Eight or nine, or exactly nine
Ives, writing the footnote years later, and Sherer, read through the Park Service overview, tell the same escape and do not tell the same ending.
By C. V. Wooster · October 6, 2026 · A history essay. The novel is a separate thing, and this page says so where the two meet.
Put the two accounts in front of you before choosing a number. Ives's is a footnote under the sentence that calls Cairook a staunch friend. He explains that the chief is no longer living. Not many months after the expedition left, there was trouble with emigrants, some of the emigrants were killed, a detachment was fired on, and a large force was sent. The Mojave made peace by surrendering eight or nine of their principal men. Cairook volunteered. He and the others were taken to Fort Yuma and put in the guardhouse. Confinement became intolerable, particularly for him. Ireteba visited more than once and one day appealed to Lieutenant Tipton, who was again on duty at the fort. Ireteba recited what Cairook had done for Whipple's party and for Ives's, and asked that he be freed. Tipton had no power to do it. Ireteba, Ives writes, could not understand that, and left disappointed, saying that if the comandante, a title he had used for Ives, had been there, the favor would not have been refused.
When that appeal failed, Cairook proposed a plan to the other captives. At certain hours they were let onto the porch for air. He would seize the sentinel, being a powerful man, and hold him so the rest could run. Ives says the plan was carried out the following morning. The prisoners rushed down the hill toward the river. Cairook pinioned the sentinel. Members of the guard bayoneted him on the spot. The fugitives were fired on. Some were killed and some escaped. None were retaken alive. The survivors carried home the story of the chief's self-sacrifice, and Cairook's only son, "a fine boy," was afterward regarded by the Mojave almost with veneration.
That footnote was written for a book published in 1861. It is not a diary entry from the porch. Ives was not at Fort Yuma that morning. He is reporting what he has been told, in the voice of an officer who liked the dead man and who had already left the river.
Sherer's nine
Bean and Vane, following Sherer, start from the April 23 terms rather than from a round "eight or nine." The terms required one hostage from each of six bands, the chief who had commanded the attack on Hoffman, and three participants. Cairook, identified as that chief, gave himself up willingly. The other eight were two sons of chiefs, four brothers of chiefs, and two nephews of chiefs. Nine men. The overview then says the nine found confinement oppressive and plotted an escape. In late June 1859 Cairook agreed to seize and hold the sentinel while they were out of jail for air. Cairook and one other were caught and killed. The rest escaped. The Army never learned that three of them got back to their people. A mourning ceremony was held for the two who died.
Set the endings side by side. Ives: some killed, some escaped, none retaken alive, and a story carried home that produced veneration for a son. Sherer, via the overview: two killed, the rest escaped, three of those escapees home, and the Army ignorant of the return. Ives has Ireteba at the fort arguing with Tipton. The overview's hostage paragraph does not mention that visit. Ives has a son. The overview has a mourning ceremony. Ives says eight or nine principal men. Sherer has a list that adds to nine, with kinship instead of a vague "principal." Both agree on the method: he held the sentinel during an airing, and he was killed there. Both agree he volunteered to be the one who stayed in the guard's hands.
The day the short history prints
The short history on this site says June 21, 1859. Ives says the morning after the plan, without a date. Bean and Vane say late June. The Army paperwork that would pin the day was not opened for this essay. June 21 may be right. It is not confirmed by either document used here, and it should not be repeated as if Ives or Sherer's cited pages had been seen to say it. "Late June 1859" is as tight as those pages get. The manner of the death is tighter than the calendar. Bayonet, porch or yard, the others running, Cairook the one who held the guard: that core is in both accounts. How many fell beside him is exactly where they diverge, which is what the short history already warns when it says accounts differ on how many died with him.
Frances Stillman's telling, as the short history summarizes it from Sherer, remembers the death as a deliberate sacrifice. Ives's footnote uses the same idea. He calls the project heroic and generous, and he says the survivors carried the story of a self-sacrifice. A sacrifice story told by an American officer who was not there, and a sacrifice story told by a Mojave elder to a historian a century later, can share a shape without being the same testimony. Stillman's words were not re-copied for this essay. The short history is the place this site has already pointed to them. Ives's words were copied, because the footnote was open.
What neither account is
Neither is a trial transcript. Hoffman's April 23 terms, as Sherer lists them, were dictated after an order that allowed the fields to be destroyed if hostages were refused. The men in the guardhouse were security for a surrender, not convicts after a hearing Ives describes. Ireteba's appeal treats the confinement as something a friendly officer might undo. Tipton's refusal treats it as above a lieutenant. Both reactions can be accurate. The footnote is good evidence of what Ives believed happened and of the role he assigns Ireteba. It is weaker evidence of how many men died on the hill, because "some" is not a count, and because Sherer's reconstruction, which had the hostage list, says two.
The list also explains who was not in the guardhouse. Irataba is not among the eight kinsmen Sherer names, and Ives's footnote has him outside, visiting, asking a lieutenant for a release the lieutenant cannot give. That is a different political position from Cairook's, and it lines up with the later American decision, described in the overview, to reinforce Aratêve as the leader who would keep the peace. The footnote does not say the appeal was a performance for an audience. It says Ireteba did not understand, or would not accept, that Tipton lacked the power. A history that turns the visit into a clever legal strategy has added a motive. A history that omits the visit, because Sherer's paragraph does not mention it, has dropped a scene that exists in a primary report. Print both, and say which book each scene comes from.
The novel needs a scene on that porch. It can follow Ives, or Sherer, or Stillman, and it has to show the choice. What it cannot do, if it wants the record, is have Cairook cut down on a date the opened sources do not print, or have all nine die, or have all nine escape. The stable facts are the airing, the seized sentinel, the bayonet, his choice to be the one who held on, and Ireteba's presence in Ives's version as the friend who asked first. Kinship that makes Irataba his brother is still the novel's addition. Ives calls Ireteba a faithful follower. He does not, in this footnote, call him a brother.
Sources
These are the documents and studies this essay actually uses. Spellings of Mojave names follow the source being quoted.
- Joseph C. Ives, Report upon the Colorado River of the West (1861), footnote to the farewell scene with Cairook, written for the published report and looking back at events after the expedition. Internet Archive text.
- Bean and Vane (2002), citing Sherer, Bitterness Road (1994), pp. 94-96, for the April 23 hostage list and the late June escape. NPS history copy.
- This site's short history dates Cairook's death June 21, 1859. Ives says "the following morning" of an airing and does not give a day. Bean and Vane say late June 1859. The day-number was not confirmed in the documents opened for this essay.