The Romance of the Colorado River / The Story of its Discovery in 1840, with an Account of the Later Explorations, and with Special Reference to the Voyages of Powell through the Line of the Great Canyons

by Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh

[5] There were two classes of trappers, the free and those in the employ of some company. The Patties belonged to the former class.

The Grand Canyon from Bright Angel Trail looking East.
Point of view 1000 feet above the water. Total depth between 5000 and 6000 feet.
Photograph by ROSE.

A band of his followers, armed, of course, with only bows and arrows, next day made a concerted attack, but were cut down by the rifles and fine marksmanship of the Americans. As these Mohaves had been good friends to Garces, and afterwards treated Americans well till they were instigated by the Spaniards to fight, it is probable that a somewhat more conciliatory approach might have avoided the trouble this party experienced.

Entrance to Black Canyon, first seen by James O. Pattie.
Photograph by WHEELER EXPEDITION.

Farther up they reached the “Shuenas,” who had apparently never before heard the report of a gun, and on the 25th of March they arrived at what we now call Bill Williams Fork. A party was sent up this stream to trap. As they did not return next day according to the plan, scouts were dispatched, who found the bodies cut to pieces and spitted before a great fire.

On the 28th of March they came to a place on the river where “the mountains shut in so close upon its shores that we were compelled to climb a mountain and travel along the aclivity, the river still in sight, and at an immense depth beneath us.” This was probably Black Canyon; they are the first white men on record to reach it. They now took a remarkable journey of fourteen days, but unfortunately little detail is given, probably because Pattie’s editor considered a cut across the country of little importance. They travelled, they thought, one hundred leagues along these canyons, with the “river bluffs on the opposite shore never more than a mile” from them.[^[6]] Thus they evidently did not see the Grand Canyon at its widest part. By April 10th they arrived “where the river emerges from these horrid mountains, which so cage it up as to deprive all human beings of the ability to descend to its banks and make use of its waters. No mortal has the power of describing the pleasure I felt when I could once more reach the banks of the river.” They had suffered for food on this journey, but now they were again in a beaver country and also killed plenty of elk, the skins of which they dressed for clothing. They had made the first extended trip on record along the Grand Canyon and the other canyons of the Colorado, but whether they passed up by the north or the south I am unable to determine. My impression is that they passed by the north, as they would otherwise have met with the Havasupai in their Canyon, with the Little Colorado, and with the Moki. They would also have struck the San Juan, but the first stream mentioned as coming in is from the north, which they reached three days after arriving at the place where they could get to the water. Three days after leaving this they met a large body of Shoshones. They appear now to be somewhere on Grand River. They had a brush with the Shoshones, whom they defeated, and then compelled the women to exchange six scalps of Frenchmen whom the Shoshones had killed on the headwaters of the Platte, for scalps of members of their own party of whom the Patties had killed eight; They also took from them all the stolen beaver-skins, five mules, and their dried buffalo meat. After this interchange of civilities the trappers went on to where the river forked again, neither fork being more than twenty-five or thirty yards wide. The right-hand-fork pursued a north-east course, and following it four days brought them (probably in Middle Park) to a large village of the “Nabahoes.” Of these they inquired as to the pass over the mountains (Continental Divide) and were informed they must follow the left-hand fork, which they accordingly did, and on the thirty-first day of May, 1826, came to the gap, which they traversed, by following the buffalo trails through the snow, in six days. Then they descended to the Platte, and went on north to the Yellowstone, making in all a traverse of the whole Rocky Mountain region probably never since surpassed, and certainly never before approached.