USA > Arizona > Arizona, prehistoric, aboriginal, pioneer, modern; the nation's youngest commonwealth within a land of ancient culture, Vol. I > Part 29
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This note I gave to the teamster, who had not yet left our camp, who delivered it promptly, and it was promptly attended to by Mr. Stevens. But for this caution our cam- paign would have resulted in complete failure, from the fact that the absence of so many people from so small a population as Tucson then contained, was noted by a person of large influence in the community, and at whose earnest demand the military commander sent an
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express of two soldiers, with dispatches to Camp Grant, who were quietly detained at Cañada del Oro, and did not reach that post until it was too late to harm us. After writing and dis- patching the note above referred to, the order "Forward!" was given, and the command moved gaily and confidently on its mission. Abont 6.30 P. M. the trail was struck which we proposed to follow, and the march continued through the Cebadilla Pass to the point where the San Xavier party had killed the Indian referred to, when the order to camp was given, as it was about midnight, the moon going down and the trail could not well be followed in the dark.
Just at daybreak of the morning of the 29th we marched into the San Pedro bottom, where our commander determined to remain until nightfall, lest our command should he dis- covered by roving Indians and the alarm given at the rancheria. We had followed all this time the trail of the Indians, who had raided San Xavier, and every man in the command was now fully satisfied that it would lead us to the reservation, and arrangements were made accordingly. Commander Elias gave orders to march as soon as it was dark, audl, believing that we were much nearer the rancheria than we really were, and that we would reach its neighborhood by midnight, detailed three men as scouts, whose duty it was when the command arrived conveniently near the rancheria, to go ahead and ascertain the exact locality and report to him the result of their reconnaissance, in order to have no guesswork about their position, and our attack consequently a haphazard affair. Everything being now ready for the final march, we moved out of the San Pedro bottom just at dark. It soon became evident that our captain and all those who thought they knew the distance had made a miscalculation, and instead of its being about sixteen miles, as estimated, it was nearly thirty, so that after a continuous march through the whole night it was near daybreak before we reached the Aravaipa Cañon, so that when we did reach it, there was no time left to make the proposed reconnoissance, to ascertain the exact location of the Indian camp-which involved the necessity of a change in our plan of attack. We knew that the rancheria was in the Aravaipa Canon, somewhere above the post, but the exact distance nobody knew. We were in a critical condition. We were in sight of the post, day was approaching, and it was plain that in a very short time we would be discovered either by the Indians or the people of the post. In either case our expedition would be an absolute failure; but our gallant captain was equal to the emergency.
Promptly he gave orders to divide the command in two wings, the one to comprise the Papagos, the other the Mexicans and Americans, and to skirmish up the creek until we struck the rancheria. When the order forward was given, a new difficulty arose, which, if it had not been speedily overcome, would have been fatal. The command was now in plain view of the military post. The Papagos had all the time been afraid of military interference with us. I had assured them that no such thing would occur, and vouched for it. It hap- pened that just as the command was balting I bad dropped the canteen from the horn of my saddle, and, dismounting to look for it in the dust and semi-darkness, got behind the troop. The Papagos, not seeing me at the front when the order forward for the skirmish was given, refused to move, inquiring where Don Guillermo was. Word was immediately passed down the line to me, and I galloped to the front, and with a wave of my hand-without a word spoken-the Papagos bounded forward like deer, and the skirmish began-and a better- executed one I never witnessed, even from veteran soldiers. There was not a break in either line from beginning to the end of the affair, which covered a distance of four miles before the Indians were struck. They were completely surprised, and sleeping in absolute security in their wiekiups, with only a buck and squaw as lookout on the bluff above the rancheria, . who were playing cards by a small fire, and were both clubbed to death before they could give the alarm. The Papagos attacked them in their wickiups with clubs and guns, and all who escaped then took to the bluffs and were attacked by the other wing, which occupied a position above them. The attack was so swift and fierce that within a half-hour the whole work was ended-and not an adult Indian left to tell the tale. Some twenty-eight or thirty small papooses were spared and brought to Tucson as captives. Not a single man of our command was seriously hurt to mar the full measure of our triumph, and at 8 o'clock on the bright morning of April 30, 1871, our tired troops were resting and breakfasting on the San Pedro a few miles above the post, in the full satisfaction of a work well done.
