James H. McClintock

“ That we may live in peace, live as friends, and trade with one another? Or shall we look for you to come prowling around our weak settlements, like wolves in the night? I hope we may live in peace in time to come. I have now gray hairs on my head, and from my boyhood I have been on the frontiers doing all I could to preserve peace between white men and Indians. I despise this killing, this shedding of blood. ”

“ Of later years there has been much community commingling of the Mormon and the non-Mormon. There even has been a second immigration from Utah, usually of people of means. The day has passed for the ox-bowed wagon and for settlements out in the wilderness. There has been left no wilderness in which to work magic through labor. But the Mormon influence still is strong in agricultural Arizona and the high degree of development of many of her localities is based upon the pioneer settlement and work that are dealt with in the succeeding pages. ”

“ A long sandy beach strewn with hides and skeletons of slaughtered cattle, a few scrubby oaks, farther back low sand hills rising behind each other as a background to a few old shanties that leaned away from the wind, an old adobe barracks, a few donkeys plodding dejectedly along beneath towering bundles of wood, a few loungers stretched lazily upon the beach as though nothing could astonish them ”

“ The fighting of the great cattle and sheep companies for possession of range privileges is now practically ended; the building of more substantial reservoirs is mastering the flood problems and the drought periods at the same time, and the Saints, by the uprightness of their lives, their industry, perseverance, and enterprise, have proven their value as citizens in the commonwealth, until the prejudices of the past, which gave them a cold reception on their advent into Arizona, and slight courtesy from the older settlers, have given way to more enlightened policies of friendship ”

“ There he saw a remarkable exhibit of industry and frugality presented by the Mormon colonies, including saddles and harness, fruit, fresh and preserved, and examples of the work of the schools. Then it was the General fervently exclaimed, "What could I not do with my beloved Mexico if I only had more citizens and settlers like the Mormons."
The colonists took no part in the politics of the country. Only a few became Mexican citizens. Junius S. Romney stated that in each settlement pride was taken in maintaining the best ideals of American government. ”

“ To bring these first wagons to the Pacific, we have preserved the strength of our mules by herding them over large tracts, which you have laboriously guarded without loss. The garrisons of four presidios of Sonora concentrated within the walls of Tucson, gave us no pause. We drove them out with our artillery, but our intercourse with the citizens was unmarked by a single act of injustice. Thus, marching, half-naked and half-fed, and living upon wild animals, we have discovered and made a road of great value to our country. ”

“ In the days when the American colonists were shaking off the English yoke, our Southwest was having exploration by the martyred Friar Garces. Three-quarters of a century later, the trail that had been taken by the priest to the Hopi villages was used by a Mormon missionary, Jacob Hamblin, sometimes called the "Leatherstocking of the Southwest," more of a trail-blazer than a preacher, a scout of the frontier directly commissioned under authority of his Church, serene in his faith and confident that his footsteps were being guided from on high. ”

“ The honor of leading Mormon pioneering in south-central Arizona lies with Daniel W. Jones, a sturdy character, strong in the faith. He had been in the Mexican war, in 1847, as a Missouri volunteer, and had remained in Mexico till 1850. In the latter year he started for California, from Santa Fe, and, in the Provo country of Utah, embraced Mormonism within a settlement that had treated him kindly after he had accidentally wounded himself. About that time he dedicated himself to life work among the Indians, the Lamanites of the Book of Mormon. ”

“ The men first turned their attention toward the construction of a ditch from the river, this completed the following year. For a while the young community was on very short rations. At times there could be only one meal a day, that a meager one of beans, served at noon to the workers, who scarcely could summon strength for more than a half day's labor.
Some of the early settlers built boweries of brush under which they rolled their covered wagons, to secure better protection from the pitiless Arizona summer sun, and with no other home for weeks. ”

“ Primarily the Tuba settlement was a missionary effort, with the intention of taking the Gospel into the very center of the Navajo and Hopi country. Agriculture flourished a all times, with an abundant supply of water for irrigation. But there was an attempt at industry and one which would appear to have had the very best chance of success. The Navajo and Hopi alike are owners of immense numbers of sheep. The wool in early days almost entirely was utilized by the Indians in the making of blankets, this on rude hand looms, where the product was turned out with a maximum of labor and of time. ”

“ First Agriculture in Northern Arizona
There can be no doubt that the first agricultural settlement in northern Arizona was by a Mormon party, led by Henry W. Miller, which made location at Beaver Dams, on the north bank of the Virgin River on the earlier Mormon road to California. On a tract of land lying six miles below the point where the river emerges from a box canyon, land was cleared in the fall of 1864, crops were put in "and then the enterprise was dedicated to the Lord," according to a report by the leader at Salt Lake. ”

