This was written particularly in regard to a visit made to the villages in 1864, and in connection with a theft of horses by Navajos near Kanab. It was found inexpedient to go into the Navajo country, as Chief Spaneshanks, who had been relatively friendly, had been deposed by his band and had been succeeded by a son of very different inclination.
In autumn of the same year, Anson Call, Dr. Jas. M. Whitmore, A.M. Cannon and Hamblin and son visited Las Vegas Springs and the Colorado River, stopping a while with the Cottonwood Island Indians and the Mohave, and establishing Callville.
Killing of Whitmore and McIntire
January 8, 1866, Doctor Whitmore and his herder, Robert McIntire, were killed in Arizona, four miles north of Pipe Springs by a band of Paiede Paiutes and Navajos, that drove off horses, sheep and cattle. There was pursuit from St. George by Col. D. D. McArthur and company.
A tale of the pursuit comes from Anthony W. Ivins, a member of the company, then a mere boy who went out on a mule with a quilt for a saddle. The weather was bitterly cold. The bodies were found covered with snow, which was three feet deep. Each body had many arrow and bullet wounds. The men had been attacked while riding the range, only McIntire being armed. A detachment, under Captain James Andrus, found the murderous Indians in camp and, in a short engagement, killed nine of them.
The trail to the Hopi towns must have been well known to the Mormon scout when in October, 1869, again he was detailed to investigate the sources of raids on the Mormon borders. He had a fairly strong company of forty men, including twenty Paiutes. The crossing was at the mouth of the Paria. Apparently all that was accomplished on this trip was to learn that the Indians intended to make still another raid on the southern settlements. Hamblin wanted to go back by way of the Ute trail and the Crossing of the Fathers, but was overruled by his brethren, who preferred the Paria route. When they returned, it was to learn that the Navajos already had raided and had driven off more than 1200 head of animals, and that, if the Mormon company, on returning, had taken the Ute trail, the raiders would have been met and the animals possibly recovered. The winter was a hard one for the Mormons who watched the frontier, assisted by friendly Paiutes. The trouble weighed heavily upon Hamblin's mind and, in the spring of 1870, at Kanab, he offered himself to President Young as an ambassador to the Navajo, to prevent, if possible, further shedding of blood.
Chapter Eight
Hamblin Among the Indians
Visiting the Paiutes with Powell
It was in the summer of 1870 that Hamblin met Major J.W. Powell, who had descended the Colorado the previous year. Powell's ideas coincided very well with those of Hamblin. He wanted to visit the Indians and prevent repetition of such a calamity as that in which three of his men had been killed near Mount Trumbull, southwest of Kanab. So, in September, 1870, there was a gathering at Mount Trumbull, with about fifteen Indians. What followed is presented in Powell's own language: