USA > Arizona > Arizona, prehistoric, aboriginal, pioneer, modern; the nation's youngest commonwealth within a land of ancient culture, Vol. I > Part 38
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G. R. Whistler, of Burke's Station, was killed in July, 1874, by his Mexican stableman, Ventura Nuñez, for plunder. The Mexican was chased ninety miles by Woolsey and a party from Stanwix and brought back to the station, and there hanged on a mesquite tree by the roadside. The body hung for months, maintained as a warning to the evildoer. The skeleton at last dropped from the rope and was buried by Mexican freighters, who placed a rough cross above the grave. It is told that discovery was made of a plot to kill all American station keepers.
Oatman Flat was named after the Oatman family of unhappy memory.
Gila Bend is especially notable for the fact that near the station was an early farm, cultivated for years by A. C. Decker, the agent. It is believed that this was the first American irrigated farm in South Central Arizona, antedating the Phoenix settlement by at least three years. A small colony settled at the Bend in 1865, fought Indians, dug a ditch and raised grain for the use of the freighters.
JOHN TOWNSEND A famous Indian fighter and scout of early Apache days
COL. KING S. WOOLSEY
First leader against the Apaches, member of Legislature and promoter of irrigation and agriculture in Salt River Valley.
COL. CHARLES D. POSTON First delegate to Congress, 1864
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A DESERT METROPOLIS
Forty-five miles east was the principal station of the road, Maricopa Wells. As early as 1868 it rejoiced in a big pool table, and in 1873 it had connection with the outside world by military telegraph line. Though now abandoned, a mere group of adobe ruins, all but forgotten by even the old-timers, it once was one of the central points of the Southwest. It was protected from Apache raids by the mere presence of several thousand friendly Pima and Maricopa Indians, who from their irrigated farms brought stores of wheat and vegetables to trade for the white man's goods. There were a hotel, blacksmith shop and store, at one time all owned by Moore. In 1869, according to one record, there was a custom house, in charge of Chas. D. Poston, who moved with the office to Florence in 1871. The place was maintained as an Indian trading post by Barnett & Block until about 1882. In the pioneer days Northern Arizona was reached through Maricopa Wells and a direct road ran to Fort McDowell. Prescott was reached by a road which skirted the border of the present City of Phoenix, and which struck towards the northwest by way of Wickenburg. The "wells" were on the south side of a hill, in the Santa Cruz Wash, about eight miles east of the present Maricopa & Phoenix Railroad. Fair-sized mesquite trees now are growing on the site of the old-time activities.
Eastward were a number of stations, rather closely set within the Pima Indian country. The first was Casa Blanca at a Pima village, where was estab- lished the first steam flour mill of Southern Arizona, operated by Nick Bichard and brothers. After the Gila rise of 1868, the mill was moved to Adamsville, below Florence. Sacaton then was only a stage station, but now is the central agency point for the Pima and Maricopa reservations.
Adamsville, in itself a mere ghost of a town, once, though only over a brief period of years, had no small prominence as a settlement, in the period when Maricopa Wells was declining and Florence had hardly started to be. In a casual motor car, sightseers bound for the Casa Grande ruins may take the rather unused road through the single street of the deserted village and pass the site of the old flour mill and along the bank of the canal that brought it water for power.
OUTLAWS AND APACHES
Mexicans are said to avoid Adamsville, for it is told that a ghost is loose amid the ruins, guarding a hoard of gold. All of this is based upon a rather fantastic . tale of the killing of two priests and six other stage passengers east of Florence, of the loot of a box of gold, of a siege of the robber, a Mexican who had taken refuge in an Adamsville adobe, of the dropping upon him of a dynamite car- tridge and of his death from rifle bullets as he fled from the impending explosion toward the shelter of the river bottom willows. The reality of the tale is this : In March, 1872, Station Keeper McFarland, of Sacaton, disappeared near a ranch of ill repute, kept by a Mexican named Gandara. Americans from Adams- ville investigated, to have one of their own number, Badel, shot by Gandara on entering the latter's house. Gandara in turn met his death by the bullet route and at once. A few days later the same citizen posse shot and killed at Adams- ville two Mexican outlaws, Manuel Reyes, the robber brought to bay, and one Aguilar. McFarland's body was found buried near the Gandara ranch.
