Beyond The Hundredth Meridian Part 7

On September 24, 1878, Powell sc.r.a.ped together eight copies of the Arid Region and sent them to Marsh to be distributed to the Academy committee. He also asked to be allowed to talk to the committee when it met. While he waited for this opportunity he busied his staff in sending out copies of the report, however obtained from the watchdog of doc.u.ments, to western newspapers.8 In promoting his own survey he had not much bothered to woo the press, but the issues here were of another and higher order, and their importance to Westerners extreme. In promoting his own survey he had not much bothered to woo the press, but the issues here were of another and higher order, and their importance to Westerners extreme.

Presumably he had his chance to talk to the committee. He also had other opportunities that made him virtually a sub rosa committee member. On October 3, 1878, when Marsh wrote Schurz tentatively outlining the group's thinking, Schurz pa.s.sed his letter on to Powell for comment and suggestion,9 though as head of one of the surveys concerned Powell might have been thought outside the deliberations. Certainly Hayden and Wheeler were given no such opportunity. It was a tight inside job. On November 6 the committee made its report to the Academy and the Academy accepted it in full, with Professor Cope casting the one dissenting vote. On November 26 Marsh forwarded the Academy's recommendations to Congress. though as head of one of the surveys concerned Powell might have been thought outside the deliberations. Certainly Hayden and Wheeler were given no such opportunity. It was a tight inside job. On November 6 the committee made its report to the Academy and the Academy accepted it in full, with Professor Cope casting the one dissenting vote. On November 26 Marsh forwarded the Academy's recommendations to Congress.

They called for much more than the consolidation of the four surveys. The Academy suggested the elimination of the surveyors-general and the practice of subletting the land-parceling surveys to local contractors. It wanted land parceling made the job of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and that whole survey moved over from the jurisdiction of the Treasury to that of the Department of the Interior. It reduced Hayden and eliminated Wheeler by recommending the consolidation of the Hayden, Wheeler, and Powell Surveys under the Department of the Interior. (The King Survey had finished its job.) And it suggested appointment of a public lands commission to study and codify the public land laws, presumably in directions sketched in Powell's report and in his testimony before the Academy's committee. Except in their cautious withholding of specific cures for the land law ills, the Academy's report was identical with the program that Powell, Gilbert, and Dutton had been actively advocating from the Survey headquarters, 10 10 and almost wholly derivative from Powell's Report on the and almost wholly derivative from Powell's Report on the Lands of the Arid Region. Lands of the Arid Region.

But the most revealing comment on the Academy's action, the wink that tipped the hand of the insider, came from Powell's confidential clerk James Pilling. At the time of the Academy report Pilling was in Boston searching among the libraries for t.i.tles to go into his comprehensive bibliography of the Indian languages. On December 5 he wrote his boss with his tongue in his cheek: "I see the Academy has made its report and it sounds wonderfully like something I have read - and perhaps written - before. What will become of we poor ethnologists?"11

5. Half-Victory

SO CONCENTRATED and vigorous a sponsors.h.i.+p as Powell's could not be kept secret, especially when advocates of the reform in Congress depended upon its creator for ammunition. As the implications of the Academy's recommendations began to percolate through the Congressional bone there was sure to be a violent reaction from Western members involved through sentiment, personal interests, or venality in the old fixed rectangular survey system, the 160-acre freehold, and the cobbled legal structure of Pre-emption Act, Homestead Act, Swamp Lands Act, Desert Land Act, Timber and Stone Act, and the other improvisations. No sooner had the report been referred to the House Committee on Public Lands than the lines were drawn. On December 19, 1878, Representative P. D. Wigginton of California, one of the few Western Congressmen favoring land-law reform, wrote to Powell saying that he, Abram Hewitt, and Thomas M. Patterson of Colorado had been named a subcommittee to study the subject. Both Patterson and Hewitt, Wigginton said, "are opposed to us." He wanted Powell to write up a full, thorough, and unanswerable report, since he was sure the two in opposition would submit something in writing and would be aided by Hayden and perhaps others. 1 1 Wigginton's letter is a sign of how confused even a supporter could be at that stage. He was entirely wrong about Hewitt's opposition, for though Hewitt had at first leaned toward War Department direction of a consolidated survey, and had perhaps been astonished to see how many other issues had got attached to a simple problem of consolidation, he later made it clear that he had been convinced by the Academy's report, which he specifically attributed to Powell.2 As for Hayden, his position was obscure. Though he might out of spite a.s.sist the enemies of consolidation and reform; he was personally an advocate of consolidation under the Department of the Interior, and he had a strong candidate for the directors.h.i.+p: himself. Shut out from the inner councils, misinformed by his Was.h.i.+ngton scouts, As for Hayden, his position was obscure. Though he might out of spite a.s.sist the enemies of consolidation and reform; he was personally an advocate of consolidation under the Department of the Interior, and he had a strong candidate for the directors.h.i.+p: himself. Shut out from the inner councils, misinformed by his Was.h.i.+ngton scouts,3 Hayden had already been unhorsed, but neither he nor Congress knew it yet. Hayden had already been unhorsed, but neither he nor Congress knew it yet.

Perhaps because of the fear of losing its bill in the Public Lands Committee, which had been known to sit on reform measures before, the reform group suddenly changed its attack. Schurz wrote to Powell asking the precise wording of the legislation he proposed for embodying the Academy's suggestions (by now even Schurz was coming to headquarters for his data) and on the 23rd Powell sent back drafts of four items: a bill specifying the duties and salary of the superintendent of the combined Coast and land-parceling surveys; specifications of duties and salary of the director of a consolidated United States Geological Survey; the authorization for a commission to study and codify the land laws; and a proposed system for handling the publications of both the Coast-Land Parcelling Survey and the Geological Survey. But he prepared only the first of these as a separate bill. The second was to be attached as a rider to the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Appropriations Bill, the third and fourth as riders to the Sundry Civil Appropriations Bill.4 That way, the Public Lands Committee would be by-pa.s.sed, and the drafts would go instead to the Appropriations Committee, chaired by John D. C. Atkins of Tennessee, a strong supporter of the reforms. Of this committee too Abram Hewitt was a member - as it turned out, its most important member. To Hewitt, it appears, must be traced the last-minute parliamentary maneuvering, some of it distinctly dubious, by means of which such important legislation found its way onto the floor of the House hidden behind the skirts of an appropriation bill. That way, the Public Lands Committee would be by-pa.s.sed, and the drafts would go instead to the Appropriations Committee, chaired by John D. C. Atkins of Tennessee, a strong supporter of the reforms. Of this committee too Abram Hewitt was a member - as it turned out, its most important member. To Hewitt, it appears, must be traced the last-minute parliamentary maneuvering, some of it distinctly dubious, by means of which such important legislation found its way onto the floor of the House hidden behind the skirts of an appropriation bill.

