USA > Arizona > Arizona, prehistoric, aboriginal, pioneer, modern; the nation's youngest commonwealth within a land of ancient culture, Vol. I > Part 18
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In the turbulent times that followed the Mexican War, with Mexico the prey of contending political factions and with the law left in the hands of local leaders of bandits, northern Sonora was the field chosen by several sets of filibusters of various aims. Of these the first and most romantic was Count Gaston Raoulx de Raousset-Boulbon, scion of an aristocratic French family, who in 1851 was picking up a precarious living around the wharves of San Francisco. In that same year there had been made, under Charles de Pondray, a futile attempt to establish a French colony at Cocospera, Sonora. The leader died, possibly assassinated, and the colony of 150 members went to pieces. Boulbon, a veritable soldier of fortune, with experience already in Algiers, managed to get to the City of Mexico with letters of introduction from the French Consul at San Francisco. His enthusiasm won the support of Jecker, Torre & Co., then financial agents of the Mexican government, and Boulbon returned to San Francisco with a contract wherein he bound himself to land at Guaymas 500 well-equipped and well-armed Frenchi immigrants, particularly for the protection against Indians of the Restauradora Mining Company, a Franco-Mexican corporation, but in reality for the establish- ment of a French buffer against possible American encroachments from the northi. The French crown already was active in its plans for the ultimate annexation of Mexico, and Boulbon possibly was an agent. June 1, 1852, the adventurer landed in Guaymas with 260 men, mainly compatriots, and soon thereafter set out for the silver fields of Arizonac.
In the promised land to the northward there must have remained some of the original immigrants, for in the Bartlett diary, under date of January 2, 1852, is found this entry: "Soon after leaving Hermosillo, we met a party of 150 Frenchmen, who were emigrating from California and destined, as I afterward learned, for Cocospera, with the design of establishing a colony there, as well as working some mines. They were a rather hard-looking and determined set of men, with long beards and sunburnt faces. Each one carried a rifle, besides which many had pistols." A number of recruits are said to have gone from Tucson.
RAOUSSET-BOULBON IN SONORA
Boulbon found the north country rich and pleasant, but, in letters home, was far from complimentary concerning the population and settlement, writing of, "Ruins of houses, ruins of churches, ruins of towns, and, above all, ruins of
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Samuel Hughes
Pcte Kitchen
John B. Allen
W. S. Oury
SOUTHERN ARIZONA PIONEERS
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crouching men and of weeping women." Probably comprehending the plans for establishment of a new Gallie principality, Governor Blanco and the Sonoran government generally proved far from helpful. It would seem that the French brought few utensils, other than warlike, for the development of the new laud, its farms and mines. Beset by Apaches on the one hand and by Mexican intrigue on the other, the Count at last, in October, concluded to appeal to a judgment at arms, marching, from Saric or Tubutama, on Hermosillo, by way of Arispe, with a force of 253 men, including forty-two horsemen and a large proportion of veteran soldiers. With a loss of forty-two killed and wounded, he stormed the fortifications of Hermosillo, defeating Blanco, who had at least 1,000 men. But the victory availed naught, for the Count fell sick of dysentery and the remaining adventurers were glad to accept safe conduct from Guaymas, after surrendering their arms and receiving an indemnity of $11,000.
Raonsset-Boulbon, permitted to leave Guaymas, after recuperation in San Francisco again was heard from the following year in the City of Mexico, where he sought compensation for the broken contract. President Santa Ana gave him fair promises and even a written "treaty," in which the Frenchman was to receive 340,000 francs for the garrisoning of Arizona with 500 soldiers. A fortnight later the contract was annulled and the Count, in its stead, was offered a commission as Colonel in the Mexican army. This was refused with scorn and the adventurer, seeking sympathy among anti-administration Mexicans, barely saved his life by hurried flight from the capital.
