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Lot Smith, The Man
As told by Jim Smith, a Son of Lot
LOT SMITH was born in Williamstown, Oswego County, New York, on May 15, 1830. His family joined the Mormon Church, and was in movement with that organization in June of 1846 when they were camped at Council Bluffs, Iowa. War had broken out between the United States and Mexico, and it was at this point that Colonel Allenby of the U. S. Army came to ask for 500 volunteers from the Mormon emigrants.
The volunteers. Lot Smith at age 16 among them, went to Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, where what was known as the "Mormon Battalion" was formed under Colonel Cook. Then he became a participant in the longest infantry march in recorded history-from Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, to San Diego, California. The Battalion went by Santa Fe, New Mexico, down the Rio Grande for a good many miles, then across to the Mimbres River Valley between Lordsburg and Deming.
Lot Smith and the Battalion first set foot on Arizona Territory when the group crossed the corner of the State near where New Mexico and Arizona join Old Mexico. They stopped at the old San Bernardino Ranch which is 18 miles out of Douglas and two miles inside the present boundary line of Old Mexico. It will be remembered that at that time all of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona, Nevada and California belonged to Mexico.
At San Bernardino Ranch they made peace with the Apache Indians, and went out to hunt wild cattle to "jerk" the meat as provision for the balance of their journey to San Diego.
The Indians told them this story about the wild cattle:
The old San Bernardino Ranch had been settled many years previously by Spanish or Mexican people, and only 13 years prior to this date the Apaches had raided the settlement, killed all of the male population, and took the females prisoners. Two weeks later, when the Apache braves were again out on the warpath, the squaws killed all of the females, thereby leaving cattle the Spanish people possessed to be hunted by the Indians as they hunted the buffalo.
The march of the Battalion was within the present boundary of Old Mexico, a little south of Naco, turning back into Arizona about at the town of Hereford, crossing to the west bank of the San Pedro River and down the stream to a few miles above Benson.
There, on the San Pedro River, occurred the famous bullfight in which some 300 wild bulls stampeded, running through the wagon trains and hooking at soldiers and goring mules. The Battalion killed about 50 bulls.
This was the only battle that the Battalion participated in during the Mexican war.
The marchers reached Tucson on December 16, 1846. The Mexicans had vacated the fort so the American Flag was run up and possession taken in the name of the United States. The trek from Tucson was by the town of Maricopa where water wells were dug; to the Gila River and down it to Yuma; thence across the California Desert to San Diego, California.
The Battalion was enlisted for a period of only one year. At the expiration of that time Lot Smith re-enlisted for another year, and was mustered out in San Francisco, California. He, with other members of the Battalion were at Sacramento when gold was discovered by a member of the Battalion at Sutter's mill and the Gold Rush began. He participated in the Gold Rush, and reached Salt Lake City with about $7,000 worth of dust. He bought a 160-acre farm in Farmington, Utah, just north of Salt Lake City, and became sheriff of Davis County.
During the Civil War he volunteered and was commissioned Captain by Abraham Lincoln. He, with 500 other volunteers from Salt Lake City, guarded the mail route from the Green River to Salt Lake City.
In 1876 he was called by Brigham Young with a group of pioneers to settle Northern Arizona. They brought their families, cattle and horses and established four settlements in the region: Sunset, Brigham City, Obed and Jo City.
Only the town of Jo City still remains.
From Sunset, which is six miles north of Winslow on the Little Colorado, he, with a group of pioneers, moved cattle and horses to Mormon Lake to establish the old Mormon Dairy. It was there that Lot Smith branched out into the range cattle and horse business.
He made a trip back East to buy a thoroughbred horse for $600, which, in those days, was a fabulous sum for a horse. This horse became the sire of the Circle S brand of horses that became famous over the entire northern part of the State. He was contemporary in Northern Arizona with the notorious Hash Knife cattle outfit.
His closest neighbor was Uncle Bill Ashurst, the father of United States Senator Henry F. Ashurst.
He later moved his family to Tuba City, but retained his cattle holdings in Mormon Lake.
And it was there he was killed by Navajo Indians on June 21, 1892.