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As late as August of 1878 a wagon train was attacked by Apaches on the Tucson road, only a few miles east of the Pima villages. The party, which was headed by Captain Freeman, had had warning by a prospector, who came wildly riding up to the train from the eastward, having escaped from the Indians, while his partner was killed. The wagons promptly were parked and prepara- tions were made for defense. The Indians soon appeared, about a dozen of them, mounted, and opened fire on the small party of Americans. The defense was not in any straits, however, when several hundred Pima Indian horsemen, sum- moned by the firing, came charging down from the westward, followed by a reinforcement of Americans. Then it was that the Apaches took to the hills with all dispatch. Two of the attacking party were killed and the teamsters' cook was slightly wounded.
At Montezuma, Austin Densy (or Dempsey) had a trading post. Florence was next, twelve miles away, started as a stage station and having its existence as a town from the time that the custom house was moved there from Maricopa Wells. Establishment of a land office followed soon. It was a long journey to the next station, Picacho, forty miles over the desert. The well at Picacho was 200 feet deep and had the only water for many miles around. It was on the line of one of the Apache trails to Sonora and, as a consequence, near the station could be counted at least seventy-five graves of persons slain by the red raiders. Near Picacho also occurred the only battle in Arizona between the Union and Confederate forces, although the affray was not accompanied by much bloodshed. Desert Well, 212 feet deep, was twenty-seven miles from Tucson, and Bailey's Well only ten miles.
In 1871 a driver named Baker, who drove between Blue Water Station and Tucson, was murdered at his home, at the former point, together with his wife and two children. This deed also was done by Mexicans, who, like those of Mission Camp, made good their escape into Sonora, whence extradition was refused.
ADVENT OF GRIFFITH AND STEVENS
In 1874 was organized the Texas and California Stage Company, to operate between Fort Worth and San Diego. The main line was 1,700 miles long and an item of its equipment was 1,200 horses. Manager and later president of the company was Wm. M. Griffith, who had headquarters successively at San Diego, Yuma and Tucson, as railroads encroached upon his shrinking field till at last the iron horse trailed along every mile of the route between Yuma and the Texas terminal. Griffith stayed with Arizona, managing stage lines and ranching and for a term served as United States marshal. For a while the line between Yuma and Tucson was superintended by another noted Arizonan, Dan C. Stevens, now resident in Florence.
In 1878, when the Southern Pacific had reached Yuma, 720 miles from San Francisco, further passenger transportation from the Colorado River eastward was by means of stages operated by Kearns & Mitchell, for whom Wm. M. Griffith was general agent. In an advertisement of the period it is noted that the passenger tariff from San Francisco to Phoenix was $93 and to Tucson an even $100. El Paso could be reached for $183, and if the traveler wanted to go as far as Fort Austin, Texas, he could be accommodated by the expenditure
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of $240. Tucson was reached on the fifth day from San Francisco, and El Paso on the ninth day.
Within the Territory about that time most of the mail contracts were held by two large transportation companies, Kearns & Mitchell, soon succeeded by Kearns & Griffith, and Gilmer, Salisbury & Co., whose interests in the South- west were in charge of the well-known Jim Stewart. The main routes were covered by these two firms, though transportation by stage or buckboard could be found between almost any points on regular mail schedules. For the side trips there was a general tariff as high as 20 cents a mile. From Phoenix to Prescott cost $20, and the traveler had his choice of the direct and rocky road over Black Cañon Hill, on Griffith's line, or, with somewhat larger coaches and on a better road, around by Wickenburg, under the care of Jim Stewart. One road was 105 miles long and the other 130, and the time consumed on either was from twenty to twenty-six hours of continuous travel.
As late as 1880 mail was carried across Northern Arizona from San Ber- nardino through Fort Mojave and Prescott to Santa Fé by a buckboard stage line, one that had had many vicissitudes. In 1871 a weekly mail contract was advertised for a route up the Colorado from Arizona City (Yuma) to St. George, Utah. For a while the main passenger and freight route from California into Northern Arizona was from San Bernardino by way of Ehrenberg and Wicken- burg. This line was owned by James Grant, with Jim Stewart as superintendent.
