140 
The Colorado River 
temporary ferry was established at the mouth of the Gila 
by Lieut. Cave J. Coutts, who had arrived in September, 
1849, commanding an escort for some boundary surveyors 
under Lieutenant Whipple. For a couple of months he 
rendered great assistance to the stream of weary emigrants, 
who had reached this point on their long journey to the 
Golden Country of their 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 Independ¬ 
ence. 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. 
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.” 
' IVt/d Life in the Far West, by Captain James Hobbs. 
