by W. L. Rusho
We know that Everett did visit two nights with sheepherders Clayton Porter and Addlin Lay, but did he encounter someone else? Perhaps a cowboy rustler ambushed him as he passed by a slickrock outcrop. Or more probably Everett, while out looking for scenes to paint, accidentally witnessed a crime, either the killing of a cow so as to claim her calf, or the illegal killing of a cow or steer for meat. One of the men who searched for Everett said that while he was in the Escalante River Canyon, a bloody cow limped by, shot but not yet down. No calf was anywhere near. The men looked for the rustler, but he had vanished.[34]
It is known for sure that three men were herding cattle or sheep near Davis Gulch about the time Everett camped there. One was said to act suspiciously during the search, but he has never been a really strong suspect. The other two had been rustler suspects for some time, but no one had enough proof to file a complaint in court—at least not until 1936. Both of these men, Joe Pollock and Keith Riddle, were indicted for cattle theft at the Garfield County Court in Panguitch, Utah, in 1936. Although the official court record lacks a written judgment, witnesses report Pollock was convicted and sent to the Utah State Prison while Riddle was acquitted.
Some Escalante people feel that Keith Riddle was “certainly mean enough to commit murder,” and that he was the instigator of most of the rustling that occurred. One witness even reported that Riddle had on more than one drunken occasion bragged that he had shot the “goddamned artist kid” and dumped his body in the Colorado River.
Another Escalante resident reports that he was told by one of the local cattlemen that, while riding on the range, he rounded a hill and discovered the same rustler butchering another man’s steer. The rustler became so enraged that he vowed to kill the intruder and ran for his rifle. The cattleman then rode his horse away at full gallop, dodging a hail of bullets. The cattleman, who was not wounded, decided not to file charges.
All of this evidence is, of course, weak, secondhand, and inadmissible in court. It is also contradicted by some people in Escalante who deny that the petty thief could have killed anyone.
During the latter part of 1982 I interviewed Keith Riddle at his home in Kanab, but he claimed that his memory was suffering from old age, and although he did remember that a young artist had disappeared near Davis Gulch, he knew absolutely nothing about any alleged murder. When asked about cattle thieves, he denied that any rustlers ever operated in the vicinity of Escalante.
Those who searched for Everett along the Escalante River in Utah were sincere, compassionate men, who willingly donated time and energy to the effort. Most people would not have understood Everett’s intangible objective of “following his dream.” Most hadn’t even met him. But when a man is lost in the wilderness, it matters little why he went there in the first place. Although some aspects of the search might seem, in hindsight, to have been poorly conducted, it was performed with as much dispatch and efficiency as one could expect in a season of adverse weather and in unbelievably tortuous terrain. The possibility of foul play, however, was apparently never seriously investigated, in spite of a pronouncement from the Utah Attorney General that, “. . . the state will go to the bottom of this case, and if a crime has been committed swift prosecution will follow.”[35]
In the summer of 1957, an archaeologist working on the Glen Canyon Archaeological Survey (prior to the filling of Lake Powell) came across the remains of camping equipment—possibly Everett’s—in a canyon tributary of the Colorado River southwest of Hole-in-the-Rock. Dr. Robert Lister, employed by the University of Utah, Edson B. Alvey, and Lloyd Gates, both of Escalante, Utah, were surveying Indian ruins in Cottonwood Canyon when they found the camp remains, including rusty cup, spoon, fork, kettles and pans, and a large canteen. Most interesting was a box of razor blades from the Owl Drug Company of Los Angeles. All three men believed immediately that it was the remains of an Everett Ruess camp.
Cottonwood Canyon is only about eight to ten miles southwest of Davis Gulch. Whereas Davis Gulch flows northeast into the Escalante River, Cottonwood Canyon runs south, directly into the Colorado River between Kaiparowits Plateau and Navajo Mountain. During the searches of 1935 and later, no one ever mentioned Cottonwood Canyon. Edson Alvey says he is sure the area was never considered when the Ruess searches were underway.[36]
The confluence of the San Juan (lower left) and the Colorado Rivers looking west, or downstream. At right center is Cottonwood Canyon, where mysterious old camping equipment was found in 1957. Photo March 1963 by W. L. Rusho.
