USA > Arizona > History of Arizona, Vol. II > Part 4
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"I have seen death since, and repeatedly under circumstances almost equally awful, but never with so intense a shock. For a minute, that seemed an age, we were so unnerved that I doubt whether we could have resisted an attack, but fortunately our own situation soon brought us to our senses. We were on foot, two miles from the house, and the murderers, whoever they might be, could not be far off, if indeed the spy
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we had seen had not already started them after us. Looking toward the wagon, I thought I could discover other bodies, but we knew that every instant of time was of great importance, and without venturing to examine closer, we started homeward.
"There was only one white man at the ha- cienda, and a large number of peons, and we did not yet know whether the murderers were In- dians, or Mexicans who would probably be in collusion with our own workmen.
"If they were Indians, we might escape by reaching the house before they could overtake us, but if they were our Mexicans, we could hardly avoid the fate the employee at the house must already have met with.
"Taking each of us one side of the road, and looking out, one to the left, the other to the right, our revolvers ready, and the cat running before us, we walked quickly homeward, uncer- tain whether we were going away from or into danger. In this manner we went on until within a half a mile of the house, when we reached the place where the road lay for several hundred yards through a dense thicket-the very spot for an ambush. We had now to decide whether to take this the shorter way, or another, which by detaining us a few minutes longer would lead us over an open plain, where we could in the bright moonlight see every object within a long distance. The idea of being able to defend our- selves tempted us strongly toward the open plain, but the consciousness of the value of every min- ute caused us to decide quickly, and taking the shorter way, we were soon in the dark, close
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thicket. As we came out into the open valley, the sensation of relief was like that felt on escap- ing untouched from a shot you have seen de- liberately fired at you. Just before reaching the house, we heard Indian signals given and an- swered, each time nearer than before, but we gained the door safely, and found all as we had left it, the American unaware of danger was making bread, and the Mexicans were asleep in their quarters. We kept guard all night, but were not attacked.
"Before daylight we dispatched a Mexican courier across the mountains to the fort, and another to Tubac, and then went after Gros- venor's body. We found it as we had left it, while near the wagon lay the bodies of the two Mexican teamsters.
"We were now able to read the history of the whole of this murderous affair. The wagon must have been attacked within less than five minutes after we had seen it at noon, indeed while we were resting and smoking at the spring not four hundred yards from the spot. A party of Indians, fifteen in number, as we found by the tracks, had sprung upon the Mexicans, who seem unaccountably not to have used their firearms, although the sand showed the marks of a desperate hand to hand struggle. Having killed the men, the Apaches cut the mules loose, emptied the flour, threw out the ore, which was useless to them, and drove the animals to a spot a quarter of a mile distant, where they feasted on one of them, and spent the day and night. A party was left behind to waylay such of us as might come out to meet the team. When Gros-
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venor neared the spot, he was shot by an In- dian, who, crouching behind a cactus about ten feet distant, had left the impression of his gun- stock in the sand. Knowing well that their vic- tim would be sought by others, they had left the spy we had seen; and had not the cat directed our attention to him at the time when he was moved stealthily away, thereby causing us to walk rapidly to the scene of the murder, and faster back, we could hardly have escaped the fate of our friend.
"During the day Lieutenant Evans arrived with a force of nineteen soldiers, having with difficulty obtained the consent of his com- mandant, and soon after Colonel Poston reached the mine with a party of Americans. Graves had been dug, and, after reading the burial ser- vice and throwing in the earth, we fired a volley and turned away, no one knowing how soon his time might come.
"I now foresaw a long and dangerous work before us in extracting the silver from our ore. We could indeed have abandoned the mines, and have escaped from the God-forsaken land by ac- companying the military, which was to leave in two weeks. But both Mr. Robinson and myself considered that we were in duty bound to place the movable property of the company in safety at Tubac, and to pay in bullion the money owing to men who without it could not escape. To ac- complish this would require six weeks' work at the furnace, crippled as were all operations by the loss of our horses and mules.