Though Raousset-Boulbon had been declared an outlaw by the Mexican gov- ernment, an authorized expedition of 300 French sailed from San Francisco April 2, 1854, on the ship Challenger, under command of Lebourgeois Desmarais, to take up the same work from which the former party had been driven, though the greater part of Arizona lately had been ceded to the United States. The Count, held under a charge of filibustering, managed to escape May 24 on the ten-ton schooner Belle, taking 200 more rifles. He consumed thirty-five days in reaching Guaymas, first landing on a nearby point and sending two of his men into the city to prepare the main body for his coming. His scouts were thrown into prison by Governor Yanes, who had succeeded Blanco, but the 300, as expected, rallied around the Count's banner. On July 8 there was a pitched battle on the streets of the seaport. Victory was with the Mexicans, who outnumbered the French eight to one. A number of the defeated seized the Belle and put to sea, to be lost on the voyage. A majority of the captives were sent into the interior, later to be released on French intervention. The Count, condemned as a traitor and rebel, was shot August 12, facing his executioners with fortitude and disdain, a true nobleman of France to the last. He was aged only 36.
Another filibustering scheme was that of Jos. C. Morehead, Quartermaster General of the California militia, who in 1851 had led about 100 men to the protection of the Colorado River ferry at the month of the Gila. The experience gained on this trip, whereon he taxed or turned back all Mexican travelers. incited an attempt in 1852 to invade Sonora. Three parties were started, to different points on the Lower California or Sonora coast, but each was met by such a show of Mexican military strength that the Californians meekly and at once assumed the role of mining prospectors.
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WALKER'S ""REPUBLIC OF SONORA"
There was a filibustering expedition into Sonora in 1853, led by William Walker, of later renown in Nicaragua. Senator Gwin of California and a number of the federal officials at San Francisco were well mixed in the plot, according to Gen. E. A. Hitchcock, then in command of the coast military department. Even at that time, Gwin was grooming Crabb for his later expedition. Gwin continued his activities till after 1863, when he had evolved an elaborate plan for colonizing northern Sonora with Southerners. This plan had been approved by Emperor Louis Napoleon and by Maximilian, then Emperor of Mexico, and upon Gwin had been conferred the title of "Duke of Sonora." The "Duke" entered Mexico himself, bearing a letter from Maximilian to Marshal Bazaine, but about that time the Mexican monarchy fell with the withdrawal of French troops and with it fell the "Dukedom of Sonora."
In October, 1853, favored by complaisant port officials, Walker had outfitted the brig Arrow, on which were quarters for several hundred men and a large store of arms and ammunition. It was well known that Walker had proclaimed the "Republic of Sonora," with a full set of officials, he retaining the governorship. The Arrow was seized by General Hitchcock, despite protests from the civil authorities. On the night of October 16 Walker slipped out of the harbor on the schooner Caroline, with fifty-six men, about a quarter of the number the Arrow was to have carried. La Paz, on the coast of Lower California, was seized November 3, but headquarters later were established at San Vicente, not far from the international line. There joined several hundred recruits. With about 100 men, Walker started on a march across the head of the peninsula, but landed in Sonora, on the eastern side of the Colorado River, with only thirty-five compan- ions, the others deserting or falling out from fatigue. So the scheme of invasion and of a new inland empire had to be given up and the expedition made its way back to the Pacific, caching 100 kegs of powder on the Colorado. May 8, 1854, the remaining members marched across the border at Tia Juana, fighting till the last moment, and delivered their arms to the American authorities. The leader was held and was tried in a United States court for violation of the neutrality laws, receiving acquittal.
The inception of this Walker expedition was in Auburn, Cal., early in 1852, and Frederic Emery and a companion were sent to Sonora to spy out the land. They failed, for the Mexican authorities preferred the colonization scheme of Boulbon. Emery the next year in San Franciso laid the plan before Walker, who, in June, in company with Henry P. Watkins, landed in Guaymas, to seek a grant of land from the Mexican authorities, meeting with no encouragement from Governor Gandara.
Hardly to be dignified as a filibustering expedition was a raid into Sonora in 1853 by a considerable force of Americans, led by one Bell. Little record of this is available, but it is told that Bell hanged a priest at Caborca, committed outrages of various sort in that and neighboring pueblos and finally departed with much loot, including altar vessels from the churches and with the priests' vestments used as saddle blankets.
