The Trail of the Camels

The Trail of the Camels Being the Story of the Adventures of the Survey Party Which Located a Road Across Northern Arizona That Later Became U.S. Highway 66

ONE BRIGHT SUMMER after-noon, seventy-seven years ago, August 31, 1857, was the date, two small Navajo boys, who should have been attending to their mother's sheep, perched themselves on a juniper log on the hill-side overlooking the Zuni River, where it enters what is now Arizona, and watched intently something new to their eyes. A long line of mules drawing wagons, and men on horseback plodding their way westward over the Indian trail that until that moment had been nothing more than the trail toward the Little Colorado River, was something these Indian boys had never seen, and much more interesting than watching sheep. Three hundred years before, Lieutenant El Tovar had passed along that same trail, riding animals the Indians had never seen, in his profitless search to-ward the Hopi villages to the north, where he had been sent by Coronado from Zuni, during the endeavor to find the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola. As the wagon train plodded along, the boys' eyes followed it until it had passed their balcony seat on the log. Sudden-ly a loud snort back on the trail turned their heads and with the first look they both fell over behind the log, hardly daring to breathe until all was quiet again. They had seen animals no one of their tribe had ever seen, whose rolling gait and grotesque appearance, with immense packs, three times as large as their father had ever packed the Indian horses, and the immense humps on their backs, was something beyond their wild'est young imagination.

By NORMAN G. WALLACE (Photographs by the Author) Even their father would have opened his mouth with astonishment; and even their grandfather, the big doctor from up on the Salahkai Mesa, who made sand paintings by the score to drive away the sickness from his tribesmen, would have blinked his eyes at least twice had he been there. These might be the same animals which had made the big tracks in the hard sandstone up in the Brown Canyon, where they had amused themselves by packing water up from the pools and pouring it into the footprints just to see how immense they were.

They were hardly the same animals by several million years, but the Indian boys could be excused their alarm, as these animals which they beheld had been jerked from their native land across the ocean and brought over to America but a few months before, and were now being used to help the white man blaze the path for many wagons across the then unknown wilderness of Northern Arizona.

The old camel story and U. S. Highway 66 are linked together by a common bond, as the original reconnaissance survey made by the War Department was completed with the assistance of twenty-five of the camels the government had imported for experimental purposes. The camel story starts back in 1836, when a military officer on the frontier of the Western plains, suggested the use of camels for military purposes in the waterless parts of the Indian country. It was seventeen years later that Jefferson Davis became head of the War Department, and becoming enthused with the idea of using camels in the West, managed to have Congress include in the annual army appropriation authority to expend $30,000 for the purchase and importation of camels and dremedaries for military service.

In June of 1855, the men commissioned to purchase the camels arrived in Algeria, Africa, where they purchased one camel and were presented with two more camels by a local chief. They found that there were two kinds of camel to be considered. The two-humped camel was known as the Bactrain camel and was used for packing heavy loads only, and never used for riding. The one-humped camel was the Arabian camel and was used for riding and packing.

The camel buyers went the rounds of the Mediterranean countries seeking information and camels. The Crimean War was in progress at that time and they went right into the thick of it to the British field forces, and found the camels could pack a load of six hundred pounds for an average of thirty miles per day, this being what the British army was actually doing with their camel trains.

At last, on February 15, 1856, a chartered ship left Smyrna, bound for the United States, with thirty-three camels aboard. The largest was some camel in any man's land. He was seven feet five inches high, ten feet long from nose to stern, and weighed just two thousand pounds. They had to cut a hole in the deck to allow head room for his hump, believe it or not.

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

It took three months for the ship to arrive at their destination, which was at a small gulf port about a hundred miles south of Galveston, Texas.

After arriving on May 14, 1856, the camel ship returned to Asia Minor, where forty-four more camels were bought, and arrived again at the same port in February of 1857. In the mean-while, the first bunch of camels was taken overland to a ranch about sixty miles northwest of San Antonio, Texas, where they made their permanent quarters. The camels of the second batch, on arrival in the United States, were sent to the same ranch.

In conducting experiments with the camels to see what they could do in the way of packing loads, one of them was loaded with twelve hundred and fifty-six pounds of baled hay, and he walked off with it, to the astonishment of the local hill-billys.

The end of the trail for westward travel through northern New Mexico was Ft. Defiance, with Albuquerque as the last large town on the road. The old Spanish trail led westward from Al-buquerque toward Zuni Indian pueblo, with Ft. Defiance as the outpost for the military, on a branch road which leaves the old trail about where Grant, New Mexico, is now situated on Highway 66.

However, the natural route westward in those days was still the old trail blazed by Coronado on his way from Mexico, through Arizona to the pueblos of New Mexico.

