USA > Arizona > Arizona, prehistoric, aboriginal, pioneer, modern; the nation's youngest commonwealth within a land of ancient culture, Vol. II > Part 11
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Almost since the establishment of a school law in Arizona women have been permitted to vote in school elections, when they were mothers of children of school age or property owners. Along this same line was a bill that passed the Legislature of 1897, that gave suffrage in municipal elections to taxpayers, re- gardless of sex. This law later was found defective.
Women's rights has been before almost every legislative session in Arizona back as far as 1891. Governors Hughes and Murphy recommended it. Fre- quently one house would pass an enfranchisement bill after assurance had been
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received that the other body would kill it. Once, in spite, the second house passed the measure, when the governor was known to be more than anxious to attach his signature. The Legislature took a recess long enough to receive the tearful thanks of the female lobbyists. When the women had gone to telegraph the good news, the Council reconvened, recalled the bill and killed it very dead indeed. The Twentieth Legislature and Governor Murphy in 1899 seemed interested and much legislative work that year was done by the women, led by President Carrie Chapman Catt of the National Equal Suffrage Association.
On the Legislature of 1901 the women made an exceptionally determined at- tack, represented on the floor by Assemblyman Andrew Kimball. On final action in the House only eight voted for the measure, after Assemblyman James had moved that the bill "be laid on the table with reverent and gentle hands, to be covered over with beautiful flowers and there lie till the meeting of the next Legislature."
Female suffrage in Arizona nearly became a reality in the Legislature of 1903. The two legislative bodies were far from friendly and when the House passed a suffrage measure the Council unexpectedly concurred by a vote of eight to four. So the bill went to Governor Brodie, who in the latter hours of the twenty-second legislative session, much to the relief of the legislators gen- erally, transmitted to the House his veto of the measure. The message was received with applause from the floor and the veto was sustained by a vote of fourteen to eight. The governor's message recited briefly that in the opinion of the executive the bill was not within the powers of the Legislature to legis- late upon, that it was not consistent with the Constitution of the United States and was beyond the constitutional limitations of the Legislature. However pleasing the veto was to a majority of the legislators, there was consternation in the galleries, where a hundred suffragists had congregated to enjoy their triumph.
In 1909 there started a regular campaign for suffrage, led by Mrs. Frances Willard Munds of Prescott, Mrs. Pauline O'Neill and Mrs. L. LaChance of Phoenix and a half dozen others who believed it a holy crusade. An organizer was brought in and the women of the territory were brought into line in sys- tematic manner, with clubs in every town. In the first State Legislature a suffrage bill made no progress but one that called for submission of the ques- tion to a popular vote came within one vote of passing.
Then it was that the women abandoned the Legislature and appealed their case to the people, favored by the very progressive laws established by a con- stitutional convention that, like that of 1893, refused the women enfranchise- ment. The appeal was made in the election of 1912. The men responded and. by a vote of about two to one, lifted women to full political equality.
The result by no means has been incendiary. Undoubtedly it has had much to do with the vote by which Arizona, from January 1, 1915, abolished the traffic in liquor. But, in a general way, the political complexion of the state has been affected not at all. The relative balance between the parties seems to have remained the same. A few more women are to be seen around the public ยท offices. A woman, Mrs. Pauline O'Neill, was a presidential elector, Mrs. Munds has gone to the State Senate, and Mrs. Rachel Berry, another strong character, a daughter of Rufus C. Allen of the Mormon Battalion, has served in the second
Mrs. Rachael Berry
Mrs. Frances W. Munds
MEMBERS OF ARIZONA STATE LEGISLATURE
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House of Representatives from Apache County. The last election found women voting in about the same proportion as men and the campaign and election were the cleaner for their presence. Even cleaner will be succeeding elections, it is felt, through the separation of politics and liquor.
An interesting judgment was given in February, 1914, by the Supreme Court of Arizona in a case wherein the property of a husband had been attached on a judgment of $6,500 secured by his stenographer against his wife, who had inflicted bodily injuries upon the employee. The court decided that when woman was enfranchised in this state, she thereupon assumed full liability for her own acts, her husband liberated from the position of acting guardian, a relationship recognized in most of the states. Had the ruling been otherwise it would have been a grim joke, for the man and wife in the meantime had separated.