In introducing the first appropriation bill for discussion on February 10, Atkins remarked that he thought the survey and land clauses the most important items in it. Events swiftly proved him right. Western Congressmen of the tribe of Gilpin sniffed the bill and smelled heresy, for the major premise of the land clauses and the Arid Region report upon which they were based was that a point had been reached in Western settlement where neither natural resources, especially water, nor social inst.i.tutions were any longer adequate. To the Gilpin mind, here were people trying to talk the Great American Desert back into existence just after it had finally been established as a garden. Inadequate rainfall, sir? Why I can show you statistics, figures taken on the spot in Dakota....

This was the high tide of the late seventies when homesteaders were tearing up the buffalo gra.s.s of Kansas and Nebraska and Colorado. These were years of big rains and fat crops, the years when facts and myths clashed sharply along the 100th meridian.5 II A wishful public and political consciousness had already accepted the doctrine of a climate changing for the better as settlement turned the sod and planted crops and trees. II A wishful public and political consciousness had already accepted the doctrine of a climate changing for the better as settlement turned the sod and planted crops and trees.6 That doctrine would persist through every plains frontier, into the Dakotas and Montana, across the international line into the Peace River country and all across the prairie provinces where it was gospel as late as World War I. In 1878 that folk belief matched a whole people's hopeful optimism, which had had none of the calamities of the eighteen-eighties to correct it, though the 1871 drouth in Kansas had temporarily discouraged extension of the farm frontier. No wonder Western legislatures angrily protested the proposed reforms. The reforms were aimed at the wheat belt, a region with a one-crop economy, and wheat farmers knew better than any politicians what was best for the country. And behind the incompre hension of the average man there was a somewhat less innocent resistance from landowners who did not want the convenient exist- , ing laws changed. They were doing fine with the laws already on the books. That doctrine would persist through every plains frontier, into the Dakotas and Montana, across the international line into the Peace River country and all across the prairie provinces where it was gospel as late as World War I. In 1878 that folk belief matched a whole people's hopeful optimism, which had had none of the calamities of the eighteen-eighties to correct it, though the 1871 drouth in Kansas had temporarily discouraged extension of the farm frontier. No wonder Western legislatures angrily protested the proposed reforms. The reforms were aimed at the wheat belt, a region with a one-crop economy, and wheat farmers knew better than any politicians what was best for the country. And behind the incompre hension of the average man there was a somewhat less innocent resistance from landowners who did not want the convenient exist- , ing laws changed. They were doing fine with the laws already on the books.

Upon the flames of regional disgust the copies of the Arid Region that Powell had sent to western newspapers fell like gasoline. Though G.o.dkin's Nation reviewed him seriously and with respect, Powell got no support from the western press. But though the hookups between land speculators, local land offices and surveyors, and the politicians were important in his opposition, what we have called the Gilpin mind was quite as important. To the Gilpin mind facts are not essential, though they are sometimes useful. What is more essential is vision, and the vision of Western politicians representing commonwealths eager for population and pressing for statehood was full of settlers, full of trainloads of immigrant farmers, full of new tracks, new roads, new towns rising on the prairie. The novel of settlement which cla.s.sically ended with the first train chuffing into a bare western town between lanes of cheering farmers would emerge a little later as the dramatization of an abiding faith. Politically and economically the West as a boom market depended on vision far more than on facts; the facts could be taken care of later. Now here came Powell and the reform group with insinuations that were bad for business. The colonial b.u.mptiousness of the lands they called the Arid Region grew violent at intimations of deficiency. Gilpin had said that the Mississippi Valley between the Alleghanies and the Rockies could support a population of 180,000,000. There were Corigressmen who would probably have raised him, at least for rhetorical purposes. 7 7 They made the most of the fact that this reform movement was sponsored by "scientific lobbyists" and supported mainly by representatives of states outside the so-called Arid Region. They squawked like captured ducks at the way in which the reformers had tried to slip their measures through by tying them to appropriations bills. They put the finger of ultimate responsibility squarely on Powell, where it belonged. Representative Patterson of Colorado called the whole program the work of one man, "a charlatan in science and intermeddler in affairs of which he has no proper conception." 8 8 The Hayden-Cope group circulated privately a defamatory report on Powell, and spread rumors of dissension within the Academy. The tearful defenders of the little man with 160 acres and a plow misconstrued the intention of the proposal completely and either through misunderstanding or malice pictured it as the preamble to landlordism. Somewhat more rationally, they attacked it as a step toward paternalism in government, though how the attempt to protect the small freeholder from speculators, the forces of Nature, and the manifest failure of the current public land laws could be considered a vicious undermining of the free American spirit is not quite clear. Still, Patterson and his fellows thought they recognized an enemy when they saw one, and these "new-fledged collegiates" and "scientific lobbyists" had all the ear-marks. The Hayden-Cope group circulated privately a defamatory report on Powell, and spread rumors of dissension within the Academy. The tearful defenders of the little man with 160 acres and a plow misconstrued the intention of the proposal completely and either through misunderstanding or malice pictured it as the preamble to landlordism. Somewhat more rationally, they attacked it as a step toward paternalism in government, though how the attempt to protect the small freeholder from speculators, the forces of Nature, and the manifest failure of the current public land laws could be considered a vicious undermining of the free American spirit is not quite clear. Still, Patterson and his fellows thought they recognized an enemy when they saw one, and these "new-fledged collegiates" and "scientific lobbyists" had all the ear-marks.

THE CANYON COUNTRY.

The Camera's View.

Portraits[image]U. S. Geological SurveyMarble Canyon. The boat is the Emma Dean Second, Emma Dean Second, flags.h.i.+p of the second Colorado River expedition. The armchair, bolted to the deck, was Major Powell's point of vantage for conning the river ahead. The photograph was taken by J. K. Hillers in late August, 1872. flags.h.i.+p of the second Colorado River expedition. The armchair, bolted to the deck, was Major Powell's point of vantage for conning the river ahead. The photograph was taken by J. K. Hillers in late August, 1872.[image]Geological SurveyGrand Canyon, looking downstream toward the mouth of Prospect Canyon, just above Lava Falls rapid. Powell first saw this district in 1870, Hillers began photographing it in the winter of 1871-72. The second Colorado River expedition quit at Kanab Wash, a little above this point.[image]Smithsonian Inst.i.tyThe mirror case. Major Powell poses in the Uinta Valley of Utah with a woman of the Ute tribe which first stimulated his interest in the Indians. The photograph is by Hillers, 1873 or 1874.[image]mithsonian Inst.i.tutionPicturesque America, 1873. Thomas Moran, (center) and his writer J. E. Colburn on Moran's first trip to the Grand Canyon country. The photograph was taken by Hillers near Kanab. The boy is a Paiute.

