In Southern Arizona the first pioneering was done by devoted Franciscans and Jesuits, their chiefest concern the souls of the gentile Indians. In similar wise, the pioneering of northern Arizona had its initiation in a hope of the Mormon Church for conversion of the Indians of the canyons and plains. In neither case was there the desired degree of success, but each period has brought to us many stories of heroism and self-sacrifice on the part of the missionaries. In the days when the American colonists were shaking off the English yoke, our Southwest was having exploration by the martyred Friar Garces. Three-quarters of a century later, the trail that had been taken by the priest to the Hopi villages was used by a Mormon missionary, Jacob Hamblin, sometimes called the "Leatherstocking of the Southwest," more of a trail-blazer than a preacher, a scout of the frontier directly commissioned under authority of his Church, serene in his faith and confident that his footsteps were being guided from on high.
The Author has found himself unable to write the history of northernmost Arizona without continual mingling of the name and the personal deeds of Jacob Hamblin. Apparently Hamblin had had no special training for the work he was to do so well. It seemed to "merely happen" that he was in southwestern Utah, as early as 1854, when his Church was looking toward expansion to the southward.
Hamblin's first essay into the Arizona country was in the troublous fall and winter of 1857, a year when he and his family were living in the south end of Mountain Meadows, Utah. He happened to be in Salt Lake when the famous Arkansas emigrant train passed through his district. Brigham Young sent a messenger southward with instructions to let the wagon train (an especially troublesome one) pass as quietly as possible, but these instructions were not received and Hamblin learned on the way home, of the massacre. The information came personally from John D. Lee, the assassin-in-chief. In Hamblin's autobiography is written, "The deplorable affair caused a sensation of horror and deep regret throughout the entire community, by whom it was unqualifiedly condemned."
Thereafter, Hamblin and his associates rode hard after other emigrants who were to be attacked by Indians, and found a company on the Muddy, surrounded by Paiutes preparing to attack and destroy them. As a compromise, the Indians were given the loose horses and cattle, which later were recovered, and the Mormons remained with the company to assist in its defense.
Aboriginal Diversions
Late in the autumn of 1857, a company came through on the way to California, bringing a letter from President Young, directing Hamblin to act as guide to California. On his way to join the train, Hamblin found a naked man in the hands of the Paiutes, who were preparing "to have a good time with him," that is, "they intended to take him to their camp and torture him." He saved the man's life and secured the return of his clothing. As the caravan neared the Muddy, news came of another Indian attack. Hamblin rode ahead and joined the Indians. He later wrote, "I called them together and sat down and smoked a little tobacco with them, which I had brought along for that purpose." Apparently there was a good deal of native diplomacy in the negotiations. There were some promises of blankets and shirts and finally there was agreement to let the travelers proceed.
[Illustration: JACOB HAMBLIN "Apostle to the Lamanites"]
[Illustration: CHURCH PRESIDENTS Brigham Young—above; Lorenzo Snow—above; John Taylor—above Wilford Woodruff—below; Joseph Smith, the Prophet—center Heber J. Grant—below; Joseph F. Smith—below]
Incidentally, they were met by Ira Hatch and Dudley Leavitt, on their return from a mission to the Mohave Indians. The Mohaves, careless of the Gospel privileges afforded, held a council over the Mormon missionaries and decided that they should die. Hatch thereupon knelt down among the savages and "asked the Lord to soften their hearts, that they might not shed further blood." The prayer was repeated to the Mohaves by a Paiute interpreter. "The heart of the chief was softened" and before dawn the next morning he set the two men afoot on the desert and directed them to Las Vegas Springs, eighty miles distant. Their food on the journey was mesquite bread, "made by pounding the seeds of the mesquite fruits in the valley."
Hamblin at all times was very careful in his dealings with the Indians. At an early date he might have killed one of them, but his gun missed fire, a circumstance for which he later repeatedly praised the Lord. Probably his greatest influence came through his absolute fearlessness. He was firmly convinced that he was in the Lord's keeping and that his time would not come till his mission had been accomplished.
