POWELL, JOHN WESLEY (1834-1902). An American geologist and anthropologist, born at Mount Morris, N. Y. His parents came to the United States from England a short time before his birth, and his early childhood was passed in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Illinois. He studied for a while in the Illinois College, at Jacksonville, later at Wheaton, 111., and still later at Oberlin College, Ohio. When the Civil War broke out he at once enlisted as a private in the Union Army; after short service he rose to the rank of major, and was subsequently offered the com mission of colonel, but declined. While serving as major at the battle of Shiloh he lost his right arm. With the close of the war he accepted a position as professor of geology in the Illinois Wesleyan University, at Bloomington, later re signing this to take a similar position in the Illinois Normal University. In 1867 Major Powell visited the Rocky Mountains of Colorado for exploration and research. The following year he organized a party of mountaineers and ex plored a portion of the Colorado River region, finally going into winter quarters on the White River. On May 24, 1869, the party of ten started on their voyage through the canon, which lasted over three months and was fraught with great dangers and hardships. The result of this daring voyage brought Major Powell into promi nence before the scientific world, and from that time until his death he was an active and con spicuous personage among American scientists. In 1869 he induced Congress to establish a geological and topographical survey of the Colo rado River and its tributaries, an undertaking which consumed the following ten years. The establishment between 1865 and 1873 of many surveys of the Western country, which acted inde pendently and often in competition with each other, led Major Powell to attempt a satisfac tory adjustment of these surveys under some combined system of operation. As a result of
this, Congress in March, 1879, discontinued the separate surveys and established the United States Geological and Geographical Survey, which had Clarence King as its first director. During Major Powell's Western work he gathered valuable ethnological and anthropological mate rial among the American Indians for the Smith- . sonian Institution, and in 1876 this appeared in a volume entitled Contributions to North American Ethnology. On the retirement of Mr. King from the directorship of the Geological Survey in 1881, Major Powell was appointed his successor. In 1894 he resigned this office to devote himself to the directorship of the Bureau of Anthropology, and to ethnological and philosophical studies. He died at Haven, Me., September 23. 1902.
Major Powell was a member of most of the important scientific societies of the United States, and served as president of the Anthropological Society of Washington and of the American As sociation for the Advancement of Science. He was the recipient of many honors from foreign societies, among which w•as the Cuvier prize. awarded to him and his associates on the Survey in 1891. His important contributions to scien tific literature include the following: Explora tion of the Colorado River of the IVest and Its Tributaries (1875) ; Report on the Geology of the Uinta Mountains (1876) ; Report on the Arid Region of the United States (1S79) ; Introduc tion to the Study of Indian Languages (1S80) ; S'tudies in Sociology (1SS7) ; Canyons of the Colorado (1S93) ; and Physiographic Processes, Physiographic Features, and Physiographic Re gions of the United States (1895).