NATIONAL ACADEMY BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS VOL. VIII 



taking leave of them; his resignation, to take effect June 30, 

 1894, had been announced some months before. The burden 

 of his work had grown, and its difficulties had been aggra- 

 V vated by antagonism; his poor health did not allow him to 

 suffer the irritation of conflicts ; his withdrawal from the Sur- 

 vey was made "necessary by painful disability," and he de- 

 voted himself thenceforward to the simpler duties' of the Bu- 

 / reau f Ethnology, of which he continued to be the chief. 



Powell's administration of the Survey was extraordinary in 

 many respects. He was a strong, independent, and aggressive 

 leader, as was to be expected in view of his freely expressed 

 indifference to traditions and conventionalities. He was truly 

 a director by nature, and so confident of his power that he 

 never hesitated to appoint able men as his subordinates. His 

 authority was maintained without resort to the formalities of 

 rank; indeed, he replaced with a jovial comradeship the lofty 

 inaccessibility not unknown in some official bureaus, American 

 as well as European. He had a keen sense of justice. I well 

 remember the outburst of indignation with which he replied 

 at a scientific meeting to a speaker who had referred unfairly 

 to the work of an absent colleague. He felt a warm personal 

 interest in the work of his associates ; more than one junior has 

 felt the cheer of his sympathetic appreciation. He attached 

 the members of the Survey to its service and secured their de- 

 voted and loyal support because he was helpful, trustful, and 

 encouraging to them when he was convinced that he had good 

 grounds for being so. He felt a personal solicitude for the 

 future of the workers in the Survey that outlasted his director- 

 ship. Withdrawal from office under a sense of disappointment 

 was a sad ending to the vast work of creation and organiza- 

 tion that Powell had guided almost from its beginning ; but he 

 had at least in the decade that followed the satisfaction of see- 

 ing the return of the Survey to a period of growth and pros- 

 perity under the direction of his successor, who had long been 

 associated with him and to whom at the end of a difficult piece 

 of work ten years earlier he had said the older man putting 

 his one arm around the younger "My boy, you have done 

 well ; I hope you will stay with us." 



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