USA > Arizona > History of Arizona, Vol. IV > Part 5
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"I learned that the town of Prescott had been located and named by Governor Goodwin, the name having been suggested by R. C. McCormick. The town was being surveyed by R. W. Groom and a man named Waldemar.
"I waited around the new town for my partner Beauchamp to return from La Paz, where he had gone with others for supplies for the Wool- sey expedition. I thought of going to work on the Montgomery if Beauchamp was inclined that way. On May 17th, 18th and 19th, it stormed, and the ground was six inches deep in slush on the plaza.
"When Beauchamp returned from La Paz he wished to go out with Woolsey again. So I con- cluded to prospect near by, and did do some
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prospecting in the mountains along the Hassa- yampa as far as Lambertson's ranch. There, late in June, I met some men who had been pros- pecting near the Vulture mine, and had some glance ore, which I took for silver glance, such as I had seen and got samples of at the Sierra Colorado mine. The ore that I got at the Sierra Colorado was worth about a thousand dollars per ton. I learned all that I could about the locality of the vein that the ore came from, and concluded to go and try to find it. I went to Weaver and there met Charles Mason, Elijah Smith, William Holcomb and a Frenchman. They had just found a big cropping near Wea- ver which had some free gold, and were digging a little on it. They proposed to give me an in- terest in the claims if I would join them, and said that we would build arrastras and work the ore. I accepted the proposition and at once set about sampling and horning the ore along the surface. I did not get the results that I thought would pay to arrastra, but there was a prominent mining man at Weaver by the name of Ehrenberg, a graduate of Freyburg. I got Ehrenberg to go and look at the property. He thought enough of it to take samples from the sixteen-foot hole that was on the claims, as well as sampling the croppings for about two thou- sand feet along the ledge, and started for San Francisco with about fifty pounds of ore. He got better than sixteen dollars per ton, and sent us the assays. He wrote that he would return and do some work on the claims. On his way back a renegade Surrana Indian murdered him while asleep at Dos Palms station.
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"Flour was scarce, so Smith, Holcomb, Charles Mason and the Frenchman desired to go to White's mill at the Pima Villages, and load their animals with flour, and walk back. With a boy that I had picked up, I went as far as the sinks of the Hassayampa with them. Here I camped in order to prospect for the rich ore that had been shown me, which started me out.
"The next day I filled a 10-gallon keg with water, and packed it on a burro, and, riding a mule which I had borrowed at Prescott, set out on the trail toward the Vulture, the boy follow- ing on a horse. About four miles from the river our trail crossed a wide wash and ran up the side of a small point on the west side. As I started up the trail the mule shied off and went around on the opposite side of the point from where the trail led up. The burro followed the mule, and the horse followed the burro. It was some distance before I got the mule back into the trail, which at that point, crossed a mesa or table land. There I discovered a lot of In- dian tracks, and after making a careful exam- ination, concluded that they had seen us and were not far away at that moment. I thought it best to turn back, as there appeared to be a big bunch of the reds. We took the trail back, and just at the point where the mule scared I found that the Indians had been crouched behind a bank just below the trail. Had the mule not left the trail we should both have been riddled with arrows and bullets. That was twice in about two months that mules had kept me out of trouble.
"We made our way back to where Wickenburg was camped, and the next morning we went back
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with Wickenburg, and some more men, and took the trail of the Indians. We followed it until night, but as we were not prepared to stay longer, we returned to the Hassayampa. This was July 4th, 1864.
"Wickenburg had an arrastra partly built, and had about a ton of Vulture ore at his camp. As he knew nothing about working ore, I under- took to show him what I could, and soon had the arrastra running. By the time the party re- turned from the Pima Villages, we had ground out the ton of ore, and cleaned up $105.
"When the party returned I took Mason and Smith and we went and found the copper ore which I had mistaken for silver.
"We next went to Antelope Creek near Weaver, and, it being terribly warm, concluded to go on to Prescott, but laid over one day, July 18th, and went to Weaver and voted at the first elec- tion held in Arizona Territory. We got to Pres- cott July 22d and camped near the town. We had killed several deer the night and morning before we went into Prescott, and sold the veni- son readily at twenty-five cents a pound, which suggested the idea of hunting for the market. Smith and Holcomb were expert game hunters and did most of the killing, while I hunted a lit- tle and kept camp when necessary, and Mason did the selling. This lasted only a short time with me.
