A second missionary expedition to the Moquis was undertaken in the fall of 1859, leaving the Santa Clara headquarters on October 20 and reaching the Moquis on November 6. Hamblin appointed Marion J. Shelton and Thales Haskell to remain there for the winter and returned home with the rest of the party.[66]Friendship with the Moquis was cultivated by the missionaries, but this seems to have led to difficulties with the Navajo.[67]
When Jacob Hamblin led a third expedition across the Colorado River to reach the Moquis in the fall of 1860, he was met by a band of unfriendly Navajos who would not let the missionaries proceed and debated whether to kill them or let them go home. With the Mormons were several Indians, including two squaws. The Navajos offered to let the party go in peace if they would leave the squaws. This Hamblin refused to do, and an agreement was finally reached whereby the missionaries were allowed to return home in exchange for goods and ammunition.[68]
They camped that night on a table-rock mesa where there was only a narrow passageway which was carefully guarded. Next morning, November 2, 1860, while some were exchanging goods with the Navajos, others took the horses down to water. As they were returning, the saddle horse of George A. Smith, Jr., started off on a side trail and he went after it alone. He found two Indians leading his horse away. The horse was readily turned over and Smith started back to camp. One of the Indians rode up alongside Smith and asked to see his revolver. Suspecting nothing, Smith handed it over. The Indian, after examining it, passed it back to the other Indian a few paces behind, who shot Smith three times. As he fell from his horse, the Indians dismounted and shot three arrows into his back.
The Indians then blockaded the trail to the Moquis towns, forcing the Mormons to retreat, who placed the dying man on a mule and started homeward with the Navajos in hot pursuit. Traveling thus, it was nearly dark before Smith died. His body had to be abandoned as the Navajos seemed unwilling to give up the chase until they had taken his scalp. The balance of the party returned home safely.
Reporting the loss of George A. Smith, Jr., was a sorrowfulduty for Hamblin. The young man’s father was deeply shocked, but like a good Saint, consoled himself with the thought that the Lord wished his son taken that way. Brigham Young sent instructions for a company of twenty men to retrieve the remains. Despite the hardships of mid-winter, they gathered up the few bones that were left of Smith’s body and returned with them for interment.
Several other trips to the Moquis by different routes resulted in detailed knowledge of northern Arizona and southern Utah. Crossings of the Colorado were explored thoroughly and ferries were established at the south of the Virgin, at the mouth of the Grand Wash (1862) and at the foot of Grand Wash Cliffs about five miles upstream (Pearce’s Ferry, 1863). These supplemented the old Ute ford in Glen Canyon. Further exploration did not reveal a more direct route until 1869, when the crossing later known as Lee’s Ferry was discovered. These routes were so well explored that no better ones have been discovered since.
Stockmen began to graze their herds of cattle and sheep on the plains of the Arizona strip. Some time prior to 1863, W. B. Maxwell established a ranch at Short Creek; not long after, James M. Whitmore located ranches at Pipe Springs and Moccasin, and Ezra Strong of Rockville settled on Kanab Creek. In the spring of 1864, several ranches were established in the mountains and two settlements were started, one at the present site of Kanab, where a small fort was built, and another housing eight families at Berryville (later Glendale) in the north end of Long Valley. In the fall, Priddy Meeks located in the south end of the valley. He was joined the next spring (1865) by several settlers[69]from the Virgin River, who brought livestock for the range and nursery stock for orchards. The new settlement was called Winsor (later Mt. Carmel).
In the autumn, with indications of an impending rift between whites and Indians, the Winsor settlers moved to Berryville and helped build a stockade for protection during the winter. In the spring they returned and planted crops, but during the summer settlement was again interrupted by Indian difficulties and had to be abandoned.
The period following early settlement was marked by Indian troubles with both Paiutes and Navajos. These are sometimes called the Navajo raids, and in part were an outgrowth of the “Black Hawk War” which broke out in Sevier Valley, central Utah, in 1865. The whites had brought with them their livestock, which they grazed upon the public domain, turning the cattle and horses loose and herding the sheep. These animals multiplied rapidly and quickly depleted the edible fruits and seeds upon which the Indians subsisted. Indian resentment not unnaturally was inflamed, and with starvation staring them in the face, there was little left for them to do but beg or steal.
The Indians had claimed the lands, the vegetation and the wild game, and although they had given the first white men permission to come, yet so many others had followed, like the proverbial camel’s nose, that they were destroying the means of subsistence of the Indians. Not only were seeds and fruits being eaten by the livestock, but game also was getting scarce and hard to find, due largely to encroachment of cattle and sheep which were taking the place of deer upon the range. The white man hunted the Indians’ deer so why should not the Indian hunt the white man’s cattle? There was some compensation to the Indians, however; they could glean in the grain fields of the settlers and gather waste grain as easily as they could seeds, and pine nut crops were uninjured by the whites.
Gradually, friendly feelings of the Indians for the settlers began to deteriorate. Begging in the settlements and the depredations on the range increased. The Paiutes in some instances aided and abetted the raiding Navajos, but the majority sided with the whites. The Navajos were wont to cross the Colorado, scatter into small bands, make swift raids on the Mormon settlements, gather up horses, cattle and sheep, and flee back across the river before they could be overtaken.
From the beginning a military force had been held in readiness against any emergency. As the southern Utah settlements expanded, improvements in this organization became advisable. In May, 1864, the Iron Military District was recast to include Beaver, Iron, Washington and Kane counties and William H. Dame of Parowan was named adjutant. Nearly all the eligible men were enrolled and companies of fifty were organized in towns wherever that many were available. Companies consisted of five platoons of ten men each, the first platoon of each company often being cavalry, the balance infantry. Three companies made a battalion and about seven battalions made a brigade. The men were occasionally called together for inspection and drill and sometimes these included battalion or brigade reviews. Training was emphasizedduring the Indian troubles between 1865 and 1869. On February 17, 1866, Erastus Snow, the Mormon leader at St. George, was elected Brigadier General and brigade headquarters were transferred from Parowan to St. George.
