USA > Arizona > Arizona, prehistoric, aboriginal, pioneer, modern; the nation's youngest commonwealth within a land of ancient culture, Vol. I > Part 5
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Though the Navajo as early as 1744 were politic enough to express a desire to receive instruction in Christianity, a movement toward their conversion at that time, led by Padre Menchero, seemed to have been attended by dismal failure, even though reinforced by many gifts. Efforts toward imparting Christian instruction seem to have been handicapped by continual wars waged by the Navajo against their northern neighbors. The most systematic effort toward their Christianization started in the latter part of 1895, at Cienega Amarilla, northwest of Gallup, at the direction of Mother Katherine Drexel, who had founded the Order of Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for the Conversion of Indians and Negroes. A mission was established in 1897 at St. Michaels under charge of the Franciscan order. This mission has assumed a large degree of importance in later years through the unremitting and intelligent research of the missionaries into the Navajo tongue. The language of the tribe has been systematized by them and even a grammar has been published, primarily in order that the gospel might be given the tribesmen in written form. The Franciscans state that the Navajo language is a beautiful one, with conditions controlling the grammar that have no parallel in any known language, necessitating new rules. English letters are wholly incapable of carrying the word sounds and the lettering finally adopted by the friars, generally, is that of the Polish alphabet.
A similar work has been attempted at the Rehoboth mission of the Christian
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Reformed Church, six miles from Gallup. There, Rev. L. P. Brink of Tohachi, N. M., has had printed a translation of a part of the Bible into the Navajo vernacular, based upon an alphabet, dictionary and grammar prepared by him.
The total population of the reservation in 1913, reported by the Board of . Indian Commissioners, was 31,635, practically all of full blood. Inasmuch as the total Indian population of Arizona is set at several thousand less than the rating of this one tribe, it should be explained that the Navajo reservation of 12,000,000 acres extends over into New Mexico and Utah. In the same year the Navajos' estimated personal property consisted of 1,500,000 sheep and goats, 325,000 ponies and mules and 30,000 head of cattle. The blanket manufactures for that year approximated a value of $500,000 and agricultural products about $250,000. Upon the reservation a governmental survey has determined the timber to be worth $7,500,000, while the estimated profit on the mining of the coal in sight, at a very low figure, some time is expected to aggregate $150,000,000.
APACHE SUBDIVISIONS-RACIAL CHARACTER
It should be understood that the Apache people are by no means a nation and never have they been held together in any particular bonds of national or political union. Within Arizona, the principal bands include the Chiricahua, Pinaleño, Coyotero, Aravaipa, Tonto, San Carlos and a few others, annexes of one or another of this list. The Mojave-Apache and Yuma-Apache are Indians of Colo- rado River Valley origin, who drifted eastward and who were known in the early chronicles as Yavapai, or Yampai. Speaking a common language are the Mescal- lero of the Rio Grande Valley, the Ojos Calientes of the Mimbres and their allies, the Janos of northern Sonora, the Chiricahua of the Dragoon and Chiricahua Mountains, the Coyotero, Pinal or San Carlos of the White and Pinal Mountain section, and the Tonto of Tonto Basin. Yet despite their apparent consanguinity and the fact that they occupied contiguous territory, most of the bands were at war with each other and lived in continual fear of savage reprisals. The worst of these Indians from the standpoint of the American have been the Chiricahua, which have furnished the greater number of bandit gangs against which military operations have had to be directed.
The Aravaipa, who lived near the mouth of the San Pedro River, according to Connell, have a language distinctly their own, though in general characteristics and habits they resemble their neighbors.
Aboriginal industry among the Apache seems to be confined to the making of baskets, in which exceptional skill is shown. Possibly the greater number of the well-decorated Apache baskets in outside ownership have come from the allied Mojave-Apache.
The word "Apache" is understood to have its origin in the Zuni word for the Navajo, meaning simply "enemy." For themselves the Apache have much the same designation as the Navajo, "Tinneh" or "Diné." The Apache dialect is said to have a vocabulary rarely including more than 600 words and the Indian uses his supply with the utmost economy, making a look or gesture suffice wher- ever he may. According to Connell, the Apache, properly known as such, never scalp, but always crush the heads of their victims, to keep the late lamented from recognizing them, with possibly disastrous results, when met hereafter in the happy hunting grounds.
