USA > Arizona > Arizona, prehistoric, aboriginal, pioneer, modern; the nation's youngest commonwealth within a land of ancient culture, Vol. I > Part 28
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A mining exploration party, bound for the neighborhood of Apache Pass, sent out by Lent & Harpending of San Francisco, was ambushed by Indians in the summer of 1870 east of Maricopa Wells. Few of the party were injured in the affray, but the others, unhorsed and with torn clothing, made a sad spectacle as they staggered into Grant.
THE GAME OF HUNTING COCHISE
The depredations of Cochise and his Chiricahua Indians lasted about twelve years, practically unchecked. Whatever the cause, the warfare was of the bloodiest sort, with torture, murder and rapine scattered widely over southeastern Arizona. Possibly it is to the discredit of the soldiery of the white race in general that when he submitted it was on terms dictated by the Indians and only after Cochise had become old and his blood Inst had been glutted.
Cochise and his immediate band found their richest plunder down in Mexico, and in the country north of the line were not especially active about this time. In July, 1871, a herd of cattle was driven away within rifle shot of Fort Bowie, whence most of the garrison had gone. Captain Jerry Russell and his troop, of the Third Cavalry, were ambushed by Cochise within "Cochise Stronghold," in the Dragoon Mountains, with the loss of Guide Bob Whitney. There was the usual amount of deviltry on the Sonoita, where a large party of Mexicans were "wiped out" and where Lieutenant Steward and Corporal Black were murdered from ambush. But all of this was a state of comparative relaxation on the bor- der, where Cochise was reputed to have killed 100 by his own hand.
DEATH OF LIEUTENANT CUSHING
One of the few disasters known to the army in its Apache campaigns was the killing of Lieut. Howard B. Cushing of the Third Cavalry, in the fall of 1871. He was an officer of rare ability and spirit, a brother of the naval lieutenant who blew up the Confederate ironclad Albemarle. He was given a roving command with about half a troop and with two horses to the man. His first exploit was an attack upon a band of Tonto Apaches which had ambushed a wagon train on the Camp Grant road. Cushing, riding at night, found the murderers in camp celebrating with whiskey they had secured from the train. In the attack every one of the ninety-six warriors was killed. Only a few of the soldiers were wounded and none killed. According to Tom Hughes, within six months Cushing had attacked and killed 325 hostile Apaches. One of Lieutenant Cushing's most daring raids ended on the slopes of the Pinal Mountains, not far from the present town of Globe. Operating in true Apache fashion, he took his dismounted troop- ers by night to a point overlooking the rancheria of a band of the Indians who
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had killed Kennedy and Israel in Cañon del Oro and had attacked a large party of Mexicans in the same locality. At daylight Cushing struck, killing nearly all the men in camp and taking captive the women and children, who were herded back to the Camp Grant reservation.
His special detail was hunting down Chief Cochise. The last expedition was from Camp Crittenden, assisted by two good Mexican trailers and accompanied by a San Francisco mining engineer named Simpson. The scouts found Indians in a eañon of the Whetstone Mountains, about twenty miles east of Crittenden. As the Apaches evidently were in large force, Simpson counseled return to Crittenden for more troops. Cushing is said to have replied: "I have been hunting Cochise and his cutthroats. I have found them and I will never let up until I have taken his camp and have killed the whole outfit." Cushing dis- mounted, leaving about a third of his force behind with the horses and pack train and started up the cañon with the Indians firing at him from both ridges, within 200 yards. Simpson fell dead with shots through his body and head and later Cushing was shot in the mouth and then in the heart, while his trumpeter and two soldiers were killed. Further encumbered by a half-dozen wounded, Sergeant Wallace, left in command, retreated to the horses and, leaving the pack train and dead behind, rode hard to Crittenden with at least 200 Indians follow- ing. At Crittenden there was only a small troop of cavalry, probably forty-five men, so the killing could not be avenged at that time.
RIFLES ON THE FARMER'S PLOW BEAM
Tom Hughes, that best of historians of the Apache troubles of the lower Arizona valleys, in later years furnished many interesting and valuable details concerning the difficulties encountered in bringing civilization into the Southwest. In 1869 his hired hands plowed the fields, each man with a rifle in a holster before him and a pistol strapped to his waist, while cattle and horses were not per- mitted to graze beyond a rifle shot from the fortified house or near any possible ambush.
