The Romance of the Colorado River / The Story of its Discovery in 1840, with an Account of the Later Explorations, and with Special Reference to the Voyages of Powell through the Line of the Great Canyons

by Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh

The Grand Canyon-Granite Buttresses.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.

So well did they now get on, running rapids and making fine time, that they began to look forward with great hope to a speedy termination of the canyon. When therefore the river took an unexpected turn towards the south and the lower formations once more began to appear, till the black granite, dreaded and feared, closed again threateningly about them, they were considerably disheartened. At the very beginning they were compelled to make a portage. Then they reached a place which appeared worse than anything they had yet seen. This was partly due to the condition of the men and it was partly a fact. They could discover no way to portage or to let down, and Powell believed running it meant certain destruction. They climbed up and along on the granite for a mile or two, but there appeared no hope for success. In trying to secure an advantageous position from which to view the fall Powell worked himself into a position where he could neither advance nor retreat. His situation was most precarious. The men were obliged to bring oars from the boats four hundred feet below, to brace into the rocks in order to get him safely back. The absence of his right arm made climbing sometimes very difficult for him. This was on the side opposite their first landing. Descending, they recrossed the river and spent the whole afternoon trying to decide on a plan. At last Powell reached a decision. It was to lower the boats over the first portion, a fall of eighteen or twenty feet, then hug the right cliff to a point just above the second drop, where they could enter a little chute, and having passed this point they were to pull directly across the stream to avoid a dangerous rock below. He told the men his intention of running the rapid the next morning, and they all crossed the river once more to a landing where it was possible to camp.

New and serious trouble now developed. The elder Howland remonstrated with Powell against proceeding farther by the river and advised the abandonment of the enterprise altogether. At any rate, he and his brother and William Dunn would not go on in the boats. Powell sat up that night plotting out his course and concluded from it that the mouth of the Virgen could not be more than forty-five miles away in a straight line. Calculating eighty or ninety miles by the river, and allowing for the open country he knew existed below the end of the Grand Canyon, he concluded that they must soon reach the mouth and be able to find the Mormon settlements about twenty miles up the Virgen River. Then he awoke Howland and explained the situation, and they talked it over. The substance of this talk is not stated, but Howland went to sleep again while Powell paced the sand till dawn, pondering on the best course to take. The immediate danger of the rapid he thought could be overcome with safety, but what was below? To climb out here, even were it possible, was to reach the edge of a desert with the nearest Mormon town not less than seventy-five miles distant, across an unknown country. So heavily did this situation weigh upon him that he almost concluded to abandon the river and try the chance on the top, but then he says: “For years I have been contemplating this trip. To leave the exploration unfinished, to say that there is a part of the canyon which I cannot explore, having already almost accomplished it, is more than I am willing to acknowledge, and I determine to go on.” So he awoke Walter Powell and explained to him Howland’s decision. Walter agreed to stand by him, and so did Sumner, Hawkins, Bradley, and Hall. The younger Howland wished to remain, but would not desert his brother. O. G. Howland was determined to leave the river, and Dunn was with him.

