USA > Arizona > Arizona, prehistoric, aboriginal, pioneer, modern; the nation's youngest commonwealth within a land of ancient culture, Vol. II > Part 2
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Hearing the report of a gun up Granite Creek, Bob went cautiously up that way to investigate, expecting to find the Walker party or Apaches. He found Capt. Pauline Weaver and a Dutchman. To Bob's questions about a party of miners, Weaver said he had "not seen a living soul in the country outside himself, the Dutchman, and Apaches; but yesterday I was up this mountain and I saw a smoke over east there and I know it was not an Apache smoke; perhaps the people you are looking for made the smoke." Although the "smoke" was not more than ten or twelve miles distant, old Captain Weaver, who had lived with the Indians since 1841, was so independent or so indifferent that he didn't care enough about the matter to look up the party of whites whose smokes he had seen many times. Pishon made his way over to "Walker's Gulch," where he found that party. Bob remained here with the miners. Clark investigated the mining situation, etc., while Pishon had an interview with Benedict to ascertain, if possible, the present and future intentions of the Joe Walker party.
Captain Pishon's orders were to find the Walker party. If the party was not permanently located to follow it, and if it should swing around towards the Rio Grande and Texas, to arrest the whole party when it reached the Rio Grande, and confine the bunch at Fort Seldon or Craig. If permanently located, then to select a site for a military camp as near the Walker party as was consistent. Pishon selected a site near where Walker Gulch enters the Agua Fria, about where King S. Woolsey put up the first house in Northern Arizona, but now known as Bowers' Ranch, fourteen miles southeast of Prescott. This done, Captain Pishon returned to New Mexico, passing through Albuquerque in August, 1863, enroute to Santa Fé.
Soon after receiving Pishon's report, Carleton ordered a large expedition out to establish Fort Whipple at the site selected, or, in the discretion of the commanding officer, at some other site near the Walker party. The transportation and military supplies for this expedition were made up at Fort Union, which place it left on the 5th of October, 1863, with orders to rendezvous at Fort Wingate. The outfit from Union consisted of sixty mule teams, six yoke of cattle to the wagon. Moore was head wagonmaster. I joined the outfit at Albuquerque as "bullwhacker" and drove one of the big teams until I was assigned to drive the doctor's ambulance after reaching Jacob's Well, west of the Zuñi Village. We had 500 head of beef cattle and 1,800 head of Navajo sheep for mutton. These sheep had been captured by Kit Carson's command, then fighting the Navajos. The personnel of the command, which left (old) Fort Wingate November 4, 1863, consisted of two companies of the First California Volunteer Infantry. Captains Hargrave of "C" and Benson of "F," Lieutenants Nelson, Taylor and Pomeroy, Major Willis, commanding, Doctor Lieh and wife (the first white woman to locate in Northern Arizona), Captain Pishon and a detachment of fifteen men, as guides for the expedition. In due time the outfit reached Chino Valley and Major Willis decided to establish the fort at that point, which was done on the 20th day of December, 1863. Our expedition made so plain a trail that the Goodwin party could easily follow it and needed no guide.
THE FIRST CAMP IN LITTLE CHINO VALLEY
Banta's story of the establishment of Fort Whipple is sufficient in itself. The military records tell that Major Edw. B. Willis, First California Volunteer Infantry, with Co. C, Capt. J. P. Hargrave, and Co. F, Capt. Henry M. Ben- son, left Wingate November 7, 1863, and marched to Fort Whipple, 340 miles, arriving December 7, though Co. F may have been delayed, as its arrival date is set down as December 21. Co. F remained at Clark, or Whipple, till the fol- lowing July, but Hargraves' command was at Whipple till muster out, late in the following year. Chaves, after a stay of a couple of months, returned with Butcher and Chacon to Wingate, where he took command. A detachment of New Mexican volunteers, under Captain Thompson, was at Whipple late in 1864.
