Pipe Spring Cultures at a Crossroads An Administrative History of Pipe Spring National Monument

Location and Environment

Pipe Spring National Monument is located on a 40-acre tract of land in Mohave County, in the northernmost part of central Arizona. The monument is eight miles south of Utah's southern boundary, 60 miles southeast of St. George, Utah, 20 miles southwest of Kanab, and 15 miles west of Fredonia, Arizona, on State Highway 389. The entire stretch of land between Utah's southern boundary and the Grand Canyon is known as the "Arizona Strip." This region has very strong historical and cultural ties with Utah among the immigrant "Mormons," a popular term for those with religious and/or cultural ties to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [2] The Kaibab Paiute consider the larger area encompassing the southern half of Utah, northern Arizona, and portions of Nevada as traditional areas of prehistoric and historic use. Pipe Spring National Monument lies within the boundaries of the Kaibab Indian Reservation, established before the monument was created. [3]

Primary historic resources at the monument include three sandstone buildings (the Pipe Spring fort, east cabin, and west cabin), the historic-period sites of the Whitmore-McInytre dugout and a lime kiln, and other structures, including stone walls, the quarry trail, and the fort ponds. Reconstructed "historic" features include a vegetable garden, orchard, vineyard, telegraph line, and corrals. For the most part, modern developments are located at the southernmost part of the monument and include a residential area, maintenance area, and access road. This area is fairly well screened by plantings. There are three springs at the monument: the main spring (Pipe Spring), emerging from beneath the fort itself; tunnel spring (located just southwest of the fort); and cabin spring (a seep spring near the west cabin, once called the "calf pasture spring"). The springs are fed by the Navajo Sandstone aquifer to the north and west, via the Sevier Fault. Because there is more than one spring at the site, for many years it was referred to as "Pipe Springs," although the monument's official name was never plural.

The monument occupies the Moccasin Terrace of the Markagunt Plateau at the southern sloping base of the Vermilion Cliffs. From this site, a dry plain slopes southward for 40-50 miles before it descends dramatically into the Grand Canyon. The elevation of the monument is 5,000 feet, the climate is fairly temperate, and the plant and animal species are typically semi-desert. North of the monument is pinyon-juniper woodland. Intermingled with and at the edge of this woodland community is a sagebrush grassland with sagebrush dominant on the more level areas of ground and pinyon-juniper occurring on the shallow rocky soils and broken country of adjacent higher elevations. Other on-site vegetation includes rabbitbrush, prickly pear cactus, and sagebrush. Culturally introduced plant materials include a variety of shade trees (ash, cottonwood, poplar, elm, locust, ailanthus), fruit trees, a grape arbor, and a vegetable garden. Animal species include small rodents, reptiles, birds, coyotes, badgers, and porcupines. [4] High temperatures range in the summer from 90 to 115 degrees; in the winter, normal low temperatures range from 0 to 40 degrees.

1. Pipe Spring National Monument vicinity map; 1959, modified (Pipe Spring National Monument).

Utah and the Arizona Strip: Ethnographic and Historical Background

Native American Occupation, pre-1776

"Pipe Spring" (as it was later named by Latter-day Saints), along with other springs in the immediate area, was used by indigenous peoples long before European or Euroamerican explorers and colonists discovered it. Prehistoric cultural resources appear in all portions of the monument and consist of ceramic and lithic scatters, charcoal deposits, and structural remains akin to what archeologists classify as the Virgin/Kayenta Anasazi (ca. A.D. 1100-1150). [5] These materials appear to be related to prehistoric structures in the area, including the large unexcavated pueblo of 22-40 rooms located immediately south of the monument, all of which are within the boundaries of the Kaibab Indian Reservation. Prehistoric petroglyphs are also found in and adjacent to the monument.

The arid region of southwestern Utah, southern Nevada, and northern Arizona was territory traditionally inhabited by the Southern Paiute by A.D. 1150. [6] Prior to the arrival of Europeans to North America, small bands of semisedentary people gathered the natural plants and hunted the fauna of this ecologically diverse region. Pine nuts were especially valued as a dietary staple. The Southern Paiute practiced small-scale horticulture, planting and irrigating crops of corn, beans, and squash near permanent water sources. Their lives depended on a wide range of seasonal resources in different ecozones. Considerable distances between these food sources demanded great mobility. Water was then, as now, a key resource available at only a few places, and these places governed band movement and territories. [7]

The Southern Paiute had contact and relations with other native peoples: the Hopi to the east, Ute to the north, Goshute to the northwest, Shoshone to the west, Mohave to the southeast, and Hualapai and Havasupai to the south, across the Colorado River. Today, most Southern Paiute believe they were the people, or were related to the people, that archaeologists refer to as the Virgin River Anasazi. (The Kaibab Paiute refer to these ancient people as the iinung wung.) Archaeologists, however, are not in agreement on this issue. Some believe the Southern Paiute came out of the Great Basin when the Virgin River Anazasi abandoned the area; others propose they were post-agricultural Anasazi using hunting and gathering strategies in response to recurring environmental crises. Existing evidence is insufficient to determine if the Southern Paiute pushed the Anasazi out of the area ca. A.D. 1100-1150 or joined with them to become a common people. [8]

The Kaibab Paiute are one of a number of distinct Southern Paiute bands that have inhabited the Arizona Strip. They believe the area to be their ancestral home, their mythology holding that the Kaibab Plateau was their place of origin. According to oral history accounts collected in 1932 by anthropologist Isabel T. Kelly, the southern boundary of Kaibab Paiute traditional territory extended from the junction of the Paria and Colorado rivers downstream until just beyond Kanab Creek Canyon. The western boundary extended northward crossing the Virgin River just east of Toquerville and ended at the Kolob Plateau. The northern boundary proceeded from that point to the Paria River, which formed the eastern boundary. A conservative estimate of their traditional territory is 4,824 square miles. [9] Events of the 18th and 19th centuries would irrevocably impact the extent of their territory and way of life, and pose a serious threat to their survival. The history of the Southern Paiute and in particular, the Kaibab Paiute, continues in the following sections.

Spanish and Euroamerican Exploration and Contact

The time period from 1776 to 1847 is marked by early Spanish and later Euroamerican contact with the Southern Paiute through their exploration and economic activities in the area. The 1776 expedition led by two Franciscan priests, Francisco A. Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante, through northern parts of the Southern Paiute territory provided the first historical references to the native peoples. The explorers were attempting to find a northern route that would connect Santa Fe with Monterey, California. [10] On the return to Santa Fe, the Spanish expedition crossed the Arizona Strip. [11] On the Pilar River (now called Ash Creek) near its junction with the Virgin River 25 miles below Zion Canyon, Escalante noted the Indians' cultivation of corn in irrigated fields located on small flats along the river bank, thus documenting Southern Paiute agricultural practices. While the expedition failed to accomplish its mission, it gained much knowledge of the Great Basin region. It was later followed by excursions into the region by fur trappers, including Jedediah Smith (1826) and William Wolfskill and Ewing Young (1830). The 1849 California gold rush brought large numbers of prospectors and others traveling through Southern Paiute territory.

Prior to the arrival of the Latter-day Saints in 1847, Southern Paiute bands were impacted by the slave trade, a topic discussed by Isabel T. Kelly and Catherine S. Fowler in their chapter on the Southern Paiute in Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 11, Great Basin. [12] By the early 17th century, Spanish colonies in what are now northern New Mexico and southern California had institutionalized slavery and other forms of servitude. [13] Ute and Navajo slave raiders preyed on Southern Paiute bands. Spanish expeditions and American trappers repeated this pattern. Women and children were the most sought after as captives. One Indian agent noted that prior to 1860, scarcely one-half of the Paiute children escaped slavery, and that a large majority of those that did were males. One history of Utah refers to the trade:

In historic times the Ute carried on an extensive slave traffic. Children were obtained by barter or by force from poorer bands of Paiutes and exchanged with the Navahos [sic] and Mexicans to the south for blankets and other articles. Certain Paiute bands were almost depopulated by this traffic. [14]

The Kaibab Paiute maintain a memory of these raids by the Ute and Navajo. Feelings of enmity harbored by the Kaibab Paiute toward these tribal groups is often explained today by reference to such past raiding activity. [15] Some documentation suggests that Southern Paiute bands responded to the threat of enslavement by retreating from heavily traveled areas, particularly the Old Spanish Trail that opened as a commercial route in the 1830s. (This 1,200 mile rugged path was charted to link the old established settlements in New Mexico with the fledgling Spanish colony of Los Angeles, California. The New Mexicans carried westward serapes, blankets, knives, guns, hardware items, and cloth bought in the Santa Fe trade. [16]) At the same time, the slave trade may have forced abandonment of ecologically favorable areas, inhibiting the expansion of horticultural activities among the Southern Paiute, while increasing their dependence on hunting and gathering as a way of life.

In their study, Kaibab Paiute History, The Early Years, anthropologists Richard W. Stoffle and Michael J. Evans calculated the pre-1492 population estimate for the Kaibab Paiute to be at least 5,500. By the mid-1800s, Stoffle and Evans estimated the Kaibab Paiute population to have declined to about 1,175. [17] Although Spain's colonizing activities never reached the Southern Paiute territory, Stoffle and Evans attribute Indian population decline to the effects of diseases (in particular, smallpox and measles) which the Spanish introduced into native populations in Mexico and the Southwest between 1520 and 1846.

The Coming of the Saints and the Call to Dixie

Joseph Smith, Jr., born in Vermont on December 23, 1805, was the organizer and first president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. On June 27, 1844, Smith and his brother Hyrum were murdered by a mob at Carthage, Illinois. Brigham Young (also born in Vermont) succeeded Smith as Church president at the age of 34. Less than two years after the murders of the Smith brothers, Young and his group of followers left Nauvoo, Illinois, in February 1946, fleeing religious persecution. They headed for the Great Basin with the main party arriving at the Great Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. [18] This region was then part of Mexico. With no official Mexican presence closer than Santa Fe and Tucson, many Latter-day Saints may have dreamed of establishing a new empire in the Great Salt Lake Valley.

The United States declared war on Mexico on May 13, 1846. Its victory in the conflict and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed February 2, 1848, resulted in Mexico's relinquishment of all claims to Texas above the Rio Grande, an addition of 1.2 million square miles of territory to the United States. While this put an end to any hopes the Latter-day Saints may have had for an independent empire, they wrote a memorial to the U.S. Congress in December 1848 for creation of a territorial government. Without waiting for a response to the petition, the new immigrants undertook to create a provisional government for the "State of Deseret," electing Brigham Young, president of the Church, as their governor. On September 9, 1850, President Millard Fillmore signed a bill creating the Territory of Utah, renaming it after the Ute Indians. Young was retained as governor until 1857.

Not long after the arrival of Brigham Young and the Latter-day Saints to the Salt Lake Valley, parties of men were organized and sent out to explore other regions. [19] On November 23, 1849, one such party of 50 men set out under the leadership of Apostle Parley D. Pratt to explore southern Utah. By January 1850, Pratt's party had reconnoitered the country as far south as the mouth of the Santa Clara River, beyond the rim of the Great Basin.

2. "The Mormon Exodus to the Rocky Mountains" (Reprinted from Howells, The Mormon Story, A Pictorial Account of Mormonism, 1964).

Kelly and Fowler report that slave raiding on the Southern Paiute ended soon after the arrival of the Latter-day Saints while noting that,

Initially the Mormons became unwilling participants in the trade, purchasing Indian children from the Utes who threatened to kill the children if the Mormons did not buy them. But active measures by Brigham Young and the territorial legislature ultimately ended the trade by the mid-1850s. [20]

While Mormon immigration to Salt Lake Valley went uncontested, resistance by native peoples began as soon as the colonizers headed south into the Utah Valley in 1849. The Walker War of 1853-1854 was precipitated by Mormon occupation of Ute lands. The war alerted the Church leaders that a more forceful Indian policy was needed. Five Indian missions were quickly dispatched between 1854 and 1856, all located on important trails within what were called the "outer cordon" colonies. [21]

Mormon settlers considered it their religious duty to influence the native peoples. They lived among Indians, baptized them, gave them Mormon names, and in a few cases married them. [22] By the end of 1858, only one mission survived, the Southern Indian Mission in southwestern Utah, where it served as a base for exploration, colonization, and Indian control. [23] Ironically, at the same time indigenous peoples in the Utah Territory were beginning to reel from the effects of Mormon colonization, the Latter-day Saints themselves felt their own way of life imperiled by the government of the United States. In 1856 President Brigham Young oversaw the formation of the Express and Carrying Company (also known as the Y.X. Company or the B.Y. Express Company). This business was the largest single venture undertaken to date by the Latter-day Saints in the Great Basin. It was designed to provide way stations for handcart companies and other immigration, to carry the United States mail between the Missouri Valley and Salt Lake City, and to facilitate the movement of passengers and freight between Utah and the East. In 1857 Anson Perry Winsor, an important figure in the history of Pipe Spring, was appointed to work for this company as wagon master. [24] Nearly all Mormon villages sent men to assist with the enterprise. The vast majority of them were called to work as missionaries. Their primary concern, of course, was the establishment of new settlements. [25]

On a trip to the Missouri River for Brigham Young's express company, Winsor arrived at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Territory, on May 1, 1857. The year 1857 was marked by a serious political crisis in Utah, one that would hasten a movement of Latter-day Saints into the Arizona Strip and other areas far distant from Salt Lake City. The causes of this crisis and related events - known as the Utah War - are examined in detail in other Utah histories and will only be summarized here. [26]

In June 1857 President James Buchanan appointed a new governor for the Utah Territory. This move was designed to displace Church leaders with politicians closely tied to authority in Washington, D.C. An order directing troops to Utah was issued June 29, 1857, by the Commanding General of the Army and was justified as follows:

The community and, in part, the civil government of Utah Territory are in a state of substantial rebellion against the laws and authority of the United States. A new civil governor is about to be designated, and to be charged with the establishment and maintenance of law and order... [military action] is relied upon to insure the success of his mission. [27]

At the same time the new governor was appointed, the federal government cancelled all contracts with Brigham Young's Express and Carrying Company. Utah historian Leonard Arrington states that the activities of this company in carrying out the mail contract and in performing other economic chores for the Church figured prominently among the factors that led to the conflict with the federal government. [28] The desire of non-Mormons to impose national institutions and customs on Mormons (particularly with regard to the practice of polygamy) also played a role in the conflict.

The first of 2,500 federal troops left for Utah Territory from Fort Leavenworth under the command of Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston on July 18, 1857. The entire force committed to the expedition amounted to 5,606 men. "Express missionary" Winsor learned of the military action, known as the "Utah Expedition," while at Fort Leavenworth, and alerted Brigham Young of the impending advance of the U.S. Army. [29] Winsor sent a letter via Abraham O. Smoot who delivered the letter to Young on July 24, 1857, at Big Cottonwood Canyon, located near Brighton, Utah, about 20 miles southeast of Salt Lake City. [30] A reported 2,587 persons were gathered there that day to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Latter-day Saints' arrival in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. [31] Thus Young had many months to take defensive action against the expected arrival of federal troops. The Utah Territorial Militia — consisting of about 3,000 men - was mustered into full-time service. While they were instructed to "take no life," the militia considerably slowed the advance of troops through implementation of a "scorched earth" policy, destroying resources ahead of the Army's advance. [32]

The advance of federal troops on Utah was considered a threat and Utah Mormons considered it continuing "gentile" persecution. [33] While the troops were still en route, a tragic event occurred in southern Utah. On September 11, 1857, Mormon militiamen killed over 100 men, women, and children who were part of a group of Missouri and Arkansas emigrants; the incident is known as the "Mountain Meadows massacre." While the massacre involved many individuals, John Doyle Lee was the only person brought to trial much later. An all-Mormon jury found him guilty and sentenced him to death, a sentence carried out on March 23, 1877. [34]

On September 15, 1857, Brigham Young declared martial law and proclaimed, "Citizens of Utah - We are invaded by a hostile force." Federal troops, in fact, were still en route. As he made preparations to defend the Kingdom, Young ordered Latter-day Saints in Idaho, Nevada, California, and other western states to abandon their settlements to "come home to Zion." The same directive was issued to missionaries scattered throughout the world, resulting in the return of several hundred. [35] Anson P. Winsor was later sent to Echo Canyon, east of Salt Lake City, in October 1857 to make fortifications and to guard the area against federal troops. In the spring of 1858, Winsor was called back to Echo Canyon with 300 men to relieve troops who had been on duty there the previous winter. Outright war was averted when negotiations held in February and March 1858 led to an agreement that Brigham Young would relinquish his governorship of the Utah Territory. Alfred Cumming, a federal appointee from Georgia who had served as Superintendent of Indian Affairs on the Upper Missouri, arrived to take over the territorial government on April 12, 1858.

The military actions of the federal government and its subsequent takeover of official government functions by "gentiles" reinforced the Latter-day Saints' long standing sense of injustice and oppression. [36] Just prior to Cumming's arrival, Brigham Young called a "Council of War" in Salt Lake City on March 18, 1858, where he announced his plan "to go into the desert and not war with the people [of the United States], but let them destroy themselves." Four days later, Young wrote, "We are now preparing to remove our men, women, and children to the deserts and mountains..." What followed has been called "The Move South." The events that follow chronicle this southern migration as it pertains to the Arizona Strip region near Pipe Spring.

Brigham Young instructed missionary and explorer Jacob Hamblin to learn something of the character and condition of the "Moquis" (whom we now refer to as the Hopi) and to preach to them. On October 28, 1858, Hamblin and a small party of men were sent southeast from the young southern Utah settlement of Santa Clara to contact the Hopi. [37] A Kaibab Paiute referred to as Chief Naraguts served as the party's guide through the region. Their other purpose was to determine if the Latter-day Saints could retreat to this region should the conflict with the U.S. Army become unbearable, to establish a mission among the Tribe, and to explore the region. [38] On October 30, 1858, the men encamped at Pipe Spring. Hamblin's party is the first documented visit by Euroamericans to Pipe Spring. Their explorations revealed the general topography between the Virgin and Colorado rivers to other Euroamericans, opening the way for later colonization of northwestern Arizona. The name "Pipe Spring" was in use by the time a second Hamblin mission to the Hopi passed by Pipe Spring on October 18, 1859.

Protected by the Utah Territorial Militia (also known as the Nauvoo Legion), Mormon expansion moved quickly, occupying the richest river valleys, reducing game, and pre-empting forage and water holes. Serious friction continued between Indians and settlers as whites penetrated other areas of Utah. [39] Between 1858 and 1868, 150 new towns were founded, and the 1850 Utah population of 11,000 grew to 86,000 by 1870. [40]

3. Erastus Snow, in charge of Arizona colonization (Reprinted from McClintock, Mormon Settlement in Arizona, 1921).

A move to relocate the Ute on the Uintah Reservation in the 1860s led to the Black Hawk Indian War of 1865-1868. [41] Initial fighting broke out between the Ute and the Latter-day Saints in 1865 in the Sevier Valley in central Utah. The war led the Church in 1867 to build Cove Creek Fort 200 miles south of Salt Lake City, located midway along the 60-mile stretch between Fillmore and Beaver. The fort's primary purpose was to protect the telegraph line that linked the area's settlements to Salt Lake City. [42] The Utah Territory's last major Indian conflict, the war forced the temporary abandonment of a number of southern settlements. Ute resistance was contagious, stirring some Southern Paiute into sporadic resistance. [43] However, no major confrontations took place between the Latter-day Saints and Southern Paiute. Some ascribe the non-combativeness of the Southern Paiute to activities of missionaries among them, most notably, Jacob Hamblin. [44] Perhaps, more likely, they simply lacked the numbers and resources with which to effectively stave off intruders, whether Euroamerican or Indian, such as the Ute and Navajo. [45]

The early 1860s mark the beginning of Mormon encroachment on Kaibab Paiute territory through the establishment of missions and permanent white settlements. At a semi-annual general conference of the Church held in October 1861, Brigham Young called 300 families to the Dixie Mission. [46] Utah's "Dixie" was in the Virgin River Basin, established to produce cotton, molasses, wine, and other warm-climate crops. On November 29, 1861, a group headed by George A. Smith and Erastus Snow left Salt Lake City to colonize the valleys of the Virgin and Santa Clara rivers. The town of St. George was surveyed and incorporated in 1861. Again on October 19, 1862, Young issued another call for 250 families to go south. Two other important events occurred earlier that year which would eventually spur colonization activity in southern Utah and northern Arizona, along with other western regions: passage of the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862, and President Abraham Lincoln's signing of the Pacific Railroad Act on July 1, 1862. The latter act authorized and provided financial aid for the nation's first transcontinental railroad. While the Civil War delayed its construction, the union of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869, ended the isolation of Brigham Young's Kingdom. Young organized a company to build a trunk line between Salt Lake City and Ogden, completed on January 10, 1870. The railroads provided a transportation corridor that linked Utah commercially to other states while ensuring a continuing stream of new immigrants. The Homestead Act, on the other hand, added an incentive to land-hungry settlers to take their families into arid lands that would have otherwise been considered desolate and unpromising by most folks back east. Not until 1869 did federal officials open a land office in the Utah Territory. Prior to that time, Church officers supervised settlement and land distribution, issuing land certificates to settlers in both Utah and the Arizona Strip. [47]

4. Mormon settlements along the Arizona Strip and in Arizona (Reprinted, by permission, from Walker and Bufkin, Historical Atlas of Arizona, copyright © 1979 by the University of Oklahoma Press). (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

Other events had more immediate effects on settlements. Kit Carson's 1863-1864 bloody campaign against the Mescalero Apache and Navajo in the Territory of Arizona (which at that time included New Mexico) resulted in the infamous "Long Walk" during the winter of 1863-1864 and subsequent incarceration by April 1864 of about 9,000 Navajo and 400 Mescalero Apache at Fort Sumner in Bosque Redondo, New Mexico Territory. Many there suffered from disease, inadequate food rations, and crop failures. Before being released to return to their homelands in 1868, 1,000 Navajo died at Bosque Redondo. [48]

White settlers in Arizona and New Mexico hoped that the creation of reservations in the 1860s would solve the "Indian problem" and end their war with the Apache and Navajo. For Indians, of course, white immigrants and their protectors, the territorial militias, and the U.S. Army created the problem. Pockets of Indian resistance to white encroachment persisted for decades in some cases. [49] Displaced by years of conflict with the U.S. Army and refusing to go to their assigned reservation, some Navajo took refuge in Monument Valley and other remote locations while continuing to raid villages and livestock in southwestern Utah and along the Arizona Strip. [50]

Manuelito was the last of the Navajo war chiefs who held out against forced incarceration, hiding with a small band of about 100 men, women, and children along the Little Colorado. Finally, he and 23 defeated and emaciated warriors surrendered at Fort Wingate on September 1, 1866. [51] The free Navajo not only lived in fear of capture or death by U.S. Army soldiers, but also of Ute and Mexican slave raiders who still trafficked in stolen children. The choice between going to the reservation and remaining free was difficult, with either alternative posing considerable threats to survival. Some resistance leaders finally chose to surrender, concluding a treaty with U.S. government representatives led by General William Tecumseh Sherman at Bosque Redondo in May 1868. The 1868 treaty did not end hostilities along the Arizona Strip, however. Navajo raids continued to be a problem, particularly during the winters of 1867-1870. During the 1860s, the Latter-day Saints in Kanab Creek area permitted some Paiute Indians to have access to water and land for farming. In turn, these Paiute warned members of the fledgling white communities of impending raids by the Navajo, who were also the traditional enemy of the Paiute. [52] Since both Latter-day Saints and Paiute were vulnerable to the Navajo attacks, they served for a time as mutual allies.