Here I might lay down my pen and rest, but believing that in order to fully vindicate
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those who were actors in this drama, and those who were aiders and abettors, I crave your indulgence while I give a brief summary of the causes which drove our people to such extreme measures, and the happy effects resulting therefrom.
Through the greater part of the year 1870 and the first of 1871, these Indians had held a carnival of murder and plunder in all our settlements, until our people were appalled and almost paralyzed. On the San Pedro, the bravest and best of its pioneers had fallen by the wayside-instance: Henry Long, Alex Mckenzie, Sam Brown, Simms, and many others well known to all of you. On the Santa Cruz, noble Wooster, his wife, Sanders, and an innumer- able host, slept the sleep that knows no waking. On the Sonoita, the gallant Penningtons, Jackson Carroll, Rotherwell, and others, slain, and Osborne, our secretary, seriously wounded, without a chance of defense. In the vicinity of Tucson, mail drivers and riders, and almost all whom temerity or necessity caused to leave the protection of our adobe walls, piteously slaughtered, makes the array truly appalling. Add to this the fact that the remaining settlers on the San Pedro, not knowing who the next victims might be, had at last resolved to abandon their crops in the fields and fly with their wives and little ones to Tucson for safety, and the picture of misery is complete up to that memorable and glorious morning of April 30, 1871, when swift punishment was dealt out to these red-handed butchers, and they were wiped from the face of the earth.
Behold now the happy results immediately following that episode! The farmers of San Pedro return with their wives and babes to gather their abandoned erops. On the Sonoita, Santa Cruz and all other settlements of Southern Arizona, new life springs up, con- fidence is restored, and industry bounds forward with an impetus that has known no check in the whole fourteen years that have elapsed since that occurrence.
In view of all these facts, I call on all Arizonans to answer on their conscience: Can you call the killing of the Apaches at Camp Grant on the morning of the 30th of April, 1871, a massacre ?
PROOF OF THE INDIANS' GUILT
Oury's story is unduly modest on one point, according to another narrator of the period, Theodore Jones, a clerk for E. N. Fish & Co. of Tucson. According to Jones, Oury really was the leader of the party. Jones' story differs somewhat in detail from that of Oury, giving a more extensive account of the circumstances that finally roused the settlers to take personal action against the redskins. The crowning Indian atrocity was the murder of Lester B. Wooster and wife at their little home on the Santa Cruz River above Tubac. Wooster had been a clerk for E. N. Fish & Co. and by the firm had been backed in his agricultural experi- ment. The news of the Wooster killing was brought to Tucson by one of Wooster's farm hands. Jones, Bill Morgan and a squad of eleven soldiers started at once for the ranch. There, Jones wrote, a sad sight met their eyes.
Poor Wooster and his wife were lying out in front of what was their home, just a few feet from the front door, both in pools of blood and evidently dead some hours when we arrived. The Indians had laid waste the entire place. The furniture was broken into thou- sands of pieces and was scattered everywhere. They had ripped the flour sacks open, letting the flour run out on the floor of the shack, which was a one-story 'dobe affair. The Mexican who brought the news of the murder to Tucson had been plowing out in the field with another Mexican when the attack took place, which happened in the morning shortly after sunrise. When the Indians first appeared the Mexicans had cut the traces from the plows and had ridden the horses off, thereby making their escape.
If there had been any doubt before the massacre of the guilt of the Apaches of Wooster's death it was dispelled when some of the party found the watch case of Wooster, with the works taken out, strung around the neck of one of the squaws, while the works, along with a pair of sleeve buttons, a gift of the writer to Wooster, were hung on a string around the neck of one of the little papooses with which to amuse himself. It was the finding of these articles in the possession of the Indians that made the massacre such a thorough one. On sight of this watch there was no holding the friends of Wooster.
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On the homeward journey were encountered and killed a couple of Apaches who had a couple of mules and a pony belonging to Leopoldo Carillo, a Mexican who lived on the outskirts of Tucson. A messenger from Colonel Dunn, who had started for Grant, was met on the return, his mule broken down and the soldier sitting resignedly on the side of the road.
