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John Hance: The Life, Lies, and Legend of Grand Canyon's Greatest Storyteller
A legend in his own lifetime, John Hance (1837–1919) was synonymous with early Grand Canyon tourism. Between the late 1880s and early 1900s, to say “John Hance” was to say “Grand Canyon.” Hance was well known to travelers and visiting dignitaries alike, men such as William “Buffalo Bill” Cody and Theodore Roosevelt, the president who affectionately referred to him as “the greatest liar on earth.” It was said that Hance tried to jump the canyon on his horse Darby only to turn back when he was halfway over and realized he would never make it across. The truth behind Hance’s life is remarkable even without embellishment. In this book, Shane Murphy chronicles Hance’s childhood in Tennessee and Missouri, his service in the Confederacy during the Civil War, his time in Union prisons as a POW, and his later adventures with the Hickok brothers crossing the plains. Settling in Arizona’s fruitful Verde Valley, Hance farmed and filled military contracts before taking up residence as Grand Canyon’s first permanent Euro-American settler, trail builder, guide, and renowned storyteller. Hance left no correspondence, personal memoirs, or other writings. Only informal portraits from magazines and newspaper accounts remain. Murphy investigated assessors’ rolls, rare mercantile ledgers, and mining claims to create a full and compelling narrative of a man who was once an icon of the American West and should be remembered as the founding father of Grand Canyon tourism.
230 pages, Paperback
Published September 21, 2020
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November 28, 2020
In more than 100 trips through the Grand Canyon, Shane Murphy, Colorado river guide, knew Hance Rapids as a stretch of serious whitewater he had to navigate. For Murphy, the historian, tracking the man behind those eponymous rapids proved to be as arduous and as tricky a journey.
To understand John Hance you have to understand the times in which he lived. Murphy sets that scene well. Born into some of the "roughest, bloodiest, Indian-fighting times," John Hance and his brother George were "cogs in the westward-spinning wheel" that ran over everything in its path. It displaced native tribes, driving them off homesteads, farming land, and away from sacred sites. They frequently fought back. One of John Hance's early duties was to help "stand off the Indians and bandits that preyed on the wagon trains.” Later in Arizona, Hance and his brother participated in forcibly removing Yavapai, Hualapai, and Apache families from Camp Verde. On the arduous 180-mile, 36-day journey which even participants called "sad duty" and "outrageous," many of them died. Apache attacks were frequent while John and George were farming after the war. Apparently John Hance carried these experiences with him to the Grand Canyon. Years later, visitors would describe him as a genial host, but one called him "the guide, the hunter, the Indian hater, the story-teller."
Using John's brother George Hance's notes to blaze a trail, Murphy tracked Hance's life from the mountains of Tennessee to Missouri where he and his fellow farmers, ill-clothed and poorly trained, enlisted on the Civil War's Confederate side. In Arkansas, Hance's Tenth Missouri Infantry suffered heavy losses and Hance was captured, and held in several prisoner of war camps, overcrowded and smallpox-infested; he was hospitalized two times. "He survived while up to a dozen a day did not."
Hance emerged in ill health, but alive. Back in Missouri, he hired on as a teamster and dispatch carrier with wagon master Lorenzo Butler Hickok, known as Tame Bill, the well-respected, polar opposite of his younger brother Deputy US Marshal Wild Bill Hickok. Hance helped Lorenzo run government supply trains consisting of 200 oxen- and mule-drawn wagons carrying massive loads. It was back-breaking work in the hot sun, without adequate drinking water, and frequently under Indian attack. The Hance brothers later farmed, freighted and hauled supplies for the government until that business dried up. All that before John Hance ever set foot on the Canyon's Rim.
Once there, he built an access road and a log cabin from which he led tourists down to the Colorado River on the first trail for which he charged a toll. He had his first visitors in 1884 - to whom he served lunches of canned tomatoes, crackers and coffee. From this start, he practically "invented Grand Canyon tourism," as much with his inventive story-telling as with hard work. Between the mid-1800s and early 1900s John Hance WAS Grand Canyon. As a journalist remarked, you heard so many references to him that you came to have a "See-Hance-and die feeling."
"Literate to a useful degree," Hance arose from a region rich in story-telling and he used it to enhance his stature and to promote the Canyon, inventing his own legend and polishing it with every group he led down the trail or entertained around the camp fire. Hance kept a Visitors Log between 1891 and 1900, and 1,145 individuals signed it. The first name was Gifford Pinchot, the man who became first director of the U.S. Forest Service. ‘Pinchob' as Hance spelled the name, took "a most impressive and somewhat hazardous trip” down Hance Trail. "John Hance impressed on us the important fact that he was the best shot, the best walker, the best boatman and swimmer, the best rider, and had the best horses and the best mines ‘of any man that ever saw or read of Arizony.’"
