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Show WINTER 2013 UHQ pp 4-90_UHQ Stories/pp.4-68 12/5/12 9:38 AM Page 22 uTAH HISTORICAL QuARTERLy recorded that they gave Adair seventy-five dollars with instructions to buy rations and meet the party at the mouth of the Kanab in the Grand Canyon by September 4.90 Powell was apprehensive about the remaining leg of the voyage—the darkest, most isolated section of the trip—because not only was it laced with rocks and rapids, but the water level in the Colorado was much higher than when Powell had passed through in 1869.91 His young and depleted crew would need the confidence and assurance that supplies awaited them at a specific location downstream. Adair’s resupply role was crucial. Having lost three men on his first expedition because of despair, Powell knew the psychological, as well as practical, peril of running short on basic provisions. That Powell now entrusted Adair with responsibility to move supplies down Kanab Canyon to the Colorado River by a date certain underscores the confidence that Powell and Thompson had developed in this massacre participant. The leaders of the survey knew from experience that Adair was a frontiersman, confident enough in the wild to follow directions and arrive on time at a remote rendezvous point where resupply was essential. In Thompson’s diary, Adair is always “George,” suggesting an affection or familiarity not afforded other members of the party. Clem Powell captured Adair’s lively personality: “Adair is our Indian interpreter, a late acquisition to the party. He abounds in jest and anecdotes; his yarns about the campfire would set up a Dime Novel Company for a twelve-month.”92 Adair told Powell’s men about the massacre. Dellenbaugh remembered: “George Adair, whom I knew well, a young fellow at the time, said he joined the crowd without knowing what it was all about.” From his experience with Adair, Dellenbaugh was inclined to believe that Haight, Lee, and Philip Klingensmith were the “real perpetrators” of the crime.93 As Powell and his men commenced the final leg of their journey, Lee summarized in his diary entry for July 24 his view of the group as “our generous friends of Maj. Powel’s expedition.” 94 In turn, Dellenbaugh remembered, “Lee was most cordial and we could not have asked better treatment than he gave us the whole time we were at Lonely Dell.”95 The push down the Colorado from the Paria to the Kanab was, in the eyes of Dellenbaugh, “a forlorn hope.” The expedition was undermanned without original members Francis Bishop, Beaman, and Steward. They were down to just two boats with the roughest and most isolated stretch of river ahead in high water. The enterprise evoked great uncertainty.96 90 “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 93; “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 437. “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 438. 92 Ibid., 422. 93 Frederick S. Dellenbaugh to Mr. Kelly, August 16, 1934, in “F. S. Dellenbaugh of the Colorado,” 242. 94 Mormon Chronicle, 2:206. 95 Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 216. 96 Ibid., 215. 91 22 |