The population of this section about the time of the governor's arrival was not inconsiderable. Conner writes: "In November, 1863, men were arriving
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by the hundreds. John Dickson and I counted arrivals up to 800 and then gave it up." Major Willis estimated the mining population around Prescott at 1,500 and in the Mojave country at nearly 1,000.
The post in Little Chino Valley was a busy one, both before and after the governor's arrival. Major Willis had called a council of 100 Hualpais, who had agreed to the major's announcement that he would shoot any Indian caught stealing. The Miner of a subsequent date called the Hualpai "a poor, degraded Indian, without spirit and many think not chargeable with any of the outrages committed." The Pinal Apaches were found very different, abounding in pluck and audacity. Fifteen of them had robbed King Woolsey, on his Agua Fria ranch, of thirty head of cattle. At the time he was called, "one of our most daring and skillful Indian fighters, and believes fully, as he has good reason to, in the extermination policy." Already Woolsey had been at the head of a punitive expedition against the Apaches, in which he had slaughtered twenty or more.
Indian news for years constituted the main feature of journalism in northern Arizona. This, from the first issue of the Miner, of March, 1864, is a fair example of the news of the period :
On Saturday afternoon Messrs. Vickroy and Smith, of the Lower Hesiampa diggings, waited upon Secretary McCormick with a request from the people of that district for military protection. They reported that on Wednesday a very large body of Apaches had entered the district and killed eight of the miners, five Mexicans, and that some twenty more were missing. The secretary immediately solicited Captain Pishon, commanding in the absence of Major Willis, to send a force to the Hesiampa, and at nightfall, by order of the captain, twenty of Captain Butcher's Missouri volunteers were upon the road. Messrs. Vickroy and Smith expressed much satisfaction with the prompt response to their appeal. It is their opinion that the Apaches meditate a severe and continued campaign against the miners on the Hesiampa and at Weaver.
EVOLVING A GREAT SEAL
It is doubtful if very much was done at the Little Chino Valley camp in the way of government, though Marshal Duffield, on arrival, busied himself arranging for a census. Secretary McCormick had evolved a great seal, thus described at the time :
"The design, that of a stalwart miner, standing by his wheel-barrow, with pick and shovel in hand, the upturned 'paying dirt' at his feet, and the auriferous hills behind him, with the motto 'Ditat Deus' (God enriches), forms an appropriate and striking combination. Objection has been made to the wheel-barrow and short-handled shovel, but both are used in our mines, and are thus properly introduced." The "auriferous hills behind" have been understood to represent the San Francisco Peaks (which are not auriferous), but old timers fix the locality of the pictured scene as "Seal Mountain," on the Hassayampa River, near Walnut Grove.
Governor Goodwin seems to have been active with intelligent appreciation of the difficulties of his office and of the necessity for early organization. With a military escort he toured the valleys of the Verde and Salinas, probably reaching as far down as the present site of Phoenix. At one point the party surprised a rancheria, within which were killed five Indians and where two Indians were wounded. But trouble was not leaden-footed in its pursuit of
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the governor. It overtook him at least as early as May 18, 1864, when he moved the seat of government to the brand new town of Prescott, instead of to Tucson or La Paz, each of which believed the capital its own by right. Then it should be remembered that a very large part of the population was of southern bias-while Goodwin, of course, was a strong upholder of the President and his policies.
EARLY DAYS OF PRESCOTT
Conner tells that the first improvements on Granite Creek in 1864 were a cabin and a corral, built by Van Smith, who cared for the animals of new
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arrivals. His first herder, Joseph Crosthwaite, was killed by Indians within one hundred yards of where the buildings of the later Fort Whipple were built. Half of the stampeded herd of 160 animals ran toward the Prescott woods, where Conner was helping Bob Groom lay off the new townsite, and then returned to Smith's corral. The other half circled easterly. The raiding Indians, on reaching Lynx Creek, ran across a Mr. Moore, Sam C. Miller and Dr. J. T. Alsap, gave them a running battle to an old mining cabin, added their three animals to the fleeing herd and "passed on like the wind, leaving Miller shot twice through the same leg."