The State Federation of Women's Clubs, a body that is non-partisan in every sense, was organized in Phoenix in November, 1901, the idea brought to Arizona by Miss Anne Rhodes, a vice president of the New York Federation. The Fed- eration now has membership of clubs, in every part of the state, including organizations devoted to every phase of feminine interest in civies and the arts.
CHRISTENING A BATTLESHIP WITH WATER
The first American warship of importance to bear the name of "Arizona," slid from the ways of the Brooklyn navy yard in June, 1915, christened with the first water over the Roosevelt dam, from a bottle broken against her prow by Miss Esther Ross of Prescott. Inquiry develops the fact that two vessels before had borne the name, though only one was of any importance. She was an iron, paddle-wheel steamer, built at Wilmington, Delaware, in 1858. Her name was changed during the Civil war, when she became the bloekade runner "Caroline." While enroute from Havana to Mobile, loaded with munitions of war, she was captured, October 28, 1862, by the Federal warship "Montgomery." She was condemned in a prize court at Philadelphia, sold to the Government for $845,000, given her original name of "Arizona," and assigned to the Gulf squadron, armed with a battery of six guns. She participated in a number of important engagements along the gulf coast, at Sabine Pass, and on Red River, till destroyed by an accidental fire while on her way up the Mississippi River from Southwest Pass, to New Orleans. Four of her crew of ninety-eight men were lost in the fire.
The new Arizona when she goes into commission will have displacement of 31,400 tons. She is 608 feet long, will have a speed of twenty-one knots, and will have cost the Government more than $13,000,000 to build and equip. She will have a main battery of twelve fourteen-inch guns, firing projectiles that weigh 1,400 pounds each, in addition to a secondary battery of twenty-two five- ineh guns. Her crew will number about 1,000 officers and men.
CHAPTER XXXII MINING AND MINERS
Prospectors Ever in the Vanguard of Civilization-Wealth that has Come Through a "Grubstake"-"Lost Mines" of the Southwest-The Miner Party-Fraudulent Mining Schemes-Arizona Diamonds that Came from Africa-Quijotoa's Boom.
It is a curious and little appreciated fact that the miner is the scout of civilization. He braves the savage, the desert's heat, the Arctic's cold. Alone, he fearlessly penetrates regions wherein his foot is the first to tread. It was the pursuit of golden dreams that sustained the weary marches of the Spanish explorers of America. Thus it was with Arizona. Coronado's quest, four hundred years ago, was for the gold of the Seven Cities. Though the Spaniards found no gold in Cibola, they found it elsewhere, and for centuries the greatest revenues of the Spanish crown were from mines now included in Southern Arizona. The Spaniard mainly confined his operations to Pimeria, among peaceable tribes. The Anglo-Saxon went even farther when he came into possession of the land. There is not a valley in Northern or Eastern Arizona that has not its tale of prospectors ambushed by Apaches. Yet, step by step, the Apaches were driven back. Following the prospector and the miner came the trader, the cattle rancher, the farmer, the homeseeker, till today Arizona's civilization, based upon the mine, is as sound and as modern as is that of much older commonwealths. No longer is mining the only industry, but it is still the chief. It is well that it is so, for the dollar from under the ground is a new dollar and a whole dollar. The bright golden bar from the assayer's den in the stamp mill means so many more actual dollars added to the money in circulation; every drop of the fiery stream from the converter's lip, means just so much more permanent wealth brought into being for the good and use of mankind. And mining has passed the experimental stage. "Luck" counts for little in the business. Nearly every great fortune of the West has been made in mining, and nearly every fortune has been made by men of good, hard horse sense, who went in on their judgment and not on their hopes and enthus- iasm.
Though many of the people of Arizona for years clung in affection to the 16-to-1 theory, it was a fact that the demonetization of silver really had little effect upon Arizona. Broadly stated, almost every silver mine within the ter- ritory had closed before silver had sunk below a dollar an ounee. The famous mines at MeCracken, Tombstone, Silver King, Richmond Basin, Mack Morris
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and in the Bradshaws about all had been closed down and there remained very little exploration for silver outside of Mohave County.
