Part 6 (1/2)

In his way, Powell was one of our better namers. He had a flair for the picturesque, and his descriptive terms are sometimes extremely apt, as in Split Mountain Canyon, Flaming Gorge, and the Vermilion Cliffs. He did not plaster politicians across the map, he had no weakness for the cute. Some notion of propriety preserved him from extravagance except in the happy contrast of Dirty Devil and Bright Angel. One gathers that he expected the names he put down to last, unlike Gilbert, whose preface to the Henry Mountains Henry Mountains facetiously apologizes to Howell, Steward, Newberry, Marvine, Peale, Holmes, Geikie, Jukes, Scrope, and Dana for putting their names on insignificant details. The affront will never, he says, ”be repeated by the future denizens of the region. The herders who build their hut at the base of the Newberry Arch are sure to call it 'the Cedar Knoll'; the Jukes b.u.t.te will be dubbed 'Pilot k.n.o.b,' and the Scrope, 'Rocky Point.' ” facetiously apologizes to Howell, Steward, Newberry, Marvine, Peale, Holmes, Geikie, Jukes, Scrope, and Dana for putting their names on insignificant details. The affront will never, he says, ”be repeated by the future denizens of the region. The herders who build their hut at the base of the Newberry Arch are sure to call it 'the Cedar Knoll'; the Jukes b.u.t.te will be dubbed 'Pilot k.n.o.b,' and the Scrope, 'Rocky Point.' ”4 Gilbert was not entirely wrong. Even the beautifully named Aquarius Plateau is known locally as Boulder Mountain, the Tushar is called Beaver Mountain, and the Pahvant Sigurd Mountain. Gilbert was not entirely wrong. Even the beautifully named Aquarius Plateau is known locally as Boulder Mountain, the Tushar is called Beaver Mountain, and the Pahvant Sigurd Mountain.

Usage is freakish. Sometimes local names last, sometimes those of the explorer and surveyor, sometimes both. Powell's have shown a strong tendency to survive, and so, though they have been subjected to acid debate, have Dutton's.5 Down the vast 217-mile avenue of the Grand Canyon, that ”mountain-range-in-a-ditch” any of whose subordinate b.u.t.tes is larger than the ma.s.s of any mountain east of the Rockies, Dutton left a legacy of names. The honoring of Survey members took care of a good many features, and the descriptive habit which has dotted our western parks with Inspiration Points took care of some more. The tourist who slakes his thirst at Hidden Spring, or walks out for the view to Cape Royal, Cape Final, or Point Sublime, is orienting himself by names that Dutton put there. But the major features of the canyon, the great amphitheaters and side gorges and b.u.t.tes, demanded something extra.

He might have used Indian names. But there were no existing Indian names for many of the things needing labels, and Dutton disliked Indian names anyway. He appears never to have learned Paiute, and he did not yield to the arguments of Fred Dellenbaugh that he make the Indians his source.6 The map shows plenty of Indian names, and has since the very first sheets that Thompson produced - s.h.i.+numo, Kwagunt, Kaibab, Paria, Kanab, Uinkaret, s.h.i.+vwits - but these were adopted earlier by the Mormons or by Powell. Dutton turned away from adding more, and began the series of oriental and architectural names that since the eighties have persisted and even spread. The map shows plenty of Indian names, and has since the very first sheets that Thompson produced - s.h.i.+numo, Kwagunt, Kaibab, Paria, Kanab, Uinkaret, s.h.i.+vwits - but these were adopted earlier by the Mormons or by Powell. Dutton turned away from adding more, and began the series of oriental and architectural names that since the eighties have persisted and even spread.

The fixed binoculars at the lookout points will, for a dime, bring you close up to the Hindoo Amphitheater, the Ottoman Amphitheater, Vishnu's Temple, s.h.i.+va's Temple, the Temples of Isis and Osiris, the Transept, the Cloisters. They will show you the Tower of Set, named by Moran on Dutton's example, and Vulcan's Throne down on the Toroweap, and Wotan's Throne and Krishna Shrine and Rama Shrine. Besides the ones given in Dutton's time there is a host of Apollo Temples, Venus Temples, Jupiter Temples - and fading badly as inspiration strains itself, King Arthur Castle and Guenevere Castle and Holy Grail Temple. Dutton named East Temple and West Temple in Zion, where a religious flavor was inevitable both because of the architecture of the canyon and because of the character of the Mormon settlers. The religious and architectural parallel was compulsive in the Grand Canyon too, for the similarity of the b.u.t.tes to paG.o.das with widening eaves, to temples ”every inch carved,” to the angular, ma.s.sive, intricately decorated buildings of Asia is extraordinarily impressive. Perhaps the true objection is not to the original series, which was discriminating, but to later elab orations, which have spread the contagion over Bryce, Zion, Cedar Breaks, and the rest of the canyon country. Yet the architectural names are all but inevitable; every explorer was compelled to them; every part of the Plateau Province bears them. Even the pioneers feeling their way down the Waterpocket Fold looked at the domes of white sandstone crowning the red cliffs and they named one red b.u.t.te Cathedral Rock and the ridge itself the Capitol Reef from its resemblance to the dome of the Capitol in Was.h.i.+ngton.