In September 1870 Jacob Hamblin, accompanied by Major John Wesley Powell, concluded a peace treaty on behalf of the church with the Shivwits Paiute at Mt. Trumbull, on the north side of the Colorado River. (Powell was an explorer and geologist who convinced the Smithsonian Institute and Congress to fund two exploratory expeditions he led down the canyons of the Colorado and Green rivers during 1869 and 1871-1872. He conducted other explorations in Arizona and Utah in 1874 and 1875. Powell became director of the Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region in 1875, director of the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1879, and director of the U.S. Geological Survey in 1881. [53] ) Soon after, Hamblin and Powell embarked to Fort Defiance, New Mexico Territory, on a peace mission. At the time 6,000 Navajo were gathered there to receive their annual government allotments. Their meeting with the Tribal Council, begun on November 1, concluded on November 5 with a peaceful settlement. One source reports that Hamblin wrote Erastus Snow details of the meeting in a letter dated November 21, 1870. [54] Another source states that Hamblin returned to Kanab with word of the treaty about December 11, 1870. [55] The raids on white settlements soon ended, allowing the development of existing towns and the establishment of new ones.

The Honeymoon Trail

Once peace was made with the Navajo, Latter-day Saints began colonizing along the Little Colorado River in Arizona. A ferry was established across the Colorado at the mouth of the Paria where both Jacob Hamblin and John Wesley Powell had found a feasible crossing. John D. Lee, in hiding for his role in the Mountain Meadows massacre, moved to this remote site with one of his wives, Emma, in December 1871. By January 1873, Lee offered regular ferry service to travelers seeking to cross the river and the place became known as "Lee's Ferry." Brigham Young issued a call that year for colonists to go to Arizona and fill the Little Colorado Mission. The missionaries - 109 men, 6 women, and 1 child - gathered at Pipe Spring, beginning the trek in 54 wagons. The wagon trail traveled nearly 200 miles, creating a rough road as it went. Historian C. Gregory Crampton describes their route to Lee's Ferry:

From the open valley of Kanab Creek the colonists wound along the ledgy, rocky western slope of the Kaibab Plateau. On top they had to traverse a thick forest of pinyon and juniper which snared animals and tore canvas. Then they jolted and bumped down the eastern slope of the Kaibab, which was steeper than the western slope. Through House Rock Valley and along the base of the Vermilion Cliffs they pulled through deep sand, headed washes and deep gulches, and finally arrived at the mouth of the Paria. [56]

Once they made the difficult crossing at Lee's Ferry, the first band of colonists had only a horse trail to follow along a steep and rugged rock crest known as "Lee's Backbone." Wagons had to follow switchbacks over a talus slope covered with sandstone blocks, then made their way southward along the base of the Echo Cliffs. Wagons continued into side canyons opening into Marble Canyon, through washes, barren hills, and across the Painted Desert until they reached Moenkopi, where they found spring water. Moenkopi was only 70 miles from Lee's Ferry, but the trek took the band 26 days, attesting to the ruggedness of the terrain. Proceeding on to the Little Colorado River, the settlers found a bleak and barren region with the riverbed nearly dry. Believing no settlement could be established in such a place, they headed back over the route just traversed.

Still, the road had been opened to the Little Colorado, soon to be traveled by a scouting party in 1875 and another mission of 200 men, organized in 1876. The settlers in this latter mission reached Sunset Crossing, near present-day Winslow, Arizona, in March 1876. Between 1876 and 1880, the Utah-Arizona road was in constant use as Latter-day Saints streamed into the Little Colorado region, establishing a foothold in northeastern Arizona. Beyond Lee's Ferry the route was known as the Mormon Wagon Road. By 1880 two other routes were used by Latter-day Saints traveling between Utah and the Little Colorado River settlements in Arizona, although neither was as heavily traveled as the Lee's Ferry route. [57]

5. Map showing early settlement and roads in Arizona (Reprinted from McClintock, Mormon Settlement in Arizona, 1921). (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

Once the St. George Temple was completed in 1877, young Mormon newlyweds, married by civil authorities in the Arizona settlements, traveled from the Little Colorado River settlements to St. George (by way of the Mormon Wagon Road and Lee's Ferry route) to have their vows solemnized in the temple. Generally, several wagons traveled together, providing both companionship and security in case problems were encountered along the primitive road. C. Gregory Crampton reports these treks were usually made in mid-November with the couples remaining in St. George for the winter, returning to the Little Colorado in April. [58] The route was traveled by so many newlyweds that it came to be known popularly as "The Honeymoon Trail."

Portions of the old road's well-worn trace can still be seen, including at the vicinity of Pipe Spring where late 19th century travelers would have naturally stopped for water. A portion of the Honeymoon Trail is shown on early 20th century area maps as the "Kaibab Wagon Road" as it passes through the Pipe Spring vicinity. Once Pipe Spring National Monument was established, a number of changes were made to the small section of historic road that traversed the 40-acre tract. In 1934 the road was relocated south of the fort ponds; it was abandoned altogether as a vehicular route, once State Highway 389 opened in 1967. While native vegetation now obscures much of the old road trace within the monument itself, it can be very easily discerned as one looks southwest far across the landscape from the fort. [59]

The Impact of Latter-day Saint Colonization on the Southern Paiute

Historian Leonard Arrington compared the early Latter-day Saints with this country's first colonists, the Puritans, whose religious dogma carried over into secular life. Arrington wrote,

[The Church's task] did not end with the conversion of individual souls. As the germ of the Kingdom of God, the church must gather God's people, settle them, organize them, and assist them in building an advanced social order. Ultimately, according to Mormon theology, the Church must usher in the literal and early Kingdom of God ('Zion') over which Christ would one day rule.... All individuals who participated in this divine and awesome task would be specially blessed and protected. One day, when the Kingdom was finally achieved, there would be no more wars or pestilence, no more poverty or contention. [60]

Brigham Young likened the process of teaching Indians the ways of white men and leading them toward Latter-day Saint conversion to the process of irrigation. Young stated, "[We must] cut channels" for water to run in "and gradually lead it where we want it to go.... Just so we must do with this people... by degrees we will control them." [61] With regard to contact between the white settlers and native peoples, Utah historian Charles S. Peterson observed:

Mormon relations with native Americans were at once an expression of faith and conquest. The Book of Mormon taught that Indians were a fallen people with whom God's spirit had ceased to contend but who were nevertheless united by blood and heritage to ancient Israel. In God's due time, the dark skin and 'loathsome' ways of the curse would be lifted and an inherited claim to the American continent be made valid. In the meantime the Saints watched closely for signs indicating that the curse was lifting and experimented with the means of redemption. [62]

Peterson refers to the strong cultural and religious overtones of Latter-day Saint colonization efforts: [63]

By the roads of the gathering the Mormons came to Utah. By colonization they distributed themselves and became a force in the West. By colonization they made a hostile land habitable and brought its discordant elements into a harmonious relationship with God's kingdom. Initiated in 1847, colonizing was repeated on successive frontiers during the next four decades. Responding in part to the Great Basin environment and in part to the teachings and experiences that made them a chosen people, Mormons developed their most distinctive institutions and practices in the process of colonizing. In other words, the climax of withdrawal from the larger society occurred not in arrival in Salt Lake City nor in the conflict that came to center there, but in the colonizing process - the call, the move, group control over land and water, and the farm village life. Developed to bring a raw environment into harmony with God's will on the one hand, and to protect the independence that its rawness permitted on the other, the practices of colonization proved impossible to perpetuate indefinitely, but until 1890 they distinguished Mormon culture and served as the vehicle of the church's geographic expansion. [64]

During the four decades of colonization that spanned from 1850 to 1890, Latter-day Saints established some 450 farm villages and towns. Even before the last watered lands in Utah were ferreted out during the 1870s and 1880s, the Saints extended their colonizing efforts to the neighboring states of Nevada, California, Idaho, Colorado, and Arizona. These settlements were a highly effective means of expanding the Church's area of the influence and economic power. By the 1890s, Latter-day Saint colonies were established as far as Canada and Mexico as a direct response to the U.S. government's crackdown on polygamists that began in 1885.

Several members of the Edwin D. Woolley, Jr., family recorded their recollections about Pipe Spring and the local Kaibab Paiute in the late 19th century. [65] Their observations included the following:

They are not a fighting tribe.... As a tribe they gave the white settlers little trouble. They seemed to have one need and that was food. They were always hungry. Their friendliness was the trusting friendliness of a child, and their pleasure and gratitude for kindness and a 'bees-kit' [biscuit] was of the same nature. We found them a most likeable people of many virtues, and fear never entered the relationships between the races when we were children. Indeed it seems that if they did not actually welcome the coming of the Mormons they were willing to settle for peaceful co-existence so long as the phrase meant Mormon food and clothing and a few of his utensils such as knives and guns.... Such an attitude on their part is understandable when the conditions of their life are appreciated. The lot of this handful of human beings was not a happy one even in good seasons but in bad seasons when nature forgot to send the rain life was cruelly hard. [66]

The narrative described the manner in which "wick-i-ups" were made by the Paiute, the use of various plants (particularly the squawbush), and various aspects of their material culture. "Clothing was scanty beyond belief," consisting of an apron made of strips of coyote and rabbit hide. Robes of rabbit skin were worn in winter. The pine nut "could be called the staff of life of these people... It became their first article of commerce when the white man invaded their land." [67] While the writer expressed admiration for the ability of the Paiute to survive in a harsh environment, it was obvious these Indians were viewed as extremely "lowly" in terms of cultural and social development. [68] This "backwardness" he attributed to the rigors of their way of life.

"They were always hungry." Some would argue that they had not always been hungry but that the deprivation witnessed by the Woolleys and their Latter-day Saint neighbors just prior to the turn of the century was caused by the indigenous people's loss of access to important resources. The impacts on native flora and fauna that accompanied Mormon settlement along Kanab Creek and other nearby locations, such as Short Creek, Pipe Spring, and Moccasin Spring, were disastrous, resulting in the loss to the Kaibab Paiute of their traditional means of subsistence. This in turn led to a rapid decline in population. [69] Stoffle and Evans cite starvation, rather than war or disease, as the primary cause of Indian deaths during the decade following the first arrival of Mormon settlers. From an estimated pre-contact population of 1,175, the Kaibab Paiute were reduced to 207 by 1873, representing an 82 percent decline in their numbers. [70] Although relations stabilized between Latter-day Saints and the Kaibab Paiute during the following three decades, the Indians found themselves in a desperate plight.

The immediate effects of colonization were apparent early on. Angus M. Woodbury, born in 1886 in St. George, Utah, of Latter-day Saint immigrant parents, wrote in A History of Southern Utah and its National Parks:

The coming of the Mormon pioneers gradually upset the Paiute government. The whites frequently settled on Indian campsites and occupied Indian farming lands. Their domestic livestock ate the grass that formerly supplied the Indians with seed, and crowded out deer and other game upon which they largely subsisted. This interference with their movements and the reduction in the food supply tended eventually to bring the Indians into partial dependence upon the whites.

Within a few years, farm crops and livestock brought the whites more food and clothing than the Indians had ever dreamed of. No wonder they became beggars in the towns and thieves of cattle and horses on the range. As long as the whites were in the minority, they used to feed the Indians.... As the whites increased and became strong enough to defy the Indians, the attitude changed from one of fear to that of domination.... In time, it became increasingly difficult for the Indians to maintain themselves. [71]

The Latter-day Saint's religion and charity proved to be woefully insufficient compensation for the Kaibab Paiute loss of traditional lands and other resources essential to their way of life.

In the 1860s, the federal government began establishing agencies (reservations) for Utah's native population. The Uintah Ute were attached to an Indian agency established in northeastern Utah in 1868. In an 1873 special commission report, John W. Powell and G. W. Ingalls recommended that the Kaibab Paiute also be placed under federal jurisdiction so that they might at least have food to eat and accessible farmland. No action was taken. In 1880 Jacob Hamblin wrote Powell, then director of the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of Ethnology,

The Kanab or Kaibab Indians are in very destitute circumstances; fertile places are now being occupied by the white population, thus cutting off all their means of subsistence except game, which you are aware is limited. They claim that you gave them some encouragement in regard to assisting them eak [sic] out an existence....

The foothills that yielded hundreds of acres of sunflowers which produced quantities of rich seed, the grass also that grew so luxuriantly when you were here, the seed of which was gathered with little labor, and many other plants that produced food for the natives is all eat out [sic] by stock.

As cold winter is now approaching and seeing them gathering around their campfires, and hearing them talk over their suffering, I felt that it is no more than humanity requires of me to communicate this to you.... I should esteem it a great favor if you could secure some surplus merchandise for the immediate relief of their utter destitution. [72]

President Ulysses S. Grant issued the order establishing a reservation in 1872 on the Upper Muddy River in Nevada. Few but the Moapa Paiute went there. Powell responded with the recommendation that the Kaibab Paiute, now consisting of about 40 families according to Hamblin, move to the Uintah or the Muddy Valley reservations, so that they might obtain federal assistance. It is hardly surprising that the Kaibab Paiute shunned resettlement at the Uintah Reservation, given the history of Ute slave raiding among them. In the late 1880s, a federal appropriation was obtained to remove the Shivwits Paiute from their land on the Arizona Strip to a reservation on the Santa Clara River, just west of St. George. No evidence indicates that any Kaibab Paiute were able or willing to relocate to these reservations, choosing to remain instead on their traditional lands. As native subsistence became increasingly precarious, many Kaibab Paiute moved into closer proximity to the Latter-day Saint settlements of Kanab, Fredonia, and Moccasin, while others sought out wilderness refuge away from Euroamerican settlements, such as Kanab Creek Canyon.

Stoffle and Evans point out that the situation the Kaibab Paiute found themselves in was, in a number of ways, atypical of the post-conquest experience of most other native peoples in the region:

Unlike most other Native Americans, the Kaibab Paiutes did not during these years (1) have a treaty agreement with the United States government, (2) have any territory officially recognized as a reservation, or (3) receive regular welfare subsidies from either the Mormon Church or the federal government. It was a time of hunger, disease, and rapid cultural change for the Kaibab Paiutes. Yet they were ignored by the peoples and institutions that had set these processes in motion. [73]

Not until the early 20th century would the federal government take action to alleviate the dire circumstances of the Kaibab Paiute.

Pipe Spring and Its Ownership, 1863-1909 [74]

As they carried out Brigham Young's directive, Mormon settlers moved to southern Utah and into what soon was to become Arizona Territory, created by President Abraham Lincoln on February 24, 1863. They laid out town sites, allocated fields, and constructed communal irrigation systems. Between 1863 and 1865, stock ranches were established at Short Creek, Pipe Spring, and Moccasin Spring (also known as "Sand Spring"). At about the same time, ranches were established at the present site of Kanab although these were temporarily abandoned during the height of conflict with the Navajo. [75] Thus, within a very short time period, white settlers had expropriated all perennial water sources in the Kaibab Paiute territory. These were Kanab Creek, Short Creek, Pipe Spring, and Moccasin Spring. The latter two were the only large springs in the area. [76]

The first white man to lay claim to Pipe Spring was James Montgomery Whitmore. After joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Texas, Whitmore moved with his wife, Elizabeth, and several children, a brother, and a sister to Utah in 1857. Because he had been a druggist before coming to Utah, he was known as "Doctor Whitmore." [77] Whitmore remained in Salt Lake City until the 1861 call, then moved with his family to St. George. On April 13, 1863, Whitmore received a land certificate for a 160-acre tract, which included Pipe Spring. [78] (It is notable that John D. Lee, participant in the Mountain Meadows incident referenced earlier, signed this certificate.) Upon this tract Whitmore, assisted by Robert McIntyre, established a ranch, constructed a small dugout for quarters, fenced about 11 acres for cultivation, set out about 1,000 grape vines, built corrals, and planted peach, apple, and other fruit trees. [79] While some accounts refer to McIntyre as a hired hand, a number of writers report he was related to Whitmore. [80] It seems possible that he was both related to and worked for Whitmore.

It is important to note that Whitmore's settlement at Pipe Spring coincided with Kit Carson's military campaign against the Mescalero Apache and Navajo in Arizona Territory, as referenced earlier. In 1865 Navajo raiding parties began crossing the Colorado River, raiding settlements along the Arizona Strip. In December 1865 the Navajo attacked the Utah Territorial Militia garrisoned at Kanab, forcing the settlement's abandonment. On or about January 9, 1866, a party of Indians drove off a herd of sheep from Whitmore's ranch. (According to David Chidester of Venise, Utah, Navajo, aided by some Shivwits Paiute, made the raid on Whitmore's ranch. [81] C. Leonard Heaton, long-time monument custodian, wrote that the raiders were Navajo and some Paiute who had been "kicked out of the local tribe because of their wickedness." [82] ) Whitmore and McIntyre set out to trail the raiders, leaving James Jr., Whitmore's 11-year-old son, in the dugout. [83] When the men didn't return, the boy headed on foot for William B. Maxwell's ranch in Short Creek, 25 miles west. He was intercepted by men on horseback who then informed Maxwell of the situation. Maxwell, a major in the militia, began gathering men for a search party. On January 11, 1866, word was received in St. George from Maxwell of the disappearance of Whitmore and McIntyre. Thirty-one local volunteers under the command of Col. D. D. McArthur and a second detachment from St. George of 46 men led by Capt. James Andrus arrived at Pipe Spring to search for Whitmore and McIntyre. [84] Anson P. Winsor was one of those in the search party, as was Edwin D. Woolley, Jr., both prominent in Pipe Spring's later history.