The Black Hawk War broke out in 1865 and was not settled until 1868. Nearly 3,000 men were enlisted and the cost was over a million dollars and at least seventy lives. This Ute unrest was contagious, and the Paiutes in turn were stirred into sporadic resistance.
Hostilities in the south began late in 1865, when, on December 18, a number of Paiutes raided Kanab and made away with some horses. During that winter Dr. James M. Whitmore and his son-in-law, Robert McIntyre, were herding sheep in the vicinity of Pipe Springs. Soon after the first of the new year, a band of Navajos and Paiutes stole a herd of Whitmore’s sheep. The next day the two men went in pursuit and failed to return. This was reported to St. George and a cavalry detachment was organized under Captain David H. Cannon. As his force appeared inadequate, he sent an appeal from Pipe Springs for additional support. D. D. McArthur came from St. George to take charge and brought with him forty-seven men under James Andrus with wagons and supplies for an extended trip designed to drive the Navajos across the Colorado River. When they arrived at Pipe Springs, the snow was two feet deep and no trace of the sheep or men could be found. On January 18, they came upon the tracks of two Paiute Indians following a large steer, tracked them until sundown, and captured the Indians in the act of killing the beef.
After questioning and torture, hanging by the heels and twisting of thumbs, one of the Indians admitted that he had dreamed that Navajos had been there and then revealed the whereabouts of a camp of Indians about ten miles out. A detachment was sent and found that it had been moved another five miles. The militia overtook the camp about sunrise on January 20, killing two Indians and capturing five.
Third degree methods elicited information about the killing of Whitmore and McIntyre. The captives led another detachment to the scene of the killings, where the posse crisscrossed the area on horseback, uncovering the arm of one of the victims in the deep snow. Both bodies had bullet wounds and were riddled with arrows. They had been killed on January 10.
A wagon was sent after the bodies. While the men were recovering the remains the other detachment with the five Indian prisoners arrived. These had in their possession much of the clothing and personal effects of the murdered men. The evidence of guilt seemed conclusive, so the Indians were turned loose and shot as they attempted to run. The Navajos who probably assisted in the killing escaped. The sheep could not be found and it was assumedthe Navajos had taken them across the Colorado River. As pursuit was impossible because of the deep snow the party returned home. Charles L. Walker of St. George records in his diary:
They were brought home in a wagon load of snow, frozen stiff and in a good state of preservation. I, with others, washed them and pulled out the arrow points from their bodies and dressed them in their burial robes. Also went to the funeral, which was attended by a large concourse of people.[70]
They were brought home in a wagon load of snow, frozen stiff and in a good state of preservation. I, with others, washed them and pulled out the arrow points from their bodies and dressed them in their burial robes. Also went to the funeral, which was attended by a large concourse of people.[70]
On February 19, 1866, two days after Erastus Snow was elected Brigadier General, Peter Shurtz, who had built a station at Paria and had kept about twenty Indians around him all winter, reported that he had lost his cattle and wished to move into the settlements. He also reported Navajos camped on Paria River about eight miles below his ranch where the Ute trail reached the stream.
Further information indicated that the Navajos were concentrated east of the Colorado at Cottonwood, intending to raid Kane County in force and that Captain James Andrus with thirty men had gone to Paria to get Peter Shurtz and his family and to reconnoiter. No report of this expedition is available, but a letter written by L. W. Roundy from Kanab on March 9, 1866, tells that Andrus had left Paria fourteen days earlier headed for an Indian camp twelve miles south.[71]At Kanab, three Indians had attempted to kill Oren Clark in the bottoms near the fort and had started to drive off the livestock. Four men from the fort rushed in pursuit and after dark recovered about thirty head of cattle, but the Indians escaped with about an equal number.
The Indian menace was so serious by this time that Erastus Snow ordered all stock in the region south of St. George and the Virgin River as far east as Kanab removed to the north and west of the lines of settlements so that it would be easier to ward off Navajo attacks. This was a difficult task because the grazing was poor around the settlements and the mountains to the northwest were already filled with livestock.
The threat from the Utes in upper Sevier Valley also became acute. Menacing behavior of the Indians in this area and in the Kanab region led to an order from Utah headquarters to General Erastus Snow (March 15) to send a company of men from Beaver and Iron counties over to the Sevier River to build and man an outpost between Circleville and Panguitch. A company of 76 men led by Captain Silas S. Smith served here from March 21 to November 30, 1866. They established Fort Sanford about ten miles north of Panguitch and assisted settlers at Circleville to move tosafety. At Panguitch, they helped the settlers transform the town into a fort.
In the meantime, gathering the livestock from the exposed range was proceeding slowly. A party sent out from Rockville in April to round up the stock in the vicinity of Maxwell’s Ranch, found the bodies of two men, a woman, and an Indian, killed a few days before. When the bodies were brought in to Grafton, it was ascertained that they were young Robert Berry, his wife, Isabel, and his brother, Joe, who were coming home to Berryville in Long Valley via the Dixie settlements and the Arizona Strip (a roundabout way, but the only wagon route at the time). They had left the Maxwell Ranch on Short Creek on April 2, 1866 when some Indians (presumably Paiutes), ambushed them.