AN INSIDE VIEW OF OLD CAMP GRANT
The story of the citizens of Tucson naturally shows only one phase and the disinterested reader naturally asks for review of the case from another angle. Providing this, the Editor considers himself very fortunate in securing a report of the situation at Old Camp Grant at the time of the massacre, written by Miles L. Wood, who there lived at the time and who still is a resident, in honored old age, of Bonita, in the upper Sulphur Springs Valley, a short distance from the Camp Grant of later days. The story of the bloody episode best is told by Mr. Wood himself in a letter lately written to the Editor. Given simply and clearly, it follows :
In October, 1869, the Third Cavalry from old Camp Grant in a serap with the Indians (Pinaleño Apaches) captured two young squaws and brought them to the post. They were locked up at night and turned loose in the daytime but not allowed to get out of sight. This went on until the summer of 1870. The commanding officer, Capt. Frank Stanwood, wanted them run out of camp, but the quartermaster, Lieut. Royal E. Whitman, objected. A Mexi- can employed in the pack train had been captured when a small boy in Sonora by the Apaches and had lived many years among them. Lieutenant Whitman used this man as interpreter and talked many hours with the squaws. Finally, in the summer or fall of 1870, one of the squaws was sent out to the mountains, with instructions to bring in some of the bucks for a talk. The squaw returned with one buck, Es-kini-en-zin (usually called Eskiminzin), chief of the Pinaleno Apaches. He stayed two days, was well fed, had a long pow-wow with Lieutenant Whitman and left. Es-kini-en-zin returned the next day with five others. A treaty was made and they were filled up with plenty to eat and given presents. From that time the Indians came in, a few at a time, until nearly two thousand were there under the military authorities. I was running the beef contract at that time and, as each Indian aged from one day up drew 11/2 pounds of beef daily and there were four companies of soldiers to supply, it took an average of 250 head of cattle per month to be killed and cut up by me.
The Indians were under the impression that they had made the treaty with Camp Grant and no one else outside, so when they got their rations, every five days, they could go out and rob and kill ranchers and capture wagon trains and then hurry back to the protection of Camp Grant, as was promised them. Chief Es-kini-en-zin came in at one time with a bullet hole through the fleshy part of his leg. He showed the wound to me and said that he had a party of Indians and that they saw six canvas-covered wagons coming through the Cienega, near where Pantano is now. They lay in wait, expecting to make a big haul, as there was no escort along. They killed the driver of the lead wagon and then found the wagons were loaded with a company of infantry going to Camp Bowie. The soldiers rolled out of the wagons and killed thirteen before the Indians could get away. Es-kini-en-zin got the hole through his leg there.
This kept up until the beginning of 1871. In March, I believe, Captain Stanwood was in Tucson. While there he found out that there was a movement on foot to punish the Indians. He rode to Camp Grant and ordered out all the cavalry stationed there on a scout and led them himself, leaving only twenty infantry soldiers in the camp to watch over 2,000 Indians.
The Indians had their rancheria on the Aravaipa, about 11/2 miles from the post. The party from Tucson came by the Canon del Oro, crossed the San Pedro three miles above Camp Grant and attacked the Indians at the break of day, on the side next to the post. As the Indians were prevented from running to the post for protection, they ran for the moun- tains, followed for several miles by the Papago Indians, who killed all they could catch. I
CRUCIFORM CACTUS
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do not know how many were killed. I counted 138 around the rancheria. The Papagos also carried away a number of small children with them when they returned to Tucson. Nearly all that I saw dead were women and children. I also saw the bodies of a number of old bucks. Es-kini-en-zin lost four wives and five children, but as he had nine wives he had enough left.
The next day Lieutenant Whitman put up a pole on the hay stack with a white bed sheet attached, to try and get the Indians to come back. They commenced to come in and in a few days were back again (except those killed). The lieutenant explained to them that the people of Tueson came as a surprise, that he would have protected them if he had known and asked the Indians to keep a lookout from a high peak so as not to be caught again. This the Apaches did.