OPTIMISTS OF THE HILLS
The professional prospector of the Southwest is practically of the past. As a rule he lived on a "grub stake" furnished by some gamblesome group of individuals in the town wherein the prospector made his headquarters. The law of such eo-partnerships was definitely recognized. As a rule there was no very close agreement made between the parties; rarely was any contraet put down in writing, but the unwritten law of the land was that the man who furnished the "grub stake" got a half interest in any location that was made by the prospeetor during the time when he fed upon "grub" furnished by his urban partner. It was rare indeed that such agreements were violated. The prospeetor nearly always kept faith. The system came into Arizona from Nevada and California, where many of the fortunes realized by country store- keepers, saloonkeepers and gamblers came through modest "grub stakes" fur- nished some old prospeetor.
The prospector's outfit was of the simplest, in keeping with his life and taste. There was always a burro, usually one that had had years of experience in the prospeeting game, and that never strayed far from the camp, however transient it might be. Wonderful tales are told of these prospecting burros of old; they were fond of bacon rinds, and would always leave the sage brush and eatclaw, upon which they were supposed to thrive, to join the prospector in consuming the last of the baking-powder biscuits.
The prospector of old was a man sustained by a boundless faith and never- quenehed hope. In reality he was a gambler of the most pronounced type; every hill held for him the chance of a bonanza, and no rocky point was passed with- out an investigating tap from his hammer; every iron-stained dyke had to be sampled in his gold pan. Most of the prospectors were overly sanguine; they fairly loaded themselves and their principals down with prospects, on which the annual assessment work would have cost far more than the value of the ground. Many a prospector has boasted that he held even 100 locations. To have fulfilled the letter of the mining law, such a number of elaims would have necessitated the expenditure of $10,000 in annual assessment work, yet the individual speaking might have assets on which could not have been realized $10.
All through the hills of Arizona are to be found the monuments left by these prospectors, where they first located and then tested claims that were worthless in nearly every instance. They were looking for sudden riches, and failed to understand the philosophy of the latter-day miner, worked out by hard experience, that mining, after all, is a manufacturing industry, and that the greatest profits are not found in rich pockets of silver and gold, but in the percentage of income over expense that can be gained by the working of large quantities of ore of fairly uniform grade, handled almost meehanieally and under the most economical conditions.
The prospeetor's life was rough, and yet not particularly laborious; he drifted through the hills on trips that were limited only by the quantity of grub he carried or could command. As a rule he slept out in the open, whatever the weather, and his diet was based unendingly upon bacon and black coffee, with
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sour-dough or baking-powder bread on the side. Tobacco, of course, was an absolutely essential feature of his ration. When the trip was up and his loca- tions had been recorded, rarely did the professional prospector ever work upon the mines he had found. If the find proved good, he sold out for some modest sum, which he often spent in dissipation. Then it was back again to the hills. with the same old burro, living a life which he would not have exchanged for any other.
A very different type was the miner who did occasional prospecting, usually when he was out of work or when he got tired of the darkness underground and wanted a trip into the hills in communion with the face of Nature, instead of her heart. A man of this sort usually paid his own way and held fast to anything good that he found. Not necessarily of higher type than the profes- sional hunter of mines, he was of more substantial character and in hundreds of instances graduated into the class of mine-owning capitalists and became one of the leading citizens of his locality.
A BLIND MINER AND HIS WORK
Mohave County has given the world many instances of rare courage in its pioneer days, but nothing finer than the tale how a blind miner, Henry Ewing, unaided sunk a shaft on his Nixie mine, near Vivian, not far from the present camp of Oatman. It was in 1904, after Ewing, a gentleman of culture, had lost his eyesight. Despite the warning of friends, he persisted in returning to his mine, where he rigged up leading wires, to assure him a degree of safety and then set up a windlass over his twenty-foot hole. He blasted and dug and hauled the ore buckets to the surface and cared for himself in camp, his worst adventure an encounter with a rattlesnake and narrow escape from death on the trail. Another experience was falling from a ladder a distance of thirty feet, receiving serious injuries, yet managing to climb out and to seek assistance at a nearby mining camp.
