USA > Arizona > Arizona, prehistoric, aboriginal, pioneer, modern; the nation's youngest commonwealth within a land of ancient culture, Vol. I > Part 19
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The word to-day has a general pronunciation of "Too-sahn," this changed by Mexicans and by some of the pioneer Americans to "Took-sone." This has no connection with Spanish, but comes down from the desert Papago or Sobai- puri, who were found nearby on the Santa Cruz by the first Spanish explorers. General acceptance has been given in considering the origin of the word itself to a theory that it meant "dark or brown spring" and even the spring itself has been shown, near the Elysian grove of today, where many a "dark-brown taste" since has been acquired. It is true that in the Papago language "styuk- son" means dark or brown spring, but Dr. M. P. Freeman of Tucson, the city's most careful historical student, dissents. From Papago sources he has learned that just across the valley at the foot of Sentinel Peak was an Indian pueblito known as "Styook-zone," interpreted as meaning "the village at the foot of the black hill." Inasmuch as the Indians consulted seem to agree on this expla- nation, it is probably to be preferred.
In the Rudo Ensayo, with date attached of 1762, San Xavier is noted as the northernmost mission among the Pimas, with the addition, "at a distance of three leagues north lies the post of Tucson, with sufficient people and con- veniences to found another mission." In spite of all this, the formal occupation of the present town as a presidio does not appear to have been recorded officially prior to 1776, when the garrison at Tubac was transferred thither. Padre Font about 1775 found the pueblo Tuquison more populous than that of San Xavier del Bac.
Bishop Salpointe has found authority for the statement that in 1772 Padre Garcés gathered the population in a pueblo of adobe, with a church, a mission house and a protective wall, about half a mile from the present city site, and called it the Pueblito del Tucson. Later the old church on the river was known as "La Escuela Pura."
EVER IN FEAR OF THE APACHE
One of the very earliest records of old Tucson is contained in a letter or report, dated at San Agustin de Tucson, November 24, 1777, addressed by Manuel Barragua, Francisco Castro and Antonio Romero to Señor Capitan Don Pedro Allande y Savedra. Despite the efforts of those who tell that the Apaches were driven into warfare by the malign influence of the whites, it would appear that the Indians were about as pernicious in those days as they were 100 years
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later. The letter was written particularly to secure an additional force of troops for the protection of the fields and herds and the captain is beseeched "that you will pity our misfortunes and listen to our petitions that you may remove the continual misfortunes that we have suffered by a continual expectation of our total destruction." Reference was made to a former expression of desire on the part of the inhabitants to break up their homes and to an order received from the captain "imposing heavy penalties upon us if we should sell or remove our goods." Matters had come to a head, however, within a month before the writing of the letter. The Apaches had finished the entire herds of horses and cattle which had been guarded well. At the same time, "with boldness they had destroyed the fields and carried away as much corn as they were able." The letter tells, "since the fort was removed to Tucson these towns and missions (along the Santa Cruz) have experienced such disaster that they have been obliged to burn the town of Calabazas, a calamity never before experienced." The Apaches had remained in the vicinity continually, watching from the hills and the settlers momentarily expected to be destroyed, as their property had been. There is a narration that near Tubac and Tumacacori were fields of corn and wheat and recommendation was made that the scant irrigation supply of the Santa Cruz be bestowed in alternate weeks to the fields of either settlement, as had been done by the former captain, Don Juan de Anza. Of wheat and corn there had been raised the previous year about six hundred fanegas.
The letter recited that in the vicinity of Aribac, seven leagues distant, were rich mines of silver and that three leagues beyond, in the valley of Babacomari, there were fine gold placers that had been examined by Don José Torro. Three visits were made by Don José at great risk, and by remaining there over three days each trip, he had brought away gold valued at about two hundred dollars.
The presidio or pueblo had a checkered career, garrisoned by Spanish, Mex- ican and Opata Indian soldiery, but with a population that varied according to the activity of the mining industries and likewise the activity of the Apaches. The Indians attacked it continually, drove off the herds and often killed the rancheros while at work. As early as 1825 the town had been well fortified with an adobe wall, which had circular corner salients, permitting cross-fire on any antagonists. That this was necessary was shown by the fact that a number of Apache attacks had been made upon the farms in the vicinity and even on the town itself, which the Indians had hoped to take by surprise. Within the wall, and in places backed up on it, were the houses occupied by the troops of the presidio and by the small Spanish-speaking population.
