JOHN WESLEY POWKLL DAVIS 



was learned a year later by Jacob Hamblin, a Mormon mis- 

 sionary among the Indians, who spoke their language well and 

 had great influence among them, and who was with Powell's 

 party in the summer of 1870 on the plateau north of the can- 

 yon, not far from the point where the three men had ascended_ 

 from the river the year before. "They came upon the Indian 

 village almost starved and exhausted with fatigue. They were 

 supplied with food and put on their way to the settlements. 

 Shortly after they had left, an Indian from the east side of the 

 Colorado arrived at the villagfe and told them about a number 

 of miners having killed a squaw in a drunken brawl, and no 

 doubt these were the men. No person had ever come down 

 the canyon ; that was impossible ; they were trying to hide their 

 guilt. ... In this way he worked them into a great rage. 

 They followed, surrounded the men in ambush and filled them 

 full of arrows." Powell's comment on this pitiful story con- 

 tains not a thought of revenge or even of punishment ; he real- 

 ized that primitive and advanced men do not think alike and 

 he respected the Indians' idea of justice. "That night I slept 

 in peace, although these murderers of my men, and their 

 friends, the U-in-ka-rets, were sleeping not five hundred yards 

 away. While we were gone to the canon, the pack-train and 

 supplies, enough to make an Indian rich beyond his wildest 

 dreams, were all left in their charge and were all safe; not 

 even a lump of sugar was pilfered by the children" (Colorado 

 River, 130, 13 i)-\ Some years later Powell explicitly stated 

 his creed in thislnatter : "When I stand before the sacred fire 

 in an Indian village and listen to the red man's philosophy, no 

 anger stirs my blood. I love him as one of my kind" (Philo- 

 sophical Bearings of Darwinism, Washington, 1882, p. 12). 

 ! Powell's interest in Indian customs and languages was at 

 first combined with some attention to problems in the practical 

 administration of Indian affairs ; he was appointed by Congress 

 in 1872 (?) a commissioner to examine the condition of cer- 

 tain tribes in the Far West, and his report, made jointly with 

 G. W. Ingalls, was his first ethnological publication (1874). 

 It was at this time that he discussed the "causes and remedies" 

 for the inevitable conflict that arises from the spread of civil- 

 ization over a region previously inhabited by savages ;" but in 



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