Without doubt, Hamblin's course was largely sustained by a letter received by him March 5, 1858, from President Brigham Young, in which he prophesied that "the day of Indian redemption draws nigh," and continued, "you should always be careful to impress upon them that they should not infringe upon the rights of others; and our brethren should be very careful not to infringe upon their rights, thus cultivating honor and good principles in their midst by example, as well as precept."
In the spring of 1857, Hamblin and Dudley Leavitt, at a point 35 miles west of Las Vegas, smelted some lead ore, Hamblin having some knowledge of the proper processes. The lead later was left on the desert. The wagons were needed to haul iron, remnants of old emigrant wagons that had been abandoned on the San Bernardino road.
Encounter with Federal Explorers
In the course of his missionary endeavor, in the spring of 1858, Hamblin took five men and went by way of Las Vegas Springs to the Colorado River, at the foot of the Cottonwood Hills, 170 miles from the Santa Clara, Utah, settlement. Upon this trip he had remarkable experiences. On the river he saw a small steamer. Men with animals were making their way upstream on the opposite side. Thales Haskell, sent to investigate, returned next morning with information that the steamer company was of military character and very hostile to the Mormons, that the expedition had been sent out by the Government to examine the river and learn if a force could not be taken through southern Utah in that direction, should it be needed, to subjugate the Mormons. Hamblin returned to Las Vegas Springs and thought the situation so grave that he counseled abandonment of the Mormon settlement then being made at that point.
This record is very interesting in view of contemporary history. Without doubt, the steamboat he saw was the little "Explorer," of the topographical exploration of the Colorado River in the winter of 1857-8. Commanding was Lieut. J.C. Ives of the army Topographical Corps, the same officer who had been in the engineering section of Whipple's railway survey along the 35th parallel. The craft was built in the east and put together at the mouth of the river. The journey upstream was at a low stage of water and there was continual trouble with snags and sandy bars. Finally, when Black Canyon had been reached, the "Explorer" ran upon a sunken rock, the boiler was torn loose, as well as the wheelhouse, and the river voyage had to be abandoned, though Ives and two men rowed up the stream as far as Vegas Wash.
The steamboat was floated back to Yuma, but Ives started eastward with a pack train, guided by the Mohave chief, Iritaba, taking the same route that had been pursued many years before by Friar Garces through the Hava Supai and Hopi country.
It is to be regretted that Hamblin did not go on board the "Explorer," where no doubt he would have received cordial welcome. Even at that time, Brigham Young undoubtedly would have been pleased to have helped in forwarding the opening of a route to the southwestern coast by way of the Colorado River.
Incidentally, the steamer had a trip that was valuable mainly in the excellent mapping that was done by Ives and his engineers. Captain Johnston and the steamer "Colorado" had been over the same stretch of river before the "Explorer" came and had served to ferry across the stream, about where Fort Mohave later stood, the famous camel party of Lieutenant Beale.
The Hopi and the Welsh Legend
There was serious consideration by the Church authorities of a declaration that the Moqui (Hopi) Indians of northern Arizona had a dialect that at least embraced many Welsh words. President Young had heard that a group of Welshmen, several hundred years before, had disappeared into the western wilds, so, with his usual quick inquiry into matters that interested him, he sent southward, led by Hamblin, in the autumn of 1858, a linguistic expedition, also including Durias Davis and Ammon M. Tenney. Davis was a Welshman, familiar with the language of his native land. Tenney, then only 15, knew a number of Indian dialects, as well as Spanish, the last learned in San Bernardino. They made diligent investigation and found nothing whatever to sustain the assertion. Not a word could they find that was similar in anywise to any European language.
It happens that the Hopi tongue is a composite, mainly a Shoshonean dialect, probably accumulated as the various clans of the present tribe gathered in northeastern Arizona, from the cactus country to the south, the San Juan country to the northward and the Rio Grande valley to the eastward. But the Welsh legend was slow in dying.