Numerous conflicting accounts relate the events surrounding the militia's January 20 discovery of the bodies of Whitmore and McIntyre and the subsequent retaliatory killings of a number of Paiute men. Some reports say that the Paiute were found to have in their possession some of Whitmore and McIntyre's property. Years later, in July 1914, James Andrus told his version of the story to photographer Charles Ellis Johnson who wrote it down. [85] According to Andrus, his troops had encountered two Indian men in the process of attempting to kill several cattle. They took the two prisoners to the militia camp and turned them over to McArthur. In return for a promise of his freedom, the older of the two Indians led them to the bodies of Whitmore and McIntyre. [86] Later, again in return for a promise of freedom, the younger Paiute led the militia to the Indian encampment where the militiamen arrested nine more Paiute men. In spite of protestations of innocence by these captives, the militiamen held them accountable for the murder of Whitmore and McIntyre and shot and killed them. Thus, according to Andrus' account, nine Paiute men were killed; other reports of the number killed range from 6 to 13. [87] There is no record of what happened to the remains of the slain Indians. The bodies of Whitmore and McIntyre were returned to St. George for burial. All business was suspended on the day of the funeral, January 23, 1866, and over 300 people attended last rites for the two men. [88]

Jacob Hamblin later learned from contact with the Indians that the Paiute men the militiamen had shot to death were innocent. [89] It is worthy of mention that the 1866 slayings of Whitmore and McIntyre and the militia's subsequent killing of Paiute men are alive in the memory of many local Latter-day Saints and Kaibab Paiute today. The controversy would resurface in 1933 when the Utah Trails and Landmarks Association affixed a commemorative marker to the fort. The current site of the Whitmore-McIntyre dugout is located about 100 feet southeast of the fort. Not long after the construction of the Pipe Spring fort, the roof of the old Whitmore-McIntyre dugout collapsed, reportedly under the weight of a cow. The dugout was used thereafter as a trash pit by residents of Pipe Spring. [90]

The slaying of Whitmore and McIntyre and subsequent retaliation by militia against the Paiute were not to be the last blood shed between whites and Indians on the Arizona Strip. On April 7, 1866, Joseph Berry, Robert Berry, and his wife Isabella were killed by Indians near Maxwell's Ranch at a spot since known as Berry Knolls, located 1.5 miles south of Short Creek (now Colorado City). It was not known if the Paiute or the Navajo were responsible. The danger to the Mormon frontier was now grave. Martial law was declared and Brigham Young urged that small frontier settlements be abandoned with residents moving to larger towns for security. No settlement, he advised, should have less than 150 well-armed men. As the theft of livestock was thought to be the Indians' primary objective, Young urged settlers to guard their animals. Practically the entire eastern line of settlements, those in the Sevier Valley, most of those along the upper middle sector of the Virgin, and all the settlements in Kane County as well as Moccasin and Pipe Spring were abandoned, not to be reoccupied until about 1870-1871. [91]

Although Pipe Spring was within the new territory of Arizona, James M. Whitmore had received the land certificate for his Pipe Spring claim from Washington County, Utah Territory. The confusion was attributable to the shifting character of Utah's territorial boundaries, beginning 11 years after its creation, and to a prolonged effort by Utah officials to have the Arizona Strip returned to Utah. During its early history, Pipe Spring fell under the jurisdiction of three different counties in two different territories. From January 4, 1856, to August 1, 1864, it fell under the jurisdiction of Washington County. When Kane County was organized in 1864 Pipe Spring came under its jurisdiction where it remained until 1883. Both these counties were located in the Utah Territory. The size of its territory was reduced a number of times by the creation of the territories of Nevada and Colorado (1861), and Wyoming Territory (1868). More Utah territory was lost when the Nevada Territory's eastern boundary was moved eastward in 1864. As late as 1897, some Utah officials were still arguing to retain the Arizona Strip territory, lands that lay between the Utah border and the Grand Canyon, but to no avail. [92] Arizona's territorial boundaries were extended in 1883 to take in much of the Arizona Strip, and at that time the Pipe Spring ranch was placed under the jurisdiction of Mohave County, Arizona, where it has since remained. [93]

6. Map showing boundary changes to Utah and surrounding territories, 1850-1896 (Reprinted, by permission, Beck and Haase, Historical Atlas of the American West, copyright © 1989 by the University of Oklahoma Press). (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

In 1866 Capt. James Andrus was given command of a cavalry company consisting of 62 officers and men and was instructed to examine the country along the Colorado River from the Buckskin Mountain (on the Kaibab Plateau) to the north of the Green River. The expedition left St. George on August 16, 1866, and traveled by way of Gould's Ranch, Pipe Spring, the abandoned settlement of Kanab, Skutumpah, to the Paria River, which they reached in the vicinity of the later site of Cannonville. [94] It may have been at this time (or shortly after) that a stone cabin was constructed at Pipe Spring to be used for periodic encampment by the militia (the north part of what is now known as the east cabin). On November 24, 1868, Colonel John Pearce camped at Pipe Spring with 36 men of the Utah Militia under his command. [95] By March of 1869, Erastus Snow, Bishop of Southern Utah, decided to make Pipe Spring a permanent supply base for the militia. Men were sent to plant turnips and corn where Whitmore had once raised his crops. [96] The stone cabin was repaired for use as guard quarters. In August of that year, John R. Young reported from Pipe Spring that four tons of hay had been cut on the "Moccasin spring creek," 2.5 miles north of PipeSpring. [97] Two tons of this hay were brought to Pipe Spring and a shed was built to shelter 16 horses. [98] By September 12 of that year, a decision was made to winter the militia at Kanab due to its proximity to the Colorado River. [99] The Pipe Spring supply base was soon vacated.

In April 1870 Brigham Young traveled to the site of Kanab and issued a call for it to be reoccupied. During this trip, he surveyed the Pipe Spring area and decided that the site would be a good location for some of the Church's tithed herds. For the safety of local settlers, Young also decided that a fort should be constructed at Pipe Spring. [100] He returned to Salt Lake City and appointed Anson P. Winsor to take charge of the operations, offering an annual salary of $1,200. On his return trip to consecrate the town of Kanab the following September, Young stopped at Pipe Spring to inspect the site for the new fort. Present there at the time were Major John Wesley Powell, Jacob Hamblin, and Chuarumpeak (nicknamed "Frank" by whites), Powell's Paiute guide. Powell reported that the Paiute Indians called Pipe Spring "Yellow Rock Water," after the nearby cliffs. [101] A map produced by Powell's expedition surveys of 1871-1873, however, depicts "Yellow Rock Spring" as located approximately 10 miles southwest of Pipe Spring. This leaves open the question of whether or not Pipe Spring and "Yellow Rock Water" are really the same. [102]

7. Detail from USGS survey map, John Wesley Powell's expeditions of 1871, 1872, and 1873 (Courtesy Bancroft Library, University of California).

How did the Church obtain the ranch property? Upon Whitmore's death on January 9, 1866, his widow, Elizabeth Carter Whitmore, inherited the ranch as part of her husband's estate. [103] In December 1870, Mrs. Whitmore made a verbal agreement with Brigham Young to sell the Pipe Spring ranch to the Church. [104] A record of payment to Mrs. Whitmore was not made until just over three years later, however, after the organization of the Winsor Castle Stock Growing Company (Winsor Company). Church historian Andrew Jenson provides a description of the meeting held for the purpose of organizing this cooperative livestock company. [105] The meeting convened in the St. George Tithing Office on January 2, 1873. Erastus Snow was chosen its first chairman. The maximum capital stock agreed to was $500,000. The Board of Directors elected Brigham Young, Sr., president; his nephew, Joseph W. Young, vice-president; and Alexander F. MacDonald, treasurer. [106] Initial subscriptions in stock were made totaling $17,450, with the Church as primary subscriber. [107] Minutes of the meeting stated:

In addition to the 140 acres of land at Pipe Springs, purchased by the Trustee and Trust of the James M. Whitmore estate in 1870, the church has since negotiated for a one-third interest in Moccasin Springs, but which, up to the organization of the Winsor Castle Stock Growing Company, has not been paid for; and therefore, will have to be paid for by that company. Some 15 acres of land have been irrigated by the one-third interest in Moccasin Springs. [108]

The reference to 140 acres is believed to be an error, one that has been repeated in other subsequent accounts. The size of Whitmore's original claim was 160 acres as verified by the land certificate. The reference to purchase of one-third water rights and irrigation of land at Moccasin Spring is important to note and will be discussed under a later section, "Moccasin Ranch and Spring." A memorandum of agreement was made on February 15, 1873, between the Winsor Company and Anson P. Winsor as follows:

In presence of President Brigham Young, Vice-President Joseph W. Young and Secretary Alexander F. MacDonald, at St. George. A. P. Winsor proposes to do the work of herding at the ranches of the company, also the farming and fencing connected therewith at Winsor Castle and Moccasin Spring and the dairy work at the ranches for $3,500 per annum. Anson P. Winsor to pay all board and expenses. [109]

Winsor was to receive $1,000 salary; the other $2,500 was to pay four hired men and one woman. (Winsor received $1,200 salary per year from May 1870 until January 1873. Under the new arrangement, his salary was reduced.) At the preliminary meeting it was recorded, "Mrs. Whitmore to be offered $1,000 in capital stock in the company if she will accept it, for ranch and improvements." [110] Accept it she did, for a January 1, 1874, entry in Winsor Company's Ledger B recorded that she was paid $1,000 in Winsor Company stock. Another Ledger B entry indicated a cash payment to Mrs. Whitmore of $366.64. The latter is believed to be for interest owed resulting from the three-year delay of payment. In exchange, Mrs. Whitmore provided the company with a bill of sale. [111] No legal record of the transfer of title from Whitmore to the Church has ever been located and may have never been executed, given the political tenor of the times.

James M. Whitmore's death left Elizabeth Carter Whitmore with nine children under the age of 12 to raise. After her husband's death, she managed the family farm, raising grapes, apples, and peaches. [112] She became a very influential person in St. George, holding and exchanging a great deal of property. [113] In September 1869 she purchased the home of Jacob Hamblin in Santa Clara. Then she and a "Mrs. McIntyre," whom she had previously been living with, moved to the Santa Clara home. [114] (Mrs. McIntyre may have been the widow of Robert McIntyre. If so, the fact that the widows of Whitmore and McIntyre were living together after the men's deaths lends credence to sources which say the two men were kin. The exact relationship of the two men and two women has yet to be documented.) In 1883 Mrs. Whitmore moved to Salt Lake City where she lived until her death on November 24, 1892.

Anson P. Winsor was one of the Latter-day Saints who responded to the call of 1861. Born August 19, 1818, in Ellicotville, New York, he was baptized into the Church in 1842. As a member of the faithful group gathered in Nauvoo, Illinois, he had acted as one of Joseph Smith's bodyguards. He emigrated from the Midwest to Utah in 1852 with his wife, Emeline Zenatta Brower, and a growing family, and soon located in Provo. (The couple eventually had nine children.) There in 1855, he took in plural marriage a second wife, Mary Nielsen, a Danish immigrant. Winsor's role in the Utah War (1857-1858) has already been mentioned. During the period of heightened conflict with Indians (late 1865-1869), Winsor served as colonel in the Third Regiment of the Utah Territorial Militia under General Erastus Snow. He is reported to have participated in several battles with Indians. [115]

In response to Brigham Young's call to colonize southern Utah, Winsor moved his families in 1861 from Provo to Grafton on the Virgin River, and was appointed its bishop in 1863. Grafton, along with Kanab and other settlements, was abandoned in 1866 during the period of Navajo raids. Winsor was living in Rockville when he was appointed in April 1870 to collect and oversee the Church's ranch of tithing cattle at Pipe Spring. [116] His role as ranch superintendent began that May. [117] Soon after, he sent his 15-year-old son, Anson Jr., to the site to plant a garden prior to the family's arrival. No documentation has yet identified the location of this early garden, but it is reasonable to assume it was the same land previously cultivated by Whitmore and the militia. Because of the lay of the land, the garden would most likely have been located south of the fort where it could be irrigated by gravity flow from the springs. The boy lived in the old Whitmore-McIntyre dugout during this period.

Joseph W. Young, president of the Stake of Zion in St. George and a nephew of Brigham Young, was charged with overseeing the construction of the fort. [118] Young wrote a letter on October 16, 1870, from his home in St. George to President Horace S. Eldredge in England describing his appointment and noting,

This work will keep me out most of the winter, but it is a very necessary work, and I am willing to do my part in it. This Pipe Spring and Kanab country is right between us and the Navajos, and it is the best country for stock raising that I ever saw if it can be made safe against the raids of these marauding Indians. I start out tomorrow with a small company to commence the work. [119]

Presumably, Young and his party left the following day and soon began the preliminary work of laying out the fort. John R. Young, brother to Joseph W. Young, brought his two wives, Albina and Tamar, and their children from Washington, Utah, to Pipe Spring in 1870 so that he could assist his brother with construction of the fort. John R. Young reported that his wife Tamar (born Tamar J. Black) assisted Joseph Young in drawing up the plans for the fort. Construction of the fort began that fall. [120]

It is not known exactly when the rest of the Winsor family arrived, but it was some time prior to Joseph W. Young's arrival. The one-room stone building constructed a few years earlier by the militia was modified in 1870 through the addition of another room to the south, the two rooms separated by an open bay. The Winsors lived in this building, now known as the east cabin. Anson P. Winsor's son, Walter, later reported that Joseph W. Young was also mayor of St. George, thus did not spend all of this time at Pipe Spring. [121] When he was at Pipe Spring, he reportedly shared the Winsors' cabin. In 1870 a second two-room stone cabin was erected west of the fort site to house workers (now referred to as the west cabin or bunkhouse).

Blocks of sandstone for the construction of the fort walls were quarried from the sandstone cliff immediately west of the fort site. The partially worked stones were placed on a forked log called a "rock lizard" and dragged by an ox down a trail cut or worn into the face of the cliff. This contraption has also been called a "stone-boat," thus the trail has been referred to as both the "stone-boat trail" and the "quarry trail." The proximity of this trail to the fort is shown in figure 9.

8. An ox dragged building stone on a "rock lizard" down the quarry trail (Pipe Spring National Monument)

9. The quarry trail followed along the cliff face to the fort's construction site (Pipe Spring National Monument)

Lumber for the fort came from a sawmill at Mt. Trumbull (located 60 miles from Pipe Spring in the Uinkaret Mountains of the Uinkaret Plateau), and lime was brought from a deposit located eight miles to the southwest near Cedar Ridge. [122] While the fort was originally planned to be 152 feet by 66 feet, Young reduced it to approximately 68 by 44 feet, most probably because threats from Navajo to nearby settlements were no longer a problem after the November 5, 1870, treaty of Fort Defiance. [123] (As mentioned earlier, word of the treaty did not reach Pipe Spring until December, several months after construction activities began on the fort.) Once the possibility of Indian attacks was over, the fort's defensive function was rendered obsolete. Although reduced in size, it still retained its defensive design.

The Pipe Spring fort was completed by April 1872 except for interior work that continued for several years. [124] The completed structure consisted of two sandstone block buildings, each two-stories, that faced each other across a courtyard. Heavy wooden gates, which opened outward, enclosed both ends of the courtyard. Wood shingles covered the fort's roof. For defensive purposes, none of the buildings' exterior walls were constructed with windows but instead were supplied with gun ports.

The north building (or "upper house") of the fort abuts a hillside that historically yielded the site's primary source of spring water. The spring water flowed by gravity southward, beneath the floor of the north building's west room, then through a stone-lined trough across the courtyard, and into the west room of the south building (the "lower house"). The main function of the cattle ranch at Pipe Spring was to produce cheese, butter, beef, and hides for Mormon workers building the St. George Temple, which was under construction 1871-1877. Sheep were also kept at Pipe Spring during this period, providing a source of wool and lamb for the St. George workers. In addition to cooling the dairy room, the water that issued from the spring behind the fort was used for culinary purposes, crop irrigation, and stock watering. [125] Reports detailing the fort's construction, physical appearance, and history as the Church's cattle ranch are described in other sources, and will not be repeated here. [126]

During fort construction, a telegraph line was being constructed from Rockville, Utah, to Kanab, Utah. The organization of the Deseret Telegraph Company dates back to 1861, when the transcontinental telegraph reached Salt Lake City. Church leaders immediately planned to build a line for the settlements from north to south but the Civil War temporarily prevented them from acquiring the necessary wire, insulators, and equipment. During the winter of 1865-1866, the Latter-day Saints subscribed money and contributed teams and teamsters to form a train to transport these supplies from the Missouri Valley. A Church-run school for telegraphy was set up in Salt Lake City, the company was incorporated by the territorial assembly, and construction began on the telegraph line with men's labor credited as a Church tithe. Troubles with Indians during 1865-1870 hastened the line's construction. It reached St. George on January 15, 1867. Pipe Spring was chosen to be a station of the Deseret Telegraph Company, making it the earliest telegraph station in Arizona. The first message was sent from there on December 15, 1871. The telegraph line reached Kanab on Christmas Day, 1871. Eliza Luella ("Ella") Stewart was the first operator at Pipe Spring; she was also was the first operator in Kanab where the office was set up in the home of her father, Bishop Levi Stewart. The arrival of the telegraph line in southern Utah and the Arizona Strip enabled settlers there to communicate with Salt Lake City and thus with the rest of the world. It helped to end the terrible isolation that was characteristic of remote settlements and kept those in Salt Lake City informed of distant developments. By 1880 the telegraph line was about 1,000 miles; 1,200 miles of wire were strung over thousands of rough poles, and there were 68 offices or stations. In 1900 the company was sold to eastern interests. [127]

Major John W. Powell obtained supplies for his Grand Canyon expedition at Pipe Spring in 1871 and 1872. Anson P. Winsor's son, L. M. Winsor, reported that it was during these visits that Powell christened the new fort, "Winsor Castle." Prior to that time he said it was called "Fort Arizona." [128] L. M. Winsor also recalled the family had a vegetable garden planted with tomatoes, corn, potatoes, squash, and pumpkin. In addition, the family kept a vineyard and a variety of fruit trees (peaches, apples, and two varieties of plums) and planted black currants. [129]

The fort at Pipe Spring never came under Indian attack. Relations with the nearby Kaibab Paiute had long been friendly, and the peace negotiated by Hamblin and Powell with the Navajo while the fort was under construction eventually ended the raiding of white settlements. Few references to the Winsors' relationship with the Kaibab Paiute at Pipe Spring have been found so the following quotation is particularly useful. L. M. Winsor reported that his father, Anson P. Winsor, "...spent much time with the Paiute Indians who taught him many things. He acquired a love for these Indians that remained through life, and he always had some of them near or working for and with him." [130] While there had once been occasional Navajo raids in the area, the local Paiute were friendly to the family, the son recalled. In addition to a huge herd of cattle, the Pipe Spring ranch had a band of sheep. John R. Young's son, Silas, remembered that an Indian tended the sheep. [131]

After the signing of the November 5, 1870, treaty, the Navajo became frequent visitors and traders in Mormon settlements. Their raiding of Southern Paiute camps, however, continued. According to Stoffle et al., as threats of Navajo attacks on Mormon settlements gradually waned, the Latter-day Saints broke earlier mutual protection treaties with the Paiute. A significant decline in interactions between Euroamericans and the Paiute characterized the three following decades. Southern Paiute north of the Colorado River sought refuge with other peoples, such as the Hualapai and Havasupai, or moved to more isolated places like the lower Kanab Creek area, and to hidden places along the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. [132]

A number of Kaibab Paiute cast their lot with the white settlements of Kanab, Fredonia, and Moccasin where they eked out a marginal existence by relying on occasional handouts of food and on limited opportunities for employment doing menial jobs. At least until 1900, payment was usually made in the form of produce or locally produced goods. Even menial jobs were not secure, however. As thousands of poor, land-hungry Church converts from Great Britain, Ireland, and Scandinavia continued to immigrate to the newly colonized areas, many of the unskilled tasks once performed by Indians were turned over to the immigrants. [133]

Anson Perry Winsor continued overseeing the Church's cattle at Pipe Spring until he was called to St. George in the fall of 1876 to labor there as an ordinance worker in the Temple. [134] After Winsor's departure, his son Walter was in charge at Pipe Spring until the arrival of Charles Pulsipher. [135] Pulsipher was elected superintendent of the Winsor Company's herd on January 3, 1877, moving to Pipe Spring from Hebron, Utah, where he had supervised another Church herd. [136] The size of the Pipe Spring herd in mid-1877 was 2,097. Pulsipher lived at the fort with the second and third of his three wives, Sariah and Julia, and children. [137]

By a unanimous vote of stockholders present at a meeting held January 1, 1879, the property of the Winsor Castle Stock Growing Company was transferred to the Canaan Cooperative Cattle Company (Canaan Company) of St. George, headed by Erastus Snow, president of the St. George Stake. Brigham Young, who was its primary shareholder until his death in 1877, founded the Canaan Company in 1870. It was probably the largest of the southern Utah cooperatives, operating dairies, farms, meat markets, and hiring agents to represent it. The company's main ranch headquarters was at Canaan Spring, in a cove at the base of the Vermilion Cliffs a few miles west of Short Creek. [138] Soon after the merger between the Winsor Castle Stock Growing Company and the Canaan Company, Pipe Spring's dairy cattle were transferred to Canaan's dairy ranch at Upper Kanab. Pipe Spring ranch operations then concentrated on the production of beef cattle.

Drought in 1879 and over-grazed range land reduced the Pipe Spring herd. On November 15, 1879, the Canaan Company returned the Pipe Springs property to the Church, or rather, to the Trustee in Trust, President John Taylor. At their next meeting on December 17, 1879, the Company directors approved paying the Trustee in Trust rent for the Pipe Spring ranch from July 1 through December 31, 1879. In late 1879, the Company's Chairman Erastus Snow and President Taylor agreed that annual rent in 1880 for the Pipe Spring ranch would be $250.

