Of notable interest is the fact that certain members of the Jones expedition were so deeply interested in what they saw that they made request for immediate return. So, October 18, 1876, there started southward, from Salt Lake, at the direction of the Church Presidency, another expedition, in character missionary, rather than for exploration. It embraced Helaman Pratt, Jas. Z. Stewart, Isaac J. Stewart, Louis Garff and George Terry. Meliton G. Trejo joined at Richfield. Phoenix was reached December 23, there being found several families of the Church who had come the previous year. The day the missionaries arrived happened to be exactly thirty years after the date on which the Mormon Battalion passed the Pima villages on the Gila River, just south of Phoenix. The members of the party worked all over southern Arizona, especially among the Mexicans and Indians.
In February of 1877 headquarters were at Tubac. In April, after a Mexican trip, a letter was received from President Brigham Young asking that Sonora be explored as a country for possible settlement. Later in May the Stewarts started eastward, in continuing danger from hostile Apaches after they had crossed the San Pedro. On the road, while the missionaries were passing, a mail rider was killed. At Camp Bowie the Apaches were found beleaguering the post. East of that point the Stewarts had to replace a wagon tire just as they were passing a point of Apache ambush. Return to Utah was in December, 1877. It was concluded that border settlements better had wait on Indian pacification.
Trejo was a remarkable character. He was of aristocratic Castilian birth and had been an officer in the Spanish army in the Philippines. It would appear that he became interested in the Mormon doctrine, which, in some manner, had reached that far around the earth, and that he resigned his commission and straightway went to Utah. There his knowledge of Spanish, backed by good general schooling, made him valuable as a translator, though his English was learned in the Jones family. His later work was in Arizona and Mexico, as a missionary, his home in 1878 moved to Saint David on the San Pedro, where he died a few years ago. He was a fluent writer and sent many interesting letters to the Deseret News. In January, 1878, he wrote from Hayden's Ferry:
"We are now between the Salt and Gila Rivers, on a very extensive rich plain, covered with trees and small brush, watered in some places by means of canals from the two rivers named. The river dams and canals are very easy made, on account of the solid bottoms of the rivers and pure farming clay of the plain. In fact, the people who are now living here find it very easy to get good farms in one or two years without much hard labor. They unite as we do in making canals. The climate is one of the most delightful in the world and until a few years ago, one of the most healthy too, but lately the people have been troubled with fevers, which nobody seems to know the cause. The water is good and the sky is clear, there being no stagnant pools; the ground is dry and the winds blow freely in every direction. I don't believe these fevers are naturally in the country, but are caused by the people not taking proper care of themselves."
An interesting letter has been found, dated at Tubac, March 4, 1877, addressed to President Brigham Young and written by Elder Jas. Z. Stewart. It told that the country is "better than the north part of the Territory, from the fact that the land is as good, if not better, the water is good and regular and the climate more pleasant." He referred to the ruins of whole towns, to the rich mines, to the abundance of game and to the drawback of Apache raids. He described the southern Arizona Mexicans as "all very poor, having no cows, horses, houses nor lands and but very little to live on. Though they live for days on parched corn, they are willing to divide their last meal with a stranger. They are industrious, but ignorant, it being seldom you can find one who can write."
Start of the Lehi Community
The reports from the south gave ample encouragement to expansion ideas within the First Presidency. So, after due deliberation, was organized another Jones expedition for the settlement of the land.
As letters of the time are read and instructions found, it becomes the more evident that President Brigham Young and his counselors had in view a great plan of occupation of the intermountain valleys, reaching down into Mexico, or beyond. It was a time when the Church was growing very rapidly and when new lands were needed for converts who were streaming in from Europe or from the eastern States. Logically, the expansion would be southward, though there was disadvantage of very serious sort in the breaking of continuity of settlement by the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River and by the deserts that had to be passed to reach the fertile valleys of the southland.
When the second Jones party started, according to an official account, "President Young sat with a large map of America before him, while saying that the company of missionaries called were to push ahead as far as possible toward the Yaqui country in Mexico, which would finally be the objective point; but if they could not reach that country they might locate on the San Pedro or Salt River in southern Arizona."
[Illustration: GROUND PLAN OF LEHI]