Almost as much pluck has been shown by several miners who have developed their claims alone. In the Hualpai Mountains, Frank Hamilton started upon such a work in 1874 and alone sunk two shafts, 100 and 50 feet deep. In the same district a memorandum has been found of J. L. Doyle, who alone sunk two 65-foot shafts and connected them with a drift. Enoch Kile, a Yavapai County miner, single-handed sunk a 75-foot shaft and doubtless many other such instances could be found.
ARIZONA'S MANY "LOST MINES"
Almost every prospector, whether professional or tenderfoot, had his own pet "lost mine" that he looked for. Hundreds of "lost mine" stories have been localized everywhere over the West. The richest always was somewhere out in the desert, beyond water, or within almost inaccessible mountains, where wild Indians guarded the golden secret handed down to them by their fore- fathers. Of course, most of these tales were merely inventions or distorted dreams. But the prospector, with only his burro for companionship, was wont to dream strange dreams and, eventually, to transmute them into what he con- sidered reality. On the deserts lie the bones of scores of men who believed
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these tales and who staked their lives in the search for things which did not exist.
One of the best authenticated of these stories was of the lost "Soldier" mine. The story has had little embellishment and, in part, may be true. Briefly narrated, it is this: In the summer of 1869 Abner MeKeever and family were ambushed by Apaches on a ranch near the Big Bend of the Gila. McKeever's daughter, Belle, was taken captive. A number of soldiers gave chase. The Apaches separated into several bands, whose trails were followed by small detachments of soldiers, the most westerly by Sergeant Crossthwaite and two privates, Joe Wormley and Eugene Flannigan. Two of their horses dropped of fatigue and thirst and their provisions ran out. Taking some of the horseflesh with them, they struck northerly, seeking water in what is sup- posed to have been the Granite Wash range of mountains in Northern Yuma County. Water was found just in time to save their lives, for Wormley already had become delirious. In the morning they found the spring fairly paved with gold nuggets. Above it were two quartz veins, one narrow and the other sixteen feet wide. The soldiers dug out coarse gold by the aid of their knives. About fifty pounds of this golden quartz they loaded on the remaining horse and then set out for the Gila River. Less than a day's journey from the river, the three men separated, after the horse had dropped dead. Wormley reached the river, almost demented from his sufferings and unable to guide a party back into the desert. Men struck out on his trail and soon found Flannigan, who would have lasted only a few hours longer. He was able to tell the story of the gold find, and the rescuing party went farther to find Crossthwaite's body. In a pocket was a map, very roughly made and probably very inaccurate, on which he had attempted to show the position of the golden spring. Still better evidence was secured a few days later in the discovery of the dead horse, with the gold ore strapped to his back. The ore was all that Flannigan claimed and $1,800 was realized from its sale. Flannigau made several unsuccessful attempts to return to the find, but he dreaded the desert and never went very far from the river. He died in Phoenix in 1880. The district into which the party penetrated has been thoroughly prospected during the past twenty years and contains many mines of demonstrated richness. It is possible that the mountain was the Harqua Hala. The find might have been the later famous Bonanza, in a western extension of the mountain, from which several millions of dollars in free gold were extracted. Farther west, around Tyson's Wells, also has been found placer gold, though none of these discoveries seem to exactly fit the special conditions of the Lost Soldier mine.
Another lost "Soldier" mine was found by a scouting soldier from old Fort Grant in the hills north of the Gila River, not very far from the mouth of the San Pedro. His discovery was of quartz speckled with free gold. The country about has been thoroughly prospected since that time and mines of import- ance have been worked in that vicinity, but the nearest approach to the dis- covery of the old-time bonanza has been in the finding of placer gold in several of the gulches.