The transfer of Pipe Spring to the Canaan Company, then back to President Taylor, may seem curious, but in context of the events of the time, it can be better understood. At the personal orders of Brigham Young, the Pipe Spring fort had been constructed by a work mission of the Church and subsequently used as a tithing ranch. President Young held controlling stock of the Winsor Castle Stock Growing Company as Trustee in Trust for the Church. [139] The legal process to settle Young's estate, begun after his death (which took place on August 29, 1877), was not completed until some time in 1879. [140]

According to Leonard Arrington, the giant share of Church properties in Young's name was eventually turned over to his successor, John Taylor. It is probable that Pipe Spring wasn't immediately transferred to Taylor's control pending the outcome of the settlement of Young's estate. In any event, President Taylor continued the policy of secretly holding certain Church business properties in the names of individual trustees, presumably to prevent federal officials from knowing the actual extent of Church holdings. In early 1879, Canaan Company Superintendent James Andrus was appointed to take charge of the Winsor Castle herd but resigned later that year. Pulsipher stayed on at Pipe Spring into the winter of 1879-1880. [141] On December 17, 1879, the company hired James S. Emett to oversee the Andrus Spring, Short Creek, and Pipe Spring ranches. Census records indicate Emett lived in Kanab. He was released from his position the following year, and soon after the company notified Church President Taylor it would not renew its lease.

By 1880 the Church's policy in managing the Pipe Spring ranch was to lease it to interested cattlemen who would use it as an investment and care for the Church cattle herd. After the Canaan Company's lease expired (some time in 1880), the ranch was vacant until late 1881 or early 1882 when it was leased to Kanab resident Joseph Gurnsey Brown, who lived there with his wife Harriet. [142] In 1885, shortly before the Brown family left Pipe Spring, they received a visitor, a Frenchman named Albert Tissandier, who stopped both en route to and on return from Kanab. On the first visit, Tissandier drew a sketch of the fort and its setting, the oldest known picture of the site, and presented it to a Kanab family. [143]

10. Albert Tissandier and his drawing of Pipe Spring, 1885 (Pipe Spring National Monument, neg. 5013).

The Browns left Pipe Spring in 1885, moving back to Kanab. Either just before or at the time of their departure, the Church turned management of the ranch and herds over to the United Order of Orderville (described later). Erastus Snow's son-in-law, Edwin D. Woolley, Jr., was placed in charge of the Pipe Spring herd in late 1885. [144] Woolley, president of Kanab Stake, maintained a home and family in Kanab while moving his plural wife, Florence (or "Flora," daughter of Erastus Snow), and their three children to the Pipe Spring ranch in the spring of 1886. [145] A series of caretakers was hired to oversee ranch operations, among them were George Hicks, Loren Little, and Squire Hepworth. [146] During Woolley's management, John M. McFarlane, U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyor for Arizona, made a private survey by metes and bounds of the Pipe Spring ranch on December 3-4, 1886. [147] The plat of survey showed that the property, with all its improvements, contained 40 acres. [148]

Prior to this time, a number of federal laws had been passed that would directly impact activities at Moccasin and Pipe Spring. In 1862, Congress passed an act prohibiting polygamy, disincorporated the Church, and prohibited it from owning more than $50,000 worth of property other than that used directly and exclusively for devotional purposes. Although the law was generally considered unconstitutional, the Church attempted a kind of surface compliance with it by permitting only one civil marriage, calling the others "sealings," and placing properties acquired by the Church in the hands of Brigham Young as trustee in trust. After Young died, Church business properties continued to be secretly held in the names of individual trustees.

Crucial weaknesses in the early legislation targeting Latter-day Saints led to the passage in 1882 of the Edmunds Act. The Edmunds Act set in motion a process for reordering the political climate in Utah, and it also had a profound impact on territorial life through criminal prosecutions. The number of deputized federal marshals in the territory increased 300 percent, given the primary responsibility of tracking down polygamists. [149] This law put "teeth" into the 1862 law by enacting heavy penalties for the practice of polygamy, defining cohabitation with a polygamous wife as a misdemeanor, disenfranchising polygamists, and barring them from serving on juries or holding public office. The Edmunds Act also attempted to eliminate the Church as a power in Utah by vesting the territory's political machinery in federal non-Mormon appointive officers. Until 1885, there was widespread belief this law was unconstitutional, so federal officials moved slowly in bringing indictments under it. On March 3, 1885, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Edmunds Act by denying the appeal of convicted polygamist Rudger Clawson. Territorial officials then commenced the systematic and intensive prosecution of Church leaders in Utah and elsewhere, known as the "Raid." [150]

In 1887 the Edmunds-Tucker Act, or "Anti-Polygamy Act," amended the 1862 law, putting even greater pressure on Latter-day Saints. This law was designed to destroy the temporal power of the Church. Among its provisions was the dissolution of the Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Attorney General was directed to institute proceedings to forfeit and escheat all property, both real and personal, of the dissolved Church corporation held in violation of the 1862 limit of $50,000. It also called for the dissolution of the Perpetual Emigrating Company, the abolition of female suffrage in Utah, and the disinheritance of children of plural marriages. [151] Moreover, it empowered the court to compel the production of books, records, papers, and documents relating to properties held by the Church's president. [152]

Between 1884 and 1893, there were 1,004 convictions for unlawful cohabitation and another 31 for polygamy under the Edmunds Act. [153] As polygamous marriage was difficult to establish in the courts, most often the charge made was that of unlawful cohabitation. Under the Edmunds Act, cohabitation with a polygamous wife was a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $300 or by six months imprisonment, or both. The period from 1885 to 1890 was marked by intensive "polyg hunts" for "cohabs." Many Church leaders went into hiding (or hid their plural wives and children) to escape prosecution. (Church President John Taylor died while in hiding on July 25, 1887. His last public appearance was in the Salt Lake City Tabernacle on February 1, 1885.) Just as the 1858 federal takeover of Church government functions had spurred southern colonization, the struggle over polygamy served also as catalyst for further expansion of Mormon settlements.

Edwin Dilworth ("Dee") Woolley, Jr., was one of the polygamists who sequestered his wife Flora and their children across the state line in the remote Pipe Spring fort. [154] Federal agents sought plural wives as witnesses in those days. If the plural wife could not be located, it was nearly impossible for the federal deputies (referred to as "Deps" by the locals) to prove cohabitation. Nine other plural wives and their children are reported to have taken refuge at Pipe Spring at various times during the raiding period. (They were never all there at the same time.) Their names were Josephine Snow Tanner and Georgie Snow Thatcher (sisters to Flora Snow Woolley), Lynda J. (or T.) Marriger, sisters Ellen C. and Ann C. Chamberlain, Caroline Woolley, Emma Carroll Seegmiller, Mrs. Bringhurst and Mrs. Sangford of Toquerville. The husbands of the two Toquerville wives were serving time in the penitentiary. The Chamberlain sisters were the wives of Thomas Chamberlain, president of the United Order in Orderville. [155] Chamberlain was one of those arrested, convicted, fined, and sentenced to prison for violation of anti-polygamy laws. [156]

A significant number of changes were made to the Pipe Spring fort and landscape during Flora Woolley's five-year stay there. The fort alterations (principally the cutting of window and door openings and the removal of the large wooden gates on the east and west end of the courtyard) are described in detail in Park Service Historian A. Berle Clemensen's historic resource study. [157] The changes were made in order to let more air and light into the buildings and to minimize its fortress-like feeling. [158] Flora Woolley reportedly wanted these alterations to make the place feel less like a prison. [159] Of her move to Pipe Springs Flora once said, "...I went to prison to keep my husband out." [160] (In 1959 the fort was restored to its original appearance through filling in the openings made during the Woolley period. See Part IX.) Another change made during this period was that, at Flora Woolley's request, brick extensions were added to the upper building chimneys to improve the chimney's draw and to keep flying red ants from nesting in them. [161] Landscape changes made during the Woolley period included the planting of cottonwood, elm, willow, and ailanthus trees near the fort and changes to the ponds located just south of the fort. The ponds were there prior to the arrival of the Woolleys, but during their tenancy the ponds were enlarged, the banks built up, and stonework was constructed around them. They were used as a reservoir for water to irrigate the Woolleys' orchard, garden, alfalfa, and currants. [162] In 1890 there were about 1,400 head of cattle in the Pipe Spring herd. During this period, cattle drank from a large watering hole and troughs located about 200 yards west of the fort. [163]

11. Pipe Spring fort, April 27, 1891. The man wearing a white hat is Edwin D. Woolley, Jr. (Photograph by J. J. Booth, Pipe Spring National Monument, neg. 29).

According to Flora Woolley, eight women gave birth to nine children (three girls and six boys) while at Pipe Spring during the raiding years, thus earning it the popular name, "Woolley's lambing ground." [164] Another source confirms that eight wives gave birth at Pipe Spring, one bearing twins. [165] Another humorous nickname applied to Pipe Spring during these years was "Adamless Eden," as men put themselves in legal jeopardy if caught by federal deputies while visiting wives there. Pregnant plural wives in particular appear to have been a threat to their husbands' freedom during this period, since one couldn't explain one's "delicate condition" and deny a plural marriage at the same time. This might explain the unusually large number of women who gave birth at Pipe Spring over a relatively short span of time.

These women were not totally isolated from the outside world for a telephone was installed in the fort in 1888. It was located on the doorframe in the west room of the north building. Dilworth Woolley recalled the first time it was used:

The telephone bell tinkled. Mother in much excitement, took down the receiver and called, 'Yes, yes, yes' and talked into the mouthpiece. I do not remember what else she said. There were many persons in the room but I do not recall who they were. There were some Indians looking on. After much excited talk back and forth over the line, Father called old Frank Indian to come to the phone. He put the receiver to his ear with manifestations of fear in every move — listened a second or two, dropped the receiver, shook his head and mumbled something in Indian, and departed quickly. But his reaction caused an explosion of laughter among the audience. [166]

Dilworth Woolley reported in 1938 that the first message sent over the telephone from Kanab to the Pipe Springs ranch was a musical number played by the Kanab Marshal Band. [167]

Fredonia also served as a refuge for plural wives during these years. The town lies on the east bank of Kanab Creek. The first settler in that area, Thomas Frain Dobson, brought his family from Kanab in the spring of 1885. The town site was surveyed in 1886. The name was suggested by Erastus Snow, wrote Arizona historian James H. McClintock, "naturally coming from the fact that many of the residents were from Utah, seeking freedom from the enforcement of federal laws." [168]

The problem of plural wives and their children was only one of the concerns of Church leaders, however. Protecting its property from federal escheatment under the Edmunds-Tucker Act was also of utmost importance. [169] Most of the 3,000 head of livestock on Church ranches at Star Valley, Wyoming; Oxford, Idaho; and Pipe Springs, Arizona, was sold to Mormon capitalists and semipublic livestock associations. [170] Immediately following President Taylor's death on July 25, 1887, a suit was filed on July 30, 1887, by the U.S. Attorney General against the Church and the Perpetual Emigrating Company. The Edmunds-Tucker Act abolished the legal position of the Trustee in Trust, and thus another device had to be invented to protect the Church's assets. On August 22, 1887, under New York state law, one of Brigham Young's sons, John W. Young, formed a holding company, the Kaibab Land and Cattle Company. [171] This company took under its umbrella the Pipe Spring ranch, grazing herds at House Rock Valley, Kaibab, and the Arizona Strip, and controlled all the assets of the Canaan Cooperative Stock Company. [172]

Through the Kaibab Land and Cattle Company, the Church continued to indirectly run the Pipe Spring ranch. Daniel Seegmiller, like Edwin D. Woolley, was married to one of Erastus Snow's daughters, Artimesia, with whom he lived in Kanab. His plural wife, Emma Seegmiller (born Emma Isabelle Carroll), lived at Pipe Spring during the raiding years. Daniel Seegmiller was put in charge of the Church's herd of horses at House Rock Valley. Seegmiller was later fired from his position for unscrupulous dealings and was replaced by his foreman, Ed Lamb. [173] Seegmiller played a significant role in confusing the ownership history of Pipe Spring when in 1888 he filed ownership rights to the Pipe Spring property with Valentine scrip. [174]

The use of Valentine scrip as a means of buying land originated from April 5, 1872, legislation (17 Stat. 649; "An Act for the Relief of Thomas B. Valentine"). By this act, the federal government bought out a Spanish land grant in California in exchange for scrip worth an equal amount of "...unoccupied and unappropriated public lands of the United States, not mineral, and in tracts not less than the subdivisions provided for in the United States land laws, and if unsurveyed when taken, to conform, when surveyed, to the general system of United States land surveys." [175] The scrip came to be known as "Valentine scrip" and was bought and sold throughout the West. One such certificate came into the hands of Daniel Seegmiller. [176] On May 3, 1888, in Prescott, Arizona, Seegmiller filed application on a tract of unsurveyed land described by metes and bounds and courses and distances in the 1886 McFarlane survey (referenced earlier) by using this Valentine scrip.

After researching the history of Pipe Spring ownership in 1969, National Park Service Area Manager Raymond Geerdes concluded that Daniel Seegmiller had attempted, for reasons of self-interest, to lay claim to the Pipe Spring tract, even while he knew it was Church property. [177] Geerdes asserted that Seegmiller's attempt to legally gain title was unsuccessful, but that he still profited by selling the "bogus" claim to Benjamin F. Saunders on July 23, 1895, for $2,500. [178] The Mohave County Recorder recorded the quitclaim deed from Seegmiller at the request of Saunders on December 5, 1895. Seegmiller's sale of the scrip lent the appearance of authenticity to his claim for years thereafter. Saunders, who would also pay the Canaan Cooperative Stock Company for the property, may have simply purchased the Valentine scrip to avoid any future potential disputes over his legal ownership of Pipe Spring.

Ninety years later, questions still arose about the Valentine scrip. A letter to A. D. Findlay of Kanab (grandson of the A. D. Findlay who once owned Pipe Spring) from Attorney Ken Chamberlain of Richfield, Utah, dated June 19, 1985, offers additional information on the Valentine scrip:

Under the Code 17 Stat. 696 (the Act of April 5, 1872) 'Valentine Scrip' was issued as a 'lieu selection or scrip right or bounty right which was permitted on unsurveyed lands as the equivalent of a homestead entry with a maximum of 160 acres.

The scrip was issued in about the same manner as an unpatented mining claim and it was redeemable up until about 1955 but was redeemable as early as 1905 by exchanging it for an application for a homestead or desert land entry.All scrip that had not been converted to a homestead patent became null and void in 1970. [179]

Between 1895 and 1909, when Jonathan Heaton purchased the Pipe Spring ranch, Seegmiller's Valentine scrip got passed from one buyer to the next. It would later create a huge headache for one of Jonathan's sons, Charles Carroll Heaton, when he attempted to prove legal ownership of Pipe Spring.

After President Taylor's death in July 1887, Wilford Woodruff became head of the Church. On September 25, 1890, President Woodruff issued the "Official Declaration" (also referred to as the "Manifesto") which proclaimed the end of polygamy among Latter-day Saints. The following summer Flora Woolley left the Pipe Spring fort and moved to Kanab. [180] After Woodruff issued his declaration withdrawing official Church sanction of polygamy, "polyg hunts" by deputy marshals became less frequent and judges showed more leniency in dealing with "cohabs" brought before the courts, sometimes fining them only six cents and dismissing the case if they professed to accept Woodruff 's "Manifesto." In January 1893 President Benjamin Harrison signed into effect a limited, carefully worded amnesty proclamation for people convicted under anti-polygamy laws. In 1894 President Grover Cleveland granted them complete amnesty, thereby restoring their voting rights and other privileges. In October 1893 an act was passed in Congress authorizing the return of escheated property to the Church. Personal property was returned to the First Presidency in January 1894. Church real estate was returned in June 1896. [181] Utah became the nation's 45th state on January 4, 1896.

By 1895 the Church was free to openly sell properties that had proven unprofitable. In mid-1895 the Church sold the Pipe Spring property to Benjamin F. Saunders. Saunders was a rancher who dealt in both sheep and cattle and had ties to southern Utah and northern Arizona dating from about 1883 until his death in 1909. [182] Saunders also had interests in Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming, and other parts of the west. [183] Although he was a "gentile," he reportedly got along quite well with the Latter-day Saints. [184] Saunders had wanted to buy the Pipe Spring ranch for years. In the January 22, 1883, meeting minutes of the Canaan Cooperative Stock Company, Chairman Erastus Snow told the directors, "B. F. Saunders desires to buy stock and if the circumstances were right favorable, to buy into the Company." (According to one source, the company had some 4,200 cattle in 1883. [185]) While the Board refused to sell Saunders capital stock in the Company, it agreed to sell him 500 head of grazing stock. [186] Saunders bought the cattle and in addition offered to buy Parashont Ranch, located between Mt. Trumbull and the Grand Canyon. [187] After conferring with Church officials in Salt Lake City, Snow wired instructions to Company directors to sell this ranch to Saunders. Later, in 1899, Saunders also acquired all the property of Kaibab Land and Cattle Company, comprising its House Rock and Kaibab operations. [188]

Records from 1883 until 1895 for the Canaan Cooperative Stock Company have not been located. [189] At its last meeting on October 1, 1895, held in Salt Lake City, a record was made for the sale of all the Canaan Company's remaining assets to B. F. Saunders, including Pipe Spring ranch. [190] Saunders paid $10 a head for all cattle and horses born before 1895. All improvements - buildings, corrals, watering troughs, etc. - were included in the bargain. One researcher speculated that this is the reason no legal transfer of recorded property took place, for this method of transfer (selling the cattle and "throwing in" all the improvements) saved the Church from revealing its lengthy ownership of Pipe Spring. [191] Further proof that the Church still owned Pipe Spring at the time of this sale is a telegram dated June 7, 1895:

To President Woodruff
Sale of Pipe Springs to Cattle Syndicate [B. F. Saunders] means serious loss to the people of our stake; if it must be sold the people of the stake wish to buy. See letter by the people.

E. D. Woolley [192]

Why the Church chose to sell the ranch to Saunders instead of honoring the request of Kanab Stake may never be known. In any event, while Saunders acquired Pipe Spring, no official or legal record of conveyance from the Church to Saunders has ever been found. The sale to Saunders officially ended Church ties to the Pipe Spring property.

Saunders held the property only briefly, however. On December 2, 1895, he sold Pipe Spring to David Dunn Bulloch of Salt Lake City and Lehi W. Jones of Cedar City, Utah, for $3,250. [193] Excerpts from a letter Bulloch wrote to his wife Sarah Ann in Salt Lake City included a description of the ranch:

...I think it is the finest ranch I ever seen for livestock, and it is a very pretty place. There is about $5,000 worth of improvement on the place. There is [sic] two large buildings, one a two-story with five rooms in, and a number of small buildings, a hay field, and all kinds of apricot and plum trees, a fish pond, I think the fish are carp. There is a number of corals [sic], the best I ever seen on a ranch. So I bought it, and I think I got a bargain. I paid thirty-two hundred and fifty dollars.... I have let the Jones boys have a half interest. [194]

On May 24, 1897, Bulloch and Jones formed the Pipe Springs Cattle Company. [195] Heber Monair was ranch foreman for Bulloch and Jones from 1895 to 1897 and lived in the upper building of the fort during those years. Monair visited the fort with his wife in 1946 and, characteristically, Custodian Leonard Heaton plied him for historical information. During his time at Pipe Spring, Monair recalled, the stock watered in troughs west of the fort ponds. He also told Heaton that he traded some wine to Jonathan Heaton for a barrel full of carp to put in the fort ponds. [196]

At a meeting of the Pipe Springs Cattle Company on January 19, 1901, a resolution was passed to sell the property to A. D. Findlay. On January 23, 1901, the Pipe Springs Cattle Company entered into a contract with Findlay whereby the Company agreed to deliver 1,200 head of cattle from the Pipe Spring and Bull Rush ranches to Findlay, with principal deliveries to be made during the spring and fall roundups of 1901, and final delivery to be made prior to December 15, 1902. Findlay was to pay $22.50 per head of cattle. [197] He was also to pay $20,000 in cash, thereafter having the option of completing payment by delivering his herd of sheep (known as the "Heart herd") numbering about 3,000 and valued at $2.25 per head. [198] Also in the contract were provisions for the sale and transfer of the Pipe Springs and Bull Rush ranch properties. The Pipe Spring ranch deed was to be conveyed on October 15, 1901, for $4,000. (The price for the Bull Rush ranch was to be the actual cost to the Company and date of deed transferal to take place on October 15, 1901, "or as soon thereafter as title...is perfected." The Company had yet to secure the title.) The quitclaim deed for Pipe Spring was not executed until November 3, 1902. The Pipe Spring purchase was to include lumber, fencing, hay machinery, and the stove and furniture in use at the ranch. [199] The total price for the livestock from both ranches and the Pipe Spring tract would have totaled $31,000.