According to verbal reports, as related by Mrs. John Dennett of Rockville (then a girl living in Long Valley and who pieced her story from Indian and white sources), the Berrys fought for their lives. The Indians shot one of the horses, rendering the wagon useless. In the fighting, one Indian was shot. Joe Berry loosened the other horse and tried to escape but was killed in so doing. The Indians closed in and captured Robert and his wife. They tied Robert to a wheel where he was forced to watch them torture Isabel, who was an expectant mother. They shot arrows into her and laughed at her as she tried to pull them out. Then they shot him full of arrows. Mrs. Dennett said her father always felt that the Berrys had been killed in revenge for some Indians slain by Long Valley men who had found them roasting a beef. At that time three were slain: an Indian, a squaw and a papoose.
When the Berry tragedy was reported in St. George, orders were issued forbidding travel unless in groups large enough to provide adequate safeguards. This led to the declaration of martial law, May 2, 1866, and to the issuance of instructions to concentrate the settlers in fortified places of at least 150 men. Patrols were ordered out in various directions, especially across the trails used by the Navajos in raiding the Mormon country and in contacting the rampaging Utes of Sevier County.
When Silas S. Smith, stationed on the Sevier, heard of the Berry massacre, he found that the Paiute chief at Panguitch had known about it for five days without reporting it to him. Smith at once ordered pickets to bring in all passing Indians for questioning. Friendly Indians responded willingly enough, but when two strange Indians refused, a skirmish resulted in which one was killed and the other wounded.
Smith decided to disarm the local Indians and surrounded one of their camps near Panguitch one morning before daylight and took their arms. Two visiting Indians were missing from the camp so he kept a guard awaiting their arrival. When they came, they showed fight. One of them was killed, whereupon the other surrendered.The next day Smith surrounded another camp soon after sunrise, but the natives had already fled. However, in the ensuing melee two more Indians were killed. The arms taken from them included several guns, many new arrows, and a peck of new arrow heads. Some escaped to Panguitch Lake and spread the alarm among the Indians there.
General Snow had a number of chiefs from Panguitch, Parowan, and Red Creek brought to Parowan for conference. He tried to pacify them with arguments and presents but insisted that they must not have arms or ammunition and must have passes in order to travel through the Mormon settlements. This aroused some resentment, but on April 25, 1866, they agreed to leave their weapons at Parowan as a token of friendship. Some of the Indians reported gunfire around Upper Kanab where Col. W. B. Maxwell was on lookout for Navajos.
With the declaration of martial law and the order to concentrate settlers in large towns, the outlying ranchers and people from the smaller villages began to move into Toquerville, Virgin and Rockville. In June, General Snow decided to abandon Long Valley. Mrs. John Dennett, who made the trek as a girl, recalled the line of wagons leaving Long Valley with armed guards in front and rear. While crossing the sand hills between there and Kanab, a small boy was run over and killed. A halt was made while the child was buried in the sand, but the exigencies of the situation forbade longer delay and the weeping mother was hastily torn from the fresh grave.
The settlers’ train passed Kanab to the left and pushed on toward Pipe Springs. Near the mouth of Cottonwood Canyon (June 27) they ran into an ambush of Indians who, for some unexplained reason, failed to attack. J. M. Higbee reports[72]that they called to the Indians to come in and talk or be shot. They came in and talked. According to Mrs. Dennett, there were seven or nine Indians taken into Pipe Springs for a council of war. The wagons were driven into a large circle, as was customary in times of danger, the Indians inside the circle in the center of the group of whites. Higbee says the Indians were told that if any more were found along the route of the caravan they would be shot. Mrs. Dennett adds that some of the Indians had guns and clothes belonging to the Berry boys, which greatly enraged a brother of the dead men, who pleaded to be allowed to revenge his kin. After this, no more Indians were seen on the trip.
In the late summer of 1866, Captain James Andrus[73]wasordered to investigate Indian routes crossing the Colorado River in the rough country between the Kaibab and the mouth of the Green River. A group of men was mustered into service from the Virgin River settlements at Gould’s Ranch, twenty-six miles east of St. George, August 16, and moved on to Pipe Springs two days later, where final preparations were made. On the 21st, forty-six mounted men, each equipped with a rifle and two pistols, and with a pack horse bearing forty days’ rations for each pair, started northeast toward the rough country. They went via abandoned Kanab and Scutumpah to the Paria River six miles above Paria settlement where they met another contingent of their party. Two days later, Joseph Fish with eighteen men arrived from Iron county. They located the Ute trail which passed down the Paria to the Colorado. Elijah Averett, sent back with some of the surplus animals, was killed by Indians in the hills west of Paria.
On August 29, the main party went northeast through the hills south of the Aquarius Plateau into a valley where they found wild potatoes growing (hence named Potato Valley, now Escalante Valley). They climbed the Plateau and looked off into the wild country stretching to the mouth of the Green River. Convinced that there was no use in going farther, they retraced their march on September 2, traveled to the northwest corner of the plateau, descended to the Sevier River Valley and reached Circleville. They had been pathbreakers from Paria to this point. From here they returned via Parowan and Cedar City.
The settlements were now prepared for attack. An Indian raid was made on John D. Lee’s ranch near Beaver on October 23, 1866, and in November, General Snow learned that the Navajos were concentrating east of the Colorado for new raids on Kane County. Soon a friendly Paiute reported that the Navajos were nearing Pipe Springs.
The crops planted in Long Valley had been left in the care of friendly Paiutes when the settlers left. In the fall, the Berry boys and others went back to harvest the best crop that had yet been grown there. It took several trips to haul the produce to the Dixie settlements. During their last trip, Snow received a report of an attack of sixteen Navajos on three white men at Maxwell’s Ranch, in which Enoch Dodge was wounded. Snow sent men to Long Valley and instructed A. P. Winsor to throw an intercepting force between the settlements and the fords of the Colorado, to recover lost stock and find out whether the raiders were Navajos or Paiutes. He was promised that other men would be held in readiness if needed.
