Part 7

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 sorrowful duty 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.

Indian Troubles

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 emphasized during 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 assumed the 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]

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 to safety. 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] was ordered 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, quietly gathering 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.