[6] There are several other fair springs in the vicinity, chiefly Johnson's to the north of Kingman, and Gentile Springs, below the pass through which the Santa Fé railway enters Sacramento Valley.
Garcés says the people received him hospitably and "conducted themselves with me as comported with the affection that I had shown toward them." Their dress was antelope skins and "some shirts of Moki," doubtless the cotton woven shirts of these primitive weavers.
Lieutenant Ives, in his interesting report of his early explorations in this region, describes the Wallapais in Peach Springs and Diamond Canyons, another of their favored locations, and Captain Bourke in his "On the Border with Crook" makes passing mention of them.
On January 4, 1883, President Arthur decreed the following as their reservation:--
"It is hereby ordered that the following-described tract of country situated in the Territory of Arizona be, and the same is hereby, set aside and reserved for the use and occupancy of the Hualapai Indians, namely: Beginning at a point on the Colorado River five miles eastward of Tinnakah Spring; thence south twenty miles to crest of high mesa; thence south forty degrees east twenty-five miles to a point of Music Mountains; thence east fifteen miles; thence north fifty degrees east thirty-five miles; thence north thirty miles to the Colorado River; thence along said river to the place of beginning; the southern boundary being at least two miles south of Peach Spring, and the eastern boundary at least two miles east of Pine Spring. All bearings and distances being approximate.
Owing to the abundant supply of water at Beale's Springs the settlement there naturally became a stopping-place for all travel across that portion of Arizona. It was the favorite camping-place of the wagons travelling between Fort Mohave and Fort Whipple, near Phoenix. Johnson's and Gentile Springs also being in line, and the pass just below Kingman leading into the Sacramento Valley being the most natural outlet for a railway, the building of the Atlantic and Pacific, by which name the section of the great Santa Fé transcontinental system which extends from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Barstow, California, was originally known--found the Wallapais and at once put them in contact with the outside world and our civilization. Unfortunately the actual builders of a railway and their followers do not always represent the best elements of our civilization, and the meeting in this case was decidedly against the best interests of the Wallapais. Close proximity, also, to a border mining town, such as Kingman, has not tended to the elevation of the morals or ideals of the Wallapais, and in a short time many of those who resided near the railways became known for their degradation. The men yielded to the white men's vices and soon inducted their women into the same courses, so that for a long period of years the name Wallapai seemed to be almost synonymous with drunkenness, gambling, wild orgies, and the utmost degradation. In those days it was no uncommon sight to see as many as twenty men, women, and children lying around drunk in either Kingman or Hackberry, and I have personal knowledge of several cases where fathers took their daughters and sold them to white men, into a bondage infinitely worse and more degrading than slavery.