SOUTHERN PACIFIC LINES Shy 
The history of Yuma dates back to 1540, when Alarc6n came up 
the Gulf of California and ascended the Colorado River to cooperate 
with the land expedition of Coronado. In 1700 Padre Kino came 
down the Gila River to its mouth, where he found, on the Arizona 
side, a large rancheria of Indians, which he named San Dionisio. 
The Yuma Indians gave a cordial reception to the first Spanish 
explorers and missionaries. The Jesuit missionary Jacobo Sedel- 
maier reached the Colorado River in 1744 and again in 1748. In 
1779 Garcés established the Misién de la Purisima Concepcién on the 
west bank of the river opposite the present town. About 53 families 
of colonists, laborers, and soldiers, appropriating the best lands, 
settled near by and also at another mission near Pilot Knob, about 
8 miles down the river. The Indians occupied palisaded towns and 
raised melons, squashes, and grain. Although they had previously 
appeared most friendly and amenable, they were irritated by the 
failure of the Spanish authorities to fulfill promises, and in 1781 they 
started an uprising in which Padre Garcés and three other priests and 
most of their white men associates, to the number of about 46, were 
slaughtered, including the visiting Lieutenant Governor of Baja 
California and a dozen of his soldiers who were camped on the Arizona 
side of the river. The women and children were enslaved. After 
this one serious outbreak the Yuma Indians did not prove trouble- 
some to the whites. Originally a powerful race, they themselves 
suffered much in wars with other tribes and in 1857 were almost 
annihilated by the Pima Indians. 
The first military post, then called Camp Calhoun, was established 
on the west side of the river in 1849 by United States Dragoons, who 
escorted Whipple’s boundary-survey party. In this year also a boat 
which came down the Gila River from the Pima region was pressed 
into service as a ferry across the Colorado River, and on this ferry 
during the gold rush many thousands crossed to California. The 
fare was $2 for man or animal. Fort Yuma was established on the 
west side of the river in 1851, when Camp Independence, as it was 
then called, was moved to ai site of the old mission and renamed. 
In 1861-62 the region was partly devastated by a flood. The 
settlement on the east bank of the river, called Colorado City, 
Arizona City, and finally Yuma, began to prosper in 1864, and 
in 1871 the county seat was moved there from La Paz, 75 miles 
up the river. The first steamboat to ascend the river was the Uncle 
Sam, in 1852, built at the head of the Gulf of California. In 1855 
several steamboats were running on the river, and in 1857 Lieut. 
Joseph Ives started from the mouth of the Colorado in a 50-foot iron 
stern-wheel steamer (pl. 33, A) and ascended to the “head of navi- 
gation’’ through Black Canyon, the site of the reservoir to be 
impounded by the Boulder Dam. (See p. 241.) Freight boats came 
