USA > Arizona > Arizona, prehistoric, aboriginal, pioneer, modern; the nation's youngest commonwealth within a land of ancient culture, Vol. I > Part 37
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42
267
ARIZONA-THE YOUNGEST STATE
in comparison with the haphazard way in which a better force of American troops went to Cuba. It was Miles who elaborated the uniform of the United States army till its cost became burdensome upon the officers and made himself a gorgeous vision through the operation of the same set of orders. No military man in the service was more easily accessible to reporters than was Miles.
KILLING OF REYNOLDS AND HOLMES
The Miles campaign in 1886 practically disposed of the "Indian question" within Arizona. The heart of insurrection had been removed with the Chirica- huas and thereafter the demeanor of the Apaches of whatever breed compara- tively was as decent as the average in any American settlement. An occasional Indian went wild, but usually he vented his spite upon a tribesman and by his tribesman was corrected. Most of such trouble, naturally, was on the White Mountain reservation, where civil and military authorities were doing their best to make husbandmen of wild outlaws. The most serious group of such sporadic Indian crimes centers around the notorious "Apache Kid."
In 1889, the fall term of the U. S. District Court in Globe, before Judge Jos. H. Kibbey, appeared nine White Mountain Apache renegades, charged with various offenses. For several years there had been a change in the manner of Indian administration and Apache criminals now were called before the courts wherein they appeared to receive all due justice, despite any prejudice that the population at large might have against the race. One of these redskins was convicted of the murder at San Carlos of Lieutenant Mott and later was executed by hanging in Globe. The other eight, on Nov. 1, together with one Mexican prisoner, were started by special stage over the Pinal Mountains on their way to the penitentiary at Yuma, to which they had been committed for terms of various length. The posse, which proved too small indeed, comprised Sheriff Glenn Reynolds and a special deputy, Win. H. Holmes, an old-time prospector, generally known throughout central Arizona as "Hunkydory." The driver was Eugene Middleton, proprietor of the stage line and a member of a Tonto Basin family that had had serious experience with Apaches.
The second day of the journey, in the Gila Valley, near the present town of Kelvin, the sheriff took six of the shackled prisoners from the stage at the bottom of a steep sand wash. As the little party trudged up the hill, two of the Indians suddenly grasped the Sheriff, who was in front, while two others wheeled upon Holmes. The latter, who, though brave, was subject to heart trouble, fell backward as his pistol was wrenched from him by the Indian Pash-lan-ta, who first attended to the Sheriff. Reynolds, struggling desperately, was shot in the base of the neck and then the Indian turned and shot Holmes through the heart. Middleton, from whom this story has been secured at first hand, stopped the stage and, pistol in hand, was guarding two prisoners that had been left with him. One of these was the "Kid," who, in good English, shouted : "I will sit down; don't shoot." The scene of the tragedy was not visible from the stage and the pistol shots were supposed by Middleton to have heen fired by the Sheriff. A moment later he was better informed, for the Mexican prisoner ran up, seeking his own safety, just as the unseen Pash-lau-ta, from behind the coach, fired at the driver with the Sheriff's rifle. The four horses bolted and Middleton fell to the sand with a bullet through the cheek,
268
ARIZONA-THE YOUNGEST STATE
neck and left side of the body. The Indians rolled him over, searching him for valuables and cartridges and, fully conscious, he felt the muzzle of a rifle against his temple. Then, as Pash-lau-ta was about to make sure of his job, the "Kid" saved his life by observing, "Save the cartridges; he is dead anyhow."
The Mexican prisoner escaped from the Indians and made his way to Florence, where later he received a pardon from the Governor.
Leaving Middleton still "playing possum," the Indians unshackled them- selves, took their commitment papers from the Sheriff's pocket, tore them up, gave a whoop of joy and left the scene. When all was still, Middleton, horribly wounded as he was, staggered to his feet to seek help. He found that Holmes' body had not been molested, but the Sheriff's face had been horribly jabbed and ent by the muzzle of the gun and the forehead had been smashed in with a stone. It was not until the following morning that Middleton managed to drag himself back to Riverside station, about five miles distant. A posse from Globe started on the trail of the fugitives, but soon had to return on account of a snowstorm. The Indians had struck up the river to the mouth of the San Pedro near the site of the town of Hayden and thence on to San Carlos. It is told that the wife of a rancher named Cunningham, hearing of the escape of the Indians, died of fright. At San Carlos six of the outlaws were killed by Indian scouts, and the head of Pash-lau-ta was cut off and carried to agency headquarters in order to give full assurance of his death. The seventh Indian, badly wounded, was captured and at Florence was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment at Yuma.
