The Rock That Could Change History

LIE HERE?

experts set out to investigate his whereabouts in 1849

IX OF US TRUDGED THROUGH a remote sandy wash southeast of Prescott, hoping to unravel a 150-year-old mystery. Under the brightest sun imaginable, we climbed onto a rock ledge and pondered the past.

Historians officially recognize the Walker party, which was led by Rutherford Walker, as the first group of Anglos to explore and occupy central Arizona north of the Gila River. Walker and his men struck gold on Lynx Creek in 1863, leading to the founding of nearby Prescott as the first Territorial capital. But a message chipped into the flat rock at our feet challenges the Walker party's status as the region's earliest American explorers. It reads: "Killed Indians Here, 1849, Willie Drannan."

Could an Anglo have crossed this land a full 14 years before Walker? We batted the matter back and forth. Our party included Paige Phifer, an archaeologist with the Prescott National Forest whose work has brought her in contact with rock art around Arizona; Tom Bonomo, a Forest Service supervisor with a strong working knowledge of history; and Edward and Diane Stasack of Prescott. Between the two of them, the Stasacks have almost 50 years' experience in studying rock art.

No one in the group was eager to dispute established history, especially on the word of William F. Drannan. The best that can be said of him is that he knew how to spin a yarn.

"He was a scoundrel and a liar," said Skip Miller, then of the Kit Carson Historic Museum in New Mexico, in a phone interview. "He made money saying he did all these things, but he never did any of them. Most of his life was a lie."

Drannan earned Miller's disdain, and a measure of fame, by producing two books in which he claimed a close association with Kit Carson, the greatest frontiersman of his time. In Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains, published in 1900, Drannan told of meeting Carson in the lobby of a St. Louis hotel in 1847, when Drannan was 15. He claimed the encounter led to a 12-year friendship, during which he became like a foster son to the man he called "Uncle Kit."

His second book, Capt. W.F. Drannan: Chief of Scouts, was published 10 years later. The two volumes contained lively stories of adventure in the West and encounters with famous men, including Carson and John Fremont. Drannan's books sold well. Newsboys peddled them on trains and at railroad depots across the West. He sometimes dressed in buckskin and set up a table on street corners to tell his stories and hawk his books.

But Carson scholars have been unable to find Drannan's name in any legitimate document, including numerous first-person accounts written by men who rode with Carson. Carson biographer Harvey Lewis Carter and other writers flatly dispute Drannan's claims.

The most thorough of his critics, W.N. Bate, wrote Frontier Legend: Texas Finale of Capt. Wm. F. Drannan, Pseudo Frontier Comrade of Kit Carson, a 69-page book shredding Drannan's credibility.

Bate said Drannan even visited two of Carson's relatives while Kit was still alive, apparently trying to establish a relationship with the famous scout. Both said Drannan knew nothing about Carson-not even the most familiar facts.

In one book, Drannan claimed to have been at Carson's wedding to Josefa Jaramillo in Taos, New Mexico, in 1843. Not only would he have been only 11 years old, but that was four years before his alleged introduction to Carson. In another book, Drannan said he was present in 1852 at Carson's famous duel with a Frenchman known as Shunar. But Carson himself wrote that the duel was in 1835. Drannan would have been 3 years old.

Bate discovered that the "somewhat illiterate" Drannan didn't even write the books himself. His wife, Belle, a well-educated New Englander, penned the books, transforming her husband's fantasies into smooth and satisfying reads. She also sewed the buckskin suit he wore when signing books.

We sat on the rocks under the morning sun, having a good laugh over Drannan's apparent trickery. We agreed with Bate that, while Willie might've been a fraud, he seemed a likeable one, motivated by insecurity and a need for attention and money in his old age.

But the more we talked about it, the more our certainty disintegrated. True, Drannan made up much of two books. Does that mean he did not kill Indians on this spot in 1849? Not at all. In fact, one of our group declared himself an emphatic believer.

"I don't doubt for a minute this is authentic," said Edward, pointing to the Drannan inscription with his walking stick. "If someone were going to fake a name, why would they put down an obscure one like Willie Drannan? If you want to make a good fake, why not use Kit Carson?"

The author of the Drannan inscription was not the only person to have visited this remote gorge. Ancient rock art decorated the cliff above us, and down in the wash we found a number of grinding sticks, probably used to crush various seeds, berries and other fruits.

It may have served as a sacred place, a way point for travelers or a source of water. "Anywhere in the Southwest where you have water, it was some kind of gathering site," said Phifer.

More visitors came as recently as the early 1900s, and they, too, carved their names into the rocks. One glyph stands in clear relief close to Drannan's. It says simply, "Marie." The latest date on the other engravings is 1920.

The color of those inscriptions is considerably lighter than the Drannan message, and that's significant. A petroglyph darkens with age in a process known as repatination, so the lighter ones were almost certainly made well after the Drannan inscription.

"If Drannan's looked like Marie's, I'd say it's a fraud," said Edward. "But comparing the repatination of the two, it's very persuasive to me that Drannan's message could have been done 150 years ago."

