In considering the development features of the settlement of central
Arizona, the Author feels it might be interesting to note that the
immigrants saw in the Salt River Valley many evidences of the truth of
the Book of Mormon, covering the passage northward of the Nephites of
old. There was found a broad valley that had lain untouched for a
thousand years, unoccupied by Indian or Spaniard till Jack Swilling and
his miners dug the first canal on the north side of the river a few years
before the coming of the Saints to Jonesville. The valley had lain
between the red-skinned agriculturists of the Gila and the Apache
Ishmaelites of the hills. There had been no intrusion of Spanish or
Mexican grants. The ground had been preserved for utilization of the
highest sort by American intelligence.
Yet this same intelligence found much to admire in the works of the
people who had passed on. From the river had been taken out great canals
of good gradient, and it was clear that they had been dug by a people of
homely thrift and of skill in the tilling of the soil. There still were
to be seen piles of earth that marked where at least seven great communal
houses had formed nuclei for a numerous people. These were served by 123
miles of canals.
These people were not Aztec. According to accepted tradition, the Aztecs
passed southward along the western coast, reaching Culiacan, in
northwestern Mexico, about 700 A.D., and there named themselves the
Mextli. The ancient people of the Salt River Valley probably had moved,
or were moving, about that same time. They appear to have been of
Toltecan stock and undoubtedly came from the southward, from a land where
was known the building of houses and wherein had been established
religious cults of notable completeness and assuredly of tenacious hold.
Just why they left the Salt River Valley is as incomprehensible as why
they entered it, and how long they stayed is purely a matter of
conjecture. Probably occupation of the valley was not simultaneous.
Probably the leaving was by families or clans, extending over a period of
many years. Probably they left on the ending of a cycle of peace, on the
coming to the Southwest of the first of the Apache, or of similar
marauders, who preyed upon the peaceful dwellers of the plains. That they
were people of peace cannot be doubted, people who in the end had to
defend their towns, yet sought no aggression.
[Illustration: ANCIENT CALALS COVERING 123 MILES, AND PUEBLOS OF SALT
RIVER VALLEY. Surveyed by Herbert R. Patrick]