In the fall of 1856, the Secretary of War ordered a survey made from Ft. Defiance westward along the thirty-fifth parallel, for a wagon road to California. Lieutenant Edward F. Beale, formerly of the U. S. Navy, and then superintendent of Indian affairs, was chosen to command the surveying expedition, and had the authority to use the camels as an experiment. Mule-drawn wagons and saddle horses completed the trans. portation detail, with the necessary soldiers needed in the Indian country beyond Ft. Defiance. It is due to Lieutenant Beale's daily diary, and to the diary kept by May Humphreys Stacey, one of his assistants, that we are able to trace out the path taken by the surveyors along the route which is now followed very closely by the present Highway 66 across Arizona. As there were no landmarks named as yet, except the San Francisco Peaks and one or two water holes on the way westward from Zuni, it is necessary to study the diaries closely to ascertain just where the party went across Arizona. Descriptions and other information noted in the diaries were studied and distances travelled each day enables us to follow the path taken.

The survey party was organized at the camel ranch near San Antonio, Texas, and on June 25, 1857, the outfit left for the west via Texas, and central New Mexico to Albuquerque, from which point they followed the old Spanish trail to the Zuni pueblo. As Lieutenant Beale's instructions were to continue the road from Ft. Defiance westward, he had to leave the party near Zuni and go on camel-back to Ft. Defiance, about sixty miles to the north of where the new route would branch off of the one already surveyed and built. At Ft. Defiance, he obtained the military escort which was to go with him across the Indian country of Northern Arizona, and with them met his main party at the town of Zuni.

It was at Zuni that the expedition started on the route that had not been mapped or hardly even explored. In 1853, Lieutenant Whipple had made a rough reconnaissance from California to New Mexico for a possible railroad route, and a man by the name of Francis Xavier Aubrey had gone over the ground with a bunch of hard riding, tough hombres and mapped a route for a railroad that was used later by the Santa Fe clear across Arizona. The Aubrey Cliffs near Seligman are named from this pioneer.

OCTOBER, 1934. ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

Where Lieutenant Beale and the camels were lost, Mt. Floyd in the distance and Chino Creek in the foreground. Beale came through the pass shown in the center of the photograph and found water in a rocky pool in Chino Creek, saving his horses and mules. The camels did not need water badly, having had a drink ten days before, but the horses required water at least once in 36 hours.

However, all the information gathered by these two men did not help much the camel survey party, as there were no landmarks named to go by, so Lieutenant Beale was practically on his own, insofar as knowing where to go was concerned. His job was to find a wagon route to California along the thirtyfifth parallel, and that is what he did, with the help of the camels, as we are to see later.

On August 30, 1857, the survey party arrived at Zuni, after coming over the old Spanish trail from Albuquerque, via the Inscription Rock, where Coronado had camped three hundred and fifteen years before. As there would be absolutely nothing obtainable after leaving Zuni in the way of provisions, the party spent nearly the whole night of August 30 shelling corn and getting together all their supplies of food for the journey westward.

arrived at Zuni, after coming over the old Spanish trail from Albuquerque, via the Inscription Rock, where Coronado had camped three hundred and fifteen years before. As there would be abso lutely nothing obtainable after leaving Zuni in the way of provisions, the party spent nearly the whole night of August 30 shelling corn and getting together all their supplies of food for the journey westward.

For feed, the camels had only what they could pick up on the way, and got very fat on the screw bean mesquite, which is abundant in West Texas, also thriving on greasewood bushes and prickly pear cactus of New Mexico and Arizona.

It was on the evening of August 31, 1857, that the expedition crossed the future border of what was to be known as Arizona six years later, and camped at a spot not far from the ancient ruins of the pueblo of Hawikuh, where Coronado's dream of the Seven Cities of Cibola melted away as he viewed the red sandstone and mud houses of that village, perched up on the mesa which stuck out into the valley of the Zuni River.

On September 1, the party had advanced well into Arizona, stopping at Jacob's Well, south of the present Highway 66 about fifteen miles, and the same day arrived at Navajo Springs, an historical spot of the state, where they were now practically on the line of the present highway, from the location of which their survey did no deviate more more than three miles or so.

On September 2, the party was astonished by the sight of a large piece of "petrified timber" sticking out of a rock, not knowing that they were on the north edge of the largest area in the world of petrified trees and which was later to be the Petrified Forest of Arizona and a national monument. After reaching the Puerco River valley, the party followed that stream until it joined the Little Colorado where Holbrook now is, passing that site on September 4. As the valley of the Little Colorado was muddy, the expedition took to the mesa on the south, where, on gaininig the top, they beheld the San Francisco Peaks far to the west and which were to be their landmark for many weeks. For the next few days they had to veer their course toward the northwest in order to avoid the Canyon Diablo, as they were not able to take the wagons across the vertical rocky sides of that stream.

On September 8, the party camped at the mouth of the Canyon Diablo where it enters the Little Colorado, that spot being not far from the present Leupp Indian Agency. The spot where Winslow now holds forth had been passed on the day before.

Lieutenant Beale's report in regard to the camels, of date September 1 and September 6, says: "Our camels, packed with corn at Zuni, about 750 pounds each, get along very well. The camels are so quiet and give us so little trouble that we forget they are with us. They pack their heavy load of corn, of which they never taste a grain, put up with (Continued on Page 19)