File:Mormon settlement in Arizona - a record of peaceful conquest of the desert (1921) (14773368715).jpg

Identifier: mormonsettlement00byumccl (find matches)
Title: Mormon settlement in Arizona : a record of peaceful conquest of the desert
Year: 1921 (1920s)
Authors: McClintock, James H., 1864-1934
Subjects: Mormons
Publisher: Phoenix, Ariz. : (Printing and binding by the Manufacturing Stationers Inc.)
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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of theSaints to Jonesville. The valley had lain between the red-skinned agriculturists of the Gila and the Apache Ishmael-ites of the hills. There had been no intrusion of Spanish orMexican grants. The ground had been preserved forutilization of the highest sort by American intelligence. Yet this same intelUgence found much to admire inthe works of the people who had passed on. From the riverhad been taken out great canals of good gradient, and itwas clear that they had been dug by a people of homelythrift and of skill in the tilUng of the soil. There still wereto be seen piles of earth that marked where at least sevengreat communal houses had formed nuclei for a numerouspeople. These were served by 123 miles of canals. These people were not Aztec. According to acceptedtradition, the Aztecs passed southward along the westerncoast, reaching Culiacan, in northwestern Mexico, about700 A. D., and there named themselves the Mexth. Theancient people of the Salt River Valley probably had 225
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226 moved, or were moving, about that same time. They appearto have been of Toltecan stock and undoubtedly came fromthe southward, from a land where was known the buildingof houses and wherein had been estabhshed religious cultsof notable completeness and assuredly of tenacious hold.Just why they left the Salt River Valley is as incomprehen-sible as why they entered it, and how long they stayed ispurely a matter of conjecture. Probably occupation of thevalley was not simultaneous. Probably the leaving wasby families or clans, extending over a period of many years.Probably they left on the ending of a cycle of peace, on thecoming to the Southwest of the first of the Apache, or ofsimilar marauders, who preyed upon the peaceful dwellersof the plains. That they were people of peace cannot bedoubted, people who in the end had to defend their towns,yet sought no aggression. Evidences of Well-Developed Culture Possibly a great epidemic, of the sort known to haveswept Mexico before the coming

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