APACHE SQUAW WITH NOSE CUT OFF INDICATING ADULTERY SQUAW MACK, AL SIEBER AND TONTO SCOUTS, 1885
TALKLAI, APACHE CHIEF AN APACHE MANSION
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The Apache, in common with nearly all of the southwestern tribes, rarely ever camp in a river or creek bottom, usually choosing a little mesa or shelf somewhat removed from the water. There are a number of reasons for this: One is that the higher site was better capable of defense, but the principal cause is that the bottom land always is warmer in summer and cooler in winter than the mesa above.
Captain Bourke found the Apaches most singular in one respect. He had heard that certain of the tribes in Africa used castor oil in cooking, but no other tribe was so greedy for this medicine as were the Apaches. He tells, "Only on the most solemn occasions could they gratify their taste for castor oil-the condi- tion of the medical supplies would not warrant the issue of all they demanded. But taste is at best something which cannot be explained or accounted for; I recall that the trader at the San Carlos Agency once made a bad investment of money is buying cheap candies ; they were nearly all hoarhound and peppermint, which the Apaches would not buy or accept as a gift."
The wild Indian character at Fort Apache thus was set forth by Agent C. W. Crouse : "Apache morality is very low; he manifests little feeling of obligation toward any. To him lying and stealing are no great sins, just conveniences." Yet in a late report the agent at San Carlos wrote: "The Apaches are sensible Indians and are in my opinion progressing toward civilization in a very satis- factory manner." In common with other southwestern Indians they have become a labor reserve that eventually will be of the greatest value in the work of upbuild- ing the commonwealth.
Though the clan system is not so well developed among the Apache as with the more sedentary tribes, yet there are clans of many sort, each with its peculiar ceremonials and dances. Sacred to all Apache and Navajo are the bear and fish, which never are eaten. Banta tells how he drove a number of Navajo chiefs, insulted, from a conference by merely threatening them with a dried fish.
It is probable that the death roll from Apache forays would have been double the actual figures, however awful that number may be, were it not for a super- stition of the tribesmen that forbade an attack after nightfall. The Apache was an abnormally superstitious individual, to whom the rustling of the leaves indi- cated voices of invisible spirits and who cowered with dread at every manifesta- tion of natural forces that was not readily explainable to the processes of his limited mentality. He would march at night to be upon vantage ground at daylight, which was his favorite time to attack. A mail rider through dangerous country always made his journeys by night and if the journey were too long for one ride he would hide himself securely in some rocky fortress against the possible coming of the redskins. An interesting experience that well shows this feature of Apache custom was that of George Turner, an elderly resident of Globe, who, in 1882, while traveling at night in the Cherry Creek Valley, unex- pectedly came around the point of a rocky hill into the camp of a large band of hostiles, the same that later was broken up at the fight of the Big Dry Wash. Turner, feeling assured of death, rode past a number of small fires, around which the Indians had undoubtedly been crouching when they heard the sound of his horse's hoofs. But every Indian had fled into the rocks, from which undoubtedly a hundred pairs of eyes saw the old man pass, and yet he was allowed to go without molestation.
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As early as 1862, Agent W. F. N. Arny, in a report made to Col. Jas. L. Collins, New Mexican Superintendent of Indian Affairs, suggested that all the Apaches of New Mexico and Arizona should be gathered together upon one reservation, and reported a suitable location would be on the Gila, south of the Mogollon Mountains, about where the Indians eventually were herded by Crook. This suggestion followed after a similar one made by Colonel Bonneville in Sep- tember, 1857, he then stating that the Gila valley offered a location "most admir- ably adapted for the home of the Indians." Later the superintendent reported to the Secretary of the Interior that Confederate agents had been among the New Mexican Indians, Apaches, trying to stir them up against the federal government.
From La Paz, Hermann Ehrenberg, January 11, 1866, suggested to the Secretary of the Interior that all the unruly Apache be sent to join the Navajo on the Pecos reserve in northern New Mexico and that all the peaceful Indians of Arizona be placed on a reservation on the Gila below that of the Pima.