This expedition of 1858, besides the two individuals noted, included Frederick and William Hamblin, Dudley and Thomas Leavitt, Samuel Knight, Ira Hatch, Andrew S. Gibbons (later an Arizona legislator), Benjamin Knell and a Paiute guide, Naraguts. The journey started at Hamblin's home in the Santa Clara settlement and was by way of the mouth of the Paria, where a good ferry point was found, but not used, and the Crossing of the Fathers on the Colorado, probably crossed by white men for the first time since Spanish days. The Hopi villages were found none too soon, for the men were very hungry. They had lost the mules that carried the provisions. The Hopi were found hospitable and furnished food until the runaway mules were brought in. There was some communication through the Ute language, after failure with the language of Wales. William Hamblin, Thomas Leavitt, Gibbons and Knell were left as missionaries and the rest of the dozen made a difficult return journey to their homes, a part of the way through snow.
The missionaries left with the Hopi returned the same winter. They had not been treated quite as badly as Father Garces, but there had been a division among the tribes, started by the priesthood. There was very good prophecy, however, by the Indians, to the effect that the Mormons would settle in the country to the southward and that their route of travel would be by way of the Little Colorado.
It might be well to insert, at this point, a condensation of the Welsh legend, though affecting, especially, the Zuni, a pueblo-dwelling tribe, living to the eastward of the Hopi and with little ethnologic connection. The following was written by Llewellyn Harris (himself of Welsh extraction), who was a Mormon missionary visitor to the Zuni in January, 1878, and is reprinted without endorsement:
"They say that, before the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, the Zuni Indians lived in Mexico. Some of them still claim to be the descendants of Montezuma. At the time of the conquest they fled to Arizona and settled there. They were at one time a very powerful tribe, as the ruins all over that part of the country testify. They have always been considered a very industrious people. The fact that they have, at one time, been in a state of civilization far in advance of what they are at present, is established beyond a doubt. Before the Catholic religion was introduced to them, they worshipped the sun. At present they are nearly all Catholics. A few of them have been baptized into our Church by Brothers Ammon M. Tenney and R.H. Smith, and nearly all the tribe say they are going to be baptized.
"They have a great many words in the language like the Welsh, and with the same meaning. Their tradition says that over 300 years before the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, some white men landed in Mexico and told the Indians that they had come from the regions beyond the sea to the east. They say that from these white men came the ancient kings of Mexico, from whom Montezuma descended.
"These white men were known to the Indians of Mexico by the name of Cambaraga; and are still remembered so in the traditions of Zuni Indians. In time those white people became mixed with Indians, until scarcely a relic of them remained. A few traditions of the Mexican Indians and a few Welsh words among the Zunis, Navajos and Moquis are all that can be found of that people now.
"I have the history of the ancient Britons, which speaks of Prince Madoc, who was the son of Owen Guynedd, King of Wales, having sailed from Wales in the year 1160, with three ships. He returned in the year 1163, saying he had found a beautiful country, across the western sea. He left Wales again in the year 1164, with fifteen ships and 3000 men. He was never again heard of."
Indians Await Their Prophets
President Young kept the Hopi in mind, for the following year (1859) he sent Hamblin on a second trip to the Indians, with a company that consisted of Marion J. Shelton, Thales Haskell, Taylor Crosby, Benjamin Knell, Ira Hatch and John Wm. Young. They reached the Hopi villages November 6, talked with the Indians three days and then left the work of possible conversion on the shoulders of Shelton and Haskell, who returned to the Santa Clara the next spring. The Indians were kind, but unbelieving, and "could make no move until the reappearance of the three prophets who led their fathers to that land and told them to remain on those rocks until they should come again and tell them what to do." Both ways of the journey were by the Ute ford.
Navajo Killing of Geo. A. Smith, Jr.