The ranch was actually sold by Bulloch and Jones to Findlay on October 8, 1901 (a week earlier than stated in the above contract). On November 12, 1902, Findlay also purchased 100 head of cattle for $1,100 from John R. Findlay. On April 13, 1907, Findlay formed the Pipe Springs Land & Live Stock Company. During Findlay's ownership, as well as that of Bulloch and Jones, caretakers and cowhands lived at the fort. Between 1902 and 1907, a long underground tunnel was constructed into a rocky hill to reach a water source. This water source was called tunnel spring. Hint Silar of Alton, Utah, built it. Silar told Edna Heaton in 1934 that the purpose of the tunnel was to get beneath the main body of the spring and transport the water by pipeline five miles southwest to the Indian Knolls and make a cattle ranch there. Findlay sold the ranch, however, before the project could be completed. [200]

Findlay sold the ranch to Jonathan Heaton and Sons, a copartnership, on January 2, 1909, with Findlay carrying the mortgage. [201] (Heaton's seven sons were William, Israel, Ira, Junius, Jonathan Jr., Charles, and Fred.) The amount promised in payment was $59,563.13, payable one year later, with interest. In return, Jonathan Heaton and Sons were to receive the Pipe Spring ranch "with all improvements, water rights and appurtenances," as well as a parcel of land known as the "Findlay Lower Reservoir" along with its improvements, water rights, privileges, and appurtenances. [202] The sale also included the transfer of 4,400 head of range cattle. The Heaton period of ownership will be covered in a later section.

Moccasin Ranch and Spring

Because the settlement of Moccasin, its residents, and the main spring there are so closely tied to the history of Pipe Spring (as well as to the Kaibab Indian Reservation), a brief history of Moccasin is included here.

The Mormon settlement of Moccasin is located four miles north of Pipe Spring, just a few miles south of the Utah line. Histories of Moccasin vary in detail, particularly with regard to its earliest years. The following is an account by historian James H. McClintock:

The place got its name from moccasin tracks in the sand. [203] The site was occupied some time before 1864 by Wm. B. Maxwell, but was vacated in 1866 on account of Indian troubles. In the spring of 1870, Levi Stewart and others stopped there with a considerable company, breaking land, but moved on to found Kanab, north of the line. This same company also made some improvements around Pipe Spring. About a year later [1871], a company under Lewis Allen, mainly from the Muddy, located temporarily at Pipe Springs and Moccasin. To some extent there was a claim upon the two localities by the United Order or certain of its members. The place was mainly a missionary settlement... [204]

Historian C. Gregory Crampton wrote that Maxwell established his claim at Moccasin at "about the same time" that Whitmore acquired Pipe Spring. [205] As mentioned earlier, Maxwell also owned a ranch at Short Creek, 25 miles west of Pipe Spring, where he lived. According to Crampton, Maxwell sold the Moccasin claim in 1864 to one Rhodes, who moved to the spot with Randall and Woodruff Alexander (and possibly others). [206] As mentioned in the section pertaining to the organization of the Winsor Castle Stock Growing Company, sometime between 1870 and 1872 the Church negotiated the purchase of one-third interest in Moccasin Spring. This interest was transferred to the Winsor Company soon after organization in January 1873. While the water at Moccasin Spring may have provided water for the Church herds, it also served an additional purpose. As cited earlier, it was noted at the Winsor Company's organizational meeting that "Some 15 acres of land have been irrigated by the one-third interest in Moccasin Springs." In August 1869, John R. Young had reported four tons of hay being harvested "on the Moccasin spring creek" just 2.5 miles north of Pipe Spring. It appears that prior to 1870 either Maxwell or the second owner(s) of Moccasin Ranch was irrigating land with water from Moccasin Spring to produce winter feed for livestock. It is obvious then why the Church had a strong interest in purchasing one-third interest in Moccasin Spring.

12. William B. Maxwell, first Mormon claimant of Moccasin, undated (Reprinted from McClintock, Mormon Settlement in Arizona, 1921).

In later years some conflict would emerge in the historical record over the question of when the Kaibab Paiute began to live at Moccasin Spring, so it is helpful to note some of the recorded memories of the early white settlers. [207] Emma Seegmiller (1868-1954), mentioned earlier, was one of the women who hid at Pipe Spring during the "Raid" of the late 1880s. She wrote, "Since my earliest recollection, Moccasin Springs, or near vicinity, has been the home of a tribe of Ute [sic] Indians, and for many years an Indian reservation has adjoined the Moccasin Ranch property." [208] While the federal government did not withdraw land in the area for Indian use until 1907, her "earliest recollections" would most likely date to the 1870s. Emma Seegmiller also recalled good relations between the Paiute and local Latter-day Saints, including melon feasts, the two groups joining together for dances, and the Indians praying for Church and U.S. leaders, such as George Washington. [209]

Emma Seegmiller is not the only person who recalled the Paiute living at Moccasin Spring from an early date. Silas Smith Young, born in 1863 and the son of John R. Young, later told Edwin D. Woolley, Jr., that Indians were living at Moccasin when he was there, and that it was not yet claimed by white men. [210] The boy, who would have been only seven or eight years old at the time, was probably unaware of William B. Maxwell's 1865 claim. As Maxwell's primary ranch was in Short Creek, he may have spent little time at the Moccasin claim. What is most important to note about the memories of Emma Seegmiller and Silas Smith Young is that their record is the earliest available Euroamerican acknowledgment of native people living in the immediate area at least by the time of the fort's construction in 1870.

To return to the chronology of ownership of the Moccasin ranch, according to Leonard Heaton, Christon Hanson Larson purchased the Moccasin property in 1874. Larson owned the ranch for two years. Heaton reported that Larson then sold it to Lewis Allen and Willis Webb, along with two-thirds of the water rights from Moccasin Spring. Canaan Cooperative Cattle Company Cattle Company owned the other one-third of water. (Brigham Young and the Church controlled this company, like the Winsor Company, thus the Church was still preserving its one-third rights through the Canaan Company.) Heaton wrote that on March 4, 1887, Allen and Webb joined the United Order at Orderville and turned over to the Order their land and rights to two-thirds flow of the spring. [211] Emma Seegmiller gives a slightly different account, writing that Lewis Allen (also known as "Moccasin Allen") acquired Moccasin Ranch as a result of his joining the United Order. Like James H. McClintock, she makes no mention of Willis Webb. [212]

John R. Young, nephew to Brigham Young, organized the United Order at Mt. Carmel, Utah, on March 20, 1874. It was a communitarian effort that emerged after the economic Panic of 1873. Promoted by Brigham Young, the program was designed to spur spiritual and communal economic revival and, for a time, was particularly successful in southern Utah. The town of Orderville, located two miles north of Mt. Carmel, was surveyed on February 20, 1875. It was situated on the Virgin River in Long Valley, in southern Utah. The heyday of the Order was 1880 when its adherents numbered nearly 600. Farming lands were expanded to include areas scattered through Long Valley and Kanab. [213] By 1881 the Orderville Order "owned 5,000 head of sheep and the cattle had increased ten-fold." [214] Such success led the Church to put this Order in charge of the Pipe Spring ranch in 1884. [215] Leonard Heaton reported in 1961 that his great-grandfathers were among the early settlers who had moved to Long Valley in 1870, after having spent five years on the Muddy River in Nevada trying to raise cotton and to "be peace makers among the Indians along the California road." [216] The Heaton family was thus a part of the Orderville communitarian experiment from beginning to dissolution.

Either in late 1879 or early 1880, the Church "bought" the water rights to one-third of the flow of Moccasin Spring from the Canaan Company (which the Church controlled) and established an Indian mission at Moccasin Ranch for the Kaibab Paiute. [217] It has been reported that at this time the Church gave the one-third water rights of the spring to the Kaibab Paiute. In February 1880, the Orderville United Order sent C. B. Heaton to oversee the Indians at the mission. The Kaibab Paiute are reported to have numbered 150 at the time the mission was established. During this period of Moccasin's history, sorghum, fruits, and grapes were cultivated. The site was particularly well known for its sorghum and melons. Leonard Heaton later reported, "It was when the United Order was in operation that the Paiute Indians were first introduced [sic] to take up farming, as the Mormon Church gave the Indians one-third of the spring and 10 acres of land and had the foreman of the ranch teach them the arts of farming." [218] The gift of land and one-third rights to the spring to the Paiute would have accomplished a number of Church objectives, as mentioned earlier.

When the federal government began intensive prosecutions of polygamists in 1885, Church authorities counseled dissolution of the United Order. Sources report a wide variety of dates for the dissolution of the Orderville Order. One states that the United Order of Orderville began in 1875 and was practiced for 11 years, suggesting dissolution in 1886. [219] Leonard Heaton also reported that the Order dissolved in the 1880s. [220] Angus Woodbury wrote that the dissolution was gradual, hastening after 1885. (According to Woodbury, the United Order of Orderville did not officially dissolve until 1900. By that date, however, the only property it held was a woolen mill. [221] ) Prior to then, the Order sold its farm lands, livestock, ranches, tannery, and sawmill to members, with each man allowed to use his work credits to buy property. Common possessions of all were distributed among the 100 or more families that remained. [222] Five Heaton brothers, all members of the Order, had been working at the Moccasin ranch for a year or so, and received the 400-acre property as their share of the common property in 1893. [223] One of the brothers, Jonathan Heaton, later bought out his brothers' interest in the property. [224] It was Jonathan Heaton and his plural wife Lucy who would sire the population of the village of Moccasin in the first three decades of the 20th century, including son Charles C. Heaton, father of C. Leonard Heaton, future custodian of Pipe Spring National Monument. [225]

A school building was constructed in Moccasin in 1904-1905. The building was used for Church services on Sundays by special permission of the school board. For a time, the Kaibab Paiute continued to farm the small piece of land given to them by the Church and to live in the community of Moccasin. As late as 1908, when the Indian camp was relocated 1.5 miles to the southeast, Leonard Heaton could remember the Kaibab Paiute using tepees as homes and moving from Moccasin to the mountains in the summer. They returned in the winter, he stated, "...leaving the white men to care for their crops while they were gone during the summer, coming home with their horses loaded with dried venison and pine nuts which they would trade for fruits and vegetables and flour." [226] While Buckskin Mountain at the northern part of the Kaibab Plateau was the closest, some Kaibab Paiute regularly made their summer hunting and gathering excursions to other areas on the Kaibab Plateau. Heaton wrote that another name used to refer to the Kaibab Paiute was the "... Moccasin Indians, a name applied to the Indians by the Mormon people who tried to get them to settle down at Moccasin, Arizona, four miles north of the monument, and live like white people, farming and cattle raising, instead of roaming over the country in search of a living." [227]

By 1921 the white population of Moccasin was 39, made up of 14 adults and 25 children. Sugar cane, corn, alfalfa, and potatoes were grown on the acreage that was cultivated. Possibly as much as 150 to 200 acres were irrigated with water supplied by Moccasin Spring, which its residents claimed had been "highly improved by white settlers." [228] Five hundred head of cattle were grazed in the area, 100 year-round and the rest during the winter months. The patriarch of the family, Jonathan Heaton, died in 1928 at age 72 from injuries sustained in a farm accident. [229]

13. Kaibab Paiute Indians at Moccasin, 1904. From left to right: Charles Bulletts and Toby John, on horses; Minnie (Soxoru) Tom, wife of Indian Tom; Mammie (Wuri) Frank, her child Maroni, and her husband Mustach Frank; Young Williams (Na'apiv), Dave Cannon; Indian Tom (Naap) and son, Tommie Tom (Oaisin), Tappio Dick; Annie (Wiuys) Frank; Tunanita'a (John Seamon's father); Adam Commadore, his wife Fannie (Punuv) Commadore and their two grandchildren (Photograph by Charles C. Heaton, Pipe Spring National Monument, neg. 2476).

During the early 1920s, residents of Moccasin rallied to defend their rights to settled lands that lay within the bounds of the Kaibab Indian Reservation. Local residents and their attorneys described the early Kaibab Paiute as "roving bands of Indians who had no permanent place of abode," who only settled down once they were given the "care and attention of the white settlers." [230] (The story that the Paiute never lived in the area until the establishment of the Church mission there is contradictory to reports by other sources, cited earlier.) The Kaibab Paiute had long utilized the resources most valued by settlers, land and water, as well as native plants and animals. Perhaps because their use was dictated by a seasonal, semi-nomadic tradition, or perhaps out of pure self-interest, some white settlers chose to deny any prior use or rights of Indians to these resources, particularly after the lands were withdrawn from settlement for Indian use.

14. Jonathan Heaton and his 15 sons, Moccasin, 1907 (Reprinted from McClintock, Mormon Settlement in Arizona, 1921).

By the early 1940s, Moccasin's white population totaled 63, all reportedly descendants (by birth or by marriage) of Jonathan and Lucy Heaton and their 11 children. As the children grew up and married, they were allotted a share of the land. [231] A small store was located in Moccasin, patronized mostly by the Kaibab Paiute living on the reservation. In 1928 it was agreed among the Heaton family that none of the land would be sold to an outsider. A problem arose when, during the 1941 restoration of the fort at Pipe Spring, men needed to be hired as laborers. Custodian Leonard Heaton hired 40 men, who all listed their address as Moccasin. When the payroll was submitted to the chief clerk of Southwestern National Monuments, a few eyebrows must have been raised. Of the 40 men listed, the last names of 37 were "Heaton." (The other names, Brown and Johnson, were related to the Heatons by marriage.) [232] Federal rules against employing relatives appear to have been ignored in Pipe Spring National Monument's early years, perhaps because the Heatons of Moccasin supplied such a close and capable labor pool.

The Federal Government's Response: Creation of the Kaibab Indian Reservation

Mormon settlement at Moccasin and elsewhere in the region was not the only threat to the Kaibab Paiute way of life. Federal government actions also made a significant impact. In 1893 much of the nearby high country to the southeast was set aside as a forest preserve. The impact on the Kaibab Paiute was noted 10 years later in the Commissioner of Indian Affair's annual report to the Secretary of the Interior for the year 1903. At that time the Kaibab Paiute numbered 110 (64 men and 46 women). Special Agent James A. Brown, who described existing conditions in the following excerpts, made the report:

These Indians are gradually adopting the ways of the white people.

As yet no houses have been built by the Indians, but all of them live in teepes [sic], never remaining in one place long at a time. They are quite superstitious, and as soon as one of their number dies they will move camp within the next few hours.

They have a small farm, located at Moccasin Spring, about 18 miles from Kanab. This farm is taken care of by the Indians. At present about 7 acres are cultivated. Corn and alfalfa are the chief crops raised. They do not realize much money from their farm, as they do not try to market any of their products; but as soon as it is ripe most of them go to Moccasin and eat up what they have raised.

The men work for the white men at odd jobs. The haying season is when they are most employed. Some few are herding sheep this year. The squaws have steady employment the year round washing for the white people. They get from 25 cents to 60 cents per day for putting out a washing (or a batch of clothes). They never get anything ahead, but spend their money as fast as they make it to support themselves.

The young Indians do a great deal of hunting, but game is very scarce, rabbits being about all they get. Formerly the Buckskin Mountain afforded excellent hunting ground, but since that has been made a forest reserve the Indians have been shut off. In fact, they have not been allowed the same privilege as white men have during the open game season, which I think they certainly should have.

Deer are very plentiful on the Buckskin Mountain, and before it was made a reserve these Indians obtained most of their living from that source. [233]

Concerned Church officials brought the condition of the Kaibab Paiute to the attention of Utah Senator Reed Smoot who, in late 1905, asked the Office of Indian Affairs for federal relief. [234] The situation regarding access to traditional hunting lands, however, only worsened. On November 28, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt established the Grand Canyon National Game Preserve. [235] On January 11, 1908, Roosevelt proclaimed Grand Canyon National Monument, separating it from the Kaibab National Forest which was created that year from the forest reserve set aside in 1893. [236] From 1906 to 1923, the federal government employed hunters of the U.S. Biological Survey to kill predatory animals, including more than 800 cougars, 30 wolves, nearly 5,000 coyotes, and more than 500 bobcats. [237] State deer-hunting laws suddenly became rigidly enforced in the interest of the infant tourist industry. As off-reservation Indians with no treaty protection or hunting rights, the Kaibab Paiute were subject to these laws. The imposition of state license, season and bag limits dealt them a serious blow, as they had long been dependent on deer for food and buckskins to trade. Cut off from deer hunting, the Paiute were, as Ethnohistorian Martha Knack wrote, "plunged into hunger and poverty." [238]

The displacement of the Kaibab Paiute from their lands and the resources they had depended on created a crisis that prompted remedial action from the federal government. The government's solution to the "Indian problem," implemented throughout the West during the 19th and early 20th centuries, was the creation of Indian reservations. The creation of the Kaibab Indian Reservation was not accomplished by a single act of government, but rather evolved by fits-and-starts over a period of 10 years, from 1907 to 1917. This section describes the major factors in that evolution. Also included is information drawn from letters of superintendents of the Kaibab Agency, as well as from a number of investigatory reports filed by field agents during the early years. These data provide a picture of how the Kaibab Indian Reservation first developed and what resources were available to it during the years leading up to the establishment of Pipe Spring National Monument. It also offers additional information about Moccasin Ranch and about relations between its white residents and their Kaibab Paiute neighbors. [239]

By 1906 the Kaibab Paiute population reached a historic low of 73. By the Indian Appropriation Act of June 21, 1906 (34 Stats. 325 and 376), Congress appropriated $5,000 for the purchase of lands and sheep for the San Juan Paiute and $10,500 to "support and civilize" the Kaibab Indians in southern Utah and northern Arizona and for the purchase of lands and water, along with farming implements, machinery, and livestock. At the time of this appropriation, certain facts were reported by Office of Indian Affairs on the San Juan Paiute and Kaibab Paiute tribes. Regarding the latter, the Office reported that,

...a remnant of the Kaibab tribe, consisting of 73 Indians, owned a small tract of land aggregating about 12 acres and lying west of Kanab, Utah, on which they were trying to produce enough to exist, but that it was impossible for them to make a living because the land was next to worthless and that they had to rely upon the citizens of that place and the surrounding ranches and towns for enough to keep them from starving; that in past years they had access to the Buckskin Mountains [sic] to graze their ponies and secure game, that they realized quite a revenue from the sale of buckskins, which has since been cut off; that the only thing which they could secure money from was the sale of the few pine nuts they were able to gather during the fall. [240]

U.S. Indian Inspector Levi Chubbuck was immediately directed by the Office of Indian Affairs to conduct an investigation for purposes of determining how the funds could best be expended in the interests of the Indians in the region. Chubbuck's report of December 31, 1906, failed to find the Indians in a starving condition, but made other observations:

Hearing the Indians express the desire that they might have the Moccasin Ranch because it was where their fathers and grandfathers had been born and were buried, I made inquiry of Mr. Nephi Johnson, Sr., one of the first white men to come into that section, as to the early occupancy of that land by the Indians, and he stated publicly that to his knowledge the Indians were living on what is now known as Moccasin Ranch long before any white men lived there, and that they tilled the ground and used the water from the springs. Afterwards white men took full possession and the Indians were located on land close to Kanab. Their close proximity to the town being distasteful to many at the time, the church undertook to relocate the Indians at the ranch acquiring a claim to the 10 or 12 acres with water right and putting them in possession of the tract. [241]

As opposed to Office of Indian Affairs accounts, in the 1920s local Latter-day Saints and their attorneys asserted that the Kaibab Paiute were drawn to the settlement of Moccasin only after the Church mission was established there, as well as by the Church's "gift" of land and water. These assertions were made in legal defense of their homestead claims.

What appears to be the case is that Indians were indeed living at Moccasin Spring, at least seasonally, prior to Maxwell's 1865 claim. In fact, the suggestion that any such reliable water source went unused prior to the Latter-day Saints' arrival would seem highly improbable as the livelihood of the Indians depended upon the use of all available resources. When the Navajo raids of December 1865 forced the four-year abandonment of the Kanab settlement, some, if not all, of the Paiute band at Moccasin may have moved to Kanab Creek, joining others already there prior to the settlement's abandonment. Their combined numbers would have offered an increased measure of safety against the Navajo. As Latter-day Saints responded to Brigham Young's 1870 call to resettle Kanab, demand for irrigable land along Kanab Creek grew quickly. With the threat of Navajo raids ended, the Paiute were no longer needed in Kanab as political allies. At that point it is likely they were viewed not only as competitors, but also perhaps as a public nuisance. The fact that some Indians were reduced to begging for food and clothing may explain Chubbuck's 1906 report (cited earlier) that the Indians' close proximity to Kanab was "distasteful to many." The Church's solution to the problem may well have been to draw the Indians back to Moccasin with an offer of water, land, and a Church mission. The offer of the return of some part of their traditionally used land and water would have been attractive to the Kaibab band, especially as they were being squeezed out of the Kanab area by a growing number of white settlers. The establishment of a Church mission might also have been considered beneficial by providing institutional charity to the Indians, a form arguably more reliable than individual charity.

