CHAPTER VII

W J'S LIFE WORK

W J's first point of observation after leaving the farm was on the Indian Mounds near Dry Hollow in Dubuque county, Iowa, not far from Farley and near his home. These mounds were carefully studied, engravings were made from them, and articles written about them for the press.

When Hunter's Cave, in Jackson county, was discovered, he made a journey there to explore that underground formation. The night was spent in admiring and investigating the wonders of the cavern. An interesting description of the cave appeared in the Farley Advertiser, the editor of the paper then and now, Mr. Chas. A. Joseph, having accompanied W J on this exploration tour.

From 1875 to 1877 he studied geology and archeology. I do not know what was the incident that first claimed his attention and stimulated his interest in what was to be one of the dominating activities of his life. Between 1877 and 1881 he made geologic and topographic surveys of northeastern Iowa. This work is said to be the most extensive ever made in America without public aid. "He began the work several years before the United States government learned of his true worth," says an article in one of the Dubuque newspapers at the time of his death. Mr. Knowlton gives an account in his excellent memoir of the work executed by W J in this region. "The glacial mantle which so completely covers Northeastern Iowa, offered many, then, unsolved problems, and together with his brothers, he ex

plored with keen interest the numerous caves about their home and studied the peculiar rocky topography with more than boyish interest. He read widely of such books and papers as were then available on glaciation and its phenomena, and began independent observations which soon brought him into contact and communication with other workers in his field. The fact that he joined the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1878 (twenty-seventh meeting at St. Louis, August, 1878), enrolling himself in the section of Geology, shows that his interest was even then crystallizing along these lines. So far as learned, his first scientific paper, "On the Relative Position of the Forest Bed and Associated Formations in Northeastern Iowa," was published in 1878 and it was the forerunner of many of like import.

Between 1877 and 1881, he prosecuted as a private enterprise, a topographic and geologic survey of some 12,000 square miles of territory in northeastern Iowa though the full results were not published until 1891.

His first work under Federal auspices was a report on the building stones of Iowa, prepared for the tenth census in 1880, though not published until four years later. This, but more particularly his careful work on the multifarious phenomena of glaciation in the Upper Mississippi Valley had attracted wider attention and in July, 1883, he was called to the United States Geologic Survey, then under the directorship of Major J. W. Powell. In a very short time he was placed in charge of the division of the Atlantic Coastal Plain geology. Though then but thirty years of age, he came not as a mere tyro or dabbler in geology, as might be presumed from his previous isolation, but with an astonishing breadth of view and maturity of judgment, and within the next ten years he erected a foundation which

must ever be considered by any who would study the geology of the Coastal Plain. This decade, 1883-1894, covers the period of his most intensive constructive geological activities.

From September 28 to October 4, 1885, he was present at the Congrès Géologique International, at Berlin, having been sent as a delegate from the United States. He resigned from the Geologic Survey on June 30, 1893, to assume on the following day the position of ethnologist in the Bureau of American Ethnology, to which department he had accompanied Major Powell. One year later he became ethnologist in charge of the Bureau, and continued in this position until July 31, 1903, when he resigned to assume charge of the Department of Anthropology of the St. Louis Exposition where he brought together an unprecedented assemblage of the world's peoples. At the close of the St. Louis Exposition he became first director of the St. Louis Public Museum, continuing in the position from 1905 to 1907. On March 14, 1907, Theodore Roosevelt created an Inland Waterways Commission, and at the first meeting of this Commission, W J McGee was elected vice-chairman and secretary, a position he continued to fill until his death. About the same time (March 23, 1907), he was appointed as an expert in soil waters in the Bureau of Soils, United States Department of Agriculture, and in that position he also continued until his death. He surveyed and mapped out 300,000 square miles in southeastern United States and completed a geologic map of the United States and New York, and in 1888 he investigated the Charlestown earthquake.

Aside from the honors and responsibilities which came with a busy official life, many additional honors were conferred upon him. He was one of the principal founders of

the Columbia Historical Society; president of the American Anthropological Association, of the Anthropological Society of Washington; of the National Geographic Society, and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1897). He was senior speaker in the Department of Anthropology at the World's Congress of Arts and Sciences in 1904, and non-resident lecturer on Anthropology at the State University of Iowa.

Mr. Knowlton further says, "In the field of Pleistocene geology of the Upper Mississippi Valley, W J McGee was a pioneer. At the time he began his studies very little was known of the glacial history of this region and he did much to establish a knowledge of the succession of invasions and recessions of the ice-sheet and while many of his conclusions have been subject to revision in the light of fuller modern investigations, much of his work remains and must remain, as a basis upon which subsequent knowledge is to be builded.

"His most notable contributions to American geology are, of course, in the Atlantic Coastal Plain. In this plain, Dr. McGee's name with three others - Hilgard, Smith and Dall, must ever be associated. These men have laid the foundation, however much it has been, or in future will be modified, upon which all subsequent work must be erected. In this particular phase of the subject which W J McGee has made his own, he was again a pioneer. He saw and appreciated the broad problems of stratigraphic continuity and succession, of continental elevation and depression, and he set about their solution. His work was distinctively constructive and as such finds a permanent place in American geologic history. While certain of his conclusions, as is almost always inevitable in pioneer work, have been modified or revised, the broad, fundamental generalizations remain as an essential basis for later students.

"After an interval of a dozen years or more following the close of his studies on Coastal Plain geology, during which his attention was mainly occupied in the field of ethnology, he again returned to the consideration of certain, collateral, geological problems. It had come to be the fancy in certain quarters that the removal of the forest or vegetal covering had little or no influence on the run-off, of surface waters. His report on 'Soil Erosion' published as a Bulletin of the Bureau of Soils in the United States Department of Agriculture, is a complete and graphic refutation—if such were really needed of this contention. His last work completed less than a month before his death and also to be published as a bulletin of the Bureau of Soils is an elaborate study of subsoil water and its essential relation to agriculture.

"Of his anthropological and ethnological work only the briefest mention can be made. While much of his time was given to administrative work, he nevertheless found opportunity for a number of studies, perhaps the most notable being a study of the Seri Indians, a fierce, previously unstudied tribe, inhabiting certain islands off the coast of Lower California.

"He did much for the Geological Society of America. He was one of the founders and served for four years as its editor, establishing the Bulletin, its official publication, on the high plane it then and since then has maintained. His constant attendance at the meetings during the earlier years of the society's existence will be recalled, as well as his contributions to many notable discussions of geologic problems.

"W J is said to have been a very helpful man ever ready with counsel and information to assist whomsoever might come to him. To the younger men he was especially con