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Editor's note: This article is a part of a series reviewing Utah and national history for KSL.com's Historic section.SALT LAKE CITY — It has now been 150 years since Western explorer John Wesley Powell embarked on his first journey down the Colorado River and through southern Utah.
In 1872, he returned along with photographer John Hillers and others. Now, a new book by a Utah author showcases the images captured along the way during that 1870s trip.
“The People: The Missing Piece of John Wesley Powell’s Expeditions” by Carol Ormond explores the photos taken by Hillers during the expedition and the story of the journey across southern Utah. Many of the photos show Native American life and the scenery at the time.
Keep in mind, this was a different era in photography. It’s not as if Powell, Hillers or anyone else had a phone with them to take photos and put them on Instagram as can be easily done today. The crew brought more than 1,000 pounds of photographic equipment with them to capture the photos in the book.
Some of the photos were placed on a special display at Maynard Dixon Home in Mount Carmel last year. The Thunderbird Foundation for the Arts acquired those photos in 1999.
Ormond was blown away the first time she saw the images.
“My very first impression was, ‘These are priceless,’” she said. “This group of people were captured in a time that was fast disappearing. They were in the most primitive state of any of the Indians that were on the continent at the time.”
What makes the photos so captivating is the humanity.
“That was one of John Wesley Powell’s gifts. He saw people as people and respected them,” Ormond continued. “Because he respected them, they respected him.”
That bond between Powell’s crew and mostly Paiute Native Americans comes across vividly in the photos, too. As Emily Bingham, vice president of The Thunderbird Foundation for the Arts, noted, much of Powell’s successes journeying through southern Utah came with the help of Native Americans.
They guided Powell through the area, and showed him where to find water and how to deal with the elements at the time.
“You hear so much about the white man coming in and destroying the Native American way of life, but when you look at this relationship, you can see there was a lot of respect for one another,” Bingham added.
She pointed to a pair of photos that stand out to her. One shows a group of children playing a game where one acted like deer and the others played wolves trying to track it down. The other shows a mother next to an empty cradle.
“I wonder what in the world is going through her mind,” she said, looking at the photo.
The book is available online. A symposium and panel discussion with Ormond and others is planned for 1 p.m. Saturday at the Old Rock Church off U.S. 89 in Mount Carmel, Kane County. The event precedes a review of artwork from the artist Robert Goldman, which begins at 11 a.m. Saturday.
Bingham hopes the photos will help people understand what life was like for Native Americans in the 1870s and even beforehand.
“We often think about just vast landscapes of emptiness,” she said. “We don’t often associate that there were people long before we were.”
Contributing: Ken Fall, KSL TV
