were Mohave property so they were cut down and used to build the rafts. When the Mohave discovered that their valuable cottonwoods had been disturbed, they responded by attacking the settlers with their Walapai allies. The Rose Party included dozens of women and children with only twenty-five men at arms fighting against hundreds of Mohave warriors. The Walapai with a small bunch of Mohaves focused on attacking four women and children held up in a cabin built in the mountains outside of the camp while the main Mohave force attacked the camp itself. In the end seventeen warriors were killed and left on the battlefield while the Americans lost one killed, Alpha Brown, and eleven seriously injured. The settlers won the day by repulsing the Mohave attack but they lost most of their livestock and instead of crossing the border into California, they turned around and went back to New Mexico. Irataba and his band of Mohaves, who had been key in establishing peace at the end of the Yuma War, were against conflict with the United States and later Irataba became a high-ranking leader among his people after helping end the Mohave War. The war with the Maricopa was also ongoing and this was a major reason why Irataba was for cooperating with the Americans. Irataba's opinion was not accepted in 1858 though, other important chiefs were for war with the United States, including Cairook and Sickahot. The other chiefs were highly popular among their warriors so Irataba was powerless to stop them. First Mohave Expedition News of the battle at Beale's Crossing reached the media quickly followed by the United States War Department and General Newman S. Clarke in Los Angeles. Clarke sent Lieutenant Colonel William Hoffman of the 6th Cavalry on an expedition to Beale's Crossing to build a post for protecting settlers crossing the Colorado. Hoffman set out from a ranch in Cajon Canyon on December 28, 1858, hoping to make it across the Mohave Desert along the Mohave Road before the heat of summer could set in. In January 1859, Hoffman was encamped with his fifty men near Beaver Lake. Chief Cairook was in the area with about 300 men and the two sides encountered one another in an Indian war skirmish known as the Battle of Beaver Lake. The American camp was surrounded but accurate musket fire proved deadly for the Mohaves and ten