On the Gila River, Arizona.
This is the place chosen for the San Carlos Irrigation Dam.
Photograph by J. B. Lippincott.
With some trouble they obtained permission to trap on the Gila, "a river," says Pattie, "never before explored by white people." They soon came into the country of the Apaches, and one of the men was killed in an advance party. When the Patties came to the point they saw the remains. "They had cut him in quarters after the fashion of butchers. His head with the hat on was stuck on a stake." It was full of arrows.
After considerable manœuvring around New Mexico, James O. Pattie again went trapping down the Gila and its branches to the Colorado River in 1826. Up the Colorado he went to the Grand Canyon, the first American apparently to see it, then across country not far from the great gorge, probably on the north, till they came to Grand River, Colorado, and in April, 1827, they crossed the Continental Divide to the head of the Platte near Long's Peak, whence they proceeded to the Yellowstone, terminating there a remarkable traverse of this part of the Wilderness. Pattie then went back to Santa Fé, where his father had remained, and once more started out, going to the Colorado, where they trapped beaver down to the mouth, intending to go this way to the Spanish settlements, which they thought existed there. Encountering the great tidal bore they were nearly wrecked.[87] They finally struck across for the California missions, suffering greatly for water, and reached St. Catherine's in 1828. Here they were arrested and Pattie the elder at length died in prison. James O., with great difficulty after long captivity, succeeded in freeing himself and returned to his home by way of Mexico, arriving far poorer than when he started with such rosy hopes and his father's strong support. The book which he published is one of the most interesting in the whole range of this literature.[88] Had he chosen to remain in the Wilderness there is no doubt that he would have become one of the most famous of trappers, but the death of his father took the romance out of the life and he cared no longer for adventure.
William Becknell, in 1824, went far west of Santa Fé, and in August of the same year William Huddart, with fourteen men, went from Taos to Green River, and in so calling the stream used the term for the first time on record. Green seems to have been a denizen of Green River Valley before 1820. They probably followed the old Escalante trail approximately. A battle with Arapahos finally compelled Huddart to return to Taos with a part of the company, the others having previously gone north along Green River.
The afterwards celebrated Christopher (Kit) Carson now appears on the scene in New Mexico, 1826, only seventeen years old, but full of that courage, energy, and good judgment which finally placed his name at the top of the list of Wilderness breakers. 1826 was a fruitful year in exploration. Lieutenant Hardy of the British navy came up the Gulf of California in a schooner and entered the Colorado for some distance.
Pattie, the first American to see the Grand Canyon, so far as I can ascertain, had in a general way explored the Colorado from its mouth to the head of its Grand River branch. He had not been able to enter the deep canyons, but he had seen them from above, and had ascertained the character of the great river which for the distance from at least White River to the mouth of the Rio Virgin remained unbroken wilderness for more than forty years longer, the last portion to be vanquished.[89] Pattie's name has been little known in this connection, and his extraordinary journey has not received the recognition it deserves, for it actually holds a place alongside the achievements of great explorers. The same year, 1826, that Pattie made the successful traverse from the mouth of the Gila to the Yellowstone by way of the Colorado and Grand rivers, Jedediah Smith started from Salt Lake with fifteen men and, proceeding south to Utah Lake, thence went southwesterly about on the same trail apparently that Escalante had followed in 1776, till he came to the Virgin River, which he called Adams in honour of the President. He followed it down to its junction with the Seedskedee or Colorado. The Seedskedee or Green River was also known as the Colorado, hence when Smith speaks of the Seedskedee in this region his meaning is perfectly clear.[90]