Globe, after the coming of the Southern Pacific, had the advantage of three routes of ingress. William Sutherland (Idaho Bill) ran a stage line from Casa Grande through Florence, Riverside, Dripping Springs and Pioneer, over the Pinal Mountains. But about half the passengers took his side line from Flor- ence to Silver King, where mules were mounted for an adventurous journey through Devil's Canon to Bloody Tanks, where a buckboard would be in wait- ing. The third route, generally used for eastern travel, ran southeast from Globe through the Apache Reservation to Willcox or Bowie.
TRAVEL OUT OF THE OLD PUEBLO
Tucson was the departure point for many mining camps, but particularly for Sonora, into which ran two rival stage lines. Both were equipped after the Mexican fashion, with large Concord coaches, drawn by two wheel mules and four ponies abreast in the lead. Beside the Mexican driver sat a helper, whose duty it was to yell and throw stones. Frequently the two rival stages, starting at the same time, would get tangled in racing down the narrow Meyer Street, to the great edification of the populace. The journey was accounted an unusually happy one if the passengers escaped with no more than one upset on the wretched roads, over which the teams were galloped southward. There were minor details also of impossible food and of lengthy stops at ranches, where the hostlers seemed never to have thought of the simple expedient of gathering the next team in from the range until the stage came into sight.
The early days of Tombstone were palmy ones for Tucson, from which many loaded stage coaches steadily rolled out for the new bonanza.
The early-day stage driver was a character well worth consideration. Usu- ally he was of the type of whichi gamblers are made, quiet and undemonstrative, absolutely fearless, even to the point of recklessness, skillful in handling his team
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of from four to six horses through the heat and dust, appreciative of the pres- ence on the box beside him of one of his own kind and even resentful of the presence thereon of an ignorant tenderfoot. It was generally understood that in case of a hold-up the driver should not fight, for his first duty lay in the safety of his passengers, horses and equipment. Few there were of the old-time Jehus who had not had narrow escapes, for every stage that bore a freight of value was accompanied by an express messenger, who sat beside or behind the driver, a sawed-off shotgun in his hands. These express messengers were of the type of which sheriffs were made, keen and alert, brave and dependable. There have been instances, with express messengers shot from ambush, where the driver seized weapons and, sometimes at the cost of his life, fought the highway robbers. Some of the drivers were marked as men who would fight and who expected no mercy in the event of a hold-up.
WELLS IN THE DESERT
A most valuable possession in the early days was a well of water down in the desert by the side of the stage road. These stage stations usually were deso- late places, with an adobe house or two, a corral and the well. From the latter usually came a sad sound, as of ungreased wheels. Almost invariably the water was hoisted by a mule, usually blind or blindfolded, which in time became so accustomed to its work that little oversight was needed from the bare-legged Mexican boy who generally acted as engineer. From the cool, dark depths below, the water came up in a small barrel. The mule would back a few steps, the water was dumped into a small reservoir and then the bucket went down for a fresh filling.
One of the most noted of these stations was Culling's Wells, on the old Ehrenberg road, about sixty miles west of Wickenburg. One of the later keepers of the station was Joe Drew. That he was a man possessed of both imagination and a true sense of humanity was shown by the fact that at night, swung from a tall cottonwood pole above the well frame, ever was raised a lantern, its beams visible along the waterless road many miles to the east and west. Drew had grieved that several deaths from thirst had occurred only a few miles from the station, and his action followed the arrival one evening of an almost spent lad, who, on the point of lying down to die, had seen in the distance a glimmer of light from the windows of the station house. Drew thereafter called himself "Keeper of the Lighthouse on the Desert."
Another noted station was that of M. H. Calderwood, an officer of California volunteers, who established himself at the crossing of the Agua Fria on the stage road between Phoenix and Wickenburg, where he found the purest of water, not far from where the Santa Fe now enjoys a supply of similar quality at Marinette.
Around these frontier stations, in keeping with their appearance, too often was tragedy. This was peculiarly true of the stations along the old Butter- field route, as narrated elsewhere. Sometimes there was tragedy even before the station started, as instanced by a ring of dirt north of Wickenburg, toward which the stage driver would incline the butt of his whip as he told the story of a couple of young men, bent upon starting a station, who dug a well 125 feet deep, which, lined only with the ribs of saguaro cactus, caved in
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while one of its diggers was at the bottom. The body there was left, in what was called the deepest grave in Arizona.