Most of the stories of lost mines had to them an Indian annex. Usually the story ran that the Indians would bring in gold and silver, but would refuse to tell the secret of their wealth. Ross Browne told in 1863 that at the store of
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Hooper & Hunter in Arizona City he saw masses of pure gold as large as the palm of the hand, brought in by adventurers who stated that certain Indians had assured them that they knew places in the mountains where the surface of the ground was covered by the same kind of yellow stones. But neither threats nor presents, whiskey, knives, tobacco, blankets, all the Indians craved, could induce the savages to guide the white man to the fabulous regions of wealth. The explanation then was given that the Indians were afraid that the white men would come in such numbers that the Indian preponderance of population would be lost.
THE "NIGGER BEN" AND "LOST DUTCHMAN"
Most popular of lost mine stories in pioneer days was that of the "Nigger Ben." A. H. Peeples, one of the Weaver party, to which Ben also belonged, in 1891 told the editor what he knew of the legend.
Nigger Ben-and he was a good man if his skin was black-was the only one of us who dared to prospect around very much alone. The Indians would not harm him, evidently on account of his color. He struck up a friendship with several Yavapai chiefs, even when they were the most hostile to the other miners, and they told him of a place where there was much gold, far more than on Rich Hill, where we were working. Ben took a nugget from our stock that was about the size of a man's thumb and showed it to a chief who was especially friendly with him. The Indian said he had seen much larger pieces of the same substance and started off to exhibit the treasure to him. Ben was taken to some water holes, about sixty-five miles northwest of Antelope, toward MeCracken, in southern Mohave County. When there, however, the chief would show him no further, seemingly being struck by some religious compunctions he hadn't thought of before. All he could be induced to do was to toss his arms and say, "Plenty gold here; go hunt." Ben did hunt for years and I outfitted him myself several times and believe he finally died of thirst on the desert. Numbers of others have tried to find the Nigger Ben diggings, but they have not been discovered as yet. Ed Schieffelin, who discovered the Tombstone mines, wrote me several months ago, asking about them. I gave him all the information I had on the subject and he is now out with a large outfit thoroughly prospecting the whole of that region. I am confident the gold is there.
One variety of the "Lost Dutchman" story concerns the operations of a German who made his headquarters at Wickenburg, in the early seventies. He had a very irritating habit of disappearing from the camp once in a while, going by night, and taking with him several burros, whose feet would be so well wrapped that trailing was impossible. He would return at night, in equally as mysterious a manner, his burros loaded with gold ore of wonderful richness. Efforts at tracking him failed. The country for miles around was searched carefully to find the source of his wealth, which could not have been very far distant. The ore was not the same as that at Vulture. The location of the mine never became known to anyone, save its discoverer. He disappeared as usual one night, and never returned. The assumption that he was murdered by Apaches appears to have been sustained by a prospector's discovery near Vulture in the summer of 1895 of the barrel of an old muzzle-loading shotgun, and by it, a home-made mesquite gun stock. The gun had been there so long that even the hammer and trigger had rusted away. Near by was a human skeleton, bleached from long exposure. The next find was some small heaps of very rich gold rock, probably where sacks had decayed from around the ore, and then at a short distance was discovered a shallow prospect hole, sunk on a
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gold-bearing ledge. The ore in the heaps was about the same character as that which had been brought into Wickenburg in the early days by the "Lost Dutch- man," but it didn't agree at all with the ore in the shallow prospect hole, which was not considered worthy of further development.
In the winter of '79 some trouble was stirred up among confiding tender- feet by the publication of a story in the Phoenix Herald, printed as a fake so plainly transparent that he who ran might have read. It told of the arrival of a prospector from the depths of the Superstitions, whence he had been driven by pigmy Indians, who had swarmed out of the cliff dwellings. His partner had been killed, and he had escaped only by a miracle. But the couple had discovered some wonderful gold diggings, from which an almost impossible quantity of dust had been accumulated by a couple of days work. The story was widely copied, and from eastern points so many inquiries came that the Herald editor had to have a little slip printed to be sent back in reply. On the slip was the word "fake." The editor feared to even remain silent, for most of the letters told of the organization in eastern villages of parties of heavily-armed men to get the gold dust or die in the attempt, and there might have been dire consequences on the head of the imaginative journalist had Phoenix been reached by even one of the desperate rural eastern expeditions.
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