REMEMBERING EMMA

EMMA LOUISE BATCHELOR never could have envisioned the adventurous course her life would take. From a Sussex village to a brutal American wilderness, she lived both wide and deep. But new pieces of her history keep coming to light. For instance, several websites report Emma's oldest son, John Jr., cutting the umbilical cord of her youngest child. But her husband's own diary states that baby John died at birth. So maybe the oldest living son, William, played that role.

Emma Lee has intrigued me for more than 35 years, since a Colorado River guide - trying to put distance between our group and another boat departing downriver from Lees Ferry — led us up to Lonely Dell, the name Emma gave the site. It was hot, as it often is at Lees Ferry. Red dust and birdsong are frequent, and if you're fortunate, that birdsong may include a canyon wren, whose clear twee-twee-twee-twee cascades as if it's tumbling joyfully down the Vermilion Cliffs. A small orchard baking under the sun's glare pays homage to the one Emma continued watering until the last poor little peach tree died — possibly because the Paria River, which passes nearby, is so alkaline.

Two rustic buildings and a root cellar were all we saw that first visit. Since then, improvements have removed some stark poignancy. (Similarly, old stones in the nearby cemetery were replaced with far less evocative new versions.) We know that the family slept in the root cellar while their home and shop were being built — it's markedly cooler than a few feet above. Stories breathe in touchstones, and here you can literally touch the stones that housed Emma and her children.

ON THAT FIRST TRIP, we heard about Emma giving birth alone. I was not yet a mother, but it was easy to imagine the bright, encouraging tone she might have used in telling the children to play well outside together. How did she not cry out? Once she'd successfully pulled the small daughter out of her own body, did she cry into the new, soft skin? As always, happy things give our imaginations little on which to dwell. It's the shadows that make scenery so compelling.

Emma was no stranger to childbirth or difficulty. She came from England after embracing the Mormon faith at 16. Then she joined one of the famous — or infamous — pushcart companies, bringing her meager belongings in a handcart through dire conditions. One hundred fifty of the 250 in her party died, many from frostbite. Those who survived walked 1,400 miles. Emma delivered at least one baby on the trail.

When she came to Lees Ferry in 1871, she was the 17th of John D. Lee's 19 wives and was heavily pregnant. Theirs had been a love match: John D. recorded in his journal the day they met that she'd done something special to a roast the likes of which he'd never tasted, and that her English accent beguiled him. She was also a practiced healer, no small thing when you have children and live in arguably splendid isolation. Both skills served her well. Before leaving years later, Emma entertained John Wesley Powell on one of his famous expeditions down the Colorado, and he wrote of her cooking as well as her skilled nursing of his photographer. It's this aspect of Emma — her fierce femininity, rather than any frailty or delicacy — that draws me.

So while Lees Ferry (oddly, without an apostrophe) bears the name of John D., who ostensibly was in charge of running the ferry that took Mormons up and down the famed "Honeymoon Trail," to me, this is a woman's place. The first time, John D. stayed here long enough to see Emma settled in before taking sister wife Rachel on about 20 miles for another outpost, and it fell to Emma to operate the ferry, and the family. (Some now say Rachel lived there, but it appears she moved on quickly after assisting Emma with giving birth. Emma must have liked her, or she wouldn't have named another daughter after her.) Area tribes are said to have held John D. in high regard. Before having to stay one step ahead of Mormons out to arrest him for his purported part in the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre, he'd explored with Jacob Hamblin, learning Native languages as he traveled. None of those activities involved him being home — any home, let alone an isolated outpost.

Which brings us back to Lees Ferry. "Oh, what a lonely dell," Emma is said to have remarked to John upon arriving; he told her she'd named the new home. In doing so, she also gave Frances Dell, the first child born there, her middle name — and her nickname, "Dellie." She and her siblings were the ones sent out to play when Victoria was born. That birth was so brutal that the baby's name came from "victory," which Emma felt afterward.

Along with courage, Emma possessed shrewd people skills. When one Navajo chief brought his men to Lonely Dell, instinct made Emma bold. As darkness fell, she brought her children down to his camp. She was afraid, she said, and would feel safer under his care. He was impressed with her bravery and put out word that she was to be shown courtesy by his people. Talk about statecraft.