I have never met any of the men of this party except Powell and his brother Walter, so I have no other account of the affair than the one just stated, which is from Powell’s Report, and is the same that he gave me orally before that Report was printed. Walter Powell never mentioned the subject, or in any way suggested to me that there was anything behind the version of Powell. But others have. They have said that the real cause of the break was an incompatibility between Powell and the elder Howland. It is quite possible that Powell may have discovered Howland persona non grata, but had this been as serious as some have said, Howland would not have waited, it seems to me, till they came to a particularly bad-looking place to take his departure. At any rate, that was a long night for Powell, and whatever the main cause of Howland’s leaving was, it was a trying ordeal for the leader. Howland’s obligation certainly was to go on as if he were an enlisted soldier, and he evidently failed in this duty. When daylight finally came a solemn breakfast was prepared and eaten. No one had much heart. The river was then crossed again to the north side. The decision of the three men to leave rendered one boat useless, and the poorest, the Dean, which was a pine boat, was left behind. Two rifles and a shotgun were given to the men who were leaving, but their share of the rations they refused to take, being sure they could secure all the game they required. Their calculations were correct enough, and they would have arrived at the settlements had not an unforeseen circumstance prevented. When the river party were ready to start the three deserters helped lift the two boats over a high rock and down past the first fall. Then they parted. Powell wrote a letter to his wife which Howland took, Sumner gave him his watch with directions that it be sent to his sister in the event of the river party being annihilated, and the duplicate records of the trip were separated, one set being given to Howland, who at the last begged them not to go on down the river, assuring them that a few miles more of such river as that now ahead of them would consume the last of the scant rations and then it would be too late to try to escape. In fact each party thought the other was taking the more desperate chance. By a mistake the duplicate records were wrongly divided, each party having portions of both sets. This afterwards made gaps in the river data below the Paria as far as Catastrophe Rapid. Powell entered the Maid of the Canyon and pulled away while the departing men stood on an overhanging crag looking on. Both boats succeeded in going through without accident, and it was then apparent that the place was not so bad as it looked and that they had run many that were worse. Down below it they waited for a couple of hours hoping the men would change their minds, take the Dean, and come on. But they were never seen again by white men. They climbed up the mighty cliffs to the summit of the Shewits Plateau, about fifty-five hundred feet, and that it is a hard climb I can testify, for I climbed down and back not far above this point. At length they were out of the canyon, and they must have rejoiced at leaving those gloomy depths behind. Northward they went, to a large water-pocket, a favourite camping-ground of the Shewits, a basin in the rocky channel of an intermittent stream, discharging into the Colorado. The only story of their fate was obtained from these Utes. Jacob Hamblin of Kanab learned it from some other Utes and afterwards got the story from them. They received the men at their camp and gave them food. During the night some of the band came in from the north and reported certain outrages by miners in that country. It was at once concluded that these whites were the culprits and that they never came down the Colorado as they claimed. In the morning, therefore, a number secreted themselves near the edge of the water-pocket. The trail to the water leads down under a basaltic cliff perhaps thirty or forty feet high, as I remember the spot, which I visited about six years later. As the unfortunate men turned to come up from filling their canteens, they were shot down from ambush. In consequence I have called this the Ambush Water-pocket.[^[1]] The guns, clothing, etc., were appropriated by the Shewits, and I believe it was through one of the watches that the facts first leaked out. I have always had a lurking suspicion that the Shewits were glad of an excuse (if they had one at the time) for killing the men. When I was there they were in an ugly mood and the night before I got to the camp my guide, a Uinkaret, and a good fellow, warned me to be constantly on my guard or they would steal all we had. There were three of us, and probably we were among the first whites to go there. Powell the autumn after the men were killed went to the Uinkaret Mountains, but did not continue over to the Shewits Plateau. Thompson went there in 1872.

[1] I have since been told that these men were killed near Mt. Dellenbaugh, but my version is as I remember Jacob Hamblin’s statement to me in 1872. He was the first to get the story.

The Basket Maker.
Old woman of the Kaibab Pai Utes. Behind is the typical Pai Ute dwelling of boughs and brush. The dwellings of the Shewits are similar.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.

Meanwhile the boat party dashed safely on through a succession of rapids till noon, when they arrived at another very bad place. In working through this by means of lines, Bradley was let down in one of the boats to fend her off the rocks, and finding himself in a serious predicament started to cut the line, when the stern of the boat pulled away and he shot down alone. He was a powerful man, and snatching up the steering oar, with several strong strokes he put her head down stream and immediately boat and all disappeared amidst the foaming breakers. But he came out unharmed, and in time to render service to Powell’s boat, which was badly shaken up in the passage. The other men of Bradley’s boat, left behind, were obliged to make a long and difficult climb before they were able to rejoin their craft. By night they had run entirely out of the granite, and at noon the next day, without encountering any more serious trouble, they emerged at last from the depths of the giant chasm. They were at the mouth of the Grand Wash. The Dragon of Waters was vanquished. Not that the Dragon would not fight again just as before, but those who attacked him in future would understand his temper.