The pueblo had a serious experience with Apaches in January, 1851, and its people seem to have impressed the Indians with a large respect for their prowess, for the redskins sued for peace, through a Mexican captive, Acuña, the same who later led an expedition from Sonora after silver mines into the mountains beyond the Gila. A treaty was agreed upon and the Indians departed, leaving Acuña behind.
There is a record of occasional visitation of the "vomito amarillo." possibly cholera or a form of yellow fever, though the modern disease of that designation rarely is found far from the hot and damp southern coasts. Smallpox was known commonly.
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COMPLIMENTS OF EARLY VISITORS
Bartlett in 1852 found a population of only about three hundred, miserably confined to narrow limits and barely gaining sustenance, existing only through the protection of the troops. The houses were all of adobe and the majority of them in a state of ruin. "No attention seems to be given to repair; but as soon as a dwelling becomes uninhabitable it is deserted, the miserable tenants creeping into some other hovel where they may eke out their existence."
Tucson was evacuated by Commandant Garcia, March 10, 1856, following the proclamation of the Gadsden Purchase, and for a while had a garrison of the First Dragoons. American enterprise already was on the ground, for, eleven days before the evacuation, Solomon Warner arrived from Fort Yuma with thirteen mules loaded with merchandise, secured on a commission basis from Hooper & Hinton of Fort Yuma. Mark Aldridge was the first United States postmaster, he succeeded by Dr. C. H. Lord.
Poston described Tucson in 1856 as having a population of about four hun- dred Mexicans and thirty Americans, with two American stores, a flour mill and "some other business places," probably saloons. The houses were of adobe, generally damp and unhealthy. The vote at the preceding election was sixty- six. According to Poston, for a year previous to his visit the American popula- tion had been engaged principally in waiting for the American troops, though he called it "the most orderly, quiet, civil community that I have ever seen." It was evident that Poston was not deeply impressed, for he declared it could never be a place of importance. Mail coach transportation was had with the outside world in 1858. Soon thereafter the locality began to be celebrated through the columns of the Arizonian, which had been moved from Tubac, and which made its bow in Tucson about that time. The editor printed his valedic- tory and an attack on President Lincoln in the Arizonian of March 9, 1861.
B. H. Woods in 1857 wrote of 500 people resident and 2,000 acres cultivated. He found much "chills-and-fever."
Pumpelly in 1860 considered the town's most important feature two large meteoric iron masses, that had been used by a blacksmith as anvils. One, 160 pounds in weight, was taken to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The other, of 632 pounds weight, was sent by General Carleton to San Francisco. The first is said to have been brought in 1735 ( ?) from Sierra de la Madera by Juan Bautista de Anza.
Cremony told that about 1860 Arizona and New Mexico were cursed by the presence of two or three hundred of the most infamous scoundrels it is possible to conceive. Innocent and unoffending men were shot down or bowie-knifed merely for the pleasure of witnessing their death agonies. Men walked the streets and public squares with double-barreled shot guns, and hunted each other as sportsmen hunt for game. In the graveyard at Tucson there were forty-seven graves of white men in 1860 and of that number only two had died natural deaths, all of the rest having been murdered in broils and barroom quarrels.
The picture drawn by J. Ross Browne of Tucson in the early days of '64 was hardly attractive, even though it was of the principal town of the new Territory, the center of trade for Sonora and the largest settlement on the highroad from the Rio Grande to Fort Yuma. The town itself Browne called
DILEMOM
BAK
OFFICE
Main Street, Phoenix, in 1879 Cliff Dwellings on Beaver Creek
Main Street, Florence, in 1878 Eskiu il je-he, Apache Scout
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"the most wonderful scatteration of human habitations ever beheld by the eye of a jaded and dust-covered traveler expecting to enjoy all the luxuries of civilization which an ardent imagination might lead him to expect in the metropo- lis of Arizona-a city of mud boxes, dingy and dilapidated, cracked and baked into a composite of dust and filth; littered about with broken corrals, sheds, bake-ovens, carcasses of dead animals and broken pottery; barren of verdure, parched, naked, and grimly desolate in the glare of the southern sun. Adobe walls without whitewash inside or out, hard earth floors, baked and dried Mex- icans, sore-backed burros, coyote dogs, and terra-cotta children; soldiers, team- sters and honest miners lounging about the mescal shops, soaked with the fiery poison ; a noisy band of Sonoranian buffoons, dressed in theatrical costume, cutting their antics in the public places to the most diabolical din of fiddles and guitars ever heard; a long train of Government wagons preparing to start for Fort Yuma or the Rio Grande-these are what the traveler sees, and a great many things more, but in vain he looks for a hotel or lodging house. The best accommodations he can possibly expect are the dried mud walls of some unoccu- pied outhouse, with a mud floor for his bed, his own food to eat and his own cook to prepare it; and lucky is he to possess such luxuries as these."