Less than a month after this, the Indians reported a large party coming. All the Indians gathered near the post and a detachment of soldiers was sent out to stop the invaders in the canon facing the post, on the south toward Tucson. Charlie Brown, proprietor of the famous old Congress Hall in Tucson, was the leader of the bunch. He was allowed to come into Camp Grant. There he told Captain Nelson, Twenty-first Infantry, who was then com- manding officer, that his party must come to the river to get water. Captain Nelson refused but ordered out a large tank wagon, with eight mules, to haul a load of water out to the men, about 212 miles up the cañon. Brown said he would go back and find out what the men said and return and report. He came back in the evening and said his party had con- cluded to return to Tucson. He complained that Captain Nelson had placed a cannon on the point of the hill, facing the canon and said that if the men had the sand he would lead them in and take "your little old post."
The Indians were still sulky. A few days later I saw a bunch of Indians coming to my place painted and armed. I lived below the hill, out of sight of the camp. I felt they meant mischief. I got my man. We got in the back of the room facing the door, laid our cartridges on the floor and with guns in our hands waited for them. They looked in and then left, went down the river, where a man named Mckenzie had a small patch of corn and killed him. A lot of them left then but soon came back.
Several months after this, I moved my slaughtering outfit up the river to where the main body of the Indians lived, so as to be handy to issue beef to them. I hauled a load every morning to Camp Grant for the troops. One morning an Indian, a petty chief called Chuntz (who later murdered Lieutenant Almy), came to my camp (I had nothing but a brush shed, open all around), as I was saddling up my horse to go to look for another horse that had strayed. He said he knew where the horse was and tried to get on my horse behind me. I gave him a hard push and he fell on his back and I rode away.
A pack train of forty mules owned by Hank and Yank (Hank Hewett and Yank Bart- lett) was used to transport supplies on the different scouting parties. This day Hank came to me and said he had a boy 13 years old, named Hughes, out on a visit. The pack train had to go up the Aravaipa forty miles, with supplies for a detachment of cavalry stationed where Dunlap's ranch now is. The boy was not able to stand the trip and he asked me to look after him until he came back. The next morning Chuntz and two other Indians came into my camp and sat down before the fire. I paid no attention to them. I told a man named Wright to go and repair the brush corral and told the boy to cut some meat for dinner and that I would be back in half an hour. I was not gone more than that time. When I returned, I found that the Indians had killed the boy with an axe and thrown him on my bed. Wright saw the killing from the corral and hid himself in the brush. I sent him to Camp Grant to report and he came back with a company of cavalry. The officer in com- mand said he would surely catch the Indians that had killed the boy. The soldiers were gone three days and came back and reported that they had lost the trail, but I saw the Indians the next day after the soldiers went out.
When Vincent Collier and Gen. O. O. Howard came to investigate the "massacre" by the Tucson people, all the Apaches were gathered under the cottonwood trees in the river bottom, also a delegation from Tucson, with Sam Hughes as leader. None of the crowd that did the killing were there, as the Indians might have known some of them. At the big talk I remember Vincent Collier telling the Indians how wrong it was to rob the white men and that God was looking and would be angry and he asked, "Why do you rob the white man?"
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Old Captain Chiquito, chief of the Aravaipas, said, "It seems to me that God gave every- thing to the white man and nothing to the Indian and so you must expect the Indian to help himself to what he needed." About January, 1872, the Indians were moved to San Carlos.
Naturally, this resort to Indian methods on the part of the whites was viewed in the East with horror and President Grant threatened to place the Territory under martial law if something were not done by the civil authorities. So Oury and ninety-eight others were arrested by the federal authorities and charged with murder. The case, tried by Judge Titus, was one of considerable profit to the young District Attorney, who by law was given a fee of $25 for each indictment, but practically nothing, of course, could be done with the matter in a community such as Tucson, wherein all the sympathy was with the raiders. Acquittal was announced by the jury after twenty minutes' consulta- tion. Among other Americans who "may" have been with the party, have been named Sidney R. DeLong, Chas. F. Etchells and D. A. Bennett.
AN EARLY APOSTLE OF PEACE
Generals Mason and Stoneman had led in the idea that it was cheaper and more effective toward lasting peace to feed the Indians than to fight them and that some substitute must be provided the hillmen for the chase and pillage by which their tribes from time immemorial had maintained existence. With this policy, however, began a "carpetbag" era, with crooked Indian agents stealing the supplies that had been issued for Indian benefit and with large mercantile firms conniving. It is not to be denied that a time of vigorous war- fare against the mountain Indians was a time of prosperity for the army con- tractor, generally a man of considerable capital, who could secure undue profit by nominal observance of the strict rules of the army supply divisions. There were several periods in the history of Arizona when the mining industry had a close second in that which concerned the furnishing of supplies to troops in the field and to Indian reservations.
