The Romance of the Colorado River Part 6

* Brigham Young and his followers crossed to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847.

Meanwhile a gang of freebooters, who left Texas in 1849, found their way to this point and acquired or established a ferry two or three miles below the old mission site. Their settlement was called Fort Defiance in contempt for the Yumas. They were led by one Doctor Craig. They robbed the Yumas of their wives and dominated the region as they pleased.

Captain Hobbs,* a mountaineer who was at Yuma in 1851, says:

"The attack which wiped out this miserable band was planned by two young Mexicans, who had attempted to cross the ferry with their wives, and had them taken from them and detained by the Texans. The Mexicans went down the river and the desperadoes supposed they had gone their way and left their wives in their hands. But they only went far enough to find the chief of the tribe who had suffered so horribly at the hands of this gang, and arrange for an attack on their common enemy."

* Wild Life in the Far West, by Captain James Hobbs.

By this plan twenty-three out of the twenty-five whites, including the master scoundrel himself. Dr. Craig, were destroyed with little loss to the attacking party. Hobbs calls this the best thing the Yumas ever did.

It took place only a month before Hobbs reached the ferry, and only two or three days before one of the periodical returns of United States troops, this time a company of dragoons under Captain Hooper, probably belonging to Heintzelman's command. To him the two escaped desperadoes came with a complaint against the Yumas, but the captain was posted and he put the men in irons to be transported to California for trial. The Yumas now established a ferry by using an old army-waggon box which they made water-tight, as the Craig Ferry had suffered the fate of its owners. Hobbs employed the Yumas to take his party over, the horses swimming, and the arrangement seems to have worked very well.

According to Hobbs, the first steamboat came up the river while he was there, frightening the Yumas so that they ran for their lives, exclaiming the devil was coming, blowing fire and smoke out of his nose, and kicking back with his feet in the water. It was the stern-wheel steamboat Yuma, and this is the only mention of it I can find. It had supplies for the troops, but what became of it afterward I do not know.

This was evidently before the coming of the Uncle Sam, usually credited with being the first steamboat on the Colorado, which did not arrive till a year after the reconnaissance of the river mouth by Lieutenant Derby of the Topographical Engineers, for the War Department, seeking a route for the water transportation of supplies to Fort Yuma, now ordered to be a permanent military establishment. He came up the river a considerable distance, in the topsail schooner Invincible and made a further advance in his small boats. The only guide he had to the navigation of the river was Hardy's book, referred to in a previous chapter, which a.s.sisted him a good deal. He arrived at the mouth December 23, 1850. "The land," he says, "was plainly discernible on both coasts of the gulf, on the California side bold and mountainous, but on the Mexican low and sandy." There could, therefore, never, have been any doubt in the minds of any of those who had previously reached this point as to the character of Lower California. The Invincible sailed daily up the river with the flood tide, anchoring during the ebb, and they got on very well till the night of January 1, 1851, when the vessel grounded at the ebb,

"swung round on her heel, and, thumping violently, was carried by the tide (dragging her anchor) some two or three miles, grounding finally upon the shoal of Gull Island. At flood tide sail was made on her as soon as she floated, and we succeeded in getting her back into the channel. As the vessel grounded at every ebb tide and on the return of the water was violently swung around, thumping on her bottom and swinging on her anchor, I began to see that it would be neither prudent, or in fact possible, to ascend the river much higher, and we accordingly commenced making preparations for a boating expedition."*

* Reconnaissance of the Gulf of California and the Colorado River made in 1850-51, by Lieut. G. H. Derby. Ex. Doc, 81, 32nd Congress, 1st Session, Senate.

The ebb tide ran at the rate of five and a half miles an hour, and the next day they saw, as it was running out, the "bore," or tidal wave, booming in to meet and overwhelm it.

"A bank of water some four feet in height, extending clear across the river, was seen approaching us with equal velocity; this huge comber wave came steadily onward, occasionally breaking as it rushed over shoals of Gull and Pelican islands; pa.s.sing the vessel, which it swung around on its course, it continued up the river. The phenomenon was of daily occurrence until about the time of neap tides."