Look at Vishnu's Temple. If you don't call it something like Vishnu's Temple what would you call it? Kwagunt Peak? Ivanpah b.u.t.te? The Indians had no architecture to match the imaginative-ness of their religion or the majesty of these forms. Thunder Hogan would hardly do. You might take some elaborate descriptive phrase such as the Utes used for the country around the junction of Grand and Green, and try to cram ”Toom-pin-wu-near-tu-weap” on your map. Or you might seize upon some translation and call your b.u.t.te ”Standing Rock.” But you would not have helped yourself much. Ute and Paiute do not strike us as especially euphonious tongues. Paiute mythical heroes are called S6-kus Wai-un-nats, or something worse; their chiefs labor under names like Chuarruumpeak or Nara guts ; some native placenames are said to be too obscene for translation onto any polite map.7 Perhaps Dutton did as well as another might have. Bizarre topography may justify exotic or even eccentric names. The ”temple” habit that spread to Bryce repeats the Isis and Osiris motif, and Bryce throws in to boot a Wall Street, a Silent City, a Cathedral. In places it goes cute, as in Peekaboo Canyon. But what should one do for names in a geological funhouse? In the Grand Canyon, at least, Dutton's names are like his superlatives of description - admissible because they cannot be avoided.

Later surveys of the river have had less unnamed country to work with and less imagination to turn loose. Since 1923 the fas.h.i.+on has been strictly practical. As plans for reclamation dams have crept down the canyons, surveyors' instead of explorers' language has come with them. Now on the detailed maps you will find every previously unnamed gulch and wash labeled for its distance from the head of the survey, which for the Grand Canyon division was Lee's Ferry.

Now they are Six Mile Wash and One Hundred and Thirty Mile Canyon and Two Hundred Mile Rapid. At their very worst, Powell and Dutton did not name by transit or plane table or chain. Bright Angel Creek and. Sockdolager Rapid, or for that matter s.h.i.+va's Temple and the Ottoman Amphitheater, seem livelier than Hundred and Ten Mile Point or 38 40' Spring.

11. The Lunatic Fringe: Samuel Adams Again

THIS WAS THE continuing job of the Powell Survey - the careful acc.u.mulation of fact on many scientific fronts and the interpretation of fact without inordinate subjective distortion. As geography, geology, paleontology, ethnology, drainage, climate, resources of soil and water and timber and minerals, the Plateau Province emerged into the area of knowledge. Of the four Western surveys of the seventies, that of Powell was the most intensive. Hayden and Wheeler wandered hectically all over the West, with results that showed their haste and their lack of system. King, as systematic as Powell, had chosen to survey a hundred-mile cross section along the route of the Pacific Railroad from the Rockies to the Sierra, with reference princ.i.p.ally to its mineralogy. Powell devoted himself to a region and attempted to bring it cleanly into focus through a multiple study of its large problems.

Out of the studies of Powell and his collaborators came records: reports, photographs, sketches, geological sections, and the maps that were as essential to geology, Powell said, as a house was to housekeeping. Because the ideal of thoroughness made publication slow, not all the results of the Survey were immediately available, but through the seventies a growing body of accurate and careful information on Powell's chosen region began to appear. Contained in these maps and reports and in the field notes of the survey parties were not only geological, ethnological, and hydrographic data and the generalizations derivable from them, but the foreshadowings of larger generalizations that would eventually mature as broad proposals of policy. Something like organizing genius went into the Powell Survey. The apparent excitability and tendency to run in many directions at once which so irritated Thompson began to show itself for what it really was: a masterful capacity to keep many knowledges in mind, to group and retain facts by cl.u.s.ters and yet make them all contribute to a larger and more comprehensive whole. It was as if he forced every sc.r.a.p of knowledge acquired in years of study by himself and his collaborators to contribute ultimately to a purpose so clear that it looks - though it apparently was not - foreseen.

