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Show WINTER 2013 UHQ pp 4-90_UHQ Stories/pp.4-68 12/5/12 9:38 AM Page 10 uTAH HISTORICAL QuARTERLy Powell’s men were low on food. Frederick Dellenbaugh noted that “so liberally had we used our rations that we were nearing the end, and we began to look hopefully in the direction from which we expected the pack-train to arrive.” Yet “four days passed and still there was no sign of it.”22 The party was reduced to half-rations. They had their first visitors on October 28—five days after their arrival. From the far side of the Colorado, not from Kanab, they first heard an “Indian yell” and looked to see “three natives.” Soon another figure appeared “and in good English came the words, ‘G-o-o-d m-o-r-n-i-n-g,’ long drawn out.” Powell’s men rowed over to investigate. “On landing,” Dellenbaugh wrote, “we were met by a slow-moving, very quiet individual, who said he was Jacob Hamblin. His voice was so low, his manner so simple, his clothing so usual, that I could hardly believe that this was Utah’s famous Indian-fighter and manager.”23 Hamblin and company were returning from an expedition to the Navajo. Accompanying Hamblin were nine Navajos for a trading visit to the southern Mormon settlements, as well as Isaac C. Haight, George W. Adair, and Joe Mangum. Haight and Adair had both participated in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, Haight playing a major role in Cedar City and Adair being present on the ground.24 The members of the Powell expedition took great pleasure in the company of both the Navajos and the Mormons. They made supper for the group. The Navajos were “a very jolly set of fellows, ready to take or give any amount of chaff, and perfectly honest,” Dellenbaugh wrote.25 Clem Powell remembered that the Powell men persuaded the Navajos to sing and dance. After a while, Clem recorded, “all of us, white and red, joined hands and danced around the fire.”26 When the Navajos retired, the remaining visitors—Hamblin, Haight, Adair, and Mangum—sang some “Mormon songs” and spent time “relating . . . their Mormon experiences.”27 Before leaving the next day, the Mormons shared with the hungry Powell expedition what Clem Powell called “Mormon beans” and what Dellenbaugh (perhaps more accurately) called “Mexican beans.” These “reddish brown” beans (in contrast to the white beans in the expedition’s supplies) helped the Powell group to “eke out [their] supplies” for a few more days.28 Still, if the supply train did not arrive soon, Powell’s men faced 22 Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, A Canyon Voyage: The Narrative of the Second Powell Expedition down the Green-Colorado River from Wyoming, and the Explorations on Land, in the Years 1871 and 1872 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908), 152. 23 Ibid., 153. 24 Ibid., 153; “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 358–59; “Journal of Stephen Vandiver Jones,” 105. 25 Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 154; “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 35–59; “Diary of Almon Harris Thompson,” 60. 26 “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 359. 27 Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 154; “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 359. 28 “Journal of W. C. Powell,” 359; Dellenbaugh, Canyon Voyage, 154. 10 |
