In the spring of 1857, Hamblin and Dudley Leavitt, at a point 35 miles west of Las Vegas, smelted some lead ore, Hamblin having some knowledge of the proper processes. The lead later was left on the desert. The wagons were needed to haul iron, remnants of old emigrant wagons that had been abandoned on the San Bernardino road.
Encounter with Federal Explorers
In the course of his missionary endeavor, in the spring of 1858, Hamblin took five men and went by way of Las Vegas Springs to the Colorado River, at the foot of the Cottonwood Hills, 170 miles from the Santa Clara, Utah, settlement. Upon this trip he had remarkable experiences. On the river he saw a small steamer. Men with animals were making their way upstream on the opposite side. Thales Haskell, sent to investigate, returned next morning with information that the steamer company was of military character and very hostile to the Mormons, that the expedition had been sent out by the Government to examine the river and learn if a force could not be taken through southern Utah in that direction, should it be needed, to subjugate the Mormons. Hamblin returned to Las Vegas Springs and thought the situation so grave that he counseled abandonment of the Mormon settlement then being made at that point.
This record is very interesting in view of contemporary history. Without doubt, the steamboat he saw was the little "Explorer," of the topographical exploration of the Colorado River in the winter of 1857-8. Commanding was Lieut. J.C. Ives of the army Topographical Corps, the same officer who had been in the engineering section of Whipple's railway survey along the 35th parallel. The craft was built in the east and put together at the mouth of the river. The journey upstream was at a low stage of water and there was continual trouble with snags and sandy bars. Finally, when Black Canyon had been reached, the "Explorer" ran upon a sunken rock, the boiler was torn loose, as well as the wheelhouse, and the river voyage had to be abandoned, though Ives and two men rowed up the stream as far as Vegas Wash.
The steamboat was floated back to Yuma, but Ives started eastward with a pack train, guided by the Mohave chief, Iritaba, taking the same route that had been pursued many years before by Friar Garces through the Hava Supai and Hopi country.
It is to be regretted that Hamblin did not go on board the "Explorer," where no doubt he would have received cordial welcome. Even at that time, Brigham Young undoubtedly would have been pleased to have helped in forwarding the opening of a route to the southwestern coast by way of the Colorado River.
Incidentally, the steamer had a trip that was valuable mainly in the excellent mapping that was done by Ives and his engineers. Captain Johnston and the steamer "Colorado" had been over the same stretch of river before the "Explorer" came and had served to ferry across the stream, about where Fort Mohave later stood, the famous camel party of Lieutenant Beale.
The Hopi and the Welsh Legend
There was serious consideration by the Church authorities of a declaration that the Moqui (Hopi) Indians of northern Arizona had a dialect that at least embraced many Welsh words. President Young had heard that a group of Welshmen, several hundred years before, had disappeared into the western wilds, so, with his usual quick inquiry into matters that interested him, he sent southward, led by Hamblin, in the autumn of 1858, a linguistic expedition, also including Durias Davis and Ammon M. Tenney. Davis was a Welshman, familiar with the language of his native land. Tenney, then only 15, knew a number of Indian dialects, as well as Spanish, the last learned in San Bernardino. They made diligent investigation and found nothing whatever to sustain the assertion. Not a word could they find that was similar in anywise to any European language.
It happens that the Hopi tongue is a composite, mainly a Shoshonean dialect, probably accumulated as the various clans of the present tribe gathered in northeastern Arizona, from the cactus country to the south, the San Juan country to the northward and the Rio Grande valley to the eastward. But the Welsh legend was slow in dying.