By this time the relations between the United States and Mexico were at the point of rupture, and in 1846 Kearny’s forces moved on New Mexico and California, the Mormon Battalion marking out a waggon-road down the Gila.  Fremont, being in California, took an active part (1846) in the capture of the region, but the story of that episode does not belong here, and may be found in any history of California.  The same year in which the formal treaty of peace was signed (1848) another event occurred which was destined to have a vast influence on the whole country and lead streams of emigrants to the new Dorado across the broad wastes of the Colorado Valley; gold in enormous quantities was discovered on Sutler’s California ranch.  There were three chief routes from the “States” across the wilderness of the Colorado River basin:  one down the Gila to the Yuma country, another by South Pass and so on around Salt Lake and down the Humboldt, and the third also by South Pass and Salt Lake and thence south, by Mountain Meadows and west by the Old Spanish Trail.  On the northern road Jim Bridger had, in 1843, established a trading post on Ham’s Fork of Black’s Fork of Green River, and this now was a welcome stopping-place for many of the emigrants,* while on the southern trail a 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 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: