Part 7 (1/2)
This high purpose Catlin followed throughout the remainder of his life with unwavering fidelity. He visited almost every Indian tribe in North America, gathering sketches and making descriptive notes. He also visited South America, and afterward spent many years in Europe exhibiting his work. The result of his labors was a gallery of more than six hundred pictures, now happily forever safe under the protection of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution in Was.h.i.+ngton, wherein he delineated the portraits of famous chiefs and the scenes and customs of Indian life. This work he supplemented with the scarcely less valuable work of his pen, leaving behind him probably the best popular description of the native races that has ever been written. His work is a perennial fountain to which students of Indian themes will ever resort. Valuable as it was considered in his lifetime, each pa.s.sing year makes it more valuable still.
Catlin's enthusiasm for every thing pertaining to Indian life, and the grief with which he beheld the certain fading away of it all before the rapid progress of civilization, suggested to him the idea which was to find partial fulfillment at the time to which our narrative has now been carried. In order to preserve, at least on a small scale, the native fauna of America, and a remnant of the Indian races, he proposed that the government should set apart, in some suitable locality of the West, a large tract of land, to be preserved forever as a ”_Nation's Park_, containing man and beast, in all the wildness and freshness of their nature's beauty.” With his natural enthusiasm and vigor, he unfolded his idea, concluding:
”I would ask no other monument to my memory, nor any other enrollment of my name among the famous dead, than the reputation of having been the founder of such an inst.i.tution.”
In the report of the late Prof. Joseph Henry to the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution for 1871, it is stated that Catlin made a proposition to the government in 1832 ”to reserve the country around these [the Yellowstone] geysers as a public park.” While it is more than probable, considering the date, and the wide acquaintance of Mr.
Catlin with the traders and Indians of the West, that he had heard of the geyser regions, still there is not sufficient evidence attainable to justify our acceptance of the above statement. But in every thing else except the particular locality, and the plan of providing a reservation for the Indians, Catlin's idea was the same as that finally adopted by Congress.
Although the project of creating a vast National Park in the West originated with George Catlin, it is certain that Congress could never have been brought to act favorably upon it, except under the influence of some extraordinary motive. That motive was supplied when the innumerable unique and marvelous wonders of the Yellowstone were made known. Their preservation at once became a matter of high public duty, which could be accomplished only by reserving from settlement the region around them.
Since the Park was created and has to such a marked degree received the approval of the people, numerous claimants have arisen for the honor of having first suggested the idea. In truth, no special credit for originality should attach to the matter. It was a natural, an unavoidable proposition. To those who first saw these wonders, and were not so absorbed with gold-seeking as to be incapable of appreciating their importance, it was clear that, within a few years, they must become objects of universal interest. It was equally clear that the land around them would soon be taken up by private parties, and that the beautiful formations would be carried off for mercenary purposes; in short, that the history of Niagara and of the Yosemite would repeat itself in the Yellowstone. To avoid such a calamity only one course was open, and that was for the government to retain control of the entire region. That the necessity of such a course should have been set forth independently by several different parties, as we find it to have been, is therefore not in the least surprising.
But in as much as the development of the project must have started from some one source, it is of interest historically to determine what this source was. We find it to have been the Washburn Expedition of 1870.[AF] The subject was discussed by the party at the first camp after leaving the geyser regions near the junction of the Firehole and Gibbon Rivers. The date was September 19, 1870. The members of the party were sitting around the camp-fire after supper, conversing about what they had seen, and picturing to themselves the important pleasure resort which so wonderful a region must soon become. The natural impulse to turn the fruits of discovery to the personal profit of the discoverer made its appearance, and it was suggested that it would be a ”profitable speculation” to take up land around the various objects of interest. The conversation had not proceeded far on these lines when one of the party, Cornelius Hedges, interposed and said that private owners.h.i.+p of that region, or any part of it, ought never to be countenanced; but that it ought to be set apart by the government and forever held to the unrestricted use of the people. This higher view of the subject found immediate acceptance with the other members of the party. It was agreed that the project should be at once set afoot and pushed vigorously to a finish.
[AF] Mr. Folsom deserves mention in this connection. In the ma.n.u.script of his article in the _Western Monthly_ was a reference to the Park idea; but the publishers cut out a large part of his paper, giving only the descriptions of the natural wonders, and this reference was cut out with the rest. Mr. Folsom also suggested the idea to General Washburn, of which fact Mr. N. P. Langford is still a living witness.
From Mr. Folsom's suggestion, however, as from Mr. Catlin's, no direct result can be traced.
As soon as the party reached Helena, a series of articles appeared in the daily papers of that city describing the late expedition, and in one of these, written by Mr. Hedges and published in the _Helena Herald_ November 9, 1870, occurs what is believed to be the first public reference to the Park project.
The next mention of the subject was in Mr. Langford's lecture, delivered, as already related, in Was.h.i.+ngton, January 19, 1871; in New York, January 21, 1871; and at a later date in Minneapolis. At each of these places he closed his lecture with a reference to the importance of setting apart this region as a National Park. The _New York Tribune_ of January 23, 1871, thus quotes Mr. Langford:
”This is probably the most remarkable region of natural attractions in the world; and, while we already have our Niagara and Yosemite, this new field of wonders should be at once withdrawn from occupancy, and set apart as a public National Park for the enjoyment of the American people for all time.”