Hughes tells of Pennington, the noted Indian fighter, whose name now is borne by a street in Tucson. With his two sons Pennington came past the Hughes ranch in April, 1869, and announced his intention of taking up a ranch on the Sonoita, a few miles below. He was warned that he would be killed before a month passed, but replied, "If you can farm and look out for the Apaches, I guess I can." Inside of a week he and his sons were dead, shot down at their plows while planting corn.
According to Hughes, during the period from 1867 to 1876 no less than twenty-two men were killed by Apaches on the Hughes ranch in the Sonoita Valley near Camp Crittenden. In March, 1870, the Apaches killed two men and seized the ranch. Hughes crept back after night to find the Indians at the ranch house and did what he could to diminish their loot by liberating from their pens about 100 head of logs.
In April, 1872, L. C. Hughes, Attorney-General of Arizona, visited his broth- ers' ranch on a hunting expedition in company with Capt. T. M. K. Smith and J. S. Vosburg. Soon after they had left Monkey Springs Cañon, returning, the Apaches killed two herders and all the work oxen in the same cañon, where it
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was apparent the Indians had let the white men go by simply in order to make sure of getting the cattle, which they knew were to be driven in later for grazing.
On another trip out from Tucson Attorney General L. C. Hughes, Samuel Hughes, the Adjutant-General of Arizona, Hiram S. Stevens, who served as Delegate to Congress, and two others passed through Davidson's Cañon. They knew their danger and each man had his rifle and pistol ready. The mules they were driving became wild with fright at the narrowest point of the cañon, where there is little doubt that the Apaches let the party pass, seeing that it was well prepared for a fight. Incidentally, it should be told that mules undoubtedly have saved the lives of many white men, for they could scent an Indian unfailingly and seemed to appreciate that the scent meant danger. Possibly this appreciation of danger was due to the fact that to an Apache mule meat was the greatest delicacy that could be offered on his bill of fare.
In May, 1872, the Hughes ranch was well planted with about 250 acres of corn and 125 acres of potatoes, wheat and barley. The crop was considered of particular value by the commanding officer at Camp Crittenden, who had added as a guard five soldiers of the Twenty-second Infantry to the fourteen men ordi- marily on the ranch. One evening as the cattle herd was following the returning farm crew, Cochise and scores of his band broke into the valley with yells, killed three herders and drove $4,000 worth of horses and cattle into the nearby hills. Hughes tells that the loss was even the greater from the fact that he had borrowed money with which to buy the stock, which replaced other animals stolen in previ- ous months.
In the latter part of September, 1872, at the mouth of the Sonoita, near Calabazas, a party of twenty-two Mexicans en route from Mexico to Tucson, with a pack train loaded with mescal and panoche, was annihilated by an Apache hand, which tossed the bodies into a pile, heaped brush around and then set the brush afire. The charred remains later were buried by Pete Kitchen.
Maj. Samuel K. Sumner, Fifth Cavalry, for two months thereafter served as a gnard for the lower Sonoita country, but he had been gone only a short time when the Apaches reappeared in greater force than ever. Hughes' partner, returning from Camp Crittenden, looked down upon the Hughes ranch to see Apaches in every direction. Wild with the thought that his wife and children were at the ranch house, he dashed back to the camp where Lieutenant Hall immediately sallied forth with twenty-five soldiers. The Apaches, seeing the troops, retreated into the rocks to the side of the valley, from which the small force of soldiery could not dislodge them. The wife and children were found safe within the adobe house, but three farm hands had been killed while weeding corn. The woman had been in the cornfield, but she managed to get to the house and barricade the heavy doors. Within was a sick farm hand, who wanted to get out and try to escape in the brush, but the plucky little woman threatened him with death at her own hands and made him take a rifle and help her repel the attack that immediately was made by the Apaches. For two hours these two, a sick man and a woman, held at bay over 100 Apaches.