Cottonwood Canyon has since been renamed Reflection Canyon, and its lower portion is filled with Lake Powell. Lake water also covers the campsite in question.
Immediately after the items were found, they were turned over to the County Sheriff at Panguitch, who sent them on to Stella Ruess for possible identification. She could not be sure, but she doubted that they belonged to Everett.
Still, one wonders why important camp items, such as a canteen and kettles, would be abandoned in the desert canyon. If it actually had been a campsite, why would the camper depart, without his valuable equipment, in a remote site almost eighty miles from the nearest village? Could the items have been the remains of Everett’s missing camp outfit? If so, how did he transport the heavy items to Cottonwood? Did Everett abandon everything there? Or did some thief who took the outfit from Everett’s camp in Davis Gulch simply dispose of it in Cottonwood? Could outlaw Navajos have killed Everett, returned to the Reservation by way of Cottonwood Canyon, and on the way disposed of the unwanted portion of Everett’s pack? Or could the camp items constitute an enigmatic bit of possible evidence in the maze of theories about Everett’s disappearance?
By late summer 1935, efforts to locate Everett on the Utah side of the Colorado River were about exhausted in futility and frustration. What had started with the early promising discovery of the burros, Everett’s bootprints, and the NEMO inscriptions was stopped cold, in spite of the many manhours spent on searches. By then, most people in Escalante were convinced that Everett could not possibly still be in Utah, but that he had most certainly gone on south, into the mysterious and esoteric land of the Navajos.
* * *
[25] Interview with Addlin Lay, Salt Lake City, Utah, 27 December 1982.
[26] Los Angeles Examiner, 3 March 1935. This article also states that H. J. Allen wired Christopher and Stella Ruess on 2 March 1935 that “he is organizing a search party. The Illustrated Daily News of Los Angeles, 5 March 1935, reported that the burros arrived in Escalante “yesterday.”
[27] Chester Lay, interview, Escalante, Utah, 25 September 1982.
[28] Interview with Jennings Allen, 5 January 1983.
[29] Interview with Gail Bailey, Escalante, Utah, 26 September 1982.
[30] Interview with Clayborn Lockett, Tucson, Arizona, 29 November 1982.
[31] Interview with Norman Christensen, Escalante, Utah, 27 December 1982.
[32] Allen later gave the names of men on the search party as: P. M. Shurtz, George Davis, Gail Bailey, Chester Lay, Alton Twitchell, Ronald Schow, Jack Woolsey, Prudencio Gabala, Walt Allen, Frank Barney, Earl Woolsey, Claude Haws, Alden Moyes, and Loran Blood.
[33] C. Gregory Crampton, “Historical Sites in Glen Canyon, Mouth of Hansen Creek to Mouth of San Juan River,” Anthropological Papers, No. 61 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah, December 1962), p. 28.
[34] Interview with Chester Lay, Escalante, Utah, 26 November 1982.
[35] Salt Lake Tribune, no date, probably August 1935. The same Tribune article quoted Attorney General Joseph Chez as saying, “The best men available will handle this case, and we will not stop until we have determined beyond a reasonable doubt that Ruess was slain or met an accidental death, after which his outfit was stolen.” Chez also stated that he would confer with Governor Henry H. Blood on the matter. A January 1983 search through the Utah State Archives, however, uncovered no file on Everett Ruess in either the Attorney General or Governor sections. Archivist Val Wilson stated that it is no
t unusual for such archives to be incomplete.
[36] Letter from Edson Alvey to Randall Henderson of Desert Magazine, dated 3 July 1958, copy in possession of Waldo Ruess.
Chapter 8: Missing—Speculations in Navajoland
Speculations in Navajoland
22 January 1938
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Ruess:
Your remembrance reached me in Santa Fe. I don’t forget Everett—it was kind of you to include me as one of his friends. The way of his going, I feel, is the way I would like to depart—close to the soil. But he was so young.