THE BLOODY TRAIL OF THE KID
The "Kid" managed to make good his escape, however, and for several years thereafter was a veritable nightmare in central and southeastern Arizona. He was heard from all the way from Tonto Basin to the Sierra Madres of Mexico, and in all of this distriet at least a dozen murders were charged to him, possibly some of them not of his doing. One was that of a young man named Baker, in the Sierra Ancha Mountains, but this may have been one of the features of the Pleasant Valley war.
It is known that the "Kid" returned several times to the San Carlos reser- vation, where he stole several squaws and where he was so feared by the Indians that his visit only was known after he had gone. At different times he headed small bands of ontlaw Apaches and made excursions in force. On one of these trips, on December 12, 1890, the Indians penned up three white men on a hill- side twenty miles southeast of the San Bernardino ranch. One was no other than Gus Hickey, present Chairman of the Board of Supervisors of Cochise County, and a prosperous merchant in Bisbee. The others were Cowboy Jack Bridger and Bunk Robinson. Hickey had been called to the spot by a cowboy to see a steer that had been killed by the Indians. When the trio came to the dead animal. one of the cowboys swiftly raised a rifle and shot down an Indian who, unconscious of their presenee, was on his way for more beef. Then it was that the trio discovered that they had to settle with a band of not less than twelve Indians, led by the "Kid" himself. The white men ran behind a clump of rocks on the hillside and piled up more rocks in making a rather insecure sort of fortification. One of the attacking party was the notorious
THE APACHE KID
KID AND HIS RENEGADES IN GLOBE, BEFORE TRIAL
269
ARIZONA-THE YOUNGEST STATE
"Big Foot," whose moccasin tracks, it was claimed, measured fourteen inches in length. The siege had continued several hours, and the party behind the rocks had begun to feel relative security, when a shot knocked a corncob pipe from Hickey's mouth. Bridger, laughing at the occurrence, leaned forward, possibly exposing himself, and received a shot through the head. Only a few minutes later Robinson fell back, killed in the same manner. Then it was that Hickey established a marathon record and beat an Apache Indian at running. He struck the trail for camp, in the bottom of a sandy gorge in which some water was flowing. At the first bend, however, he sprang behind a boulder on the side of the canon and struck away at a right angle, while the Indians kept running down the canon, thinking him still ahead, on the well-trodden trail. He had been cut off from his horse, so flight necessarily was on foot to safety at the Milt Hall ranch, where he had been stopping, with five others. The detour necessary was about fourteen miles. The next day the scene of battle was visited, the bodies were found unmutilated, but the heads had been crushed in with stones.
Early in 1899 Colonel Kosterlitsky of the Mexican rurales declared that the Apache Kid was still alive at the head of a little settlement of well-behaved Apaches, renegades from the United States, in the Sierra Madre Mountains in Chihuahua. The colonel intimated that if the settlement of Apaches ceased to be well-behaved its end would immediately come.
Though charged with participation in the murders of Thomas Hunt and Henry Baston, near Arivaca, in June, 1886, the Kid a year later was serving as sergeant of Indian police under Chief of Scouts Al Sieber. June 1, 1887, he wounded Sieber and went off on a little warpath of his own, accompanied by a couple of tribesmen. Within two days they killed a rancher, William Diehl, in the Galurio Mountains. Diehl's partner was E. A. Clark, a former chief of Hualpai scouts, hence well-known as "Wallapai Clark." Heading for the bor- der, the outlaws were turned hy troops and, after killing Mike Grace near Crittenden, were captured by Lieut. Carter Johnson while trying to slip back upon the reservation. They were sent by the military authorities to San Diego and later to Alcatraz, but had to be brought back when the Supreme Court declared that jurisdiction in such matters belonged to the local courts. Worth noting is Clark's claim that vengeance finally came his way. In February, 1894, receiving a return visit from the Kid, he succeeded in breaking that worthy's leg and in killing his squaw. Ilad he reversed the order of shooting to him would have come an immense reward that had been offered for the Kid, dead or alive, but preferably inanimate. This is believed to have been the Kid's last appearance across the international line, an ending of centuries of carnage and the final elimination of the Indian as a factor to be feared.