PERILS OF THE ROAD
One of the worst crimes known in the deadly Davidson Canon (thirty-five miles southeast of Tucson) was the Curly Bill massacre, in August, 1870. Curly
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Bill, whose real name seems to have been William Venerable, had three twelve- mule freight teams, hauling lumber from a mill owned by E. N. Fish and A. Lazard of Tucson and situated in the northeastern Santa Rita Mountains. The lumber brought $250 a thousand in Tucson and the freight charge from the mill to the town was $50 a thousand. Samuel Hughes was interested in the mill and was the selling agent in Tucson. Curly Bill's last trip was out of Tucson loaded with merchandise for the Hughes and Lazard store at Camp Crittenden. The teams had nearly passed the canon when more than fifty Apaches, concealed behind rocks, opened fire, killing the team owner and his five employees. The dead mules and abandoned wagons were seen two days later by the mail rider, Corporal Black, who himself was killed two years later. Two troops of the First Cavalry from Crittenden, accompanied by Thomas Hughes and H. S. Stevens, went to the scene and found the bodies, which had been left in the "wash" and had been taken downstream and buried in sand by a small cloudburst. The Apache party was a very large one and made a stand against its pursuers in Rincon Cañon, delivering so hot a fire that the attack had to be abandoned after seven soldiers had been wounded.
Hughes had stocked his ranch with horses and cattle repeatedly, only to have every animal swept away by the Apache raids. His last affair, April 17, 1877, began by the theft of twenty-five fine work horses and seven head of cattle. With four of his men, Hughes took the trail with the impression he was following only a small party. The trail led into a valley covered with tall sacaton, out of which arose about 100 Apaches, who opened a fierce fusillade upon the pursuers. They turned, only to find a score of mounted Apaches behind them. There seemed hope only in one direction and this was to charge through the grass, and this they did. When the grass was passed only Hughes remained alive, though at one time surrounded by Apaches, one of whom had hold of the bridle of the American's spirited horse. Hughes tells that the saddest part of it all was meet- ing on his return to the ranch the wives and children of the four murdered men. The bodies were taken up next day by Maj. Wm. A. Rafferty, who went to the scene with three troops of the Sixth Cavalry. Hughes understood that Geronimo was one of the leaders in this outrage.
Second Lient. Reid T. Steward, only about a year out of West Point, was killed August 27, 1872, in Davidson's Cañon, not far from Camp Crittenden. He had left the post in command of a sergeant and ten men, escorting two army wagons, bound for Tucson. Disregarding the warnings of the post commander, Capt. W. P. Hill, Steward took Corporal Black in a buggy and drove ahead. The escort coming into the canon soon thereafter, found Steward's body in the road, the head mashed with rocks. On a hillside in full view of the road they saw Corporal Black tied to a dry tree being burned and tortured by the Apaches. The soldiers charged the Indians but were driven back, for the redskins were ten to one. The troops of the Fifth Cavalry were hurried to the spot and found Black's body, showing at least 100 wounds where firebrands had been stuck in his flesh before he died. He was an experienced man who had carried the mail for three years and had made 400 trips, but he always passed through that cañon at night time. He was overruled by the young lieutenant when he suggested that there be delay till after nightfall.
About the same time six men who had been working on a ranch were ambushied
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at the same place. Five were killed. The sixth, knowing the Indian superstition, pretended to be demented and so successfully played the farce that the Indians, after stripping him of his clothing, let him go, for almost any of the southwestern Indians believe that a lunatic is under the direct protection of the gods.
A LEGISLATURE PLEADS FOR HELP
In 1871 the Legislature again memorialized Congress for protection, stating that soon the constant decimation "will sweep from the country all traces of civil- ization except deserted fields and broken walls." It was suggested that the departure of the industrious ancients from the valleys they had tilled undonbt- edly was due to the ravages of the implacable Apache and that "our people only await a similar fate." The people of Arizona were recorded as attached to their Territory, finding in its genial climate, pastoral, agricultural and mineral resources all the elements necessary to make it a populous and desirable country in which to live, enduring their hardships with fortitude; "and though hundreds have fallen beneath the scalping knife and tomahawk or suffered torture at the burning stake, the survivors fill the broken ranks and continue the contest." It was alleged, apparently in all truth, that the Apaches never had been worse than in that period, and yet the government had just withdrawn a large part of the soldiery. Governor Safford added testimony that he considered no road safe, save along the Colorado River, that "the Apache Indians depend principally for their support upon theft and robbery and do not desire, nor will they accept, any terms of peace until they are thoroughly subjugated by military power."
