had run the Colorado, by a combination of foresight, planning, and calculated risk. What he had to fight with was what he had always had: his clarity of understanding and his personal vigor, plus the general support of disinterested scientific men. He could also depend upon a few interested ones, especially the personal enemies of F. V. Hayden. His campaign of 1877 and 1878 he ran as he had run the Colorado, by a combination of foresight, planning, and calculated risk.

First things first. Feeling the cold breath on his neck when Congress convened in January, 1877, Powell wrote a good many letters, including notes to King, Julius Bien, John Strong Newberry of Columbia, and F. W. Putnam of Harvard,7 begging help in getting his appropriation for the continuation of the Powell Survey the next year. The tone of these notes is perturbed, almost desperate. The day after he dictated them to his secretary, James Pilling, he hurried into the hands of Eugene Hale of the House Appropriations Committee a summary of the work and publications of the Powell Survey, and he also sent Hale as a gift a set of Jack Hillers' Grand Canyon photographs and some proof sheets from Gilbert's coming monograph on the Henry Mountains. At the same time, for reasons not exactly opaque, he requested a personal interview. begging help in getting his appropriation for the continuation of the Powell Survey the next year. The tone of these notes is perturbed, almost desperate. The day after he dictated them to his secretary, James Pilling, he hurried into the hands of Eugene Hale of the House Appropriations Committee a summary of the work and publications of the Powell Survey, and he also sent Hale as a gift a set of Jack Hillers' Grand Canyon photographs and some proof sheets from Gilbert's coming monograph on the Henry Mountains. At the same time, for reasons not exactly opaque, he requested a personal interview.

Whatever the effect of his conversations with Hale, his letters brought results. Newberry, formerly one of Hayden's collaborators but now his bitter enemy, wrote as Powell requested to Representatives Garfield and Hewitt, champions of the liberal wing in the House, and he not only praised the scientific work of Powell and Gilbert but he went out of his way to denounce Hayden as a power-mad lobbyist no longer worthy the name of scientist.8 Putnam and others of the scientific fraternity gave Powell, in less vehement terms, the letters of character he needed. Putnam and others of the scientific fraternity gave Powell, in less vehement terms, the letters of character he needed.

Their help was enough, just enough. The weight of presumably disinterested Science applied to interested Politics got the Powell Survey continued life, but on minimum terms. Congress dropped the appropriation for 1877-78 from $45,000 to $30,000, a reduction that hurt at a time when Powell was hoping to strengthen himself for the eventual showdown with the other surveys. As a matter of fact, he had already incautiously committed himself to things that would cost money. Dutton, Gilbert, and Thompson were all, in addition to topographical and geological work, gathering data on water and irrigable lands in Utah for the use of the General Land Office and Powell's projected report on the Public Domain. The Dutton and Gilbert monographs, as well as the two volumes of Con tributions to North American Ethnology, Con tributions to North American Ethnology, were all partly completed, and their publication, an expensive matter if one were to compete with Hayden's lavish reports full of ill.u.s.trations and plates, were all partly completed, and their publication, an expensive matter if one were to compete with Hayden's lavish reports full of ill.u.s.trations and plates,9 was essential as a lever under Congress. A map of,Utah containing the hydrographic data his parties had gathered languished for lack of funds to print it. And now early in 1877 came a golden opportunity to acquire some easy credit and win the approval of most scientific men if he could only find the money to take advantage of it. was essential as a lever under Congress. A map of,Utah containing the hydrographic data his parties had gathered languished for lack of funds to print it. And now early in 1877 came a golden opportunity to acquire some easy credit and win the approval of most scientific men if he could only find the money to take advantage of it.

As a consequence of the gold strikes in the Black Hills in 1874, Congress had authorized still a fifth Western survey, under the direction of W. P. Jenney and Henry Newton. The resulting report had been practically finished but never published, and there was now no apparent intention on the part of Congress to appropriate funds for it. The strong suspicion on Science Street was that Hayden's jealousy of intrusion upon a territory he considered his own had led him to block the printing of the report. Newton, as it happened, was a student and protege of John Strong Newberry. And Newberry was convinced that Hayden blocked the report because he feared the exposure of his own geological incompetence.

