First through the Grand Canyon

by John Wesley Powell

The conquerors buried the maidens by the shores of the lake; but Tum-pwi-nai′-ro-gwi-nump was left to rot, and his bones to bleach on the sands, as he had left Si-kor′.

There is this proverb among the Utes: “Do not murmur when you suffer in doing what the spirits have commanded, for a cup of water is provided.” And another: “What matters it who kills the game, when we can all eat of it.”

It is long after midnight when the performance is ended. The story itself was interesting, though I had heard it many times before; but never, perhaps, under circumstances more effective. Stretched beneath tall, sombre pines; a great camp fire, and by the fire, men, old, wrinkled, and ugly; deformed, blear eyed, wry faced women; lithe, stately young men; pretty but simpering maidens, naked children, all intently listening, or laughing and talking at times, their strange faces and dusky forms lit up with the glare of the pine-knot fire. All the circumstances conspired to make it a scene strange and weird. One old man, the sorcerer or medicine-man of the tribe, peculiarly impressed me. Now and then he would interrupt the play for the purpose of correcting the speakers, or impressing the moral of the story with a strange dignity and impressiveness that seemed to pass to the very border of the ludicrous; yet at no time did it make me smile.

The story is finished, but there is yet time for an hour or two’s sleep. I take Chu-ar′-ru-um-peak to one side for a talk. The three men who left us in the cañon last year found their way up the lateral gorge, by which they went into the Shi′-vwits Mountains, lying west of us, where they met with the Indians, and camped with them one or two nights, and were finally killed. I am anxious to learn the circumstances, and as the people of the tribe who committed the deed live but a little way from and are intimate with these people, I ask Chu-ar′-ru-um-peak to make inquiry for me. Then we go to bed.

September 17.—Early this morning the Indians come up to our camp. They have concluded to send out a young man after the Shi′-vwits. The runner fixes his moccasins, puts some food in a sack and water in a little wicker work jug, straps them on his back, and starts at a good round pace.

We have concluded to go down the cañon, hoping to meet the Shi′-vwits on our return. Soon we are ready to start, leaving the camp and pack animals in charge of the two Indians who came with us. As we move out, our new guide comes up, a blear eyed, weazen faced, quiet old man, with his bow and arrows in one hand, and a small cane in the other. These Indians all carry canes with a crooked handle, they say to kill rattlesnakes, and to pull rabbits from their holes. The valley is high up in the mountain, and we descend from it, by a rocky, precipitous trail, down, down, down for two long, weary hours, leading our ponies and stumbling over the rocks. At last we are at the foot of the mountain, standing on a little knoll, from which we can look into a cañon below. Into this we descend, and then we follow it for miles, clambering down and still down. Often we cross beds of lava, that have been poured into the cañon by lateral channels, and these angular fragments of basalt make the way very rough for the animals.

About two o’clock the guide halts us with his wand, and springing over the rocks he is lost in a gulch. In a few minutes he returns, and tells us there is a little water below in a pocket. It is vile and stinking, and our ponies refuse to drink it. We pass on, still ever descending. A mile or two from the water basin we come to a precipice, more than a thousand feet to the bottom. There is a cañon running at a greater depth, and at right angles to this, into which this enters by the precipice; and this second cañon is a lateral one to the greater one, in the bottom of which we are to find the river. Searching about, we find a way by which we can descend along the shelves, and steps, and piles of broken rocks.

We start leading our ponies; a wall upon our left; unknown depths on our right. At places our way is along shelves so narrow, or so sloping, that I ache with fear lest a pony should make a misstep, and knock a man over the cliffs with him. Now and then we start the loose rocks under our feet, and over the cliffs they go, thundering down, down, as the echoes roll through distant cañons. At last we pass along a level shelf for some distance, then we turn to the right, and zigzag down a steep slope to the bottom. Now we pass along this lower cañon, for two or three miles, to where it terminates in the Grand Cañon, as the other ended in this, only the river is 1,800 feet below us, and it seems, at this distance, to be but a creek. Our withered guide, the human pickle, seats himself on a rock, and seems wonderfully amused at our discomfiture, for we can see no way by which to descend to the river. After some minutes, he quietly rises, and, beckoning us to follow, he points out a narrow sloping shelf on the right, and this is to be our way. It leads along the cliff, for half a mile, to a wider bench beyond, which, he says, is broken down on the other side in a great slide, and there we can get to the river. So we start out on the shelf; it is so steep we can hardly stand on it, and to fall, or slip, is to go—don’t look and see!

It is soon manifest that we cannot get the ponies along the ledge. The storms have washed it down, since our guide was here last, years ago. One of the ponies has gone so far that we cannot turn him back until we find a wider place, but at last we get him off. With part of the men, I take the horses back to the place where there are a few bushes growing, and turn them loose; in the meantime the other men are looking for some way by which we can get down to the river. When I return, one, Captain Bishop, has found a way, and gone down. We pack bread, coffee, sugar, and two or three blankets among us, and set out. It is now nearly dark, and we cannot find the way by which the captain went, and an hour is spent in fruitless search. Two of the men go away around an amphitheater, more than a fourth of a mile, and start down a broken chasm that faces us, who are behind. These walls, that are vertical, or nearly so, are often cut by chasms, where the showers run down, and the top of these chasms will be back a distance from the face of the wall, and the bed of the chasm will slope down, with here and there a fall. At other places, huge rocks have fallen, and block the way. Down such a one the two men start. There is a curious plant growing out from the crevices of the rock. A dozen stems will start from one root, and grow to the length of eight or ten feet, and not throw out a branch or twig, but these stems are thickly covered with leaves. Now and then the two men come to a bunch of dead stems, and make a fire to mark for us their way and progress.

In the meantime we find such a gulch, and start down, but soon come to the “jumping off place,” where we can throw a stone, and hear it faintly striking, away below. We fear that we shall have to stay here, clinging to the rocks until daylight. Our little Indian gathers a few dry stems, ties them into a bundle, lights one end, and holds it up. The others do the same, and with these torches we find a way out of trouble. Helping each other, holding torches for each other, one clinging to another’s hand until we can get footing, then supporting the other on his shoulders, so we make our passage into the depths of the cañon. And now Captain Bishop has kindled a huge fire of driftwood, on the bank of the river. This, and the fires in the gulch opposite, and our own flaming torches, light up little patches, that make more manifest the awful darkness below. Still, on we go, for an hour or two, and at last we see Captain Bishop coming up the gulch, with a huge torch-light on his shoulders. He looks like a fiend, waving brands and lighting the fires of hell, and the men in the opposite gulch are imps, lighting delusive fires in inaccessible crevices, over yawning chasms; our own little Indian is surely the king of wizards, so I think, as I stop for a few moments on a rock to rest. At last we meet Captain Bishop, with his flaming torch, and, as he has learned the way, he soon pilots us to the side of the great Colorado. We are hungry and athirst, almost to starvation. Here we lie down on the rocks and drink, just a mouthful or so, as we dare; then we make a cup of coffee, and, spreading our blankets on a sand beach, the roaring Colorado lulls us to sleep.