This expedition of 1858, besides the two individuals noted, included Frederick and William Hamblin, Dudley and Thomas Leavitt, Samuel Knight, Ira Hatch, Andrew S. Gibbons (later an Arizona legislator), Benjamin Knell and a Paiute guide, Naraguts. The journey started at Hamblin's home in the Santa Clara settlement and was by way of the mouth of the Paria, where a good ferry point was found, but not used, and the Crossing of the Fathers on the Colorado, probably crossed by white men for the first time since Spanish days. The Hopi villages were found none too soon, for the men were very hungry. They had lost the mules that carried the provisions. The Hopi were found hospitable and furnished food until the runaway mules were brought in. There was some communication through the Ute language, after failure with the language of Wales. William Hamblin, Thomas Leavitt, Gibbons and Knell were left as missionaries and the rest of the dozen made a difficult return journey to their homes, a part of the way through snow.
The missionaries left with the Hopi returned the same winter. They had not been treated quite as badly as Father Garces, but there had been a division among the tribes, started by the priesthood. There was very good prophecy, however, by the Indians, to the effect that the Mormons would settle in the country to the southward and that their route of travel would be by way of the Little Colorado.
It might be well to insert, at this point, a condensation of the Welsh legend, though affecting, especially, the Zuni, a pueblo-dwelling tribe, living to the eastward of the Hopi and with little ethnologic connection. The following was written by Llewellyn Harris (himself of Welsh extraction), who was a Mormon missionary visitor to the Zuni in January, 1878, and is reprinted without endorsement:
"They say that, before the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, the Zuni Indians lived in Mexico. Some of them still claim to be the descendants of Montezuma. At the time of the conquest they fled to Arizona and settled there. They were at one time a very powerful tribe, as the ruins all over that part of the country testify. They have always been considered a very industrious people. The fact that they have, at one time, been in a state of civilization far in advance of what they are at present, is established beyond a doubt. Before the Catholic religion was introduced to them, they worshipped the sun. At present they are nearly all Catholics. A few of them have been baptized into our Church by Brothers Ammon M. Tenney and R.H. Smith, and nearly all the tribe say they are going to be baptized.
"They have a great many words in the language like the Welsh, and with the same meaning. Their tradition says that over 300 years before the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, some white men landed in Mexico and told the Indians that they had come from the regions beyond the sea to the east. They say that from these white men came the ancient kings of Mexico, from whom Montezuma descended.
"These white men were known to the Indians of Mexico by the name of Cambaraga; and are still remembered so in the traditions of Zuni Indians. In time those white people became mixed with Indians, until scarcely a relic of them remained. A few traditions of the Mexican Indians and a few Welsh words among the Zunis, Navajos and Moquis are all that can be found of that people now.
"I have the history of the ancient Britons, which speaks of Prince Madoc, who was the son of Owen Guynedd, King of Wales, having sailed from Wales in the year 1160, with three ships. He returned in the year 1163, saying he had found a beautiful country, across the western sea. He left Wales again in the year 1164, with fifteen ships and 3000 men. He was never again heard of."
Indians Await Their Prophets
President Young kept the Hopi in mind, for the following year (1859) he sent Hamblin on a second trip to the Indians, with a company that consisted of Marion J. Shelton, Thales Haskell, Taylor Crosby, Benjamin Knell, Ira Hatch and John Wm. Young. They reached the Hopi villages November 6, talked with the Indians three days and then left the work of possible conversion on the shoulders of Shelton and Haskell, who returned to the Santa Clara the next spring. The Indians were kind, but unbelieving, and "could make no move until the reappearance of the three prophets who led their fathers to that land and told them to remain on those rocks until they should come again and tell them what to do." Both ways of the journey were by the Ute ford.
Navajo Killing of Geo. A. Smith, Jr.