Newberry had been a stout ally in the matter of the appropriation. On March 17, 1877, again at Powell's request, he wrote Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz asking that the Black Hills report be authorized as a publication of the Powell Survey. On that same day he put in a requisition for a chunk of Powell's budget to finance a fossil-hunting trip to Colorado,10 but money at that time was more than Powell could grant, even when the but money at that time was more than Powell could grant, even when the quid pro quo quid pro quo within the austere walls of Science had been satisfactory. To gratify Newberry then would have ruined him. Fortunately,. Newberry was good-natured, and could wait. within the austere walls of Science had been satisfactory. To gratify Newberry then would have ruined him. Fortunately,. Newberry was good-natured, and could wait.

Meantime, Powell was moving much faster than Schurz. The Secretary had hardly had time to receive Newberry's letter before the Major had calculated his risks and plunged. He arranged to pay half of Newton's expenses for a trip back to the Black Hills to clean up doubtful points, and without authority to do so he guaranteed publication of the report. If deficiency appropriations could be had later, Newton would also be compensated for his time. Even while scientific gentlemen under the nudging of Powell or Newberry were bombarding Schurz with letters urging publication of the Newton-Jenney monograph, the arrangements had all been made. It was the end of May before Schurz got around to approving the deal, which by that time he could have repudiated only at the expense of a squabble with the Major.11 Immediately there were additional drains on the Powell Survey purse, first an engraving bill for the Newton book for $1840, and next a proposal that Professor R. P. Whitfield, who was to a.n.a.lyze the Black Hills fossils, be permitted to publish a preliminary pamphlet establis.h.i.+ng his priority in the matter of new species. New species were the breath of life to paleontologists. Othniel C. Marsh and Edward Cope, the two great rivals in vertebrate paleontology, controlled their own avenues of publication and were sometimes in print with preliminary descriptions within a few weeks of the time the bones came out of the ground. Whitfield's request had to be granted, though it strained the already overstrained budget. With the engraver Powell arranged time payments; the office correspondence for that year is loaded with importunities for money from tradesmen and instrument makers and lithographers and engravers, and equally loaded with Pilling's inspired replies stalling them off.

Henry Newton died of typhoid in the Black Hills before the money for his book had even been transferred to the Powell Survey account. By that time the Major was after Schurz for funds for other purposes: $600 of General Land Office funds to print the map of Utah, $4000 for office furniture and rent, hitherto not supplied by law for his bureau. That whole summer saw him trying to get his entire program through with only two thirds as much money as he had hoped for.

And he did not get through the summer without running afoul of Hayden, who had eyes and ears working for him throughout official Was.h.i.+ngton12 and who could not have helped comprehending to the full the meaning of Powell's adoption of the Newton report. The two had words in Schurz's office on May 19, and the words on Hayden's part were mainly about duplication, undercutting, and waste. The argument brought, three days later, a careful letter from Powell to Schurz, a long, scrupulous, and almost weary letter. Powell gave Hayden credit for great contributions (more than he actually believed he had made) and suggested a division of labor within the two Interior Department surveys. and who could not have helped comprehending to the full the meaning of Powell's adoption of the Newton report. The two had words in Schurz's office on May 19, and the words on Hayden's part were mainly about duplication, undercutting, and waste. The argument brought, three days later, a careful letter from Powell to Schurz, a long, scrupulous, and almost weary letter. Powell gave Hayden credit for great contributions (more than he actually believed he had made) and suggested a division of labor within the two Interior Department surveys.13 Let Hayden have the whole field of natural history, for which he had built up an elaborate organization, and leave to Powell the whole field of ethnography, in which he was already collaborating with the Smithsonian. The yeast of this letter worked in the fermenting pot until November, 1877, when the Department approved it in principle and Hayden concurred, with the difference that he wanted all the geology and geography as well as the natural history, leaving Powell only his Indians. Let Hayden have the whole field of natural history, for which he had built up an elaborate organization, and leave to Powell the whole field of ethnography, in which he was already collaborating with the Smithsonian. The yeast of this letter worked in the fermenting pot until November, 1877, when the Department approved it in principle and Hayden concurred, with the difference that he wanted all the geology and geography as well as the natural history, leaving Powell only his Indians.14

