Adventures in the Canyons of the Colorado, by Two of Its Earliest Explorers

This pamphlet called forth a strong rejoinder from Robert Brewster Stanton, which occupied some twenty-two pages of "The Trail," a monthly publication of the "Sons of Colorado." In it, this eminent engineer and writer, whose intimate knowledge of the Canyon none can dispute, while giving full credit to the honesty and integrity of Mr. White, still insists that he was unintentionally wrong in the main part of his statements.

On the other hand, F. S. Dellenbaugh, who has written two books on the Colorado River, viz., "The Romance of the Colorado River" and "A Canyon Voyage," openly assails White as a mendacious fabricator of the worst type.

It would not be impossible for me, with my intimate personal knowledge of one portion of the Grand Canyon, extending over a period of nearly forty years, to point out discrepancies and inaccuracies in the published statements of both Stanton and Dellenbaugh, but it is not worth while here to do this. Personally, I have come to believe White's statements, and here wish to reproduce in fac-simile a letter he wrote to his brother, dated Callville, September 26, 1867. Owing to the imperfections in spelling, punctuation, etc., I give a rendition (made by Mr. Dawson) into correct English.

Fac-simile of first page of James White's letter to his brother.

Fac-simile of second page of James White's letter, and the envelope in which it was sent to his brother.

NAVIGATION OF THE BIG CANON

A TERRIBLE VOYAGE

Callville, September 26, 1867.

Dear brother:

It has been some time since I have heard from you. I got no answer from the last letter I wrote you, for I left soon after I wrote. I went prospecting with Captain Baker and George Stroll in the San Juan mountains. We found very good prospects, but nothing that would pay. Then we started down the San Juan River. We traveled down about 200 miles; then we crossed over on the Colorado and camped. We laid over one day. We found that we could not travel down the river, and our horses had sore feet. We had made up our minds to turn back when we were attacked by fifteen or twenty Ute Indians. They killed Baker, and George Stroll and myself took four ropes off our horses, an axe, ten pounds of flour and our guns. We had fifteen miles to walk to the Colorado. We got to the river just at night. We built a raft that night. We sailed all that night. We had good sailing for three days; the fourth day George Stroll was washed off the raft and drowned, and that left me alone. I thought that it would be my time next. I then pulled off my pants and boots. I then tied a rope to my waist. I went over falls from ten to fifteen feet high. My raft would tip over three or four times a day. The third day we lost our flour, and for seven days I had nothing to eat except a raw-hide knife cover. The eighth day I got some mesquite beans. The thirteenth day I met a party of friendly Indians. They would not give me anything to eat, so I gave them my pistol for the hind parts of a dog. I had one of them for supper and the other for breakfast. The sixteenth day I arrived at Callville, where I was taken care of by James Ferry. I was ten days without pants or boots or hat. I was sun-burnt so I could hardly walk. The Indians took seven head of horses from us. I wish I could write you half I underwent. I saw the hardest time that any man ever did in the world, but thank God that I got through it safe. I am well again, and I hope these few lines will find you all well. I send my best respects to all. Josh, answer this when you get it. Direct your letter to Callville, Arizona. Ask Tom to answer that letter I wrote him several years ago.

JAMES WHITE.

Stanton claims that White only went through the lower part of the Canyon, viz., from the Grand Wash Cliff's to Callville. This much he concedes, and he asserts that the evidence is clear that White was led to claim he had traveled the whole length of the Canyons, not through dishonesty, but by the law of suggestion.

The men with whom he talked, after he was rescued from the raft, knowing little or nothing of the Canyon, and assuming he had traveled the whole distance from the San Juan, made him believe he had so traveled. When his terrible physical and mental condition is recalled, it is not hard to believe that he was in such a weakened state as readily to receive any powerful mental suggestion, and that this, once firmly fixed in his mind, ever afterwards appeared to him to be the strict and literal truth.