"About August 6th a man who had come up from Fort Mojave to try to start an express line, started out from Prescott on his return, and at a point about fifteen miles out had been jumped by the Indians and shot with an arrow, as was his mule also. The mule got him out and brought
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him back to Prescott, neither being very badly wounded.
"I was anxious to have the line established, and after examining the mule carefully, con- cluded that he could make the trip. I proposed to take what letters the fellow had collected and go to Fort Mojave with them. The proposition was accepted, and the next day I traveled with Miller Brothers' pack-train, which was starting for Los Angeles, as far as Williamson Valley, about twenty miles. Leaving the train after dark, I rode until the following morning about seven o'clock, and came to a camping-place where a nice stream of water ran for a short distance by the side of the road. There was good feed growing on the flat among the mesquite and catsclaw bush, and I tied the mule with a long rope and went down under the bank which was ten or twelve feet high, to make a cup of coffee. I had just got my fire started and cup of water on it, when I thought I heard a quick move on the bank above. I grabbed my gun and ran to the top of the bank, and, sure enough, a Yavapai Indian was leading my mule away as fast as he could make him lead. Almost at the same glance I saw another Indian on a horse off about two hundred yards to my right. He let a terrible yell out of himself as I showed up, and right there I did some of the fastest running that I ever did. I couldn't shoot because the mule was in the way. The Indian saw that I was bound to overtake him, so he dropped the rope and ran, dodging, through the brush. I tried hard, but could never make a sure shot, and I was not going to waste any pow- der. Maybe I was not glad to get hold of that rope !
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"I did not wait to make coffee, but got out of there pretty quick, although I presume the two Indians that I saw were all that there were in the bunch. If the Indian had led the mule slowly away, instead of trying to hurry him, I should not have known anything about it until too late.
"I rode on for a few miles until I came to a favorable place to watch the mule from a bunch of granite rock, then tied him in the open, and lay there until nearly night. Starting out I had traveled only a short distance when I saw com- ing on the trail, meeting me, quite a bunch of Indians with women and children. I left the trail and kept a good gunshot distance between us, as I thought perhaps they had adopted that plan to get near me, and I thought I recognized the horse that the Indian was riding who yelled to his partner in the morning.
"I made a dry camp late in the night, and gave the mule a good rest, and a chance to graze. I arrived at Fort Mojave the fourth day from Prescott, one hundred and seventy-three miles, with my mule's neck and withers badly swollen from the arrow wound. I remained at Fort Mojave two nights, and was furnished with a cavalry horse and three soldiers, to escort me back to Prescott.
"The morning that I reached Mojave, Dr. Willing with four men and a pack train of mules were just starting for Prescott. One of the men, A. I. Shanks, I had ridden the range with in Sac- ramento Valley for two years before coming to Arizona. On my return trip I overtook the Willing party the third day out, and camped two nights and traveled one day with them. The
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second night we camped at what is known as Walnut Creek, and early in the morning I went out to try to get a deer, and run on to a lot of Indians camped in a gulch among the cedars. I sneaked away without alarming the Indians, and rushed back to camp and told what I had found. The three soldiers volunteered to go with me and clean them up. I placed the soldiers on a high mesa directly above the camp, and told them that I would go down below and sneak up as close as I could get and turn loose on them. As I should be in sight of the soldiers, they would know when to show up and commence shooting. I got within forty or fifty yards of the camp without being seen, and just as I was ready to shoot, the soldiers commenced to holler, 'Don't shoot! Don't shoot!' The Indians were gone like a flock of quail, and I was mad enough to commence on the soldiers if it would have done any good. Their excuse was that the Indians looked like Mohaves. The truth of the matter was that there were too many Indians. I will say here that these were Yavapais, and as bad as any Indian tribe of equal numbers. They played friendly when in or near the government post or mining camps, and stole and murdered every time they got a chance when they thought they could blame it on the Apaches. When I returned to camp I told the soldiers in presence of the Willing party what I thought of them, and rode away toward Prescott without breakfast.