In the fall of 1860, Hamblin was directed to attempt to establish the faith in the Hopi towns. This time, from Santa Clara, he took Geo. A. Smith, Jr., son of an apostle of the Church, Thales Haskell, Jehiel McConnell, Ira Hatch, Isaac Riddle, Amos G. Thornton, Francis M. Hamblin, James Pearce and an Indian, Enos, with supplies for a year. Young Ammon Tenney was sent back. This proved a perilous adventure. Hamblin told he had had forebodings of evil. Failure attended an attempt to cross the Colorado at the Paria. For two days south of the Crossing of the Fathers, there was no water. The Navajo gathered around them and barred further progress. There was a halt, and bartering was started for goods that had been brought along to exchange for Indian blankets. At this point, Smith was shot. The deed was done with his own revolver, which had been passed to an Indian who asked to inspect it. The Indians readily admitted responsibility, stating that it was in reprisal for the killing of three Navajos by palefaces and they demanded two more victims before the Mormon company would be allowed to go in peace. The situation was a difficult one for Jacob, but he answered bravely, "I would not give a cent to live after I had given up two men to be murdered; I would rather die like a man than live like a dog." Jacob went out by himself and had a little session of prayer and then the party started northward, flanked by hostile Navajos, but accompanied by four old friendly tribesmen. Smith was taken along on a mule, with McConnell behind to hold him on. Thus it was that he died about sundown. His last words, when told that a stop could not be made, were, "Oh, well, go on then; but I wish I could die in peace." The body was wrapped in a blanket and laid in a hollow by the side of the trail, for no stop could be made even to bury the dead.
About a week later, Santa Clara was reached by the worn and jaded party, sustained the last few days on a diet mainly of pinon nuts.
That winter, through the snow and ice, Hamblin led another party across the Colorado out upon the desert, to bring home the remains of their brother in the faith. The head and the larger bones were returned for burial at Salt Lake City. It was learned that the attacking Indians were from Fort Defiance and on this trip it was told that the Navajo considered their own action a grave mistake.
A Seeking of Baptism for Gain That the Shivwits were susceptible to missionary argument was indicated about 1862, when James H. Pearce brought from Arizona into St. George a band of 300 Indians, believed to comprise the whole tribe. All were duly baptized into the Church, the ceremony performed by David H. Cannon. Then Erastus Snow distributed largess of clothing and food. Ten years later Pearce again was with the Indians, greeted in affectionate remembrance. But there was complaint from the Shivwits they "had not heard from the Lord since he left." Then followed fervent suggestions from the tribesmen that they be taken to St. George and be baptized again. They wanted more shirts. They also wanted Pearce to write to the Lord and to tell Him the Shivwits had been pretty good Indians.
The First Tour Around the Grand Canyon
Hamblin's adventures to the southward were far from complete. In the autumn of 1862 President Young directed another visit to the Hopi, recommending that the Colorado be crossed south of St. George, in the hope of finding a more feasible route. Hamblin had had disaster the previous spring, in which freshets had swept away his grist mill and other improvements. Most of the houses and cultivated land of the Santa Clara settlement had disappeared. He was given a company of twenty men, detailed by Apostles Orson Pratt and Erastus Snow. A small boat was taken to the river by wagon. Hamblin's chronicle does not tell just where the crossing was made, but it is assumed that it was at the mouth of the Grand Wash. From the river crossing there were four days of very dry travel toward the southeast, with the San Francisco Mountains in the far distance. There is no reference in his diary to the finding of any roads, but it is probable that most of the journey was on aboriginal trails. Snow was found at the foot of the San Francisco Mountains and two days thereafter the Little Colorado was crossed and then were reached the Hopi, who "had been going through some religious ceremonies to induce the Great Spirit to send storms to water their country that they might raise abundance of food the coming season." This may have been the annual Snake Dance. The Hopi refused to send some of their chief men to Utah, their traditions forbidding, but finally three joined after the expedition had started. There had been left behind McConnell, Haskell, and Hatch to labor for a season, and as hostages for the return of the tribesmen.
