VI. THE PROMOTER OF RESEARCH. 



r I A HE preceding chapter outlines the results of Powell's personal 

 X investigations as they appear in his published writings. The 

 story would be but half told if no mention were made of the results 

 of his labors as the administrator of scientific trusts. The investi- 

 gator is apt to be a specialist, concentrating his attention on a 

 single subject to the practical exclusion of all others, and by that 

 specialisation incapacitated for executive work. Powell, however, 

 was eminently a man of affairs. Whether his generalisations and 

 theories were sound and true is a question that may be left to 

 the verdict of posterity, but his contemporaries recognised and 

 declared his eminent ability as an organiser and administrator of 

 scientific work. A multitude of minor responsibilities may be here 

 neglected, but four important trusts must be mentioned, each in- 

 volving either the direction or the practical guidance of a body of 

 scientific work. The Survey of the Colorado River, which ex- 

 panded from 1872 to 1879 into the Survey of the Rocky Mountain 

 Region, gradually developed three corps of scientific assistants a 

 corps of topographers, a corps of geologists, and a corps of eth- 

 nologists. The ethnologic work, although but slightly endowed, 

 grew to such importance that in one of the later years of the Survey 

 Professor Henry, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, placed 

 at Powell's disposal the accumulated ethnographic material in the 

 archives of the Smithsonian and gave him direction of all ethno- 

 graphic work carried on in cooperation with the Institution. 



When the surveys were reorganised in 1879 the ethnologic 

 work was continued by the constitution of a Bureau of Ethnology, 

 and Powell has been continuously the Director of that Bureau. 

 The Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region published four quarto 

 volumes entitled Contributions to North American Ethnology, and its 

 successor has printed nineteen thick annual reports, four quarto 

 monographs, and twenty-five bulletins. 