"Along about four o'clock in the afternoon, when within six or seven miles of Prescott, I took a trail across a bushy point which the wagon road went around, and when I reached the top of the bushy point I saw off to my left a covered rig
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with two horses hitched to it and some men on the ground. That being an unusual thing, I rode down to the wagon and learned that they had come from California, via Yuma, and were head- ing for Prescott. I had been talking but a few moments when a bunch of Indians appeared on top of the ridge where I had left the trail to go to the wagon. The men (whom I afterward be- came acquainted with) were Gilford Hathaway, Joseph Melvin, William Little, and a man named Smith. They became quite excited and were going behind the wagon and talking so that I could not hear what was being said, so I took the road to Prescott, not caring to be taken off by mistake as being a renegade white running with the Indians. Nor did I stop to explain that the Indians were shouting the password that Pauline Weaver had learned the Yavapais at a treaty made in 1863 at Agua Caliente.
"I got to Prescott before dark, and noticed, as I passed, a small patch of corn that had been planted by a man named Sanford on Granite Creek. The corn had all been killed the night before by frost. That was the 17th of August, 1864. Pretty early frost.
"I learned at Prescott that the Woolsey party had returned and that Beauchamp had been killed by Indians on the trip; that he was the only one killed. I was at a loss to know what to do about working the Montgomery, and lay around the town for a month or more. This com- pleted my first year in Arizona."
"The next man that was murdered by the Mex- icans was digging a well on the road leading from La Paz on the Colorado River to Wicken- burg, in company with a man named Dave King. 5
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The well was being dug to get water to sell to the travelling public-mostly freight teams-and is about thirty miles west of Wickenburg. One evening a train belonging to a man named Stan- field camped near the well, and accompanying the train were several deserters from a company of Mexican volunteers that had been raised by one Primitivo Cervantes, and enlisted to fight the Apaches. This company, or a part of it, was stationed at Date Creek and Skull Valley to escort trains through Bell's Canyon, and from Skull Valley to Prescott. In the morning when the train pulled out, two of the deserters stopped behind, and after King, who was digging in the well, had been at work a short time, he heard a shot and looked up just in time to dodge his partner, who had been shot in the head and came head first to the bottom of the well, which was about a hundred and thirty feet deep. A few minutes before King heard the shot he had seen his partner looking down into the well. He often sat on the landing-board and talked with King as they worked. What must have been King's feelings, there in a well many miles from any- one who could help him with his dead partner! He lay down beside the dead man, afraid to move or cry out for fear whoever had killed his partner would come and kill him. He did not know at the time who had done this. It might have been Indians, as he rather thought it was. But Providence was kind to King. While lying there considering his chances of getting out of the hole he forgot entirely the mail carrier who made one round trip per week from La Paz on muleback, and that was the day the mail was due to pass into Wickenburg. But King never
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thought of the mail-carrier, his only hope being that some train might pass that way and by a rare chance find him before he perished. What could his feelings have been after several hours spent there in that terrible position, to see a man lean over the curbing, looking down into the place ? He did not recognize the man, and was afraid to speak lest it might be an enemy. But the man on top, for some unknown reason, said 'Hello!' Then King recognized John Duff, the mail-carrier, and Duff told me many times that he got the greatest surprise of his life when he received an answer from the well. Duff had ridden out to the men's camp, as was customary with him when he passed, and found things all scattered around, and had concluded that the men had quit the well and gone to Wickenburg. Something prompted him to go to the well, and that probably saved King's life. Duff lowered the bucket and King put his partner's body into it, and after hoisting the body out, Duff hoisted King out.
"They dug a shallow grave and buried the dead man, and having concluded from the gov- ernment shoe tracks that it was the Mexican sol- diers that had done the killing and robbed the camp, they followed their trail until nearly dark; then, as the trail led across the country toward the Vulture, they turned back to the Wicken- burg road, and made haste to get there.
