APPENDIX A
• John Wesley Powell’s parents, Mary Dean and father Joseph Powell, a Methodist exhorter and preacher, migrated in 1830 to Palmyra Village, New York.
• Powell was born in 1834 in Mount Morris, New York just south of Rochester, a place of political and religious fervor as stated in his eulogy.
• The Joseph and Mary Dean Powell family moved to Jackson, Ohio in 1838 and then to Southern Wisconsin in 1846 and on to Northern Illinois in 1851.
• 1853-1858 John W. Powell attended Illinois Institute (now Wheaton College) and Oberlin College where Powell received some college instruction but was largely self-taught.
• 1861 Powell enlists as a private in the Twentieth Illinois Volunteer Infantry.
• Married November 28, 1861 to Emma Dean.
• While serving the Union Army in the Civil War, Powell rose from private to brevet Lieutenant Colonel.
• He lost his right arm in the Battle of Shiloh 1862.
• He left the army in January 1865 after the outcome of the war was no longer in doubt.
• Powell, upon arriving home, secured a professorship at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington and also started teaching at Illinois State University.
• In 1867 he started the Illinois Museum of Natural History and was appointed as the museum’s curator.
• In 1867 and also in 1868 Powell led expeditions to the Rocky Mountains to do research for the establishment of public lands and Indian reservations.
• In May through August of 1869 Powell starting at the Green River in Wyoming led a party to explore the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.
• Upon arriving at Separation Rapids three of his party decided to leave and were later found dead, killed by Indians.
• Powell became famous for running the mighty Colorado River and returned to Washington as a folk hero because of his encounters with the Indians and his explorations of the Colorado River Basin.
• 1870 Congress established the Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region putting Powell in charge.
• 1870-72 Congress appropriated ten thousand dollars for the exploration of the Colorado River and its tributaries and survey work. Powell’s fieldwork included a large part of Utah and considerable parts of Wyoming, Arizona and Nevada. (Arlington Cemetery J.W. Powell’s Eulogy)
• Powell’s only child, Mary Dean was born in Salt Lake City, Sept. 8th 1871 while he was doing government business in Utah.
• From December 1871-72 Powell met with Mormon and Indian leaders in Kanab, St. George and Salt Lake City, Utah.
• In the spring of 1873 Powell was appointed Special Commissioner of Indian Affairs to investigate the “conditions and wants” of Indian tribes of the Great Basin Region of Utah.
• In May of 1873 Powell, as Commissioner of Indian Affairs, met with delegations of Utes, Goshutes, Northwest and Western Shoshones Indians near Salt Lake City, Utah.
• In 1876 in Buffalo, New York, Powell joined Lewis Henry Morgan in establishing a subset of the American Association for the Advancement of the Sciences (AAAS). Powell would later become President of the (AAAS) in 1888.
• Powell in 1877 spent time in Northern Utah with “Weber River Utes” collecting kinship material for Lewis Henry Morgan as promised. (Letter Powell to Morgan, 18 July 1877, Powell Survey letters, National Archives Record Group 57)
• The Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institute was established by an act of the United States Congress on March 3, 1879. It was largely the personal creation of the geologist and explorer Major John Wesley Powell as Director. This was a position held until his death. (Bureau of Am. Ethnology; Smithsonian, C.O. Sullivan National Anthropological Archives 2007)
• 1879 Powell was appointed to head a special Public Lands Commission assigned by Congress to investigate the arid lands of the west for classification and the establishment of public lands. Powell toured the West for five months on behalf of a public lands commission, visiting scores of remote communities.
• Late in 1879 Powell was active in the formation of the Anthropological Society of Washington, were he served for several years thereafter as its first president.
• In early 1880 Powell proposed that the Tenth Census of the United States should collect extensive data on untaxed Indians.
• In 1881 Powell’s most influential position was as the head of U.S. Geological Surveys (USGS) where he served from 1881 to 1894.
• In 1882 Powell, under instruction of Congress, established the Division of Mound Explorations to explore the true origin of earthen mounds found predominately throughout the eastern United States. (Bureau of Am. Ethnology; Smithsonian, C.O. Sullivan National Anthropological Archives 2007)
• Powell marshaled legislation to limit settlements and to establish public lands in the Arid States of the West.
• August 1889 Powell led the charge with an order from the Department of Interior, that all public domain (lands) be closed to entry and that the closure be made retroactive to October 2, 1888. (Until surveys of irrigable lands were made.)
• In Washington D.C. Powell founded the Cosmos Club, a club that still exists today.
• Powell died September 23, 1902 in Maine where, according to Powell’s instruction, his brain was removed and weighted because he believed that his brain was larger than the average of other human brains. This was a practice done by some European elites like French naturalist George Cuvier, E. D. Cope, William Thackeray and Emperor Napoleon III.