While this force was on the road, the Long Valley party started home with a wagon train. On October 31, when the teams were spread out doubling up Elephant hall, about nine miles south of Mt. Carmel, Indians attacked near the summit and shot Hyrum Stevens.The pioneers abandoned the train and left everything in the hands of the Indians. Stevens was taken with the others on horseback (with a man behind to hold him in place) around the head of Zion Canyon on a three-day trip over the Old Indian Trail and down over Kolob to Virgin. He survived the ordeal and returned to his home at Rockville, where he lived to a ripe old age.
When a rescue party under Captain Sixtus E. Johnson arrived a week later, November 5, they found the wagons unattended, tongues broken and contents scattered. The Indians had taken five yoke of oxen, eleven horses and everything they could carry, including harness, flour and wheat. Four Paiutes, however, had pursued the Navajos and recaptured the cattle and harness.
Finding the teamsters gone, Johnson gathered up the livestock that had scattered back along the way to Long Valley. Then a second rescue party under Major Russell from Rockville arrived with the Paiutes who had retrieved the harness and cattle. They took the caravan into Virgin, arriving November 11.
On November 26, Major John Steele reported signal fires on the mountain south of Virgin City and General Snow issued an order to establish posts at the mouth of (Black) Rock Canyon sixteen miles southeast of St. George and near Gould’s Ranch, eight miles south of Virgin City.[74]The men at these posts were to serve as guards as well as herders of livestock and were to build stone quarters; the “house to be covered with stone flagging or earth in a manner that it cannot be fired from the outside, with but one door and that heavy and strongly barred, so that one or two men, well armed, may defend themselves against any number of Indians.”
Despite these precautions, the Navajos scattered in small bands, easily passed through the military posts, and hid in the mountains north of St. George. On the evening of December 28, word reached Harrisburg from local Paiutes that some Navajos had killed and dried three beeves between Grapevine Springs and Toquerville. Captain J. D. L. Pearce, with fifteen men from Washington, at once took up their trail along Harrisburg Creek toward Pine Valley Mountain but failed to overtake them.
In the meantime, on December 28, near Pine Valley, Cyrus Hancock saw three Indians skulking on the range and called to them. The Indians proved hostile and tried to capture him. One seized his horse’s bit and another tried to shoot him with an arrow. He slid off his horse and ran toward Pine Valley, the Indians in pursuit. One of them shot him in the arm with an arrow. He stumbled and fell as they yelled in triumph, but he regained his footing and outran them into the valley. These Indians were thought to have been hiding around the town for two or three days, quietlygathering stock. As soon as discovered, they left with about thirty horses and passed down the Black Ridge between St. George and Middleton on the night of December 28, gathering more horses at both places and hastening southwest via Fort Pearce Wash.
Col. D. D. McArthur immediately ordered out all available cavalry in pursuit of the thieves, who had an entire day’s start. An expedition of thirty men headed by Lt. Copelan followed the Indian trail from the Washington Fields past Fort Pearce, through Black Rock Canyon and out toward Pipe Springs where it met another detachment returning from an Indian encounter.
Captains J. D. L. Pearce and James Andrus were at Harrisburg on the evening of December 29, when an express carrying instructions to Colonel Winsor at Rockville arrived. Upon reading the instructions they started for Rockville and arrived at dawn. Thirty men gathered and pushed on to Maxwell’s ranch where they arrived that evening. After resting an hour, they hastened on to Cedar Ridge and five miles southeast of Pipe Springs. Sixtus E. Johnson spotted the smoke of Indian fires curling up in the distance, about half a mile from the place where Whitmore and McIntyre had been killed. The men slipped into a wash and kept out of sight until within gunshot of the Indians, when they made a dash to get between them and their horses. Firing opened and the Indians took to the rocks. The skirmish lasted nearly an hour and covered a rough area half a mile wide and three miles long. The thirteen Navajos in the band refused to yield even when cornered, and several died fighting. During the fray an arrow aimed at Captain Andrus struck his horse in the forehead, saving the rider. One mortally wounded Indian continued to shoot until he fainted. Another, wounded in both legs, fired until his arrows were spent and then kept twanging his bow as if shooting as long as the fray lasted.
When all was quiet the whites gathered together and found that none was injured. Two Indians who had escaped came out on a hill some distance away where they felt safe and slapped their seats in derision and yelled “Squaw! Squaw!” in defiance. A man named Warren, from Pine Valley, who had an extra long range breechloading gun took a chance shot and brought one of them down. The other fled.
Of the thirteen Indians, four were killed, seven wounded and two escaped, only one on horseback. Three horses were lost, but the balance and the thirteen cattle were recovered and brought back. Copelan’s party returned on January 1, 1867 but Pearce and Andrus tarried two or three days longer. General Snow was in Salt Lake City at the time and his responsibility fell largely upon Captain J. D. L. Pearce and Adjutant Henry Eyring, his assistant.
The concentration in the larger towns and the military control of the movements of people in the region tended to reduce the danger to the settlers. Tension with the local Paiute Indians wasgradually eased, although the Navajo raids continued for several years. Jacob Hamblin, Utah’s “Leatherstocking,” played an important role in quieting the Paiutes. In the fall of 1867, he was instructed to keep in touch with the Indians and do his best to pacify them. He went to Kanab, where he helped them plant corn and vegetables and had peace parleys with them, urging the Paiutes to cooperate in preventing Navajo raids by watching the fords of the Colorado and the trails leading to the settlements.
