There was good reason for the delayed settlement of Tonto Basin, for it was a region traversed continually by a number of Indian tribes. It was a sort of No Man's Land, in which wandered the Mohave-Apache and the Tonto, the Cibicu and White Mountain Apaches, not always at peace among themselves. Several times the Pleasant and Cherry Creek Valleys were highways for Indian raids of large dimensions. The Pleasant Valley war, between the Tewksbury and Graham factions cost thirty lives. No Mormon participated.
Most of the land holdings necessarily were small. The water supply is regular in only a few places. Hence it is natural that most of the Mormons who settled, moved on, to better agricultural conditions found farther southward. Abandonment of all Tonto Basin settlements was authorized at a meeting of President Woodruff with the heads of the Arizona Stakes, held at Albuquerque August 14, 1890.
Chapter Sixteen
Little Colorado Settlements
Genesis of St. Johns
One of the most remarkable of Arizona settlements is St. Johns, 58 miles southeast of Holbrook, its railroad station. Though its development has been almost entirely Mormon and though it is headquarters for the St. Johns Stake of the Church, its foundation dates back of the Mormon occupation of the valley of the Little Colorado.
Very early in the seventies, New Mexican cattle and sheep men spread their ranges over the mountains into the Little Colorado Valley and there were occasional camps of the Spanish-speaking people. In 1872 a mail carrier, John Walker, had built a cabin on the river, five miles below the site of St. Johns. As early as 1864 the locality had been visited by Solomon Barth, a Jewish trader, who dealt with the Indians as far eastward as Zuni and who, on burros, packed salt from the Zuni salt lake to the mining camps of the Prescott section. Barth, oddly enough, for a while had been connected with the Mormons, at the age of 13, a new arrival from Posen, East Prussia, joining his uncle in a push-cart caravan to Salt Lake. Later he was in San Bernardino, there remaining after the 1857 exodus, to go to La Paz, Arizona, in 1862. In 1864 he carried mail on the route from Albuquerque to Prescott, as contractor. In November, 1868, he was captured by Apaches, but was liberated, with several Mexican associates, all almost naked, reaching the Zuni villages, on foot, four days later. For food they shared the carcass of a small dog. In 1870 he was post trader at Fort Apache, then known as Camp Ord, in the year of its establishment. In 1873, a game of cards at El Badito (Little Crossing), a settlement on the Little Colorado, on the St. Johns site, determined his future terrestrial place of residence. From his adversaries, New Mexicans, he won several thousand head of sheep and several thousand dollars. Then he left the life of the road and settled down.
A.F. Banta, a pioneer of Arizona pioneers, then known by his army name of Charlie Franklin, tells that he was at Badito (Vadito) in 1876, the place then on a mail route southward to Fort Apache and the military posts on the Gila. In the same connection, James D. Houck, in 1874, contracted to carry mail across the Little Colorado Valley, between Fort Wingate and Prescott. Another mail route was from Wingate to St. Johns and Apache.
Sol Barth and his brothers, Morris and Nathan, settled at St. Johns in the fall of 1873, with a number of New Mexican laborers. At once was commenced construction of a dam across the Little Colorado and of ditches and there was farming of a few hundred acres adjoining the site of the present town. In all, Barth laid claim to 1200 acres of land, though it proved later he had only a squatter title. With him originated the name of St. Johns, at first San Juan, given in compliment to the first female resident, Senora Maria San Juan Baca de Padilla. With this conspicuous exception, all saintly names in Arizona were bestowed by either Catholic missionaries or by Mormons.
Ammon M. Tenney, a scout of Mormondom second only to Jacob Hamblin, in 1877 at Kanab received from President Brigham Young instructions to go into Arizona and select places for colonization. He visited many points in western New Mexico and eastern Arizona, but his recommendation was confined to St. Johns, Concho, sixteen miles west of St. Johns, The Meadows, eight miles northwest, and Woodruff.