Mormon Settlement in Arizona: A Record of Peaceful Conquest of the DesertMcClintock, James H.
History
Mormon Settlement in Arizona: A Record of Peaceful Conquest of the Desert
McClintock, James H.
Arizona -- History -- To 1950; Latter Day Saints -- Arizona -- History
In New England the Mormons were considered a blood-thirsty people, eager
to slay any Gentile who might happen along. It is not to be intimated
that the Bostonians were mollycoddles. They appear to have been above
even the average of the time, manly and stalwart enough, but the truth
is, as told by Mr. Mann, the expedition did not care either to mingle
with the Mormons or to incur danger of probable slaughter. Therefore, the
parties hurried along as fast as possible. The same view is indicated in
a recent interview with David E. Adams, of one of the Mormon settlements.
He told the Historian that he found the Bostonians suspicious and
fearful. At that time the Utah people still were living in their wagons.
They were breaking ground and were starting upon the construction of dams
in the river. The second Boston party passed June 23.
At Sunset Crossing Mann and three of his companions entered upon an
adventure assuredly novel in arid Arizona. They constructed a raft of
drift cottonwood and thought to lighten the journey by floating down the
river. It was found that the stream soon bent toward the northward,
away from the wagon trail. Sometimes there were shoals that the raft had
to be pushed over and again there were deep whirlpools, around which the
raft went merrily a dozen times before the river channel again could be
entered. The channel walls grew higher and higher until, finally, the
navigators pulled the raft ashore and resumed their journey on foot,
finding their wagon in camp at the Canyon Diablo crossing. There,
apparently considering themselves safe from massacre, was an encampment
of a week or more.
At the Naming of Flagstaff
Mann, his bunkie, George E. Loring (later express agent at Phoenix), a
Rhode Islander named Tillinghast and three others formed an advance party
westward. This party made camp at a small spring just south of San
Francisco Mountains, where Flagstaff is now. Mann remembers the place
as Volunteer Springs in Harrigan Valley. While waiting for the main party
to come up, the advance guard hunted and explored. Mann remembers
traveling up a little valley to the north and northwest to the big LeRoux
Springs, below which he found the remains of a burnt cabin and of a
stockade corral, possibly occupied in the past as a station on the
transcontinental mail route.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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