"The next morning everybody in town had heard the news. There was one old gray-headed man that we all called Uncle Joe. His name was Joseph Blackwell. He was one of the Tex- ans who were prisoners at the Alamo, but did not happen to draw a white bean. At that time he
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was night herder for J. M. Bryan, commonly called Crete Bryan. Bryan had a large herd of mules with which he was hauling ore from the Vulture mine to the mill at Wickenburg. As there was no tame hay in the country, the mules were herded in the hills at night, and Uncle Joe was one of the herders.
"When he talked with King he learned all he could about the course the Mexicans had taken; then went to Bryan and asked him for Kit, a favorite riding mule.
" 'What do you want of Kit, Uncle Joe ?'
" 'I'm going to get the d-d greasers.'
" 'All right, Uncle Joe. She is in the corral.' "In a short time Uncle Joe came back with canteen, gun and saddle-bags. Then Bryan re- alized that the old man meant business, and said :
" 'Well, Uncle Joe, I'll go, too.'
"In less time than it takes me to write it they were off. They started to cut track between the Vulture mine and the Hassayampa. If they failed to cut the tracks there, they would prob- ably find their men at or near the Vulture. They found the tracks east of the Vulture, going to- ward the White Tank Mountains, and followed them to the White Tanks, where they made a fire. From there they had taken the road to the crossing of the Salt and Gila Rivers. This road led on to Tucson via the Pima Villages. There was no Phoenix at that time.
"The Mexicans were overtaken between the two rivers, sitting beside the road. They had a string of fish which they had just caught with some hooks that they had evidently taken from King's camp, for he had some and they were
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missing, as well as a lot of other plunder and the six-shooters.
"Bryan and Uncle Joe threw their guns down on them, and made them lay down their guns and go away from them ; then asked them if they had any choice between hanging and shooting. A shrug of the shoulders was the answer. So they marched them far enough from the road so that they would not smell bad, tied them to a mesquite tree, and shot them.
"The next man that was murdered by the Mexicans was a Portuguese who at one time ran a bakery in Wickenburg. He had saved some money and thought it would pay to sink a well between the Hassayampa and Salt Rivers, as it was a long way across the dry plains.
"He went to a point about twelve miles out from the sink of the Hassayampa, and started to sinking in a gulch that heads up into the hills east of Wickenburg. He had only got down twenty-five or thirty feet when some passers-by noticed that the well had been caved in around the top and the camp robbed. The place is known to this day as the 'Nigger Well' by old- timers. The Portuguese was part negro.
"The well was never cleaned out. The Portu- guese left some property in Wickenburg-an old adobe shack and an adobe oven.
"There may have been more than one man buried in the well, as his Mexican helper never showed up.
"This happened in 1866 or 1867, and the Apaches were making raids in some part of the country nearly every full moon; so the matter of a man or two did not amount to much unless
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he happened to have some personal friends, like Hampton and King.
"The next murder according to my recollec- tion was committed at what was known as the 'Martinez Ranch,' about twenty miles from Wickenburg, on the road to Prescott by the way of Date Creek Camp, in the spring of 1871.
"A young man named Sam Cullumber was keeping a station and the Arizona Stage Com- pany kept four standing horses there and a man to attend to them. There were some Mexicans camped near by, and the signs read that some of them had gone to the house to buy something, and while the stock-tender was weighing some flour in one room, he was stabbed in the jugular vein and fell dead, while Cullumber was killed in the other room.
"There were probably four of the Mexicans, as they took the four stage horses. Two days later a Maricopa Indian saw two Mexicans hide their guns in some brush near the Maricopa Canal and get onto their horses and ride off. The In- dian (who had not been seen) rushed out as soon as the Mexicans were out of sight, and took the guns and hid them in another place; then went to Phoenix and told the officers what he had seen. Joe Fye (Phy) and Wilt Warden were sent out to investigate. The Indian took them to the guns; then they followed the horse tracks and found the horses tied to mesquite trees. They took the horses to town, and there they were identified by someone who knew them as the stage horses that belonged at Martinez Sta- tion. Fye and Warden returned to the place to lay for the Mexicans, but when they got there the tracks showed that the Mexicans had been
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there during their absence with the horses, and had left, going toward the river below town. The officers followed them and overtook them at a point on the river bank known as the Hay Camp, or Half Way Camp. It was a place where the hay haulers-generally Mexicans- camped when they went out west of the Agua Fria to cut galleta hay for use in Phoenix. They would go from this camp and cut a load of hay with hoes, and returning would generally camp at the Hay Camp, go to Phoenix next day, unload, and get back to camp the same night.
