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.