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Mapping the Four Corners: Narrating the Hayden Survey of 1875

The survey conducted under the leadership of Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden was one of the most consequential of such assessments in the history of the opening of the American West. Hayden, who had conducted previous surveys in Montana and Wyoming, initiated his canvass of the Southwest in Colorado, in 1873, and concluded it in the Four Corners region of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico in 1875. Mapping the Four Corners, edited by Robert S. McPherson, a professor of history at Utah State, Eastern, and Susan Rhodes Neel, an associate professor of history at Utah State, Eastern, richly details the final phase of this focal survey Hayden directed (albeit mainly from Washington, DC and Denver). The book is subtitled Narrating the Hayden Survey of 1875 for it is largely composed of a first-rate compilation of carefully selected excerpts from field notes, diary entries, correspondence, and newspaper accounts by the expedition members. This United States Geological and Geographic Survey team was chiefly composed of cartographers, geologists, and other scientists, but also one of its key members was the prominent photographer William Henry Jackson, some of whose pictures the editors have included to help illustrate this volume. As part of his visit to the Hopi mesas, Jackson even met and photographed the later famous potter Nampeyo (her picture appears on p. 148). Beyond being scientists, many of the participants were also seekers of gold and other economic opportunities for themselves. In total, the party was composed of almost 40 individuals, broken up into seven specific groups, each with their own responsibilities and tasks to perform. The chapters of the book generally reflect the work of the separate groups. Beyond the actual survey, a dominant sub-theme of this text concerns the circumstances of the Indians of the area, especially the Utes. The editors, for example, have identified selections dealing with the Indians and illustrating the expedition members’ often less-than-positive opinions of them. But they were after all men of their times. The attitudes of the expedition members emerge especially in the graphic descriptions of the reservation allotments of food such as livestock, flour, and other essentials to the Utes every 10 days or so and to what the expedition members interpreted as the Utes’ almost animal-like responses to these allotments. Although this was not one of the expedition’s stated intents, the Utes also perhaps correctly feared the survey and that it could ultimately lead to a loss of reservation land, by establishing rigid boundaries for the area. After approximately two months, just as the work was coming to an end, part of the expedition even came under attack by Indians. The sixth chapter, “‘Something Serious Has Occurred’: La Sal Mountains to Parrott City, August 15-19,” very effectively chronicles the almost 200 mile long-gun battle retreat of the combined parties led by engineer and surveyor James Terry Gardner and geographer Henry Gannett from a band of renegade Utes, Paiutes, and Navajo. This edited collection provides a very good rendering of the final segment of the Hayden Survey and its southwestern environment. The document selection is quite sound, though perhaps somewhat slanted toward the conditions of the Indians at the expense of the actual day-to-day nitty gritty of surveying. The editors’ “Introduction” and “Conclusion” are excellent and absolutely essential to the book. In addition to pulling the volume together, they set the stage especially for readers who are less familiar with the ways and significance of western surveys and their consequences, respectively. Similarly, readers will find the explanations in the notes, along with the maps, photos, and other illustrations, exceptionally helpful. The interest for this book easily should extend well beyond those captivated by surveying and mapping to anyone fascinated by the history of the American West.