About that time, on the testimony of G. V. Angula, lard sold for $2.50 a pound, muslin for $1 a yard, corn for $12.50 a hundred pounds and corn whiskey for 50 cents a drink. It should be understood that the common currency even as late as 1880 was Mexican silver, of debased value. The Mexican dollar in Arizona generally was known as a "dobie," its size and weight thus compared with an adobe brick.
It should be understood that even after the establishment of Prescott, the greater part of the population of present Arizona was centered in Tucson, the balance mainly being in a fringe of mining camps along the Colorado. There was a period when the principal income of Tucson was derived from handling supplies for troops engaged in chasing the Apaches-rather an impermanent and unsatisfactory income at the best.
Even before the coming of the railroad Tucson enjoyed a large export trade with Sonora. As late as 1878 Hinton ingenuously accounted for this, stating that goods delivered at Guaymas must pay customs duties, but this same mer- chandise can be easily taken across the line without observation on mountain trains, when made up into little bales of from 100 to 150 pounds each adaptable to pack mules. Thus Tucson has a monopoly of the dry-goods trade of Sonora."
SETTLEMENT ON THE SANTA CRUZ
South of Tucson, up the rich Santa Cruz Valley, was a fairly continuous line of settlement, along Pete Kitchen's famous road to Sonora-"Tucson, Tubac, Tumacacori and Tohell." Beside the three terrestrial localities listed was the mission of San Xavier, the rancho settlement of Calabazas, where the first American custom house was established, and the presidio of Santa Cruz, near the border. Of these the most important was Tubac. The word "Tubac," by Fred Hodge is said to mean "adobe house," also "ruined house," "ruined," etc., the word occurring in San Xavier del Bac, Quitobac, etc. The presidio appears to have been started about 1752, as no earlier reference has been found concerning it. It undoubtedly followed the Indian uprising of November 20,
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1751, and was placed at a visita of the mission of Guebabi. The place later was temporarily abandoned in favor of Tumacacori. De Anza was in command after 1764 for about ten years. Bartlett, who visited it in 1852, then called it "a God-forsaken place that contains a few dilapitated buildings and an old church with a miserable population. It was abandoned a year before our arrival, has since been repopulated and might have comprised at the time of our visit a hundred souls." A few years thereafter the old presidio had a mixed population of Americans, Mexicans and Indians, deriving their livelihood from the working of nearby mines. It was in this period that at Tubac was established the first newspaper of Arizona.
The Americans came to Tubac in 1856, when Poston made it his headquar- ters and when it was the center of operations of the Arizona Mining Company, which had brought in an enormous amount of machinery and equipment before the necessary abandonment of the country in 1861. For the preceding three years Tubac was the most important settlement in Arizona, for good houses had been built, farming had been started, and the place was a center of industry and trade. In 1864, when Poston returned with Browne, already it was a city of ruins.
After the leaving of the American troops, only about twenty-five people remained at Tubac. These soon were besieged by a force of Apaches estimated at 200. A message was sent to Tucson asking for help. Promptly there came to the rescue a party of twenty-five Americans led by Grant Oury, who struck the Apaches from the rear and drove them away. This reinforcement came in good time, for danger menaced from another source. A party of seventy-five Mex- ican bandits, hearing of the abandonment of Tubac, came up from Sonora for purposes of plunder. Finding the garrison too strong, the Mexicans fell back to Tumacacori, where they murdered an old American resident, looted the village and returned southward.
