Mooney Falls

Havasupai Indian Reservation was set aside in 1880. When Grand Canyon National Park was established in 1919 it covered so much country that the ancestral home of the Havasupai was inside its borders. Confusion has arisen because this reservation is inside the Park area. Writers erroneously call Supai village a "Grand Canyon Village," which leads the general reader -who does not know Supai country-to think this village belongs to the Park, or even that it is in the Grand Canyon gorge. Factually, this village does not belong to the Park, nor is it in the Grand Canyon. In the Act establish-

CAMERA DATA OPPOSITE PAGE "MOONEY FALLS IN HAVASU CANYON" BY JOSEF MUENCH. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.11 at 1/25th sec.; 6" Schneider Xenar lens; early May; sunny day. This lovely drop of water is seen here from an inner rim, reached over a horseback trail from the village of Supai deep in a side gorge of the Grand Canyon. Water falls easily over this travertine ledge on its way through the lower canyon to a junction with the Colorado River.

CENTER PANEL "HAVASU CANYON PANORAMA" BY JOSEPH WAMPLER. 4x5 Crown Graphic camera; Ektachrome; f.10 at 1/50th sec.; Kodak Ektar 101mm f.4.5 lens; May; 11 a.m. of a cloudless day; Norwood meter reading 150; ASA rating 12. Photograph taken near the edge of the village area (lower side) of the Havasupai Reservation, eight miles by trail from Hualapai Hilltop, which is sixty-three miles from U.S. 66 near Peach Springs. The photographer says: "My preference for moving water shots in most cases, including falls, is a shutter speed of 1/50th sec., which retains some sense of water movement without excessive blur." Mr. Wampler conducts Wampler Trail Trips.

ing the Park the Indian's home lands were specifically reserved for their use and occupancy. Thus, though the Reservation lies within the Park, it is still a real Indian Reservation, administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and has nothing to do with the Park Service.

Mooney Falls in Havasu Canyon-is inside the Havasupai Reservation. It is fourteen miles from Hilltop down the Topocoba Trail to Supai-then nine miles, more or less, from the village to the junction of Supai (Havasu) Creek and the Colorado. Of course this tributary canyon is a mere pin-scratch compared to Grand Canyon, but walk down the trail to Supai-and on to Mooney Fallsand you will develop a considerable respect for minor canyons. And that's how big Uncle Sam thinks in national parks. A whole Indian reservation hidden in one of them.

I first heard about Havasu Canyon and its beautiful waterfalls when I was a little girl, living in Williams, Arizona. My father (Matthew A. Humphreys) prospected and mined in this canyon for some time, and would bring us bright specimens of ore, and tell us about the perilous trails that were the only means of getting into this beautiful spot. They called it Cataract Canyon then, and they shortened the name of the village to Supai, although the Indians called themselves Havasupai-Havasu (blue water), pai (people). My father never tired of telling us about the wonderful setting of the villagethe red cliffs enclosing it-the gentle, friendly Indianstheir gardens, and the wonderful red-fleshed cling-stone peaches-and about the waterfalls in the canyon below the village. And I heard about Mr. Mooney-who tried to go down a rope to the bottom of the highest waterfall and was killed.

Although my father had been in Havasu Canyon before, he was not there at the time of Mooney's death, but in the next year (1883) he began making regular trips in and out, and I was bound to hear my elders talking about Mr. Mooney, and his fall from the cliff. I even saw a photograph of a waterfall, and was told its was "Mooney Falls." His trips home were joyous occasions to me, and I was always there to sit on my dad's knee and listen to the wonder tales. Once he brought home some of the fine peaches from Supai village, so we might taste them. They were the first peaches I ever saw. When I began (in 1933) to look for history about

This prospecting in Havasu Canyon there was only my father's youngest brother left of the group who filed mining claims in Cataract Canyon in the days of Mr. Mooney. Thanks to Arthur L. Flagg (for many years with the Department of Mineral Resources in Phoenix, and now Curator of Arizona Mineral Museum) I have a copy of the "Cataract Canyon Mining Claims" record on which my father's and my uncle's names were listed.

The first name on the mining claims record was Alphonso Humphreys (my uncle). The others listed were: D. W. Mooney, H. J. Young, W. C. Beckman, Mat Humphreys (my father), and W. W. Jones. The claim dates run from 1879 (first date for Alphonso Humphreys) to 1883, which last date was for Mat Humphreys.

We know nothing of Mr. Mooney's people, or history, except that we were told he was a sailor who was tired of the sea and wanted to prospect for riches in the earth-a venturesome young man, like the other prospectors, eager to find some new and exciting thing. More than one person has written about this bit of Arizona history, and most of them have given the name of the sailor as James Mooney. Considering the initials, D. W., on the mining claim record, I am sure their "hear-say" was wrong.

