William Wallace Bass

“ At last daylight comes, and we have breakfast, without a word being said as to the future. The meal is as solemn as a funeral. After breakfast, I ask the three men if they still think it best to leave us. ”

“ Bass and I are both very human, have many of the frailities and weaknesses common to mankind, but regardless of them all, or of their magnification by officious meddlers and mischief-makers, we still preserve that unbroken serenity and confidence of friendship vouchsafed but to the most favored of men. ”

“ At eleven o'clock we come to a place in the river where it seems much worse than any we have yet met in all its course. A little creek comes down from the left. We land first on the right, and clamber up over the granite pinnacles for a mile or two, but can see no way by which we can let down, and to run it would be sure destruction. ”

“ More dead than alive, he emerged from the lower reaches of the Canyon at Callville, a Mormon settlement, where he was cared for and nursed back to life. Mr. White is still alive, a respected and honored old man, a citizen of Trinidad, Colorado, and while all the writers that have extolled Powell, from George Wharton James down to the Kolb Bros., have either abused or ignored White, there is a growing conviction that the old man's story was and is true and that he did actually make the journey. ”

“ This is practically the whole story as told by Powell. For years it has been accepted as the truth. Science is Truth focalized, and there is no real science without truth. I have always wondered whether this narrative gave us the whole truth, and when I saw the Powell Monument and noted the omission of the three names of the two Rowlands and Dunn, I wondered still more. Why should the names of these three men be left off after having traveled over four hundred miles on the maiden trip, and thus having proven their valor and courage? ”

“ In the fall of 1868, myself, J. C. Sumner, William Dunn, O. G. Rowland and Seneca Rowland, brothers, were camped at the Hot Springs in middle park, Colorado, about one hundred miles west of Denver, Colorado. We were trapping and prospecting, both in that section and on White River, some seventy-five miles further west. While our party, J. C. Sumner in charge, was in camp at this place, Major Powell and party pulled in with their pack animals, twenty-five animals and twelve or eighteen men. ”

“ We differ on a thousand subjects; we argue about men, measures and history; we read geology, ethnology and archaeology from different standpoints; he is aggressively argumentative, I am conciliatory acquiescent, yet in one thing we are steadily united, viz., in our devotion and love to the great canyon in or near which he has spent so great a part of his life. ”

“ The dip of the rocks is to the north, and we are rapidly running into lower formations. Unless our course changes, we shall very soon run again into the granite. This gives us some anxiety. Now and then the river turns to the west and excites hope that are soon destroyed by another turn to the south. About nine o'clock we come to the dreaded rock. It is with no little misgiving that we see the river enter these black, hard walls. At its very entrance we have to make a portage; then we have to let down with lines past some ugly rocks. ”

“ Some time ago I learned that William W. Hawkins, the cook referred to by Powell, was still alive. Powell died in 1902 at the age of 69 years. Hawkins was then living, and thus became the sole survivor (I believe) of the first Powell trip. After the expedition he settled in Pine Valley, Utah, but later moved to Gila Valley, Arizona, and thence to Graham County, where he resided for thirty-five years. He was Justice of the Peace for many years and resided at Eden in that county. He also was a prominent rancher and at his death had six sons living, two of whom reside near Mesa, Arizona. ”

“ Born in Shelbyville, Indiana, in 1848, he came to Arizona, by way of an hospital for incurables in New York, to die. Life in the open gave him a new hope, and at 72 he is still hale, hearty, vigorous and capable of more work than many a city-bred youth of 25. His life in Arizona has been a romance throughout, and in much of it I have either shared or been an interested spectator. My first meeting with Mr. Bass was at Flagstaff in 1888, under the following circumstances:
I had gone out to the Canyon, from Flagstaff, with the Rev. Stewart Conrad Wright, a Methodist minister, and several women. ”

“ The Major asked me to bake up all the flour that we had and said to make the bread into bisquits, or dough-gods (as we called them) , as flour and water was what we had to make them with. In about three hours I had them all baked. I told the Major that the bread was ready and he called the boys and told them all his intentions as to leaving the river. That was the first time Hall and I knew anything about what was going on. I told Hall to take our shares and put them in the boat, as the Major said that each man should keep his own part as we might get separated. ”

“ The elder Howland thinks it is, and Dunn agrees with him. The younger Howland tries to persuade them to go on with the party, failing in which, he decides to go with his brother.... Two rifles and a shotgun are given to the men who are going out. I ask them to help themselves to the rations, and take what they think to be a fair share. This they refuse to do, saying they have no fear but that they can get something to eat, but Billy, the cook, has a pan of biscuits prepared for dinner, and these he leaves on a rock. ”

