Quechans helped flood-stricken Yuma

Editor’s Note: The Yuma Sun is reprinting articles from past newspapers throughout the year as part of the Yuma Sun’s 150th anniversary, honoring Yuma’s unique history. This column is one in a series written by local historian Frank Love that appeared periodically in the newspaper.

Yuma’s native neighbors came to the town’s assistance when this city was nearly washed away by a flood in 1891. When you consider the native people’s past experiences with their Anglo neighbors, their assistance was amazing and generous – especially considering their personal losses in the flood.

Yumans became fearful that the town might be inundated by rising waters from the Colorado and

Gila rivers on a Saturday in February. John Gandolfo and Eugene Sanguinetti, the town’s leading merchants, put their employees to work strengthening the levee that protected Yuma that evening. The effort failed when water first broke over the Colorado levee and then the Gila levee.

An effort was next made to save the business district on Main Street, but that also failed. Hundreds of men began building a dirt barrier on the street to try to save the business buildings on the west side of the street after the east side began to flood. That failed, too, and water was rising 9 feet on the downtown streets near the river within 20 minutes.

Most construction in those early days depended upon adobe. Yuma’s Sentinel newspaper afterward reported that almost every building on the east side of Main Street had “melted like sugar” in the 1891 disaster.

With rain pouring down on the stricken town, people began trying to save their possessions, but were soaked as they rescued what they could. Most fled to the mesa with what they could carry. Those fortunate enough to live in the upper areas of town generously opened their homes to the dispossessed.

With longtime residents, it wasn’t a new experience or one that they and Yuma wouldn’t face again. Older Yumans recalled how the village was nearly drowned by rising waters during an 1862 flood. Some younger residents who remained in town after the 1891 flood and lived long enough would see canoes and rowboats used on Main Street in another flood in 1916.

With the Quechan, the vagaries of the Colorado River were nothing new. One old native had earlier warned the townspeople, “The floods will come!”

Not everyone believed him, but the local newspaper editor announced on Feb. 2, “Now we all believe, and we are ready to believe everything we hear of the floods.” He added, “Old Indians say that in the days gone by, no one knows when ... in the great flood of 1700 or thereabouts, the river changed to where it is now. Whether true or not, the story may be true. Probably it is.”

Despite their own losses, Quechans pitched in to aid the stricken town. Many Indian families had been affected by the rising waters. Those who had crops along the riverbank saw them washed away as the river rose.

One of the first Indians to assist during the disaster was a famed Quechan runner, Shampooec. The newspaper editor, John Dorrington, hoped to find out before the water hit town what chances Yuma had to avoid flooding.

He asked Shampooec to carry a letter to his friend, George Norton, who lived in the Mohawk Valley. Dorrington guessed that if the Gila was flooding that area, Yuma might be next because the Gila empties into the Colorado.

The fleet-footed Quechan left Yuma at 6 on Saturday evening and was back in Yuma with news of flood damage in the valley in 37 hours. Yuma’s Sentinel newspaper would later report that Shampooec’s round trip covered 180 miles. He had to swim across the Gila twice to reach his destination. To the amazement of Yuma’s editor, the Quechan said he was disappointed that he wasn’t able to cover the distance in less time.

The bad news the Quechan brought back was too late to help because the town was already flooded when he returned. The contents of the message Shampooec gave to editor Dorrington didn’t survive, but it couldn’t have contained anything but bad news.

Tucson’s Star would report afterward that 10 miles of Southern Pacific Railroad track between Laguerta and Yuma washed out, and it estimated that it would take 250 men nearly a week to restore the damaged rail lines. Both food and clothes were needed by the dispossessed, the Star reported.

The public school on Main Street was among the flood victims. So was the Immaculate Conception Church and a convent. Every store but one in the lower area of town was destroyed.

A week after the flood waters receded, Yuma’s newspaper reported that 344 homes were destroyed by the rising water. A lengthy list of business losses included some that were valued in the thousands of dollars.

As the town began to recover, Yuma’s March 7 Sentinel newspaper edition praised the Quechans for their assistance. “The Indians came to the rescue of Yuma, and did all they could, leaving their homes where many lost all they had,” the Sentinel noted. “They worked well and some means should be devised by which they will receive their pay.”