The White Mountain Indian reservation was established November 9, 1871, but has had a number of changes since that time. It lies generally north of the Gila River and has its head agency at San Carlos on that stream. It has been diminished on the westward in order to eliminate several mining fields. To the northward, within it, lies the military reservation of Fort Apache. The Apache comprehended within the main reservation generally have been transferred from other sections of the Southwest. They embrace a considerable number of sub- tribes or bands, not necessarily historically friendly or associated, a feature that permitted the employment of Indians as scouts with safety during military Apache campaigns.
The White Mountain reservation was extended in the latter part of 1872 to include the whole valley of the Gila River from New Mexico westward for 200 miles. This brought out an effective protest from the Legislature of 1873, in which was stated that the White Mountain Indians had never cultivated lands less than forty miles north of that river and that the upper part of the reserva- tion would not be used if reserved for them. It was further reported that "set- tlement has already commenced and large irrigating canals are now being con- structed in the valley of the Gila, a short distance above old Camp Goodwin ; that at this point is found the largest body of arable land in Arizona, and if opened to civilization is destined to become the largest settlement in the Terri- tory; that many have settled there in good faith and if now driven off will be compelled to abandon all they have; that by excepting this portion of the Gila Valley from the reservation, the rights and interests of the Indians will not in the least be impaired and simple justice will be done to a large number of indus- trious citizens and the prosperity of the Territory will be greatly advanced."
The issuance of rations to the Apache at San Carlos was discontinued July 1, 1902, save only in the way of charity, such as is the custom among other tribes. This was the very last of the ration system in Arizona.
The mountain-dwelling Apache first were gathered in the Verde Valley, at Fort Apache and in the Chiricahuas. There was fear that this lack of rations might send the Indians out on the warpath, but it is a fact there followed the fullest peace with the redskins.
OLD PIMA AGENCY, 1877
HOPI VILLAGE OF WALPI
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As the history of Apache warfare is a large feature in the history of Arizona, much will be found elsewhere in this work concerning this diverse tribe, sons of Cain within the Southwest.
THE FRIENDLY PIMA OF THE PLAINS
Only in the unhappy outbreak of 1751 has the Pima nation as a whole been other than friendly since the coming of the white people, and in that trouble the Gila Pimas had little part. The Pima naturally is of a very decent sort, happy in disposition and not at all quarrelsome with his neighbors, a reasonably good farmer and skilled in irrigation. As a rule the tribe has a rather virtuous repu- tation and the peculiar diseases of the pioneer period have done little damage. Living in more permanent habitations than their neighbors, it is to be deplored that tuberculosis has found many victims, while trachoma has attacked the tribe severely, though possibly in little greater degree than other Indians throughout the United States
When the Southern Pacific railroad came through in 1879, the Indians were free passengers on the freight trains, joyously accepting the opportunity for travel. The privilege had to be withdrawn, for not only did the redskins become a nuisance from their numbers, but the practice was found to be spreading small- pox among the tribes. Unlike their Yuman neighbors, the Pimas buried their dead, in a sitting posture, beneath an underground shelter of poles.
One of the early agents nearly forced the Pima on the warpath by an attempt to change tribal customs too suddenly. Especially, he insisted that the woman should ride and the man walk where only one pony was available. Signal fires blazed on the hilltops and there was a tribal gathering at Sacaton, where condi- tions were so serious that all of the whites, save the agency officials, were hurried away to Casa Grande. But peace was restored when Agent Wheeler acknowl- edged his error, thereafter declaring that the Pima were "the best Indians in the world." A later agent, A. H. Jackson, called his charges "a drunken and sullen people," showing he did not know how to approach them.
Pima records carry back but little into the past. The tribal history is to be found only in legends passed through generations, or engraved upon sticks, of which a half dozen have been found. Some of these sticks are still being kept up by duly honored tribal historians. In Frank Russell's excellent work on the Pima, is given a full transcript of a stick record that started in 1833 and that continued to date.
The principal chronicles were those of the never-ending warfare with the Apaches, who seem to have worried them from all sides. Also there was trouble with the Yumas, due to protection extended to the Maricopas, a Yuma offshoot at war with the parent stock.
