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Show WINTER 2013 UHQ pp 4-90_UHQ Stories/pp.4-68 12/5/12 9:38 AM Page 23 The three-week run through the Grand Canyon, although a challenge, achieved the basic scientific goals of the expedition. When Powell and his men reached Kanab Wash on September 7, George Adair and two other men were there to meet them with supplies.97 With reports of unfriendly Indians downstream, high water that made the rougher rapids ahead even more dangerous than on the 1869 voyage, and little more to be gained on the scientific front by running the rest of the canyon, Powell and Thompson concluded to terminate their journey at that point and head north to Kanab. Thompson wrote of informing “the boys of our decision this morning. All very pleased. The fact is each one is impressed with the impossibility of George Adair. continuing down the river.”98 By September 12, most of the party was back in Kanab. Survey work continued for the next several months—with Adair in his accustomed support role—but by the end of 1872, the remainder of Powell’s men who had come down the river from Wyoming in 1871 had returned to their homes in the east. Only Thompson and Hillers would continue to work with Powell in the survey.99 Powell’s confidence in Adair is seen once more in a final assignment: Adair guided American landscape artist Thomas Moran and New York Times correspondent Justin E. Colburn from Fillmore south to Kanab. As Moran reported to his wife: “Powell does not leave here with us, but gives us a man [Adair] who has been with him a long while. So we are all right.” 100 Their route took them through Toquerville on July 23 after a side trip to the dark pink Navajo sandstone cliffs southeast of Kanarraville, now part of the Kolob section of Zion National Park. Adair apparently also served as “guide” for “an excursion of four days” into what “is called by the Mormons ‘Little Zion Valley,’” today’s Zion Canyon.101 97 “Photographed All the Best Scenery,” 141–42. “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 98. 99 “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 155; Worster, River Running West, 257–58. 100 Tom to “My dear Wife,” July 17, 1873, in Amy O. Bassford, ed., Home-Thoughts, from Afar: Letters of Thomas Moran to Mary Nimmo Moran (East Hampton, NY: East Hampton Free Library, 1967), 33; Worster, River Running West, 298–301; [Justin E. Colburn], letter, July 23, 1873, in “The Land of Mormon,” New York Times, August 7, 1873; [Justin E. Colburn], letter, August 13, 1873, in “The Colorado Canon,” New York Times, September 4, 1873. In 1872, Powell had “been appointed Commissioner to locate the Indians of southern Utah and northern Arizona on reservations.” Gregory, in “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 141. 101 [Justin E. Colburn], letter, August 13, 1873, in “The Colorado Canon,” New York Times, September 4, 1873. 98 23 dAuGHTERS OF THE uTAH PIONEERS THE POWELL SuRVEy |
