Grand Canyon-A Human Perspective

he history of the Grand Canyon is a complicated story of water and rock. Human history at Grand Canyon, although eons shorter, is equally complex and like the Canyon itself shrouded in mystery. Culturally there is a prehistoric and an historic perspective which meld into the broader picture.
Prehistorically, Native Americans lived and loved, struggled and died in the Canyon. For them the Canyon and all it contained was quite simply home. For over ten thousand years their presence has waxed and waned. Populations of hunters and farmers rising and falling in their own time responding to the inevitable changes in the world around them. Most of it going on unnoticed without leaving a trace.
Only the rare moment gets preserved and it is rarer still for that event to come to discovery in a later time. For the southwestern archaeologist the lack of convenient evidence is compounded even further by the lack of a written record. Without written language, personal histories dissolve and the complete truth remains elusive. As an example the great abandonment of the southwest during the 14th century never really happened. It is myth. It was a poorly conceived generalization based on minimal information which under further scrutiny does not hold up. In actuality, Puebloan (Anasazi) groups simply retracted to places in which they could sustain themselves. The locations they had recently left were in fact the margins of their own world and these very places were in turn occupied by peoples known to us as the Pai and Paiute moving in from the west and north. It is more than likely residual groups of Puebloans in small numbers were present in the western reaches of the Canyon as the Pai expanded upriver.
Until very recently there was a tendency within the archaeological community of the southwest that promoted the concept; if you did not live in stone houses and make beautiful pottery you counted for less on the material scale and research barometer. The fact is that the vast majority of peoples inhabiting the Colorado Plateau and vicinity over the last ten millennia made their living in some other fashion. For instance, hunter-gatherer cultures like the Hualapai and Southern Paiute have lived in the Canyon for the better part of seven hundred years, yet their style of life has left a skinny record on the surface that is easy to overlook and easier still to underestimate.
A modern analog to the hunter-gatherers is the current use of the river corridor by the boating community. Two thousand years from now who could tell by physical evidence that over twenty-thousand people a year passed through the Canyon? It would appear from the record that the better part of the inner Canyon was abandoned during the last century. There would be some chunks of the dam, possibly ruins at Phantom, the occasional inscription and maybe a skeleton or two attached to a backpack frame to mark our passing. But where are the boats and the boatman, not to mention all of their stuff?
Historically, the human story casts a shadow much different from the Native experience. For the new Americans, the Canyon was and is antithetical to the concept of home. Even now it evokes feelings of frontier isolation and the fringe of civilization. To be sure, people live in and around the canyon today and you, the reader, are keenly aware that some of us cannot live fully without it. But Grand Canyon remains an exotic destination for the majority of modern people.
Technically, the historic period for Grand Canyon began in September of 1540 when a dozen Spaniards dressed in armor and riding thirsty, used-up horses, peered over the edge somewhere in the vicinity of Desert View. Three men actually attempted a descent to the river, but after going less than a third of the way down they returned to the rim with their minds sizzled by the shear immensity of the place. The vastness of scale could not be absorbed by their European frame of reference. The small party was led by Garcia Lopez de Cardenas. They belonged to Coronado's larger expedition and were, of course, looking for gold. They thought they were in Hell: no gold and no cities to plunder. The Hopi guides that brought them to this place conveniently omitted any mention of the several trails leading to the river. The Spaniards left and did not come back.
For our purposes the historical period began with several US Army expeditions that passed through the region in the 1850s (Sitgreaves, Ives, Whipple, and Beale with his camels). The era of the new Americans was cemented by the amazing journey of John Wesley Powell, Jack Sumner and company in 1869. As is common to our history, the miners followed the cavalry and the map makers. And that was the case for Grand Canyon.
Before Powell could finish a second trip the prospectors poured into this remote region. By the late spring of 1872 hundreds of gold miners had appeared at Lees Ferry, the mouth of Kanab Creek and along the Grand Wash Cliffs. Most of them left within months but the dream persisted. Through the 1880s several men took up residence at various locations along the river corridor. The area around Palisades was particularly attractive to the hard rock miners.
Most of these men left no trace in the written or physical record and they have disappeared into the whirlpool of time. Others amongst them are well known and belong to the lexicon of Canyon history: McDonald, Hance, Bass, Tanner, Beamer, Boucher, and Lantier. These men worked their digs, lived simply, and through all their effort profited precious little from precious metal. Those who stayed mined another resource, the tourist lode. It is the same ore that keeps on paying today.
As a prime example Ben Beamer came to the Canyon in 1890 hoping to make it pay. He considered his prospects nearly unlimited and extracted virtually nothing of value. Nevertheless he remained a busy fellow reworking an Anasazi structure at the mouth of the LCR into his own image [see below], prospecting all the while and of course living the good life in the bottom of the Canyon. He did not become an entrepreneur like John Hance or William Bass, but he enjoyed fishing and the changing beauty of the inner Canyon.
Within 25 years of Powell's first trip, the frontier period of the Canyon had passed by and the bona fide tourist replaced the solitary man. Beamer's legacy remains today as a documented historical site at the LCR. Like Bert Loper's boat, it is disappearing bit by bit. People have the not so absurd notion they can be more in touch with their heritage by possessing little fragments of it. Regardless of human habit and desire the Canyon, with absolute indifference, is the ultimate zone of subduction consuming individuals and the cultures they create. In time, nothing survives the Canyon.

