Title:

Down the Great Unknown

Author:

Edward Dolnick

Category:

Non-fiction

Rating:

Date Reviewed:

December 19, 2024

own the Great Unknown is another fine piece of non-fiction writing by Edward Dolnick. It this book, Dolnick describes the 1869 expedition led by John Wesley Powell down the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon. What surprised me is that the expedition did not begin at the head of the Grand Canyon (as I had always assumed), but instead Powell and his team of 9 men launched their boats into the Green River near the Utah/Wyoming border. The recently completed Transcontinental Railroad crossed the Green River at that point, and so that is where Powell began. They don't reach the entrance to the Grand Canyon until after page 200 of this 292 page book. By that time, they have already endured amazing hardship, survived numerous near drownings, and lost most of their supplies. Before they even begin the Grand Canyon, they were already exhausted, demoralized and half starved!

Dolnick describes how Powell decided to explore the great blank space on the map known as the American Southwest. It was a huge uncharted desert drained by the mighty Colorado river, which was too violent to sail. Nevertheless, Powell decided he would lead a team of 3 boats down this unmapped river. Because the river had never been navigated, no one knew if there were towering waterfalls that might trap the expedition. None of the men had any white water skills (in 1869, that was not a skill anyone possessed.) The boats Powell chose were sturdy, but were heavy (which made it difficult to portage them around the rapids). Also the boats had keels, which made it more difficult to direct the boats through the currents. Even worse, the boats were designed to be rowed with the oarsman facing the back of the boat, so he could not see where he was headed even though split second decisions were necessary when trying to run the rapids.

Powell is a scientist, and so the team carries barometers to measure altitude. They draw maps and plot longitude and latitude. At the beginning of the trip, the party does not move with enough urgency.

As they sail down the Green River, more rivers merge in. The volume and power of the water keeps increasing with each confluence. By the time the men reach the Colorado, the current has grown into a raging torrent. Using the journals from the men who were on the expedition, Dolnick describes the obstacles that had to be overcome. There were expeditions that followed after Powell, and some of them ended up in disaster and drownings. Powell and his men were both lucky and skilled, deserving the praise that they received for their epic achievement.

Powell famously had just one arm, his right arm had been shot off at the Battle of Shiloh (all of the men on the expedition were veterans of the Civil War). Dolnick spends a couple chapters describing the horrific fighting at Shiloh, and then also describes the ghastly medical facilities that the wounded men faced - if a bullet hit a limb, it was summarily amputated. If you were shot in the torso, you simply died in agony. A huge percentage of amputees died from subsequent infections because the field surgeons had no concept of germ theory. It is a sobering read.

It was also disturbing to read about the Mountain Meadow Massacre. In 1857, a party of Mormon militia men ambushed a wagon train of pioneers and massacred 120 Americans, killing everyone older than age 6. The has long been speculation about what happened to the three mountain men who decided to abandoned the Powell expedition deep in the Grand Canyon when faced with a seemingly unsurviveable rapid. Those three men hiked out of the Grand Canyon and were never heard from again - but it seems likely that the Mormons murdered them too. Tragically, after the part split, Powell and his remaining adventurers exited the Grand Canyon just a day later - if those three men had just stuck it out the fearsome rapids one more day, they too would have lived.

Down the Great Unknown is the best kind of non-fiction writing - interesting and informative. I think I have read most of Dolnick's books, but I should check the library catalog to see if there are any I missed.