This journey probably was the first that ever circled the Grand Canyon, for return was by the Ute Crossing, where fording was difficult and dangerous, for the water was deep and ice was running. The three Hopi were dismayed over their violation of tradition, but were induced to go on. Incidentally, food became so scarce that resort was had to the killing and cooking of crows.
The Indians were taken on to Salt Lake City and were shown many things that impressed them greatly. An unsuccessful attempt was made to learn whether they spoke Welsh. Hamblin wrote that the Indians said, "They had been told that their forefathers had the arts of reading, writing, making books, etc."
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT IVES' STEAMER ON THE COLORADO IN 1858]
[Illustration: AMMON M. TENNEY Pioneer Scout of the Southwest]
Here it may be noted that the Grand Canyon was circumtoured in the fall of 1920 by Governor and Mrs. Campbell, but under very different circumstances. The vehicle was an automobile. Crossing of the Colorado was at the Searchlight ferry, about forty miles downstream from old Callville. On the first day 248 miles were covered, mainly on the old Mormon road, to Littlefield, through the Muddy section, now being revived. St. George and other pioneer southern Utah settlements were passed on the way to Kanab and Fredonia. The road to the mouth of the Paria and to Lee's Ferry appears to have been found very little less rough than when traveled by the Mormon ox teams, and the river crossing was attended by experiences with quicksand and other dangers, while the pull outward on the south side was up a steep and hazardous highway.
A Visit to the Hava-Supai Indians
Hamblin had about as many trips as Sindbad the Sailor and about as many adventures. Of course, he had to take the Hopi visitors home, and on this errand he started from St. George on March 18, 1863, with a party of six white men, including Gibbons, Haskell, Hatch and McConnell. They took the western route and found a better crossing, later called Pearce's Ferry. At this point they were overtaken by Lewis Greeley, a nephew of Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune, who had been sent on to the river by Erastus Snow.
A trail was taken to the left of the former route. This trail very clearly was the main thoroughfare used by the Wallapai into Cataract Canyon, which was so known at that time. Down the trail, into the abysmal "voladero" of Father Garces, they traveled a day and part of another, leading their horses most of the way. In many places they could not have turned their animals around had they wished to do so.
Cataract Canyon, the home of the Hava-Supai, is a veritable Yosemite, with craggy walls that rise nearly 3000 feet to the mesa above. Hamblin especially noted the boiling from the bottom of the canyon of a beautiful large spring, the same which today irrigates the lands of the well-disposed Indians. These Indians gave assistance to the party and told of an attack made a short time before by Apaches from the southeast, who had been met in a narrow pass where several of their number had been slain. Assuring the Hava-Supai they would send no enemies into their secret valley, Hamblin led his party to the eastward, up the Tope-Kobe trail to the plateau. This was reached April 7. Though along the Moqui trail at no point were they very far from the Grand Canyon, that gorge was not noted in Hamblin's narrative, for the brethren were not sight-seeing. A few days later they were in the Hopi towns, to which the three much-traveled Indians preceded them, in eagerness to see their people again.
Only two days were spent with the Indians and on April 15, taking Haskell, Hatch and McConnell, the party struck toward the southwest, to find the Beale road. On the 20th, Greeley discovered a pond of clear cold water several acres in extent in the crater of a volcanic peak. The San Francisco peaks were passed, left to the southward, and the Beale road was struck six miles west of LeRoux Springs, the later site of Fort Moroni, seven miles northwest of the present Flagstaff.
The Beale road was followed until the 28th. Thence, the men suffered thirst, for 56 hours being without water. Ten of their eighteen horses were stolen. This, it was explained, was due to the failure of the Hava-Supai to return Wallapai horses which the men had left in Cataract Canyon on the outward journey. St. George was reached May 13, 1863. The main result had been the exploration of a practicable, though difficult, route for wagons from St. George to the Little Colorado and to the Hopi towns.