The narrative on one stick started in 1833, some years after the Maricopas had fled their river brethren. It was a year of meteoric showers and of floods, that showed the wrath of the gods. A large band of Yumas crept up on the Maricopa village and captured a number of women. The Pimas overtook the war party at the Gila, saved the women and killed nearly all the invaders. Apache raids upon the settled and prosperous Pimas were common in those days, yet the year 1837 passed at Gila Crossing in peace. The following year a large war party of Apaches was destroyed. Truly Indian in its simple monotony is the
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chronicle of fights with marauding Apaches and revengeful Yumas, repeated year after year. Occasionally there is reference to Apache forays upon the Papagos. In 1850 record is made that 134 Yumas were killed and their bodies left on the field, on the slopes of the Estrella Mountains, south of the Gila, after the invaders had surprised the Maricopa village. Many Pimas were wounded but none killed. Despite this blow, the Yumas came again in 1857, reinforced by a number of Mojaves. They killed a number of Maricopa women, found gathering mesquite beans, and burned the Maricopa village. While the Yumas wasted time in the singing of triumphal songs, the Pimas gathered from every village and, by noon of the following day, occupied in force the ground between the Yuma eamp and the Gila River. Mounted Pimas and Maricopas repeatedly charged the enemy, doing large execution. The Yumas, exhausted by the fray and suffering from thirst, tried to break through the cordon and gain the river. In a last attempt, in compact body, they were ridden down by their mounted foes. Their formation was broken up and a hand-to-hand melee followed, from which only a single Yuma brave escaped. He had been stunned by a blow from a club and had been covered by a heap of the slain. At night, recovering consciousness, he managed to slip away, to carry to his tribesmen news of the disaster. To all of which, the red historian, as he fingered the stick, added, "And the Yumas came here to fight no more."
Of interest to the now populous Salt River Valley are tales of how in several instances Apache marauders were chased into the valley near Phoenix and Tempe. In 1850 three Apaches were surrounded on a hill near Tempe. They built a stone fort, but this was charged by the Pimas at sunset and the three were slain. Eight years later a large band of Apaches, caught out in the broad valley and unable to evade their mounted pursuers at the end of a thirty-mile flight, took refuge on the summit of Tempe Butte, where all save one met death behind rock defenses. Only a few years ago Pimas and Maricopas were prevailed upon to give a mimic battle upon this same butte, now embraced within the corporate limits of Tempe.
There was only passing reference to the Civil War, mainly in connection with the capture in 1861 of Agent Ammi M. White by "soldiers from the east," a Confederate column. This was important to the Pimas, as affecting the market for their wheat. Briefest of mention is made of the famous "Fight of the Caves," in the Salt River Canon in 1873, when a squadron of the Fifth Cavalry, assisted by Apache, Pima and Maricopa scouts, killed scores of Superstition Mountain Apaches, who refused to surrender. But, in the language of the Pima historian, "Owl Ear," "it was a sight long to be remembered !"
Brief mention is made in the chronicles to the only murder of a white man ever known in the tribe. It happened in 1880, near the Indian village of Casa Blanca, where two young Pimas killed a tramping American for his arms and a few dollars in silver. The Indian police soon found the culprits, who confessed and who thereafter were hanged in Florence. Their bodies were delivered up to their tribesmen, who agreed that full justice had been done. Yet there were a number of instances, nnrecorded on the sticks, where unoffending Pimas had been killed by white men, who went unpunished in the rough pioneer days.
Something of a lesson in temperance runs through the whole seventy-year narrative. Occasional references are made to "tizwin" debauches. One of the
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last of these, in the record of 1894, naively tells that, "tizwin was made secretly at Gila Crossing, but no one was killed." The domestic liquor, brewed from rotted corn, mescal or, later, from fruit of any kind, assuredly was of the fighting kind. It is held that overindulgence in the white man's distillations is of com- paratively late date. Possibly because tizwin no longer may be made, "bootleg- ging" by Mexicans became common among all Arizona Indians, leading to scores of arraignments before each session of the United States court. It is claimed that many Indians made an occupation of enticing Mexicans to sell them liquor, that witness fees may thus be secured. Prohibition has bettered these conditions.
The Pima are not only relatively industrious and honest, but they are brave and have been of service to the whites as scouts against the Apache. That they were not more generally employed is due wholly to a tribal custom that compelled eight days of purification of any one who had slain a man, even though com- mendably in war. As a result, a considerable part of a force in the field might be lost for a week to a commanding officer, while the Pima scouts joined in the ceremonials that made some one of their number again "square" with his gods.