Thus the season of 1877, a lean year moving toward an uncertain future, and with a hectic pressure perceptible in its field work and its office work and its rus.h.i.+ng of publications to catch up with the wordier surveys and impress skeptical lawmakers. Despite his amputated appropriation, Powell managed to finish the season much stronger than he had started it. The field parties in Utah had made great headway both in topography and hydrography. Volunteer and part-time ethnologists in every part of the West and South were. busy on a hundred Indian languages in preparation for the general study of the Indian tongues that Powell planned. Gilbert's Henry Mountains Henry Mountains was out, a solid and original contribution certain to reflect great credit on the Survey in scientific if not in political circles. Whitfield's preliminary bulletin on the Black Hills fossils was out. Volumes I and III of was out, a solid and original contribution certain to reflect great credit on the Survey in scientific if not in political circles. Whitfield's preliminary bulletin on the Black Hills fossils was out. Volumes I and III of Contributions to North American Ethnology, The Tribes of the Extreme Northwest and The Tribes of California, Contributions to North American Ethnology, The Tribes of the Extreme Northwest and The Tribes of California, were out, tying the Powell Survey more closely than ever into the Smithsonian, with which its relations had always been close. Working closely with Professor Henry, Powell had well under way for the use of his workers among the tribes a were out, tying the Powell Survey more closely than ever into the Smithsonian, with which its relations had always been close. Working closely with Professor Henry, Powell had well under way for the use of his workers among the tribes a Manual of North American Ethnography Manual of North American Ethnography to replace the outgrown ones of Schoolcraft and Gallatin. to replace the outgrown ones of Schoolcraft and Gallatin. 15 15 And he had much additional data for his study of the Public Domain. And he had much additional data for his study of the Public Domain.

More important than these, and including them all, was the broad plan for future action that was coming into focus, growing in clarity, precision, and urgency. Early in November, 1877, Powell requested that the War Department transfer Captain Dutton from the Department of the Platte for detached winter duty in Was.h.i.+ngton. Dutton came as a mounted officer, thereby getting a little extra pay for the expenses of his horse. But he did not come to take care of any horse, or even to hasten the preparation of the High Plateaus High Plateaus monograph. He came to help the boss in putting over the "general plan, monograph. He came to help the boss in putting over the "general plan,16 which from this time on began swiftly to evolve out of the realm of abstract thinking and into the realm of practical - and explosive - politics. which from this time on began swiftly to evolve out of the realm of abstract thinking and into the realm of practical - and explosive - politics.

2. 1878: The General Plan

POWELL'S LETTER to Schurz on May 22, 1877, had made it clear that he was prepared, if necessary, to step completely out of topography, geology, and natural history and devote himself to ethnology, to which both his inclinations and his opportunities had led him. The 670 vocabularies already in his possession would keep him occupied for a long time on the cla.s.sification of the Indian languages, and his relations with Joseph Henry and Spencer Baird were cordial and uncomplicated by the political jealousies that riddled the surveys. Actually he had been far less free since acquiring governmental support than he had been while running his personal shoe-string scientific expeditions in Colorado and on the river. Now, with a little urging, he might have retired into the scientific quiet of the Smithsonian.

But he didn't. Abandonment of ambitions for his own Western survey liberated him from personal motives to a very large extent, and that liberation had the effect of making him both more aggressive and more successful in promoting his version of the ideal government survey. From the moment when he began to care less about continuation on the old terms of the Powell Survey, he began to care more about efficient organization and the public good which federal science ought to serve.

