OCR Text |
Show 280 tured to cross the Basin in t h i s direct manner." Simpson's map which accompanied his Report showed the entire region explored by Dame south of his own trail as "UNEXPLORED." Even when he discovered the t r a i l made by a contingent of Bean's company in Steptoe Valley, he was unable to explain i t s origin. Ironically, Bean was Simpson's guide in 1859, and, notwithstanding the fact that he was guiding Simpson over part of his own t r a i l of the previous year, he did not mention i t to Simpson u n t i l after their return to the settlements. Simpson was completely ignorant, as was the rest of the world, of the accomplishments of the White Mountain Expedition. Map makers apparently learned nothing of the discoveries of the 1858 expedition. Fremont's reports remained the authority on this region for several years t o come. Johnson's Map of California and Territories of New Mexico and Utah, published in 1862, continued to show a void in the central Great Basin region with t h i s paraphraseraent of Fremont: "This vast unexplored region of country i s supposed t o be inhabited by tribes of Indians. Altitude 5,000 f e e t . " Other maps continued the use of Fremont's great apocryphal east-west range well into the 1860s. Information about Mormon a c t i v i t i e s in the White Mountain country was not easily obtained, and then i t was grossly inaccurate. In the summer of I858 a newspaper correspondent with Johnston's Army reported: "At the White River Mountains, west of Fillmore, a settlement was attempted, but an Indian, through a trifling business transaction, got dissatisfied, which finally led to shooting, a fight, and the departure of the s e t t l e r s . " 6 Such was the limit of knowledge received by the outside world of the White Mountain Expedition. The story may have i t s foundation in the Indian depredations reported by returnees from Snake Creek. The history of the Snake Creek farm i s somewhat obscure. When Captain Richard F. Burton, of the British Army, visited Salt Lake City in I860, while taking notes for a book, Orrin Porter Rockwell advised him t o "shun |