ENTERTAINMENT FOR THE TRAVELER
Among the noted station keepers was Snider, of Bumblebee, who had married a sister of King Woolsey's wife. Snider was a mild sort of individual. He didn't drink liquor, but he had it for sale. One frosty morning a traveling friend dropped off the Black Cañon stage coach and demanded whiskey. The black bottle was placed upon the rough counter and a generous drink was swallowed by the benumbed traveler, who, with a contorted face, immediately exclaimed: "Snider! if that was whiskey you gave me, it was the worst I ever tasted." "Vat! vasn't dot good whiskey ?" "Horrible." Then Snider with uplifted hands sorrowly declaimed: "Vell, I guess I have been cheated. Do you know," he impressively informed his friend, "I paid $2 a gallon for dot whiskey down in Phoenix."
It was at the same Bumblebee station that Joe Coulson, a stage employe, secured respect for his hostess' food at the point of a revolver. An English traveler had objected to the main article in the menu, uncivilly protesting that beans were fit food only for horses. The Arizonan taught him better and after- ward gleefully told that the tenderfoot had eaten two platefuls and he believed could have stood a third if the instructor's trigger finger hadn't cramped.
Joe, at a later period, about 1880, represented the stage line at Gillett on the Agua Fria. Before daylight one morning he got into an altercation with the driver of a southward-bound stage. The driver couldn't get to his revolver under his heavy ulster till Joe had exhausted the contents of his weapon and had fled back into the brush. The driver searched through the darkness for the agent, but vainly, and finally, his bullet-riddled overcoat flapping around his heels, returned to where his stage had been. But the horses, scared by the flying bullets, had started southward, taking with them the coach and about a dozen passengers. There was a wild, driverless ride for about a dozen miles to Hall's Station, but the passengers were all spilled before the coach reached that point.
MEXICAN TRAFFIC BY CARRETA
As far down the years as 1883 occasionally Tucson and Phoenix were visited from Sonora by long trains of carretas, rude Mexican carts, usually held together with rawhide, with wheels that had been turned from a cross-section of a large cottonwood log and with the long pole of each cart attached to the horns of a couple of half-wild oxen. The noise of the wheels' creaking could be heard for miles ahead. But the trains were welcome, for they brought fruit, panoche (coarse sugar) and zarapes, to trade for American goods.
FREIGHTING IN PIONEER TIMES
The Arizona "freighter" was a very important personage in the days before the railroad came. As a rule he was a professional, closely allied to the rather contemptuous stage driver, who cursed him for entting up the roads and for raising too much dust. Some of the freight "outfits" of those days were awe- inspiring affairs. The team might be anything up to twenty-four mules, driven by a "jerk line," and handled with a skill marvelous to the uninitiated. The
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driver was in the saddle on the "nigh wheeler," and the passage of the road in times of difficulty or upon grades developed a flow of language on the frontier said to be equaled only by that of a cavalry captain. The star performers in a mule team were the spry little mules on the lead and the mules on the "swing" which, on a turn, would step over the chain and, undirected, keep the fore wheels in the proper track.
The mule, without doubt, was the greatest traction factor in the upbuild- ing of the Southwest. Oxen at first were tried, but for them the country was too hot and too dry. Horses, save in the Mexican "rawhide" outfit, suffered much from the same disadvantages. Yet the finest team ever known in the Southwest was one of sixteen Percheron Norman horses, known along the Globe- Willcox road as "The Bell Team," for every horse, save the one ridden, bore above the hames a set of bells. The average weight of the horses of this team was not less than 1,500 pounds, and they were curried and blanketed and cared for as carefully as though on an eastern estate.
In the freighting of the ores of the Silver King mine down to the mill at Picket Post, the motive power comprised a number of eight-mule teams, consid- ered by the freighters absolute perfection and a standard of excellence never elsewhere surpassed in the Southwest. The mules all were carefully matched, and had been purchased in Kentucky with little regard to cost. The drivers had a collateral income, for about the only way to get specimens from the Silver King was to subsidize a driver to throw a few chunks of ore at his lead mules about the time he was coming into the town of Pinal.