Murphy has gathered an eclectic cast of supporting characters who shared Hance's life and times. These are only a few.
* William David Bradshaw, "brave, generous, eccentric, and in simple truth a lunatic," searched for gold in the mountains named after him. When he didn't find it, he took his life in a particularly gruesome way.
* Al Sieber served the U.S. Army as an Indian scout in nearly every Apache War campaign until Geronimo’s surrender in 1886.
* “Hi Jolly” whose real name was Hadji Ali, ran the “U.S. Camel Corps.” One does not expect to find a camel drover on the Southwest plains, but as pack animals, oxen were ill-suited to the heat; camels as a substitute looked promising, but the program was called off when the Civil War erupted.
* Annie Smith Peck was a renowned mountain climber, author/lecturer and in John Hance's life, "the sole reference with romantic overtones." She was 47 on her Grand Canyon visit. Hance showed her all his favorite and most challenging haunts. "Grand Canyon was the glue for those two, the accelerant being that Peck lived like Hance—home was where her trunk landed that evening." Though Hance guests wrote poems touting their relationship, Peck apparently packed her trunk and moved on.
Murphy also takes you shopping with Hance at Verde Valley’s Head & Co. store where purchases included two pairs of "drawers," towels, soap, thread and needle, 135 pounds of corn, 24 pounds of coffee, 55 pounds of sugar, 10 pounds of salt, and 20 pounds of turnips - and eight bottles of whiskey and a box of tea and the honey to sweeten it.
In 1903 and again in 1911, Hance met President Theodore Roosevelt, who benighted him with the "greatest liar" title. After Hance led him on a 24-mile horseback ride in the Canyon, Roosevelt said he treasured seeing the Canyon, but his "greatest satisfaction" was shaking hands with "the greatest liar on earth." Perhaps fittingly, Hance, the storyteller, and Roosevelt, the president who was one of his biggest fans, died on the same day in January, 1919.
Hance, always quick on his feet, told the story of a stranger asking him how the deer hunting was around the South Rim. “Why shucks,” he answered, “I went out this morning and bagged three all by myself!” “That’s wonderful!” the stranger exclaimed. “Do you know who I am?” Hance had no idea. “I’m the new game warden around here.” “And do you know who I am?” Hance snorted. “I’m John Hance, the biggest damn liar in these parts.”
A story as big as the Canyon itself with photos; a fascinating protagonist reclaimed from obscurity; and an inside look at the grandeur of the Grand Canyon.
To understand John Hance you have to understand the times in which he lived. Murphy sets that scene well. Born into some of the "roughest, bloodiest, Indian-fighting times," John Hance and his brother George were "cogs in the westward-spinning wheel" that ran over everything in its path. It displaced native tribes, driving them off homesteads, farming land, and away from sacred sites. They frequently fought back. One of John Hance's early duties was to help "stand off the Indians and bandits that preyed on the wagon trains.” Later in Arizona, Hance and his brother participated in forcibly removing Yavapai, Hualapai, and Apache families from Camp Verde. On the arduous 180-mile, 36-day journey which even participants called "sad duty" and "outrageous," many of them died. Apache attacks were frequent while John and George were farming after the war. Apparently John Hance carried these experiences with him to the Grand Canyon. Years later, visitors would describe him as a genial host, but one called him "the guide, the hunter, the Indian hater, the story-teller."
Using John's brother George Hance's notes to blaze a trail, Murphy tracked Hance's life from the mountains of Tennessee to Missouri where he and his fellow farmers, ill-clothed and poorly trained, enlisted on the Civil War's Confederate side. In Arkansas, Hance's Tenth Missouri Infantry suffered heavy losses and Hance was captured, and held in several prisoner of war camps, overcrowded and smallpox-infested; he was hospitalized two times. "He survived while up to a dozen a day did not."
Hance emerged in ill health, but alive. Back in Missouri, he hired on as a teamster and dispatch carrier with wagon master Lorenzo Butler Hickok, known as Tame Bill, the well-respected, polar opposite of his younger brother Deputy US Marshal Wild Bill Hickok. Hance helped Lorenzo run government supply trains consisting of 200 oxen- and mule-drawn wagons carrying massive loads. It was back-breaking work in the hot sun, without adequate drinking water, and frequently under Indian attack. The Hance brothers later farmed, freighted and hauled supplies for the government until that business dried up. All that before John Hance ever set foot on the Canyon's Rim.