“ Of the permanence and quality of the Mormon pioneering, strong testimony is offered by F. S. Dellenbaugh in his "Breaking the Wilderness:"
"It must be acknowledged that the Mormons were wilderness breakers of high quality. They not only broke it, but they kept it broken; and instead of the gin mill and the gambling hell, as corner-stones of their progress and as examples to the natives of the white men's superiority, they planted orchards, gardens, farms, schoolhouses and peaceful homes. There is today no part of the United States where human life is safer than in the land of the Mormons ”

“ The Colorado now absolutely has lost all possibilities for commerce. Pioneer conditions are about the same as far southward as the Laguna dam. This structure, built to divert water for the Yuma and Imperial valleys, absolutely bars the river channel for navigation. Above it and below it now are only ferries and a few power boats. The great Imperial canal system, at a point below Yuma, for much of the year drains the river flow. Where good-sized steamers once plied from tidewater, at the head of the Gulf of California, now, for months at a time, is only a dry sand wash. ”

“ Though by no means with exclusive population of the faith, Mesa, sixteen miles east of Phoenix and in the Salt River Valley, today includes the largest organization of the Saints within Arizona and is the center of one of the most prosperous Stakes of the Church. It is beautifully located on a broad tableland, from which its Spanish name is derived, and is the center of one of the richest of farming communities. In general, the soil is of the best, without alkali, and its products cover almost anything that can be grown in the temperate or semi-tropic zones. ”

“ Early in 1876 one of the settlers wrote from Allen's Camp, "It is all United Order here and no beating around the bush, for it is the intention to go into it to the full meaning of the term." This chronicler, John L. Blythe, April 11, 1876, again wrote, "The companies are going into the United Order to the whole extent, giving in everything they possess, their labor, time and talent." In August there was a report from the same locality that "the people are living in a united system, each laboring for the good of all the community and an excellent feeling prevails." ”

“ For many years there was a general feeling that the streets of Mesa were entirely too wide, though it had been laid out in loving remembrance of Salt Lake City, and the question of ever paving (or even of crossing on a hot summer day) was serious. It appears from latter-day development that the old-timers builded wisely, for probably Mesa is alone in all of Arizona in having plenty of room for the parking of automobiles. The main streets have been paved at large expense. In several has been left very attractive center parking, for either grass or standing machines. ”

“ It would appear that a tremendous amount of optimism, energy and self-reliance lay in the leaders of the small community, in digging through the bank of a stubborn cliff, in throwing a rude dam across a great flood stream and in planting their homes far out on a plain that bore little evidence of agricultural possibilities, beyond a growth of creosote bush, the Larrea Mexicana. ”

“ The Mormons of Arizona today are not to be considered in the same manner as have been their forebears. The older generation came in pilgrimages, wholly within the faith, sent to break the wilderness for generations to come. These pioneers must be considered in connection with their faith, for through that faith and its supporting Church were they sent on their southward journeyings. Thus it happens that "Mormon settlement" was something apart and distinctive in the general development of Arizona and of the other southwestern sections into which Mormon influences were taken. ”

“ Still, there might be testimony from the writer that he has lived near the Mormons, of Arizona for more than forty years and in that time has found them law-abiding and industrious, generally of sturdy English, Scotch, Scandinavian or Yankee stock wherein such qualities naturally run with the blood. If there be with such people the further influence of a religion that binds in a union of faith and in works of the most practical sort, surely there must be accomplishment of material and important things. ”

“ One of the most interesting early locations of the Mormon Church in Arizona was that of Moen Copie, about 75 miles southeast of Lee's Ferry. The name is a Hopi one, signifying "running water" or "many springs." The soil is alkaline, but it is a place where Indians had raised crops for generations. The presiding spirit of the locality was Tuba, the Oraibi chief, who had been taken by Jacob Hamblin to Utah, there to learn something of the white man's civilization. ”

“ In 1867 a river flood destroyed much of the results of the colonists' labors and there was abandonment of the location. Between 1875 and 1878 settlers began to come again and a thriving community now is in existence at that point, known as Littlefield. It is to benefit in large degree by plans approved by the Arizona Water Commissioner, for damming of the canyon for storage of water to irrigate land of the Virgin Valley toward the southwest. Littlefield is the extreme northwestern settlement of the present Arizona five miles south of the Utah line and three miles east of the Nevada line. ”

