396 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



for the position of director of the survey, and was himself placed 

 upon the commission on the codification of existing laws relating to 

 the survey and disposition of the public domain. 



The labors of this commission concluded, Professor Powell was 

 glad to be able to turn his attention once more to science. The 

 one field which now most deeply interested him was that of Amer- 

 ican ethnology. From the very beginning of his Western explora- 

 tions, the aborigines had strongly engrossed his thoughts, and among 

 all his scientific collections and investigations which he had been 

 enabled to make none had received more careful attention than those 

 relating to the Indian tribes. While the other surveys had devoted 

 much attention to the collection, study, and illustration of the vari- 

 ous departments of natural history, he had made ethnography, next 

 to geology and topography, the chief object of his expeditions. Prior 

 to the date of the consolidation, three volumes relating to ethnology 

 had been published by the Powell Survey, and eight more were in 

 different states of preparation, while in addition to this the mate- 

 rial collected and deposited in the Anthropological Hall of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution was sufficient for several other volumes, and de- 

 manded elaboration. The study of Indian languages had especially 

 interested him, for he saw that, whatever success might be attained 

 in preserving the ludians themselves from extermination, the fate 

 of their languages was already settled, and in a short time the primi- 

 tive stocks would have inevitably become so badly corrupted that 

 the philologist would find it impossible to deal with them in a scien- 

 tific manner. 



Efforts were made by the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 

 and the Secretary of the Interior to prevent the discontinuance of this 

 work, and an appropriation of twenty thousand dollars was secured in 

 March, 1879, for completing and preparing for publication the " Con- 

 tributions to North American Ethnology," under the Smithsonian In- 

 stitution, with a provision that all the material collected in the surveys 

 that bore on that subject should be turned over to that institution. 



Professor Powell was put in charge of this department, and has 

 prosecuted it with great vigor and success to the present time. A 

 Bureau of Ethnology grew up under the Smithsonian Institution, 

 which has become the recognized center of ethnographic operations in 

 this country. 



When, in the spring of 1881, Mr. Clarence King retired from the 

 work of the surveys, there seemed to be no rival candidate to Professor 

 Powell for the vacant position, and it fell to him as the most obvi- 

 ously suitable person to fill it. 



Without mentioning particularly the numerous official reports into 

 which important scientific matters have often found their way, the 

 principal literary contributions of Professor Powell are the following : 



1. " History of the Exploration of the Canons of the Colorado." 



