If a person had to die, this would be the place to do it. The young cowboy was probably admiring the view of South Peak, for he still had his field glasses around his neck. Perhaps he looked for deer and wild turkey below the towering ponderosa pine or amidst the scrub oak. But to be shot in the back . . .
The death of Harry Hopkins brings a sense of intrigue and mystery. Very little is known about his past, including his family or place of birth. As far as who pulled the trigger, that has never been solved either, although there are some pretty good theories.
Harry was a cook and ranch-hand for the
L.C. Cattle Company in 1887. This was an interesting time on the
wild frontier of what would become southeastern Utah. The Mormons,
who a few years earlier had arrived in Bluff, now pushed northward to
Verdure Creek, where they established a small community they called
South Montezuma. The cowboys had their range spread across much of
the eastern slopes of the Abajo Mountains, the Carlisles in the north
and the L.C. Cattle Company in the south. As for the Utes, they
had been here longer than anyone.
Cowboy story singer, Stan Bronson,
put it accurately when he penned: “Cowboys and Indians and
Mormons, most of those people were fine. But some of those people were
up to no good, making trouble all the time.”
One such example occurred just a few
years earlier when a Ute Indian fell into a quarrel with a cowboy
over a horse. The cowboy shot the Indian through the mouth, but
miraculously he survived. This didn't settle well with the other
Utes and they started causing havoc with the cattleman, so much that
they soon picked up camp and began to move out. That's when the Utes
rode in with bullets whistling, stealing several of their horses,
killing four mules and burning a wagon.
The L.C. Cattle Company arrived in San
Juan during 1880. In 1881, the owner, Issac Lacy, was shot by one of
his own employees, a former gunfighter from Tombstone. His wife took
over the business and hired a foreman to handle operations. The
company located their headquarters near Recapture Canyon and had a
summer camp near Verdure. It was here that the young Harry Hopkins
cooked for the cowboys while they were out on the range.
The cowboys camped a couple miles west
of South Montezuma. Harry came from time to time for supplies. Mary
Jones, a resident of the young settlement, recalled the events
leading up to the murder:
“The L.C. Ranch had a summer camp on
the Blue Mountain, not far from the Verdure [South Montezuma]
settlement. A teenage boy by the name of Hawkins [Hopkins] took care
of the camp and the horses while the men were out on the range. He
came down to buy eggs, milk and butter from the Mormon women and
would stay and visit until late afternoon. On one such trip the boy
seemed reluctant to go back to camp. The women sensed his uneasiness
and urged him to stay overnight. But he must feed the horses. The
cowboys depended upon him.”
Harry returned to camp where he
prepared the afternoon meal. While waiting for the riders to come back he climbed a hill and sat on a drift fence with his binoculars.
No doubt he enjoyed the solitude and pungent smell of pine. Before
him, beyond the forested gulf of Verdure Canyon, rose the ominous
summit of South Peak.
Unknown to the young camp-hand, someone
was creeping through the brush behind him. Without any apparent
warning, Harry Hopkins was shot in the back, dropping him dead.
When the cowboys returned, they found
dutch ovens full of food at the edge of the fire, but their cook was
no where to be found. That night, a violent thunder storm rolled across the mountain.
The next day, Harry failed to make his
usual appearance at South Montezuma. Mary Jones remembered: “Soon
Old Wash, a Ute Indian, came by and said the boy was dead. Wash
claimed that [Hopkins] had been standing on a log looking for horses
through his field glasses and was struck by a bolt of lightning.”
A group of men hurried to the site,
where Hickory Dennis and another cowboy, possibly Parley Butt, found
the boy face-down in the mud with two bullet holes in his back. His
body was too decomposed to move, so they dug a hole at the spot and
rolled him in.
The incident elevated tension between
the three groups. Everyone was wary of the Indians. For days on the
Blue and LaSal Mountains, Indian signal fires burned, sending plumes
of smoke in the air, a sure sign that they were on the warpath. The
white man worried there was an Indian behind every tree.
Some of the cowboys also wished to
drive away the settlers of South Montezuma. In a rage they declared:
“You Mormons clear out of here in ten days or we will annihilate
you!” This threat caused the Mormons to seek protection from U.S.
Soldiers, who came from Fort Lewis near Durango.
As for a motive for the murder, only
theories will suffice. Harry was a cook for stockman on the
Disappointment Range near the Lone Cone in Colorado, where several
Indians were killed by cowboys. Perhaps his killing was an act of
retaliation. Another theory is that Harry was an outlaw and had been
discovered by an old enemy. Or, as Albert R. Lyman theorized, the
Utes were always looking for excitement and Harry was the victim of a
potshot.
The cowboy cook is buried where he
died, at the head of Devils Canyon. An old fence made of poles
surrounds the burial plot. Inside is a head and foot stone, with the
simple inscription of “H H Hopkins.”
The story of Harry Hopkins is
intriguing. It is best told around the campfire, at night when the
cicadas are serenading and a gentle breeze is subtly bending the tall
grass. ♠
Sources
Lacy, Steve, and Pearl Biddlecome
Baker. Posey, the Last Indian War. Gibbs Smith, 2007.
Lyman, Albert R. Indians and
Outlaws: Settling of the San Juan Frontier. K.R. Lyman, 1980.
Palmer, Cameron. “Eagle Project.”
2001.
Young, Norma Perkins. Anchored
Lariats on the San Juan Frontier. Community Press, 1985.