The winds blew through the halls of Congress and the myths were invoked and the s.h.i.+bboleths spoken and the gospels rea.s.serted. Like some Civil War battles, the struggle went on to the point of exhaustion, and beyond exhaustion to stalemate and compromise. It was February 18, 1879, after nine days of bitter debate, when the House voted by 98 to 79 a gutted measure consolidating the surveys and appointing a public lands commission, but dropping out entirely any actual alteration in the land laws or the surveying system. This would have been acceptable as something between defeat and victory, but the Republican Senate turned it into an absolute defeat, and incidentally attested the continuing potency of Hayden's lobby in the upper house, by repudiating the whole thing and writing in an amendment discontinuing every survey but Hayden's.

Active and astute as he had shown himself, Powell was at that point powerless to avert the complete ruin of his plan. What was saved was saved by Hewitt, who hung on tenaciously through the conference committee meetings on the appropriation bill, and at the last minute managed to write into the Sundry Civil Bill the clauses consolidating the three Western surveys under the Department of the Interior and authorizing a commission to study the problems of the public lands. The clauses thus returned to the condition the House had left them in, and in that condition were pa.s.sed by Congress.

At the point when the Sundry Civil Expenses Bill pa.s.sed on March 3, 1879, silence should have settled upon the field. Immediate attempts to reform the land laws were blocked; Western Congressmen had no real interest in the survey and little to fear from an investigating commission, whose report could easily enough be covered over with dead leaves when it appeared. But silence could not fall until a director had been picked for the joined surveys. That directors.h.i.+p was intensely and persistently sought by Professor Hayden. Apparently, with Wheeler and the War Department out, he feared only Powell as a rival. But Powell had been sincere in his offer the previous May to pull out of geology and devote himself to ethnology. By his own specific request to Atkins, there was in the same Sundry Civil Expenses Bill that created the United States Geological Survey 9 9 an almost-unnoticed item: an almost-unnoticed item: For completing and preparing for publication the contributions to North American ethnology, under the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, twenty thousand dollars: Provided, Provided, that all of the archives, records, and material relating to the Indians of North America, collected by the geographical and geological survey of the Rocky Mountains, shall be turned over to the Inst.i.tution, that the work may be completed and prepared for publication under its direction.... that all of the archives, records, and material relating to the Indians of North America, collected by the geographical and geological survey of the Rocky Mountains, shall be turned over to the Inst.i.tution, that the work may be completed and prepared for publication under its direction....

That changed the Powell Survey into the Bureau of Ethnology 10 10 and made it again an adjunct of the Smithsonian, out of the political wind. Pilling's question, "What will become of we poor ethnologists?" was answered while everyone was looking in another direction. There was no need for Major Powell to spoil his look of impeccable, though somewhat political, rect.i.tude by becoming a candidate for the directors.h.i.+p of the united surveys. Nevertheless, his refusal to enter the compet.i.tion did not mean that he intended to keep hands off. He threw his weight solidly behind Clarence King for the job; he took pains, from motives that were a peculiar mixture of personal dislike and concern for science and public probity, to denounce Hayden to Representative Garfield, to Atkins, and to President Hayes. He smoked out King's friends - Marsh, William Brewer, Hewitt, and others - to intercede with Hayes in King's behalf. He or his office clerks kept nudging scientific correspondents to work on their Senators to confirm if King were appointed. and made it again an adjunct of the Smithsonian, out of the political wind. Pilling's question, "What will become of we poor ethnologists?" was answered while everyone was looking in another direction. There was no need for Major Powell to spoil his look of impeccable, though somewhat political, rect.i.tude by becoming a candidate for the directors.h.i.+p of the united surveys. Nevertheless, his refusal to enter the compet.i.tion did not mean that he intended to keep hands off. He threw his weight solidly behind Clarence King for the job; he took pains, from motives that were a peculiar mixture of personal dislike and concern for science and public probity, to denounce Hayden to Representative Garfield, to Atkins, and to President Hayes. He smoked out King's friends - Marsh, William Brewer, Hewitt, and others - to intercede with Hayes in King's behalf. He or his office clerks kept nudging scientific correspondents to work on their Senators to confirm if King were appointed.11 King was nominated on March 20 and confirmed by the Senate, without incident, in April, 1879. The scientific battlers wiped their blades. King wrote Powell a letter of deep grat.i.tude for his support. "I am sure you will never regret your decision [presumably the decision to eliminate himself as a candidate] and for my part it will be one of my greatest pleasures to forward your scientific work and to advance your personal interest." 12 12 "The best and brightest man of his generation" was thus established at the head of the bureau whose potential for the future so stirred Henry Adams. "The best and brightest man of his generation" was thus established at the head of the bureau whose potential for the future so stirred Henry Adams.13 Lieutenant Wheeler was out, scheduled to go on disgruntledly attacking civilian surveys and chewing the bitter weed of the Powell-Hewitt coup for a good many years. Lieutenant Wheeler was out, scheduled to go on disgruntledly attacking civilian surveys and chewing the bitter weed of the Powell-Hewitt coup for a good many years.14 Hayden was down. To retain anything at all of what he had had he was forced to accept a position as a geologist under King, and that position he would fill in taciturn obscurity until failing health drove him to retirement shortly before his death in 1887. And Powell was snug in his Bureau of Ethnology, securely wedged between friends at the Smithsonian and friends in the United States Geological Survey. Consolidation itself could not have turned out better. In the struggle for public land law reform, the Gilpins had won, but they knew they had been in a fight. At the very least, system and organization in government science had benefited, and that could lead to other gains, as could the Public Lands Commission to which Powell, Thomas Donaldson, and Alexander Britton had been appointed to a.s.sist Clarence King and Commissioner Williamson of the General Land Office. There was no doubt at all that the report finally brought in by that group of men would echo the thesis and at least some of the proposals of the Arid Region report and the report of the National Academy. Hayden was down. To retain anything at all of what he had had he was forced to accept a position as a geologist under King, and that position he would fill in taciturn obscurity until failing health drove him to retirement shortly before his death in 1887. And Powell was snug in his Bureau of Ethnology, securely wedged between friends at the Smithsonian and friends in the United States Geological Survey. Consolidation itself could not have turned out better. In the struggle for public land law reform, the Gilpins had won, but they knew they had been in a fight. At the very least, system and organization in government science had benefited, and that could lead to other gains, as could the Public Lands Commission to which Powell, Thomas Donaldson, and Alexander Britton had been appointed to a.s.sist Clarence King and Commissioner Williamson of the General Land Office. There was no doubt at all that the report finally brought in by that group of men would echo the thesis and at least some of the proposals of the Arid Region report and the report of the National Academy.