At Howard's Point the vessel was anch.o.r.ed while the party continued the exploration in the small boat. The Cocopas whom they met were entirely friendly. These people wore no clothing beyond the breechcloth, and were plastered from head to foot with mud. The width of the river varied from two hundred yards to half a mile. At one place they pa.s.sed a Cocopa village, near which lay an old scow made from waggon-boxes which had floated down from the ferry at Yuma. On the 13th they met Major Heintzelman coming down-stream, and as he had taken field notes Derby considered it unnecessary for him to proceed, and they went back in company to the ship, arriving there the same afternoon. The vessel was then worked three miles farther up, where her cargo was discharged to be taken by teams to the fort. Heintzelman was accompanied by a Dr. Ogden and a Mr. Henchelwood, "proprietors of the ferry." The Craig gang had been destroyed earlier this year, and these men had probably established a new ferry. While lying at this berth, the vessel was roughly tumbled about by the tidal wave, till she broke from her anchor and drifted rapidly up-stream. This was the highest and most powerful spring tide, and the situation was full of peril. The captain, Wilc.o.x, calmly took the helm himself, steered toward the bank and ordered his men to leap to the ground from the jib-boom, carrying the kedge anchor. By this means the mad rush of the vessel was stopped, and by the use of logs and cables she was kept a safe distance from the bank. When the stores were finally landed they turned gratefully but apprehensively toward the sea, which they happily reached again without serious mishap.

A little later this same year (1851) George A. Johnson came to the mouth of the river on the schooner Sierra Nevada with further supplies for the fort, including lumber for the construction of flatboats with which to go up to the post. Johnson afterwards ran steamers on the river for a number of years, but he was not the first to attempt steam-navigation here, that honour resting with Turnbull who built the Uncle Sam.

Many of the emigrants, dreaming of ease and prosperity as they trudged their long course across the desolation of the South-west, never lived to touch the golden sands of wonderful California, but expired by the way, often at the hands of the Apache or of some other cutthroat tribe.

One of the saddest cases was that of Royse Oatman, who, en route with his large family, was ma.s.sacred (1851) on the spot now known as Oatman's Flat, not far below the great bend of the Gila. His son, left for dead, revived and escaped. Two daughters were carried off and afterwards sold to the Mohaves, among whom one died and the other was restored by purchase to freedom (1856) by Henry Grinnell, and was sent to her brother's home in Los Angeles.* Another characteristic example is related by Hobbs, lit the desert beyond Yuma,

"we came upon the remains of an emigrant train, which a month previous had attempted to cross this desert in going from the United States to California. While pa.s.sing over the desert they had been met by a sand-storm and lost the road by the sand blowing over it, and had wandered off into the hills. They had finally got back into the road; but by that time they were worn out, and they perished of fatigue and thirst."

* For the full story see Capture of the Oatman Girls, by R. B.

Stratton.

They had pa.s.sed the watering-place, a small pool, and as they had already been two or three days without water, the mistake was fatal.

They had lightened their loads by casting off goods, but it was useless.

A squad of soldiers was sent out from Fort Yuma to bury the bodies, of which eight were women and children and nine were men. The desert has no compa.s.sion on the human intruder, and he who ventures there must count only on his own resources.

The crossing of Green River was also difficult, except at low water, on account of the depth and force of the current. Sometimes the emigrants utilised a waggon-box as a boat, and the Mormons, who pa.s.sed in 1847, established a ferry. Later others operated ferries, and the valley vied with Yuma in the matter of human activity. Fort Bridger was a place for rest and repairs, for there was a primitive blacksmith forge and carpenter shop. Here lived Bridger with his dark-skinned wife, chosen from a native tribe, and Vasquez, also a famous hunter. The fort was simply a few log cabins arranged in a hollow square protected by palisades, through which was a gateway closed by timber doors. Simple though it was, its value to the emigrant so far away from any settlement can hardly be appreciated by any who have never journeyed through such a wilderness as still existed beyond the Missouri. Could we pause here and observe the caravans bound toward the sunset, we could hardly find anywhere a more interesting study. There were the Californian emigrant, and the Mormon with his wives and their push-carts, there were the trapper and the trader, and there were the bands of natives sometimes friendly, sometimes hovering about a caravan like a pack of hungry wolves. There is now barely an echo of this hard period, and that echo smothered by the rush of the express train as it dashes in an hour or two so heedlessly across the stretches that occupied the forgotten emigrant days or weeks. In the search for a route for the railway much exploration was accomplished, and these expeditions, together with those in connection with the Mexican boundary survey, added greatly to the acc.u.mulating knowledge of the desolation enveloping the Colorado and its branches.