But this assertion of Stanton's implies that White and his companion, Stroll, after Captain Baker was killed, crossed the intervening hundreds of miles from the San Juan to the head of the Grand Wash, and that he there entered the Canyon and floated down to Callville. To my limited intelligence it seems incredible that any man could believe in the truth and honesty of James White and yet not question him as to how he forgot to mention how he traveled over all these hundreds of miles. White never makes a word of reference to it, nor does Stanton. Did White come on a flying machine in a trance? Let anyone, even though he be unfamiliar with the wild country that exists between the San Juan and the Grand Wash, look at a U. S. Geological Survey map and he will then be able to form some idea of the practical difficulties in the way of anyone crossing it. Then, when it is recalled, that White was beset by hostile Indians, who were determined to slay him and capture his outfit; that the country was unknown to him; that there was no food except that which he could secure with his rifle, is it not evident that he would far rather take his chances on facing the unknown dangers of the river than face certain death at the hands of the surrounding Indians?

Personally, it is far harder for me to believe that White came overland, and forgot all about that trip, and entered the Canyon at its lower end, than it is to accept his own plain statement that he built the raft near the junction of the Grand and the Green and made the whole descent of the Colorado River to the point where he was rescued at Callville.

My first interest in White's trip through the Grand Canyon dates back to 1883, while I was engaged in train service for the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad (now the Santa Fe) during its construction between Williams, Arizona, and the Colorado River where the bridge is now situated near Needles, California. It so happened that we were detained for several days at Kingman, Arizona, due to a fire that destroyed boarding cars and a water tank on the line near the end of the construction work. At this time I had never taken any interest in the Grand Canyon, in fact knew nothing about it, only from vague reports that were being circulated by the railroad men who had been out to see it from Peach Springs, at the mouth of Diamond Creek Canyon. This route was then in its infancy and later was opened to visitors and was the first one opened to the public. They were so enthusiastic in their descriptions of this now famous "National Park" that I at once became very greatly interested, and when I chanced to meet a man named Hardy, who was then in Kingman, I found that he lived on the Colorado River and was engaged in goat raising. He told me about finding some mountain sheep among his band of goats, and various other experiences he had met, not the least of which was finding a man on a raft who had come through the entire Grand Canyon. He described him as being in an exhausted condition and covered with sores festered by flies. After reviving the man they learned the story of his sufferings and the drowning of his partner while going through some bad rapids; in fact his descriptions to me of what White told him was very much the same as has been published from later interviews to different parties.

This was in July, 1883, when I met Mr. Hardy, and in September following I set out to make my first visit to Grand Canyon, from Williams, Arizona.

Since that time I have taken a great interest in its history and discovery. F. S. Dellenbaugh, a member of the Powell party of 1872, while on a visit to my camp at Bass Trail, told me his opinion of White's dramatic tale and I later read the same in his "Romance of the Colorado River," wherein he stamps the whole story as a "splendid yarn" (and I may here add, "but well told"). He denounces White's account as an utterly improbable feat to accomplish, but from my first personal knowledge of what the river is at the season of year that White's trip was staged, I cannot agree with Dellenbaugh, and never have. From my many years of observation in this section of the Canyon I am thoroughly convinced that during the period of high water, which is from the last of June until late in August, a raft may pass safely through the entire 488 miles of the canyon without disaster. It would be dangerous in the extreme in low water. Another incident to strengthen my belief in White's story was the meeting of a man, J. P. Vollmer by name, then president of the First National Bank of Lewiston, Idaho, who was a visitor to the canyon some years later. He told me he came near being a member of White's party when they were about to start on their prospecting trip on the Mancos in Colorado, but unavoidably he was prevented from joining them in time or he might have been among them when attacked by the Utes and met the fate of Baker, or with White and his partner on the raft. I subsequently corresponded with Vollmer regarding the incident and he once wrote me he was quite sure he could find some record of dates among his papers, but later on failed to do so. He and various others with whom I have talked regarding White have all united in their convictions of the truth of White's claims regarding this, the first journey through the entire five divisions of canyons through which the Colorado River maintains its tortuous existence, 218 miles of which, at the western end, is known as the Grand Canyon.

W. W. BASS.

Grand Canyon, Arizona, May 21st, 1920.

notes

1

Correctly spelled "Escalante," so named after Padre Escalante, who crossed the river in an expedition made in 1776.