CHAPTER XXI
PIONEER TRANSPORTATION
Stage Coaching through the Indian Country-The Famous Butterfield Contract-Trials of Mail Contractors-Perils of the Road-Wayside Stations and Their Tragedies- Freighting by Wagon-Mexican Carretas.
Early-day stage transportation through Arizona on the old transcontinental routes lasted only about twenty-two years, till displaced by the railroads. Though considered luxurious at the time, let there be consideration of the endurance of any through passenger who could stand the journey of a fortnight from San Antonio, Texas, to San Diego, with much of the travel at night. On lines less than 300 miles in length the travel usually was continuous, in deference to mail contracts, a passenger within the lurching "thoroughbrace" stages catching a few winks of sleep by passing an arm through one of the leather loops provided for such service and dependent from the side of the coach. There was slight break in the monotony of a desert road, where each landmark slowly was ap- proached and passed, with only the prospect ahead of arrival at some desolate mud-built "station," where water, whiskey and the roughest of food could be secured, while the stage team was being changed.
There would have been few stage lines in Arizona if their income had been solely from passenger and express business. As a rule, these items were subordi- nate to the mail contracts, from which the running expense generally was assumed to come. It has been stated that the carriage of mail in the earliest days at times cost the Government $65 a letter.
The first through stage line on the southern route was that of the San An- tonio and San Diego Stage Company. In one of its early advertisements, in the Tubac Arizonian of June 30, 1859, is made the statement that the line "has been in successful operation since July, 1857." Yet Silas St. John, who was one of its employees, stated that the first mail rider, Charlie Youmans, started from San Diego November 15, 1857. St. John took the mail pouch at Carrizo Creek and rode to Yuma (then Iaeger's Ferry), 110 miles in thirty-two hours, without changing horses. Thence to Tucson the riders were "Big Foot" Wal- lace, John Capron and James McCoy. According to St. John, the first real stage service was in November, when three coaches loaded with passengers rolled through eastward, reaching Tucson on the 18th. This first party went safely through to San Antonio. In the early part of the month a large number of horses had been driven eastward, to supply changes at the stations.
The mail contract was in the name of the company's President, Jas. E. Birch, an experienced California stage man, who received $149,000 a year. The manager was Isaiah C. Woods, who later superintended from a New York office.
270
"THOROUGHBRACE" STAGE ON A TOMBSTONE STREET
MARICOPA WELLS STAGE STATION IN 1874
Telegraph Operator Gearhardt, Stage Manager J. H. Moore, Line Rider Billy Baxter, Book- keeper Charlie Naylor, Milt Ward
.
271
ARIZONA-THE YOUNGEST STATE
Service was semi-monthly. There would appear to have been a change of ownership later, for the advertisement referred to, dated at San Antonio, July 1, 1858, is signed by G. H. Giddings and R. E. Doyle, as proprietors. The advertisement recited that, "Passengers and express matter are forwarded in new coaches drawn by six mules over the entire length of our line, excepting the Colorado desert of 100 miles, which we cross on mule back. Passengers guaranteed in their tickets to ride in coaches, excepting the 100 miles as above stated. An armed escort travels through the Indian country with each mail train, for the protection of the mails and passengers. Passengers are provided with provisions during the trip, except where the coach stops at public houses along the line, at which each passenger will pay for his own meal. Each pas- senger is allowed thirty pounds of personal baggage, exclusive of blankets and arms."
San Antonio at the time best was reached by steamer to Indianola, Texas, and thence by stage. On the Pacific side recommendation was made of steam- ers north to San Francisco. There was another route by which you could go directly, if physically able, from Yuma through to San Francisco, by the stages of the Overland Mail Company. The fare from San Antonio to Tucson was $50 and to San Diego $200. Extra through baggage was at the rate of $1 a pound. From Yuma northward by stage the fare was $40 to Los Angeles and $80 to San Francisco. From Yuma to San Diego the fare was $65.
THE BUTTERFIELD CONTRACT
It would appear that this San Antonio and San Diego Stage Company was succeeded in 1858 by the operation of the famous Butterfield mail contract, though on this point no exact information is available. The Butterfield con- tract, of six years' duration, had been awarded the previous September for semi- weekly service, at a stated price of $600,000 a year. It was stipulated that the trip of 2,759 miles from St. Louis to San Francisco should be made within twenty-five days. This schedule usually was beaten by three days and it was told that, when bearing a presidential message, the journey once was made in the wonderful time of sixteen days.