Kind regards from
Edward Weston
White Mesa Cliff Arch, near Tonalea, Arizona. Photo by W. L. Rusho.
If the complex pattern of mesas and deep canyons on the north side of the Colorado River was a difficult place to took for a man, the south side, especially around Navajo Mountain, was considerably worse. Fed by the snow and rains that strike the foresttopped, tenthousandfoot-high dome, the small streams have carved a jumble of deep, winding gorges through the sandstone, separated from each other only by slickrock mounds and ridges. Everett, gazing in wonder on this scene from high on Navajo Mountain in late June 1934, wrote: “...the country is as rough and impenetrable a territory as I have ever seen. Thousands of domes and towers of sandstone lift their rounded pink tops from blue and purple shadows.” Northeast of the mountain lay the confluence of the Colorado and San Juan rivers, sunk deep into the rock jumble. A few miles farther northeast were Hole-in-the-Rock and the mouth of the Escalante River.
In this incredible complex of slickrock canyons, Rainbow Bridge lies hidden just to the left of center. At lower right is the Colorado River. Photo taken November 1959 by W. L. Rusho.
In the triangle between the Colorado and San Juan rivers was another rock maze, inoffensively named Wilson Mesa. It was in this triangle that the Hole-in-the-Rock pioneers of 1880, doggedly pursuing their “call,” built dugways, blasted rocks, and pushed their battered wagons towards the eventual settling place—Bluff, Utah. Theirs was a terrible journey through a land that contained no natural roadways.
Everett may have crossed the river into this slickrock wilderness, possibly in company with the Navajos who had been trading at Escalante. He had told friends in Escalante, and had written to relatives, of his intention to cross the river. He could speak enough Navajo to survive. He not only liked the Indians but felt a kinship with them in their relationship to the earth and what he saw as their natural artistry.
Navajos had been in Escalante just before Everett left for the canyons in November 1934. Furthermore, Everett had been seen visiting with them, conversing in Navajo, and eating with them.[37] Before the formation of Lake Powell in 1963, it was fairly common for Navajos to travel north across the rough trails to Escalante where they sold blankets and jewelry in the towns. In warmer months, part of a Navajo group might climb Kaiparowits Plateau, make camp in the forest, and spend several days poaching deer. They would debone the meat to make it more easily transportable. Upon descending to the Holein-theRock road, they would meet the remainder of their group returning from Escalante and other towns. Having completed their hunting and trading endeavors, they would cross the Colorado and return to the reservation.[38]
To support the theory that Everett joined the Navajos, searcher Ches Lay reported that he found size nine boot prints in three places: 1) near the head of Davis Gulch at a point where he could have climbed out, 2) around a group of high, rounded sandstone knolls, mixed with moccasin footprints of Navajos, and 3) at the top of the Holeinthe-Rock, on the canyon rim above the Colorado River, also mixed with Navajo footprints. Lay explained that the sandstone knolls area was a common place for Indians to camp while waiting for their tribesmen to return from trading in Escalante. At these knolls, Lay also saw campfire circles and many of the sharpened sticks commonly used to roast meat.
The plausibility of footprints remaining from late November until early March may be questioned, but several people familiar with the country state that damp or frozen sand could retain such marks for months—at least until obliterated by heat and wind. An area sheltered from the wind and rain could hold footprints indefinitely.
Even Jennings Allen suggested that Everett might have joined a group of Navajos on the canyon rim, transferred his outfit to one of their horses, returned his burros to the grassy floor of Davis Gulch, climbed the cliff (not the trail) to rejoin the group on the rim, then traveled with them to the Navajo Reservation across the Colorado and San Juan rivers. Whether he intended to ever return to Davis Gulch is an open question.
Searches for Everett on the Navajo Reservation were conducted, if haphazardly, by a neurotic man who suffered delusions of grandeur, yet whose unstable personality was masked by his solemn appearance of rational conversation, letter writing, and behavior. Neal Johnson, who listed his address as Escalante or Hanksville, worked most of his time as a miner in other areas. Few Escalante residents even knew him. His background was obscure, although he alluded to having once served as a pilot in the Mexican Air Force. He signed his name, and asked others to call him, Captain Neal Johnson.