More importantly from the Church perspective, the mission may have facilitated some measure of Church control of the Indians by offering a tried-and-true means of imposing Euroamerican, and distinctively Latter-day Saint, values upon them. In other words, if the Indians became enough "like them," the Church and its members would provide enough work, food, clothes, and other essentials to enable the Indians to physically survive. Even so, Kaibab Paiute lives were still miserable enough to prompt such heart-rending appeals as the one made in 1880 by Jacob Hamblin to John Wesley Powell (cited earlier), to warrant the Indian Appropriation Act of June 21, 1906, and to prompt later federal investigations, such as the one made by Levi Chubbuck (quoted above). Levi Chubbuck filed a supplemental report to the Office of Indian Affairs on February 12, 1907. While unsatisfactory to his superiors in several ways, these two reports led to a modification of the original Indian Appropriation Act of 1906. Under the Indian Appropriation Act of March 1, 1907 (34 Stats. 1015 and 1049), the original sums were reappropriated and made available for the use of the Paiute Indians in southern Utah and northern Arizona. [242] In Chubbuck's February report, he stated, "Stock raising must be the principal means of support for these people, as it is for the whites of this region, hence it is necessary that ample provision for grazing ground be made..." [243]

On May 18, 1907, Inspector Frank C. Churchill was instructed to return to the area and to complete the investigation begun by Chubbuck. While Chubbuck had reported on the conditions of the Paiute, his report failed to make definite recommendations. Churchill inspected conditions of the Shivwits group residing near St. George, population about 150, and at Moccasin Ranch, where the Kaibab Paiute were reported as numbering about 80. In his report of August 30, 1907, Churchill also noted a fenced pasture containing several thousand acres and "some ten or fifteen acres of tillable lands, well-watered by a spring located on the private property of Moccasin Ranch, owned by Mr. Jonathan Heaton, the Indians owning one-third of the full flow of the spring..." [244] Churchill reported that the Indians' share of water was sufficient to cultivate 50 acres. [245] Churchill also reported on several smaller, scattered groups of Paiute living in northern Arizona, central Utah, and eastern Nevada. [246]

In submitting Inspector Churchill's report to the Secretary of the Interior on October 8, 1907, Acting Commissioner C. F. Larrabey stated,

It appears from the report that it will be practically impossible to locate these Indians on any one tract of land, as each group is attached to the vicinity where it is now located and would not be content elsewhere; and as the appropriation would not be sufficient to purchase lands for each group in the vicinity of its present location, some other policy must be followed. [247]

In this letter Larrabey concurred with Churchill's recommendation that a reservation 18 miles long by 12 miles wide be established "for the use of the Kaibab and other Indians." He also agreed with the Inspector's other recommendations: 1) that one-third of the flow from Moccasin Spring be piped down 1.5 miles south of the spring "to a point at or near the cedar post set by me with the assistance of Jonathan Heaton, Walter Funke, and E. D. Wooley [sic] ...the object being to construct a small, inexpensive reservoir at the end of the pipeline;" 2) that an engineer be directed to measure the flow of Moccasin Spring and to stake out a pipeline and reservoir site; and that 3) after the construction of the water system, between 50 and 100 two-year-old heifers, along with a suitable number of bulls, be issued to the Kaibab Paiute. Larrabey assured the Secretary that "the adoption of these recommendations for the Kaibabs will place them in a comparatively independent position whereby they can protect their homes without further assistance from the Government." [248]

The Secretary of the Interior approved Larrabey's recommendation on October 10, 1907. Five days later, Larrabey requested the Secretary to direct the Commissioner of the General Land Office (GLO) to withdraw the necessary lands (216 square miles, or 138,000 acres) from settlement and entry. On October 16, 1907, First Assistant Secretary Thomas Ryan approved the request and referred it to the Commissioner of the GLO for action. On October 23, 1907, the GLO notified the Register and Receiver in Phoenix, Arizona, of the withdrawal of public lands for the Kaibab Indians. The 1907 withdrawal - the first step toward creating the Kaibab Indian Reservation - enclosed all of Moccasin and Pipe Spring and part of the town of Fredonia within the boundaries of the reservation.

Office of Indian Affairs Chief Engineer William H. Code was directed on November 11, 1907, to further investigate the water situation at Moccasin Spring and to determine the requirements and cost for a pipeline. After he reported, it became apparent that the pipeline and irrigation project could not be completed by June 30, the end of the 1907 fiscal year, and also that this work should be accomplished prior to the purchase of farm equipment and livestock. The Secretary of the Interior learned that the $10,500 appropriated in June 1906 had to be spent in fiscal year 1907, and took action to have the funds reappropriated by Congress for fiscal year 1908.

In 1908, by agreement between the Department of the Interior and the Heaton family, the Kaibab Paiute moved from the 10-acre tract the Church had given them located next to Moccasin Spring, to a location 1.5 miles to the southeast. The new school and village were established on lands claimed by the Heatons but relinquished to the Indians in exchange for the Moccasin land the Indians had vacated. That year a division weir was installed at Moccasin Spring and a pipeline was laid to transport the Indians' one-third share of water to the new village reservoir. [249] Both Indians and white employees living and working in Kaibab Village for both domestic and agricultural purposes used the Indians' portion of spring water. Other developments (believed to all date to 1908) comprised a school, an office/residence for the superintendent, six stone residences for Kaibab Paiute families, and several support buildings. In addition, the Indian Office issued 83 heifers to the Indians.

A number of protests were received against the setting aside of the lands for the Kaibab Paiute. On December 9, 1909, Senator Reed Smoot submitted a petition to the Secretary of the Interior signed by about 100 residents of Kanab, Utah, and Fredonia, Arizona. The petition requested that the newly created Kaibab Indian Reservation be reduced in area. The Secretary replied that he would request a report from the superintendent of the Kaibab agency "as to the needs of the Indians for the lands referred to in the petition," and would advise Senator Smoot later about the matter. [250] While no other correspondence on this particular petition was found, no action was taken at this time to further reduce the reservation's size.

With their traditional economies threatened or destroyed by Euroamerican incursion and removal to reservations, Indians were forced to develop new strategies for survival. In his article, "When Indians Became Cowboys," historian Peter Iverson describes how and why many Indians became involved in the lucrative cattle industry:

As Indians began to search for ways to transform the imposed setting of the reservation into a home with appropriate cultural meaning, once again they had to tie economy with society. How could they use the lands they now occupied? They did not have to look far for possibilities. Non-Indian neighbors all over the West had appropriated Indian land for the cattle industry. Now whites were trying to gain access to Indian reservations for the same purpose. It is not surprising that Indians soon realized that cattle ranching offered them opportunities too. Indian cattle ranching therefore began to emerge as a strategy to confront changing times. It gradually became part of the tradition of many western Indian communities. [251]

Cattle were initially provided to the Indians by the federal government, while agents of the Office of Indian Affairs worked hard to develop the reservation's fledgling industry. Despite problems (such as continued pressure by non-Indian neighbors for the government to reduce the Indian land base), cattle ranching still offered the best chance for many Native American communities to build a local economy and rebuild a society.

Early reports by Indian Service officials provide a glimpse into the increasingly important role cattle ranching played on the Kaibab Indian Reservation shortly after it was set aside. During the month of June 1911, at W. H. Code's instructions, engineer Howard C. Means of the U.S. Indian Service at Ft. Duchesne, Utah, investigated conditions relative to the water supply for the Indians on the Kaibab Indian Reservation. Means' report of July 12, 1911, included a description of Kanab Creek and its use by Kanab residents, along with a description of Moccasin Springs. The latter, he reported,

...is composed of two springs. The larger one flows approximately 1/2 second foot and the smaller one about 1/3 of the amount of the larger. The Indians own 1/3 of the flow of the larger spring and this amounts to approximately 1/6 of a second foot. The Kaibab School is located 1? miles south of Moccasin Springs and the water is conveyed from the spring to the school through a 4" pipeline. This pipe empties into a small reservoir above the school buildings from which the fields are watered through open ditches. The school buildings are supplied for domestic use through a branch line connecting with the main line before it reaches the reservoir.... The school and farm is located on a sandy spot, which increases the amount of water necessary to grow crops.

Supt. R. A. Ward has approximately 150 acres under fences which is the school farm. He has 10 acres of this planted to alfalfa, 6 of which is good. The remainder is very poor on account of lack of water. He also has 1/2 acre of potatoes, which he waters... [252]

Means also mentioned that in addition Ward dry farmed 6 acres of wheat, 10 acres of rye, 5 acres of corn, 1.5 acres oats and cowpeas, and 2.5 acres cane and millet. "It appears that Supt. Ward is accomplishing considerable with the amount of water and help he had to work on," he wrote. Means' report continues, describing the Indian settlement at what is now called Kaibab Village and the white settlement at Moccasin:

There are about 90 Indians attached to [the Indian] school of which 50 live in the six small houses back of the school buildings. The remainder live around Kanab. Supt. Ward states these Indians own 300 head of cattle, which are kept in a pasture about 8 miles square and on a good range.

The Moccasin Springs, owned by Jonathan Heaton (except that portion claimed by the Indians), Pipe Springs, owned by Jonathan Heaton, and Two Mile Spring, owned by Brig. Riggs, are all the springs on the reservation that amount to anything.... I believe that Heaton acquired the rights to these springs from the Mormon Church and am unable to state how the Church acquired them. The Pipe Springs practically control the range to the Buckskin Mountains [sic] to the south and thousands of head of cattle water there. The Mormon Church built a two-story stone house at this spring a good many years ago but no one lives there at present.

The Heaton family live at the Moccasin Springs, which has been developed by planting trees and shrubbery until it is an oasis in the desert in reality. There are 4 dwelling houses, a schoolhouse and two barns, besides several small houses and sheds, located around the springs. [253]

When Means visited Moccasin during the summer of 1911, Jonathan Heaton was away, so he spoke with two of Heaton's sons, described as "joint owners in the place." He asked at what price they would sell their interests in Moccasin Springs. They told him that the place had been offered to the government "at the time plans were being made to move the Kaibab School there for $12,000 but were sure their father would not consider such a price at this time." [254] Means observed that given the fact that the federal government had expended $17,000 in building the school and pipeline and as water was in such scarce supply, he couldn't understand why the government hadn't taken advantage of Jonathan Heaton's earlier willingness to sell. Means urged that steps be taken to determine the Heaton's legal holdings, to arrive at a fair appraisement of their rights, and to acquire them by purchase. There is no evidence that his recommendation was acted upon, but others later echoed it.

15. Map of Kaibab Reservation, 1911 (Courtesy Bureau of Indian Affairs).

In 1911 Special Agent Lorenzo D. Creel reported to the Office of Indian Affairs what he had been able to learn about Jonathan Heaton's ownership rights at Moccasin and about the way in which the Indians' had obtained their one-third ownership rights to the main spring at Moccasin. An unknown informant made the following statement. It is apparent from the quotation, however, that the informant was living in Kanab, Utah, and that he was president of Kanab Stake at the time of the interview. [255] The informant stated the following to Agent Creel:

Mr. Heaton acquired his title as follows:

The Springs were located by an unknown man. [256] The Indians had undoubtedly used them for centuries and [had] attempted to obstruct the flow of the Springs by various means. They later allowed the white man to remain in possession of them. A cooperative association within the Mormon Church, known as the "United Order," purchased his right. When this Society dissolved and distributed its property among the stockholders, the Church purchased 1/3 of the water and gave it to the Indians who were then living close to the present Heaton improvements and sent a man to help them bring some of the land under cultivation, as sort of a missionary enterprise. [257] Mr. Heaton took the remaining 2/3 of the Springs and all improvements as a part of his interest in the stock of the 'United Order,' and has retained peaceful possession up to the present time.... Now this is the natural home of the Indians. They already own ten acres of land with water right that was bought and given to them over twenty-five years ago by our Church and that right has always been respected by the whites that have operated from then till now. The Indians have cultivated the ten acres all these years.... And to show he [Mr. Heaton] is not extravagant in his values he has given me, as president of the [Kanab] stake, a standing offer of a thousand dollars for [the] Indians unimproved, so far as buildings are concerned, ten acres with water right. [258]

This quotation documents that by 1911, Jonathan Heaton had an interest in buying the land and water rights granted to the Indians by the Church when its mission was established about 1880.

Correspondence between Superintendent Ward and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs indicates that providing water for Indian stock continued to be a concern. By 1912 the Indian cattle herd had grown to 350-400 head. [259] On March 5, 1912, Ward wrote that there had been one unsuccessful attempt to pipe water from some of the mountain springs to the flat below and that it had failed, primarily because of the pipe's exposure to the elements. He opined that the construction of two or three reservoirs was a more viable solution, to be located in different sections of the pasture. The possibility of digging wells was also suggested. [260]

In the same letter, Ward referred to "drift" permits he had issued to cattlemen for grazing: "These permits call for 1,700 head of cattle which, of course, will not be on the reservation all of the time as they drift on and off. The rate charged was twenty cents per annum or a total of $340. For years sheep have grazed on this land much to its detriment, however, they are not allowed on the reservation now." [261] Ward stated that his main objective was "to make the Indians self-supporting and self-reliant." He maintained that the Kaibab Paiute

...have the nicest bunch of cattle in the country. This spring I expect to sell for the Indians about $1,000 worth of steers which will be the first sale from the increase of 83 heifers, which were issued to them three years ago and which the purchase price was $1,860. Beside this a number of steers have been slaughtered which is a great benefit to the Indians....

Agriculture is a great factor in the Indian's development and much more difficult to impress upon him than stock raising.... The people are just beginning to realize the opportunities that agricultural pursuits offer them. [262]

Ward had fenced over 200 acres of the reservation for dry farming. Most of the Indian residents were skeptical of his experiments, but a few were beginning to show interest. "The main thing is to get the Indian to see the necessity of cultivation," he asserted. He also was making "very slow progress" in convincing the Kaibab they needed better horses, but "a few of them are gradually working toward better stock," he reported. [263]

Office of Indian Affairs Second Assistant Commissioner C. F. Hauke forwarded Ward's letter of March 5, 1912, to the Secretary of the Interior stating, "It is clear from this report that the most promising means for supplying the necessary water supply for stock, at least for the present, lies in construction of reservoirs rather than to undertake the reconstruction of the pipeline from the springs higher up the mountain side." [264] Hauke directed Ward to construct reservoirs and to dig test wells in the ravines near the school site, using Indian labor. Hauke advised Ward that the $500 appropriation to develop water for stock must be expended by June 30. Hauke stated that he was "not convinced that the course you are now pursuing with reference to the grazing of outside cattle on the reservation is obtaining the largest revenue..." and wanted to discuss the matter at a later date. Documentation indicates that by 1913 grazing fees charged to non-Indian cattlemen were significantly increased. At least 28 permits were issued in 1913; the rate charged per head for cattle was most often one dollar per head, paid in advance; a few men were charged 50 cents per head. [265]

On June 11, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson issued Executive Order No. 1786 temporarily withdrawing public lands ("Township 41 N., R.2 W., G. and S.R.M.") from settlement, location, sale, or entry "for the purpose of classifying said lands, and pending the enactment of legislation for the proper disposition thereof..." [266] (As this executive order did not supersede the Departmental Withdrawal Order of October 16, 1907, it is presumed that its intent was to strengthen the 1907 order in anticipation of the creation of the reservation.) A few weeks later, on July 2, Office of Indian Affairs Commissioner F. H. Abbot wrote to Department of the Interior Secretary Franklin K. Lane to request that the lands that included the town of Fredonia be eliminated from the reservation. The public survey completed in 1912 showed that part of the town lay within its boundary. In describing the process by which lands had been set aside for the Indians, Abbott stated that the October 1907 withdrawal,

...was temporary in its nature and was made for the purpose merely of protecting the Indians from encroachments by whites and not with the idea of establishing a permanent reservation. Since the withdrawal the Office has had correspondence with officers of the Indian Service and with other persons, and has invariably promised to eliminate the lands not actually needed for the Indians, and has assured the settlers that any prior rights obtained by them would be respected. At the time the withdrawal was made the lands were unsurveyed, but the township containing the town of Fredonia, namely 41 north, range 2 west, has now been surveyed and the approved plat of survey filed in the local land office.... The established line of the reservation on the east runs almost directly through the center of the town of Fredonia, and the citizens of the town have requested that all of the township now included in the temporary withdrawal be eliminated. [267]

Abbott wrote that Special Agent Creel had been sent to Fredonia, as instructed by the Office, "to gain a thorough knowledge of the true conditions so that he may be in a position to make a clean cut recommendation as to what eliminations should be made." Creel submitted his report on May 5, 1913, stating,

So far as I was able to learn that part of the petition giving a history of the town and conditions is substantially correct. These people settled upon this land in good faith and proceeded to make homes in the face of almost insurmountable difficulties, and have had a constant struggle to maintain themselves and families. They appear to be honest, industrious citizens and anxious to comply with the law in every respect, but earnestly desire that they may obtain legal right to the homes they have labored so hard to establish. [268]

In his report, Creel recommended that the township of Fredonia be eliminated from the reservation to enable its citizens "to obtain a legal title to their holdings without further delay." Commissioner Abbott concurred with Creel's recommendation and asked that the Departmental Withdrawal Order of October 16, 1907, be revoked "so far as affects the township" of Fredonia. The recommendation was approved by First Assistant Secretary A. A. Jones on July 8, 1913, and referred to the Commissioner of the General Land Office. Thus by Departmental order, the part of Township 41 north, range 2 west, that lay within the boundaries of the reservation was withdrawn. [269]

The General Land Office survey of the boundaries of the Kaibab reservation (Township No. 40 North, Range No. 4 West) was begun on July 1, 1914, and completed on August 10, 1914. At the urging of Chairman Mulford Winsor (Arizona's State Land Commission), First Assistant Secretary A. A. Jones wrote to Office of Indian Affairs Commissioner Clay Tallman in early July requesting that the survey be suspended, stating, "It is the belief of the Department that should it later be decided to establish a permanent Indian reservation it is best to fix the boundaries of such reservation in accordance with the regular public land surveys." [270] Commissioner Tallman concurred and subsequently telegraphed the Surveyor General on July 14, 1914, instructing him to omit the survey of the reservation boundaries. [271] The first township plat of survey for part of the reservation was not approved until February 15, 1916, and was filed in Phoenix, Arizona, on September 8, 1917. The map shows the 22,637.66-acre area surveyed as public land, not as Indian reservation.

A lengthy "Report on Water Supply of the Kaibab Indian Reservation, Arizona" was submitted to Commissioner Tallman in November 1914 by Henry W. Dietz, Superintendent of Irrigation, U.S. Indian Service, Salt Lake City, Utah. It contains a description of the reservation, weather conditions, and water supply sources, including Kanab Creek, Moccasin Springs, Pipe Springs, Two Mile Spring, Stock Spring, and seepage water. Dietz described Agency developments at a site located 1.5 miles from Moccasin Springs. They included a schoolhouse, a combined office/superintendent's residence, barn, sheds, and six stone cottages "built for Indian families in order that they might be near the school and water." [272] These were located close to the school. A water and irrigation system consisted of a four-inch pipeline about 7,760 feet long piped to the various buildings, also discharging into a small reservoir (200 feet square, 3.5 feet deep) near the school. [273]

Dietz described farming activities on reservation lands as practiced both by the "Agency farmer" (Superintendent Ward) and by the Indians. Ward maintained 1 acre of alfalfa and 1 acre of potatoes on irrigated land, and dry farmed 17 acres of barley and wheat, 28 acres of corn, and 25 acres of "Soudan grass." The Indians farmed 15 acres of alfalfa and 5 acres of corn on irrigated lands. They dry farmed 10 acres of alfalfa and 15 acres of corn.Thus,a total of 22 acres were irrigated and 95 acres dry farmed. [274] The report by Dietz also evaluated available water storage options. It concluded that diverting and storing water from Kanab Creek was impractical and should not be considered, even though some Kanab citizens had offered to "trade" a supply of water to the Indians for part of the reservation land. Dietz stated, "All of the flow of this creek is used by farmers at Upper Kanab, Kanab, and Fredonia, in all about 1,500 acres being irrigated." Dietz made the following observation:

There seems no other way of obtaining water from any source other than that already being used and my recommendation is that every effort be put forth to utilize the present supply to obtain a maximum benefit. To accomplish this I believe the culture should be confined to garden truck and such crops as can be used by the Indians in their homes. I do not think that an attempt should be made [to] raise alfalfa since this requires a great deal of water and can benefit a very limited number of Indians only. [275]

Dietz then offered a recommendation that had been suggested by several before him:

It would be very desirable to obtain from Jonathan Heaton his interests in the Moccasin Springs and the land to which he claims ownership. This would give the Indians water sufficient to irrigate seventy-five acres in addition to that now irrigated by them and would also give them undisputed title to till the land in the vicinity of the School. Heaton is endeavoring to obtain title to six homesteads and this will occupy all the best land in this vicinity. There is no question but what he has a moral, and perhaps a legal right to a certain amount of land but I do not believe he should be given title to any land to which he did not have a just claim at the time the reservation was established. I was unable to obtain any committal from Mr. Heaton relative to a consideration for which he would be willing to relinquish his claims but believe he would consider a proposition were it tendered him. [276]

Dietz thought the Indians needed complete control of Moccasin Spring for a number of reasons. He observed, "...there is a constant feeling on both sides of unfair division of water." It was pointed out to Dietz that Heaton was diverting spring water into a small reservoir prior to its flow to the division weir. At the same time Heaton accused the Indians of battering down the edge of the weir in order to obtain more than their share. In addition to putting an end to such arguments, Dietz thought Indian control of Moccasin Spring would enable additional development of the springs, thereby increasing the water supply; it would also make it easier to ensure sanitary conditions. [277] Dietz's report recommended that test wells be drilled on the reservation in an attempt to locate additional sources of water.