It did, a year later, and it was acknowledged and ignored by the Public Lands Committee of Congress as Powell expected it would be.15 But it was on the record, and like a spore that lies around for years awaiting the chance to germinate, it might come to something in the future. It couldn't help doing so. The fat report compiled by Thomas Donaldson from the committee's investigations is a complex and not always statistically correct volume, but it was the first systematic study of the public domain and it has been indispensable to scholars and planners ever since. In a c.u.mbersome and inadequate way it represents the completion of Powell's plan for a comprehensive study of the public domain and its needs and laws and history. Like so many of his projects, he had had to delegate it instead of finis.h.i.+ng it himself. But it was on the record, and like a spore that lies around for years awaiting the chance to germinate, it might come to something in the future. It couldn't help doing so. The fat report compiled by Thomas Donaldson from the committee's investigations is a complex and not always statistically correct volume, but it was the first systematic study of the public domain and it has been indispensable to scholars and planners ever since. In a c.u.mbersome and inadequate way it represents the completion of Powell's plan for a comprehensive study of the public domain and its needs and laws and history. Like so many of his projects, he had had to delegate it instead of finis.h.i.+ng it himself.

But in the meantime it must have been some satisfaction to provide ideas for the nation's great men, and play politics for stakes vital to two fifths of the United States, and have the ear of Presidents. A self-taught Illinois schoolteacher could have done worse.

He stood, as a matter of fact, near the top of the scientific society in which he had chosen to conduct his life. Professor Hilgard of the Naval Observatory was already pus.h.i.+ng his nomina tion to the National Academy.16 He was an active member of the Philosophical Society of Was.h.i.+ngton which included practically every notable scientist in the capital. He had been once, briefly, a kind of national hero, and he had established a solid reputation as a geologist and ethnologist. On November 16, 1878, busy as usual in a dozen directions, energetically persuading Congressmen, directing research, pursuing his own studies, providing opinion for the National Academy, drawing up sample bills, trying to convert Western editors to his land policies, and circ.u.mventing Hayden's lobby, he had taken another step calculated to enhance and insure all his other activities and at the same time consolidate his gains. On that evening he invited over to his home on "M" Street a group of friends and colleagues that included Henry Adams, Dutton, Captain Garrick Mallery, Fred Endlich, James Kidder, and some others, and before they broke up they had organized the Cosmos Club - ever since that night the closest thing to a social headquarters for Was.h.i.+ngton's intellectual elite - and elected Powell its temporary president. He was an active member of the Philosophical Society of Was.h.i.+ngton which included practically every notable scientist in the capital. He had been once, briefly, a kind of national hero, and he had established a solid reputation as a geologist and ethnologist. On November 16, 1878, busy as usual in a dozen directions, energetically persuading Congressmen, directing research, pursuing his own studies, providing opinion for the National Academy, drawing up sample bills, trying to convert Western editors to his land policies, and circ.u.mventing Hayden's lobby, he had taken another step calculated to enhance and insure all his other activities and at the same time consolidate his gains. On that evening he invited over to his home on "M" Street a group of friends and colleagues that included Henry Adams, Dutton, Captain Garrick Mallery, Fred Endlich, James Kidder, and some others, and before they broke up they had organized the Cosmos Club - ever since that night the closest thing to a social headquarters for Was.h.i.+ngton's intellectual elite - and elected Powell its temporary president.17 Despite his innocent and non-political station as head of a bureau of the Smithsonian, he was already a man with power in his hands. Only a little more growth and two more years of extending his acquaintance and his influence would make him in fact the most powerfully situated scientist in America.

IV.

THE REVENUE OF NEW DISCOVERY.

1. The Best and Brightest Man of His Generation

BY 1879 CLARENCE KING had shown every sign of living up to the extravagant expectations of his mult.i.tude of friends. The qualities that had instantly captivated Henry Adams when the two met in a shack in Estes Park in the summer of 1871, that combination of "physical energy, social standing, mental scope and training, wit, geniality, and science, that seemed superlatively American and irresistibly strong,"1 had brought him very young to great prominence. His had brought him very young to great prominence. His Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada gave him a place with Bret Harte and Joaquin Miller as a founder of a California school of literature. His expose of the 1872 Diamond Swindle was a spectacular stroke of imagination and integrity. His Systematic Geology, the culminating volume in the reports of the King Survey which he had conceived and promoted when he was barely twenty-five, gave him entree into any scientific society. He had expensive tastes, glittering friends. Schurz and others in high places were his intimates; with Henry and Clover Adams and the John Hays he was one of the tight little group that called itself the Five of Hearts and made the most fascinating conversation that any American salon ever heard. King's conversation was proverbial, almost fabulous. He must have been one of the nimblest and most challenging talkers of his time, and in the Pacific Union Club of San Francisco or the Century Club in New York he drew hearers as light draws moths. gave him a place with Bret Harte and Joaquin Miller as a founder of a California school of literature. His expose of the 1872 Diamond Swindle was a spectacular stroke of imagination and integrity. His Systematic Geology, the culminating volume in the reports of the King Survey which he had conceived and promoted when he was barely twenty-five, gave him entree into any scientific society. He had expensive tastes, glittering friends. Schurz and others in high places were his intimates; with Henry and Clover Adams and the John Hays he was one of the tight little group that called itself the Five of Hearts and made the most fascinating conversation that any American salon ever heard. King's conversation was proverbial, almost fabulous. He must have been one of the nimblest and most challenging talkers of his time, and in the Pacific Union Club of San Francisco or the Century Club in New York he drew hearers as light draws moths.2 "He knew more than Adams did of art and poetry; he knew America, especially west of the hundredth meridian, better than anyone; he knew the professor by heart, and he knew the Congressman better than he did the professor. He knew even women; even the American woman; even the New York woman, which is saying much. Incidentally he knew more practical geology than was good for him.... He had in him something of the Greek - a touch of Alcibiades or Alexander. One Clarence King only existed in the world." 3 3 So much for the man. As for the job, the consolidated survey now inherited by this paragon was thought by Abram Hewitt the solidest accomplishment of his twelve years in Congress - and Hewitt was considered by Adams the "most useful public man in Was.h.i.+ngton." 4 4 The possibilities were stimulating, the director fantastically able. Yet at the very beginning King ran into ambiguities in the organic law, which was a last-minute compromise written in as an amendment to an appropriation bill and so loosely phrased that no one could be sure either of the director's duties or the scope of the survey's activities. The law discontinued the existing surveys and made an appropriation of $100,000 for the new one, directing that all its collections go to the National Museum. It further said that the director, at a salary of $6000, should "have the direction of the Geological Survey, and the cla.s.sification of the public lands, and examination of the geological structure, mineral resources, and products of the national domain. And that the Director and members of the Geological Survey shall have no personal or private interests in the lands or mineral wealth of the region under survey, and shall execute no surveys or examinations for private parties or corporations." 5 5 And that was all. And that was all.