The first Butterfield mail eastward left San Francisco September 16. Los Angeles, 462 miles, was reached in 80 hours, Yuma, 282 miles, in 72 hours and Tucson, 280 miles, in 71 hours. The eastern stage terminus was Tipton, Mo., end of the Missouri Pacific, then 160 miles long. John Butterfield met with an ovation when he stepped from the train at St. Louis with mail that had been on the road only 24 days, 20 hours and 30 minutes. President Buchanan sent his congratulations. There had had to be great preparations for this trip. for the equipment consisted of more than 100 Concord coaches, 1,000 horses, 500 mules and 750 men, including 150 drivers. Later, when the line had been taken over by the Overland Mail Company, the service was daily and the mail pay raised to $1,300,000. Indian hostility blocked an attempt of the Central Mail Company to use the 35th parallel route.
With reference only to Arizona, the difficulties encountered by this early transportation line seemed almost insurmountable. Stations had to be estab- lished at points where water could be secured and where there could be pro- vided some security against the Indians. Provision had to be made for the horses
272
ARIZONA-THE YOUNGEST STATE
and their keepers and of forage for the horses and of food and shelter for the travelers. The stage route, over the old Overland Trail, most of it broken by the Mormon Battalion and later followed by tens of thousands of California gold seekers, was well defined and not particularly arduous, yet needed protec- tion at many points, not only from attacks by Indians, but against Mexicans and outlaw Americans. It should be appreciated also that stage robbery in the early days was one of the commonest forms of crime. When Ross Browne passed, in 1864, the stage road was still marked by many indications of the sufferings of emigrant parties and drovers, with the wrecks of wagons half covered in the drifting sands, skeletons of horses and mules and the skulls and bones of many herds of cattle that had perished by thirst or had fallen victims to the terrible sand storms that swept the desert. This description, however, particularly referred to the Colorado desert in California; the terrain in Arizona was found much more favorable.
With the outbreak of the Civil War, the Butterfield line necessarily was abandoned, for it passed through rebel territory, in and out, and in Arizona had lost the very essential support against Indians and bandits that had been extended by the soldiery. That this protection was necessary was shown by an awful experience passed through by St. John himself. In preparation for the first service, early in September, 1858, he was in charge of a crew of men in the construction of a stone corral and buildings for a station at Dragoon Springs. On the night of the 8th, three Mexican laborers, probably seeking loot of mules and weapons, attempted the murder of their four American com- panions. Three were killed or mortally wounded as they slept, but St. John, who had awakened, fought off the assassins and drove them away, though at a fearful cost, for a blow from an axe had severed his left arm and there was a deep axe wound in his hip. Then came three days and nights of torture. Lying on a heap of sacked grain, St. John defended himself and the bodies of his dead or dying comrades from the coyotes and buzzards that had been brought by the reek of blood. Finally, at noon on the fourth day, assistance came in the arrival of a party headed by Col. Jas. B. Leach and including Lieut. Sylvester Mowry. The last of the other wounded Americans, James Laing, died the following day. The nearest surgical assistance was at Fort Buchanan and a messenger was sent thither by way of Tucson, for the desert trail was infested by Apaches. Dr. B. J. Irwin, later chief surgeon of the Department of Arizona, made a hard ride of 116 miles to the rescue and succeeded in saving St. John's life and in getting him to the post hospital. Within six weeks his patient had so far recovered that he was able to start for the East. St. John returned to Arizona later and was the first secretary of the Pioneers' Home
In 1864 Sol Barth carried mail from Prescott to Albuquerque, sub-contract- ing with Ben Block from a brother of Chas. D. Poston. The mail was carried weekly, provided the mail carrier wasn't killed by the Indians. Two such kill- ings were known among the employees of Barth and Block. In 1866 they had the mail contract from Albuquerque to Fort Stanton, and in 1866 also secured a contract for carrying mail from Prescott, through Maricopa Wells to Tubac, but sold the latter to Aaron and Louis Zeckendorf, of Albuquerque. Louis Zeckendorf went down to Tucson to investigate the mail route and liked the
273
ARIZONA-THE YOUNGEST STATE
country so well that he settled, establishing a mercantile business that later grew into the largest in the Southwest.
