That these ancient peoples went north there can be no doubt. North of the
valley, nearly fifty miles, on the Verde, is a great stone ruin and
beyond it are cavate dwellings of remarkable sort. In Tonto Creek Valley,
a dozen miles north of the Roosevelt dam, is an immense ruin built of
gypsum blocks. To the eastward, Casa Grande, most famed of all Arizona
prehistoric remains, still stands, iron-roofed by a careful government,
probably of a later time of abandonment, but still a ruin when first seen
by Father Eusebio Kino in 1694. All the way up the Gila, and with a
notable southern stem through the Mimbres Valley, are found these same
evidences of ancient occupation. Chichilticalli, "the Red House,"
mentioned by Marco de Niza and by Coronado's historians in 1539-40, lay
somewhere near where another group of Mormons again reclaimed the desert
soil by irrigation in the upper Gila Valley. Ruins extended from Pueblo
Viejo ("Old Town"), above Solomonville, down to San Carlos.
Into the valleys of the Salt and of the Gila, from the north come many
waterways. In none of these tributary valleys can there be failure to
find evidences of the northward march of the Indians who lived in houses.
In this intermediate region, the houses usually, for protection, were
placed in the cliffs. Particularly notable are the cave dwellings of the
upper Verde and in Tonto Basin, near Roosevelt, and in the Sierra Anchas
and near Flagstaff.
[Illustration: THE ARIZONA TEMPLE AT MESA]
[Illustration: JONATHAN HEATON OF MOCCASIN AND HIS FIFTEEN SONS]
[Illustration: 1--Ira Hatch, Indian Missionary
2--Thales Haskell, Indian Missionary
3--Wm. C. Prows, Battalion Member
4--Nathan B. Robinson, killed by Indians]
Again there was debouchment upon a river valley, that of the Little
Colorado. Possibly some of the tribes worked eastward into the valley of
the Rio Grande. Another section, and for this there is no less evidence
than that of Frank Hamilton Cushing, formed at least a part of the
forefathers of the Zuni. Swinging to the northwest, the Water House and
other clans formed the southern branch of the three from which the Moqui,
or Hopi, people are descended. This last is history. The early Mormons
remarked upon the pueblo ruins that lay near their first Little Colorado
towns, above St. Joseph. These ruins are known to the Hopi as "Homolobi,"
and much is the information concerning them to be had from the historians
of the present hilltop tribes.
Reports of similarity have been so many, there can be no surprise that
the earlier settlers from Utah wrote home joyously, telling that proofs
had been found of the northern migration so definitely outlined in their
ecclesiastical writings, according to the Book of Mormon.
_The Great Reavis Land Grant Fraud_
For about ten years from 1885 all the lands of the Salt and Gila valleys
of Arizona lay under a serious cloud of title. There had been elimination
of the Texas-Pacific landgrant, which unsuccessfully had been claimed by
the Southern Pacific. Then came the Reavis grant, one of the most
monumental of attempted swindles ever known. James Addison Reavis, a
newspaper solicitor, claimed a tract 78 miles wide from a point at the
junction of the Gila and Salt Rivers, eastward to beyond Silver City,
N.M., on the basis of an alleged grant, of date December 20, 1748, by
Fernando VI, King of Spain, to Senor Don Miguel de Peralta y Cordoba, who
then was made Baron of the Colorados and granted 300 square leagues in
the northern portion of the viceroyalty of New Spain. The grant was said
to have been appropriated in 1757. Reavis had first claimed by virtue of
a deed from one Willing, of date 1867, but there was switching later,
Reavis thereafter claiming as agent for his wife, said to have been the
last of the Peralta line, but in reality a half-breed Indian woman, found
on an Indian reservation in northern California, and one who had no
Mexican history whatever. Reavis renamed himself "Peralta-Reavis," and
for a while had headquarters for his "barony" at Arizola, a short
distance east of Casa Grande, where he maintained his family in state,
with his children in royal purple velvet, with monogrammed coronets upon
their Russian caps. He arrogated to himself ownership of all the water
and the mines and sold quit-claim deeds to the land's owners. It is said
that the Southern Pacific bought its right of way from him and that the
Silver King and other mines similarly contributed to his exchequer. He
claimed Phoenix, Mesa, Florence, Globe, Silver King, Safford and Silver
City.
He planned a storage basin on Salt River and another above Florence on
the Gila, and advertised that he intended to reclaim 6,000,000 acres on
the Casa Grande and Maricopa plains, "thereafter returning to the Gila
any surplus water." Just how accurate his figures were may be judged by
the fact that government engineers have found that the waters of the
Gila, above Florence, are sufficient for the irrigation of not more than
90,000 acres. He viewed things on a big scale, however. At Tonto Basin
he was to build a dam 450 feet high and the water was to be taken from
the river channel by means of a 44,000-foot tunnel.
Whenever one of his prospective customers failed to contribute, he often
deeded the land to a third party. Some of these deeds are to be seen on
the records of Maricopa County. His case had been so well prepared that
many were deceived, even the lawyers who served him as counsel, including
Robert G. Ingersoll. Naturally something approximating a panic for a
while was known by the farmers of the valleys affected.
Meanwhile, very largely from moneys obtained as above noted, Reavis was
spending royally at many points. At Madrid, Spain, he had a gorgeous
establishment, whereat he even entertained the American Legation. At many
points in Mexico, he scattered coin lavishly and accumulated cords of
alleged original records and he even found paintings of his wife's
alleged ancestors. The grant was taken into politics and was an issue in
the congressional campaign of 1887.
About 1898 there was establishment of the United States Court of Private
Land Claims, especially for adjudication of many such claims in the
Southwest. Reavis' elaborately prepared case tumbled almost from the day
it was brought into court. Government agents found bribery, corruption
and fraud all along his trail. He had interpolated pages in old record
books and had even changed and rewritten royal documents, including one
on which the grant was based. Some of his "ancient" documents were found
to have been executed on very modern milled paper. On one of them
appeared the water mark of a Wisconsin paper mill. Others had type that
had been invented only a few years before. The claim was unanimously
rejected by the land court and on the same day Reavis was arrested on
five indictments for conspiracy. He was convicted in January, 1895, and
sentenced to six years in the penitentiary. After serving his sentence,
he made a brief confession, telling that he had been "playing a game
which to win meant greater wealth than that of Gould or Vanderbilt."
The district covered by his claim today has property valued at at least
one billion dollars.
When Mesa first was settled, every alternate section was called "railroad
land." claimed by the Southern Pacific, under virtue of the old Tom
Scott-Texas & Pacific land grant. Early in the eighties, this claim
vanished, it being decided that the Southern Pacific had no right to the
grant.