Experiences with the Redskins
Ammon M. Tenney in Phoenix lately told the Author that the Navajo were the only Indians who ever really fought the Mormons and the only tribe against which the Mormons were compelled to depart from their rule against the shedding of blood. It is not intended in this work to go into any history of the many encounters between the Utah Mormons and the Arizona Navajo, but there should be inclusion of a story told by Tenney of an experience in 1865 at a point eighteen miles west of Pipe Springs and six miles southwest of Canaan, Utah. There were three Americans from Toquerville, the elder Tenney, the narrator, and Enoch Dodge, the last known as one of the bravest of southern Utah pioneers. The three were surrounded by sixteen Navajos, and, with their backs to the wall, fought for an hour or more, finally abandoning their thirteen horses and running for better shelter. Dodge was shot through the knee cap, a wound that incapacitated him from the fight thereafter. The elder Tenney fell and broke his shoulder blade and was stunned, though he was not shot. This left the fight upon the younger Tenney, who managed to climb a twelve-foot rocky escarpment. He reached down with his rifle and dragged up his father and Dodge. The three opportunely found a little cave in which they secreted themselves until reasonably rested, hearing the Indians searching for them on the plateau above. Then, in the darkness, they made their way fifteen miles into Duncan's Retreat on the Virgin River in Utah. "There is one thing I will say for the Navajo," Tenney declared with fervor. "He is a sure-enough fighting man. The sixteen of them stood shoulder to shoulder, not taking cover, as almost any other southwestern Indian would have done."
Apparently, on each of the visits that had been made by Hamblin to the Hopi, he had made suggestion that the tribes leave their barren land and move to the northward, across the Colorado, where good lands might be allotted them, on which they might live in peace and plenty, where they might build cities and villages the same as other people, but, according to Hamblin's journal, "They again told us that they could not leave their present location until the three prophets should appear again."
This was written particularly in regard to a visit made to the villages in 1864, and in connection with a theft of horses by Navajos near Kanab. It was found inexpedient to go into the Navajo country, as Chief Spaneshanks, who had been relatively friendly, had been deposed by his band and had been succeeded by a son of very different inclination.
In autumn of the same year, Anson Call, Dr. Jas. M. Whitmore, A.M. Cannon and Hamblin and son visited Las Vegas Springs and the Colorado River, stopping a while with the Cottonwood Island Indians and the Mohave, and establishing Callville.
Killing of Whitmore and McIntire
January 8, 1866, Doctor Whitmore and his herder, Robert McIntire, were killed in Arizona, four miles north of Pipe Springs by a band of Paiede Paiutes and Navajos, that drove off horses, sheep and cattle. There was pursuit from St. George by Col. D. D. McArthur and company.
A tale of the pursuit comes from Anthony W. Ivins, a member of the company, then a mere boy who went out on a mule with a quilt for a saddle. The weather was bitterly cold. The bodies were found covered with snow, which was three feet deep. Each body had many arrow and bullet wounds. The men had been attacked while riding the range, only McIntire being armed. A detachment, under Captain James Andrus, found the murderous Indians in camp and, in a short engagement, killed nine of them.
The trail to the Hopi towns must have been well known to the Mormon scout when in October, 1869, again he was detailed to investigate the sources of raids on the Mormon borders. He had a fairly strong company of forty men, including twenty Paiutes. The crossing was at the mouth of the Paria. Apparently all that was accomplished on this trip was to learn that the Indians intended to make still another raid on the southern settlements. Hamblin wanted to go back by way of the Ute trail and the Crossing of the Fathers, but was overruled by his brethren, who preferred the Paria route. When they returned, it was to learn that the Navajos already had raided and had driven off more than 1200 head of animals, and that, if the Mormon company, on returning, had taken the Ute trail, the raiders would have been met and the animals possibly recovered. The winter was a hard one for the Mormons who watched the frontier, assisted by friendly Paiutes. The trouble weighed heavily upon Hamblin's mind and, in the spring of 1870, at Kanab, he offered himself to President Young as an ambassador to the Navajo, to prevent, if possible, further shedding of blood.