In November, 1868, a band of about thirty Navajos crossed the river on foot on a marauding expedition. They divided into squads of two or three and worked at night in different quarters so rapidly as to baffle the pickets. They got away with some stock, although twenty-seven horses were recovered from them on the 25th at Black Canyon, by Andrus and his command.
Notice of their presence came on November 22 from Henry Jennings to Erastus Snow at St. George. The next day local Indians reported tracks around St. George, and General Snow ordered the livestock along the Virgin gathered together and herded under armed guard. He placed pickets along the river for fifteen miles and sent Col. J. D. L. Pearce with a company of cavalry to guard the rough country passes from Black Rock Canyon (25 miles southeast of St. George) to Pipe Springs. Two days later, word came from Washington that the Navajos had made off with a band of horses via Black Rock Canyon. On the night of the 26th, a party of these Indians with about twenty horses eluded the guards not far from Pipe Springs and made their way eastward. A detachment under Captain Willis Copelan started in pursuit. He chased the Navajos and was about to overtake them, but before he attacked, some friendly Paiutes encountered the Navajos, gave battle and killed two. They recovered the horses and willingly turned them over to Copelan on his arrival. The Paiutes were rewarded with suitable presents.
By December 1, 1868 Pearce concluded that the Navajos had decamped, and started home, moving from Pipe Springs to Cedar Ridge. On that same day, however, Erastus Snow received word from J. W. Young on the Muddy River in Nevada, sixty miles below St. George, that the Navajos had run off with eighteen horses and mules. Snow sent word to Pearce to be on his guard. A posse of whites and Paiutes set out in pursuit from Mesquite. The Indians overtook the Navajos and recovered eleven of the horses.
The messenger carrying this news reached Col. Pearce at Cedar Ridge at 4 a.m., December 2, and at daybreak scouts were sent out. Captain Freeman found their trail and started after them with several men, being joined by Captain Copelan. They sighted the Navajos’ dust, but could not overtake them and the chase had to be abandoned.
A raid in February 1869 caused such concern that another expedition (February 25 to March 12) of thirty-six men, under the leadership of Captain Willis Copelan was sent out to deal with it.[75]As usual, the Navajos struck swiftly and fled before the expedition arrived. At Pipe Springs, Copelan watched the passes, hunted the surrounding region for the raiders and found they had gone east. On March 1, with twenty men he started in pursuit of the raiders. About eight miles out he struck a trail where the Indians had been driving about fifty head of cattle. During the next five days he followed the trail around the north end of Buckskin Mountain (Kaibab) across Paria and Warm Springs Creek to the old Ute ford on the Colorado River. Finding the quarry had escaped, he returned home, arriving at St. George March 12.
During the fall, fresh raids by the Navajos created yet another scare. A band raided settlements north of St. George and drove off stock. This time Colonel James Andrus was detailed to lead a foray against the marauders. He started up the Virgin River gathering fourteen recruits. Then he went to Pipe Springs where he received word that another band of Navajos had raided near Pinto. He hastened toward Pinto to intercept them, passing via Kanab and Scutumpah. Near Paria, he found a trail where some Navajos had escaped with an estimated eighty head of livestock. Here Andrus learned that the Paiutes had attacked and wounded a Navajo in a running fight, and that other raiders were on the way back from Pinto.
Andrus and his men waited until November 10 and finding no signs of the Indians, started home. The detachment had not gone far when they encountered a fresh Navajo trail made by an estimated twelve horses and two men. They caught up with the Indians early the next day just as they were passing into a narrow gorge of the Paria canyon. There were actually eight Indians with twelve horses, traveling leisurely. Under the detachment’s fire, two Navajos fell; the rest disappeared into the narrows. A few minutes later they re-appeared on the canyon cliffs on both sides of Andrus’ force. Bullets from the Indian rifles soon convinced Andrus that discretion was the better part of valor and he retired.
The Navajos were adroit raiders. In rounding up stock they would often camouflage themselves with bush foliage, crawling past the unsuspecting guards to stampede the herd. Or they would skin a young steer, leaving hoofs and horns in place and throw the hide over a brace of Indians, who would steal to the corral under cover of darkness, let down the bars, and quietly drive the stock away.
These raids were costly. Not only did the settlers live in constantfear, but a heavy toll of livestock, estimated in 1869 at 1200 horses and cattle, was taken. Men had to be continually on the alert and peaceful pursuits were interrupted to furnish posses to chase the Indians. When Major J. W. Powell of the U. S. Geological Survey was exploring the Kanab region in 1870, he expressed grave concern about the losses the Mormon settlers were suffering because of the raids.[76]In October, Jacob Hamblin decided to accompany Major Powell on a peace mission to the Navajos when the latter was leaving to return to Washington, DC.[77]They reached Fort Defiance in eastern Arizona at a time when 6,000 Navajos were gathered there for their annual allotments from the Federal government.
All the Navajo chiefs but one were present and met in council to consider Hamblin’s proposal. Powell introduced Hamblin by saying that he represented the Mormons from the other side of the Colorado River who were helping to pay the taxes from which the annual allotments to the Navajos were made. Hamblin, in turn, pointed to the disastrous consequences of the war and the advantages of peace. Through war the Navajos had lost twenty or thirty men; with peace they could herd their livestock in distant places where forage was good without fear of molestation. He proposed, in place of war, a peaceful settlement of difficulties and trade with the Mormons.
