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.