As we shall see, Powell did not impose his view of the West, either his facts or his deductions or his policies, upon a glad and unresisting nation. The powers of darkness ultimately descended on him like disturbed yellow jackets. Those who resisted facts did not give ground without loud cries and protestations. Take their maddest representative, Captain Sam Adams. Powell was hardly on his way home after the successful traverse of the canyons before Adams was belittling his exploit in the press. Within two months he had hurried to submit a long report of his own activities to Secretary of War Belknap (who had not asked for it), listing the resources of the Colorado basin, which in Adams' version, as in William Gilpin's, sounded dimly and wonderfully like a combination of Canaan and Ophir. The report included Adams' diary of the harebrained plunge down the Blue and Grand, carefully edited and rewritten and with distances, alt.i.tudes, and other invented data filled in to make it scientifically accurate. Belknap turned the doc.u.ment over to General Humphreys, Chief of the Corps of Engineers, who found that though ”useful to the public,” Adams' information could not be of material value to the War Department, and hence should not be rewarded.1 A rebuff from the War Department stopped Adams no more than logic or reason had ever stopped him. Within four months he had persuaded Representative George W. Julian to introduce a House resolution granting $20,000 for his services in exploring and opening the Colorado.2 The course of Adams' various moves for governmental compensation through the houses of Congress is like the course of his boats down the Blue - a succession of rapids and upsets and undaunted renewals. Julian's resolution was lost in committee for two years, but shortly after Powell had returned to Was.h.i.+ngton in February, 1872, from Kanab, where he had left Thompson triangulating the area north of the Grand Canyon, he received a letter from Representative R. M. McCormick of Arizona, asking his opinion of Adams' claims. Somehow the indomitable Captain had blown the breath of life into them again, and got the question reopened before the Committee on Claims. General Humphreys was also questioned again, and replied as before that he did not favor compensation. Powell wrote a letter to McCormick itemizing his contacts with Adams. That letter, doc.u.mented and incontrovertible, should have sent Adams in splinters to the Gulf.3 But Adams did not splinter readily. He was more like a bag of wind, and now, like a windbag held under water, he kept popping resistantly to the surface. Between 1870 and 1877 his case appears in an even half dozen Senate and House doc.u.ments, and for a time it even seemed as if his efforts to ”bring the true facts to the country” - and be compensated therefore - would be successful. On May 20, 1876, seven years after he had stormed off from Green River to take his ”authorization” to the more pliable citizens of Breckenridge, and four years after Powell had completely discredited him, the House Committee on Claims recommended that Captain Adams be given $3750 in compensation. But Adams did not splinter readily. He was more like a bag of wind, and now, like a windbag held under water, he kept popping resistantly to the surface. Between 1870 and 1877 his case appears in an even half dozen Senate and House doc.u.ments, and for a time it even seemed as if his efforts to ”bring the true facts to the country” - and be compensated therefore - would be successful. On May 20, 1876, seven years after he had stormed off from Green River to take his ”authorization” to the more pliable citizens of Breckenridge, and four years after Powell had completely discredited him, the House Committee on Claims recommended that Captain Adams be given $3750 in compensation. 4 4 But circ.u.mstances were unkind to Adams - as he wrote to Austin Blair of the Claims Committee in 1873, even ten copies of the Sunday Herald Herald containing his last communication on the Colorado had been stolen from him. ”It appears as if there was to be no end to the efforts to keep the facts from the country.” Apparently there was not. Now the Claims Committee's recommendation was not accepted; on January 11,1878, Senator c.o.c.krell of Missouri submitted a report for the Senate Committee on Claims denying Adams compensation on the ground that whatever services he might have rendered had been unauthorized. containing his last communication on the Colorado had been stolen from him. ”It appears as if there was to be no end to the efforts to keep the facts from the country.” Apparently there was not. Now the Claims Committee's recommendation was not accepted; on January 11,1878, Senator c.o.c.krell of Missouri submitted a report for the Senate Committee on Claims denying Adams compensation on the ground that whatever services he might have rendered had been unauthorized.