According to my Uncle Alphonso, he, with Mooney, Young, and Beckman, had been in Havasu Canyon on several different occasions before Mooney's fateful last trip, but they had not been able to find a way to get below the highest waterfall. On first trips down from Prescott they had prospected, located mining claims, and had worked on some of the claims. On this last trip Mooney had brought down the rope he intended to use in going down the cliff. In the group with them this time, besides the first four mentioned men, were E. L. Doheny (later the California oil man) and two men my uncle named simply as Potts and Fowler.

At Mooney Falls the creek runs practically east to west. The north wall of the canyon rises almost five hundred feet above the stream bed. The south bank (once the stream bed) is a two-hundred-foot cliff, with a travertine overhang. Mooney, the sailor-but no mountaineer-was trusting to his ship's training in rope climbing. After he had started down they found they couldn't see over the cliff to watch his progress, and the noise of the waterfall drowned out any attempt to communicate with him by shouting. They soon knew something had gone wrong, but there was actually nothing they could do for him at the time.

When I wrote my uncle, asking him to tell me something about the Mooney fatality, I told him there were writers who said that a ladder was built for the descent to bury Mooney. He replied, "If there was ever a ladder there it was put there a long time afterward. Young and your father buried Mooney's remains, and they never went down any ladder." Following are my uncle's own words, copied from his letter:

"I remember well the trip that Mooney fell. We had been down in the canyon about three days when Mooney fell and was killed, and we had no way to get down to bury his remains till eleven months and a day. "The day Mooney fell we were all down in the canyon except Beckman, and when we returned to camp that evening there was no levity among us. Beckman noticed that, and not seeing Mooney he asked about him, and Doheny told him he fell and was killed. The next morning before any of us was up he went down to the cliff to see if Mooney had moved. He untied the rope and tossed it down with his boots and said, this is all the funeral I can give you this time. Mooney, before starting down on his rope had pulled off his boots and he asked me to lend him my belt which was a wide one. I have never seen the belt to this day, but Mooney's boots showed us the way to go down and bury him. We noticed

JOSEF MUENCH

ladder is a little to the side of the tunnel opening, but it still looked decidedly scary.

John went first. "Come on," he said. "Just don't look down-and feel for the spikes." Sitting on the floor, I rolled over on my stomach and put my feet over the edge. Holding onto the cedar log with my left hand I found spikes for right hand and foot, and backed down the ladder. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Just a matter of concentrating on the spikes.

The creek below the falls was very much broken and rough from past freshets. We spent some time looking for Mooney's grave but could find no evidence of it. We later heard that some one had been down there after a flood and found the remains partly exposed, and had moved them to a higher ledge.

I have read many different heights given for these waterfalls-mostly in Sunday supplement reporters' sketches. The figures vary so much that I finally wrote Grand Canyon National Park Service to see if I could get a reasonably stable figure on our Havasu Canyon waterfalls. R. S. Leding, of their office, says the height of these falls do vary a little. As an example, flood waters broke off travertine deposit from the lip of Navajo Falls several years ago, lowering the falls fifteen feet or more. As the most reliable measurement of the falls Mr. Leding gives the figures used by a Prescott assay office in pre-pare with ours in sheer beauty. Not big enough to be spectacular, they are of a size for little man to admire. You can get near enough to really see them, and take in the whole setting-can appreciate the contrasting color of the cliffs with the white lace of Havasu-the beautiful blue pools below them. They make pictures you will not forget. At Mooney Falls, instead of spreading into a veil, the water plunges through a narrow gap-straight downtwo hundred feet. It is a beautiful thing, but the high walls and the narrow canyon cut down on the sunshine hours, and you must be there when the sun is shining on it to see this waterfall with its blue pool and the red cliffs in full color splendor.

We didn't follow the creek bed down to the gap where Mooney Falls goes over, but climbed out onto the south rim of the creek, where the trail led us among a series of frozen cascades-travertine deposits of the past, before the stream changed its course. The trail twisted and turned, around and over the curves of these travertine banks, always going lower and nearer the edge of the cliff, till we arrived at the level of the cave-the cave the Indian had shown my father in 1883. We went through the little cave, and down the steps in the tunnel. Then the little tunnel leveled out, and we were looking out through the opening in the side of the cliff-and there was the great waterfall, pouring, and roaring, not more than twenty-five yards away.

It's a breathtaking thing. Perched in the cliffside, like a bird in a niche, to see all that water pouring over the ledge, the narrow canyon filled with the thunder of its falling.

But the spike ladder was waiting below the tunnel, and I wanted to see all of it. Looking out over a small cedar log laid across the bottom of the tunnel mouth, it seemed a long way down to the creek bed. The spike

JOSEF MUENCH JOSEF MUENCH

Hava Supai country," and promised to write me a special letter giving historical notes that I could send to the Park Museum. It delighted me to see him write the name-Ava Supai-which tells us how the Indians pronounced that word. Like most Indian names here, it was spelled by the Spaniards. The H in Hava should be silent.

I never did get the special letter. My uncle was so fired with interest in the subject that he started to write a book, and naturally, he wanted to begin at the beginning -when he left Arkansas with his father's caravan to cross the plains to California.