Johnson, concluding that Everett had probably continued on south across the Colorado River and into the reservation, telegraphed Stella Ruess from Phoenix on 22 February 1935:
Regarding Everett Ruess leaving Escalante November eleventh I am placer mining Colorado River same district. Will conduct search your request. Know Indian scouts. Know region well. No water except snow. If lost can be found. Snow melt soon: No water, will perish. Search must start immediately. Have not reached Marble Canyon. I am here on business. Return mine twenty fourth. Will conduct search for expenses for Indian scouts only. Wire here immediately by Western Union.
—Cap. Neal Johnson
Christopher Ruess cautiously wired the Chief of Police in Phoenix to inquire about Johnson’s reliability, but apparently no police record was found. About two weeks later Johnson suddenly showed up in Los Angeles, called on Christopher and Stella, and stated that he was in town on business. During this visit Christopher, although dubious, gave Johnson enough money to send the Indian trackers out into the canyons. But the day after Johnson left, Christopher had second thoughts and wired Johnson. “Please let Allen conduct search instead. Return balance our money.” Christopher’s telegram, however, was sent to Hanksville, Utah, and Johnson did not receive the forwarded communication until May. In the meantime he continued to spend the money, supposedly for the “scouts’ expenses.”
From March to August 1935, Johnson wrote to the Ruesses at least seventeen times, many of the letters postmarked with a succession of small town names, in order: Cortez, Colorado; Holbrook, Arizona; Moab and Blanding, Utah; Dove Creek, Colorado; Richfield, Marysvale, Hanksville, and Strawberry Lake, Utah. In all of them he expressed continued optimism and hints of clues that might lead to Everett. On 14 March, for instance, he stated that he had stopped at many Indian trading posts on the Four Corners to make inquiries. “There is several that know of Everett,” he wrote. “One Chief told me today. Picture man heap savy [sic] wild mountains O.K.”
Later, Johnson reported that most of the Indians knew of the “paint man,” and that Navajos called him “Yabitoch,” meaning “fun, or good humor.” He also passed on a report from his supposed Indian trackers that two Indians and a lone white man had entered the area between the Colorado and San Juan rivers. On 22 March he wrote that he was sure that Everett was on the reservation and with friendly Navajos. Money, of course, was always a problem to Johnson, who telegraphed on 2 April that he was “out fiftyfour dollars,” and that he needed fortyfive dollars more to go searching himself with the two Indians. Always hopeful, Christopher Ruess sent him forty dollars in two installments.
Johnson also came up with the idea of making an aerial search, not an unusual suggestion. But because the country was too rough to fly low enough to spot any evidence, he suggested that Christopher Ruess should “...have some small bills made about four inches square
say about 1,000 if you can afford it. Every time we hit places where I know there is watering holes we will turn loose a hand full. Which the propeller will scatter well. They will settle to the Earth and Everett is bound to pick one of them up.” Johnson’s wacky suggestion was not mentioned again.[39]
In late April he wrote that his Navajo tracker, Cidney, had found two Indians who had accompanied the mysterious white man into the northern part of the reservation. Alas, Cidney (assuming there really was such a person) could learn only that the unnamed white man “did not wish to be bothered.”
Johnson later sent an artist’s paintbrush and a shirt button that he said had been picked up by his Indian trackers from a rock near the confluence of the Colorado and San Juan Rivers. Stella Ruess examined the brush and proclaimed that it was not sable, as all Everett’s brushes were, but was merely a cheap one that a serious watercolorist like Everett would not have in his paint kit.
Jennings Allen, in the meantime, was writing Christopher and Stella to warn them about Neal Johnson:
I hope that Neal Johnson isn’t misleading you, but don’t take too much stock in what he says. Johnson may be O.K. but has a bad record thru this section. When he left this section he run away from the law and has a shady record.