After several days of consultation, peace was agreed upon. The council appointed one of the chiefs, Hastele, who lived near the Colorado River, as negotiator who ended by saying, “We hope we may be able to eat at one table, be warmed by one fire, smoke one pipe and sleep under one blanket.” Thus was peace promised, though it was soon again to be put in jeopardy. Hamblin reached Kanab with the good news about December 11, 1870.[78]
Within a few weeks, a group of eighty Navajos arrived at Kanab on a trading expedition. They came on foot and brought all the Navajo blankets they could carry. They scattered among the settlements and traded their blankets for horses and returned well satisfied with the experiment.
Peaceful trading continued until the winter of 1873-74, when a party of four young Navajos was caught in a snowstorm near a ranch in Grass Valley, Sevier County. They made themselves at home at the ranch and even killed a small animal for food. The owner of the ranch, said to be a non-Mormon, learned of their presence and gathered some of his friends to go with him to investigate. At the ranch, they shot and killed three of the Indians andwounded the fourth, who escaped and after painful hardships made his way home.[79]
His story inflamed Navajo vengefulness and disquieting reports reached the Mormons of threatened reprisals. Brigham Young asked Hamblin to visit the Navajos again and satisfy them that the Mormons were not involved in the outrage. Bishop Levi Stewart of Kanab, however, tried to dissuade Hamblin and even sent a messenger to induce him to return after he had started, urging that the risk was too great.
Firm in his purpose, Hamblin went his way and met the Navajos east of Moencopi, about January 29, 1874. Hastele, the representative appointed by the Navajos, was not there, but other influential Indians considered Hamblin’s statement. The war council was held in a Navajo hogan, to which there was but one entrance opposite Hamblin and his two companions, while two dozen Navajos occupied the space between.
Hamblin’s explanation of the killings was at first rejected on the ground that it was he who had invited the Navajos to come into the Mormon country to trade, with the result that three of their good young men now lay on the ground “for the wolves to eat.” The interpreter told Hamblin his companions could go home, but he must die. The moment was tense. His companions refused to leave him. Without arousing suspicion, Hamblin passed several revolvers to his friends, saying as he did so, “These are in my way.” The men behind unobtrusively readied them in case of emergency. Hamblin reminded the Indians of his many friendly acts, of his willingness to come into their midst to settle the matter, and told them it was not right to kill him for the acts of strangers for whom he was not responsible. The wounded Indian was brought in. A stirring appeal for revenge was made by a young warrior, who demanded that Hamblin be the victim.
The Indians, however, after the excitement subsided, offered to settle for three hundred and fifty horses and cattle. Hamblin deliberately refused. One of them remarked that he would agree after he had been stretched over the hot coals of the fire. The interpreter asked if he were not afraid. “No,” he said, “my heart has never known fear. What is there to scare me?” “The Navajos,” was their answer, to which he replied that he “was not afraid of his friends.” Mollified, the Indians finally agreed to leave the matter to be settled by Hastele after an investigation.
Late that spring, Hastele and his party visited Kanab and were piloted to Sevier Valley where their findings convinced them that the Mormons were innocent. Thus ended the last threat to peaceful relations with the Navajos. Thereafter, both groups traded on good terms largely due to the outstanding bravery and cool judgment of Jacob Hamblin.
Re-settlement of Long Valley and Kanab does not seem to have been attempted until 1870, although Kanab and Paria were occupied by missionaries under Jacob Hamblin in 1867 as frontier outposts. At Paria a strong guard house and corral was built and some land was cultivated, beginnings out of which the settlement grew with the accession of several families in 1872 and 1873.
Kanab was similarly restored. The necessity of a fort there was impressed upon the whites by the continued Navajo raids. Five stone masons were sent from St. George in 1869 to construct the fort. They reached Kanab on August 28 and worked until early in September, when John R. Young told them they had finished their mission and could go home.
This building expedition brought new settlers to Kanab, for John Mangum (or Mangram), his brother, James, James Wilkins, and George Ross, moved there soon after. Nate Adams, who visited Kanab in September, 1870, and who moved there March 14, 1871, says the first three were in hiding and that John D. Lee, also in hiding, took up Scutumpah Ranch and explored Lee’s Ferry in 1869. Several missionaries were sent to aid Hamblin about the same time. They were fencing and cultivating land when Brigham Young made his first visit to the Kanab country about the 1st of April, 1870. George Albert Smith wrote of this visit:
At Kanab we met Brothers Jacob Hamblin and Jehiel MacConnel [McConnell], and several other missionaries, who were engaged in teaching the Indians how to cultivate the soil and to obtain a living by peaceful pursuits. We were much pleased with the country.... As soon as measures shall be taken to prevent the annual raids of the Navajos, this land of Canaan will be re-occupied by the Saints and become a valuable acquisition to our southern settlements.[80]
At Kanab we met Brothers Jacob Hamblin and Jehiel MacConnel [McConnell], and several other missionaries, who were engaged in teaching the Indians how to cultivate the soil and to obtain a living by peaceful pursuits. We were much pleased with the country.... As soon as measures shall be taken to prevent the annual raids of the Navajos, this land of Canaan will be re-occupied by the Saints and become a valuable acquisition to our southern settlements.[80]
A pioneer Salt Lake photographer, C. R. Savage, took many pictures along the way, including one of Brigham Young and his party on the Colorado at the mouth of the Virgin, and several of Zion Canyon.
Upon his return to Salt Lake City on April 16, 1870, Brigham Young sent a group of fifty-two people led by Levi Stewart, to re-settle the Kanab country. They went down through the Dixiesettlements and reached Pipe Springs on June 1. They remained there and at Moccasin Springs several days while exploring the region.[81]On the 14th they moved over to Kanab Creek and joined Jacob Hamblin at the old fort, now too small to house so many.
