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[Reprinted from the AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 20, No. 4, Oct.-Dec., 1918. ] 
MEMORIAL TO JOHN WESLEY POWELL 
By FREDERICK S. DELLENBAUGH ,; 
FTER four years in the Civil War, Major John Wesley Powell, 
minus his right forearm, which remained on the field of 
Shiloh, turned again to science and while geologizing in 
1867 in Middle Park, Colorado, conceived the idea of exploring 
the thousand miles of profound canyons through which the Green- 
Colorado river tumbled down some five thousand feet in lonely 
fury from the peaks of the Wind River mountains of Wyoming 
towards the sea. 
Around the hunter’s camps of the Far West for years circulated 
wild stories of gloomy subterranean passages where the Colorado 
disappeared from the light of day, and tore on its tumultuous 
course, and no man lived who could of his own knowledge, contro- 
vert them, nor yet the companion tales of mighty falls from whose 
grasp there was no escape. 
Major Powell formed his own opinion of these yarns and he 
resolved to act on his belief. From Green River station, Wyoming, 
therefore, on May 24, 1869, he started down the river with four 
small boats manned by resolute frontiersmen. After three months 
of desperate battling with the torrent the remnant of the party ar- 
rived with two boats at the appointed destination, the mouth of 
the Virgin river, August 30, 1869. 
Ata particularly ugly rapid below the mouth of Diamond creek, 
three of the men refused to proceed, despite the Major’s efforts to 
persuade them that the end of the canyon must be near, and that 
they ran more chances of disaster in leaving. They climbed out 
on the north heading for the Mormon settlement of St. George, 
about 90 miles off. They were ambushed, and killed, near Mt. 
Dellenbaugh by the Shewits Indians. 
Of the meager accumulation of scientific data gathered under 
the exceptionally difficult circumstances, most was lost, so that, 
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