Not wanting to wait till he came to the Havasu Canyon part of his book, I would ask questions and remind him about the Mooney Falls special. Finally he wrote me the letter from which I quoted the passage about Mooney's fall in the Canyon. A little later, in answer to questions about my father's work there, he wrote:

"After being around the Canyon the bigger part of three years we turned the mines over to your father. He worked the mines for some time. I worked some in the tunnel, but you must remember it has been over 50 years since I have been near the Canyon. I claim the honor of naming the Bridal Veil Falls, Navajo Falls, Tonto Springs, Black Tanks, Rainbow Tanks. In my book I give a reason for the naming of these places. What I write you is true,

JOSEF MUENCH

Preparing a mineral map a few years ago. They are (approximately), Navajo Falls 90 feet; Havasu 125; and Mooney 200 feet.

The greatest stretch in height on our waterfalls was made by a reporter in an Arizona newspaper back in October, 1953. (He wouldn't put his name on it.) He was very generous with all of them. He made Navajo Falls 150, Havasu 200, and Mooney Falls 296 feet.

The lively pen of this reporter also added something to history that wasn't there. He said that Mooney, and the prospectors with him, named the lower fall Bridal Veil (they hadn't been able to get down so they could see it yet)-but after Mooney's fall from the cliff, the recovery of his body, and its burial near the falls, it was renamed Mooney Falls. Shades of departed prospectors! If my Uncle Alphonso could come down here he would tell that reporter that he, personally, had already named the second beautiful waterfalls Bridal Veil before Mooney was killed.

This reporter did give out one reasonable bit-that John D. Lee, who was in Supai some time in 1876, brought the peaches to the village. Mormons have always been good providers-especially in gardens. If he grew them from seed, a good Mormon boost could have brought them to fruiting by the time my father was there in 1883.

When we returned to Grand Canyon Village we visited the Park Service building and museum. When we told them we had been down in Havasu Canyon and had climbed down my father's fifty-year-old spike ladder, they were very much interested and said they would like to have any history I could give them on it. It was right after that I wrote my Uncle Alphonso concerning the Mooney story.

On October 12, 1933 he wrote me, "I can see it will take me some time to tell about the first prospectors inand there are many other things I mention in my book which is impossible to tell here. If you can read this letter you are in luck. You must remember I am 87 years young."

This letter, written with pencil on ruled paper, but quite clearly, was his last letter to me. He died two years later.

Since the mining days of my father, and my unclewho was, if not the first prospector, at least the first to record a mining claim in Havasu Canyon-there have been other mining claims, but there is scant history on these doings. Arthur L. Flagg's book, Mineralogical Journeys in Arizona, tells a little about these workings in Havasu Canyon. A file on Havasu Canyon at the Department of Mineral Resources says, "The Bridal Veil Mines Association established a camp in Cataract Canyon in 1885." So far, we do not now know who formed this association-and the date may be a little off. My father took over the first group in 1883, and was still interested in the workings in 1885, and I never heard any mention of a Bridal Veil Mines Association. He sold his mining property in the latter part of 1886, very shortly before we left Arizona. It is possible the buyers formed the association after he left, recording the claims under new names, and he did not know the name of the new mining association.

The records of those first claims do not give their exact location in the canyon. We do not know just where my father did his mining work, but we do know he worked there-and that he left a little tunnel and an iron spike ladder that marks the trail where he went down to lay Mooney's bones to rest.

About this fabled canyon that Havasu Creek has carved to reach the Colorado-this story was told to mybrother in my father's late years. In other stories I have heard and read, I have found no actual record of any person having traversed this canyon through to the Colorado. It is always someone who heard that someone, etc. -a mere whisper of unsigned adventure. I want my father's story to stimulate enough interest to send someone through this canyon to prove this shade of my father's past wasn't a pipe dream.

After my father had pioneered from Arkansas to California, in Arizona, and in Mexico, he made an entirely new start. He went to Canada, homesteaded land-and became a Canadian citizen. My younger brother, Ben, was there with them until father's death in 1924. In the long evenings of winter in that country there was timetime for reminiscences that in a busy life had been tucked away on a shelf. Now Ben listened to tales of things that happened before he was born, and some of them were about this very Havasu Canyon.

And this story: With two associates he went through Havasu Creek to its junction with the big river. According to his recollection, there were no more high waterfalls. The canyon became narrower, and the cliffs higher, as the stream cut on toward the river. They had to wade in the stream, sometimes through waist-deep pools, to make the passage. The strange thing about this part of the canyon was that in some places the stream undercut the bank -sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other-so much that the tall cliffs leaned until they couldn't see the sky. It was a weird place, almost as dark as a tunnel. At the Colorado there was a jump-off, but not a high waterfall.

Will someone, now, please go through this creek to the Colorado, and make a record of it? I want a verification of the story of these last miles of the little river of the Blue Waters.

I am waiting to hear from you.