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.
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.