Page:The Pima Indians.pdf/36

] A battalion of dragoons under Maj. L.P. Graham marched westward to California by way of the Pima villages in 1848. Bancroft states that he has a manuscript diary from Capt. Cave J. Coutts, of this battalion, in which it is recorded that the Pimas were very hospitable and exhibited conspicuous signs of thrift.

The parties of the Boundary Survey Commissioners passed down the Gila in 1851, and the account of the Pimas by J.R. Bartlett, the American commissioner, is by far the best that has been published thus far. Bartlett's party returned eastward through the Pima villages in 1852.

In 1854 Lieuts. J.G. Parke and George Stoneman began at the Pima villages the survey for a railroad which was destined to pass through just a quarter of a century later. In 1855 Lieutenant Parke, with another party, made a second survey and again visited the villages.

From the time of the discovery of gold in California, in 1849, parties of gold seekers, numbering in all many thousand persons each year, followed the Gila route, meeting with hospitality from the Pimas and almost equally uniform hostility from the Apaches. The location of the Pimas in the midst of the 280-mile stretch between Tucson and Yuma was a peculiarly fortunate one for the travelers, who could count upon supplies and if need be protection at a point where their journey otherwise must have been most perilous.

The United States Government first recognized the value of the assistance rendered by the Pimas when by act of Congress of February 28, 1859, $1,000 was appropriated for a survey of their lands and $10,000 for gifts.