According to Conner, Miller Valley, on the outskirts of the later Prescott towusite, was located in three small land claims in June, 1863, by himself and Jake and Sam Miller.
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was given "in honor of the eminent American writer and standard authority upon Aztec and Spanish-American history." The names given the streets were in keeping with the spirit of the gathering and to this day commemorate the deeds of the early pioneers and the services of the first territorial officials.
There had been a change, May 18, from the Little Chino Valley site to a new Fort Whipple site, where the post now is, on ground secured from Van C. Smith. Smith, Hezekiah Brooks and Bob Groom were named as commissioners to lay off the new town, Groom acting as surveyor. Smith was appointed the first sheriff of Yavapai County.
The initial settlement in Prescott appeared merely to have been by virtue of squatters' rights, so on November 6, 1866, the Legislature passed a memorial to Congress asking a donation of 320 acres of land as a townsite, reciting that the tract already had been platted into lots.
George Bernard claimed to have been the first postmaster, with his office under a tree. The first mail was from California, brought through by way of La Paz by a contractor named Grant.
The old capitol on Gurley Street was built of pine logs by Van Smith and Christy in 1864, and in its upper story, July 25, 1865, was held the first meeting of the first Masonic lodge organized within Arizona. The old log mansion of the first governor, in West Prescott, also was built in 1864 by Raible and Blair, though Banta names Loren Jenks as the contractor. About the same time was built an adobe, near the corner of Goodwin and Montezuma streets, owned by Michael Wormser. However, the first building erected within the corporate limits of the present Prescott was a log hut, still standing near Granite Creek in Goose Flat, later known as Old Fort Misery and for years the home of Judge Howard. In this house was held the first district court. This was the first social center of the community.
The first family to locate in Prescott is said to have been that of Joseph Ehle, who came with his wife and daughters early in 1864, though the Leih family also must have been in the vicinity. One of the Ehle girls, Mary, was married in November, 1864, to J. A. Dickson, the ceremony being performed by Governor Goodwin. In the following January was born Mollie Simmons, probably the first white child of Northern Arizona nativity.
Miss Hall has written that Mrs. Ehle brought to Prescott its first chickens, of Black Spanish strain, its first cat, from whose progeny a kitten was sold to a miner for an ounce of gold dust, and the first hives of honey bees, estimated to have cost $50 a stand. Mrs. Ehle found that bacon sold for 75 cents a pound in gold dust and that flour was held at $44 a sack in greenbacks. Sugar and lard each cost above 50 cents a pound.
Fannie B. Stephens, the first person to be given credentials as a school teacher in Northern Arizona, passed away in Los Angeles early in 1915. She taught in Prescott in 1864, in a primitive log hut on South Granite Street near Carleton, where she had only about six pupils. Her teaching experience was brief. Women were few and wives were in demand in those days and she soon was married to Lewis A. Stephens and with him went to the Stephens ranch at the Point of Rocks, where thereafter she was in the midst of a number of exciting Apache episodes.
Prescott was a distinctively American town from the very start and at no
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time in its history has it had any considerable number of Mexicans within its population. The architecture at no time accepted the Spanish-Moorish type so general in the towns further to the southward.
Elk, deer and antelope were common in Northern Arizona at the time of the white man's coming. Wm. H. Hardy told that it would not be uncommon to see 300 deer or antelope in a day's ride and that three crack shots left Prescott on one occasion and in three days killed a four-horse wagon load of game.
Hardy, who crossed the Colorado River January 2, 1864, told that that winter was an exceptionally severe one. Thomas Matthews, William King and Ned Morris, miners from Lynx Creek, bound for Fort Mojave after provisions, were storm-bound in Williamson Valley and would have perished had they not followed the trail of a large band of antelope, leading to a lower altitude. The following winter, on December 2, Hardy at Fort Whipple built what he believed was the first sleigh ever known in Arizona. A fortnight later a party of soldiers came into Whipple in hard plight. On the road from the San Francisco peaks their horses had died and the men escaped only by making snowshoes out of the horsehide.
