In 1879, Missionaries Harris and Thayne appear to have made a mistake similar to that of the Arab who allowed the camel to thrust his nose inside of the tent. They secured permission from the commanding officer of creek. The missionary efforts appear to have failed, and the Indians simply demanded everything in sight. Reports came that the locality really was on the reservation and the white population therefore drifted away, mainly into the Gila Valley. In December, 1879, only three families were left, and the following year the last were gone. In 1881 rumors drifted down the Little Colorado that Forest Dale, after all, was not on the reservation. So William Crookston and three others re-settled the place, some of them from the abandoned Brigham City. Then came the Indian troubles of 1881-82. When Fort Apache was attacked, the families consolidated at Cooley, where they built a fort. Some went north to Snowflake and Taylor. In December, 1881, President Jesse N. Smith of the Eastern Arizona Stake advised the Forest Dale settlers to satisfy the Indians for their claims on the place, and received assurance from General Carr at Fort Apache, that the locality most likely was not on the reservation and that, in case it was not, he would be pleased to have the Mormon settlers there. A new ward was established and William Ellsworth and twenty more families moved in, mainly from Brigham City. In May, 1882, the Indians came again to plant corn and were wrathful to find the whites ahead of them. An officer was sent from Fort Apache and a treaty was made by which the Indians were given thirty acres of planted land. June 1, 1882, Apaches killed Nathan B. Robinson at the Reidhead place and shot Emer Plumb at Walnut Springs, during a period of general Indian unrest. Soon thereafter, President Smith advised the settlers that they had better look for other locations, as the ground was on the reservation. In December, Lieutenant Gatewood, under orders from Captain Crawford (names afterward famous in the Geronimo campaign to the southward) came from Fort Apache and advised the settlers they would be given until the spring to vacate. The crops were disposed of at Fort Apache and the spring of 1883 found Forest Dale deserted, houses, fences, corrals and every improvement left behind. The drift of the settlers was to the Gila Valley. [Illustration: JOSEPH FISH. An Arizona Historian] [Illustration: JOSEPH H. RICHARDS OF ST. JOSEPH. One of the few original settlers who still lives on the Little Colorado] [Illustration: A GROUP OF ST. JOSEPH PIONEERS AND HISTORIAN ANDREW JENSON] [Illustration: SHUMWAY AND THE OLD MILL ON SILVER CREEK]