The wagons of the old-time freighting outfits were in keeping with the importance of the work. Eastern wagons would not do at all. They went to pieces on the desert. The best and the biggest wagons were made in Arizona, especially at Yuma, Phoenix, Tucson and Prescott, where no stick of wood was used that had not lain for a year's seasoning and drying. Some of the lead wagons had wheels fully eight feet in height, and had capacity for a half-carload of goods. Following a sixteen-mule team usually there were three or four wag- ons, diminishing in size toward the end vehicle, which was used for forage and for the bedding and food of the freighter and his "swamper." Both men were armed even more heavily than the cowboy, with a repeating rifle near at hand, in a boot under the driver's leg or swung where a motion could pull it from the side of the big wagon, and each man bore his 45-caliber revolver, with a cartridge belt for each of the weapons. These were not for empty show, for outlaws, bandit Mexicans and Apaches all found atractive loot in the cargo of the wagons, espe- cially when a part of the cargo was in barrels.
In the Apache country travel was by wagon trains, following the system much used in crossing the plains. At least a dozen teamsters would join for mutual protection, and at night would park in a circle, with outposted videttes and sentinels. Sometimes on the road through the San Carlos Reservation, tired of the dust and the slow travel and looking for a bonus at the terminal for fast service, a driver would push on ahead. Too often the caravan next day would come across the smoking debris of the wagons, in its midst the mangled and mutilated remains of what once had been a man.
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A GRAY LIFE OF DANGER
Though the life was not attended with any large degree of profit, a freighter usually continued in his occupation till the railroad took it away from him. Possibly the best conditions were on the road to Prescott, a view expressed by a young Mormon "swamper." Around the camp-fire one night, while the "mule skinners" were discussing their opportunities in life, the lad broke in: "You know what I'd do if I was rich ? I'd buy a bang-up team and a Yuma wagon, and I'd go to freighting on the Prescott road and wouldn't live on nothin' but canned goods."
On this same Prescott road the traveler by stage rarely was out of sight of a freight team, distinguished by its cloud of dust, the driver coated from the pulverized roadway. Each town made provision for the freighter in mud-walled corrals of large size, wherein a degree of protection was afforded the goods and where forage could be had, as well as wagon repairs and shoes for the mules.
While the life sometimes may have appeared of the grayest, beside the danger from outlaw or Indian, the vicissitudes of the road sometimes gave a variation not welcomed. The load as a rule was adjusted on a basis of a reason- ably good road. When there was sand or when a hill had to be climbed, the rear wagons were dropped and the bad ground was passed before the team was brought back, sometimes ten miles, a process known as "doubling up." Some- times this process was changed by the doubling of the teams of several outfits, till as many as forty mules would be tugging at a single wagon to get it over such a grade as that of Black Cañon. At the foot of a grade usually was a ceremony that seemed uniform. Whips did not seem particularly popular, though carried. Instead, when difficulty loomed ahead, the driver took from the side of the wagon a long-handled shovel and, carefully and conscientiously, with its blade beat every mule in the team. Possibly the idea was that noise with the mules was just as effective as pain. With the first pull on the jerk line every mule was in the collar and with the second every trace was being strained to its capacity.
The days were not always dusty ones on the roads of Arizona, for the dry wash may be a raging torrent within a few hours. A typical episode was that in which one of the Sears brothers was concerned. In the canon of the Has- sayampa, where he had made camp for the night, near the Brill ranch, with several teams, he was awakened from slumber by a roaring noise that could mean only the coming of water from a cloudburst. The mules hurriedly were cut loose and were driven out of the river bed. Sears, not so fortunate, took refuge in a tall willow tree just as the flood tore down upon him through the narrow gorge. The tree bent as each wave came, and Sears, desperately clinging to a limb, repeatedly went far down into the flood only to be brought back by the elasticity of the bough just as his breath was about failing. At daylight he was rescued by means of a rope thrown from the bank. Of the wagons and their contents nothing remained in sight.
Another freighter, with a single wagon, cached a part of his load of dyna- mite at the foot of the short Hell Canon grade, north of Prescott, reloading at the top the boxes brought from the bottom on his shoulders. As he started with the last box, the wagon load at the top of the hill unaccountably exploded, and of wagon and mules very little was left. Vol. 1-19
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