TURNING TO AGRICULTURE
The American settlement of the Verde Valley began in January, 1865, when a party of men left Prescott to see if good farming land susceptible to irrigation could not be found on the river. At that time agricultural products brought high prices. Barley and wheat cost $20 per hundred and corn $2 more. There- fore the rewards of husbandry would be great if success were attained. The party of agricultural explorers consisted of James M. Swetnam, now a practic- ing physician in Phoenix, William L. Osborn, uncle of Arizona's present secre- tary of state, Clayton M. Ralston, Henry D. Morse, Jack Remstein, Thomas Ruff, later a prosperous Phonix rancher, Ed A. Boblette, James Parish and James Robinson. At that time the only ranch east of Prescott was that of King S. Woolsey, in the Agua Fria Valley, twenty-five miles distant from Pres- cott and about half way to the Verde Valley.
A site was determined upon by this first body of men near the mouth of Clear Creek and a return was made to Prescott. In February, with six loaded wagons drawn by oxen, a party of nineteen started from the capital, but divided on reaching the river. Swetnam and nine others camped at the original site selected, and Parish and the others on a point above where irrigation water would have to be taken from the Verde River. The Swetnam party dug a ditch from Clear Creek, only to find that it had been laid out with its end a trifle higher than its mouth. But the water finally was secured and land was cleared and broken, and in May over 200 acres had been planted in grain and garden stuff. That summer the pioneers lived royally, their own products supplemented by flour secured in Prescott at $30 per hundred, and bacon at 75 cents per pound. In August the first load of barley was taken to Prescott, headed and thrashed by hand, and was sold at Whipple for $17 per 100 pounds.
HOW ROSS BROWNE SAW ARIZONA
J. Ross Browne, who made a trip through Southern Arizona in December, 1863, in the following year, wrote an extremely interesting book concerning his travels, entitling it "The Apache Country." The writer was one of the early
PRESCOTT IN 1864
FIRST CAPITOL OF ARIZONA-WEST PRESCOTT
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day literary men of California and wrote a number of works that now seem to have disappeared from any but antiquarian libraries, but which were well worthy of more enduring fame.
His trip happened to be at a critical point of Arizona history-just as the territorial government had been formed, but while the American settlement was to be found only in a few scattered mining camps and along the stage routes. As the author very tersely puts it, "the melancholy fact can not be denied that Arizona has never yet had a population of over 3,000 and not a very good one at that." Even after his return he expressed a belief in the future of the wild and rather desolate country he had passed through and his final observa- tions are well worth reprinting:
I believe Arizona to be a territory wonderfully rich in minerals, but subject to greater drawbacks than any of our territorial possessions. It will be many years before its mineral resources can be fully and fairly developed. Immigration must be encouraged by increased military protection ; capital must be expended without the hope of immediate and extraordinary returns; civil law must be established on a firm basis, and facilities of communication fostered by legislation of Congress.
No country that I have yet visited presents so many striking anomalies as Arizona. With millions of acres of the finest arable lands, there was not at the time of our visit a single farmi under cultivation in the territory; with the richest gold and silver mines, paper money is the common currency; with forts innumerable, there is scarcely any protection to life and property ; with extensive pastures, there is little or no stock; with the finest natural roads, traveling is beset with difficulties; with rivers through every valley, a stranger may die of thirst. Hay is cut with a hoe, and wood with a spade or mattock. In January one enjoys the luxury of a bath as under a tropical sun, and sleeps under double blankets at night There are towns without inhabitants, and deserts extensively populated; vegetation where there is no soil and soil where there is no vegetation. Snow is seen where it is never seen to fall, and ice forms where it never snows. There are Indians the most docile in North America, yet travelers are murdered daily by Indians the most barbarous on earth. The Mexicans have driven the Papagos from their southern homes, and now seek protection from the Apaches in the Papago villages. Fifteen hundred Apache warriors, the most cowardly of the Indian tribes in Arizona, beaten in every fight by the Pimas, Maricopas and Papagos, keep these and all other Indians closed up as in a corral; and the same Apaches have desolated a country inhabited by 120,000 Mexicans. Mines without miners and forts without soldiers are common, Politicians without policy, traders without trade, storekeepers without stores, teamsters without teams, and all without means, form the mass of the white population.