In his letter books of 1878 there are no desperate pleas for help and no hurried summonses of influential friends to Was.h.i.+ngton, though the omission may reflect only a growing caution about what sorts of things were preserved in his official files. He did ask Thomas Donaldson to come to Was.h.i.+ngton to help him get an item on the Deficiency Appropriations Bill, but that was carry-over business from 1877, an additional $5000 needed to cover the public land cla.s.sification and hydrographic map of Utah done by Powell's survey for the General Land Office.1 And he did ask Professor Putnam of Harvard to return some loaned collections so that he could impress Congressmen with them. And he did ask Professor Putnam of Harvard to return some loaned collections so that he could impress Congressmen with them.2 The bulk of his time and thought, however, went not into getting an 1878 appropriation, which he seems to have taken for granted, but into the expanding problem of the organization of government science. The bulk of his time and thought, however, went not into getting an 1878 appropriation, which he seems to have taken for granted, but into the expanding problem of the organization of government science.

On February 22 he wrote nearly identical letters to Professors J. D. Plunkett, N. S. Shaler, J. B. Killibrew, and Elias Loomis,3 who at the Nashville meeting of the American a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science had been appointed a committee to see if Weather Bureau reports might be made useful for other scientific purposes. Powell told these gentlemen that there was a Congressional committee now considering what permanent disposition to make of the Weather Bureau, one of the Smithsonian's scientific fledglings which had outgrown the nest. The committee's discussions would probably provoke an examination of all the scientific bureaus, including the Western surveys. Powell asked the AAAS committee to meet with him in Was.h.i.+ngton to talk over what pressures men of learning ought to apply in the possible reorganization. who at the Nashville meeting of the American a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science had been appointed a committee to see if Weather Bureau reports might be made useful for other scientific purposes. Powell told these gentlemen that there was a Congressional committee now considering what permanent disposition to make of the Weather Bureau, one of the Smithsonian's scientific fledglings which had outgrown the nest. The committee's discussions would probably provoke an examination of all the scientific bureaus, including the Western surveys. Powell asked the AAAS committee to meet with him in Was.h.i.+ngton to talk over what pressures men of learning ought to apply in the possible reorganization.4 Major Powell had an acute political sense, and he was well informed. On March 8, Representative Atkins of Tennessee introduced a resolution asking a report from the Secretary of the Interior on the possibility of consolidating all the Western surveys. He thus reopened the debate that had never quite subsided since 1874. Schurz replied to the resolution by forwarding letters from both Powell and Hayden saying what they had all three agreed on in November, 1877 - that Powell would take ethnology and Hayden the rest. The War Department made its customary claim that the Topographical Engineers were the proper people to survey the West and make the maps. Those were the expected opening moves. But in the very beginning of the maneuvering, most probably after consultation with Schurz and perhaps with others, Powell made up his mind to go after something a hundred times more sweeping than a mere division of labor or a mere systematizing of Western surveys. The surveys were not the only thing in the West that was being mishandled, wasted, and misapplied. The very laws and the philosophy behind the laws were inadequate.

While Powell had been fighting for survival in 1877, Congress had pa.s.sed the Desert Land Act, which its advocates described as providing a workable plan for settlement of the arid lands but which one historian has described as designed "to encourage monopolization while throwing dust in the public's eyes."5 Right now it had before it a bill that would be pa.s.sed in two months as the Timber and Stone Act, and this would further complicate a land policy already snarled with red tape, riddled with loopholes, and rotten with dishonest practices. Insofar as they were scientific operations, government surveys were not concerned with policy. And yet their findings compelled settlement of policy questions; the examination of any natural resource, minerals, arable land, grazing land, timber, stone, water, led directly to the political question of how these resources should be controlled, reserved, or distributed, whether they should be held by the government or given or sold to the people, protected or exploited. The vision of William Gilpin held no such problems, for in Gilpin Land the beneficent working of social and economic law was like the grand slow inevitable rolling of the earth. But the practical observation of Powell revealed a hundred unpleasant possibilities of conflict, spoliation, monopoly, and waste. Right now it had before it a bill that would be pa.s.sed in two months as the Timber and Stone Act, and this would further complicate a land policy already snarled with red tape, riddled with loopholes, and rotten with dishonest practices. Insofar as they were scientific operations, government surveys were not concerned with policy. And yet their findings compelled settlement of policy questions; the examination of any natural resource, minerals, arable land, grazing land, timber, stone, water, led directly to the political question of how these resources should be controlled, reserved, or distributed, whether they should be held by the government or given or sold to the people, protected or exploited. The vision of William Gilpin held no such problems, for in Gilpin Land the beneficent working of social and economic law was like the grand slow inevitable rolling of the earth. But the practical observation of Powell revealed a hundred unpleasant possibilities of conflict, spoliation, monopoly, and waste.