Such is the origin of the idea which has found realization in our present Yellowstone Park. The history of the Act of Dedication, by which the Park was created, may be briefly told. The general plan for a vigorous prosecution of the project was arranged in Helena, Montana, mainly by Nathaniel P. Langford, Cornelius Hedges, and William H.
Clagett, who had just been elected delegate to Congress from Montana, and who had already himself independently urged the importance of converting this region into a public park. Mr. Langford went to Was.h.i.+ngton when Congress convened, and he and Mr. Clagett drew the Park Bill, except as to description of boundaries, which was furnished by Dr. Hayden. The bill was introduced in the House by Mr. Clagett, December 18, 1871. Senator Pomeroy, of Kansas, had expressed a desire to perform a like service in the Senate, and accordingly Mr. Clagett, as soon as he had presented the measure to the House, took a copy to the Senate chamber and gave it to Senator Pomeroy, who immediately introduced it. In each House it was referred to the Committee on Public Lands. In the Senate no formal report was prepared. In the House the Hon. Mark H. Dunnell, of Minnesota, chairman of the sub-committee having the bill in charge, addressed a letter under date of January 27, 1872, to the Secretary of the Interior, asking his opinion upon the proposed measure. The Secretary replied, under date of January 29th, fully indorsing the project, and submitting a brief report by Dr. Hayden, which forcibly presented all the main features of the case.
The bill, being thus before Congress, was put through mainly by the efforts of three men, Dr. F. V. Hayden, N. P. Langford, and Delegate William H. Clagett. Dr. Hayden occupied a commanding position in this work, as representative of the government in the explorations of 1871.
He was thoroughly familiar with the subject, and was equipped with an exhaustive collection of photographs and specimens gathered the previous summer. These were placed on exhibition, and were probably seen by all members of Congress. They did a work which no other agency could do, and doubtless convinced every one who saw them that the region where such wonders existed should be carefully preserved to the people forever. Dr. Hayden gave to the cause the energy of a genuine enthusiasm, and his work that winter will always hold a prominent place in the history of the Park.
Mr. Langford, as already stated, had publicly advocated the measure in the previous winter. He had rendered service of the utmost importance, through his publications in _Scribner's Magazine_ in the preceding May and June. Four hundred copies of these magazines were brought and placed upon the desks of members of Congress on the days when the measure was to be brought to vote. During the entire winter, Mr.
Langford devoted much of his time to the promotion of this work.
The Hon. William H. Clagett, as delegate from the Territory most directly interested in the pa.s.sage of the bill, took an active personal part in its advocacy from beginning to end.
Through the efforts of these three gentlemen, and others less conspicuously identified with the work, this measure received perhaps the most thorough canva.s.s of any bill that has ever pa.s.sed Congress.
All the members were personally visited and, with few exceptions, won to the cause. The result was a practical unanimity of opinion when the measure came to a vote. This first took place in the Senate, the bill being pa.s.sed by that body January 30th. It was warmly supported upon its pa.s.sage by several members and opposed by one, Senator Cole, of California; a fact the more remarkable because that Senator had in his own state--in the preemption by private parties of the Yosemite wonderland--the most convincing example possible of the wisdom of such a measure as that proposed.
The Senate bill came up from the Speaker's table in the House of Representatives, February 27th. Mr. Dunnell stated that the Committee on Public Lands had instructed him to ask the House to pa.s.s the Senate bill. Hon. H. L. Dawes, of Ma.s.sachusetts, warmly advocated the measure, which was then pa.s.sed by a decisive vote.[AG] The bill received the President's signature March 1, 1872.
[AG] No yea and nay vote was taken in the Senate. The vote in the House was--yeas, 115; nays, 65; not voting, 60.
This subject has been treated somewhat in detail because there has long been a false impression among the people as to who it was that first put forward this important project. To no individual is the public more indebted for the creation of the Park than to Dr. F. V.
Hayden, who was long prominently connected with the geological surveys of the government. But he did not, as is generally supposed, originate the idea. His statement in his report for 1878, Vol. II, p. xvii, that, ”so far as is now known, the idea of setting apart a large tract about the sources of the Yellowstone River, as a National Park, originated with the writer,” is entirely erroneous; and there is the less excuse for the error in that Dr. Hayden had himself heard the measure advocated by Mr. Langford in his Was.h.i.+ngton lecture. In fact, he is known to have said in later years, only a short time before his death, while residing in Philadelphia, that when the project was first talked of among the members of his party, in the summer of 1871, he personally disapproved it because he doubted the practicability of adequately guarding so vast a region; but that, upon further reflection, he became converted to the measure and was thereafter its most ardent advocate.
But it is not so much actual facts, as what men believe these facts to be, that controls human action; and it is unquestionably true that the above quotation correctly expresses the views of the great majority of members of Congress when the Park measure was before that body. It is not too much to say that Dr. Hayden's influence, as the official representative of the government, was a controlling factor in the pa.s.sage of that measure.