Part 8

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 was gradually 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 constant fear, 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 and wounded 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.

Expansion in Kane County

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]

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 Dixie settlements 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:

... 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, where Meltiar 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 of polygamous wives during the Federal offensive against the practice.[86]