That about cooked Adams' goose. He ebbed away from Was.h.i.+ngton muttering about ”as revolting a system of ingrat.i.tude and injustice as has ever been conceived and carried out by corrupt officials, who have singled me out as their marked victim.” Eventually he settled in his home town of Beaver, Pennsylvania, and went , back to the practice of law. When he died at Beaver Falls in 1915 at the age of eighty-seven he was the oldest member of the Pennsylvania bar, and probably the craziest. But he went to his grave protesting and perhaps believing the tale of his wrongs and the fantasy of his discoveries in the West, and his obituary in the Beaver Evening Tribune Evening Tribune indicates that to the end he found some who would believe him: indicates that to the end he found some who would believe him: ”... he spent a number of years exploring the Colorado River, being sent unofficially by Secretary Stanton, who died before Mr. Adams returned, and his claim from the government was never adjusted.For a short time he was employed by one of the Government Departments in Was.h.i.+ngton, resigning to stump the County for Horace Greeley in 1872 [go west, young man, by the Colorado water-level route]. He then engaged in the coal business in Somer set County, Pa., and later devoted much time to the invention and perfection of the Portable Oil Driller, but owing to encroachment upon his patents he failed to reap any reward from his efforts.” 5 5 Poor Sam Adams was doomed never to reap the rewards, whether for patents or exploration. He was a preposterous, twelve-gauge, hundred-proof, kiln-dried, officially notarized fool, or else he was one of the most wildly incompetent scoundrels who ever lived. But fool or scoundrel, he was a symptom. In his resistance to fact and logic he had many allies who were neither so foolish in their folly nor so witless in their rascality as he, but whose justification and platform was the same incorrigible insistence upon a West that did not exist.

In 1878, just about the time when Adams was turned off by Congress for the last time, Major Powell was just coming to grips with the forces of Gilpin, in and out of Congress. But before we examine the proposals he made and the struggle that grew out of them, there is a year of uncertainty to look at, a year during which Powell and his survey could easily have lost the struggle to survive.

III.

BLUEPRINT FOR A DRYLAND DEMOCRACY.

1. 1877: The Problem of Survival

AT THE BEGINNING of 1877 the Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region, J. W. Powell in Charge, was the least of the official surveys operating in the West. It had not been recognized and accorded an appropriation until King and Hayden were well established and Lieutenant Wheeler had made his first field trip. Its annual appropriation had ranged from $10,000 to $45,000, less than any of the others had enjoyed. Its published results looked meager beside King's solid series, now about half completed, and the grab-bag releases, amounting to a general scientific magazine, by which Hayden had gained credit not only for his own work but for some done independently. The area trian gulated by Powell's topographers was small by contrast with the sweeping coverage of Wheeler's reconnoissance.1 In January, 1877, the Powell Survey could produce as evidence of its worth only Powell's own reports on In January, 1877, the Powell Survey could produce as evidence of its worth only Powell's own reports on The Exploration of the Colorado River of the West The Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and and The Geology of the Eastern Portion of the Uinta Mountains, The Geology of the Eastern Portion of the Uinta Mountains, the latter with an atlas, plus three brief progress reports and some magazine articles and photographs produced for private profit. It was not enough to impress a Congress interested in practical results useful to mining corporations, land speculators, and settlers the latter with an atlas, plus three brief progress reports and some magazine articles and photographs produced for private profit. It was not enough to impress a Congress interested in practical results useful to mining corporations, land speculators, and settlers2 - particularly since Powell's chosen region showed neither mineral nor agricultural potentialities. The reports then in preparation, Gilbert's - particularly since Powell's chosen region showed neither mineral nor agricultural potentialities. The reports then in preparation, Gilbert's Henry Mountains, Henry Mountains, Dutton's Dutton's High Plateaus, High Plateaus, and two volumes of and two volumes of Contributions to North American Ethnology, Contributions to North American Ethnology, had the impractical sound of pure science, and though Powell had projected for himself a study of the history, resources, and uses of the Public Domain, that study was hardly begun. Outside the Uinta atlas and a map and diagram accompanying the had the impractical sound of pure science, and though Powell had projected for himself a study of the history, resources, and uses of the Public Domain, that study was hardly begun. Outside the Uinta atlas and a map and diagram accompanying the Exploration, Exploration, the Survey had published no maps. the Survey had published no maps.

