dreams. A flatboat, built
on the shore of Lake Michigan, and there fitted with wheels so that it
could be used as a waggon on land, was launched on the Gila at the
Pima villages and came safely down to the Colorado, bearing its owners.
Coutts is said to have purchased this boat and used it till he left,
which was not long after. The junction now began to be a busy place. The
United States troops came and went, occupying the site of Coutt's
Camp Calhoun, which Major Heintzelman, November, 1850, called Camp
Independence. In March, 1851, he re-established his command on the spot
where the futile Spanish mission of Garces's time had stood, and this
was named Fort Yuma. It was abandoned again in the autumn of the year,
as had been done with the camps of the previous seasons, but when
Heintzelman returned in the spring of 1852 he made it a permanent
military post.

* Brigham Young and his followers crossed to the Salt Lake Valley in
1847.

Meanwhile a gang of freebooters, who left Texas in 1849, found their
way to this point and acquired or established a ferry two or three miles
below the old mission site. Their settlement was called Fort Defiance in
contempt for the Yumas. They were led by one Doctor Craig. They robbed
the Yumas of their wives and dominated the region as they pleased.
Captain Hobbs,* a mountaineer who was at Yuma in 1851, says:

"The attack which wiped out this miserable band was planned by two young
Mexicans, who had attempted to cross the ferry with their wives, and had
them taken from them and detained by the Texans. The Mexicans went down
the river and the desperadoes supposed they had gone their way and left
their wives in their hands. But they only went far enough to find the
chief of the tribe who had suffered so horribly at the hands of this
gang, and arrange for an attack on their common enemy."

* Wild Life in the Far West, by Captain James Hobbs.

By this plan twenty-three out of the twenty-five whites, including the
master scoundrel himself. Dr. Craig, were destroyed with little loss to
the attacking party. Hobbs calls this the best thing the Yumas ever did.
It took place only a month before Hobbs reached the ferry, and only
two or three days before one of the periodical returns of United States
troops, this time a company of dragoons under Captain Hooper, probably
belonging to Heintzelman's command. To him the two escaped desperadoes
came with a complaint against the Yumas,