The treaty of 1848 made the Gila the southern boundary, but the Gadsden Purchase placed it farther south, as now marked. A number of expeditions concerned in this and railway surveys traversed Arizona in the early fifties under Whipple, Sitgreaves, Emory, and others, and the country began to be scientifically known outside of the canyons and their surroundings. John R. Bartlett was appointed Boundary Commissioner, and he spent considerable time along the Gila and southwards and on the lower Colorado in 1852 to 1854.* A few weeks before he arrived at Fort Yuma eight of the soldiers there had a battle with the Yumas and the eight were all killed. After this Heintzelman fought them with so much vigour that they finally came in, begging for peace. Bartlett's first view of the Colorado was in the early morning at a point twelve miles below the fort. "It was much swollen, and rushed by with great velocity, washing away the banks and carrying with it numberless snags and trees."

Never is the Colorado tranquil. As they followed up the stream they suddenly found the road washed away, and were obliged to cut a new path through the underbrush. This proved a long task, so with the pack-mules he pushed on, leaving the waggons to come later. Antoine Leroux was the guide. When they reached the place he had selected for a camp and had unpacked the mules, it was found that the water could not be approached because of the abruptness of the washed-out bank, so they were compelled to saddle again and go on toward the fort, though they had been riding since one o'clock in the morning.

* Personal Narrative of Exploration, by John Russell Bartlett.

They were finally stopped altogether by a bayou and had to wait for a boat from the fort with which to cross it. When they came finally to the crossing of the river itself to the Arizona side they had a slow and difficult time of it. Sometimes the scow they used failed to reach the landing-place on the other side and the strong current would then sweep it two or three miles down the river before the men could get it to the sh.o.r.e. The next operation would be to tow it back to some low place, where the animals on it could be put ash.o.r.e. This is a sample of the difficulties always encountered in crossing when the river was at flood.

From Yuma looking northward the river can be traced for about fifteen miles before it is lost in the mountains. See cut on page 26. Bartlett desired to explore scientifically down to the mouth, but the government failed to grant him the privilege. He and Major Emory were not on good terms and there was a great deal of friction about all the boundary work, arising chiefly from the appointment of a civilian commissioner.

Bartlett mentions Leroux's "late journey down the Colorado," on which occasion he met with some Cosninos, but just where he started from is not stated, though it was certainly no higher up than the mouth of the Grand Wash.

In 1852 the steamer Uncle Sam was brought out on a schooner from San Francisco and put together at the mouth of the river, but after a few months she most strangely went to the bottom, while her owner, Turnbull, was on the way from San Francisco with new machinery for her. Turnbull came in the schooner General Patterson, which was bearing stores for the fort. When the Patterson arrived at the mouth of the Colorado, she was able to sail easily up the river for thirty-three miles because Turnbull was met by some of his men who had been left here to take soundings, and for the first time a vessel was sailing with some knowledge of the channel. The river, however, was unusually high, which was an advantage.

The wide flatlands on both sides were inundated to a distance of fifteen miles. The current ran at a seven- or eight-mile rate and was loaded with floating snags and tree-trunks to repel the invader. In proceeding in a small boat to the fort, Turnbull, in a distance of 120 miles, found but two dry spots on the bank where he could camp.

A new steamer was soon afloat on this fickle and impetuous tide, the General Jesup, owned by Captain Johnson, who had now had three or four years' experience in this navigation had been awarded the contract for transporting the supplies from the mouth, to the fort. His new boat, however, exploded seven months later, and it seemed as if the Fates had joined with the treacherous river to prevent successful steam navigation here. But Johnson would not give up. Before twelve months had pa.s.sed he was stemming the turbulent flood with another steamer, the Colorado, a stern-wheeler, 120 feet long. As if propitiated by the compliment of having its name bestowed on this craft, the river treated it fairly well, and it seems to have survived to a good old age. The Jesup was soon repaired.

The northern part of Arizona was crossed by Captain Sitgreaves, in 1851, about on the trail of Garces, reaching the Colorado in the Mohave Valley, and following the river down to Fort Yuma. In 1854, another government expedition under Lieutenant Whipple, with Lieutenant Ives as chief a.s.sistant, explored along the 35th parallel for a railway route, and when they arrived on the Colorado at the mouth of Bill Williams Fork, they followed up the river, through the beautiful Mohave Valley to a point some eight miles above the present railway (A. & P.) bridge, where they crossed. Their experience was interesting. Lieutenant Ives directed the operations, using for a ferry-boat a singular combination: an old rubber pontoon, with the box from a spring waggon attached to the top of it for a receptacle for the goods. This was arranged at night.

