Lewis S. Craig, who was to be murdered by deserters in the Mohave Desert, commanded the military escort.
The Commission reached the Colorado River in June, and Lt.
Whipple was detached to complete a survey of the Gila River, begun a year earlier but left incomplete because of a shortage of funds. Near Pilot Knob, which is just below the confluence of the two rivers, Bartlett recorded his impressions of the vast riparian jungle, which was about two to four miles wide on the Colorado and slightly wider on the lower Gila. The gallery forest on the Gila consisted of cottonwoods and willows near the river, with a mesquite bosque behind them. These
three species formed the almost impenetrable forest on the Colorado.
Bartlett noticed that the Gila itself was diminutive and unnavigable except at its mouth.58
The main expedition, including Bartlett and the escort, left Fort Yuma and worked its way up the Gila toward the Pima villages. In the vicinity of Painted Rocks (where Kearny's little army saw a flock of bighorn in 1846) Antoine Leroux shot a buck mule deer in the dense thickets along the river. Deer and pronghorn were often seen on the 5758
57. Bartlett, v. 2, p. 160.
58. Ibid. A year earlier, in June, 1851, Lt. Thomas W. Sweeny and nine men established Camp Independence, on the east bank of the Colorado. Travelers told him at the time that the Gila River had com
pletely dried up in the area of the Pima Indian villages, where ex
tensive irrigation was practiced. See: Thomas W. Sweeny, Journal of L t . Thomas W. Sweeny, 1849-1853, ed. Arthur Woodward (Los Angeles, 1956), p. 120.
Gila, but, as Bartlett tells us, the wagons alarmed them, and the hunters had to go out well In advance of the train in order to succeed.59
At the Pima villages the Commission turned south and headed for Tucson and the Santa Cruz River. An eastward route then took them
through Guadalupe Pass. Here, Bartlett recorded a conversation with some members of an emigrant train who had weathered a recent brush with a
grizzly. Either in the Guadalupe Range or just to the east in the Animas Mountains, the bear was sighted and wounded by hunters sent out from the
t
main column. The bear limped off and vanished into a thicket. One of the men followed too closely, blundered into the enraged animal, and was
severely bitten in the leg. The man stabbed the grizzly, and both antago
nists rolled off a nearby ledge. The fall separated them, with the bear once more attempting to escape. Though bleeding heavily, the injured hunter joined his companions in tracking their quarry, which was eventual
ly overtaken and shot to d e a t h . ^
The Commission expedition reached El Paso on August 17, 1852, after crossing northern Mexico. Bartlett was jubilant and lost little time in spreading the news that he had traveled 1100 miles, as if this in itself were an accomplishment. Actually, there was very little to show for the 200,000 dollars the Commission had spent other than Lt. Whipple's survey of the Gila River.
Since the Commission's field trips were not accompanied by a com
petent naturalist whose primary duty was to observe and collect the fauna of the region, the only written account of wildlife in what is now 5960
59. Bartlett, v. 2, p. 197.
60. Ibid., pp. 335-336.
80 Arizona is Bartlett's. His concluding summary: "In a region as barren as the greater portion of that traversed, animal life would hardly be expected to abound. Nevertheless, there was no spot, however barren, or however distant from water, where rabbits and wolves were not seen.
(Here again, Bartlett, like so many of his contemporaries, seldom both
ered to distinguish between the coyote and the gray wolf.)^^ Bartlett goes on to list a number of large mammals found in the mountains and in the riparian growth along rivers and creeks. Included were: jaguar, mountain lion, ocelot, black and grizzly bear, pronghorn, coyote, and
"the large wolf" Canis lupus.62
Bighorn were also seen, and Bartlett makes the erroneous observa
tion that "the elk is not found south of the Gila." Beaver were numerous on the Gila and its northern tributaries, having made a good recovery from the onslaught of the mountain men some 20 to 25 years earlier. Both species of deer were abundant, especially in mountainous regions and along the Gila, "but nowhere as common as in Texas."63
Finally: "On the whole, game, both animals and birds, was scarce throughout the broad regions traversed by u s , except in the mountain districts, where it was abundant.
Once in El Paso, Bartlett learned that A.B. Gray had been dis
missed as Commission Surveyor and replaced by William H. Emory, since promoted to Major. Emory had taken his new post in November, 1851, to 616263
61. Bartlett, v. 2, p. 555.
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid., p. 562.
64. Ibid.
find half the Commission, under Colonel Graham (who had returned to El Paso when Bartlett undertook his jaunt into Mexico) sitting tight, with the rest somewhere in the field with Bartlett. He described the general condition of the Commission thus: "no money, no credit, subdivided
amongst themselves and the bitterest feeling between the different parties."
Bartlett soon found the following charges arraigned against him:
mismanagement of public funds, disregard for the health, comfort, and safety of those under him, and general negligence. Above all, there was clamor in Washington for his political head as a result of the Bartlett- Conde agreement, in which 6000 square miles of land needed for the
proposed railroad were given over to Mexico. Finding.that future appro
priations for the Commission had been halted, Bartlett had no choice but to sell the field equipment and the animals, disband the crews, and re
tire from the field.
The Boundary Commission was disbanded on December 22, 1852, and Bartlett and Emory returned to Washington, the former never to be a public figure again. But the controversies he aroused led directly to the Gads
den Purchase of 1853. The Bartlett-Conde agreement planted the seeds of a bitter fight in Congress between Whigs and Democrats, or, in other words, between factions advocating conciliation and aggressive expansion
ism at Mexico’s expense. There was also danger that a new boundary dis
pute involving the two countries might grow out of control. Consequently, in March, 1853, President Franklin Pierce sent James Gadsden of South Carolina to Mexico to settle all areas of disagreement. On December 30 a treaty known to history as the Gadsden Purchase was signed. The United
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