"For
two million years, humpback fish knew the River as a place to
breathe, a place to eat, the route to spawning grounds. The
River was their home. The Shoshone, Arapaho, Ute, Paiute, Hopi,
Zuni and Navajo people knew the River when it was a wild torrent
in the spring and a shallow, threadlike oasis in the summer.
Adjacent meadows fed their horses, and attracted game that fed
the people. Fur trappers knew the River for the beaver, for
a cool drink, for a quiet place to camp in the shade. Emigrants
knew the River as a halfway point to Oregon and California,
as a place to wash dingy clothes, as another obstacle to ford.
John Wesley Powell knew the River as a force that can crush
a boat and carve magnificent colorful canyons. Pioneers knew
the River as a source of irrigation water for their crops -
if only they could divert the water. Real estate developers
knew the River could make small desert communities blossom into
beautiful cities. Miners knew the River could provide the water
they needed to smelt copper, iron, silver and gold, to slurry
coal and phosphate, to generate steam and electricity, to refine
oil. The painter, photographer, writer and poet knew the
River to be the most beautiful thing they had ever seen."
David
Whitman, The River They Knew, 1995, Dinosaur Nature Association
The
Mirror Case. John Wesley Powell and Ute woman, Tau-ruv, with
mirror case in Uintah Valley, Utah, 1873 or 1874. Explorer,
scientist, and writer, Powell worked to eliminate the term
"unexplored" from maps and to document Native American cultures.
Photograph by John K. Hillers. Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.
"We
are now ready to start on our way down the Great unknown. We
have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore.
What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel,
we know not; what walls ride over the river, we know not. Ah,
well! We may conjecture many things. The men talk as cheerfully
as ever; but to me the cheer is somber and the jests are ghastly."
John
Wesley Powell,Canyons of the Colorado, August 13,
1869
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People
on shore watch as the Wheeler survey party heads up river. George
Wheeler conducted surveys for the federal government after the Civil
War, accompanied by artists and photographers to chart the interior
West.
Courtesy of Jeremy Rowe vintagephotography.
In
the early 1800s the waters of the Green River nourished an abundant
beaver population. Valued for their pelts, beavers began to be
trapped as a marketable commodity. While small numbers of trappers
and Natives hunted in the Green River basin, there was no major
impact on the environment, but in 1825 William Henry Ashley revolutionized
the area's fur trade. He held annual rendezvous at points along
the Green River where trappers would exchange their pelts with
traders from St. Louis, making the business more efficient.
The
rendezvous system was an enormous business success, but it came
at a cost. It decimated the beaver population, altered relationships
between traders and Native Americans, and exacerbated international
rivalries in the area. Within 15 years the organized commercial
fur trade came to an end. It had transformed the natural environment
and human society along the Green River, and it had paved the
way for white emigration to and through the area.
The
fur trade, much romanticized in literature and the popular imagination,
enabled people both to flee the constraints of established society
in the East and to spread the social institutions of the growing
young nation. The fur trade is thus a symbol of escape and expansion,
providing a metaphor for the larger Colorado River experience.
Petroglyphs on the Colorado.
Courtesy of Jeremy Rowe Vintagephotography.
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