In May, 1876, Hamblin served as guide for Daniel H. Wells, Erastus Snow
and a number of other leading men of Utah on their way to visit the new
Arizona settlements. The Colorado was at flood and the passage at Lee's
Ferry, May 28, was a dangerous one. The ferryboat bow was drawn under
water by the surges and the boat swept clear of three wagons, with the
attendant men and their luggage. One man was lost, Lorenzo W. Roundy,
believed to have been taken with a cramp. His body never was found. L.
John Nuttall and Hamblin swam to safety on the same oar. Lorenzo Hatch,
Warren Johnson and another clung to a wagon from which they were taken
off by a skiff just as they were going over the rapids.
In the same year, in December, Hamblin was assigned by President Young to
lay out a wagon route from Pearce's Ferry, south of St. George, to Sunset
on the Little Colorado. The Colorado was crossed at a point five miles
above the old crossing. The animals were made to swim and the luggage was
conveyed in a hastily constructed skiff. The route was a desert one,
about on the same line as that to be used by the proposed Arizona-Utah
highway between Grand Wash and the present Santa Fe railroad station of
Antares. Returning, Hamblin went as far south as Fort Verde, where Post
Trader W.S. Head advanced, without money, provisions enough to last until
the party arrived at the Colorado, south of St. George.
An interview at St. George with President Young succeeding this trip was
the last known by Hamblin with the Church head, for the President died
the following August. In that interview, December 15, 1876, Hamblin
formally was ordained as "Apostle to the Lamanites."
In the spring of 1877, Hamblin journeyed again into Arizona by the Lee's
Ferry route to the Hopi towns, trying to find an escaping criminal. On
this trip, the Hopi implored him to pray for rain, as their crops were
dying. Possibly through his appeal to grace, rain fell very soon
thereafter, assuring the Indians a crop of corn, squashes and beans.
There was little rain elsewhere. When Hamblin returned to his own home,
he found his crops burned from drought.
The estimation in which the Indians held the old scout may have
indication in a story told lately in the Historian's office by Jacob
Hamblin Jr. It follows:
"One day my father sent me to trade a horse with an old Navajo Indian
chief. I was a little fellow and I went on horseback, leading the horse
to be traded. The old chief came out and lifted me down from my horse. I
told him my father wanted me to trade the horse for some blankets. He
brought out a number of handsome blankets, but, as my father had told me
to be sure and make a good trade, I shook my head and said I would have
to have more. He then brought out two buffalo robes and quite a number of
other blankets and finally, when I thought I had done very well, I took
the roll on my horse, and started for home. When I gave the blankets to
my father, he unrolled them, looked at them, and then began to separate
them. He put blanket after blanket into a roll and then did them up and
told me to get on my horse and take them back and tell the chief he had
sent me too many. When I got back, the old chief took them and smiled. He
said, 'I knew you would come back; I knew Jacob would not keep so
many; you know Jacob is our father, as well as your father.'"
In 1878 Hamblin moved to Arizona and was made a counselor to President
Lot Smith. He was appointed in 1879 to preside over the Saints in Round
Valley, the present Springerville, living at Fort Milligan, about one
mile west of the present Eagar.
He died of malarial fever, August 31, 1886, at Pleasanton, in Williams
Valley, New Mexico, where a settlement of Saints had been made in
October, 1882.
Hamblin's remains were removed from Pleasanton before 1889, to Alpine,
Arizona, where was erected a shaft bearing this very appropriate
inscription:
"In memory of
JACOB V. HAMBLIN,
Born April 2, 1819,
Died August 31, 1886.
Peacemaker in the Camp of the Lamanites."