ESTABLISHING MAIL SERVICE
Though a notation has been found of the arrival of a horseback mail in Tucson September 1, 1865, and though there were military expresses, regular mail service through Southern Arizona does not seem to have been re-established till about 1869. In 1866 Governor McCormick expressed shame when he stated there was not at that time a stage coach running within the Territory. In Feb- ruary, 1867, B. C. Truman came to Arizona to lay out mail routes. In 1869 there had been established service from San Diego by the Gila route and Tucson to Mesilla, New Mexico, on the Rio Grande. John Capron was a sub-contractor west of Yuma. Within Arizona the stages were operated by J. A. Moore and L. W. Carr, who had their headquarters at Maricopa Wells. The Tucson Citizen of October 17, 1870, expressed extreme gratification over the arrival of the mail from San Diego in the remarkably fast time of four and one-half days and over the assurance of the owner of the line that the public could depend thereafter on semi-weekly service.
Daily service was established in 1875, with six-horse Concord coaches, these connecting with the Southern Pacific Railroad at each succeeding terminal point from Colton southeastward. The last trip into Yuma from the west was in November, 1878, when railroad service was established into the Yuma station.
The stage route ran south of and parallel to the Gila River. The principal stations east from Yuma in 1877 were Descanso, Gila City, Rattlesnake, Mission Camp, Filibuster, Antelope Peak, Mohawk, Teamster's Camp, Stanwix, Burke's, Oatman Flat, Gila Bend, Maricopa Wells, Pima Villages, Sweetwater, Sacaton, Montezuma, Sanford (Adamsville), Florence, Desert Wells, Point of Mountains, Water Holes and Tucson.
PERILS OF THE ROAD
There is a story connected with every one, for the days were wild and human life, on the whole, was of little account. Filibuster was named after the Crabb party, which struck southward from that point. Mission Camp had an especial notoriety as a place where the members of the Reed family, who kept the sta- tion, were murdered December 24, 1870, by Mexicans, who chopped the cook's head off. The bandits were driven off by the opportune arrival of several sol- diers in an ambulance. Mohawk had distinction in its well, into which Keeper Kilbright jumped, after he had taken poison, and into which the leaders of a six-horse coach team fell. The horses were lost and a new well then had to be dug. Stanwix was started by the famous Arizonan, King Woolsey, who later moved to Agua Caliente. Near Burke's Station, King Woolsey and two other men were ambushed by about a score of Apaches while the trio were returning to the station with a wagon load of wild hay. The Americans had only a shotgun charged with buckshot for a weapon, but succeeded in standing off the attack and even in killing the Indian leader. Then escape was made by mounting the wagon mules. Reinforcements and arms were secured at the station and return was made to the scene of the fray, where the dead chieftain had been left on the ground. Woolsey's party hanged the body of the Indian to a tree by the road-
274
ARIZONA-THE YOUNGEST STATE
side, where for several years it dangled as a warning to the Apaches, stuck full of arrows, shot by passing Pimas and Maricopas.
A similar spectacle was afforded on the same road about the same time near Maricopa Wells, where on a rude cross was seen the dried body of an Apache, crucified by the Maricopas. At least the Indian had been tied with cords to a rude cross, probably before torture and death. It is an interesting conjecture whether this novel method of treatment of an enemy had not been suggested by the tales of the crucifixion brought by the early missionaries.
August 18, 1873, at Kenyon Station, two Mexicans killed Ed Lumley. He had been stabbed several times and had been tortured to make him tell where his money was. Henry S. Gray and a man named Horne started after them. The Mexicans crossed the Colorado below Yuma. One was caught while hunting his horse. The same evening the second man was overtaken on the Mexican border west of Yuma, showed fight and had to be killed. The man first caught was brought back to Yuma. As the crime was committed in Maricopa County, the prisoner was started eastward by stage for Phoenix. When the station again was approached, a deputy sheriff in charge of the prisoner, having been warned that trouble awaited him, got out of the stage with his man, and tried to walk around the station, to meet the stage beyond. It is probable that the stage driver told the group of waiting avengers, for the officer's ruse failed, and the prisoner was taken from him and hanged.
Woolsey throughout his life rather made his own laws and controlled the destinies of those around him. He was a very forceful and determined man, but just. One instance illustrative of his character has been detailed by John H. Crampton : In August, 1872, a Mexican came to Woolsey's home at Stanwix, and finding no one there but a Mexican boy, detailed to him a plan for Woolsey's murder. The lad was faithful and himself became a vicarious victim. The murderous Mexican was captured soon thereafter by Woolsey himself. The next day he was ordered to dig a grave. This he did. He was then placed on the edge of the shallow excavation, before which was drawn a party of four of Woolsey's Mexican employes, armed with rifles. Woolsey himself gave the word and the murderer, with four bullets through his body, fell backward into the trench, which forthwith was filled in upon the corpse.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.