CHAPTER XXVI
LAW BROUGHT TO ARIZONA
Elections, Officials and Legislatures-McCormick's Continued Successes-Establishment of Courts-Creation of Counties-Highways-Yuma Land Dispute-A Loyal Peo- ple-Fremont's Governorship-Divorces and Lotteries-The Thieving Thirteenth- Bullion Tax Repeal.
May 26, 1864, an election was called by Governor Goodwin, to be held July 18. Poston, who was well-known in the South, was elected delegate to Congress, on a platform that called for support of the Union. He was opposed by W. H. Bradshaw, a democrat. Charles Leib, a Union man, also polled some votes. The campaign was not devoid of bitterness, there being claims that Poston even had "rung in" Papago Indian voters. Poston later admitted that he did little in Congress, wherein he likened himself to a tadpole among frogs. Congress was concerned in little but the war and its results. The Arizona delegate was given gratifying attention when he took the floor to talk on irrigation and secured an appropriation for a canal on the Mojave reservation. Extended reference to Poston's service will be found in a special chapter elsewhere in this volume.
The law was established in Arizona by the assignment of the judges to sta- tions. Howell was given the first district, with his court at Tucson, Allyn the second, at La Paz, and Turner the third, at Prescott,
Till a bond issue later was floated, little money was available for public uses, outside of the Federal pay roll. Up to November 1, 1865, the total receipts of the territorial treasurer had been only $1,189.06, nearly all turned in by the four counties.
The members of the Legislature, of whom a list will be found elsewhere, had been elected more or less at large. In the code adopted was made a division of the territory into counties, named after Indian tribes of their localities, namely, Mohave (probably an unintentional anglicizing of the Spanish Mojave), with county seat at Mojave City; Yuma (the only one that has preserved its boundaries to this day), with county seat at La Paz; Pima, embracing the Gadsen Purchase, south of the Gila, with county seat at Tucson; and Yavapai, north of the Gila and covering more than half the territory's area, with county scat at Prescott.
The governors of the early days, in order, were: John N. Goodwin, from August 21, 1863; R. C. McCormick, from April 10, 1866; A. P. K. Safford, from April 7, 1869, and John P. Hoyt, from April 5, 1877, till the coming of Fre- mont in 1878. The secretaries for the same period were McCormick under Goodwin, T. P. T. Cartter under McCormick, and Coles Bashford and John P.
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Hoyt under Safford. As the Presidents during this period were Lincoln, Johnson, Grant and Hayes, all were republican. The Federal judges appointed before 1878, the territory having an allotment of three, were W. F. Turner (chief justice), W. T. Howell, J. P: Allyn, H. F. Backus, H. H. Carter, John Titus (chief justice), Isham Reavis, C. A. Tweed and De Forest Porter. The last named remained in office from 1873 till 1881, an exceptionally long term for the times.
CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS
Governor Goodwin followed Poston in Congress, despite strong opposition from both the delegate, whose strength had singularly waned, and Judge Allyn, whose animosity, according to several private letters of the period, was per- sonal. But Goodwin received 707 votes, Allyn, 376, and Poston, only 260.
The office of delegate still remained in the official family at the third elec- tion, whereat was chosen Coles Bashford, a former Governor of Michigan, who had been serving at attorney general. He received 1,009 votes. Chas. D. Poston again unsuccessfully tried his strength with the voters, receiving 518 votes, and Samuel Adams tailed with 168 votes.
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