Morning After Mesa

BY JONREED LAURITZEN (Author of Arrows Into the Sun) For many it has been the Kingdom of the Shining Dream; for most it has been only a headache. Nearly all who have set foot on it with thoughts of conquest have found only bitter discouragement, angry frustration and finally despair.

Perhaps the luckiest of those who are part of the Strip's history was Don Lopez de Cardenas, subordinate of Coronado. It was Cardenas who first set white-man's eyes on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. That was four hundred years ago, in 1540. To Cardenas who saw the Strip from across several miles of canyon this mirage land was a place of pueblos paved with gold, peopled with women whose jewelled necklaces one might snatch and keep; but the canyon which intervened was too much for the day's work. He must have breathed a deep breath that loosened a rivet in his iron shirt, wiped his brow with his galvanized handkerchief and clanked away to report to his chief Coronado, whose men were busy robbing pueblos farther east. So, Cardenas had the Grand Canyon to thank for sparing him that inevitable disappointment of finding only grass instead of gold and Shivwits clothed in nothing, not even diamonds.

Fray Francisco Silvestre Velez de Escalante was not so fortunate. He and Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez, with a party of eight lay Spaniards, set out from Santa Fe July 29, 1776, to find a land route to Monterey on the Pacific. Citizens of the new U. S. A. were too busy drying the ink on the Declaration of Independence to notice that history was also being made that year on the Arizona Strip. Fact is, Escalante's party, instead of finding a shorter route to Monterey, discovered the longest way one could possibly take, afoot or horseback, from Santa Fe back to Santa Fe. They went northward through what is now Colorado, crossed the upper Colorado and Green Rivers, plied westward through the Wasatch Mountains, came out at what is now Provo, Utah. They preached to the Indian tribes there, thence turned southward, becoming more discouraged and bewildered as they went, until finally, after some disagreements, they decided to head back in the direction of Santa Fe, give up the attempt that had already cost them so many hardships. Had they known of, or remembered, Cardenas and his rivet-busting glimpse of the Grand Canyon they would have much preferred to go on at any cost toward the Pacific. Here ignorance turned out to be not bliss but blisters. They came across the Little Virgin River and down over the red sands of the Hurricane Valley, up the old Navajo trail to the summit of the Hurricane ledge and onto the Uinkaret Plateau. By the time they had found water near Mt. Trumbull horses and men were nearly exhausted. Their food was gone. Some of the men pursued a band of frightened squaws who, in the Friar's words, "wore nothing to cover that which one cannot see without danger," and finally convinced the Strip ladies that they wanted only something to eat. For a few bits of colored ribbon the natives sold them grass-seed meal and grasshopper cakes which the Spaniards must have relished for the rich, nutty flavor, not knowing the true nature of the stuff.

The party wended its way up through the rich autumn grasslands toward Bullrush and another day brought them to northward of the Kaibab Plateau. There, because of the poor food, some of the men took ill and instead of asking the bless-ings of their friars went to the medicine man of the Kaivavas for incantations. Perhaps these good Catholics thought that even their God had deserted them on this high place of grassy desolation, and only the Great Spirit of the Indians could help them. Down into Houserock Valley they went, to reach the climax of weeks of starvation and growing anxiety with their first terrified glimpse of Marble Canyon where it opens into the even more majestic reaches of the Grand. This between them and home!

MORNING AFTER MESA

Some comfort was had from the grudging Indians who were able to give them a hint of a ford to be found farther up the river; but none of the cowardly redskins could be persuaded to guide them to this ford, for that would take them nearer to the two things they feared above all else and with equal doggedness-the Navajos and the Canyon of the Water Gods.

So the Spaniards went on alone, probing the rim of the canyon as they went. Starvation, thirst, went with them. Four of their gaunt horses had to be butchered for food before they found a place near the Ute Ford which is now known in memory of Escalante and Dominguez as El Vado de los Padres (Crossing of the Fathers). After letting their horses down over the rocks by carving footholds they crossed the river at its autumn low and went on toward Santa Fe rejoicing.

It was almost a hundred years before another white-man's foot was lured onto this mile-high mantrap-the Strip. Beyond the Little Virgin River valleys the Strip was the next step in the southward march of the State of Deseret. Jacob Hamblin crossed and recrossed the Strip many times, using the Crossing of the Fathers, in his missions to the Mokis (Hopis) and Navajos. It was he who later initiated the ferry at the mouth of the Pariah, later to be known as Lee's Ferry, after John D. Lee, who had first established a permanent ferry at that point.

