Kane County and Arizona
Just as the settlement of Iron County had provided a stepping stone to the exploration and settlement of the Virgin River Valley, so in turn, the latter served in like stead in opening up Kane County and the Kaibab National Forest of northern Arizona.
In the fall of 1858, after Albert Sydney Johnston’s army had entered Utah, Brigham Young, still doubtful about the future, instructed missionaries under Jacob Hamblin’s leadership to cross the Colorado River to the southeast and visit the Moquis or Town Indians with the object of exploring the possibilities of retreating with his people to this region should the difficulties with the army become unbearable.[65]
Accordingly, Jacob Hamblin, one of the leading figures in Utah’s southern frontier, left the Santa Clara on October 28, 1858, with a party of twelve, including an Indian guide, a Spanish interpreter, and a Welsh interpreter, the last because of wildly erroneous reports that the Moquis spoke a variant of that tongue. The Indian led them through the Arizona strip via Pipe Springs and Kaibab to the old Ute ford where Escalante had crossed eighty-two years earlier. The visit to the Moquis was brief, some of the men returning in November, the others later in the winter. This expedition revealed the general topography between the Virgin and Colorado.
Zion Lodge in 1925; Angel Landing in the distance.
Riding the cable in Zion Canyon in 1912. Courtesy D. D. Rust.
Railroader J. H. Manderfield, Warden Arthur Pratt and Engineer W. D. Beers, about 1916 on a business trip to see about road development, stop to take a cooling drink from Pipe Spring. Gunlock Bill Hamblin shot the bottom out of the bowl of a tobacco pipe. Once the center of a sea of grass and a strategic fort against the Indian menace; now an historical monument. Photo by courtesy of D. D. Rust.
A Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce scouting party of 1915 stopped at Kanab. Rust piloted them from Hurricane to Kanab in one long day. Photo by courtesy of D. D. Rust.
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 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.