Moreover, the Congress that convened in January that year had its eye on the inauguration of a new President, Rutherford B. Hayes, in March. At least until the politicians had tried out the new ground, this Congress would be reform-minded. It had two full Grant terms, a chain-reaction of scandals, and the splitting of the Republican Party for warnings. It had investigated the Western surveys without clear result in 1874,3 haling Wheeler, Hayden, and Powell before its committees and airing all the private jealousies and public rivalries of the War and Interior Departments. The rivals were certain to come under scrutiny again. If Congress did not itself raise the question of consolidation and reform, Hayden or Wheeler would, for both were ambitious and had powerful friends, and Hayden in particular was beginning to have his withers galled by compet.i.tion. haling Wheeler, Hayden, and Powell before its committees and airing all the private jealousies and public rivalries of the War and Interior Departments. The rivals were certain to come under scrutiny again. If Congress did not itself raise the question of consolidation and reform, Hayden or Wheeler would, for both were ambitious and had powerful friends, and Hayden in particular was beginning to have his withers galled by compet.i.tion.4 During the hearings back in 1874, Powell had alienated Wheeler by advocating consolidation of all the surveys under control of the Department of the Interior, but his temporary alliance with Hayden on that issue broke down the moment Hayden began to view him as a dangerous rival for appropriations, publicity, or the directors.h.i.+p of the combined surveys. King was not a true party to the rivalry: he had completed his field work along the 40th parallel and was still in business only to finish and publish his series of reports. Though an employee of the War Department, he was personally friendly to Powell and to Powell's ideas. But from either Wheeler or Hayden, Powell could expect only the knife.

It was in the interest of simple survival that he spent much of 1877 mending his fences, trying to insure the continuation of his own survey, balk the ambitions of Hayden and Wheeler, and at the same time bring some system into the chaos of the geological and geographical surveys. This last, since he had no power to reorganize and could work only by influencing members of Congress, was only a hope, but it was not a dim one. He had a powerful organizing mind. It hurt him, quite apart from his own survival, to see dissension, duplication, and waste in an area where there was important work to be done. When Hayden's field parties clashed with Wheeler's in the Colorado mountains and precipitated a disgraceful squabble about priorities, all the surveys suffered. Such influence as Powell had, and such experience and information and persuasiveness as he could bring to bear, he would use in the direction of unification. Whoever ran them, and under whatever jurisdiction, the surveys had to be raised out of their year-by-year, hand-to-mouth, unco-ordinated and compet.i.tive state, and brought into some sort of permanent system.

The wider and less personal interest in the future of government science led him to expand a simple struggle for survival into something much larger. Events and the development of his own ideas pushed him that way, and so did his contempt for Hayden, his pa.s.sion for order, his knowledge and experience of the West and his swiftly clarifying vision of what the West must do to grow into a strong part of the American commonwealth. What perhaps began as mere opportunistic tactics shortly became grand strategy.

The general engagement to which he finally forced the reform party and the Western Congressmen adamant against change or planning resulted eventually in a stalemate, or at best in the most limited sort of victory, but the way in which he fought it showed Major Powell already cunning and effective in behind-the-scenes political maneuver, and with a very clear idea of his objectives. As Henry Nash Smith has remarked,5 his activities during 1878 and 1879 indicated a voluntary acceptance of public responsibility rare in public life at any time. In the Gilded Age it was close to unprecedented. his activities during 1878 and 1879 indicated a voluntary acceptance of public responsibility rare in public life at any time. In the Gilded Age it was close to unprecedented.

He was David against Goliath, Beowulf against Grendel's dam. He challenged odds and he met the enemy on his own ground. Behind him was none of the automatic support that many of his contemporaries, including some of his opposition, could count on. He was not wealthy and well placed like O. C. Marsh, socially prominent and much-befriended like Clarence King. He had not Hayden's well-developed lobby and no long-term friends in high places, and he could count on the backing of no university. From the only university with which he had had important contacts - and that a one-horse college in the West - he had departed abruptly in 1873, looked upon as one grown too big for his breeches.6 What he had to fight with was what he had always had: his clarity of understanding and his personal vigor, plus the general support of disinterested scientific men. He could also depend upon a few interested ones, especially the personal enemies of F. V. Hayden. His campaign of 1877 and 1878 he ran as he had run the Colorado, by a combination of foresight, planning, and calculated risk. What he had to fight with was what he had always had: his clarity of understanding and his personal vigor, plus the general support of disinterested scientific men. He could also depend upon a few interested ones, especially the personal enemies of F. V. Hayden. His campaign of 1877 and 1878 he ran as he had run the Colorado, by a combination of foresight, planning, and calculated risk.