French influences again appeared in Sonora (on French maps known as Nueve Navarre) in 1857, when the Mexican government contracted with the firm of J. B. Jecker & Co., Antonio Escandon and Manuel Payn of the City of Mexico
STANWIX STAGE STATION, EAST OF YUMA, 1872 The woman is Mrs. King Woolsey
Photo by Professor R. H. Forbes
TUBAC, 1915, LOOKING NORTH
Extreme right, old Tully-Ochoa store: Extreme left, old Pie Allen store
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for a survey of the State of Sonora. The compensation was to be one-third of the area surveyed, in public lands, and privilege of purchase of the balance of the unappropriated domain. The work was turned over to J. B. G. Isham and asso- ciates of San Francisco, who employed as chief engineer Capt. Chas. P. Stone, afterward General. When the survey was nearly complete, in 1859, after the syndicate had expended $250,000, the government repudiated the contract and Stone and his parties were expelled from the country.
CRABB'S EXPEDITION AND ITS FATE
There might have been a material change in the boundary line of Mexico had success attended the ill-fated expedition of Henry A. Crabb in 1857. Crabb, by marriage into the Ainsa family of Sonora, had gained relationship with Ignacio Pesquiera, a claimant upon the governorship of Sonora, with whom it would appear he entered into an agreement to bring down 1,000 Americans, to fight against the forces of Governor Gandara and to receive in return a broad strip of territory along the Arizona line. Crabb, it is believed, then proposed to annex this strip to the United States. The expedition was organized in San Francisco, but more than half its membership was recruited in Tuolumne County. San Pedro was reached by water January 24. Wagon equipment was secured at El Monte, near Los Angeles, and Yuma was reached about a month later. At Fort Yuma the commanding officer was First Lieut. Sylvester Mowry, Third U. S. Artillery, who took occasion to report on the expedition to the Adjutant General of the Army. Mowry stated that the party was under military discipline and that its "Chief of Artillery" was T. D. Johns, a graduate of West Point and former lieutenant in the United States Army, that reinforcements were expected from Texas under Major Lane and that 1,500 more men were to be landed with cannon at a point on the Gulf of California, all with collusion on the part of high government officials in Sonora. The membership included : "General," Henry A. Crabb, ex-State Senator and California political leader; Adjutant General, Col. R. N. Woods, former legislator, member of the Fillmore national executive committee and Fillmore elector from California ; Commissary General, Col. W. H. MeCoun, an ex-legislator; Surgeon General, Dr. T. J. Oxley, an ex-legislator ; Brigadier-General, J. D. Cosby, State Senator from Siskiyou County, and Captain Mckinney, formerly in Colonel Doniphan's command and an ex-legislator. Mowry wrote there were about 150 in the party, but only eighty-eight men appear to have crossed into Sonora. The southward journey was from what later was known as Filibuster Camp, on the Gila, east of Yuma, through Sonoita, which was reached March 25 and whereat twenty men were left, under command of Mckinney.
It is evident that Crabb expected support when he entered Sonora. Instead he found that Pesquiera already had established himself in authority and had repudiated his agreement. Still the over-confident Americans pushed on, after Crabb had sent to the Prefect at Altar a letter in which he stated: "I am well aware that you have given orders to poison the wells and that you are ready to employ the vilest and most cowardly weapons," and reiterated the wish of the Americans to find "most happy firesides with and among you." Pesquiera answered himself, with a bombastic proclamation to his people, whom he sum- moned to fly, "to chastise with all the fury that can scarcely be contained in a
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heart swelling with resentment against coercion, the savage filibuster who has dared, in an unhappy hour, to tread our nation's soil and to arouse, insensate, our wrath. Let it die like a wild beast."
Of the sixty-eight there was a single survivor, Chas. E. Evans, a 15-year-old lad, whose deposition later was taken by the American Vice Consul at Mazatlan. He told that the party, on April 1, while carelessly marching, was ambushed by the Mexicans half a mile from Caborca. The Americans forced their way to the town, where a row of adobe houses was seized as a fort, the Mexicans gaining a superior position in a nearby church, on which Crabb and fifteen men made an unsuccessful attack, taking with them a barrel of powder, with which it was hoped to blow up the structure. The Americans were besieged for six days. There were many wounded and five men had been killed in the sortie. Finally the roof of the improvised fort was set on fire and the remaining powder was expended in an effort to blow up the flaming part of the house. Then surrender was considered.
The Mexicans promised a fair trial and that the Americans should be con- sidered prisoners of war, while the wounded were to be given the care of a skillful surgeon. So Crabb and the remainder of his force walked out, one by one, and were seized and bound. At sunrise next morning all save Evans were shot and the bodies were stripped and left where hogs had access to them. Crabb had separate execution. A hundred balls were fired into his body and his head was cut off, preserved in an olla of mescal and sent to the City of Mexico, to demon- strate Pesquiera's patriotism. There was reference to Crabb's burial somewhere of a war fund of $10,000, but that would appear to have been fiction. Dead men's teeth were knocked out to secure the gold fillings.