In the morning the pontoon was found in a state of collapse and the waggon-box filled with water, but the concern was resuscitated by the skill of Ives, and soon all was ready for crossing. Swimmers carried a long rope to an island midway, while another was retained on the sh.o.r.e.

By means of these the boat was pulled back and forth. The first trip was entirely successful, but on the second attempt the affair was, by the weight of the ropes, upset in midstream.

"During the excitement attending this misfortune, we were advised by an Indian messenger that another great chief was about to pay us a visit.

Turning around, we beheld quite an interesting spectacle. Approaching was the dignitary referred to, lance in hand, and apparelled in official robes. The latter consisted of a blanket thrown gracefully around him, and a magnificent head-dress of black plumage covering his head and shoulders, and hanging down his back in a streamer, nearly to the ground. His pace was slow, his eyes cast downward, and his whole demeanour expressive of formal solemnity. Upon his right hand was the interpreter, upon his left a boy acting as page, and following was a long procession of his warriors, attended by a crowd of men, women, and children."

Compliments and presents were exchanged and all was well. Meanwhile the men who had been capsized with the boat were struggling to disentangle themselves from the waggon-box, and when freed they gained support on the rope till the entire combination was pulled back to the sh.o.r.e. The whole party were finally on the island and then used the same tactics in crossing the other deeper channel. Here they upset the ferry three times and two persons came near being drowned. The Mohaves, who are good swimmers, rendered prompt and efficient a.s.sistance in saving the floating wreckage. They were also supplied with their kind of raft, made of bundles of rushes tied together with willow twigs (see cut on page 30), which they handled dexterously. Such rafts were and are in use all the way from here to the gulf. By night the expedition was safe on the western bank, the mules having swum over, and the flock of sheep, being ferried in the boat. Several sheep were drowned, and these, with two live ones and a couple of blankets, were conferred on those Mohaves who had helped in the crossing. The landing-place was a field of young wheat, which was much damaged. The lieutenant willingly paid the moderate charge the owner made for this, and there was no trouble; all the intercourse was perfectly amicable. But had he been imbued with the trapper spirit he would probably have answered the request for payment with a fatal bullet, and then would have followed a stampede of the stock, ambush, and all the rest which embroiders the history of the trappers with such violently romantic colour.

Two or three years after the Whipple expedition, a waggon-road was surveyed (1837) along the 35th parallel by E. F. Beale. He returned to the Colorado January 23, 1858, about twelve miles north of Whipple's Crossing. He had camped, several miles back from the Colorado, and starting early met his clerk F. E. Kerlin returning from the river whither he had been sent to prepare the boat. The clerk had a "joyful surprise" in news that the steamboat General Jesup, Captain George A.

Johnson, was at the crossing and waiting to convey the party across.

Soon after the arrival of Beale's party the steamboat came up to the bank, and taking on the men, baggage, and camels landed them on the opposite or eastern side.* The mules were compelled to swim over. Then the General Jesup continued down stream "towards Fort Yuma, 350 miles below." Johnson had with him Lieut. James White, 3d U. S. Artillery, fifteen soldiers and "as many rugged mountain men" as escort. He had succeeded in navigating with the General Jesup as far up the river as El Dorado Canyon, about sixty-eight miles below the mouth of the Virgin--that is, he had gone clear through Black Canyon and thus holds the record for the first ascent of the Colorado with a steamboat to the limit of steamboat navigation. This feat he executed with the avowed purpose of "getting ahead" of Lieutenant Ives who had arrived December 1, 1857, at Robinson's Landing at the mouth of the river, bringing an iron steamboat (as described in the next chapter) under orders from the War Department to explore the Colorado as far as possible.

* Beale used camels on this expedition and considered them a success.

Johnson had been aware of his presence and intentions having been sent down from Fort Yuma with two steamboats to transport certain supplies from the vessel which brought Lieutenant Ives. He had reached the schooner December 17th. On January 2, 1858, he left Fort Yuma on his northward run knowing that Ives could not follow him until the steamboat brought in sections could be completed.

Ives had entirely ignored Johnson, as well as Johnson's skill in navigating this river, and also his powerful steamboats. The appropriation under which Ives was working was one which had originally been made for Johnson, after a visit of his to Washington, but from several causes it had been switched over to the War Department. Captain Johnson, therefore, was determined to rob Ives of the glory of being the first to take a steamboat to the head of navigation, and he did it with a steamboat much larger than that of Ives which failed to pa.s.s Black Canyon. The General Jesup, named after the quarter-master general of the Army, was 108 feet long, 28 feet beam, and drew 2 feet, 6 inches of water. She had exploded in August, 1854, but had been thoroughly repaired. On this down trip from the head of steamboat navigation she met with another accident, running on "a large rolling stone and sinking just above Chimney Peak" some eighteen miles from Yuma. She was raised by the Colorado and towed down to the Fort.*

* See Wagon Road from Fort Defiance to the Colorado River--Edward F.