Very early in his administration King consulted with the Appropriations Committee and with Schurz in an attempt to discover what the law meant by the term "national domain." 6 6 Upon their definition depended the whole scope of the survey, for if "national domain" meant "public lands," (as Schurz shortly and rather absurdly ruled that it did) then no real survey of mineral resources was possible. All working mines were on private or corporate land, as were many, undeveloped mineral veins. Only if "national domain" could be interpreted as meaning the whole area of national sovereignty could these be examined. Upon their definition depended the whole scope of the survey, for if "national domain" meant "public lands," (as Schurz shortly and rather absurdly ruled that it did) then no real survey of mineral resources was possible. All working mines were on private or corporate land, as were many, undeveloped mineral veins. Only if "national domain" could be interpreted as meaning the whole area of national sovereignty could these be examined.

Also, what sort of cla.s.sification of the public lands did Congress have in mind? Did it want a careful scientific examination based upon accurate - and slow and expensive - topographical and hydrographic and geological surveys, or did it want merely a quick rule-of-thumb cla.s.sification for the use of the General Land Office? And if it wanted this latter, how about the fact that up to now the General Land Office had always made that rough cla.s.sification for itself?

The uncomfortable fact was that the organic law of the Geological Survey contained unrelated leftovers from Powell's campaign for a reform of public land policies, and the leftovers now embarra.s.sed King. Powell was himself unable to unsnarl the practical difficulties. The Public Lands Commission of which he was the dominant member finished its deliberations in the spring of 1880, and it had to conclude that no bureau, either the Geological Survey or the General Land Office, could accurately cla.s.sify the public lands in advance of sale without temporarily halting the spread of settlement. It was a dilemma Powell would face later in connection with his irrigation surveys: planning for a completely empty public domain would have been simple enough, but planning for a public domain already planlessly, wastefully, and compet.i.tively filling up was another matter. King, a.s.suming that Congress had not contemplated the closing of the public domain while he cla.s.sified its lands, and seeing that his appropriation was nowhere near large enough for that sort of cla.s.sification anyway, simply accepted that aspect of his stated duties, and then ignored it in practice.7 Restriction of his geological work to the public lands was more hampering, for a national survey whose field of work was steadily shrinking as settlement spread, and whose preparation of maps and tracing of geological strata and mineral veins were constantly being stopped at uncrossable boundary lines, would be completely frustrated. Mineral surveys would be most impeded, and minerals were precisely the thing King was most interested in. Though he might give up the cla.s.sification of the public lands, he could not give up on this other issue. Immediately he stimulated the introduction of a resolution authorizing the extension of survey activities to the states as well as the "national domain" as interpreted by Schurz.8 He pushed that resolution hard, but it ran into opposition and died in committee. During the recess he maneuvered for its consideration, and when Congress re-convened he pushed it again with Chairman H. G. Davis of the Appropriations Committee. To forestall local jealousies and fears, he sent telegrams in February, 1880, to the directors of all the extant state geological surveys, a.s.suring them that he had no intention of infringing their rights and territories and promising his fullest co-operation with their work. He pushed that resolution hard, but it ran into opposition and died in committee. During the recess he maneuvered for its consideration, and when Congress re-convened he pushed it again with Chairman H. G. Davis of the Appropriations Committee. To forestall local jealousies and fears, he sent telegrams in February, 1880, to the directors of all the extant state geological surveys, a.s.suring them that he had no intention of infringing their rights and territories and promising his fullest co-operation with their work.9 His a.s.surances were not enough, and King's personal charm was not enough. Throughout his brief administration the Geological Survey was restricted to the public lands. Even if King had been in the best of health and had remained completely absorbed in his job it is doubtful that he could have pushed the resolution through. And actually he was neither healthy nor absorbed. During the summer of 1880 there were two ominous symptoms of what was in store for the best and brightest man of his generation. One was a bout of illness, prophetic of the breakdown that some years later would put him into the Bloomingdale asylum. The other was an increasing tendency to give only the minimum of time to the affairs of the Geological Survey, and in his off weeks to go whoring after Mexican gold mines. In a few months they would lure him completely out of the government service.

King's friends all believed, and wrote it voluminously into the record, that he left the Geological Survey to devote himself to personal scientific studies. They could have seen by his production and by his actions that he didn't. His scientific work after 1880 is negligible, even trivial, and his days and nights after he retired from the survey were obviously not spent over scientific books. He quit the Geological Survey because he frankly wanted to be rich. The six thousand dollars he received as salary was a contemptible fraction of his money needs. He had relatives to support and his own tastes were extravagant. He maintained a valet, he belonged to expensive clubs, he collected art objects, his bachelor habits ran strongly to expensive suppers and champagne. By 1880 his personal indulgences were a more compelling motive than his love for abstract science.

