By Ken Edwards

This is a condensed version of the articles on Days Past from November 26 and December 03, 2000. For the complete "story" please refer to these earlier articles by Ken Edwards. Search "Ken Edwards" to locate the articles.

Although dates and places of birth are varied, it is most probable that Pauline Weaver was born in White County, Tennessee in 1797. His parents are thought to be an Anglo-American father and a Cherokee mother. Although Weaver’s given name was Powell Weaver, his name was later used variously as Powleen, Pawleen, Pawlino, Paolin, Paolino, Paul and Pauline. The Spanish name closest to Powell was apparently Paulin, pronounced as Pauline.

In 1829 at the age of 32, he answered an advertisement in the Little Rock, AR, Gazette entitled, ‘To Young Men of Enterprise,’ placed by a Captain John Rogers in order to recruit about 100 men for a trapping expedition to the Rocky Mountains.

The expedition, consisting of less than 50 men, began in early May of 1830. After battles with Indians, desertions and poor results with trapping, the party traveled south to Taos (then belonging to Mexico) in late fall where Weaver left the remnants of the group and stayed there for several months.

In October 1831, Pauline accompanied Ewing Young and 34 others on a trip from Taos to California to buy horses and mules. Until that time, only a few Americans are known to have entered what is now Arizona. The group traveled through the White Mountains to the Salt River, then to the Gila River and reaching the Colorado River the first week of 1832. They bought supplies along the way from the friendly Pima Indians. It is unclear whether Weaver went to California with Young or waited for his return in the Yuma area. The returning party (minus Young, but joined by another party which included scout Antoine Leroux) followed a more southerly route reaching Santa Fe in July of 1832 with about 600 mules and 100 horses as well as some beaver pelts.

On a wall of Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, near present-day Coolidge, is scratched "P. Weaver 18–." The date is obscure but thought to be 1832 which would be consistent with Pauline’s trip through that area. However, it is not known for sure that this is the correct date or that Weaver actually was responsible for the engraving.

Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe record that a "Paulin de Jesus Guiver" (Weaver) was baptized at Taos in August, 1832. A church record shows that Weaver was married to Maria Dolores Martin in September, 1832, and children, Jose Benito Guiver (1833), Maria Guadalupe (1835) and Lucinda (unk. birthdate) were born to the couple. The son, Ben, seems to be a certainty but there is some doubt about the daughters. Another legend has Weaver married to an Indian woman of uncertain tribal connection.

Little is known of his life in Taos, but it is known that he was in southern California at least by 1842 and by 1845 had moved to Rancho San Gorgonio, 30 miles from San Bernardino. Weaver and Julian Isaac Williams made application to the Mexican government to obtain possession of the deserted rancho. On the application he called himself "Paulino Weaver" and claimed to be a naturalized Mexican citizen. There’s no record of the application being granted, but he remained on the rancho for more than a decade.

In 1846 when Commodore Stockton and John C. Fremont became involved in the early stages of the war with Mexico, Weaver and Kit Carson were sent east to report news of the activity in southern California. Their travels (800 miles in 21 days toward Santa Fe) involved considerable hardship. Meeting General Kearney and his troops on their way to fight in California, Carson was ordered to join them as a guide and Weaver was sent to Santa Fe as guide for the Mormon Battalion. The battalion under Commander Col. Philip St. George Cooke took a more southern route to California, unfamiliar to Weaver and Chief Guide Antoine Leroux and tensions rose. After taking Tucson and experiencing lack of food and water, the battalion reached the Colorado River on January 8, 1847. In addition, under Weaver’s guidance, they were later lost in the California desert! When they finally reached ‘civilization,’ Weaver returned to his Rancho San Gorgonio to find that the retreating Mexicans had looted it.

He apparently lived in semi-seclusion for a while except for his Indian friends. In 1851, he helped quell an impending Indian uprising over a plan to tax them and he held the instigator of the plan captive until he was taken away to be hanged for treason, murder and robbery. California legislators passed a special act for "the relief of Powell Weaver" and he was given $500 compensation for horses and supplies provided to friendly Indians. But in spite of all this, Pauline’s relations with the Indians were often not friendly.

In 1853, a Dr. Isaac William Smith arrived in California from Iowa to find Pauline Weaver at Rancho San Geogonio seriously ill with rheumatic fever. Dr. Smith nursed him back to health and in return, Weaver gave him a one-third interest in his San Gorgonio property in order to establish a cattle ranch, eventually conveying the entire ranch to Dr. Smith.