In official records are found many instances of Apache cruelty, from which a few are selected, of irregular dates:
October 9, 1869, a mail coach was attacked near Dragoon Springs and the driver, Col. John F. Stone and an escort of four soldiers of the Twenty-first Infantry all were murdered. A similar crime was committed in October, 1870, when Charlie Shibell on the Rio Grande road to Tucson found a wrecked mail coach and the mutilated and scalped bodies of John Collins, William Burns and two soldiers. Seven men were murdered within a year at the San Pedro settle- ment of Tres Alamos, which had to be abandoned. There was continual report of mail coaches and mail riders attacked and of looted freight teams, where the drivers too often were not given a chance to save their lives by flight. The Cienega stage station, east of Tucson, had to be abandoned after the Apaches had killed a number of men near by.
The fertile and well-cultivated Santa Cruz Valley was being devastated by Apaches, despite the proximity of the friendly Papagos. Seven men were mur- dered within the first half of 1870 at points north of the line, including one of Pete Kitchen's herders, Kitchen thus losing twelve head of oxen. Solomon Warner, Tucson's first American merchant, was crippled for life in an Apache attack January 29, 1870, while he was traveling in an ambulance. In November of that year it was considered something of a joke that the Apaches stole tents from the rear of the officers' quarters at Camp Crittenden.
A break in the monotony of bloodshed and torture was the tale of how Santa Cruz Castañeda, wagon master for Tully & Ochoa, stood off the Apaches on the Camp Grant road. in May, 1869. IIe and his fourteen men fought a large band of Apaches the whole day, from the shelter of the parked nine wagons of the train.
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The wagon master had a small cannon, the first such weapon ever known to have been used in Arizona warfare by civilians. With this and his rifles he kept the Indians away till near nightfall, when the ammunition gave out. Then there opportunely arrived a small detachment of troops from Grant. But the best that could be done was to beat a swift retreat, leaving the wagons behind and the bodies of three teamsters who had fallen. In December of the next year the same wagon boss lost to the Indians another train, near Camp Goodwin, with the loss of one man killed and several wounded.
Camp Bowie was a beleaguered fortress most of the time, according to Capt. R. F. Bernard, First Cavalry. The government herds were stolen near the post, a man was shot as he stepped from his doorsill, wagon trains were attacked within rifle shot of the camp and mail riders and stage passengers killed within a few miles.
It was charged at the time that the Indian bands that did this deviltry all were from a government reservation and that they were armed with guns and furnished with ammunition through military sources. On this basis damages later were sought from the United States government. In 1910 pending before the Board of Claims in Washington were Apache depredation accounts amount- ing to at least $1,000,000, most of them presented by residents of Tucson.
CHAPTER XVI RETALIATION AND CONCILIATION
Camp Grant Massacre-Vincent Colyer, Attorney for the Apaches-General Howard's Effective Service-Cochise Surrenders-His Death-Indians Herded upon Reserva- tions.
In 1870 several bands of Apaches were herded together near Old Camp Grant at the junction of the San Pedro and Aravaipa Creek. They appear to have had only scant supervision and soon were raiding the settlements to the south- ward, murdering ranchers and travelers along the San Pedro and Santa Cruz Rivers and extending their ontrages into the very suburbs of Tucson. Public meetings were held at Tueson and protests were sent to the military authorities and to the agent at Camp Grant, Royal E. Whitman, a lieutenant of the Third Cavalry. Whitman denied that he had lost a single Indian and had his records to prove that every last one of them at all times had been drawing rations. Seeing that no help could be secured from the agent, a committee was appointed, including W. S. Oury, Sidney R. DeLong and several others, to visit Gen. George Stoneman, at that time in command of the military department. He was in camp on the Gila near Florence. The committee got seant comfort from the General, who in sorrow told them that he had only a few men and could by no means cover the entire Territory. Receiving only a suggestion that Tucson might protect itself, the committee returned. At a meeting held a few days thereafter the citizens agreed that the recommendation would be accepted and that they would protect themselves to the best of their ability and in any manner they saw fit. Already there had been organized a military company, of which Oury, a valiant leader of the past, had been elected captain. It embraced eighty- two Americans and an indeterminate number of Mexicans.
