John Wesley Powell (March 24, 1834 – September 23, 1902) was a U.S. Army soldier, explorer of the American West, and director of major scientific and cultural institutions. He is famous for his 1869 geographic expedition, a three-month river trip down the Green and Colorado rivers, including the first official U.S. government-sponsored passage through the Grand Canyon.
Powell was appointed by US president James A. Garfield to serve as the second director of the U.S. Geological Survey (1881–1894) and proposed, for development of the arid West, policies that were prescient for his accurate evaluation of conditions. He also spent time among the Native Peoples of the Colorado Plateau and wrote an influential classification of North American Indian languages. Two years prior to his service as director of the U.S. Geological Survey, he had become the first director of the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution where he supported linguistic and sociological research and publications. He was also the first president of the Anthropological Society of Washington, founded in 1879.
Powell was a proponent of Lewis H. Morgan's stages of human progress, and regarded Native Americans as culturally savage or barbarian. He advocated for overthrow of indigenous societies and the gradual replacement of native hunting practices with sedentary agriculture, as well as the cultural assimilation of Native people into the United States. Powell was in favor of developing agriculture on water-rich public lands, leaving the rest for grazing animals.
From 1894 to 1899, Powell held a post as lecturer on the History of Culture in the Political Science department at the Columbian University in Washington, D.C. He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1898.