"The two Mexicans were sitting on a log be- side the road, and Fye told Warden to take care of the nearest one. When opposite them, Fye told them to throw up their hands. In- stead, they both reached for their six-shooters. Warden killed his man with a shotgun, but Fye, being an A. No. 1 shot with a rifle, broke his man's arm. His pistol dropped and he picked it up with his left hand. Fye broke his left arm. Then the Mexican broke for the river bank, which was but a few steps away. A shot from Fye's rifle broke a leg. That stopped him! The Mexican's first words were a request for water. Fye asked him where the other two horses were, and he would not tell who had them or anything about it-only begged for water. He never would tell anything, and is begging for water yet, I guess.
"The other two horses were never found, and if the Maricopa Indian had not happened to see the men hide their guns, the blame of that mur- der would have been laid to the Indians; for when the news got to Date Creek-only nine
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miles from the station-a party of soldiers was sent out accompanied by some friendly Apache- Mohaves, and they had a brush with some Tonto Apaches between Date Creek and the Cullumber Station, and the friendly Indians captured one of the Tontos alive-got him cornered in some big granite boulders and nailed him.
"I have no doubt that there were many mur- ders committed by the Mexicans and blamed on the Indians; the Loring massacre nine miles west of Wickenburg came near being one of the cases. It was reported by government officers that the Date Creek Indians did the work, but the citizens of Wickenburg and Phoenix knew better."
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CHAPTER IV. EARLY CONDITIONS IN THE TERRITORY (Con- tinued).
CAPTAIN W. H. HARDY-DESCRIPTION OF-HIS EARLY EXPERIENCES IN ARIZONA-METHODS OF INDIAN WARFARE-FREIGHTING FOR THE GOVERNMENT-EXPERIENCES WITH INDIANS -WILD GAME IN THE TERRITORY-DRIVEN OUT OR KILLED-INDIAN CUNNING-THE FIRST CHRISTMAS TREE IN THE TERRITORY.
Mention has been made in these pages of W. H. Hardy, who established the town of Hardyville, above Fort Mohave, on the Colorado River. Captain Hardy ran a ferry and a store at that place for a long time, and, as stated in a previous chapter, established a branch store at Prescott, after the location and survey of that town. He was among the first settlers in Mohave County. He was a man highly re- spected, of great energy and force of character, and did a great deal for the development of his county, which he represented several times in the upper house of the Territorial Legislature. He died June 30, 1909, at Whittier, California."
F. J. Wattron, at one time sheriff of Navajo County, has the following to say about Captain Hardy :
"Captain Hardy was an old settler upon the Colorado above Fort Mohave at Hardyville. He ran a ferry and a store at that place, also a toll road from Hardyville to Prescott. All par- ties travelling on the road had to pay Hardy in proportion to the size of their outfit. The re- pairs on the road were kept up by Hardy walk-
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ing along and leading his horse and kicking out such rocks as he could with a pair of number eleven boots. Hardy's stock consisted of flour, $20 per hundredweight; bacon, 50c per pound ; coffee, 50c per pound; sugar, three pounds for a dollar; soldier's boots, $10 per pair; overalls, $3 per pair, cash down, and no kicking. His ferry was also a paying business, but if you had no money, he would give you what you wanted out of the store, and cross you over the river for nothing."
The "Mohave County Miner," of December 8th, 1888, contains the following letter written by Captain Hardy, which is perhaps as good a statement of conditions in Arizona during the period of which we are writing, as could be found :
"Editor 'Mohave County Miner':
"You ask me to write some of my early ex- periences in Arizona. What I write may not be worth the space it takes in your valuable paper. Again, if printed, it may not be worth reading. However, as I have a little leisure time to-day, I will put in a couple of hours in telling, as I remember, what happened over twenty years since. I distinctly remember, be- cause trials and incidents which happened in those days were frequently stained in blood.
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