He took leave from the Geological Survey in September, 1880, to go west and recover from his illness. When he felt himself well again, in Arizona, he wrote for further leave and used it for a trip by muleback into Sonora to examine a mine - a thing his government position prevented him from doing in the States. He did more than inspect it: he liked its looks so well that he exerted his charm on owners and public officials in Hermosillo and convinced them that he was just the man, as actually he was, to import modem methods and turn the property into a big money-maker. Returning to New York in February, 1881, after more than five months' absence from his office, he paid little attention to the office. In his pocket he had authorization to promote and develop and modernize the Prietas mine, and during the next few weeks when he might have been fighting the Survey's battles in Congress he was out on other business half the time. Much of the time while his clerk McChesney sent shotgun telegrams to a half dozen people trying to locate the boss, King was in a close huddle with Alexander Aga.s.siz, already rich on Lake Superior copper, and his brother-in-law Henry Lee Higginson, whom Boston would remember as the founder of the Boston Symphony and the donor of Soldiers' Field and the Harvard Union.

Both Aga.s.siz and Higginson were as open to a good investment as they were to a sound benefaction, and they were no more immune than other men to King's persuasiveness. The Grand Central Mining Company had already been formed with the three as partners when King sent his resignation to President Garfield on March 11, 1881. On March 17 Mrs. Henry Adams wrote her father, "King went away for good on Monday, to our extreme regret, having got out of office, named and seen confirmed his successor, Powell of Illinois, in whom he has great confidence. He did it so noiselessly that Professor Hayden, who would have done his best to upset it, knew nothing of it till it was done." 10 10 One may be permitted a small doubt about how much persuasion King had to use on Garfield to get Powell named in his place. Garfield, just inaugurated, had been a Powell supporter since 1868, had carried through Congress the bill granting Powell's party the right to draw supplies from army posts, had backed him in the investigations of 1874 and supported his consolidation and land-reform scheme in 1879. He had even got a favor in return, when Powell loaned him his young secretary, Joseph Stanley-Brown, in 1878. When Powell's name came before the new President in 1881, Stanley-Brown was Garfield's confidential secretary, and in a little while would be his son-in-law. Through Stanley-Brown, through years of personal friends.h.i.+p, through Garfield's position as a regent of the Smithsonian, Powell was closer to Garfield than to any President under whom he served in more than thirty years. Actually he was a good deal closer than King was. And Garfield himself told the National Academy shortly after the change that he consulted only one man about a successor to King. The man was not King, but Spencer Baird, Secretary of the Smithsonian, who recommended Powell. The discrepancy between the two stories Would be frivolous if it were not a symptomatic revelation of how King's friends, and perhaps King himself, exaggerated his influence and effect.

Overpraised or not, Clarence King in the spring of 1881 left science and began a period of fabulous money-making, fabulous eating and drinking, fabulous coursing of Europe's artistic capitals, fabulous and quixotic benefactions, fabulous and nearly criminal carelessness in the conduct of his firm's London office. "The chances were great," Henry Adams had felt in the early days of their friends.h.i.+p, "that he could, whenever he chose to quit the Government service, take the pick of the gold and silver, copper or coal, and build up his fortune as he pleased.... With ordinary luck he would die at eighty the richest and most many-sided genius of his day." 11 11 He looked to be well on the road. And he left to Powell his infant bureau, hamstrung on the problem of land cla.s.sification and imprisoned within the public lands, a bureau with a small staff and a hundred-thousand-dollar budget and with the unknowns of half the continent for its targets.

Powell already had in hand another bureau that might have been considered sufficient occupation. Though its 1881 budget was only $25,000, it took for its province the whole Science of Man as it was revealed among the North American Indians. Four years before, Henry Adams, had urged such an organized study upon Lewis Morgan as an indispensable foundation for the modern study of history,12 and Morgan's preface to his monumental Ancient Society in 1877 had echoed Adams' conviction that American ethnology was destined to make over the fas.h.i.+onable theories of history. and Morgan's preface to his monumental Ancient Society in 1877 had echoed Adams' conviction that American ethnology was destined to make over the fas.h.i.+onable theories of history.

Powell, Morgan, and Adams would all be involved in that making over, Adams not the least. A pa.s.senger visiting the engine room of American society, curiously watching the thrust and stroke of pistons and drivers, Adams saw more, and saw it more acutely, than any of his contemporaries. He was one of the few non-scientists who understood the importance and the implications of the developing scientific bureaus in Was.h.i.+ngton. As a historian who read "tubs of geology" because geology was after all only history carried a little farther back than Mr. Jefferson, he could appraise the effect on thought of the revolutionary discoveries in American geology and the study of the rich tribal cultures of America. That sort of study he might have selected for Morgan, the most eminent anthropologist in the country, or for his friends Aga.s.siz or King, superbly equipped and with the wealth and social standing that made them better companions at dinner.

But who in fact undertook it was a one-armed little man with a bristly beard, a homemade education, and an intense concentration of purpose. When he a.s.sumed the joint directors.h.i.+p of the two bureaus he had created, Powell had in his control a good part of the Science of Man and the Science of the Earth, and he conceived both in the broadest possible terms. In most things he was quite as clearsighted as Adams; in some he saw even clearer. Both anthropology and geology were, as he put it, "nascent." Both stood in need of what he was best equipped to give them - system - and system not imposed arbitrarily from without but system developed during years of hard work in the field and the office. Not only could he see more of the possibilities of his government bureaus than King could but he wanted both these jobs, his life was in them. He was incorrigibly sane, and he was also as shrewd as any opposition he was likely to encounter. He understood the Congressman, it turned out, better than King, better perhaps than Adams, who understood that "criminal cla.s.s" to its foundations. And he had no ambition to get rich. If he had any single ambition it was the remarkable one of being of service to science, and through science to mankind.

In his dozen years in Was.h.i.+ngton he had grown incomparably more skillful and confident in promotion, direction, administration. By now he knew an amateur from a professional, and though he might still practice a little amiable nepotism he never put anyone but a man of the highest competence in a responsible position. He chose his men for ability and training, and his hands were on the levers of some of the most important, though not necessarily the noisiest, machinery in the engine room. Also, somewhere along the line the youthful vanity and self-importance had worn off. A scientific public hero had grown into a scientific public servant.

He was supremely and cheerfully confident. In the National Academy, the Philosophical Society, the a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science, the Cosmos Club, he moved at the core of the group which was itself the core of American science. In his two bureaus he could enlist the collaboration of the greatest, he was in correspondence with scientists the world over, and he controlled several series of enviably lavish government publications. Finally, he was blissfully, almost alarmingly free of Congressional controls. The Bureau of Ethnology was responsible only to the Smithsonian. The Geological Survey, having been created in an appropriation bill, drew a lump-sum budget without specific and detailed expenditures. Powell could spend his appropriation as seemed best to him, subject only to Treasury audit.

