All Dead Except the Gunsmith

So screamed the headline in the Omaha Daily Republican on July 2, 1869, some five weeks after John Wesley Powell and his crew of nine had left Green River City, Wyoming, headed for “the great unknown” stretches of the Green and Colorado Rivers. The newspaper quoted one John Riley, a trapper who claimed he had met John Sumner, a Powell boatman and the gunsmith of the headline, at Fort Bridger, Wyoming. According to Riley, Sumner had been left on shore “to report in case the failure none believed in did occur.” Over two days the paper presented a long an discursive account of the rivers, previous explorers, a planned Powell expedition to China, etc. and concluded:
“Our account is soon told. Ambition had a strong hold upon reason. Judgment was laid aside, and the Napoleonic Major, with his brave band of faithful companions…entered death’s portals—the awful, treacherous portals of Hell’s Gate…they must have died as they had lived—heroes all.”
One problem with the account was Riley’s recitation of the names of the crew that he said Sumner had given him: It included a fourteen year old boy named only “Schwartz” and four men whose names Sumner had forgotten (including, apparently, that of his long-time trapping partner.) Riley’s story didn’t last long. On July 8th the Chicago Tribune reported receiving a dispatch from Mrs. Powell “…She does not believe the story and evidently does not believe it came from John Sumner…”
In the previous week, however, articles appeared in all the major papers, ranging from the Rocky Mountain News to the New York Times, working their way east along the railroad. But the characters had changed. This time the reporter is John A. Risdon, who must rank among the most glib liars in history. Risdon claimed that he was the sole survivor of the Powell expedition, having been left on shore “to tend the wagon teams.” Each time Risdon told the story it grew wilder. He first reported twenty men in the crew, and made up their names, getting only one right—Powell’s—and named two teamsters and an Indian guide named “Chick-a-wa-nee.” For good measure he threw in “two men who lived at Fairview, Ill., who acted as runners…” Risdon had a sense of humor: He related that Chick-a-wa-nee had persuaded Powell to abandon his three boats and put the entire party (save Risdon) in a twenty foot birch bark “yawl,” which they built on the spot. Illustrating the maxim that a liar needs a good memory, Risdon later said there were twenty-two in crew and when challenged made up two brothers on the spur of the moment.
Risdon had something going for him, though. He charmed his way to Governor Palmer of Illinois, who was completely taken in. Palmer sent the story to the Chicago Tribune which published it verbatim on July 2nd under the head, “Twenty-one Men Engulfed in the Colorado in a Moment.”
The story begins with Risdon’s manufactured role as “chainman” with the expedition and continues:
“On the 7th or 8th day of May the party reached the Colorado River, at a point named Williamsburg, a small Indian settlement.” [Powell began his trip on May 24th]
Risdon manufactured more geography, two rivers named the Big Black and the Delaban as well as the Colorado Rapids, which lay between them and had a fall of 160 feet in a mile and a quarter. Governor Palmer’s account continued: “Mr. Risdon and four or five others of the party tried to dissuade the Major from crossing at that point… But Major Powell said laughingly in reply: ‘We have crossed worse rapids than these, boys. You must be getting cowardly. If seven or eight men cannot paddle us across there, we will have to go under.’”
Risdon again expanded the party and waggishly provided lopsided propulsion: “When they left the shore there were twenty-five men in the boat… They pushed out into the river with three hearty cheers, using seven paddles, the Major standing in the stern steering.”
Risdon stood on the shore waving his hat, and said: “You must be back in time for dinner…” They cried back in reply: “Goodbye, Jack; you will never see us again.” A moment afterward Risdon saw the boat commence whirling around and like a living thing dive down into the depths of the river with its living freight, Major Powell standing at his post and was the last man Risdon saw of this noble and ill fated expedition.

Oh how Risdon wept. He told Palmer, “For two hours I lay on the bank of the river crying like a baby.” He then went up (!) and down the river…to see if he could find any remains of the party, but could not do so.
Risdon continued to search for four days, finding only Powell’s carpet bag and risking his life to recover it. Then, taking the two teams and wagons, started for the bounds of civilization. He made a journey of it: eight days of rough travel, fording twenty streams and several times nearly losing his teams until he came to an Le Roy, a military post at an imagined location on the Red River, both places a thousand miles away. His skill at inventing names seems to have failed him for he reported to a mythical Colonel Smith who made him comfortable for a few days and then had arranged his transport to St. Louis where “All of Major Powell’s baggage together with the carpet bag… were sent to Mrs. Powell by express…”
Now this last lie could not escape refutation which makes one suspect that Risdon planned the whole thing as an enormous joke. Poor Governor Palmer; he concluded his report with: “Mr. Risdon…has the appearance of an honest, reliable man…and by his words and by the tangible proofs he brings with him (these are not described) the fate of Major Powell’s expedition is left without a doubt and another name is added to the long roll of martyrs to science. Mr. Risdon served under Major Powell…for three years during the late war.”
With admirable restraint a competing Chicago newspaper reported the following day: “There is still reason to doubt the loss of Major Powell and his party…[His] mother has received a letter from him dated May 28. Risdon’s account…states that the disaster…occurred May 8…She does not credit the story.”
On the same day the Detroit Post published a letter from the Major’s wife in which she declared, “The whole story is glaringly false, and betrays entire ignorance of the matter…I may add the party were without horses or mules.”
That put paid to the reports of Powell’s demise and on July 5th the Detroit Tribune declared, “The report of this man Risdon, beyond all reasonable doubt, is a tissue of fabrications from beginning to end.”
The Rocky Mountain News, a paper owned by a brother-in-law of Jack Sumner (the “gunsmith”), published a detailed list of Risdon’s assertions and reported: “They are all false. Risdon ought to be hung, and Gov. Palmer will be derelict in duty if he suffers him to go unpunished.”
Perhaps getting wind of the threat, Risdon slipped out of town. He didn’t get far. The July 10th Springfield (Ill.) Journal carried a story under the headline: “The ‘Sole Survivor’ of the Powell Expedition Arrested and Lodged in Jail.”
Ah, yes, but not for his hoax. It seemed he’d swiped a horse, a blanket, overcoat, quilt, and shawl from two different parties and was caught with the goods. Finding that Risdon, alias Miller, alias Clark had already served time for horse-theft, the sheriff clapped him in the clink.
Powell, of course, emerged a hero. On September 15th the Deseret News wrote: “After all that has published about this expedition and its loss, according to the dying [they must mean “lying”] statement of Risdon, it was with feelings of pleasure that we met the Major…there was a feeling of widespread anxiety on the subject [of Powell’s death] throughout the country…” No doubt this country-wide concern helped propel Powell to prominence. As Wallace Stegner put it in Beyond the Hundredth Meridian, “In the long run, perhaps Powell should have been grateful to Risdon.”
I guess so; it saved him the price of a public relations firm.
I’m sure there is at least one moral here, but it’s probably something like, “If you’re going to lie, don’t steal a horse.”

Ardian Gill

Ardian Gill is the author of The River Is Mine, John Wesley Powell’s 1869 Exploration of the Green and Colorado Rivers and the Grand Canyon.