Here it may be noted that the Grand Canyon was circumtoured in the fall of 1920 by Governor and Mrs. Campbell, but under very different circumstances. The vehicle was an automobile. Crossing of the Colorado was at the Searchlight ferry, about forty miles downstream from old Callville. On the first day 248 miles were covered, mainly on the old Mormon road, to Littlefield, through the Muddy section, now being revived. St. George and other pioneer southern Utah settlements were passed on the way to Kanab and Fredonia. The road to the mouth of the Paria and to Lee's Ferry appears to have been found very little less rough than when traveled by the Mormon ox teams, and the river crossing was attended by experiences with quicksand and other dangers, while the pull outward on the south side was up a steep and hazardous highway.
A Visit to the Hava-Supai Indians
Hamblin had about as many trips as Sindbad the Sailor and about as many adventures. Of course, he had to take the Hopi visitors home, and on this errand he started from St. George on March 18, 1863, with a party of six white men, including Gibbons, Haskell, Hatch and McConnell. They took the western route and found a better crossing, later called Pearce's Ferry. At this point they were overtaken by Lewis Greeley, a nephew of Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune, who had been sent on to the river by Erastus Snow.
A trail was taken to the left of the former route. This trail very clearly was the main thoroughfare used by the Wallapai into Cataract Canyon, which was so known at that time. Down the trail, into the abysmal "voladero" of Father Garces, they traveled a day and part of another, leading their horses most of the way. In many places they could not have turned their animals around had they wished to do so.
Cataract Canyon, the home of the Hava-Supai, is a veritable Yosemite, with craggy walls that rise nearly 3000 feet to the mesa above. Hamblin especially noted the boiling from the bottom of the canyon of a beautiful large spring, the same which today irrigates the lands of the well-disposed Indians. These Indians gave assistance to the party and told of an attack made a short time before by Apaches from the southeast, who had been met in a narrow pass where several of their number had been slain. Assuring the Hava-Supai they would send no enemies into their secret valley, Hamblin led his party to the eastward, up the Tope-Kobe trail to the plateau. This was reached April 7. Though along the Moqui trail at no point were they very far from the Grand Canyon, that gorge was not noted in Hamblin's narrative, for the brethren were not sight-seeing. A few days later they were in the Hopi towns, to which the three much-traveled Indians preceded them, in eagerness to see their people again.
Only two days were spent with the Indians and on April 15, taking Haskell, Hatch and McConnell, the party struck toward the southwest, to find the Beale road. On the 20th, Greeley discovered a pond of clear cold water several acres in extent in the crater of a volcanic peak. The San Francisco peaks were passed, left to the southward, and the Beale road was struck six miles west of LeRoux Springs, the later site of Fort Moroni, seven miles northwest of the present Flagstaff.
The Beale road was followed until the 28th. Thence, the men suffered thirst, for 56 hours being without water. Ten of their eighteen horses were stolen. This, it was explained, was due to the failure of the Hava-Supai to return Wallapai horses which the men had left in Cataract Canyon on the outward journey. St. George was reached May 13, 1863. The main result had been the exploration of a practicable, though difficult, route for wagons from St. George to the Little Colorado and to the Hopi towns.
Experiences with the Redskins
Ammon M. Tenney in Phoenix lately told the Author that the Navajo were the only Indians who ever really fought the Mormons and the only tribe against which the Mormons were compelled to depart from their rule against the shedding of blood. It is not intended in this work to go into any history of the many encounters between the Utah Mormons and the Arizona Navajo, but there should be inclusion of a story told by Tenney of an experience in 1865 at a point eighteen miles west of Pipe Springs and six miles southwest of Canaan, Utah. There were three Americans from Toquerville, the elder Tenney, the narrator, and Enoch Dodge, the last known as one of the bravest of southern Utah pioneers. The three were surrounded by sixteen Navajos, and, with their backs to the wall, fought for an hour or more, finally abandoning their thirteen horses and running for better shelter. Dodge was shot through the knee cap, a wound that incapacitated him from the fight thereafter. The elder Tenney fell and broke his shoulder blade and was stunned, though he was not shot. This left the fight upon the younger Tenney, who managed to climb a twelve-foot rocky escarpment. He reached down with his rifle and dragged up his father and Dodge. The three opportunely found a little cave in which they secreted themselves until reasonably rested, hearing the Indians searching for them on the plateau above. Then, in the darkness, they made their way fifteen miles into Duncan's Retreat on the Virgin River in Utah. "There is one thing I will say for the Navajo," Tenney declared with fervor. "He is a sure-enough fighting man. The sixteen of them stood shoulder to shoulder, not taking cover, as almost any other southwestern Indian would have done."
Apparently, on each of the visits that had been made by Hamblin to the Hopi, he had made suggestion that the tribes leave their barren land and move to the northward, across the Colorado, where good lands might be allotted them, on which they might live in peace and plenty, where they might build cities and villages the same as other people, but, according to Hamblin's journal, "They again told us that they could not leave their present location until the three prophets should appear again."