Chris Coder

Beamer's Fixer-upper

n 1869 Major Powell observed and noted in his journal the presence of a Puebloan roomblock near the mouth of the Little Colorado River. Years passed by and after the turn of the century a rekindled interest in Powell's expedition prompted certain individuals to try and relocate this dwelling of the ancients. The ruins were nowhere to be found. More mystery and intrigue in the Canyon. In 1960 Bob Euler was on a river trip that stopped at the LCR. While poking around Beamers cabin Dr. Euler (like a good archaeologist) began seeing sherds and lithics and pictographs, etc. Then the light bulb went on in his head... .....Ben Beamer had come upon this spot in 1890, and, in the tradition of an experienced prospector he could not look a gift horse in the mouth. So he transformed the jumble of rock walls into a passable cabin. During subsequent trips in 1962 and 1963 Dr. Euler became convinced these were the ruins Powell had observed. This reasonable assumption was confirmed in 1984 when the Park Service conducted excavations at this location (AZ.C:13:004) revealing a record of human occupation stretching back to the fourth century B.C. In addition, Hopi, Southern Paiute and Pai pottery were found just under the surface indicating use of the LCR as an established route well into historic times.

(Personal communication Dr.Robert Euler and A CROSS SECTION OF GRAND CANYON ARCHAEOLOGY. WACC # 28, 1986. By Anne Trinkle Jones)

DENVER REPUBLICAN
MORNING, JULY 17, 1892

Ben Beamer has come up to Denver from his home at the bottom of the Great Colorado canon. He says he likes the long vistas of prairie with their background of snowcapped mountains, but 'for scenery as is scenery' give him the roaring waters of the frothy Colorado in its sandstone framework 6,000 feet high.
The hum of trade, the clang of car-belts, the rattle of patrol wagons are well enough in their way, but the rush and swirl of the great river sing to him another song.
"I got into the canon by the Tanner trail in February 1890," he said yesterday. "The trail is twelve miles below the mouth of the Little Colorado river, and sixteen miles further down is Hanse's trail, the only two ways of reaching the river bed in that section of Arizona.
"I have lived there ever since, except for a short trip to the outer world last winter and during the whole time I have been there, I never saw a human being until this spring, when line surveyors of the Atlantic and Pacific railroad, with a guide, made their way into the canon.
"I took up a ranch at the mouth of the Little Colorado, where there are about ten acres of cultivable land, built me a cabin and went about my own business of prospecting for the precious metals. All about there are strong indications of copper, it being a sandstone country underlaid with shale, a No. 1 copper formation. There are some copper springs twelve miles above the mouth of the Little Colorado, the waters from which 30 strongly impregnate the river with blue vitriol that no fish can live in it. When the river dries up in June and July, these springs supply enough water to float a boat. You cannot drink it, though.
"Six miles below me, on the south side of the Colorado, is the McDonald claim, which belongs to Denver parties, J. N. Hughes, the lawyer, being one of them, I believe. There is from 60 to 70 per cent copper in the rock, and some silver. Below that Mr. Hanse and two partners have some big copper claims and still further down a man named Berry has located some claims which show the same percentage of copper and run from $10 to $100 per ton in silver.
"An asbestos claim below Hanse's was lately sold for $7,500. Still further south are some big gold and silver ledges, but don't know much about them. This spring there were some wonderful discoveries made at Silverado, which is fifty miles back from Kingman, on the railroad, and somewhere near the rim of the canon. They lack water there and have made arrangements to pipe it in, though whether they can get it in sufficient quantities I can't say."
The precious metals found in the canon are gold, silver, lead, uranium, molybdenum and indium, and there are miles of rock that give a blow-pipe test for nickel.
"How do I live? Well, as all prospectors do, only I get plenty of fish and wild goat, and there are some otter. After the snow melts the Colorado backs up into some of those small canons and the fish come in millions to feed on a vegetable that grows on the rocks. They are so thick that you can lean over the water's edge and pull them out by the tail two at a time.
"Facts, I assure you. No, it's only in the Little Colorado where they cannot live. They are about twenty inches long and have a flat bump on their back just behind the head.
"The Atlantic @ Pacific did some work surveying up Hanse's trail this spring to hold their right of way but I doubt if a road will be put through there. The trails are so narrow that you cannot ride horseback. You can pack things down. In some places it is a mere hog-back and a scary man would have to cross on his hands and knees. The trail winds down the side of the canon from the rim, and if you fell you could drop 6,000 feet. I found tolerably good walking along the river bank for twenty-five miles below the mouth of the Little Colorado.

"Lonesome? Not when you get used to it."