John Wesley Powell papers
name: label: Creator
content: Powell, John Wesley, 1834-1902
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
label: Topic
content: Language and languages -- Documentation
creator: label: Creator
content: Powell, John Wesley, 1834-1902
culture: label: Culture
content: Ute
label: Culture
content: Paiute
label: Culture
content: Great Basin
label: Culture
content: Diné (Navajo)
label: Culture
content: Hopi Pueblo
label: Culture
content: Shoshone
setName: label: See more items in
content: John Wesley Powell papers
abstract: label: Summary
content: John Wesley Powell (1834-1902) was a geologist, U.S. Army soldier, explorer of the American West, professor, and director of the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) and United States Geological Survey (USGS).  The John Wesley Powell papers consist of journals, research notes, and writing related to Powell's linguistic and ethnographic studies, as well as personal records and a small amount of material related to the USGS.
bioghist: label: Biographical Note
content: John Wesley Powell (1834-1902) was a geologist, U.S. Army soldier, explorer of the American West, professor, and director of the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) and United States Geological Survey (USGS).  He is known for being the leader of the  Powell Geographic Expedition of 1869, the first  cartographic and scientific investigation of long segments of the Green and Colorado rivers in the southwestern United States and for a subsequent expedition in 1871-1872.

Powell was born in Mount Morris, New York.  In 1838, he moved with his family to Southern Ohio, where he was mentored by amateur naturalist George Crookham.  The family again moved, this time to Wisconsin, before finally settling in Illinois in 1851.  There, Powell worked as a schoolteacher and attended several colleges, though he never received a degree.  He also collected fossils and studied geology during trips to areas along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.  Powell enlisted in the army at the start of the Civil War.  His right arm was amputated after he sustained an injury at the Battle of Shiloh.  Powell was promoted to second lieutenant and later to major during his army tenure.  At the end of the war he was made a brevet lieutenant colonel but preferred to use the title of "Major."

After the war, Powell taught natural sciences at Illinois Wesleyan University and Illinois State Normal University.  He became curator of the Illinois Natural History Society Museum in 1867.  During this time, Powell continued to organize expeditions, including studies of the Colorado River and the Native American tribes of the region (in 1869 and in 1871-1872).  With government funding, his second expedition produced the first reliable maps of the river.  As a result, Powell published a book, Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries: Explored in 1869, 1870, 1871, and 1872 Under the Direction of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution (1875), which was reprinted as Canyons of the Colorado in 1895.  

Powell was appointed director of the Bureau of American Ethnology at its inception in 1879, a position he held until his death.  He also served as director of the US Geological Survey from 1881-1894. 

Powell married Emma Dean in 1861.  Together, they had one child, Mary Dean Powell, in 1871.  
Powell died in 1902 at his summer home in Brooklin, Maine.  He is buried in Arlington National Cemetary.
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 11.5 Linear feet (16 boxes and 5 folders)
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1867-1907
custodhist: label: Custodial History
content: The manuscripts in this collection were compiled from numerous sources. After John Wesley Powell's death in 1902, Grove Karl Gilbert served as the literary executor of his estate.  Several manuscripts left by Powell in the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) offices were transferred to Gilbert in 1903.  Gilbert intended to publish Powell's collected writings posthumously, with William John McGee editing Powell's works relating to Anthropology and Philosophy and Gilbert editing the works relating to Geology and Geography.  This work was never completed or published.  Gilbert subsequently distributed Powell's manuscripts to the BAE, USGS, and Powell's widow, Emma Dean Powell, as he deemed appropriate. Gilbert destroyed the remainder of Powell's manuscripts, including his correspondence. There is no record or inventory of the Powell material Gilbert collected, distributed, or destroyed.  See related correspondence in the Records of the Bureau of American Ethnology and Powell collection file for more information. 

Some materials in the collection were acquired by the BAE Archives and the National Anthropological Archives from the BAE Library, Smithsonian Institution Archives, and other sources. More information is available in the records for these individual items.
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: National Anthropological Archives
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NAA.MS798
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
arrangement: label: Arrangement
content: The collection is arranged into four (4) series: (1) Research; (2) United States Geological Survey (USGS); (3) Writing and Reports; and (4) Personal.
processinfo: label: Processing Information
content: The material in this collection has been organized and cataloged in various ways by the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) and National Anthropological Archives (NAA) since the 1870s. There is little remaining evidence of Powell's own organizational scheme.