A plan had been growing in his mind for years. Undoubtedly it had become more immediate with the election of Hayes and the entrance into the Cabinet of Schurz, an avowed reformer. There is no evidence of intimacy between Powell and Schurz, but there is every evidence of essential agreement. Perhaps the fortunate meeting of their minds explains why Powell, with his report on the Public Domain only partly finished and with no appropriation for its printing even if it had been done, rushed the fragments together into printer's copy without even waiting for proofreading by Dutton, Gilbert, Thompson, and Willis Drummond, who had contributed chapters. On April 1 he presented it to Schurz as a Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States, with a More Detailed Account of the Lands of Utah. Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States, with a More Detailed Account of the Lands of Utah.

Fragment or not, this was heavy artillery. By submitting his hurried and partial report Major Powell committed himself; he took issue with every delusion of the Gilpin state of mind. Embodied in the scant two hundred pages of his ma.n.u.script - actually in the first two chapters of it - was a complete revolution in the system of land surveys, land policy, land tenure, and farming methods in the West, and a denial of almost every cherished fantasy and myth a.s.sociated with the Westward migration and the American dream of the Garden of the World. Powell was not only challenging political forces who used popular myths for a screen, he was challenging the myths themselves, and they were as rooted as the beliefs of religion.6 He was using bear language in a bull market, "deficiency terminology" in the midst of a chronic national optimism well recovered from the panic of 1873. Though he opened with his heavy batteries hurriedly, as the opportunity offered, he did it deliberately and on n.o.body's initiative but his own. He was using bear language in a bull market, "deficiency terminology" in the midst of a chronic national optimism well recovered from the panic of 1873. Though he opened with his heavy batteries hurriedly, as the opportunity offered, he did it deliberately and on n.o.body's initiative but his own.

3. The Public Domain

AS A FACT, the public domain dates from October 30, 1779, when Congress requested the states to relinquish in favor of the federal government all claims to the unsettled country between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. As a problem, it dates from the Act of Congress of May 18, 1796, which authorized the appointment of a surveyor-general and the survey of the Northwest Territory. As the responsibilty of a special branch of government, it was created with the General Land Office in April, 1812, eight and a half years after Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase had superimposed mystery upon wilderness, and added unmeasured millions of acres, unrealized opportunities, and unpredictable headaches to the national inheritance.

One of the princ.i.p.al reasons for the federal government's desire to take over the public domain intact was to efface interstate boundary quarrels stemming from royal charters and grants. Its princ.i.p.al aim in establis.h.i.+ng a plan of rectangular surveys of the public lands into ranges, towns.h.i.+ps, and sections was to avoid the irregular, difficult, badly marked, and often confused plot lines of the disorganized surveys of colonial times. The same system was continued in newly acquired Louisiana. Across the public lands, from 1812 onwards, the General Land Office imposed a grid of surveys upon which the small freeholds of the ideal agrarian democracy could be laid out like checkers on a board.