Thus at the beginning of the eighteen-eighties the three men whose careers inevitably suggest comparisons and contrasts to a student of history had each made his characteristic move. By 1880 Henry Adams had published his novel Democracy, Democracy, though its authors.h.i.+p would not be commonly known until Henry Holt, the publisher, revealed it in 1918. That novel, good humored as it was, sprang from Adams' disillusion and disgust with the country that his family had helped start on a more promising path. The cynicism and the outrageous exaggeration and paradox would grow on Adams, but they were already clear in his first anonymous novel. By 1880 Henry Adams was already on the verge of retreat from the spectacle of his country. As for Clarence King, he was already turning away from the public service at the time when he might have done most in it, and shoving off into the current of exploitation and promotion that swept along so many of his contemporaries. He was not, like Adams, hopeless and cynical. On the contrary he was a man of an extraordinary and ebullient optimism. But his hope was a hope of private wealth and personal indulgence, sadly in key with the self-interest that drove the politicians and the tyc.o.o.ns. though its authors.h.i.+p would not be commonly known until Henry Holt, the publisher, revealed it in 1918. That novel, good humored as it was, sprang from Adams' disillusion and disgust with the country that his family had helped start on a more promising path. The cynicism and the outrageous exaggeration and paradox would grow on Adams, but they were already clear in his first anonymous novel. By 1880 Henry Adams was already on the verge of retreat from the spectacle of his country. As for Clarence King, he was already turning away from the public service at the time when he might have done most in it, and shoving off into the current of exploitation and promotion that swept along so many of his contemporaries. He was not, like Adams, hopeless and cynical. On the contrary he was a man of an extraordinary and ebullient optimism. But his hope was a hope of private wealth and personal indulgence, sadly in key with the self-interest that drove the politicians and the tyc.o.o.ns.

And while Adams was dipping his pen in acid to record the bazaar along Pennsylvania Avenue, and Clarence King was hopping on his mule to track down a Mexican gold mine, John Wesley Powell was sitting down in a shabby hand-me-down office to organize the sciences of the earth and the Science of Man.

A decade later he would have more sweeping powers, for a brief time and in certain matters, than any man in the nation, not excepting the President. But even in 1881 there was perhaps not a scientist in the world who enjoyed as much real power or as many opportunities.

2. Adding the Stone Age to History

WHEN IN THE EIGHTEEN-NINETIES Powell attempted to summarize what he had learned in sixty years of intense receptivity to knowledge, he divided the grand Science of Man into five smaller "sciences." The fifth of these he called "Sophiology" 1 1- a term that like many of his coinages has not caught on. Under it he grouped all the speculations that men have made in the attempt to understand or explain phenomena, everything from the most primitive animism to experimental science. And of the thousand methods the tribes of men had discovered, only science was verifiable; the rest was mythology; to modern science all human history funneled down. From thaumaturgy to research was not merely a progress, but a triumph. The method at least was final. Through it, phenomena could be indefinitely studied and the results verified, whether the phenomena concerned the natural world or the very superst.i.tions and metaphysical systems and magics that science had replaced.

Primitive cosmologies and mythologies, Powell said, persisted in more advanced stages of society in the same way that vestigial organs persisted in the body. Evolution worked upon inst.i.tutions as it worked upon the physical organism, but it worked irregularly and slowly. "More people believe in mascots than believe in telephones, and those who believe in mascots believe that telephones are magical." The mythological and magical beliefs of recorded history, plus their folklore survivals, could be directly compared with the similar mythologies of the American Indian tribes, as Lewis Morgan had compared tribal kins.h.i.+p patterns with kins.h.i.+p patterns the world over, and the comparative study could shed, for the first time, real light on the development of civilization.

For Powell, though he adopted Morgan's savage-barbarous-civilized stages of society and accepted without revision Morgan's theory of the kins.h.i.+p basis for savage inst.i.tutions,2 social evolution was not quite the even stairway that Morgan and some European anthropologists would have it. The diversity of culture among the American Indians made rigid systematization difficult. But there was a human progress, nevertheless, a series of bench marks that Morgan had defined. The lowest level, savagery, built its inst.i.tutions on a system of kins.h.i.+p traced' through the female line. Children belonged to the clan of the mother; husbands were mere visitors in the wife's clan. Property was of the clan, not of the individual; on the individual's death any strictly personal property was normally buried with its owner or destroyed. Marriage within the clan was taboo; religion was ordinarily a zootheistic adjunct of the clan system, each clan having its tutelary animal deity. Roughly, this was the pattern of Indian tribal society as. - Morgan had unearthed it in his study of the League of the Iroquois, and of many other tribes. The tribes were not "nations," and they were not made up of "families," and the notion of owning land individually was as repugnant to most of them as the notion of owning the air. Inheritance in white patterns was impossible, our treaties with the Indian "nations" absurd: few tribes numbered more than a few hundred souls, though confederacies sometimes brought together a few thousand. social evolution was not quite the even stairway that Morgan and some European anthropologists would have it. The diversity of culture among the American Indians made rigid systematization difficult. But there was a human progress, nevertheless, a series of bench marks that Morgan had defined. The lowest level, savagery, built its inst.i.tutions on a system of kins.h.i.+p traced' through the female line. Children belonged to the clan of the mother; husbands were mere visitors in the wife's clan. Property was of the clan, not of the individual; on the individual's death any strictly personal property was normally buried with its owner or destroyed. Marriage within the clan was taboo; religion was ordinarily a zootheistic adjunct of the clan system, each clan having its tutelary animal deity. Roughly, this was the pattern of Indian tribal society as. - Morgan had unearthed it in his study of the League of the Iroquois, and of many other tribes. The tribes were not "nations," and they were not made up of "families," and the notion of owning land individually was as repugnant to most of them as the notion of owning the air. Inheritance in white patterns was impossible, our treaties with the Indian "nations" absurd: few tribes numbered more than a few hundred souls, though confederacies sometimes brought together a few thousand.