“ But this assertion of Stanton's implies that White and his companion, Stroll, after Captain Baker was killed, crossed the intervening hundreds of miles from the San Juan to the head of the Grand Wash, and that he there entered the Canyon and floated down to Callville. To my limited intelligence it seems incredible that any man could believe in the truth and honesty of James White and yet not question him as to how he forgot to mention how he traveled over all these hundreds of miles. White never makes a word of reference to it, nor does Stanton. Did White come on a flying machine in a trance? ”

“ It would be dangerous in the extreme in low water. Another incident to strengthen my belief in White's story was the meeting of a man, J. P. Vollmer by name, then president of the First National Bank of Lewiston, Idaho, who was a visitor to the canyon some years later. He told me he came near being a member of White's party when they were about to start on their prospecting trip on the Mancos in Colorado, but unavoidably he was prevented from joining them in time or he might have been among them when attacked by the Utes and met the fate of Baker, or with White and his partner on the raft. ”

“ The walls on the west side are 1,800 feet high, where the rivers come together in a V shape. Now our trouble begins, and plenty of bad rapids in the river. Dunn was the one who took the altitudes with the barometer and it was here we had the first real trouble in the party, although Powell had named Dunn the "Dirty Devil." ”

“ The Indians took seven head of horses from us. I wish I could write you half I underwent. I saw the hardest time that any man ever did in the world, but thank God that I got through it safe. I am well again, and I hope these few lines will find you all well. I send my best respects to all. Josh, answer this when you get it. Direct your letter to Callville, Arizona. Ask Tom to answer that letter I wrote him several years ago.
JAMES WHITE.
Stanton claims that White only went through the lower part of the Canyon, viz., from the Grand Wash Cliff's to Callville. ”

“ Sumner took it up for Dunn because he knew there would soon be trouble, and told Powell that Dunn had been wounded four times by the Comanchies, so it all passed off. The next day we had some very bad rapids, so bad that it was necessary to let the boats around some large rocks, and in order to do this, and as Dunn was a fine swimmer, the Major asked him to swim out to a rock where he could catch the rope and raise it over the rock so the boat would swing in below. ”

“ While we were eating our dinner Sumner said that Dunn came near being drowned and the Major's brother made the remark that it would have been but little loss, and the Major spoke up and said that Dunn would have to pay thirty dollars for a watch belonging to him that had been soaked with water and ruined, and if he did not he would have to leave the party. Andy Hall and I were down at our boat, I having gone down after a cup and Andy had remained at the boat fitting one of his oars. ”

“ I found Dunn, Bradley and Hall waiting to see what had happened, but before I had time to tell them, Sumner came and began to talk to us, telling us to not feel put out, that the Major was hasty and to give him another chance. Dunn said that the Major never did like him anyway, if he had he would never have named the Eskalanty [1] River dirty devil. We camped at that place for the night and in the morning the Major said he would take thirty dollars for the watch and that he could pay for it when we got through. None of the party except the Major liked Capt. Powell. ”

“ After another page devoted to discussing the dangers and difficulties ahead of them, Powell continues, on page 98:
After supper Captain (O. G.) Rowland asked to have a talk with me. We walk up the little creek a short distance, and I soon find that his object is to remonstrate against my determination to proceed. He thinks that we had better abandon the river here. Talking with him, I learn that his brother, William Dunn, and himself have determined to go no farther in the boats. So we return to camp. Nothing is said to the other men. ”

“ The three men who left the party—the two Rowlands and Dunn—were never seen again alive. On the following expedition Powell spent some time with the Shivwit Indians, in company with Jacob Hamblin, a Mormon pioneer and missionary. From them he learned of the death of the men who left him. On pages 130-131, he thus recounts the story. After he had talked with the Indians, one of them made a reply, and in his speech said:
Last year we killed three white men. ”

“ On the other hand, F. S. Dellenbaugh, who has written two books on the Colorado River, viz., "The Romance of the Colorado River" and "A Canyon Voyage," openly assails White as a mendacious fabricator of the worst type. ”

“ Afterwards he would take me to another, and he claimed more wonderful and scenic portion of the Canyon. Gladly the invitation was accepted, and the following week saw me at Williams, starting out in a wagon driven by Mr. Bass, with Mr. McGowan as my vis-a-vis.
This trip was my introduction to the Havasupai Indians and the wonders of their romantically located home. But of greater importance than this was the fact that this trip firmly established a friendship with Mr. Bass that nothing has ever even momentarily shaken, and the years have rendered but more firm and secure. Mr. ”