Once there, he built an access road and a log cabin from which he led tourists down to the Colorado River on the first trail for which he charged a toll. He had his first visitors in 1884 - to whom he served lunches of canned tomatoes, crackers and coffee. From this start, he practically "invented Grand Canyon tourism," as much with his inventive story-telling as with hard work. Between the mid-1800s and early 1900s John Hance WAS Grand Canyon. As a journalist remarked, you heard so many references to him that you came to have a "See-Hance-and die feeling."
"Literate to a useful degree," Hance arose from a region rich in story-telling and he used it to enhance his stature and to promote the Canyon, inventing his own legend and polishing it with every group he led down the trail or entertained around the camp fire. Hance kept a Visitors Log between 1891 and 1900, and 1,145 individuals signed it. The first name was Gifford Pinchot, the man who became first director of the U.S. Forest Service. ‘Pinchob' as Hance spelled the name, took "a most impressive and somewhat hazardous trip” down Hance Trail. "John Hance impressed on us the important fact that he was the best shot, the best walker, the best boatman and swimmer, the best rider, and had the best horses and the best mines ‘of any man that ever saw or read of Arizony.’"
Murphy has gathered an eclectic cast of supporting characters who shared Hance's life and times. These are only a few.
* William David Bradshaw, "brave, generous, eccentric, and in simple truth a lunatic," searched for gold in the mountains named after him. When he didn't find it, he took his life in a particularly gruesome way.
* Al Sieber served the U.S. Army as an Indian scout in nearly every Apache War campaign until Geronimo’s surrender in 1886.
* “Hi Jolly” whose real name was Hadji Ali, ran the “U.S. Camel Corps.” One does not expect to find a camel drover on the Southwest plains, but as pack animals, oxen were ill-suited to the heat; camels as a substitute looked promising, but the program was called off when the Civil War erupted.
* Annie Smith Peck was a renowned mountain climber, author/lecturer and in John Hance's life, "the sole reference with romantic overtones." She was 47 on her Grand Canyon visit. Hance showed her all his favorite and most challenging haunts. "Grand Canyon was the glue for those two, the accelerant being that Peck lived like Hance—home was where her trunk landed that evening." Though Hance guests wrote poems touting their relationship, Peck apparently packed her trunk and moved on.
Murphy also takes you shopping with Hance at Verde Valley’s Head & Co. store where purchases included two pairs of "drawers," towels, soap, thread and needle, 135 pounds of corn, 24 pounds of coffee, 55 pounds of sugar, 10 pounds of salt, and 20 pounds of turnips - and eight bottles of whiskey and a box of tea and the honey to sweeten it.
In 1903 and again in 1911, Hance met President Theodore Roosevelt, who benighted him with the "greatest liar" title. After Hance led him on a 24-mile horseback ride in the Canyon, Roosevelt said he treasured seeing the Canyon, but his "greatest satisfaction" was shaking hands with "the greatest liar on earth." Perhaps fittingly, Hance, the storyteller, and Roosevelt, the president who was one of his biggest fans, died on the same day in January, 1919.
Hance, always quick on his feet, told the story of a stranger asking him how the deer hunting was around the South Rim. “Why shucks,” he answered, “I went out this morning and bagged three all by myself!” “That’s wonderful!” the stranger exclaimed. “Do you know who I am?” Hance had no idea. “I’m the new game warden around here.” “And do you know who I am?” Hance snorted. “I’m John Hance, the biggest damn liar in these parts.”
A story as big as the Canyon itself with photos; a fascinating protagonist reclaimed from obscurity; and an inside look at the grandeur of the Grand Canyon.
October 23, 2020
John Hance: The Life, Lies and Legend of Grand Canyon's Greatest Storyteller was a both a great fun and informative read. This story of an imaginative and unique man almost lost to history was both intriguing and funny. It brought me a greater appreciation of a diverse life well lived as well as an increased curiosity to know more about the Grand Canyon and how it opened up to tourism.
I am drawn to well researched historical books, and Mr. Murphy went above and beyond in his accurate portrayal of John Hance. Definitely book that interjects humor and wonder along with its historical significance.
I am drawn to well researched historical books, and Mr. Murphy went above and beyond in his accurate portrayal of John Hance. Definitely book that interjects humor and wonder along with its historical significance.
October 24, 2020
If you like reading books that bring the true American West to life you will love this book. You will also love the bigger than life story of John Hance. Hance was the first trail blazer to explore and settle in the beautiful but sometimes treacherous Grand Canyon. Through this book Shane Murphey transports readers back into another time to a place of unfathomable unspoiled beauty and rugged adventure. Enjoyable from start to finish, This book is a must read for anyone who appreciates a good tall tale and a glimpse into how the American West was before the 20th century.
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