Browne declared the Santa Cruz Valley one of the most beautiful he had ever seen, yet noted on the road between San Xavier and Tubac, a distance of almost forty miles, almost that number of graves of white men lately murdered by Apaches. There were fields with torn-down fences or houses burned or racked to pieces by violence; everywhere ruin, grim and ghastly with associa- tions of sudden death. Day and night, the common subject of conversation was murder, and wherever the beauty of the scene attracted, a stone-covered grave marked the foreground.
The first settlement at Calabazas (squashes) was some time prior to 1760, though it is probable that the fertile valley at that point supported at first a Papago village that became a visita of Guebabi, under the name of San Cayetano de Calabazas. Note lias been made before of its desertion in 1777. Later it was headquarters for the great rancho of the Gandara family, and was noted for its four-acre corral. Nogales (walnuts), farther to the southward, also was a cattle ranch. Bartlett, who visited Calabazas in July, 1852, found only the ruins of a large rancho, nothing more than a name, and observed that all over the Southwest he had found on the maps a host of names, "including half the saints on the calendar, all the apostles and the Holy Lady of Guadalupe into the bargain," and that "the stranger would imagine the country thickly set- tled, whereas there might not be a village, rancho or even a single inhabitant."
STREET IN OLD TUCSON, SHOWING FIRST SCHOOLHOUSE ON LEFT
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Leroux, his guide, told that it had been a thriving establishment twenty years before, when he had visited it, but the irrigation supply had fallen off. After the Gadsden Purchase, Calabazas was for a while the site of a custom house, though, in the absence of a sufficient force of line riders, most of the goods that crossed the line in either direction were smuggled.
THE GILA VALLEY'S HISTORIC HIGHWAY
It should be understood that by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, the United States gained territory in the Southwest only as far southward as the Gila River. The Gadsden Purchase, for $10,000,000, in 1853, brought the international line down to its present location, though not far enough south to secure a seaport, which had been one of the original objects of the negotiations. The whole transaction had been a rather costly one, in money amounting to about $170,000,000, as figured in 1904 by Cyrus Townsend Brady, this without reference to the thousands of men killed or wounded or to the continuing pen- sion expense, all founded on a war believed by a large proportion of Ameri- cans to have been an unjust one.
From the time of the Mexican War till the outbreak of the Civil War, the history of Arizona was concentrated mainly along the transcontinental road that passed through Tucson and westward down the Gila Valley. To the southward some of the old Spanish mines were reworked, while, later, prospectors, at the risk of their lives, penetrated Apacheria. Military posts were established at Buchanan on the Sonoita, at Breckenridge on the lower San Pedro, at Yuma, opposite the mouth of the Gila, at Mojave, at the Colorado River crossing of the northern Beale road, and at Defiance on the Navajo reservation. There were surveys for wagon roads and railroads; rather hard-driven by national admin- istrations of southern bias, and there were a couple of boundary surveys that added much to the geographic knowledge of the times. For several years there was a passing of hordes of Americans, bound for California, as well as of Mexi- cans, though the latter usually took the more direct, though more dangerous, Tinajas Altas trail.
Emory's vision of navigation of the Gila never became a reality, though a number of attempts were made by military expeditions and pioneers to float a part of their chattels down the stream when mule transportation had been almost exhausted. Lieut. C. J. Coutts, the founder of Camp Calhoun near Yuma in September, 1849, told that there arrived in November of that year a flatboat on which had floated from the Pima villages a family, that of a Mr. Howard, together with two friends, a doctor and a clergyman. Added interest is given the story by the detail that upon the voyage a son was born into the Howard family and was given the name of "Gila." This in the story is assumed to have been the first white child of American parentage born within the pres- ent boundaries of Arizona. The Howard flatboat was bought by Coutts for use as a ferry.
