for the position of director of the survey, and was himself placed upon the commission on the codification of existing laws relating to the survey and disposition of the public domain.
The labors of this commission concluded, Professor Powell was glad to be able to turn his attention once more to science. The one field which now most deeply interested him was that of American ethnology. From the very beginning of his Western explorations, the aborigines had strongly engrossed his thoughts, and among all his scientific collections and investigations which he had been enabled to make none had received more careful attention than those relating to the Indian tribes. While the other surveys had devoted much attention to the collection, study, and illustration of the various departments of natural history, he had made ethnography, next to geology and topography, the chief object of his expeditions. Prior to the date of the consolidation, three volumes relating to ethnology had been published by the Powell Survey, and eight more were in different states of preparation, while in addition to this the material collected and deposited in the Anthropological Hall of the Smithsonian Institution was sufficient for several other volumes, and demanded elaboration. The study of Indian languages had especially interested him, for he saw that, whatever success might be attained in preserving the Indians themselves from extermination, the fate of their languages was already settled, and in a short time the primitive stocks would have inevitably become so badly corrupted that the philologist would find it impossible to deal with them in a scientific manner.
Efforts were made by the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and the Secretary of the Interior to prevent the discontinuance of this work, and an appropriation of twenty thousand dollars was secured in March, 1879, for completing and preparing for publication the "Contributions to North American Ethnology," under the Smithsonian Institution, with a provision that all the material collected in the surveys that bore on that subject should be turned over to that institution.
Professor Powell was put in charge of this department, and has prosecuted it with great vigor and success to the present time. A Bureau of Ethnology grew up under the Smithsonian Institution, which has become the recognized center of ethnographic operations in this country.
When, in the spring of 1881, Mr. Clarence King retired from the work of the surveys, there seemed to be no rival candidate to Professor Powell for the vacant position, and it fell to him as the most obviously suitable person to fill it.
Without mentioning particularly the numerous official reports into which important scientific matters have often found their way, the principal literary contributions of Professor Powell are the following:
1. "History of the Exploration of the Cañons of the Colorado."