“ Years later, Andrew Jenson found the rock walls and chimneys still standing. "Everything is desert," he wrote, "the whole landscape looks dreary and forbidding and the lonely graveyard on the hillside only reminds one of the population which once was and that is no more." Only ruin marks the place where once was headquarters of the Little Colorado Stake of Zion. The settlement was badly placed, for floods came within a rod of the fort and covered the wheat fields. ”

“ There was special injunction that the Lamanites, the Indians, be treated with all consideration and shown that the Mormons do not teach one thing and practice another. The Indians should be taught to be "friendly with the government of the United States or Mexico and to live at peace with one another, to be chaste, sober and honest and subject to the law of God." ”

“ Leading the Indians was a Navajo, Peicon, who, addressing Brown as a brother chieftain, thrust forward his young son, dramatically stating that the lad had killed three cows owned at the settlement of Sunset and offering him for any punishment the whites might see fit to inflict, even though it be death. Brown mildly suggested that the Sunset people should be seen, but that he was sure that all they would ask would be the value of the animals. ”

“ There were easier places where settlements might have been made, at Lehi or Tempe, or upon the smaller streams, but there must have been a vision rather broader than that of the original immigrant, a vision that later has merged into reality far larger and richer than had been the dream.
Within this prosperity are included hundreds of Mormon pioneers and their children. It often is said that the development of a country is by the "breaking" of from three to four sets of immigrants. It is not true of Mesa, for there the original settlers and their stock generally still hold to the land. ”

“ One of the first things the Mormon always did in establishing a new settlement was to plant fruit, shade trees and vines and the like, so that in a very few years there was a condition of comfort only attained by a non-Mormon settlement after the lapse of a quarter of a century. Dancing is a regular amusement among the Mormons and is encouraged by the authorities as a harmless and beneficial recreation. ”

“ No profaning is heard; the smoking, chewing and drinking habits are strangers to the "hope of Israel" here; no racing of horses at breakneck speed through the streets is endured in our peaceful little town; in fact the only complaint is, and not without just cause, that it is rather too quiet.
Along this same line, Dellenbaugh wrote of the southern Utah settlements:
"As pioneers the Mormons were superior to any class I have ever come in contact with, their idea being homemaking and not skimming the cream off the country with a six-shooter and a whiskey bottle. ”

“ There was a pioneer Mormon period in Arizona, that might as well be called the missionary period. Then came the prairie schooners that bore, from Utah, men and women to people and redeem the arid southland valleys. Most of this colonization was in Arizona, where the field was comparatively open. In California there had been religious persecution and in New Mexico the valleys very generally had been occupied for centuries by agricultural Indians and by native peoples speaking an alien tongue. ”

“ It is notable that the settlers on the Little Colorado had very little actual trouble with the Indians, with the Navajo of the north or the Apache of the south. The Indians were frequent visitors to the settlements and were treated with usual Mormon hospitality. There were no depredations upon the livestock, and when the peace of the settlements was disturbed it was by the white man and not by the red brother. During the time of the building of the Atlantic and Pacific railroad, there was an Indian scare. ”

“ In December, 1881, President Jesse N. Smith of the Eastern Arizona Stake advised the Forest Dale settlers to satisfy the Indians for their claims on the place, and received assurance from General Carr at Fort Apache, that the locality most likely was not on the reservation and that, in case it was not, he would be pleased to have the Mormon settlers there. A new ward was established and William Ellsworth and twenty more families moved in, mainly from Brigham City. In May, 1882, the Indians came again to plant corn and were wrathful to find the whites ahead of them. ”

“ First of the faith on the western slopes of the continent was the settlement at San Francisco by Mormons from the ship Brooklyn. They landed July 31, 1846, to found the first English speaking community of the Golden State, theretofore Mexican. These Mormons established the farming community of New Helvetia, in the San Joaquin Valley, the same fall, while men from the Mormon Battalion, January 24, 1848, participated in the discovery of gold at Sutter's Fort. Mormons also were pioneers in Southern California, where, in 1851, several hundred families of the faith settled at San Bernardino. ”

“ Somehow, in the divine ordering of things mundane, the Mormons generally were very near the van of Anglo-Saxon settlement of the States west of the Rockies. Thus it happened that on July 29, 1846, only three weeks after the American naval occupation of the harbor, there anchored inside the Golden Gate the good ship Brooklyn, that had brought from New York 238 passengers, mainly Saints, the first American contribution of material size to the population of the embarcadero of Yerba Buena, where now is the lower business section of the stately city of San Francisco. ”