We don't know the exact spot on which the Navajo chief camped, but we can walk from Emma's two little buildings toward the water and be reminded that simple people have always set examples that endure. Lees Ferry sits alone. It hasn't been so highly visited that it feels used up. Millions of people have not taken breaths here; maybe more historic molecules remain. It's still either beautifully or achingly quiet, depending on your mood. You easily feel one degree of separation from stories that unspooled here.

The raw wildness of natural scenery — soaring Vermilion Cliffs, the pastel meander of the Paria, rich shadows lengthening as the day wanes merge with human-caused visual elements of stacked stone and old timber at Lees Ferry. Together, they evoke what we identify with pioneer spirit. The people who brought that spirit here include Emma more than John D., who at some point would have returned to meet the newest member of this branch of his family after that solitary delivery by midwife and patient in a single body.

Emma adored him, by all accounts. Charismatic people can be distinctly hard to love close up. But through two trials for the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the first one ending with a hung jury, Emma brought lunches, wrote letters and served as general helpmeet to her hapless husband. By now, John D. could only rage against being painted as the patsy for the fledgling church and accept the guilty verdict for leading men who slaughtered 120 people in the Fancher party at Mountain Meadows, just outside St. George, Utah, after proposing parlay. Only 17 children survived.

At the time John D. was shot into his own coffin at Mountain Meadows, Emma was one of his three remaining wives, the other 16 having died or divorced him. According to his lawyer's eyewitness account of the execution, John D. asked a photographer to make three copies of the photo of him perched on the end of his coffinfor wives Sarah, Emma and Rachel — and gave eloquent final remarks regarding his innocence.

MOUNTAIN MEADOWS was the second site in the Lee saga where I saw history “change.” The first time I went there, in 1990, a plaque from the 1940s declared that “Mormons and Indians killed the Fancher party,” but it appeared the word “Indians” had been clumsily inserted where “savages” had been scratched out of the bronze. The next time, there was a more impressive but sterile inscription stone. Today, there’s a huge monument with markers showing where men, women and children were killed. Conspicuously absent is any mention of John D. Lee. If he’s no longer the chosen “fall guy,” it would seem he deserves some apology from the church, which now has accepted responsibility for the massacre. But I tried to contact several prominent descendants and received no reply. The past remains fluid.

Emma ran the ferry operation for two years as a widow before selling the site to the church. While the price was 100 milk cows, some accounts say she was begrudgingly given only 14. By then, she’d met a man named Frank French, a Civil War veteran who provided care and companionship. The two married and spent time in Holbrook and then the White Mountains before moving to Winslow. This was where Emma’s second act unfolded.

While she had no formal medical training, she remained a deft healer. Once, two men fought at a local saloon. They were expected to die, but someone summoned the woman then known as Dr. French. Emma spent an hour getting a bullet out of one and two hours stitching up knife wounds in the other. By the time both men recovered, they’d become friends.

Emma’s fame was such that sometimes Santa Fe Railway workers would send a special train to take her to a patient needing her care, and her Winslow home was known as the “Baby Farm.” Finding out she often assisted Navajo prostitutes in giving birth made me like her even more. Did she do so out of gratitude to that chief at the riverside camp, or simply because she knew any woman facing a potentially grisly labor deserved her compassion and skill? Either way, it was sadly uncommon to cross those racial lines in her time.

To me, Emma Lee’s beautiful actions, coupled with the fact that my favorite place in the state is where she nurtured and cooked, taught and sewed, prayed and gardened and wrestled with the ferry not because she wanted to, necessarily, but because it wouldn’t have been in her to ask herself that question make her worthy of being remembered. Her footprints at Lees Ferry are the ones that mattered.

WHEN YOU GO

Lees Ferry is part of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and marks the official start of the Grand Canyon. It's also the only place in the region where the Colorado River is accessible via car. From Page, go south on U.S. Route 89 for 23 miles to U.S. Route 89A. Turn right onto U.S. 89A and continue 14 miles to Lees Ferry Road. Turn right onto Lees Ferry Road and continue 5.5 miles to Lees Ferry. The entire route is paved. For more information, call 928-608-6200 or visit nps.gov/glca.