Morgan's discovery of some of the true bases of savage society was rich in consequences, one of which was the decision of the United States in the seventies to stop treating with tribal chiefs as if they were kings of petty nations, and to quit drawing up treaties that neither side was capable of abiding by. Other consequences were of the kind Henry Adams envisaged, the kind that would force the reconsideration of historical beliefs. It is no accident that Marx and Engels found in Morgan's work scientific, support for the materialistic view of history, and that to some Marxist believers even today Morgan stands very little below Marx as a philosopher of ineluctable social change.3 His work led directly toward the notion of an evolved and perfect state, for above the savagery of the Indian tribes he saw a middle stage of culture which he called barbarism, and which was best exemplified by the patriarchal herdsman society of the Old Testament. In this stage, agriculture had been developed, animals domesticated, property diverted from communal to personal use. Morgan drew the dividing line between savagery and barbarism at the development of pottery, Tyler at the development of tillage. Powell, regularizing Morgan's system, made it at the line where kins.h.i.+p in the female line gave way to kins.h.i.+p through the male, when the clan was replaced by the gens.4 The difference is small, for one cultural change was the logical consequence of the others. In barbarism, thaumaturgy and its shamans or priests still colored every phase of life, but as in savagery, civil and religious authority were separate. By the "civilized" stage of society, feudal or monarchical inst.i.tutions made their appearance: serfdom, guilds, caste, sometimes slavery. Civil and religious authority tended to coalesce, shaman and chief fused, and all the inst.i.tutions of private property emerged full blown. The difference is small, for one cultural change was the logical consequence of the others. In barbarism, thaumaturgy and its shamans or priests still colored every phase of life, but as in savagery, civil and religious authority were separate. By the "civilized" stage of society, feudal or monarchical inst.i.tutions made their appearance: serfdom, guilds, caste, sometimes slavery. Civil and religious authority tended to coalesce, shaman and chief fused, and all the inst.i.tutions of private property emerged full blown.

It is easy to see why Morgan's theories appealed to Marx and Engels. They made private property an ephemeral incident in human history, they challenged the notion that any inst.i.tution was either sacred or permanent, most of all they a.s.sumed a world-wide, verifiable, and inevitable progress from stage to stage of human society. Neither Morgan's theories nor Powell's slight modifications of them are unusual in their time. Not only Marx and Engels but Herbert Spencer and Lester Ward and a host of lesser thinkers were moving on roughly parallel tracks. But it is interesting to note where Powell, at least, diverges from the inevitabilities of Marx, for though he accepts at every point the evolutionary view of history, he does not sound like a materialist all the way.

Beyond the monarchical stage of civilization Powell saw "Republickism" - another of his mildly hideous coinages - in which the chief sanctions of power were not magic, not kins.h.i.+p, not raw force, not property, but ethics and conscience. At that level representative government and social and political equality replaced divine right and caste. Society was organized in nations, on a territorial basis, rather than by caste or gens or clan. Civitas replaced Societas. Somewhere in that s.h.i.+ning future when Republickism would be attained by all the world, there would be a responsible delegation of powers to elected or appointed representatives. That is, Powell's utopian last stage of social evolution looked very like a vacuum-cleaned Illinois. To republican inst.i.tutions, to Science, to responsibility and the social conscience, all the world must ultimately come.

Henry Adams would have smiled, but there have been worse dreams. Clarence King in a characteristic joke spoke of the development of society from savagery through barbarism to vulgarity, but cynicism was easier to a King or a Henry Adams than to a man bred on the midwestern frontier. Confronted with the dilemma of evolutionary thought, Powell chose the hopeful horn. In 1882, in a lecture on Darwin, he showed himself not merely undismayed but serenely confident: "Had philosophers discovered that the generation of living beings were degenerating they would have discovered despair. Had they discovered that life moves by steps of generations in endless circles - that what has been is, and what is shall be, and there is no progress, the gift of science to man would have been worthless.... The revelation of science is this: Every generation in life is a step in progress to a higher and fuller life; science has discovered hope." 5 5 Man was no mere organism at the mercy of forces, as naturalist novelists had already begun to hint. Powell could cite Huxley in corroboration of his belief that man was in fact no longer subject to biotic evolution, but had acquired through intelligence the power to hold his own physical characteristics and to mold his environment to his desires. Evolutionary science as Powell interpreted it denied any and all theories of human degeneration from a perfect state. It repudiated alike the myth of the Garden and the Fall, the iron rigidity of Calvinism, the sentimental nostalgia for an olden and perfect time with which Arcadian poets and idealist philosophers had endowed the idea, and even the modernized version that Henry Adams, also reinterpreting history, would eventually issue as his historical application of the second law of thermodynamics.

For Powell the road led up toward Perfection, not down from it. Even his conception of the origin of language, which postulated many simultaneous or parallel discoveries of the arts of speech in many parts of the world, and their gradual concentration toward fewer and simpler and better languages, was opposed to the view which thought of diversity as a curse visited upon the sinful at Babel, or as the disintegration of some parent Indo-European or other complex and perfect tongue.6 The world worked toward unity, toward co-operation, toward "Republickism," toward ethics and conscience and representative government, toward greater and greater cultural amalgamation, toward the final triumph of science. Gabriel has spoken of Powell as "the high priest of science" in the eighties. The world worked toward unity, toward co-operation, toward "Republickism," toward ethics and conscience and representative government, toward greater and greater cultural amalgamation, toward the final triumph of science. Gabriel has spoken of Powell as "the high priest of science" in the eighties.7 Major Powell would not have liked the label, for it linked science and thaumaturgy. Thaumaturgy and its priesthoods were vestigial; science was climactic. Major Powell would not have liked the label, for it linked science and thaumaturgy. Thaumaturgy and its priesthoods were vestigial; science was climactic.

The will to discover all the possible means by which human aspiration and belief and custom had been inst.i.tutionalized, and the conviction that every variant could be placed somewhere on an evolutionary stairway, gave direction and system to Major Powell's work in ethnology. Looking abroad from the vantage point of American industrial civilization he could include in his view the whole instructive spread of the American tribal cultures clear down to the level of a half housed, half clothed, half human, scatophagic tribe like the Seris of Lower California. The savage and the barbarous were there in many phases; their study could indeed, as Henry Adams had said to Lewis Morgan, profoundly alter the traditional views of human history.

When he eased into the directors.h.i.+p of the Bureau of Ethnology in the spring of 1879, Powell was in the best position in the world to direct a battery of scientific intelligences upon the origins and evolution of language, the forms and styles of Amerind art, the glacially slow growth of social and political and religious inst.i.tutions within tribal cultures. Through study of these savage cultures he might throw light on the history of human culture at large. He could also help determine the pre-Columbian equilibrium of the continent and the impact of white upon red, mercantile and industrial upon neolithic.

The opportunity was not only unparalleled in that it gave him the chance to centralize in one bureau all the scattered, undirected, overlapping, and often amateur work being done on the Indians, but it was fleeting. For some things, 1879 was already too late.

One of the most obvious facts of history to the white Americans who by discovery, e