James Constantine Pilling, BAE Chief Clerk, was first custodian of the manuscripts collection.  Pilling compiled the first catalog of BAE manuscripts in 1881 as "Catalog of Linguistic Manuscripts in the Library of the Bureau of Ethnology" in the First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.  The Pilling catalog organizes the manuscripts alphabetically by collector and includes twenty-six (26) of Powell's manuscripts, as well as other material then in the BAE manuscript collection.  

In 1893, BAE linguist James Owen Dorsey, with the help of J.N.B. Hewitt, began to compile an in-house catalog of BAE manuscripts. This system involved organizing the manuscripts onto shelves by language group, and involved separating vocabularies from related items, such as letters, related notes, and other vocabularies.  Some of the manuscripts are marked with shelf numbers from this system (e.g., Sh-57, Sh-67, etc.) This work was interrupted by Dorsey's death in 1895 and never completed.  The incomplete Dorsey-Hewitt catalog in now in  MS 1524.  

In 1896, an inventory was conducted on the manuscript collection.  An inventory list has not been preserved, but many of the manuscripts have been marked "'96" in ink indicating that they were accounted for in this inventory.  

In 1926, Hewitt, with the assistance of typist Mae Tucker, began to assign Manuscript Numbers to BAE collections.  The numbers loosely corresponded to language families, but this may have been a result of the numbers being assigned to the manuscripts in the order in which they were already arranged on the shelves.  The manuscripts were stamped with a BAE stamp including the month and year they were cataloged and the catalog number was stamped or written on the documents.  In some cases, manuscripts numbers were reassigned, resulting in several different numbers appearing on the documents.  

In 2025, Powell's manuscripts were reprocessed and incorporated into a single collection now known as the John Wesley Powell papers (MS 798).  The Archivist assembled Powell's ethnographic and linguistic manuscripts, writings, and personal papers.  Manuscripts relating to Powell's work as director of the BAE were not included.

Due to the numerous cataloging and arrangement schemes imposed on the materials and a lack of documentation, the Archivist was unable to determine an original order of the collection.  The Archivist organized the collection into four (4) series.  The Archivist referred to:

Powell, John Wesley, and Smithsonian Institution.  Anthropology of the Numa: John Wesley Powell's Manuscripts on the Numic Peoples of Western North America, 1868-1880. Edited by Don D. Fowler and Catherine S. Fowler. Washington, DC: Smithsonian 		Institution Press, 1971.

to identify and arrange the research material in Series 1.  Old BAE/NAA manuscript numbers have been recorded as "Local Numbers" for each file.  In some cases, more than one BAE/NAA manuscript has been incorporated into a single file.  In other cases, BAE/NAA manuscripts have been divided among several new files.  Original titles and wording on the documents were used when possible, even when they included outdated or offensive terminology.  Supplied titles, including modern terminology, are in square brackets [].
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: The collection consists primarily of journals, research notes, and writing related to Powell's linguistic and ethnographic study of the indigenous peoples he encountered during his explorations of the Colorado River in 1869 and 1871-1872 and subsequent trips to the western United States.  The collection also contains a few items related to Powell's role as second director of the USGS and personal records, including correspondence, financial records, honor and awards, and a few photographs.  Materal related to Powell's position as director of the Bureau of American Ethnology are not included. 

Please note that the contents of the collection and the language and terminology used reflect the context and culture of the time of its creation. As an historical document, its contents may be at odds with contemporary views and terminology and considered offensive today. The information within this collection does not reflect the views of the Smithsonian Institution or National Anthropological Archives, but is available in its original form to facilitate research.
relatedmaterial: label: Related Materials
content: Artifacts collected by Powell are held by the Department of Anthropology object collections, USGS Museum, and Illinois State University.

Material related to Powell's role as director of the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) are held by the National Anthropological Archives (NAA) in Records of the Bureau of American EthnologyMS 3322 and MS 4735.

Photographs of Powell are held by the NAA in Photo Lot 33 and Photo Lot 39 and an inventory of photographs made on Powell's expeditions is held in MS 1795-c.

Material related to Powell's work with the U.S. Geological Survey are held by the National Archives in Record Group 57: Records of the U.S. Geological Survey, 1839–2008.