In his report, Dietz made only a curt reference to Pipe Spring: "These springs are located on the southwestern portion of the reservation and are used only for stock watering. They are claimed by Jonathan Heaton." [278] The controversy over water between white residents of Moccasin and the reservation's Superintendent Ward centered squarely on Moccasin Spring. No attempts were made by him or by the Office of Indian Affairs to claim or utilize water from Pipe Spring, nor does any documentation suggest the idea was ever brought up during the reservation's early years.

By Executive Order of January 13, 1915, all land within one-quarter mile of Canaan Reservoir was set aside as public water reserve No. 24. The following year, an Executive Order of April 17, 1916, set aside all land within one-quarter mile of Two Mile Spring and all land within one-quarter mile of Pipe Spring as public water reserve No. 34, open to all livestock and travelers. [279]

16. GLO survey map, approved in 1916 (Courtesy NPS, Water Resources Division).

On July 9, 1917, Commissioner Tallman submitted to the Secretary of the Interior a draft of an executive order that would withdraw 125,000 acres of Arizona land "for the Kaibab and other Indians residing thereon" along with a letter recommending his approval of the order. Secretary Lane forwarded the order and Tallman's recommendation to President Wilson on July 12, saying he concurred with Tallman's opinion. On July 17, 1917, President Wilson issued Executive Order No. 2667 creating a permanent reservation for the Kaibab Paiute. At the time of this order, the Kaibab population was 95 persons of which 54 were adults and 41 of minor age. [280] About 87,000 acres were under lease to stockmen for grazing purposes, with the remaining grazing lands utilized for tribal stock. [281] The Indians had individual stock valued at $18,600 and tribal stock valued at $23,400. The total value of all individual and private property on the reservation in July 1917 was $221,578. [282]

On June 16, 1917, Commissioner Cato Sells, Office of Indian Affairs, wrote to Secretary Lane requesting yet another modification to the reservation. Sells informed the Secretary that the GLO had abstained from surveying the reservation boundaries in response to First Assistant Secretary A. A. Jones' request of July 10, 1914 (referenced earlier). Since then, portions of townships 39, 40, and 41 north, ranges 4 and 5 west, had been surveyed without regard to the boundary lines of the reservation. The filing of plats of these townships was being withheld by the Commissioner of the GLO pending adjustment of the reservation boundary lines. Sells transmitted a blueprint map requesting the revision of the reservation boundaries, eliminating sections along the western border and adding sections on the east. He explained, "This has been done in order that the boundaries may fall on section lines and also for the purpose of removing conflicts along the western line with settlers who have established themselves within the lines of the reservation but outside of the fence.... The effect of these changes will reduce the total area by more than five thousand acres." [283] The boundaries were revised in accordance with Sells' request. By the time the final boundaries were established, the land base of the reservation was 120,413 acres.

The Pipe Spring "Compromise"

Shortly after Dr. Edgar A. Farrow was appointed superintendent of the Kaibab Agency in 1917, he became concerned about the manner in which the Heatons were using the main spring at Moccasin. He particularly objected to the two-inch pipe installed by the Heatons which had for years been diverting water from the main spring to property owned by the Heatons prior to its reaching the measurement weir. In 1918, in anticipation of legal action that the Agency might take against the Heatons to protect the Indians' share of Moccasin Spring water, Farrow began trying to track down the history of the Indians' water and land rights in Moccasin. He wrote Jonathan Heaton an innocent-sounding letter, stating that his objective was to gather data "relative to matters pertaining to the reservation," which would be useful to future superintendents: "...To this end I am asking you to advise me in detail as to your knowledge of the rights of the Indians in the water of Moccasin Spring, how they obtained such rights, when and from whom if possible." [284]

17. Map of Kaibab Reservation, Arizona, 1921 (Courtesy National Archives, Record Group 75).

In response to Farrow's request, Jonathan Heaton's brief response is cited in full:

In answer to your ____ [indecipherable] to the Indians share of the water at Moccasin, will say that the old Kannan Cattle Company bought 1/3 of the Sand Spring water with about 11 acres of land af. [from] Lewis Allen. Then the Mormon Church bought it af. [from] the Kannan Co. and gave it to the Kane Co. Indians without any remuneration.

A man by the name of James Maxwell was the first white settler at Moccasin. [285]

["Kannan" should be spelled "Canaan" Cattle Company. "James Maxwell" should be William B. Maxwell.]

Farrow forwarded a copy of Heaton's handwritten reply to the Office of Indian Affairs with a letter detailing his concerns. He was convinced the Heatons were cheating the Indians of their water, not only by the two-inch diversion pipe above the weir, but by occasionally obstructing the workings of the weir, both of which jeopardized the Indians' water supply. Upon receipt of his letter, the Office of Indian Affairs searched their files in attempt to document the use of Moccasin Spring. One piece of information they sent Farrow was an excerpt from the 1911 report made by Special Agent Creel, cited earlier. While sending this and other information to Farrow, Assistant Commissioner E. B. Meritt stated, "Nothing in the nature of a deed or other evidence of title under which the Indians acquired their share of the flow of Moccasin Springs as a gift from elders of the Mormon Church, is in evidence here." [286] Meritt then offered a rationale for why his office had not pursued the oft-recommended purchase of the Heatons' two-thirds rights to Moccasin Spring:

For your information it may be said that ever since Inspector Chubbuck's visit to this locality there has been more or less consideration given to the acquisition from the Heatons of the so-called Moccasin Ranch and their interest in Moccasin Springs, but the valuation placed thereon has been more than it was thought the property was reasonably worth. It is understood that the Heatons themselves have only 'squatters' rights, arising through occupancy, the lands being unsurveyed preventing them from acquiring absolute title thereto. Interference with the flow of water to which the Indians are entitled may be a move on the part of the Heatons to cause the Government to acquire their rights in order to avoid further difficulty. These latter suggestions are offered solely for your information and, of course, are to be regarded as confidential. [287]

Farrow responded with a suggestion to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, one which - had it been carried out - would have had a direct and immediate impact on Pipe Spring:

My proposal is as follows: That we offer to Mr. Heaton a compromise in the shape of allowing him to continue with his two-inch pipe at the Sand Spring provided he will in exchange lay a one-inch pipe from Pipe Spring to a point in the so-called Pipe Pasture, known also as the West Pasture, giving to the Government a perpetual title to the capacity of this pipe, the pipe together with the right of way to be furnished by Mr. Heaton and to become the property of the United States without remuneration...

An arrangement of this kind would result in a solution of the water problem in the West Pasture, which after the expiration of the present permit (June 1, 1919) could be used either as a bull pasture or allowed to grow up for winter range. I am convinced that this arrangement would eventually be of more advantage to the reservation and the Indians than the elimination of the two-inch pipe at Moccasin and at the same time it suggests an opportunity for the Heaton corporation to give the reservation value received for what they are undoubtedly obtaining more than their due without interrupting their present arrangement.

I am submitting this proposition to the office for approval before taking the matter up with Mr. Heaton.

In this connection I would say that in my letter of July 16... [in which] I discussed the title to Pipe Spring and referred the matter to your office for investigation and am of the opinion that before any action is taken on the plan proposed in this letter that we determine definitely whether Mr. Heaton's title has any special value. If, however, we found that his title might be invalid and we could at the same time prevail upon him to agree to our proposition and actually lay the proposed pipe, we could immediately place a filing on the amount of water thus appropriated and in this manner establish for the United States an unquestionable title. [288]

Farrow included a sketch map with his letter that showed the Pipe Spring water would have to be piped approximately 1,320 feet. It is worth noting his reference to plans for the "west pasture." He did not plan on renewing the cattlemen's permit to graze their cattle on this desirable piece of land.

Assistant Commissioner E. B. Meritt responded to Farrow's suggestion with a letter that reveals the highly complicated legal aspects of the issues that pertained to both Moccasin and Pipe Spring. Most of Meritt's letter is quoted below:

The office has your letter of August 23 wherein you suggest as a possible solution of the 'Moccasin two-inch pipe problem' that 'we offer to Mr. Heaton a compromise in the shape of allowing him to continue with his two-inch pipe at the Sand Spring provided he will in exchange lay a one-inch pipe from Pipe Spring to a point in the so-called Pipe Pasture, etc.'

It is presumed that you suggest the use of a one-inch pipe in order to obtain an amount of water equal to one-half of that which Mr. Heaton obtains [at Moccasin Spring], the Indians' share in this water being one-third and Mr. Heaton's share being two-thirds. In this connection your attention is invited to the fact that a one-inch pipe will not carry one-half the water that a two-inch pipe will carry. In order to carry one-half the water that will flow through a two-inch pipe under given conditions, a one and one-half inch pipe must be employed.

Since it appears that Mr. Heaton has only 'squatter's rights' to the land which he occupies and as the title of the water used by the Indians is unsettled, it would seem to be inadvisable to take any steps which might complicate the situation; therefore, your proposal to trade, so to speak, the Indians' rights in Sand Spring for the right in Pipe Spring would seem inadvisable. This does not take into consideration that Mr. Heaton's title to Pipe Spring has not been definitely determined. If his title to this Spring should be invalid we would then have in return for the exchange only the value of the pipe laid by Mr. Heaton from Pipe Spring as proposed; furthermore, additional complications in regard to the water might develop.

Until such time as the land and water rights can be definitely fixed, some means of procuring for the Indians an actual one-third of the waters of Moccasin, or Sand Spring, should be developed... [289]

The following spring, Farrow took up the matter of the two-inch pipe with one of Jonathan Heaton's sons, Charles C. Heaton. Heaton told Farrow the history of the weir's installation by George Sears in 1907 and assured him that the water diverted by the family's disputed two-inch pipe had been taken into consideration when the measuring weir was installed below it. Farrow felt unqualified to make the measurements in order to verify the truth of Heaton's statement. [290] Meanwhile, he continued to pursue information about the Heatons' claims. In April 1919 he wrote the Mohave County Recorder to inquire if water filings had ever been recorded on either Moccasin or Pipe Spring, stating "I am attempting to fix the legal and moral rights of settlers." [291]

The above correspondence between Farrow and the Office of Indian Affairs illustrates that because the Heatons had not yet established their legal claims to Moccasin or Pipe Spring, the Agency feared negotiating with the family on the Indians' behalf with regards to either property. Any deal that the Agency made with the Heatons might later strengthen the Heatons' claims of ownership by being viewed as tacit acknowledgement of their ownership. This would in turn weaken the Agency's own position against those very claims. Consequently, no action was taken by the Agency to negotiate with the Heatons to either obtain access to Pipe Spring water or to purchase the Heatons' claimed two-thirds water rights at Moccasin. Instead, they focused their efforts on protecting the Indians' share of water from Moccasin Spring, one of the few claims in the region that was contested by absolutely no one. Farrow protested any actions taken by the Heatons that he perceived to be detrimental to the interests of the Kaibab Paiute. In September 1919 he filed a protest with the Secretary of State of Arizona over a new problem that arose in August:

I am enclosing herewith a formal protest which is self-explanatory except that it does not explain the rights and title to the water of the springs in question.

Several years ago - perhaps thirty or more - one-third of the outflow of Moccasin Springs was purchased from the squatters and given to the Indians. Since that time the squatters right to the property on which the springs are situated has come into the possession of Jonathan Heaton and sons. These people have at various times constructed a dirt dam between the outflow of the main springs and the weir constructed by the Government for the division of the water. These dams have according to the opinion of expert water men, inhibited the flow of the springs (and this fact has been proven by demonstration) and through breaking down have been a constant menace to the water supply of the Indians who use this water for culinary purposes as well as irrigation. As the Indian Camp is situated in a position that makes water unobtainable except that which comes from these springs, any obstruction of the flow is a serious matter.

Not being familiar with the law covering such cases and being unable for the moment to obtain expert legal opinion, I am entering this protest at the moment when last dam (constructed early in August, 1919) has broken down and polluted the water and obstructed the pipes. It is my intention to ask the Indian Office to enter suit for protection of the rights of the Indians and this protest is formally made as a basis of such suit.

I would consider it a favor if you would refer this document to the proper department and advise me with whom I should communicate. [292]

No response to Farrow's letter has been located. Less than two years later, in January 1921, Farrow reported to the Office of Indian Affairs that the Heatons were attempting to increase their water supply by constructing a new tunnel. He feared an imminent threat to the main spring's water supply:

The water supply of the Indians here could easily be reduced to such an extent as to destroy their fields if not to the limit of making the removal of the camp a necessity for want of water.

Inasmuch as the final settlement of the Heaton titles promises to be in the near future it seems necessary that some steps be taken to remove the menace that must always hang on the slender thread of the honesty of the owners of the Heaton ranch...

I suggest that steps be taken to tie up the land titles at Moccasin till the water is absolutely safeguarded. [293]

Two weeks later, Farrow reported to the Office of Indian Affairs that the Heatons had commenced blasting the new tunnel "just north of the old one above Jonathan Heaton's house." He maintained that the Heatons' continuing efforts to develop new water sources in Moccasin were having a negative impact on the Indians' portion of water: "The Indians insist that the water discharged into their reservoir has materially decreased in the last few years," he reported. [294] As additional proof of a reduction in water available to the Indians, he stated that he had been forced to eliminate three acres from fields and gardens irrigated on reservation lands since his arrival in 1917. He feared that if the Heatons' pending homestead claims were patented,

...and we have not safeguarded our water supply, a few blasts might easily leave us high and dry with no potable water of sufficient quantity to supply the Indians nearer than the Cottonwood farm, a matter of approximately 11 miles from the [Indian] school.

In this connection I wish to refer to Pipe Spring. Correspondence forwarded to me by the Office, which was had between the Director of Lands and the Register of Phoenix, indicated that the Valentine Scrip which had been the basis of tentative title on the part of the Pipe Springs Land & Livestock Company (Heatons) had been rejected; that appeal to the Secretary of Interior must be made within thirty days. To this date I have been unable to obtain any definite data as to the possible outcome of this claim, but have been unofficially advised that Governor Campbell of Arizona has been interested in the matter and has promised to support the claimants. If the spring and 40 acres surrounding it at Pipe had been in the hands of an actual settler who could make claim under the homestead rights and who had by his own efforts developed it, used it to advantage, and created himself a home, it would seem that at least a moral right to a title should be conceded; however, this spring has for years been in the hands of a corporation and this corporation has received many times the original cost from use; they have made no developments and I know positively that a portion of the water from this spring has been sold to the local cattlemen contingent on being able to deliver a marketable title. This sale has been made within the last year and money or value have actually changed hands as part of the option... [295]

Three important points are worth noting about Farrow's above statements. The first is that he questioned whether Pipe Spring's historical use as a cattle ranch, administered by a series of corporations, didn't disqualify its claimants from filing on it under homestead laws. Second, his reference to Arizona Governor Thomas E. Campbell's support of Heaton's case is important. Third and last, Farrow's letter of February 2, 1921, provides the earliest reference to the Heaton family's sale of one-third water rights at Pipe Spring to cattlemen.

The preceding documentation has been cited at length in order to convey the serious nature of the conflict that existed between the Heaton family of Moccasin and the Kaibab Indian Reservation's Agent and physician, Dr. Farrow. Such conflict appeared to escalate during the first few years after the reservation's formal establishment in 1917, which happened also to coincide with Farrow's arrival. [296] Issues related to competition for land and water would continue to impact relations between the Heatons and the Kaibab Paiute for years to come. Beginning in 1923, a third party would enter the fray: the National Park Service.

Heaton Family Claims to Lands Within the Reservation

President Wilson's Executive Order of June 11, 1913, withdrawing public lands from settlement prompted a flurry of activity by white settlers to legally prove their claims on lands that lay within the reservation. The Heaton family in particular fought a lengthy battle to gain title to lands it claimed. [297] They wrote letters, engaged lawyers in Phoenix and Washington, D.C., made personal appeals to Senator Reed Smoot in Utah and Senator Carl Hayden in Arizona, and submitted numerous petitions to state and Washington officials from about 1915 into the early 1920s, with only limited success. Two actions taken by the Heatons with regard to land claims are worthy of mention here. The first action consisted of separate filings by Jonathan Heaton's plural wife and two sons (Lucy, Fred, and Charles) on three 160-acre homestead entries. Final proof was made on these entries on December 13, 1920. The General Land Office accepted these three homestead applications and the local land office in Phoenix issued certificates. (The application of Charles C. Heaton did not include the Pipe Spring tract, only Moccasin property.)

At the urging of Dr. Farrow, however, the Office of Indian Affairs challenged Charles C. Heaton's homestead application. Farrow feared the Heaton family would at some time in the future cut off the Indians' access to Moccasin Spring. On March 7, 1921, Farrow filed a protest to the filing of a homestead claim by Charles C. Heaton. Upon hearing of the protest to his application, Heaton wrote his lawyers the following letter:

I have just learned from some of the Indians that the object of Supt. E. A. [sic] Farrow's going over our three homesteads. He has entered a protest and he and some of the Indians have signed it. Now these Indians are very friendly with us. They came and told us that they did not know what they were going to sign until the Supt. had them in the courthouse in Kane County, Utah. They came to us and told what the Supt. was doing.

I think it would be well to have this matter brought before Congressman Carl Hayden, as this Supt. [sic] actions on other matters have been put to him.

I also call your attention to the 7 or 8 acres of land that the Indians have used for some time that is in the 40 that my house and most of my improvements are in. Now, I am willing to put up something for the Indians that use this land, so as to be on good terms with them.

Hoping that with this information you will be able to get these homesteads through. [298]

His request for intervention by Senator Carl Hayden was not unusual. Mohave County Sheriff W. P. Mahoney had kept Hayden apprised of the land controversy and the conflict between Farrow and the Heatons for some time. The Heatons and their lawyers also kept Hayden informed. While the details of further negotiations are unknown, an agreement was reached in June 1923 whereby Heaton's homestead entry was approved, with several stipulations. An area not exceeding 200 feet on either side of the spring was to be segregated (about four acres), and it was stipulated that when the patent was issued to Heaton, it would contain a clause allowing him an unobstructed use of two-thirds of the flow of Moccasin Spring. [299]

18. Edgar and Anna Farrow and children, September 1923 (Photograph by Francis P. Farquhar, Courtesy National Archives, Record Group 79).

In addition to protesting Charles C. Heaton's Moccasin claim, Farrow served Heaton with a peremptory notice on August 7, 1922, directing him and other parties using certain lands within the reservation to vacate the lands within 60 days, and to promptly remove all enclosures and fences on those lands. The only exception made to the order was the Pipe Spring tract. Heaton's legal firm conferred with Senator Hayden regarding the matter in September 1922. On advice from his attorney, Heaton took no action to comply with Farrow's demands. [300] The fencing remained in place for another three years.

The second action of note by the Heatons involved the attempt by Jonathan Heaton's immediate family (by his plural wife Lucy) to claim thousands of acres of fenced reservation land under homestead laws. [301] This effort was unsuccessful because most of the 11 children listed as co-applicants with Jonathan and Lucy were minors on October 17, 1917, and thus did not meet the requirements of bona fide settlers as required under the Homestead Act. The family then petitioned in March 1921 to have these lands withdrawn from the reservation. That petition was denied by the Indian Office on April 6, 1921, and upheld by the Department of the Interior on July 5, 1921. [302]

Even after private claims to lands had been settled, relations between the residents of Moccasin and those charged with protecting the interests of the Kaibab Paiute would be strained for decades to come. Land and water were only two of the issues over which conflict arose. Trespassing and unauthorized use of reservation timber and grass by non-Indians created additional problems. [303] Dr. Farrow continued to be extremely diligent in his efforts to protect the interests of the Kaibab Paiute and to oppose the Heaton family's land claims. He was also vociferous about the removal of their fencing from reservation lands. At the request of Commissioner Charles H. Burke, the Secretary of the Interior asked the Attorney General to take legal action against the unlawful fencing in late November 1922; the Heatons and others finally removed the fences in 1925. Farrow's antagonism toward and intense distrust of the Heaton family would considerably color later interactions with Pipe Spring National Monument's first custodian, C. Leonard Heaton. Farrow's actions as an advocate, as well as his kindly doctoring, would endear him to the local Kaibab Paiute. [304]

The Kaibab Indian Reservation in 1922

Compared to earlier times, conditions on the reservation for the Kaibab Paiute seemed considerably improved immediately prior to the establishment of Pipe Spring National Monument.

