Keen interest in the Southwest was excited early in 1876 by a series of
lectures delivered at New England points by Judge Samuel W. Cozzens,
author of "The Marvellous Country." There was formed the American
Colonization Company, with Cozzens as president. Two companies of men, of
about fifty individuals each, were dispatched from Boston, each man with
equipment weighing about thirty pounds. The destination was a fertile
valley in northeastern Arizona, a land that had been described
eloquently, probably after only casual observation. The end of the Santa
Fe railroad was in northern New Mexico. There the first party purchased
four wagons and a number of mules from a grading contractor, Pat Shanley,
afterward a cattleman in Gila County.
The best story at hand of the Bostonians is from one of them, Horace E.
Mann, who for years has been a prospector and miner and who now is a
resident of Phoenix. He tells that the journey westward was without
particular incident until was reached, about June 15, the actual
destination, the valley of the Little Colorado River, on the route of the
projected Atlantic & Pacific Railroad. The travelers were astonished to
find the country already taken up by a number of companies of Mormon
colonists.
In New England the Mormons were considered a blood-thirsty people, eager
to slay any Gentile who might happen along. It is not to be intimated
that the Bostonians were mollycoddles. They appear to have been above
even the average of the time, manly and stalwart enough, but the truth
is, as told by Mr. Mann, the expedition did not care either to mingle
with the Mormons or to incur danger of probable slaughter. Therefore, the
parties hurried along as fast as possible. The same view is indicated in
a recent interview with David E. Adams, of one of the Mormon settlements.
He told the Historian that he found the Bostonians suspicious and
fearful. At that time the Utah people still were living in their wagons.
They were breaking ground and were starting upon the construction of dams
in the river. The second Boston party passed June 23.
At Sunset Crossing Mann and three of his companions entered upon an
adventure assuredly novel in arid Arizona. They constructed a raft of
drift cottonwood and thought to lighten the journey by floating down the
river. It was found that the stream soon bent toward the northward,
away from the wagon trail. Sometimes there were shoals that the raft had
to be pushed over and again there were deep whirlpools, around which the
raft went merrily a dozen times before the river channel again could be
entered. The channel walls grew higher and higher until, finally, the
navigators pulled the raft ashore and resumed their journey on foot,
finding their wagon in camp at the Canyon Diablo crossing. There,
apparently considering themselves safe from massacre, was an encampment
of a week or more.