Other petroglyphs add further clues, including one showing two coyotes. It's similar to one Edward knows of made by Yavapai Indians in what is now Prescott. If Indians were indeed killed here, he says, they probably were Yavapais, too.

Next to the Drannan message, another etched picture seemed to represent a kind of vessel. But it was not a vessel of Indian design. An arm juts straight up from it, possibly depicting the handle of a cooking pan.

"Why on earth would anyone make a petroglyph of a cooking pan?" Edward asked. "Unless it wasn't used for cooking. I suspect it was used for panning gold, although that's speculation."

Bonomo heard this remark as he scaled the high rocks examining the Indian glyphs, some of which might date as far back as 7000 B.C. He stopped and called down the hill: "There's been mining in this area, and I'll bet you could still find color in these crevices."

If Drannan had indeed traveled here, maybe gold brought him, just as it brought Walker. But how and by what route?

The Stasacks asked us to consider this: John Fremont's fourth expedition left Taos in 1848 and reached the Gila River in 1849. If accompanying Fremont, Drannan could have left the main party along the Gila and trekked north, following the Agua Fria River, or perhaps the Verde, into present-day Yavapai County.

Drannan's name doesn't appear on Fremont's roster of men, but the list is incomplete in other cases, so Drannan's association with the Fremont party cannot be ruled out.

Bate spent great effort tracking Drannan's life, but could not determine his whereabouts between 1864 and 1887. Before and after those years, however, Drannan moved from place to place.

This mobility put a visit to central Arizona in 1849-the year Drannan turned 17-within the realm of possibility.

Our group gathered again around Drannan's words. The inscription itself is on a flat slab of granite, and the letters appear crisp, especially at the edges. This indicates it was probably done with a metal spike rather than with a rock.

"It had to be hard work to move through this area in those times," Phifer said. "And to think that anybody at the end of a day would have the energy to peck on a rock is amazing to me."

I found it hard to imagine anyone who'd just fought a desperate life-and-death struggle would then stop to chisel his name in stone. My reaction would be to get out of there, and fast.

Phifer confirmed the scarcity of such boastful markings. "You'd think in the Wild West we'd see lots of inscriptions like this, but we don't. This is unique."

Edward reasoned that a fight with the Yavapais might have left Drannan pumped, his heart racing. Maybe excitement moved him to document his act. Theories suggest most rock art commemorates a momentous feat or incident. This motivation would ring especially true in a 17-year-old boy.

"I think he was proud that he'd killed," Edward speculated. "But there's also a lot of poignancy in his message. He shed blood and that would stay with him the rest of his life. And where did a young man learn to be proud to kill? What kind of person was he as a youth? I

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look at this very differently than I would if he had been older."

Diane offered another caution: "Did Drannan kill at all? The message doesn't say that he killed the Indians. Drannan could've been part of a larger party of men who did the killing."

The question silenced the conversation as we reordered our thinking. The improbable sound of a plane jetting across the sky broke the quiet. Edward turned to Bonomo: "Do you think a 17-year-old would be traveling through this country alone in 1849?"

"Probably not for long," Bonomo answered, drawing big laughs from everyone in the group.

"It took a highly skilled woodsman to survive by himself in those days," he added. "It'd be possible to acquire those skills by age 17, but he'd have to have been on a steep learning curve from 13 on."

The time came to lay down our cards. "Was Drannan here in 1849, and did he write this message?" I asked.

The Stasacks believed the answer to both questions was probably yes, and I agreed. Phifer and Bonomo took a quiet moment to assess the evidence a final time. Going first, Phifer sipped from her water bottle and said, "What Ed has said about repatination is sig-nificant to me. That Drannan was here and did this petroglyph seems pretty likely. But based on what we know about his character, who knows if he killed Indians or not?"

Bonomo agreed and said, "The chance of someone other than Drannan putting something like this here is awfully slim. I tend to think it's probably authentic, although the mystery is fascinating."

So we hiked out of the wash carrying a conclusion that challenges history books. But as we walked up the steep ridge, the creosote crunching underfoot, I couldn't help thinking of the contradictions we'd weighed this day, and the man whose words we were trusting.

Willie Drannan died in Mineral Wells, Texas, in 1913. His headstone there says he was a Texas Ranger. But of course, that was false, too-another invention in a life rich in fantasy. Al ADDITIONAL READING: Leo W. Banks wryly exposes tall tales from Arizona's Territorial years printed as truth by newspapers of the day in Rattlesnake Blues: Dispatches From a Snakebit Territory. To order, call toll-free (800) 543-5432 or go online to arizonahighways.com.

Leo W. Banks of Tucson enjoyed trying to unravel this Arizona mystery. He claims no ties to Kit Carson. He also wrote "The Life and Death of Sally Brand, Part 2" in this issue.

Photographer David Elms Jr. enjoys investigating obscure figures from Arizona's past. His investigations always provide him with good reasons for trips to Arizona's beautiful outback from his Phoenix home.

CHASING BUTTERFLIES