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Show Record usually brought pelts and things of that kind over and traded them for coffee and flour and stuff like that and then rode back. There was quite a commerce with the Indians. There were several of the 494 skiffs in use along the river there. The skiffs were 4 feet wide, 10 feet long, and flat bottom. I recall the occasion in 1902 when I had to put something in the nature of a dam in the river to divert sufficient water into my canal for irrigation purposes. Usually, when we had high water, it would cut the channel in the river and knock down our ditches. It was the scarcity of water and the water level that made it necessary for me to divert it. 495 It was so dry it did not run from one pool to another. I could not definitely fix the year that happened. At any rate that is the year, whatever it might have been, during my experience, when the San Juan River carried less water than at nay other time. The Laplatta comes in below Farmington but above Fruitland. C. C. Bowen testified for complainant on direct examination as follows: 496 I live at Goodrich. It is not a post office. It is 30 miles below Bluff. My occupation is running an Indian trading post. I moved into the San Juan country in 1878. Have been there most of the time since. I am familiar with the sections of the San Juan River from Bloomfield, New Mexico, to John's Canyon. John's Canyon is probably 15 or 20 miles below Goodrich. The Indians have not used the river for trading or travelling to my knowledge. I do not 497 maintain a ferry boat at my trading post. My father ran a ferry at Jewett, New Mexico. Where I am now, I am near the Suspension Bridge. I do not know of any navigation on the San Juan River. I saw one boat down there last winter; then I saw a boat when I was a kid about 8 years old, about 45 years ago. I have never used it for shipping out supplies. I get my supplies in by truck. They come from Bluff mostly by parcel post. I haul lots of stuff from Cortez, Durango and Gallup. I have been on the river myself - 72- 1188 |