IRRIGATED FARMS ON TWO RESERVATIONS
The Arizona Pima are gathered on agricultural lands along the Gila and Salt rivers in Pinal and Maricopa counties, with principal reservation headquarters at Sacaton. The main body of the tribe is unfortunate in one respect, for the Gila's summer flow was taken from the red farmer by irrigation works near Florence in the seventies, and the situation made still worse by the building of the large Florence canal in 1887. These works, in turn, were left dry by appropriations still further up the stream, in Graham County.
This spoliation of aboriginal rights has been protested for twenty years past, not for the purpose of restoring the river flow to the Indians, but to secure them some other adequate irrigation supply. Through the Reclamation Service of the Interior Department, electric power has been secured from the Roosevelt works and a large expanse of Indian land near Sacaton now is being supplied with pumped water. A large canal has been dug to take advantage of the Gila floods. But the main reliance is to be upon water storage at San Carlos, where, upon favorable report made by a trio of army engineers, may be built a dam, to cost about $6,000,000, designed for the storage of water to supply 40,000 acres of Indian land and 50,000 acres around Florence.
The Pima and Maricopa Indian reservation lies along the Gila River from a point a short distance below Florence down to the junction of the Gila and the Salt, embracing the ground upon which the Pima were found at the time of the coming of the white men. It is probable that the tribe has had the longest period of residence in any one locality of any of the southwestern Indians. The reserva- tion was established in February, 1859, with 110 square leagues of land. Engineer in charge was Col. A. B. Gray. At the conclusion of the survey gifts of farming implements, seeds and clothing, provided by Congress to the value of $10,000, were distributed to the Indians by Lient. Sylvester Mowry.
January 10, 1879, an order was issued extending the main Pima reservation eastward to join the White Mountain reserve, but there was an immediate and natural howl and the order was revoked. While there is no memoranda available of the lines of the proposed extension, it is not improbable that it would have
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taken in much of the fertile Gila Valley around Florence, as well as the great mining districts around Ray and Winkelman.
On the north bank of the Salt River, from a point about ten miles northeast of Phoenix and eastward to the mouth of the Verde River, lies the Salt River reservation, occupied by a few hundred Pima Indians, now of rather superior development, favored by the possession of good lands, well watered through perpetual water rights to a large flow from the Arizona canal.
These Indians, like the Mojave-Apache on the MeDowell reservation, have no ancient water rights, but have been especially favored in water distribution on purely philanthropic grounds. The Indians, upon the suggestion of white farmers of Tempe, who sought a northern buffer against raids from the hostile Apache, first settled on the Salt River about 1873. A few years later, however, there came protest from the farmers that found official expression in a memorial of the Legislature of 1877 addressed to Congress, representing that the Indians on Salt River had become a nuisance, particularly on account of their large bands of horses, which were roving at will over that portion of Maricopa County, greatly to the annoyance of the citizens thereof and creating a condition that might compel the citizens to abandon their homes unless the Government protect them. Possibly the milk in the cocoanut was found in a reference to the fact that the Indians had placed themselves on surveyed land opened for settlement and had driven away a number of persons who sought to locate homesteads thereon. The suggestion that the Indians be sent back to the reservation on the Gila appears to have met with scant consideration by the Indian Bureau or by Congress. The northern reservation was formally designated in 1879.
One of the strongest reservation forces for civilization has been Rev. Chas. H. Cook, a German clergyman of the Presbyterian Church, who came in 1870, after reading an article written by Gen. A. J. Alexander, commanding at Fort McDow- ell, on the needs and virtues of the Pimas. Dr. Cook has been the staunch defender of his wards through all the years and throughout has been held in affection even by the pagans of the tribe. Himself the only teacher in 1871, the reservation now has as large a percentage of school attendance as would be found in almost any American city, while churches, both Protestant and Catholic, num- ber several thousand communicants. Though the Pima were slow to accept Christianity, the writer knows that at times of flood the Gila has been dared by swimming Christian Indians who would not miss their Sabbath services. In Phoenix now is maintained the Cook Bible School, where a score or more of Indi- ans, mainly Pimas, are training for the Christian ministry, to work among their tribesmen.
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