Four wounded men, left on the American side of the line, at Sonoita, in the house of a trader, E. E. Dunbar, were murdered by a Mexican party, as well as sixteen of the twenty who had been left behind near the border, attacked as they were escorting a wagon southward. Altogether the death list of Americans totalled ninety-three.
GRANT OURY'S ATTEMPT AT RESCUE
Woods and Charles Tozer, two of the leading officers, had left the main expedition at Yuma and had proceeded to Tucson, there, and along the Santa Cruz, to recruit an additional force, with the offer of 160 acres of land to each armed emigrant. Twenty-six were enrolled, including the two recruiting officers. As Captain was elected Granville II. Oury, the same who later was sent to repre- sent Arizona in the Confederate Congress and who, still later, served as a federal congressman. The sergeant was John G. Capron, later a famous cross-country mail carrier. Capron, a resident of San Diego a few years ago, then wrote that he was the solitary living survivor of this party. Avoiding all settlements, Oury marched his men almost into Caborca before he appreciated the plight of the main expedition. Then he was met by a Mexican officer who stated that Crabb had surrendered and that he and his men would be sent out of the country. Oury was advised to march into the town and to lay down his arms. The Arizonans, better versed in Mexican warfare than were the Californians, refused and soon were besieged in a ravine, losing all their horses by gunfire before nightfall. In the dark and through sheltering dense woods, the Arizona men made their way
Granville H. Oury
Estevan Ochoa
Charles T. Hayden
SOUTHERN ARIZONA PIONEERS
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northward to Pitaquito, near which, on the plains, they were charged by a detach- ment of about fifty Mexican lancers. The Americans were much the better armed, so drove the Mexicans back and managed thereafter to keep them at long rifle range. Yet four of the invaders were killed, by name Chambers, Thomas, Woods and Hughes, the last named shot down by ambushed Mexicans at the very border line. A number were wounded, including Capron and Forbes.
The return was a sad one. Footsore, weary, almost naked, the men secured food only in the small villages they dared visit and for water often had to depend upon the sap of the bisnaga cactus. Oury went on ahead and sent back a mule load of provisions. Soon thereafter the Oury ranch was reached and there the men spent several days resting, sleeping and eating and in picking the cactus thorns from their bodies. Tozer and a few went on to Tucson, while Capron went back to Calabasas, where he had a contract for supplying hay to four troops of United States dragoons, there in camp under Major Steen. There he found a Good Samaritan in Chas. Trumbull Hayden, who had started a store a mile below the post.
In the San Diego Herald in May appeared an interesting account of Oury's experiences, giving him great credit for skill and expressing the opinion that if he had been with Crabb from the beginning a different result would have heen known. The early-day newspaper writer, on evidence furnished by a late arrival from Arizona, declared, "All was bad management, want of experience and a clear rushing upon a deadly fate. The influence of this affair upon Americans is very bad. Our prestige is entirely destroyed; the Mexicans are loud in their boasts; our dreaded invincibility is gone, and nothing but a great victory will restore it. Even the Indians now say we are of no account and they will kill small parties when they meet them. Heretofore Americans have had much greater seenrity than any other people. It remains to be seen how this horrible news will be received in California; whether the thirsty sands of Sonora and the Gadsden Purchase have drank the lifeblood of men whom California has been proud to honor with the judicial ermine and the robes of the senator in vain, or whether she will give an earnest demonstration that, indeed, 'the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.'"
BORDER PROTEST AND LAMENTATION
There was a strong protest by the American Minister to Mexico, John Forsyth, who called the bloody work simply murderous and who defended Crabb as an immigrant and prospective settler. Chas. B. Smith, American vice-consul at Mazatlan, furnished the best official reports. He told how a party of Americans "headed by Mr. Hewes (Hughes), twenty-six in number, were attacked by about 300 Mexicans, but fought their way to the line, losing only four men, one of which was Hewes himself, whose heart and hands and ears were brought into Altar on a spear." Evidently this was the Tozer-Oury party. But nothing seemed to come of the American protests, possibly because the State Department in the end found itself unable to defend the motives of Crabb and his backers in their so-called " Arizona Colonization Company."