Simultaneously with these first activities of the Mormons on the Strip came the voyages of Powell down the Colorado River. Powell made no headlines, but this expedition stands out as a tremendous feat of courage motivated, not by a yen for publicity, but by an intelligent and dauntless scientific urge. The voyage of Columbus into the mysterious darkness of strange seas was no more daring than Powell's plunge into the unknown canyons of the Colorado. Columbus stands higher on a pedestal, not because of the more remarkable quality of his deed itself, but because the results were larger than those achieved by Powell. From the beginnings of Marble Canyon down through the Grand Canyon to Toroweap and beyond, the River of Mysteries had poured its torrents for centuries, untouched by human arm or oar. Some of the bravest of the naked, half-starved Uinkarets and Shivwits and Kaivavas had crept to the Canyon's brink, perhaps, and looked down fearsomely, apprehensive of a chance glimpse of the many gods who dwelt in the thunderous depths, or of the spirits of the dead who took this canyon pathway to the Happy Hunting Grounds. The Navajos had crossed the river at the Ute Ford to steal the maidens of these lazier northern tribes and kill off the braves; but never, in the memory of anyone, had a human being ventured into the canyons below, either afoot or astride the plunging waters.

As to the nature of this unmapped habitation of spirits and gods Powell had no clue. One thing his scientific knowledge told him: that a river carrying silt had no falls. It may have rapids deadly, treacherous ones, as he found; but the grinding of the silt on the river bottom forbids the presence of any sudden jump-off. Except for that one slight-but, on the Colorado up to that time, unproven assurance, the perils of the Canyon were as unknown as the misty valleys of Mars. A simple, superstitious folk like the Amerinda would surely people it with spirits of fierce warriors guarding the abodes of fiercer gods. Even for us of today, with all our knowledge of the river and its canyons, it has not lost its terrors; and a victory over its rapids can still be put down as a major conquest on the American scene. It is therefore hard to estimate the courage of Powell and his little party in starting out on a journey whose perils could only be judged as they were encountered.

Out of a warm sky the wind may come up howling and after a night of fierceness leave the Tumurru shining cold and red in a scarf of snow.

One of the most astounding facts of that whole astounding episode is that it did not end in tragedy at least for those who stuck with the expedition. The greatest irony, to Strippers at least, is that the only tragedy of the expedition occurred not in the teeth of the rapids, but on the solid mesas of the Strip. It is one of the most piteous things that ever happened in a ruthless land; the fact that the two Howland brothers and Dunn should have left the expedition when the journey was about through, climbed out of the 4,500 foot depths, taking no food with them, and, starved and famished, thrown themselves on the hospitality of a tribe of Shivwits, who killed them to get their shirts and a watch. The rest of the expedition went down over Lava Falls and came out of Black Canyon finally, successful and immensely relieved.

The Navajos who came onto the Strip and into Southern Utah via the Crossing of the Fathers during those quiet pioneer nights cared little about anything except cattle, horses and sheep. It might have been easier and simpler for them to trade blankets and leatherwork for the livestock, but it suited the Navajo fancy better to let down the bars of Mormon corrals in the stilly night and take what livestock they wanted.

The Mormons were a generous, peace-loving, long-suffering people and would gladly have given the Navajos anything they could spare. Thieving, however, was quite another thing. It was against the commandments and it left the bereft with no sense of having done a good deed to make up for his loss. It violated, too, the Mormon instinct for order and his strong possessive urge. Therefore, the Saints considered themselves justified when, on at least two occasions, they sent posses of men riding bareback to pursue bands of Navajos onto the Strip where the redskins were slaughtered to a man.

On one of the above occasions a band of Navajos, together with a smattering of Piutes, had left Dr. James Whit-

MORNING AFTER MESA

more and his brother-in-law, Robert McIntyre, under three feet of snow, their bodies filled with arrows. That was January 8, 1866. The same day travelers from Kanab at St. George discovered the absence of Whitmore and McIntyre from their Pipe Springs camp and took the word post haste into St. George. The news was announced as the Saints were gathered in the meeting hall for a dance. Men heard the announcement with one foot in the air, poised for the cotillion. They were told that now was the time to put their foot down on the Navajos. Early next morning a band of hardy Saints under Colonel Daniel McArthur and Captain Andrus, riding gaunt, underfed horses and using their quilts and blankets for saddles, rode through snow three feet deep on the Strip, caught up with an old Piute buck and a boy who, after a night of questioning by Andrus, guided them to the bodies of Whitmore and McIntyre and later to the camp of Piutes who were presumed to have done the killing, because they wore some of the clothes of the dead men. After a short discussion, during which the leaders of the posse argued whether to kill the culprits or take them to St. George for trial, it was decided to get the business over with and about twenty redwings never saw their braves again. The Piutes at Mocassin, who had forefathers among those killed, later claimed that the Navajos who actually killed Whitmore and McIntyre had traded the men's stolen clothing to the more peaceable Piutes, whose denials of the killing did not save them from the rifles of the posse.

Sometime later Andrus, responding to the aggravated demands of the Southern Utah Saints that the thieving Navajos be driven across the river for good and all, led another "bareback posse" onto the Strip where they tracked down a band of twenty or thirty Navajo braves, crept up on them in a branch of the Kanab Gulch, and from a vantage point on the rim of the Gulch picked the braves off one by one before they could scramble out of the depths.