In any wilderness region surveys could be run as soon as it appeared that settlement was on the way1 - a skirmish line of squatters was as sure a sign of the need for surveys as swallows are of spring. Surveys were let out to local surveyors under the general supervision of the General Land Office, and if the original scientific intentions rapidly were lost, and if Land Office meridians sometimes had less than the desirable reference to true meridians, - a skirmish line of squatters was as sure a sign of the need for surveys as swallows are of spring. Surveys were let out to local surveyors under the general supervision of the General Land Office, and if the original scientific intentions rapidly were lost, and if Land Office meridians sometimes had less than the desirable reference to true meridians,2 and if compa.s.s and chain erred, and though some men grew rich on the graft incidental to the part.i.tioning of the land, nevertheless the Land Office Surveys made out to do their practical job. They divided the land so that t.i.tles could be issued to pioneer farmers, speculators, and the states and corporations given grants for wagon roads, ca.n.a.ls, railroads, colleges, and other internal improvements. They proceeded without having to mind the debates between advocates of free land and those who believed the government should sell off the public lands for profit and a balanced budget. They were utilitarian only; policy was none of their business. and if compa.s.s and chain erred, and though some men grew rich on the graft incidental to the part.i.tioning of the land, nevertheless the Land Office Surveys made out to do their practical job. They divided the land so that t.i.tles could be issued to pioneer farmers, speculators, and the states and corporations given grants for wagon roads, ca.n.a.ls, railroads, colleges, and other internal improvements. They proceeded without having to mind the debates between advocates of free land and those who believed the government should sell off the public lands for profit and a balanced budget. They were utilitarian only; policy was none of their business.

When J. A. Williamson took over as Commissioner in 1876, he could summarize the conditions under which he took office3 and show that the Land Office Surveys had reached westward clear across Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, across all but the upper Niobrara district of Nebraska, across the Red River Valley in Dakota Territory. Eastern Colorado, like the mountainous western slope, was unsurveyed. Wyoming had been touched only in its southeastern corner and along the line of the Union Pacific. Idaho had survey stakes only in three scattered districts around Bear Lake, Boise, and Lewiston. Montana was virgin unmarked plains except in its west-central section. In other words, the whole public domain from the Appalachians almost to the Rockies was laid out in towns.h.i.+ps and a great part of it disposed of by sale and grant and homestead. West of the Nebraska-Colorado line the surveys had touched the better-watered areas where settlement had first clotted. Like settlement, and as an inevitable corollary, the grid surveys were now beginning to fill in the areas between the Missouri and the Sierra-Cascade Mountains. And like the settlers who ventured out into the arid belt, the General Land Office was beginning to find that what worked well to eastward worked increasingly badly beyond the 100th meridian. and show that the Land Office Surveys had reached westward clear across Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, across all but the upper Niobrara district of Nebraska, across the Red River Valley in Dakota Territory. Eastern Colorado, like the mountainous western slope, was unsurveyed. Wyoming had been touched only in its southeastern corner and along the line of the Union Pacific. Idaho had survey stakes only in three scattered districts around Bear Lake, Boise, and Lewiston. Montana was virgin unmarked plains except in its west-central section. In other words, the whole public domain from the Appalachians almost to the Rockies was laid out in towns.h.i.+ps and a great part of it disposed of by sale and grant and homestead. West of the Nebraska-Colorado line the surveys had touched the better-watered areas where settlement had first clotted. Like settlement, and as an inevitable corollary, the grid surveys were now beginning to fill in the areas between the Missouri and the Sierra-Cascade Mountains. And like the settlers who ventured out into the arid belt, the General Land Office was beginning to find that what worked well to eastward worked increasingly badly beyond the 100th meridian.