Poston, always a prolific source of letters, in the fall of 1857 recorded that "The guerilla warfare on the frontier continues with increased aggravation. Americans are afraid to venture into Sonora for supplies and Mexicans are afraid
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to venture across the line. Americans who had nothing to do with the filibuster- ing expedition have been treated badly in Sonora and driven out of the country, and Mexicans coming into the Purchase with supplies and animals have been robbed and plundered by the returning filibusters. The Americans in the Ter- ritory are by no means harmonious on these subjects-some in favor of filibuster- ing and others opposed to it. It results that we are in a state of anarchy, and there is no government, no protection to life, property or business; no law and no self- respect or morality among the people. We are living in a perfect state of nature, without the restraining influence of civil or military law or the amelioration of society. There have not been many conflicts or murders, because every man goes armed to the teeth and a difficulty is always fatal, on one side or the other. God seud that we had been left alone with the Apaches. We should have been a thousand times better off in every respect."
Mission San Xavier Scene on a residence street Interior of Mission San Xavier
Residences, in the mission style University of Arizona
SCENES IN AND NEAR THE CITY OF TUCSON
CHAPTER X THE PRE-TERRITORIAL PERIOD
Old Tucson, a Border Metropolis-Its Foundation and Name-Yuma and the River Camps-Politics, when Arizona Extended from Texas to the Colorado-Con- federate Activity.
Practically all history of European or American occupation of the present land of Arizona starts in its southeastern section, wherein Tucson, an enduring outpost of civilization, still attaches the romance of the past to the fringe of her activities as a modern metropolis. The speech of Spain most noticeably lingers within her gates and pride loyally is felt in the perpetuation of the Moorish and Spanish types of architecture. The comparative newness of white settlement can be appreciated when it is considered that Tucson is the only Arizona town that dates back of the Civil War. She has known government under three nations and was the westernmost post garrisoned by the Confederates. She stood firm as the guard post between the Apaches of the hills and peaceful Indians of the valleys and sheltered the friars of old in their efforts to establish the faith of the Cross. Almost wholly modern she seems to-day, when super- ficially viewed, but below the bustle of business the student finds a most attract- ive sub-stratum of sentiment, that has served to perpetuate memories of the romantic past, to the times when Spanish cavaliers drew sword for the glory of their king and for the extension of their faith.
There are some, filled with local pride and eager for local assumption of the honors that attach to age, who have sought to show that Tucson is one of the oldest cities in the United States, if not the oldest. On similar basis even greater antiquity might attach to a village planted on the site of Casa Grande. The local claim appears to be based largely upon a statement in Hodge's "Ari- zona as It Is" of its settlement about 1560, which would make it much older than Santa Fé, New Mexico, or Saint Augustine, Florida.
TUCSON'S BIRTH AND BAPTISM
Tucson in reality was founded just about the same time as San Francisco, in 1775 or 1776, just as the revolutionary heroes were settling down to the hard task of creating the United States. On this basis, the Fourth of July should have added significance in what its residents are pleased to call "The Ancient and Honorable Pueblo." It is not as old by more than twenty years as Tubac, from which an early military commandant, Juan Bautista de Anza, went straightway to similar office in the foundation of the Presidio of San Francisco. - Tucson was a Spanish presidio, garrisoned by about fifty soldiers from Tubac. Its first few adobe huts were placed on the banks of the Santa Cruz,
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near the shade of a cottonwood grove and not far from a Papago (or Sobaipuri) rancheria, a visita of the mission of San Xavier. This rancheria in the annals of the Church had had the dignity of a name at least as far back as 1698, when Padre Kino wrote of passing a short distance below San Xavier through San Cosme de Tucson and San Agustin de Oyaut. San Agustin he put on his map in 1702. It was a short distance down the river from the site of Tucson. Along the water courses of southern Arizona, the reverend travelers were prone to dignify each Indian village with a name with some saintly prefix, founded on hope of the future, rather than upon any missionary successes of the day. In the lapse of years, of the many saintly appellations that were scattered north of San Xavier, there remains only one, for Saint Augustine to this day is rev- erenced as the patron saint of Tucson. In a few of these villages were built adobe churches with mud or grass roofs.
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