During late August 1922, John W. Atwater inspected the Kaibab Agency and Schools. (The Kaibab Agency administered a second Indian school for the Shivwits Paiute.) His report indicated that Dr. Farrow's wife, Anna, served as the financial clerk for the Kaibab Agency. Atwater gave the Farrows high marks on their work: "A more efficient couple cannot be found in the Service." The couple had previously lived and worked in the Philippines. Atwater wrote,

Superintendent Farrow is an excellent officer. His education and training, combined with his business qualities and executive ability, equip him to manage successfully any Superintendency in the Service. His invariable kindness and good judgement have secured for him the respect and friendship of his Indian charges. He is not only content to remain in his present position but desires to do so until the indebtedness upon the tribal herd is paid. [305]

A white stockman, Arch Lallard, and white female housekeeper, Julia Perkins, were also employed at Kaibab Agency in 1922, as well as an unidentified teacher. Atwater reported existing conditions at the reservation:

...Perhaps about 50 acres are now under irrigation and for which a meagre [sic] supply of water is obtainable. By the expenditure of two or three thousand dollars, perhaps twenty-five acres additional might be placed under irrigation.

The reservation has no other resources. The Indians seek employment among the White settlers during the summer and autumn months, some of them going to the beet fields. Work is plentiful and fair wages.

The Indians, as a whole, appear healthy, though they have not increased in numbers. Epidemics such as Flu, Whooping cough, etc. account for this.

Outside of the very few acres of valley land, this reservation is of little value. It is mountainous, much of it devoid of any vegetation. It would sustain a small number of cattle, but a fence should surround it before it is used for pasture.... Like the [sic] most of the Indians of the southwest these people wish to remain where they are. By respecting these wishes very little can be done for them.

By day labor on the farms and ranches of the Mormon people, together with the small amount of produce raised on their irrigated tract of land, they can continue to eke out a precarious sort of existence. [306]

The report described the Kaibab School as a frame structure built to accommodate 20 students. The building, noted to be in good repair, contained a classroom, small dining room, wash room and pantry. Outbuildings included a barn, wagon shed, blacksmith shop, and outhouses. Other frame buildings included an office building and employee building. Buildings were heated by wood stoves and lighted by coal oil lamps. Atwater omitted description of the six stone residences known to have been occupied since 1908 by Kaibab Paiute families.

The Kaibab Agency owned three milk cows, a team of workhorses, a saddle horse, and one colt. Atwater recommended getting an additional saddle horse and replacing the team of horses with a truck. Attempts at dry farming by whites and Indians in the area had been abandoned, reported the inspector, who opined that the reservation was suited solely for stock raising. Still, 18 families maintained gardens at Kaibab, growing corn, potatoes, squash, pumpkin, beans, and other vegetables. "No surplus is produced, but full use is made of the products raised," he observed. The gardens, along with 25 acres of alfalfa, were irrigated with water piped from Moccasin to a reservoir near Agency headquarters at Kaibab Village. Another 25-acre field of alfalfa was located a two-mile distance from the Agency; it was irrigated with water originating on the reservation, possibly from Two Mile Spring. (Another 1922 report states that in addition to the one-third interest in Moccasin Spring, the Indians had "two fairly good stock water springs in the Indian pasture" and "two or three small seeps in the Indian pasture that may be developed into stock water springs." [307])

19. Charles C. Heaton, September 1923 (Photograph by Francis P. Farquhar, Courtesy National Archives, Record Group 79).

Inspector Atwater also reported on tribal livestock. The tribal herd consisted of 662 "good quality grade Herefords" in good condition. Atwater estimated that the reservation range could support 1,500 head of cattle if used to capacity. Individually owned cattle numbered 126 head, belonging to 21 owners. Atwater wrote, "About 150 horses are owned by the Kaibab; they are of mixed breed, many of them worthless. The care given the work horses is quite indifferent, many of them lacking sufficient feed in winter time." [308] He reported that the tribal herd was brought into the reservation in the autumn of 1916. At the time Farrow took over the superintendency in 1917 the herd consisted of 178 cows and 22 bulls, Atwater wrote. The sale of 200 head of cattle already had already brought in $3,600. Grazing leases were issued on land not needed by the Tribe for grazing its own herd.

In general, health on the reservation was reported to be good with only three known cases of tuberculosis. In addition to routine medical treatment, Dr. Farrow was usually called when Indian women were in labor and frequently assisted in deliveries. In concluding his report of inspection, Atwater shared Farrow's concern about the Moccasin water source and pending Heaton land claims, making the following recommendation: "Definite arrangements for water protection for the Kaibab Agency and school plant should be made with the Heatons before titles to the land claimed by them as homesteads are patented to them. The loss of this water would completely ruin the project there." [309]

While many area cattle ranchers were hard-hit by the 10-year drought that began in 1922, by 1930 the Kaibab Paiute had reportedly established a fairly successful cooperative cattle business. [310] In addition to farming their garden plots and tending their tribal and individual herds, the Indians of Kaibab Agency maintained their traditional practice of seasonal harvesting of wild food resources and medicinal plants. The impact that the later creation of Pipe Spring National Monument would have on the Kaibab Paiute and the relations between the two entities are interwoven throughout the rest of the monument's history.

The Heaton Family and Pipe Spring, 1909-1924

As mentioned earlier, A. D. Findlay sold the Pipe Spring property to Jonathan Heaton and his sons on January 2, 1909, with Findlay carrying the mortgage. The Heatons' copartnership was called the Pipe Springs Land & Live Stock Company. The Heatons continued to live in Moccasin while renting out the ranch at different times to a number of different families.

According to Leonard Heaton, O. F. Colvin lived at Pipe Spring from about 1908 to 1914. [311] Beginning in 1915 the Pipe Spring property was rented out for two years to William S. Rust for $10 a month. Given all the family linkages at Pipe Spring, it should not come as a surprise that Rust was Edwin D. Woolley's nephew. [312] Rust had taken up a homestead in Short Creek with his wife and children in 1911, proving the claim in just three-and-one-half years. The Rusts then sold this homestead for $2,200 and moved to Pipe Spring. Rust wanted to buy the Pipe Spring ranch but the Heatons were not inclined to sell. Rust later recalled in his autobiography: "In the big living room of the old Pipe Springs fort the red sofa and chairs looked very elegant and refined. Tourists traveling through there on their way to Cedar City, St. George, and Hurricane would stop for meals or stay overnight. There was no other road to those points." [313]

Rust's daughter, Maida, remembered that during that time, in addition to "the most wonderful spring water," the family had an orchard, garden, field, pastures, cows, a pet goat, chickens, "and a pond of water surrounded by tall trees." [314] She also mentioned the downside of living at Pipe Spring. She once had a face-to-face encounter with a rattlesnake while retrieving her shoes from the under-the-stairway kitchen closet. After leaving Pipe Spring in 1917, the Rusts struggled to make a living in Hurricane and Cedar City. Then "Uncle Dee" (Edwin D. Woolley) told Rust he needed someone to run his hotel in Kanab, so the family moved there in 1919 and took on the job, soon paying off all their debts. At some point after the Rusts left Pipe Spring, John E. White lived there as caretaker for the Heatons.

On March 3, 1920, Charles C. Heaton, vice-president of the Pipe Springs Land & Live Stock Company, filed application to locate Valentine scrip certification for the Pipe Spring ranch. (As mentioned earlier, the Valentine scrip had been filed by Daniel Seegmiller in 1888, later sold to cattleman B. F. Saunders, then passed down to succeeding buyers.) On April 10, 1920, the Commissioner of the General Land Office held for rejection of the filing of the Valentine scrip, subject to appeal:

The filing of Valentine scrip upon unsurveyed land does not segregate the land from the public domain, nor secure to the application a vested right in the land applied for. The application to locate the certificate according to the subdivisions of the survey is therefore held for rejection subject to the right of appeal to the Secretary of the Interior within thirty days from receipt of notice... [315]

Charles C. Heaton appealed the decision. Obtaining the quitclaim deed from the Findlays was one of the actions he took to prove legal ownership of Pipe Spring. Exactly when Jonathan Heaton and his sons paid off the mortgage of the Pipe Spring property is unknown. No quitclaim deed was obtained from A. D. Findlay until one was executed on December 30, 1920, to the Pipe Springs Land & Live Stock Company. On December 18, 1920, the Pipe Springs Land & Live Stock Company executed a quitclaim deed to Charles C. Heaton. (The reason these two deed transactions occurred out of chronological order is unknown, but both were executed in compliance with a letter request by Charles C. Heaton dated November 12, 1920.)

In late March 1921, Charles C. Heaton wrote to his attorney, John H. Page, to inquire about progress on the case. [316] On April 8, 1921, Page replied to Heaton that, with the recent recording of the Findlay deed, the legal firm now had an abstract of a complete chain of title from Daniel Seegmiller to Charles C. Heaton. In other words, they possessed the evidence needed to show the General Land Office that Heaton was legal owner of the Pipe Spring tract. The complete abstracts had been forwarded to the firm's attorney in Washington, D.C., Samuel Herrick. A decision in a test case which Page thought was similar to Heaton's had just been handed down. Herrick believed that the Heaton case might be argued under the earlier decision. [317] The General Land Office, however, had denied the homestead application because the land was not unappropriated; rather, it had been withdrawn from the public domain in 1907 for the Indians. Heaton's lawyers filed an appeal, arguing that application under the Valentine scrip could not have been made until the public survey had reached the area and that they had filed soon thereafter. Assistant Secretary of the Interior Edward C. Finney denied the appeal on June 6, 1921. [318]

Farrow's letter of February 2, 1921, cited earlier, has already documented that Arizona's Governor Campbell had promised to support Heaton in his land claims at Pipe Spring; Senator Carl Hayden had also taken Heaton's side. Add to these facts one more — that one-third rights to water at Pipe Spring had already been sold to area cattlemen — and it is no wonder then that Charles C. Heaton would not give up his fight for the property. A motion for review of the June 6 decision was made. On August 25, 1921, Heaton's lawyer, John H. Page, wrote to Senator Hayden to ask for his assistance with the "Heaton scrip case" (also called the "Valentine scrip case"). Samuel Herrick had already supplied Hayden with a copy of the motion and a brief on the rehearing of the case. Page asserted,

Some of the arguments in the Secretary's recent decision in this Valentine scrip case, and which decision Judge Finney signed, have nothing to substantiate them, and the conclusions reached are absurd. We cannot help thinking that this office has had no experiences with scrip cases. But no matter how it happened, the decision is all wrong, and our present motion for a rehearing should be granted with the result [of] a favorable decision as to the scrip location. Mr. Heaton has advised us that if his property and improvements should be confiscated by final adverse action of the Interior Department, we are authorized to take this case to the courts, to the Supreme Court of the United States, if necessary. [319]

Page asked Hayden to delay the rehearing until the return to Washington, D.C., of Secretary Albert B. Fall so that Hayden could personally review the case with Secretary Fall prior to its rehearing. (Assistant Secretary Edward C. Finney had made the original decision in the scrip case.) By the time Page's letter arrived in Washington, Hayden's secretary wrote to inform him that Hayden had already read the brief and that Hayden had already assured Herrick that he would be glad to "extend him all possible cooperation." [320] On October 17, 1921, Hayden wrote Page that he had spoken with Assistant Secretary ("Judge") Finney, who "was still a little bit peeved" over a letter Page had sent Senator Henry F. Ashurst about the Heaton case. [321] Finney was determined to make the final decision in the rehearing of the Heaton case, but Hayden assured Page he was still "hopeful that the outcome would not be unfavorable." [322] Such was the status of the Valentine scrip case when early discussions took place about the idea of transforming the Pipe Spring ranch into a national monument. The events directly leading up to the creation of Pipe Spring National Monument and the National Park Service's acquisition of the site from Charles C. Heaton are the subject of Part II of this report.

The National Park Service, Historical Background

National Context, 1916-1923

Before focusing on National Park Service (NPS or Park Service) activities in Utah and Arizona, it is helpful to consider the larger national context, both prior to and after the 1916 creation of the Park Service. As the Church's fort at Pipe Spring was under construction in the Arizona Territory, a number of expeditions between 1869 and 1871 traversed the region of Yellowstone in the Montana and Wyoming territories. Members of these parties suggested reserving Yellowstone for public use, rather than let it fall into private hands. Agents of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company threw their weight behind the idea of setting aside Yellowstone and its geological wonders, standing to benefit financially from such a tourist attraction. [323] The Yellowstone bill was passed in Congress and signed into law by Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Like Yellowstone, parks set aside in the following years were most noted for their natural or scenic values: Sequoia, General Grant, and Yosemite in California were the next national parks to be established during the 1890s. All had Army superintendents. The Forest Reserve Act of 1891 authorized U.S. presidents to set aside forest reserves on the public domain; 176 million acres were so designated by 1916. [324] Meanwhile, 10 more national parks were established by 1916.

During the 1880s and 1890s, efforts were made to secure protective legislation for prehistoric and historic sites, contributing to congressional passage and Theodore Roosevelt's signing on June 8, 1906, of the Antiquities Act. The Antiquities Act gave U.S. presidents authority to proclaim and reserve "historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest" on lands owned or controlled by the United states as "national monuments," while prohibiting excavation or appropriation of antiquities on federal lands without government permission. Mesa Verde National Park was created three weeks later. Roosevelt proclaimed 18 national monuments during his tenure, 12 of which were designed to protect natural features, such as Wyoming's Devils Tower. Nearly one-fourth of the units in the current National Park System today originated in whole or part from the Antiquities Act. [325]

Lack of central control in the pre-Park Service years led to serious problems, as Paul Herman Buck writes in The Evolution of the National Park System of the United States: "Without responsible direction, the establishment of parks and the efforts to secure appropriations for them in several instances deteriorated into a scramble for federal appropriations.... There was no over-all administrative authority to check on the quality of national park proposals." [326] Consequently a number of "inferior parks" were added to the system, some of which were later abolished. Such parks drained scarce resources from the more worthy parks while creating an impression that Congressional appropriations smacked too much of pork barrel. [327]

On January 21, 1915, Stephen Tyng Mather was appointed Assistant to the Secretary of the Interior, as director in charge of parks. Both Secretary Franklin K. Lane and Mather were alumni of the University of California at Berkeley. Horace M. Albright, another Berkeley graduate, became Mather's top aide. Mather and Albright garnered support from influential journalists, railroads likely to profit from increased tourism, and members of Congress as they lobbied for passage of the bill creating the National Park Service. [328] Notably, Senator Reed Smoot was an ardent champion of the bill. By the time the National Parks Act (Organic Act) was passed and signed by President Woodrow Wilson on August 25, 1916, the Department of the Interior oversaw 14 national parks and 21 national monuments, the vast majority being in the western United States. Mather was appointed the Park Service's first director (serving from 1917 to 1928) with Albright appointed assistant director, a position he held until 1919. [329] Both men firmly believed that the parks needed to attract and accommodate more visitors.

In 1916, to stimulate public awareness of the available transportation to national parks and to publicize their extraordinary scenery, Mather's infant agency published the National Parks Portfolio, a stunning publicity volume containing pictures and descriptions of all the major preserves. Seventeen western railroads contributed $43,000 toward the publication of the first edition. Mather mailed 275,000 copies to carefully selected scholars, politicians, chambers of commerce officials, newspaper editors, and other influential people who were likely to boost the national park idea. [330]

In a letter to Mather from Secretary Lane on May 13, 1918, the policies that were to guide future expansion of the park system were outlined:

In studying new park projects, you should seek to find scenery of supreme and distinctive quality or some natural feature so extraordinary or unique as to be of national interest and importance. You should seek distinguished examples of typical forms of world architecture.... The national park system as now constituted should not be lowered in standard, dignity, and prestige by the inclusion of areas which express in less than the highest terms the particular class or kind of exhibit which they represent. [331]

In the East, the War Department since the 1890s had administered historic sites of national significance (battlefields, forts, and war memorials). Having a personal interest in history, Assistant Director Horace Albright sought to have these areas transferred to the Park Service soon after its creation, but met with little success until he succeeded Mather as director in 1929. [332] President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued two executive orders, effective August 10, 1933, that transferred these historical areas along with national monuments administered by the U.S. Forest Service to the National Park Service. The reorganization of 1933 added 44 historical areas to the Park Service's holdings.

While the West had an abundance of candidate places possessing historical significance, nearly all of the parks and monuments established under the new Park Service from 1916 to 1930 featured spectacular scenery or prehistoric sites. Pipe Spring National Monument was only the second historical monument created during this period. [333] Given Secretary Lane's guidelines for designating national parks and monuments, why did the remote and little-known Pipe Spring site come to be one of the earliest historical monuments established under the newly created Park Service? That question can be partly answered through an understanding of the economic and political context that fostered development in southern Utah and northern Arizona during the 1920s.

Regional Context, 1910s-1920s

Stephen T. Mather played a pivotal role in developing and promoting parks in the West, including those of southern Utah and northern Arizona. It was during Mather's tenure that the standard was set for later Park Service administrators. In Our National Park Policy, John Ise wrote of the Park Service's first director:

Mather was a man of prodigious and explosive energy, a tireless worker, a born promoter, 'a practical idealist of the live-wire type,' with a generous devotion to his job which is reminiscent of some of America's greatest.... Handsome, of winning personality, he commanded respect and admiration and was able to win many friends for the parks.... In his years in the Park Service he gave much of his fortune to the promotion of the parks, and gave of his energies so prodigally that his health broke several times and he died in 1930 at the age of sixty-three, after only twelve years as Director. [334]

One of Mather's favorite methods of promoting parks was to take influential men, senators, representatives, newspapermen, writers, and others who might help promote the parks on trips through some of the parks. If these trips were pleasant, the guests might be inclined to support them thereafter. Even if hardships were encountered on the journey, such as poor road conditions, they might become supporters of increased park financing. One such trip in the summer of 1920 involved taking some members of the House Committee on Appropriations to visit a number of parks. Western cities paid the cost of the trip, concessioners provided free accommodations in the parks, officials of the railroads accompanied them on their respective lines, and Park Service officials acted as guides. The trip was an apparent success for appropriations began to climb the following year. [335]

Mather would effectively employ similar promotional tactics in southern Utah and northern Arizona during his tenure. Two parks key to Pipe Spring's fate were established during Mather's tenure in 1919: Arizona's Grand Canyon National Park (incorporating the 1908 Grand Canyon National Monument) and Utah's Zion National Park (incorporating the 1909 Mukuntuweap National Monument). Pipe Spring National Monument was established in 1923 as was Bryce Canyon National Monument, the latter first administered by the Department of Agriculture until redesignated as a national park in 1928. The details of Pipe Spring's establishment and events leading up to it are considered fully in Part II.

20. Stephen T. Mather, 1923 (Courtesy Zion National Park, neg. 2139).

Railroads were another key player in promoting and developing parks. In addition to providing tourists transportation to parks, they offered special summer rates for travel to parks, provided visitor accommodations, and financed costly publicity campaigns. The Union Pacific System was instrumental in the development of Zion, Bryce Canyon, and the north rim of the Grand Canyon. (Cedar Breaks was also a part of Union Pacific's area tour in the 1920s and 1930s, but was not established as a national monument until August 22, 1933.) The fact that Pipe Spring National Monument was located along an early Union Pacific motorcoach route of the "Grand Circle" tour of Zion, Cedar Breaks, Bryce Canyon, and the north rim of the Grand Canyon is critical when considering reasons behind its establishment.

Also crucial to an understanding of the development of western parks was Mather's remarkable ability to weave an intricate web of relations between the private and public sectors in order to further the agency's goals. Perhaps nowhere is this better illustrated than in his activities promoting parks in southern Utah and northern Arizona. What were the most important considerations in getting the public to visit parks during the 1920s? In a nutshell, 1) access to information about the parks (publicity); 2) a means to reach the parks (train, auto, or motorcoach); 3) reliable transportation networks to travel on (efficient railroads and good vehicular roads); 4) comfortable places to lodge and dine while visiting the park (pleasant, affordable accommodations); and finally, 5) a pleasant in-park experience. The latter would either ensure visitors' desire to return or prompt them to tell their friends and family about the experience, meanwhile broadening the base of the Park Service's constituents by creating new "converts" to its mission.

Fortunately Mather's infant agency was not required to solve all of these problems single-handedly, nor did it have the financial resources and political clout to do so. State and local communities recognized the value of attracting tourist trade to their regions. During Utah's agricultural depression of the 1920s, a great deal of attention was paid by both politicians and businessmen in campaigns to establish new parks and monuments encompassing the outstanding scenic features of its southern regions. This depression coincided with the birth of auto touring as a national pastime. In the 1920s and 1930s, tourism offered the best hope of reviving depressed agricultural economies. What ensued was a period of extraordinary collaboration between the private, public, and even ecclesiastical spheres, leading to the creation of a number of park units, including Pipe Spring National Monument. Part II of this report explores the means by which these various parties became agents of change in southern Utah and northern Arizona, and examines some of the motivating forces behind their actions.