It now seems apparent that one of two things should have been done to the hostile Indians at the very inception of trouble after the American occupation. They should have been killed generally as criminals, or, better and more eco- nomical in the end, they should have been transported to another locality, such as Indian Territory, there to be cared for and guarded and instructed in the arts of the husbandman till they had attained an approach to civilization. It was futile to expect them to change their habits and instincts while leaving them in the land they knew so well, where no opportunity offered for any beneficial industry.
In 1871, there appeared to be a general impression "back East" that the white people of Arizona were trying to exterminate the Indians in order to acquire their lands. It was appreciated in the War and Interior Departments that official action should be taken toward segregating the Indians. So one of the first results of the Fort Grant massacre was the sending to Arizona of two "peace commissioners." The first of these was Vincent Colyer, a prominent member of the Church of Friends. He bore credentials directing all military officers and Indian authorities to give assistance in provisions, transportation and military protection. At the time, Colyer was a member and secretary of the Board of Indian Commissioners, within the division of the Secretary of the
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Interior. His detail to the work of conciliation in the Southwest was at the direct order of the President, whom he saw at Long Branch, New Jersey, July 13. He was given the fullest of powers, even above the military, with an espe- cial view toward gathering the Indians upon reservations where rations could be issued and where they might have defined rights against the whites.
Colyer, representing not only the Quakers, but the whole religious element that sought the spiritual regeneration of Poor Lo, was a prejudiced observer, whose only experience with Arizona Indians theretofore had been a visit to the Moquis in 1869. His report reflected his attitude of mind, for throughout he praised the Apaches as long-suffering under the cruelties of the whites and of Indians generally recognized in the Southwest as peaceful. He repeated the old legend that the Apaches had been friendly with the Americans till driven to war. He denounced as reprehensible Crook's plan of employing Apaches to fight Apaches and succeeded for a time in securing a reversal of this practice. He told of experiences in the heart of the Apache country, where he had a guard of only fifteen men and where, though Indians surrounded them continually, "not an animal was disturbed nor an article stolen." He referred to vitupera- tion and abuse by the press of Arizona and California, whom he seemed to think represented an ungodly and unregenerate people, rather inferior to the Indians themselves, and repeated the list of alleged white aggressions, including the old Johnson story, the killing of Mangas Coloradas, the capture of Cochise and King Woolsey's Pinole Treaty, but put small stress upon the tales which he must have heard of the murder and torture of thousands of beings of his own color.
The Commissioner entered Arizona from the northeast, after having briefly investigated Indian affairs in New Mexico. From Camp Apache southward, he expressed pleasure at the general attitude of good will expressed by the Indians whom he met on the way to Camp Grant, which he reached September 13, 1871. There he found fresh tribulation awaiting the poor Indian in the promised advent of a couple of hundred armed white citizens from Tucson (the Brown party), already within twelve miles of the reservation and expected on the morrow. At the same time, he was informed that Governor Safford and a party of 300 citizens (the Miner expedition), who had recently passed through the reservation, were expected on the return homeward the next day, where it was indicated that the two parties proposed to join and exterminate the last vestiges of the Aravaipa Apaches. Capt. William Nelson sent Lieutenant Whitman to meet the party from Tueson and informed its leaders that he was prepared to enforce his order forbidding approach within ten miles of the post and would open fire upon them with his cannon on their appearance at the mouth of the cañon opposite the post. According to Colyer, "They left with the declaration that they could use a white flag as well as we and that if that would bring the Indians they would bring them in and put them on a reservation where it would not cost much to feed them." Nothing more was said of the promised raid of Governor Safford's party. Colyer visited the scene of the massacre, where he found some of the bones uncovered by rains and where he was joined by Eskiminzin, whose gentle nature had been overpowered by emotion and who was found wiping tears from his eyes. The Commissioner, on the evidence of Lien- tenant Whitman, took early opportunity of denying that any Indians had left
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