First things first. Feeling the cold breath on his neck when Congress convened in January, 1877, Powell wrote a good many letters, including notes to King, Julius Bien, John Strong Newberry of Columbia, and F. W. Putnam of Harvard,7 begging help in getting his appropriation for the continuation of the Powell Survey the next year. The tone of these notes is perturbed, almost desperate. The day after he dictated them to his secretary, James Pilling, he hurried into the hands of Eugene Hale of the House Appropriations Committee a summary of the work and publications of the Powell Survey, and he also sent Hale as a gift a set of Jack Hillers' Grand Canyon photographs and some proof sheets from Gilbert's coming monograph on the Henry Mountains. At the same time, for reasons not exactly opaque, he requested a personal interview. begging help in getting his appropriation for the continuation of the Powell Survey the next year. The tone of these notes is perturbed, almost desperate. The day after he dictated them to his secretary, James Pilling, he hurried into the hands of Eugene Hale of the House Appropriations Committee a summary of the work and publications of the Powell Survey, and he also sent Hale as a gift a set of Jack Hillers' Grand Canyon photographs and some proof sheets from Gilbert's coming monograph on the Henry Mountains. At the same time, for reasons not exactly opaque, he requested a personal interview.

Whatever the effect of his conversations with Hale, his letters brought results. Newberry, formerly one of Hayden's collaborators but now his bitter enemy, wrote as Powell requested to Representatives Garfield and Hewitt, champions of the liberal wing in the House, and he not only praised the scientific work of Powell and Gilbert but he went out of his way to denounce Hayden as a power-mad lobbyist no longer worthy the name of scientist.8 Putnam and others of the scientific fraternity gave Powell, in less vehement terms, the letters of character he needed. Putnam and others of the scientific fraternity gave Powell, in less vehement terms, the letters of character he needed.

Their help was enough, just enough. The weight of presumably disinterested Science applied to interested Politics got the Powell Survey continued life, but on minimum terms. Congress dropped the appropriation for 1877-78 from $45,000 to $30,000, a reduction that hurt at a time when Powell was hoping to strengthen himself for the eventual showdown with the other surveys. As a matter of fact, he had already incautiously committed himself to things that would cost money. Dutton, Gilbert, and Thompson were all, in addition to topographical and geological work, gathering data on water and irrigable lands in Utah for the use of the General Land Office and Powell's projected report on the Public Domain. The Dutton and Gilbert monographs, as well as the two volumes of Con tributions to North American Ethnology, Con tributions to North American Ethnology, were all partly completed, and their publication, an expensive matter if one were to compete with Hayden's lavish reports full of ill.u.s.trations and plates, were all partly completed, and their publication, an expensive matter if one were to compete with Hayden's lavish reports full of ill.u.s.trations and plates,9 was essential as a lever under Congress. A map of,Utah containing the hydrographic data his parties had gathered languished for lack of funds to print it. And now early in 1877 came a golden opportunity to acquire some easy credit and win the approval of most scientific men if he could only find the money to take advantage of it. was essential as a lever under Congress. A map of,Utah containing the hydrographic data his parties had gathered languished for lack of funds to print it. And now early in 1877 came a golden opportunity to acquire some easy credit and win the approval of most scientific men if he could only find the money to take advantage of it.

As a consequence of the gold strikes in the Black Hills in 1874, Congress had authorized still a fifth Western survey, under the direction of W. P. Jenney and Henry Newton. The resulting report had been practically finished but never published, and there was now no apparent intention on the part of Congress to appropriate funds for it. The strong suspicion on Science Street was that Hayden's jealousy of intrusion upon a territory he considered his own had led him to block the printing of the report. Newton, as it happened, was a student and protege of John Strong Newberry. And Newberry was convinced that Hayden blocked the report because he feared the exposure of his own geological incompetence.

Newberry had been a stout ally in the matter of the appropriation. On March 17, 1877, again at Powell's request, he wrote Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz asking that the Black Hills report be authorized as a publication of the Powell Survey. On that same day he put in a requisition for a chunk of Powell's budget to finance a fossil-hunting trip to Colorado,10 but money at that time was more than Powell could grant, even when the but money at that time was more than Powell could grant, even when the quid pro quo quid pro quo within the austere walls of Science had been satisfactory. To gratify Newberry then would have ruined him. Fortunately,. Newberry was good-natured, and could wait. within the austere walls of Science had been satisfactory. To gratify Newberry then would have ruined him. Fortunately,. Newberry was good-natured, and could wait.