"It was of the first importance that we should increase our force of Americans, not only for
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protection against the Apaches, but more es- pecially against the possible treachery of our Mexican workmen, for at almost every mine in the country a part of all of the whites had been murdered by their peons. One of the party which had come that day from Tubac was en- gaged on the spot. Partly in the hope of getting a small force of soldiers, who should remain till the abandonment began, and partly to persuade an American who lived on the road to the fort to join us, I resolved to accompany Lieutenant Evans, who was obliged to return the next day.
"Taking with me a young Apache who had been captured while a child, and had no sym- pathy with his tribe, I rode away with Lieu- tenant Evans, intending to return the next day. The wagon road lay for ten miles along a tribu- tary of the Sonoita valley, then ascended the Sonoita for twelve miles to the fort, while a bridle-path across the hills shortened the dis- tance some two or three miles by leaving the road before the junction of the two valleys. To reach the house of the American whom I wished to see, we would have to follow the wagon road all the way; and as more than a mile of it before the junction of the valleys lay through a narrow and dangerous defile, on an Apache wartrail that was constantly frequented by the Indians, Lieu- tenant Evans would not assume the respon- sibility of risking the lives of his men in a place where they would be at such disadvantage. While I felt obliged to acknowledge that it would be imprudent to take infantry mounted on mules through the defile, it was of the first necessity that I should see Mr. Elliott Titus, the American
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living near the junction of the valleys. At the point where the hill-trail left the road, bidding goodbye to Lieutenant Evans, who, could he have left his men, would have accompanied me himself, I was soon alone with Juan, my Apache boy. As we neared the gorge, I observed that Juan, who was galloping ahead, stopped sud- denly, and hesitated. As I came up, he pointed to the sand, which was covered with fresh foot- tracks.
"It was evident that a considerable party of Indians had been here within half an hour, and had dispersed suddenly toward the hills in dif- ferent directions. Our safest course seemed to be to press forward and reach Titus' house, now about two miles off. We were on good horses, and these animals, not less alarmed than our- selves, soon brought us through the defile to the
Sonoita creek. To slip our horses' bridles with- out dismounting, and refresh the animals with one long swallow, was the work of a minute, and we were again tearing along at a runaway speed. We had barely left the creek when we passed the full-length impression of a man's form in the sand with a pool of blood, and at the same in- stant an unearthly yell from the hills behind us showed that the Apaches, although not visible, were after us, and felt sure of bringing us down. Our horses, however, fearing nothing so much as an Indian, almost flew over the ground and soon brought us in sight of Titus' hacienda. This lay about two hundred yards off from the road in a broad valley shaded by magnificent live oaks.
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"As we rode rapidly towards the houses, I was struck with the quietness of a place generally full of life, and said so to Juan.
""'It's all right!' he said, 'I saw three men just now near the house.'
"But as we passed the first building, a smith's shop, both horses shied, and as we came to the principal house, a scene of destruction met our eyes.
"The doors had been forced in, and the whole contents of the house lay on the ground outside, in heaps of broken rubbish. Not far from the door stood a pile made of wool, corn, beans and flour, and capping the whole a gold watch hung from a stock driven into the heap. Stooping from the saddle, I took the watch, and found it still going.
"As I started to dismount to look for the bodies of the Americans, Juan begged of me not to stop.
" 'They are all killed,' he said, 'and we shall have hardly time to reach the road before the Indians come up. Promise me,' he continued, 'that you will fight when the devils close with us ; if not, I will save myself now.'