GRUESOME MEMORIES OF A FERRY
The first of the California gold-seekers made their way across the Colorado either by fording or on rafts, assisted or impeded by the Indians. Early in 1849, however, a long-felt want was filled by the establishment of a regular ferry Vol. 1-10
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about a mile below the mouth of the Gila, at a point on the west bank that became known as Fort Defiance, which is not to be confused with the real fort of that name. This settlement appears to have been a veritable bandit lair, wherein the traveler was robbed by excessive tolls, card sharping or by the simpler methods of the highway, that might include murder. While there is a record of a ferry- man named Craig, the first appears to have been a Doctor Lincoln (or Langdon), who had been hacked by J. P. Brodie, a wealthy Scottish merchant of Hermosillo. Lincoln later was joined by John Glanton (or Gallantin), a desperado Indian scalp hunter, who, with $8,000 offered for his own scalp by the Mexican govern- ment, had started for the more salubrious clime of California. In April, 1850, the gang was defied by a party led by General Anderson, who, rather than pay extortionate ferriage fees, built a boat, used it and then presented it to the Indians, who, assisted hy a discharged soldier, started an opposition ferry at Algodones, down the river. Glanton sought restraint of trade by killing his white competitor and breaking up the boat. Then he left for San Diego, to deposit $8,000, that had been accumulated by him. When he returned, according to a tribal story that seems authentic, he was met by the redskins in apparent amity and, with his men, was invited to a feast, around four fires, of poles. At a signal each of the 100 dancing Indians caught up from the fires a blazing brand and fell upon a guest. Glanton is said to have been killed at the first onslaught, but the remaining Americans fought with desperation, killing many of the Indians. But, in the end, the whites, a dozen in number, all went under, save three, who escaped in a boat. It has been told that one of these was Charlie Brown, who later kept a large gambling saloon in Tucson.
This "massacre" caused much excitement in Southern California and, under authority from the Governor of California, a volunteer force of militia, more than 100 strong, was sent under Quartermaster General Jos. C. Morehead to the Colo- rado river, which was reached in the fall. In the meantime another ferry, oper- ated by L. J. F. Iager and Ben Hartshorne, was started July 11, 1850, at Pilot Knob, a few miles down stream from the Gila's mouth. The ferrymen had made peace with the Indians, had built three boats, an adobe house and a fort, garri- soned by ten men, and were doing a rushing business with the emigrants. When the Morehead force came, trouble came also. There was fight between the Cali- fornians and the Yuma, in which the honors first went to the redskins, but the Americans came back to the fray and drove the Indians from the locality. This included destruction of an Indian ferry business down the river, where Glanton's boats were being used. The militia proceeded also to disarm all passing Mexi- cans. Travelers, according to Bartlett, who passed in 1852, had secured more than $15,000 from the Indians since the Glanton killing, the looted money spent for clothing and trinkets.
The following year Morehead began a filibustering expedition against Sonora. but none of his schemes had really serious ending.
A small guard of regulars followed the militia, but was withdrawn later and in November, 1851, the ferrymen were driven off by the Yumas, who wanted a monopoly of the ferry business. There was a fight, in which Iager received three arrow wounds. In 1852 Fort Yuma was established and with the coming of the soldiers returned the ferrymen. The history of the fort is told elsewhere in this work. It should be appreciated that till 1854 Colorado City, opposite the fort,
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and the eastern bank of the river south of the Gila were in Mexican territory, though the Mexican arm of authority rarely reached that far. The "city" seems to have disappeared in the Gila flood of 1862, after which the name of Arizona City was preferred.
HOW POSTON "RAISED THE WIND"
Colorado City, according to Rafael Pumpelly, had a curious origin. In July, 1854, Poston and a number of mining engineers were journeying from the Arizona mines to California, where capital was to be solicited. When the Americans reached the Colorado, they were almost without money and found that the ferry- man, L. J. F. Iaeger, would demand $25 for their passage. Poston, a man of infinite wit, looked around for some way out of his difficulty. He saw at once that the location was ideal for a townsite. So he set his engineers at work and within a few hours they had surveyed the ground, set a number of stakes and evolved a formidable-looking map. The ferryman crossed the river to find out the meaning of all the stir. He was shown the map on which was located the landing for a steam ferry and became deeply interested. As a result, Poston traded him a good corner lot for ferriage across the river. The names of some of the founders of Colorado City still endure on certificates of stock, for Poston actually incorporated his townsite company in California in the hope of raising a little needed money. Included within the incorporation were George A. John- son, A. H. Wilcox, George F. Cooper, L. J. F. Iaeger, Hermann Ehrenberg, Chas. D. Poston, Jack Hinton and Col. James McPherson.
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