NATIONAL ACADEMY BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS VOL. VIII 



He returned to Colorado with another party in the summer of 

 1868, this time with aid from certain colleges in Illinois, and 

 from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, and again 

 with authority for getting provisions from military posts. He 

 passed the summer in the region of Middle Park. The follow- 

 ing winter, Mrs. Powell still being in the party, was spent in 

 camp in the valley of White River, a branch of Green River, in 

 western Colorado and eastern Utah. From this camp Powell 

 made excursions to the Grand, Green, and Yampa Rivers, 

 while thereabouts he made his first studies of Indian tribes and 

 became an ethnologist. There is no indication that he had had 

 earlier training in ethnology, and it may well be believed that it 

 was as largely his warm sympathy as his keen inquiry that led 

 him to eminent success in this field; but the more immediate 

 result of this summer and winter, regarding which no report 

 was published, was his plan for the exploration of the Green- 

 Colorado River by following its course in boats. Perhaps his 

 previous experience on the placid rivers of the prairies led to 

 this adventurous project on a torrential river deeply inclosed 

 in unknown canyons. 



EXPLORATION OF THE COLORADO CANYON.. 



It was truly a daring project. Professor Brewer, of Yale, 

 wrote of it some years later* in effect as follows: Being in 

 Colorado while Powell was making his trip down the river, I 

 was intensely anxious as to his fate, for I thought his project 

 a mad scheme. . . . The river has an average fall of. ten 

 or fifteen feet per mile, and I had assumed that there must be 

 great falls, and that the explorer must approach them from 

 above. On telling Powell of this some years later, he an- 

 swered in substance : "Have you never seen the river ? It' is 

 the muddiest river you ever saw. Rapids I expected of course, 

 but not falls. I was convinced that the canyon was old enough 

 and the muddy water swift enough and gritty enough to have 

 worn down all falls to mere rapids. I entered the canyon with 

 confidence that I would have no high falls to stop us,. although 

 there might be bad rapids, and I believed that we might over- 



*Amer. Journ. Science, XIV, 1902, p. 381. 



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