CHAPTER XIX
A few days after I arrived home from Fort Defiance, I went on a visit to St. George, and other settlements. I took Tuba and his wife with me, that they might have an opportunity of seeing some of our farming and manufacturing industries.
After looking through the factory at Washington, where some three hundred spindles were in motion, Tuba said it spoiled him for being an Oriba. He could never think of spinning yarn again with his fingers, to make blankets.
His wife, after looking at the flouring mill, thought it was a pity that the Hopees (meaning the Oriba women) were obliged to work so hard to get a little meal to make their bread, when it could be made so easily.
Tuba and his wife gleaned cotton in the fields one week, on the Santa Clara, where the cotton had been gathered by our people, and President Young gave him a suit of clothes.
When we returned to Kanab, we found eighty Navajos who had come in there to trade. Most of them were on foot, and had brought blankets to trade. Some of their women accompanied them, which is their custom when going on a peaceable expedition.
Comiarrah, one of their leading men, introduced his wife to me. She took hold of my hand and said, "We have come a long way to trade with your people. We are poor and have brought all we could on our backs. We have not much, and we want to do the best we can with it. We came home to our country three years ago, and found it naked and destitute of anything to live on. We once had many sheep and horses, but lost them all in the war. We were taken prisoners and carried to a poor, desert country, where we suffered much with hunger and cold. Now we have the privilege of living in our own country. We want to get a start of horses and sheep, and would like you to tell your people to give us as good trade as they can."
They traded for fifty horses in Kanab, then went to St. George and other settlements, and traded all the blankets they had for horses, and went back to their own country quite satisfied.
In September, 1872, I went to take Tuba home, as I had promised I would do. Brothers I. C. Haight, George Adair and Joseph Mangum accompanied us. We went by the old Ute crossing, and left some supplies for Professor Powell's party, at a point which had before been designated.
On the east side of the river, we crossed some dangerous places, deep canyons and steep rocks. Some of our animals fell and bruised their legs; one was so badly injured that we were compelled to leave it. Another fell from a cliff into a canyon and was killed instantly.