A firmly fixed pattern of settlement, of which the rectangular surveys and the traditional quarter-section of land were only outward manifestations, though in some ways determining ones, began to meet on the Great Plains conditions that could not be stretched or lopped to fit Procrustes' bed. A mode of life that despite varying soils and a transition from woods to prairies had been essentially uniform from the east coast through Kentucky and Ohio and on to the Missouri or slightly beyond, met in the West increasingly varied topography, climate, alt.i.tudes, crops, opportunities, problems. The Middle West, geographically and socially and economically, was simple; the West was complex. Instead of the gentle roll of the great valley there were high plains, great mountain ranges, alkali valleys, dead lake bottoms, alluvial benchlands. Instead of trees or oak openings there were gra.s.slands, badlands, timbered mountains, rain forests and rain-shadow deserts, climates that ran the scale from Vermont to the Sahara. And more important than all the variety which was hostile to a too-rigid traditional pattern was one overmastering unity, the unity of drouth. With local and minor exceptions, the lands beyond the 100th meridian received less than twenty inches of annual rainfall, and twenty inches was the minimum for unaided agriculture. That one simple fact was to be, and is still to be, more fecund of social and economic and inst.i.tutional change in the West than all the acts of all the Presidents and Congresses from the Louisiana Purchase to the present.4 One of the most difficult operations for imperfect mortals is the making of distinctions, of stopping opinion and belief part way, of accepting qualified ideas. It is a capacity demanded by and presumably encouraged by the democratic process, and perhaps over a long period of time the history of America demonstrates its comforting presence among us as a people. But the individual who can modify or correct beliefs molded by personal interest or the influences of his rearing is rare, and was rare in the eighteen-seventies. It is easy to be wise in retrospect, uncommonly difficult in the event.

The Great American Desert, for example.

The notion of a Great American Desert east of the Rockies is almost as old as the public domain.5 Lewis and Clark, whose report was not published until 1814, did not use the term, though they mentioned dry streams and the lack of timber along the upper Missouri. But Zebulon Pike, in his report published in 1810, had told of finding a desert between the Missouri and the Rockies, some of it suitable for grazing but some of it bare dunes. He saw a real value in this desert, in that it would be a bar to settlement and would prevent the reckless extension and perhaps disintegration of the Union. John Bradbury and Henry M. Brackenridge, going up the Missouri in 1811, and Thomas Nuttall in 1819, contributed to the vaguely growing public notion of the lands beyond the Missouri, and they used terms such as "pathless desert" which had ambiguous connotations. Lewis and Clark, whose report was not published until 1814, did not use the term, though they mentioned dry streams and the lack of timber along the upper Missouri. But Zebulon Pike, in his report published in 1810, had told of finding a desert between the Missouri and the Rockies, some of it suitable for grazing but some of it bare dunes. He saw a real value in this desert, in that it would be a bar to settlement and would prevent the reckless extension and perhaps disintegration of the Union. John Bradbury and Henry M. Brackenridge, going up the Missouri in 1811, and Thomas Nuttall in 1819, contributed to the vaguely growing public notion of the lands beyond the Missouri, and they used terms such as "pathless desert" which had ambiguous connotations.

In part the notion of the Great American Desert is a matter of mere words, a semantic difficulty. The poetic and romantic meaning of "desert" was one thing, the popular meaning another. According to the one, any unpeopled wilderness, especially open gra.s.slands but even dense woods, could be called a desert. According to the other, a desert must be a waste of naked sand and rock. Confusion between the two terms partly explains both the growth of the belief in the Great American Desert's existence, and its denial. But specific reports had much to do with it too. Dr. Edwin James, the official chronicler of Major Stephen H. Long's 1820 expedition to the Rocky Mountains, attested to the presence of a "dreary plain, wholly unfit for cultivation, and of course uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture for their subsistence," and hoped that it might "forever remain the unmolested haunt of the native hunter, the bison, and the jackall." His map, which showed the "Great Desert" between the 98th meridian and the Arkansas, was widely influential, and his observations were borrowed by popular magazines and popular historians. By the mid-thirties the Great American Desert was firmly established on the maps and in the American mind, and it continued to be acknowledged for more than a generation. Thomas Farnham in 1843 divided the pre-montane West into three zones, the last one, from the 100th meridian to the Rockies, "usually called the Great American Desert." Josiah Gregg's Commerce of the Prairies Commerce of the Prairies made a desert of all the plains between the Red River and the sources of the Missouri. Captain Gunnison, traversing the plains on his survey for the Pacific Railroad in 1853, arrived at the same conclusion. The report of the first Kansas State Geological Survey in 1866 held out no hope of an immediate settlement of the plains, and John Hanson Beadle in made a desert of all the plains between the Red River and the sources of the Missouri. Captain Gunnison, traversing the plains on his survey for the Pacific Railroad in 1853, arrived at the same conclusion. The report of the first Kansas State Geological Survey in 1866 held out no hope of an immediate settlement of the plains, and John Hanson Beadle in The Undeveloped West The Undeveloped West saw only wasteland for eight hundred miles west of the 100th meridian, and from British Columbia to Mexico. saw only wasteland for eight hundred miles west of the 100th meridian, and from British Columbia to Mexico.

