144
Photographer, before leaving for Kansas, and Browne
put together Bell’s photographic outfi t—camera equip-
ment, chemicals, plates, darkroom tent, etc.—and
shipped it after him.
Bell joined the expedition at its jumping off point, Ft.
Wallace, near the Colorado border, in the heart of Indian
country, and the focal point of the Indian Wars. Sgt.
Wyllyams was killed shortly after Bell’s arrival and he
photographed the body as it was found. Perhaps because
Bell was a physician and unsentimental about death,
the image is straightforward and unfl inchingly grue-
some—Wyllyams’ corpse had been stripped, horrifi cally
mutilated, and shot full of arrows. When the photograph
was reproduced soon afterwards in Harper’s Weekly as
a sanitized wood-engraving, surprised and dismayed
Kansas-Pacifi c offi cials saw it as negative publicity and
suspected that Bell intended to profi t personally from
the photographs. They were already dissatisfi ed with the
quality of Bell’s work and had hired Alexander Gardner
as Chief Photographer for the expedition.
Before Gardner could reach the expedition, however,
it left Ft. Wallace, traveled southwest across desert coun-
try to New Fort Lyon in southeast Colorado (close to the
mouth of the Purgatoire River and near present day Las
Animas), where it split into two parties. The northern
party to explored south central Colorado, then followed
the Rio Grande south to the rendezvous at Ft. Craig in
southern New Mexico. The southern party, which in-
cluded Bell, explored north central New Mexico west to
the Rio Grande, then went down the Rio Grande south
through Albuquerque to the rendezvous at Ft. Craig.
Alexander Gardner joined the survey at Ft. Craig,
where the expedition was reorganized and again split
into northern and southern parties. Gardner joined the
northern party, which followed the 35th parallel to
California. Bell went with the southern party, which
traveled west along the 32nd parallel. However, Bell
left the expedition when it reached Camp Grant in south
central Arizona. Taking only what he could carry on his
horse, and leaving his equipment and negatives behind,
Bell rode across Mexico to the coast, caught a ship to
San Francisco to return overland to the East Coast and
on to England. Bell had been with the expedition about
six months and had made perhaps 100 usable nega-
tives, all taken in Kansas, southeast Colorado, and New
Mexico. Kansas-Pacifi c offi cials complained that Bell’s
negatives were “not of much account. Most of them are
too dim or not well fi nished and the photographer here
complains much of the negatives and says the result is
caused by carelessness.”
William Abraham Bell’s photographs proved useless
for the purposes of the railroad, but his experience with
the expedition benefi ted him personally. He wrote a best-
seller account of his experiences, New Tracks in North
America (1869), which proved so popular in both Great
Britain and the United States that it went through two
editions in two years. Moreover, while he was with the
survey Bell had become close friends with it’s leader,
William J. Palmer, and when Bell returned to the United
States in 1871, they became business partners and played
a signifi cant role in the development of Colorado. They
founded the town of Colorado Springs, as well as the
Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, and created a business
empire that brought investments and settlers to the stateBELL, WILLIAM ABRAHAM
Bell, William Abraham. Private
George Ruoss.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Gilman Collection, Museum Purchase,
2005 (2005.100.99) Image © The
Metropolitan Museum of Art.