Only a short time after the consultation with Stoneman, twenty-five Apaches, early in 1871, raided the settlement at San Xavier, murdering a mail carrier and driving off cattle and horses. A party from Tucson joined another from San Xavier and overtook the Indian rear guard, killing one Indian and recov- ering a quantity of horses and cattle. On the return to Tucson, Oury had a long conference with one of the pursuers, Jesus M. Elias, a prominent Spanish- speaking citizen, who furnished absolutely satisfactory evidence that the raiders had been Camp Grant Indians. The Indian killed was positively identified as from Camp Grant, where he had often been seen. Elias referred to the inef- fective manner in which Tucson had carried on its Indian campaigns theretofore and to the repeated beatings of the war drums that at last had been treated as was the cry of "wolf." He said: "You are well aware that there are wealthy men in this community whose interest it is to have the Indians at Camp Grant
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left undisturbed and who would at the first intimation of an intent to inquire seriously into their operations appeal to the military and frustrate all our plans and hopes."
It was Elias who laid out a plan of campaign, as chronicled by Oury :
You and I will go first to San Xavier, see Francisco, the head of the Papagos there, have him send runners to the various Papago villages notifying them that on the 28th day of April we want them to be at San Xavier early in the morning, with all the force they can muster for a campaign against our common enemy, the Apache, Francisco to be prepared to give them a good breakfast on their arrival and send a messenger to me at once; this matter being satisfactorily arranged we return to Tucson. I will see all the Mexicans who may desire to participate in the campaign and have them all ready to move on the day fixed, April 28th, news of the arrival of the Papagos at San Xavier having first been received. All who are to be active participants in the campaign shall leave town quietly and singly to avoid giving alarm, and rendezvous on the Rillito, where the Papagos will be advised to meet us, and where, as per arrangement, the arms, ammunition and provisions will be delivered and dis- tributed. All hands having arrived at the rendezvous, the command shall be fully organized by the election of a commander, whom all should be pledged to obey implicitly. When thus organized the command shall march up the Rillito until the trail of the Indians who have committed the recent depredation at San Xavier shall be struck, which will be followed wher- ever it may lead and all Indians found on it killed if possible. Here, then, you have the whole plan of the Camp Grant campaign, as proposed by Mr. Elias and concurred in by myself.
For its successful fulfillment we both went to work with all our hearts-he with his countrymen (the Mexicans), I with mine (the Americans), and both together with our auxiliaries, the Papagos. Early on the morning of April 28, 1871, we received the welcome news of the arrival of the Papagos at San Xavier, and that after a short rest and feed they would march to the general rendezvous on the Rillito. Soon after Mr. Elias informed me that the Mexican contingent was quietly and singly leaving town for the same destination, and soon after, having given proper directions to the extremely small contingent of my own countrymen, I silently and alone took up the line of march to the common rendezvous. By 3 P. M. all the command had arrived; also that which was still more essential to the success- ful issue of the campaign, to-wit: the wagon with the arms, ammunition and rations, thanks to our old companion, the adjutant-general of the territory, whose name it might not be discreet to give in this connection, but is well known to almost every member of the Society of Arizona Pioneers. As soon as I was convinced that no further increase was to be expected, I proceeded to take account of stock, with the following result: Papagos, 92; Mexicans, 48; Americans, 6; in all, 146 men, good and true.
During our stay at the general rendezvous a number of pleasantries were indulged in by different members of the party upon the motley appearance of the troop, and your narrator got a blow squarely in the right eye from an old neighbor, who quietly said to him: "Don Guillermo, your countrymen are grand on 'resoluting' and 'speechifying,' but when it comes to action the show-up is exceedingly thin"-which, in face of the fact that so many Ameri- cans had so solemnly pledged themselves to be ready at any moment for the campaign, and only six showed up, was, to say the least, rather humiliating. However, everything was taken pleasantly.
Jesus M. Elias was elected commander of the expedition, and at 4 P. M. the command was in the saddle ready for the march. Just here it appeared to me that we had neglected a very important precautionary measure, and I penciled the following note to H. S. Stevens, Esq., Tucson: "Send a party to Cañada del Oro, on the main road from Tucson to Camp Grant, with orders to stop any and all persons going toward Camp Grant, until 7 o'clock A. M. of April 30, 1871."
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