Beale, 35th Congress, 2d Session, House of Representatives, Doc.u.ment, 124, Washington, 1858. Also Handbook to Arizona, pp. 247-48, R. J.

Hinton, 1878. The information as to Johnson's application for an appropriation to explore the Colorado was given me by Mr. Robert Brewster Stanton. Johnson also related the story of his "getting ahead"

of Ives, to Mr. Stanton, who now has the written statement as well. I communicated with Johnson in 1904, requesting some data, but he declined to give it on the ground that he intended himself to publish the story of his exploits. Since then unfortunately he has died.

CHAPTER VII

Lieutenant Ives Explores to Fortification Rock--By Trail to Diamond Creek, Havasupai Canyon, and the Moki Towns--Macomb Fails in an Attempt to Reach the Mouth of Grand River--James White's Masterful Fabrication.

Steam navigation on the Colorado was now successfully established, and when Lieutenant Ives was planning the exploration of the river there were already upon it two powerful steamers exactly adapted, through experience of previous disasters, to the peculiar dangers of these waters, while Johnson, the chief owner and pilot, had become an expert in handling a steamboat amid the unusual conditions. He had succeeded in making a truce with the dragon. And he had secured the friendship of the tribes of Amerinds living along the banks; his men and his property were safe anywhere; his steamers often carried jolly bands of Cocopas or of Yumas from place to place. In arranging a government expedition to explore to the farthest point practicable for steamboats, the sensible course would have been to advise with Johnson and to charter his staunch steamer Colorado, together with himself, thus gaining at the very outset an immense double advantage: a boat perfectly modelled for the demands to be made upon it, and a guide entirely familiar with the tricks of the perfidious waters. Especially important would this have been because Lieutenant Ives, who was instructed to direct this work, was ordered to accomplish it at the lowest and worst stage of the stream. Ives had been Whipple's chief a.s.sistant in 1853-54, and therefore well understood the situation. But he states that the company was "unable to spare a boat except for a compensation beyond the limits of the appropriation." As a boat was spared, however, for the less important matter of going far up the river to ferry Beale across, it would appear that either the negotiations were not conducted in a proper spirit, or that Ives rather preferred a boat of his own. The cost of building in Philadelphia the boat he used, and sending her in sections to San Francisco, and thence to the Colorado, must have been very great. The steamer was ordered June 1, 1857, and had to be at the mouth of the Colorado by December 1st of the same year. After a trial on the Delaware, a mill-pond compared with the Colorado, she was hastily shipped, with all her defects, by way of Panama, there being no time to make any changes. The chief trouble discovered was radical, being a structural weakness of the hull. To, in a measure, offset this, timbers and bolts were obtained in San Francisco, the timbers to be attached to the OUTSIDE of the hull on putting the sections together, there being no room within. It requires little understanding of naval architecture to perceive that a great handicap was thus imposed on the little vessel. Yet Lieutenant Ives says, on the trial trip she was "found satisfactory"! By November 1st, the party was on board the schooner Monterey, bound for the head of the Gulf. Though the vessel was loaded down with supplies for Fort Yuma, room was made for the Ives expedition and they arrived, pa.s.sing through a heavy gale in the gulf, at Robinson's Landing on November 30th. The schooner was anch.o.r.ed over a shoal, and was soon aground, as the fierce tide ran out, a circ.u.mstance that enabled her to stay there and stem the torrent. A deep booming sound was presently heard, growing louder and nearer, and

"in half an hour a great wave several feet in height, could be distinctly seen flashing and sparkling in the moonlight, extending from one bank to the other and advancing swiftly upon us. While it was only a few hundred yards distant, the ebb tide continued to flow by at the rate of three miles an hour. A point of land and an exposed bar close under our lee broke the wave into several long swells, and as these met the ebb the broad sheet around us boiled up and foamed like the surface of a cauldron, and then, with scarcely a moment of slack water, the whole went whirling by in the opposite direction. In a few moments the low rollers had pa.s.sed the islands and united again in a single bank of water, which swept up the narrowing channel with the thunder of a cataract."