Brigham Young manifested much interest in the success of the colony. He promised Stewart that he would visit him in the fall and asked him to find a more direct route to Kanab from the north that would obviate the long roundabout approach through the Dixie settlements and the Arizona strip. Stewart sent out two expeditions, the second of which found a road from the head of the Sevier River through Upper Kanab and Johnson Wash.
Brigham Young started for Kanab on August 26, 1870. Accompanying him from Parowan was the intrepid explorer and topographer of the U. S. Geological Survey, Major J. W. Powell, who had already made one trip through the Grand Canyon and was returning to make plans for further geological studies and his second trip through the canyon.[82]In attempting to follow Stewart’s directions, the party lost its way and wandered into the Paria River valley and thus went many miles out of its direct route. According to Nate Adams,[83]“old Humpy Indian” guided the company safely into Kanab on the evening of September 9, 1870. While there, a townsite and fields were surveyed east of the fort beyond the path of the canyon winds. Brigham Young returned to Salt Lake City via St. George and the Dixie settlements.
Three months later, on December 14, 1870, six lives were lost in a fire at the fort. These included Bishop Stewart’s wife, Margery, and three of his sons.[84]Brigham Young made a special trip to Kanab from St. George, where he was wintering, to comfort the bereaved families. Soon after, the settlers began to build their homes on the townsite. Within a few years, the fort was deserted but it was maintained for some time for use in case of emergency. Dellenbaugh, a member of Major J. W. Powell’s party, thus describes his visit to Kanab in the early 70’s:
F. S. Dellenbaugh in Zion Canyon (1930) with the flag of the Emma Dean boat that made “a canyon voyage” about 60 years earlier.Photo U. S. Nat. Park Service.
F. S. Dellenbaugh in Zion Canyon (1930) with the flag of the Emma Dean boat that made “a canyon voyage” about 60 years earlier.Photo U. S. Nat. Park Service.
Viewing Bryce Canyon from the rim.Courtesy Union Pacific Railroad.
Viewing Bryce Canyon from the rim.Courtesy Union Pacific Railroad.
... Nigger, [a white mule] went along very well and I was in Kanab by three o’clock. The village which had been started only a year or two, was laid out in the characteristic Mormon style, with wide streets and regular lots fenced by wattling willows between stakes. Irrigating ditches ran down each side of every street and from them the water, derived from a creek that came down a canyon back of the town, could be led into any of the lots, each of which was about one quarter of an acre; that is, there were four lots to a block. Fruit trees and vines had been planted and were already beginning to promise near results, while corn, potatoes, etc., gave fine crops. The original place of settlement was a square formed by one-story log houses on three sides and a stockade on the fourth. This was called the fort and was a place of refuge though the danger from Navajo attack seemed to be over and that from any assault by the Paiutes certainly was past. One corner of the fort was made by the walls of the schoolhouse, which was at the same time meeting-house and ball-room. Altogether there were about 100 families in the village. The houses that had been built outside the fort were quite substantially constructed, some of adobe or sun-dried brick. The entire settlement had a thrifty air, as is the case with the Mormons. Not a grog-shop, or gambling saloon, or dance-hall was to be seen; quite in contrast with the usual disgraceful accompaniments of the ordinary frontier towns. A perfectly orderly government existed, headed by a bishop appointed by the church authorities in Salt Lake City, the then incumbent of this office being an excellent man, Bishop Stewart.[85]
... Nigger, [a white mule] went along very well and I was in Kanab by three o’clock. The village which had been started only a year or two, was laid out in the characteristic Mormon style, with wide streets and regular lots fenced by wattling willows between stakes. Irrigating ditches ran down each side of every street and from them the water, derived from a creek that came down a canyon back of the town, could be led into any of the lots, each of which was about one quarter of an acre; that is, there were four lots to a block. Fruit trees and vines had been planted and were already beginning to promise near results, while corn, potatoes, etc., gave fine crops. The original place of settlement was a square formed by one-story log houses on three sides and a stockade on the fourth. This was called the fort and was a place of refuge though the danger from Navajo attack seemed to be over and that from any assault by the Paiutes certainly was past. One corner of the fort was made by the walls of the schoolhouse, which was at the same time meeting-house and ball-room. Altogether there were about 100 families in the village. The houses that had been built outside the fort were quite substantially constructed, some of adobe or sun-dried brick. The entire settlement had a thrifty air, as is the case with the Mormons. Not a grog-shop, or gambling saloon, or dance-hall was to be seen; quite in contrast with the usual disgraceful accompaniments of the ordinary frontier towns. A perfectly orderly government existed, headed by a bishop appointed by the church authorities in Salt Lake City, the then incumbent of this office being an excellent man, Bishop Stewart.[85]
After the Navajo peace settlement many of the places abandoned in 1866 were reoccupied and within a few years further expansion filled most of the remaining areas suitable for settlements or ranches. In Long Valley, Berryville (now Glendale), and Winsor (Mt. Carmel) were revived in 1871. Johnson was settled in the spring of the same year by five brothers, Joel, Benjamin, Joseph, George and William Johnson, on the site of Scutumpah, formerly John D. Lee’s ranch. In 1872, Graham, on the headwaters of Kanab Creek (upper Kanab), was reoccupied and the settlers engaged in dairying and lumbering.
The upper reaches of the Paria, however, attracted settlers from the north. Panguitch was re-founded in March, 1871 under George W. Sevy and counted seventy-five families the next year. Joel H. Johnson and George D. Wilson established a sawmill in 1871 near the present location of Hillsdale, and were soon joined by twenty families, including those of Nephi and Seth Johnson. Other cattlemen located farther up the Sevier, whereMeltiar Hatch founded the village bearing his name. Nephi Johnson, discoverer of Zion Canyon, was made bishop of Hillsdale in 1874.
