Scientist of the Day - Stephen Harriman Long
Stephen Harriman Long, a US Army topographical engineer, died Sep. 4, 1864, at the age of 79. In 1819-20, Long led a group of 22 men, including several naturalists and artists, on an expedition across the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains. Edwin James was the expedition botanist, and Samuel Seymour and Titian Ramsay Peale were the expedition artists. Long himself had considerable scientific training, especially in surveying and mapping, which makes this the first scientific expedition sponsored by the United States Government. Long originally had plans to explore up the Missouri River, and he had built a special shallow-draft steamboat, the Western Engineer, especially for this purpose, but the boat had continual mechanical problems and made it only as far as Council Bluffs before the government cancelled the expedition. Long hurried to Washington and managed to get approval for an alternate plan to find the source of the South Platte River in the Rockies, which was approved; they set out in June of 1820 and returned by September. Long was roundly criticized by James for his haste (they went all the way across Nebraska and back to Arkansas in less than 3 months), so that there was little time for proper exploration and collection, and Long's later declaration that the land between Kansas City and the Front Range is a "Great American Desert" unfit for habitation drew ridicule from later commentators. But such criticism is really unfair; the Long Expedition in many ways opened up the West to further exploration, and Long and his scientific colleagues accomplished a great deal in that one hot summer.
Since Long immediately left on another expedition, the official Narrative was written and published by James in 1823; we have this work in our History of Science Collection, but it is missing the map, so we show you the map from another copy (second image). The map was later printed separately, and we also show a detail from that publication, where you can see the track of the expedition and the phrase “Great American dessert (fourth image). The first image above is a colored engraving by Seymour of the South Platte and the foothills of the Rockies, and the portrait of Long was painted by Titian Peale (second image). We featured Edwin James as the Scientist of the Day on Oct. 28, 2014.
Dr. William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City