"Assuring the boy, whom I knew to be brave, that I had no idea of being scalped and burned without a struggle, I put spurs to my restless horse, and we were soon on the main road, but not a moment too soon, for a large party of Apaches, fortunately for us on foot, were just coming down the hill and entered the trail close behind us. A volley of arrows flew by our heads, but our horses carried us in a few seconds beyond the reach of these missiles, and the enemy turned
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back. Slackening our speed, we were nearing a point where the road crossed a low spur of the valley-terrace, when suddenly several heads were visible for an instant over the brow of the hill and as quickly disappeared. Guessing instantly that we were cut off by another band of Indians, and knowing that our only course was to run the gauntlet, we rode slowly to near the top of the hill to rest our animals, and then spurred the terrified horses onward, determined if possible to break the ambush. We were on the point of firing into a party of men who came in full view directly as we galloped over the brow of the hill, when a second glance assured us that instead of Apaches they were Americans and Mexicans, burying an American who had been killed that
morning. It was the impression of this man's body which we had seen near the creek. He had been to the fort to give notice of the massacre of a family living further down the river, and on his return had met the same fate, about an hour before we passed the spot. An arrow, shot from above, had entered his left shoulder and penetrated to the ribs of the other side, and in pulling this shaft out a terrible feature of these weapons was illustrated. The flint-head, fas- tened to the shaft with a thong of deer-sinew, remains firmly attached while the binding is dry ; but as soon as it is moistened by the blood, the head becomes loose and remains in the body after the arrow is withdrawn. The Apaches have sev- eral ways of producing terrible wounds; among others, by firing bullets chipped from the half oxidized matte of old furnace heaps, containing copper and lead combined with sulphur and
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arsenic. But perhaps the worst at short range are produced by bullets made from the fibre of the aloe root, which are almost always fatal, since it is impossible to clear the wound.
"On reaching the fort and seeing the com- mandant, I was told by that officer that he could not take the responsibility of weakening his force, and that the most he could do would be to give me an escort back to the Santa Rita. As the troops from Fort Breckenridge were ex- pected in a few days I was led to expect that after their arrival I might obtain a small num- ber of soldiers. But when, after several days had passed without bringing these troops, the commandant told me that not only would it be impossible to give us any protection at the Santa Rita, but that he could no longer give me an escort thither, I resolved to return immediately with only the boy Juan. In the meantime a rumor reached the fort that a large body of Apaches had passed through the Santa Rita Valley, and probably massacred our people, and were preparing to attack Tubac. I was cer- tainly never under a stronger temptation than I felt then to accept the warmly pressed invita- tion of the officers to leave the country with the military, and give up all idea of returning to what they represented as certain death. But I felt constrained to go back, and Juan and myself mounted our horses. I had hardly bid the offi- cers good-bye when an old frontiersman, Mr. Robert Ward, joined us, and declared his inten- tion of trying to reach his wife, who was in Tubac. As we left the fort a fine pointer be- longing to the commandant followed us, and as
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he had become attached to me, we had no diffi- culty and few scruples in enticing him away to swell our party. We took the hill trail, it being both shorter and safer, and had reached a point within three miles of the Santa Rita without meeting any fresh signs of Indians, when the dog, which kept always on the trail ahead of us, after disappearing in the brush by an arroyo, came back growling and with his tail between his legs. We were then two or three hundred yards from the thicket, and spurring our horses, we left the trail and quickly crossed the arroyo a hundred yards or more above the ambush, for such the fresh Indian tracks in the dry creek had shown it to be.
"We reached our mines safely, and found that although almost constantly surrounded by Apaches, who had cut off all communication with Tubac, there had been no direct attack. Our entire Mexican force was well armed with breachloading rifles, a fact which, while it kept off the Indians, rendered it necessary that our guard over our peons should never cease for an instant. Nor did we once during the long weeks that followed, place ourselves in a position to be caught at a disadvantage. Under penalty of death no Mexican was allowed to pass certain limits, and in turn our party of four kept an unceasing guard, while our revolvers day and night were never out of our hands.
"We had now to cut wood for charcoal and haul it in, stick by stick, not having enough ani- mals to draw the six-horse wagons. This and burning the charcoal kept us nearly three weeks before we could begin to smelt. Our furnaces
4
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stood in the open air about one hundred yards from the main house, and on a tongue of high land at the junction of two ravines. The brilliant light illuminating every object near the furnace exposed the workmen every night, and all night, to the aim of the Apache. In order to obtain timely notice of the approach of the In- dians, we picketed our watch dogs at points within a hundred yards of the works; and these faithful guards, which the enemy never suc- ceeded in killing, more than once saved us from a general massacre. The whole Mexican force slept on their arms around the furnace, taking turns at working, sleeping and patrolling, re- ceiving rations of diluted alcohol, sufficient to increase their courage without making them drunk.