Attention was then focused on the upper Paria. The first settlers, David O. Littlefield and Orley D. Bliss, located near the present site of Cannonville on Christmas Eve, 1874. Early the next day eight other families arrived, who built log houses at a place called Clifton and began farming along the Paria and on Henrieville Creek. Ebenezer Bryce, from Pine Valley, selected a place farther upstream, a mile or two east of the present site of Tropic near the mouth of Bryce Canyon. Bryce used the famous canyon for a cattle range, and thus immortalized his name.
Clifton was not well located and in 1877 some settlers moved to a new townsite called Cannonville, in honor of George Q. Cannon, high Mormon official who had taken a special interest in their affairs. Other settlers moved over to Henrieville Creek to be near their farms, and thus the town of Henrieville (named for James Henrie, president of Panguitch Stake) was born.
In 1879 Daniel Goulding settled near Bryce’s ranch. Seeking water for irrigation, he and Bryce devised a scheme to divert water from Pine Creek in the Great Basin by means of a canal over the divide. This they finished, but upkeep was expensive, their crops were poor, and Goulding lost about five hundred fruit trees from drouth. Bryce became discouraged and left for Arizona in 1880 and Goulding moved to Henrieville in 1883. Bryce, unimpressed by the beauty of the canyon, considered it “awful hard to find a cow that was lost” in the intricate maze of its pinnacles.
Seth Johnson and several others located in 1886 on Yellow Creek (Kane County) about three miles southwest of Cannonville and named the settlement Georgetown, in honor of the same man for whom Cannonville was named.
In 1890 the two Ahlstrom brothers built homes on the present site of Tropic and with several others began a second and more ambitious attempt to divert water from the East Fork of Sevier River over the divide into Paria Creek. This time the project succeeded. Tropic townsite was surveyed in 1891 and settlers began to flock there and prepare homes and lands in anticipation of the coming of the water. A fitting celebration was staged on May 23, 1892, when the water was turned into the canal.
By this time, most of the suitable valleys and canyons had been occupied. Erosion, however, caused trouble at Kanab. From 1883 to 1890, floods presumably resulting from overgrazing tore out dams and ditches and gutted the canyons and valleys with deep washes. Water arose in the bottom of the washes and that in Kanab Wash (below Kanab) was diverted about 1886 onto a new townsite just beyond the state line in Arizona, called Fredonia, which later served as a refuge for a number ofpolygamous wives during the Federal offensive against the practice.[86]
While southern Utah was thus growing, a new movement was developed. In 1879, the Mormon Church leaders called for eighty men from the Southern Mission to establish an outpost for the purpose of “cultivating and maintaining friendly relations with Indians whose homes were near the point where the state of Colorado and the Territories of Utah, New Mexico and Arizona come together.” Twenty-five men, including Kumen Jones, went out to investigate routes and locations. They traveled via Lee’s Ferry, Tuba City and Monument Valley to the San Juan River as far as Four-Corners, spent about three months exploring the region, and then returned home via a northern route, past the sites of Monticello and Moab.[87]
While they were away, another party set out from Escalante seeking a short-cut to the San Juan country. A route much more direct than that mapped by the first party was reported, apparently on imperfect observation. It was, however, accepted, and by October the party was on its way. It passed through Escalante and reached Forty-mile Spring where it was held up by excessively rough country, while snows in the mountains blocked retreat.
Three scouts were sent ahead to investigate some of the wildest and most rugged scenic areas of America. The three returned in disappointment; one held the route feasible, another positively rejected it, while the third thought it might be possible to get through with special help. Envoys were sent to Salt Lake City to appeal for assistance, which was given in the form of a legislative appropriation for blasting a way through.
It took fifty days to get eighty-two wagons through Hole-in-the-Rock and down to the Colorado River and ninety days to reach Bluff on the San Juan River where the first settlement was made. Three babies were born on the way and the hardships endured form a Western epic.[88]
The story of Orderville has been left for the last. The United Order[89]was organized at Mt. Carmel, March 20, 1874,by John R. Young, at which time one hundred and nine members were listed. One summer of the United Order was enough for most members. Bishop Bryant Jolley, with his numerous family and relatives, formed the core of the dissenters. To avoid contention, those who wished to continue with the Order sold their holdings and moved in a body two miles above Mt. Carmel where title to all land was vested in the group and where they set up the town Orderville, under the leadership of Howard O. Spencer. The new town was surveyed February 20, 1875.
The first building was a hotel where all ate together in the large dining hall, from July, 1875 to May, 1880. As time passed, living quarters were provided for each family and work was divided into more specialized fields.
During the hey-day of the Order, around 1880, it numbered nearly six hundred adherents and there were some twenty-eight specialized departments of work which included most of the various activities that go to make up a simple community. The Order made great progress and acquired property rapidly. Farming lands were expanded to include areas scattered through Long Valley and at Kanab.
The growing power of the Order created jealousies, but disintegration came from internal dissension. The idea of giving everyone an equal reward regardless of ability or accomplishment tended in many cases to lessen effort and brought charges of laziness and carelessness.
Gradually, more and more individual property was assigned to each home; farmers were given a share of their own produce and livestock and sawmills and freighting were operated under lease or contract. Matters were hastening toward dissolution when, in 1885, polygamy troubles began. Fear that the Federal government might confiscate the goods of the Order forced the final dissolution of most of the property, and farming lands, livestock, ranches, tannery and sawmill, were all sold to members. The woolen mill alone was kept and intermittently operated until 1900. In that year the United Order of Orderville was officially dissolved, twenty-five years after its incorporation.