After the thorough groundwork done by the Andrus posses Jacob Hamblin found his efforts for peace with the Navajos much easier than they otherwise might have been. Even so, it took an almost superhuman will and zeal, such as Hamblin had, to face the Navajos in their hogans after Kit Carson and Jim Andrus had done their job of making the Navajos behave. Kit Carson and his men had driven, butchered and plundered them. Andrus and his men had butchered them, made it unhealthy for them to steal the maidens of the Strip Indians and use the Strip as headquarters for their raids on Mormon livestock.

Jacob Hamblin symbolized the Mormon spirituality, their absolute faith in the rightness of the mission they were on earth to perform. That faith must have shown in Hamblin's eyes when he talked to the Navajo braves. Something more than serene self-confidence was there when, as on more than one occasion, he stood before the Navajo chieftains in their towns and spoke in a soft, earnest voice as if there were not, outside the big hogan, a thousand or so young bucks who would give their best blanket for a chance to dance in white man's blood. Whatever it was, there was something in the way Hamblin's steady gaze met the hostile eyes of the chiefs that made the latter speak words of wise caution to their young warriors and let Hamblin come away with treaties of peace when any other white man might not have come away at all.

The Mormon Church bought out the heirs of the Whitmore estate, built a fort at Pipe Springs, put three thousand head of cattle on the Strip and Jim Andrus became king of the Strip which he had done so much to conquer for the Church. Andrus was not long in the ascendancy, however. His hope of empire was impaired by other Utahans, who thought it would be the easiest thing in the world to get rich simply by turning cattle out on the Strip ranges and rounding the calves up in the fall. Trouble with that plan, nature was not co-operativebeyond a certain point. The grass, which had grown bellydeep to a horse in the pre-Andrus days, began to shorten,disappear entirely under the trampling hoofs. Gaunt cattle had to trail miles to water, then, too weak to carry the load, they sank and died in the quicksands of Short Creek wash or the mud of Canebeds, Pipe Spring, Bullrush, Clayhole, Wolfhole. At one time corpses of cattle were so thick along the creekbed at Short Creek you could have walked a mile on them without touching foot to the ground. Everywhere the range was being turned into a beaten desert, trails were being gouged into gullies, ravines were gutted to make miniature canyons. Greed changed the waving grasslands to a hide-ous desolation.

But while the stockmen's dream was being turned into a nightmare another hope of empire was taking shape. In 1909 Jacob M. Lauritzen stood with an exploring party, which included two western governors, atop the Vermilion Cliffs. As they gazed out over the wide sweep of mesas stretching off for several miles to the rim of the Grand Canyon, it came green with fields and tall poplars and was dotted in their minds with homes and little towns. Why not? There was the Virgin River on the north, running mostly to waste. There was the great Colorado coming down from the northeast. And this was in the beginning of the golden age of dams and reclamation.

Lauritzen hurried home to liquidate his affairs, and with a small fortune moved to Southern Utah to make filings and begin the initial surveys and preliminary work that would start the tunnels that would bring the Virgin waters pouring through the Vermilion Cliffs and onto the thirsty Uinkaret.

Months went by. The fortune was spent, the friends who were going to find the millions to complete the project had found other enthusiasms. Lauritzen and his six young sons settled down to tussle with the water and sands of the irascible Short Creek. They would make a ranch that would control the ranges of this whole eastern half of the Strip. With a residue of the fortune they bought a hundred head of young heifers and turned them loose on the open prairie. Then they went back to digging ditches, while their literary mother chanted poems and Browning and Tennyson to them. And somehow they hoped that the hundred head of heifers would all have calves and come back home. But the heifers drifted out and became like a hundred Flying Dutchmen-occasionally seen but never overtaken.

Then the brief and wistful epoch of the settlers. From California, Arkansas, Michigan, Texas, New Mexico, everywhere, they came, with their goods piled high on wagons, trucks, jalopies. They fenced their mile of land, built shacks and corrals and here and there a schoolhouse. Inside their fences the grass came green again, and each settler saw visions of the future with himself as King of the Range.

Things did not turn out so favorably for these hopefuls and in a matter of time the settlers left, with their goods piled not so high on older and shakier trucks and jalopies.

Yet in this Never-Never Land there is still a way for you and me to dream. The Strip has great possessions unalotted. They will be difficult to blueprint and apportion. To enjoy them you need no base property nor subsidiary rights. They consist of neither lush Hereford steaks nor foundations for Utopia. They belong neither to the people of Utah nor of Arizona. They belong to the world, and to generations that will enjoy them when the results of our strivings are as forlorn and forgotten as the mounds of artifacts scattered on these mesas by the tribes before us.

They are wild, weird country of the Parashaunt, the towers of the Pahria, the breathtaking depths of the Canyon at Toroweap, the dramatic, shimmering colors of the Vermilion Cliffs and Tumurru, the fierce majesty of the Thunder River, the forested grandeur of the Kaibab, the terrible sublimity of the Grand Canyon. These are our wealth and the stuff of our future visions. Their rewards will not be the headaches of the searcher for empire on the Morning-After Mesas, but will be as rich and full as the mind that sees them.