On February 19, 1866, two days after Erastus Snow was elected Brigadier General, Peter Shurtz, who had built a station at Paria and had kept about twenty Indians around him all winter, reported that he had lost his cattle and wished to move into the settlements. He also reported Navajos camped on Paria River about eight miles below his ranch where the Ute trail reached the stream. Further information indicated that the Navajos were concentrated east of the Colorado at Cottonwood, intending to raid Kane County in force and that Captain James Andrus with thirty men had gone to Paria to get Peter Shurtz and his family and to reconnoiter. No report of this expedition is available, but a letter written by L. W. Roundy from Kanab on March 9, 1866, tells that Andrus had left Paria fourteen days earlier headed for an Indian camp twelve miles south.[71] At Kanab, three Indians had attempted to kill Oren Clark in the bottoms near the fort and had started to drive off the livestock. Four men from the fort rushed in pursuit and after dark recovered about thirty head of cattle, but the Indians escaped with about an equal number. The Indian menace was so serious by this time that Erastus Snow ordered all stock in the region south of St. George and the Virgin River as far east as Kanab removed to the north and west of the lines of settlements so that it would be easier to ward off Navajo attacks. This was a difficult task because the grazing was poor around the settlements and the mountains to the northwest were already filled with livestock. The threat from the Utes in upper Sevier Valley also became acute. Menacing behavior of the Indians in this area and in the Kanab region led to an order from Utah headquarters to General Erastus Snow (March 15) to send a company of men from Beaver and Iron counties over to the Sevier River to build and man an outpost between Circleville and Panguitch. A company of 76 men led by Captain Silas S. Smith served here from March 21 to November 30, 1866. They established Fort Sanford about ten miles north of Panguitch and assisted settlers at Circleville to move to safety. At Panguitch, they helped the settlers transform the town into a fort. In the meantime, gathering the livestock from the exposed range was proceeding slowly. A party sent out from Rockville in April to round up the stock in the vicinity of Maxwell’s Ranch, found the bodies of two men, a woman, and an Indian, killed a few days before. When the bodies were brought in to Grafton, it was ascertained that they were young Robert Berry, his wife, Isabel, and his brother, Joe, who were coming home to Berryville in Long Valley via the Dixie settlements and the Arizona Strip (a roundabout way, but the only wagon route at the time). They had left the Maxwell Ranch on Short Creek on April 2, 1866 when some Indians (presumably Paiutes), ambushed them.