Weaver stayed on with the Smiths for a while, moving to the Yuma area in 1857 where he trapped beaver for a while. The July 1860 census showed Weaver in Tucson, with a net worth of $2100. He began prospecting along the Colorado in 1861 where he and some other beaver trappers discovered gold deposits a few miles east of La Paz (northeast of Blythe on the Colorado River). The region was to become known as the Weaver Mining District, though there is little evidence that Pauline made much money there.

When the Civil War broke out, Weaver went back to Yuma to sign on as a Union scout. In March 1862, he assisted General Carleton’s California Column in routing the Confederates from Arizona and New Mexico Territories.

George Oaks, a member of the California Volunteers, described Weaver: "He had come to Arizona about thirty years before and knew the country and the Indians well. He was pretty much of an Indian, himself, and liked to scout far ahead of us. He had been so much alone that his speech was part English, part Spanish, with a few Indian words thrown in for good measure. He wore his clothes ’til they fell off him, and if he had shook those long gray whiskers of his all of a sudden, I’ll bet woodchucks, gophers and trade rats would have jumped out of them."

Pauline returned to La Paz in late May, 1862 where he began a ferry service crossing the Colorado River known as Weavers Landing. On October 20, 1862 the Los Angeles Star reported: "A party intends to leave the Colorado River on the 10th of November for [Arizona's] San Francisco Mountains under the guidance of Pauleen Weaver [to go] where diggings of unparalleled richness are known to exist."

A prospecting party of ten men, including Weaver, left Fort Yuma about April 1, 1863. The men discovered a surface placer bonanza on top of a hill about 30 miles south of present-day Prescott. This became known as Rich Hill (east of Congress). A flood of prospectors followed as word got out, and the Weaver Mining District No. 2 was formed. By late 1863, Ben Weaver, Pauline’s son, and Charles B. Genung came to the district and discovered the first quartz lode.

Although Pauline did not profit significantly in the strikes, he did establish a small ranch in the Walnut Grove area (SE of Wilhoit). In mid-August 1863, Captain Nathaniel Pishon led a military party from Santa Fe to the gold fields of the Bradshaw Mountains. While camped near Granite Creek, they encountered a solitary Pauline Weaver, mining and hunting. This may be the origin of the legend that Weaver was "Prescott’s first citizen."

In February 1864, Weaver was hired to provide scouting services for the army at Fort Whipple. He was described as follows: "He was then in the government employ, but lived a great deal with the Indians and had acquired their stealthy manner of walk and other peculiarities. He was then an old man." Judge Joseph Pratt Allyn, arriving in early 1864 with the governor’s party to set up the capital of the new Arizona Territory said of him, "[he] is the opposite of [Joseph] Walker in every respect; garrulous to a fault, tells large stories until he has the reputation of a sort of Arizona Munchausen, impulsive, and with a failing memory."

Charles Poston, Indian Agent of the Territory, claimed that to Weaver’s "teachings and efforts may largely be ascribed the peaceable and industrious character of the tribes of the Gila and Colorado River."

In June 1865, Weaver was wounded in an Indian ambush but recovered rapidly at Fort Whipple, ending up as a spy and guide at both Fort Whipple and Fort McDowell.

In November 1866, Pauline was assigned to Camp Lincoln (Camp Verde). He slept on the ground in "a jungle of cottonwood trees, willows, reeds and other swamp like vegetation, removed some distance – as usual – from the larger military encampment." He contracted malaria but refused to go to Fort Whipple for medical care and was found dead on June 21, 1867. He was buried at Camp Verde.

In 1892, his body was exhumed and reburied in San Francisco. After a campaign to bring him "home," his remains were moved back to Prescott on October 27, 1929. Weaver’s casket was carried by Boy Scouts for several blocks to the new gravesite at Sharlot Hall Museum where it was ceremoniously re-interred. Although he may not have been Prescott’s "first citizen," he certainly contributed to local folklore and earned his place as an important figure in Arizona history.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(pb152f10i84) Reuse only bypermission.

This artist drawing shows the Rancho San Gorgonio near San Bernardino where Pauline Weaver spent many years between travels across Arizona before settling in Prescott.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(marker photo by Alan Krause) Reuse only by permission.

This historical marker is located on the east bank of Granite Creek along West Gurley Street.