"More than one attempt was made by the Apaches to attack us, but being always discov- ered in time, and failing to surprise us, they con- tented themselves with firing into the force at the furnace from a distance. In the condition to which we all, and especially myself, had been brought by weeks of sleepless anxiety, nothing could sound more awful than the sudden dis- charge of a volley of rifles, accompanied by un- earthly yells, that at times broke in upon the silence of the night. Before daylight one morn- ing, our chief smelterman was shot while tending the furnace; it then became necessary for me to perform this duty myself, uninterruptedly, till I could teach the art to one of the Americans and a Mexican.
"I foresaw that the greatest danger from the Mexicans was to be anticipated when the silver
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should be refined, and made arrangements to concentrate this work into the last two or three days, and leave the mine immediately after it was finished.
"Dispatching a messenger, who succeeded in reaching Tubac, I engaged a number of wagons and men, and on their arrival, everything that could be spared was loaded and sent off. The train was attacked and the mules stolen, but the owner and men escaped, and bringing fresh ani- mals, succeeded in carrying the property to Tubac.
"At last, the result of six weeks' smelting lay before me in a pile of lead planches containing the silver, and there only remained the separat- ing of these metals to be gone through with. During this process, which I was obliged to con- duct myself, and which lasted some fifty or sixty hours, I scarcely closed my eyes, and the three other Americans, revolver in hand, kept an un- ceasing guard over the Mexicans, whose manner showed plainly their thoughts. Before the silver was cool, we loaded it. We had the re- maining property of the company, even to the wooden machine for working the blast, in the returned wagons, and were on the way to Tubac, which we reached the same day, the 15th of June. Here, while the last wagon was being unloaded, a rifle was accidentally discharged, and the ball passing through my hair above the ear, deafened me for the whole afternoon.
"Thus ended my experience of eight months of mining operations in an Apache stronghold."
As one of the results of the withdrawal of the troops from the Territory, the following, taken
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from J. Ross Browne's "Adventures in the Apache Country" gives a vivid description of the desolation of the country around Tubac and also of one of the fights had with the Indians by the settlers :
"Three years ago (about 1858) this beautiful valley, (the Santa Cruz) was well settled by an enterprising set of frontiersmen as far up as the Calabasas ranch, fifteen miles beyond Tubac. At the breaking out of the rebellion, when the Overland Stage Line was withdrawn, the whole Territory as stated in a previous chapter, went to ruin with a rapidity almost unparalleled. The Apaches, supposing they had created a panic among the whites, became more bold and vigor- ous in their forays than ever. Ranch after ranch was desolated by fire, robbery and murder. No white man's life was secure beyond Tucson; and even there the few inhabitants lived in a state of terror.
"I saw on the road between San Xavier and Tubac, a distance of forty miles, almost as many graves of the white men murdered by the Apaches within the last few years. Literally the roadside was marked with the burial places of these unfortunate settlers. There is not now a single living soul to enliven the solitude. All is silent and deathlike; yet strangely calm and beautiful in its desolation. Here were fields with torn down fences; houses burned or racked to pieces by violence, the walls cast about in heaps over the once pleasant homes; everywhere ruin, grim and ghastly with associations of sudden death. I have rarely travelled through a country more richly favored, yet more depress-
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ing in its associations with the past. Day and night the common subject of conversation was murder; and wherever our attention was at- tracted by the beauty of the country, or the rich- ness of the soil, a stone-covered grave marked the foreground.
