Ewing Young in Far Southwest 9 twenty-odd men; that Miguel Rubidu (Robidoux) and Pratt were taking thirty or more ; that Juan Roles (pos- sibly John Rueland) had eighteen in his party; and that Joaquin Joon (by which name Ewing Young was known in New Mexico) had eighteen more in his company. 7 Young's expedition to the Gila, 1826. We are not primarily concerned in the present article with the vari- ous parties mentioned by Narbona other than the one led by Ewing Young. Some account of Young's activi- ties during 1826 may be gleaned from the story of the life of William Wolfskill written by his son-in-law, H. D. Barrows, in 1866. 8 According to Barrows, William Wolfskill met Ewing Young in Missouri in the spring of 1826. He was then organizing a party to go to Santa Fe. Wolfskill joined the party. They were probably a part of the spring caravan of that year. Upon arriving in Santa Fe, Young was taken sick, and he hired Wolfskill to take charge of his party of eleven men who were going to trap on the Gila. The company set out, but were attacked by Indians and forced to return. Soon after the return of this party Young organized another com- pany consisting of about thirty men for the same place, "where," Barrows adds, "he chastised the Indians, killing several chiefs, etc., so that his party were enabled to trap unmolested. " Barrows speaks of Sublette and "Peg-leg" Smith as being in the party. Wolfskill was not a mem- ber of the second of these expeditions and his biographer, Barrows, gives no details concerning it. With this account it is interesting to compare a state- ment in the newspaper story of the life of "Peg-leg" Smith, written at the time of his death in 1866 by some one who was, apparently, fairly well acquainted with his 7 Antonio Narbona to the Governor of Sonora, August 31, 1826, Ms. (Mexico. Archivo de Governacion. Coraercio. Expediente 44, copy in Bancroft Library). Cf. T. M. Marshall, "St. Vrain's Expedition to the Gila in 1826" ( The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XIX, 251-260). 8 "The Story of an Old Pioneer" ( The Wilmington Journal, October 20,1866).