Many of those reports are the soberest truth. But what came out of them is an indication of how an objective report, by the misinterpretation of a single word, can produce popular error. There was certainly a "desert" between the Missouri and the mountains, but it was not the endless waste of drifting sand that the word brought before the eyes of many readers.

The exaggeration of the Great American Desert is one expression of the unmodulated mind. The reverse expression comes from the tribe of Gilpin. Beginning in the late fifties and early sixties, when gold strikes had bred settlements at the foot of the Colorado Rockies, and venturesome farmers were led by the presence of a lucrative local market to try the soil and steer some mountain water onto a few acres, the conviction began to grow that the Great American Desert was poppyc.o.c.k. How could a desert support buffalo by the million, and Indians of fifty tribes? Local patriots loved anyone who, crossing the plains in the green of spring, scoffed at the calamity howlers. Travelers caught in one of the torrential cyclonic storms of the plains could look up and comment dryly, or wetly, on the aridity.

And circ.u.mstances combined with wishfulness to erode the notion that had been fixed for thirty or forty years. The seventies were a time of heavy rainfall; they were also the time of the panic of 1873 brought on by Jay Cooke's collapse, and the perception that it was easy to pinch a farmer but hard to starve him may have encouraged the movement to the homestead country. Drouth and gra.s.shoppers hurt the first years of the decade, but by 1878 a series of wet years and heavy crops had precipitated a rush. Between 1870 and 1880 the population of the wheat states and territories -Nebraska, Kansas, Dakota, and Minnesota - grew from less than a million to more than two and a half million. Final entries under the Homestead Act exceeded one and a half million in 1874, two million in 1875, and two and a half million in 1878.6 Farmers put their foot in the door of the West and waited. When nothing happened, they poked their heads in. When nothing still happened, they went all the way through. By 1878 they were jubi lantly confident that the grain belt was safe. The Great American Desert was laughed away, washed away in the flow of Gilpin oratory, advertised away in the broadsides of land companies and the railroad proselytizers. The enduring faith of William Gilpin that the desert was a myth was shared not only by travelers and publicists but by thousands of dryland farmers who could point to flouris.h.i.+ng crops and steadily increasing rainfall. What had seemed to Pike a permanent barrier against settlement became a garden, a Canaan.7 Major Powell had watched that Canaan open. He had led his first expedition westward from Omaha by horse and mule team in 1867, through the dwindling buffalo herds. Cattle then were already moving north from Texas to the railroad towns. From Abilene, Kansas, the first cowtown, Texas cattle started east by rail in September of that year. In the next five years a million and a half longhorns reached Abilene from Texas over the Chisholm Trail,8 and by the same time the drives had reached far to the north and west. Jack Sumner, the Howlands, and Bill Dunn, moving leisurely from the winter camp on the White to their rendezvous with Powell at Green River in the spring of 1869, had found a herd of thousands wintering in Brown's Hole. and by the same time the drives had reached far to the north and west. Jack Sumner, the Howlands, and Bill Dunn, moving leisurely from the winter camp on the White to their rendezvous with Powell at Green River in the spring of 1869, had found a herd of thousands wintering in Brown's Hole.9 Two years later Powell's second river expedition had found other thousands, with two Texan and ten Mexican herders, making use of the public range i