"The history of Bill Rhodes, at whose ranch we camped, was an example. In the full tide of success, this daring frontiersman returned to his home one evening, and found his comrades murdered and himself surrounded by a large band of Apaches. By some means, he managed to break through their lines; but his horse being jaded, it soon became apparent that escape was impossible. Just as the pursuing Indians were upon him, he flung himself into a willow thicket and there made battle. A circle was made around him by the blood-stained and yelling devils, who numbered at least thirty ; but he was too cool a man to be intimidated by their in- fernal demonstrations. For three hours, he kept them at bay with his revolver; although they poured into the thicket an almost continu- ous volley of rifle shots and arrows. A ball struck him in the left arm, near the elbow, and nearly disabled him from loss of blood. He buried the wounded part in the sand and con- tinued the fight till the Indians, exasperated at his stubborn resistance, rushed up in a body, de- termined to put an end to him at once. He had but two shots left. With one of these he killed the first Indian that approached, when the rest whirled about and stood off. They then ad- dressed him in Spanish, calling him by name, and telling him he was a brave man, and if he
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would come out, they would spare his life. " 'No,' said he, 'D-n you, I'll kill the last one of you before you shall take me!' He had given such good evidence of his ability in that way that they held a parley and concluded he was about right; so they retired and left him master of the field. Bill Rhodes' Apache fight is now one of the standard incidents in the history of Arizona."
In reference to the Cochise war, Chas. D. Poston says: "The men, women and children killed; the property destroyed, and the detriment to the settlement of Arizona cannot be computed. The cost of the war against Cochise would have purchased John Ward a string of yokes of oxen reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and as for his woman's son, Micky Free, he afterwards became an Indian scout and interpreter, and about as infamous a scoundrel as those who gen- erally adorn that profession."
A little prior to this time a company of Maine lumbermen under a captain named Tarbox, established a camp in the Santa Rita mountains to whipsaw lumber at one hundred and fifty dol- lars per thousand feet, and were doing well. The Heintzelman mine bought all they could pro- duce. They built a house and corral on the south side of the Santa Cruz River, on the road from Tucson to Tubac, called the Canoa, which became a convenient stopping place for travel- lers on the road. Poston, who had charge of the mine, had made a treaty with the Indians, by which the Indians were to leave them undis- turbed in the working of their properties, and they, in turn, were not to interfere with the
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Indians in their frequent raids into Mexico. One day, twenty-five or thirty Mexicans rode into Tubac and said the Apaches had made a raid on their ranches and carried off all their horses and mules over the Babaquivera plain, intending to cross the Santa Cruz river between the Canoa and Tucson. The Mexicans wanted the men at the mine to join them in a cortada (cut-off) and rescue the animals, offering to divide them equally for their assistance. This was declined because the Apaches had faithfully kept their treaty with the whites at the mine and the whites felt it was their duty in good faith to do the same. The Mexicans went to Canoa and made the same proposition to the lumbermen, who accepted it. They succeeded in forming an ambuscade and fired on the Apaches when they reached the river. The Apaches fled at the fire, leaving the stolen stock behind them. The Mexi- cans made a fair division and from the sales of the mules to merchants in Tucson, the lumber- men were enabled to add many comforts to their camp at the Canoa on the Santa Cruz.
Within a month thereafter, when the inhabit- ants of Tubac were passing a quiet Sunday, a Mexican vaquero came riding furiously into the plaza, crying out: "Apaches! Apaches! Apaches!" When he had recovered sufficiently to speak intelligently, he gave the information that the Apaches had made an attack on the Canoa and killed all the settlers. It was late in the day and nearly all the men had gone to the mine, but about a dozen horses and men were mustered. Early the next morning, they started for the Canoa, and when they reached that place
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a little after sunrise, it looked as if it had been struck by a hurricane; doors and windows were smashed and the house was left a smoking ruin. The former inmates were lying around, dead; three of them had been thrown into the well head foremost. Seven men were buried in a row in front of the burned house. By the tracks it was thought that there was not less than eighty mounted Apaches in this raid, and they carried off 280 head of animals from the Canoa and the adjoining ranches.
Lieutenant Ives in his exploration in 1857, notes the change of attitude of the Mohave Indians towards the command and attributes it to the machinations of the Mormons who per- suaded the Indians that it was the intention of the Americans to divest them of their lands. This was the statement made to the Lieutenant by one of the head chiefs of the Mohaves, and his personal friend.
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