USA > Arizona > History of Arizona, Vol. VI > Part 19
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"Julius Becker had a little store at Springer- ville, and the desperadoes used to come in every two or three months, and tell him to go out of the store, and they would take all the tobacco and clothes, and drink all the whiskey they wanted, and dance and have a good time, and keep the store about a day and a night, and then send
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word to Becker that he could come back and take charge of their store. He had a few goods and a barrel of whiskey setting there. One time they got to fighting in Springer's store, and shot two of themselves. At one time they took possession of the country, and I went to Camp Apache and the officer in command gave me three companies of soldiers, and came himself; the officer in com- mand at Camp Apache and three companies of soldiers came out and restored order after a fight in which several of the desperadoes were killed.
"At another time I was threshing in Springer- ville Valley with my machine, the boys started over the valley, and I went over to a little Mexi- can town to get some things. I had neither six shooter nor gun. I was horseback and when I got up to the little store they told me that there was a man there that I had a warrant for, a desperado, and that he was in another room; that he had given up his arms, six shooter and guns, to them. I was not armed then either, and, fool- ishly, I went to arrest him. I went up to him and told him I had a warrant for his arrest. At that time they wore their pants inside their boots, and as I went up to him, he pulled a long dirk knife out of his bootleg and struck at me. The knife went straight between my eyes, then he kept following me back across the room with his knife and gave me five wounds in the body, near the heart, each time striking a rib, before I knocked him down and, with the assistance of others who had run in, overpowered him. I was cut up pretty bad. He got up after I knocked him down and came at me again. A fellow by
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the name of Stanley rushed in and grabbed the knife, and cut his hand.
"Once I had a narrow escape; a desperado came in who had killed five men. He and his gang had killed the sheriff and five men who were following them in Colorado. The party, in two divisions, came into the valley the fall that I lived in Springerville. There was a re- ward of two thousand dollars for him and his companions. They had ambushed the posse that was following them, the sheriff and five men, and killed them all. Anyway they came into Round Valley and he rented a farm from a pretty hard case there who was going to leave the country. I threshed his grain, and when I got through threshing, he wouldn't pay me. He said he would pay me when he got ready, and it was close to Becker's little store, and he had two six shooters on him; he was sitting on his horse and I told him that I would take the barley and give him the price that he would get for it. He wouldn't do it, and I asked old Julius Becker to come up and take hold of the scales with me and we would carry them over and weigh the barley, so we took the scales and weighed out the barley, and this hard case just stood there. That night I went over to the house. I intended to go over to Nutrioso to the other ranch where my family lived, and I had my horse saddled down by the house after we had supper; there was three of us in the cabin. As I came out of the door-there was a bunch of bushes a little dis- tance from the cabin,-and as I stepped outside I looked around and this same man was along- side this bunch of bushes. He fired at me and
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cut the coat I had on, right in front of my breast. I was standing with the light behind me. I fell back into the house, and I guess he thought he had killed me. I didn't go out of the house that night any more.
"At one time I was going over to Nutrioso- Jack Olney was a hard case who kept a saloon at Springerville, and he was in the habit of beating up men over the head with a six shooter, and one time he beat up one of my men, a man by the name of Pearson, he came out to the ranch all beaten up. I made the remark then that if Ol- ney ever tackled me, he would get the worst of it. A short time after that I went into Springerville; had my six shooter in the front of my trousers as we used to carry them those days when we didn't have a belt on. I went into Henry Springer's store, and there was no one there but the book- keeper. Olney had seen me coming into Spring- erville, and with two of his boys he sneaked into the store behind me, and walked right up behind me and putting a six shooter to my head, said : 'I heard you said that if I tackled you I would get the worst of it.' I said, 'Yes, I did,' for I knew that he would not shoot; if he had been going to shoot he never would have stopped to talk about it, and I said to him that if he would put his guns off and come outside, I would give him the beat- ing of his life. He did this, and by this time two of my friends had come up, one of them be- ing Murray who had come from Wisconsin with me; we all went outside and put off our guns and started in. He didn't know the first thing about boxing or fighting with his hands, and I was pretty good at it those days, having been in
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the lumber camps in Wisconsin and holding my own there pretty well. He would come at me and try to grab me by the feet and ankles and try to throw me, and then I started to kick him when he tried to fight foul. I kicked him so bad that he ran over to one of his men to get his gun, but my two friends stood by me and told the other fellows that if they gave him a gun they would shoot them, so he didn't get the gun, but came back at me for more, and I gave him such a beating up that he was in bed for four weeks. After that he quit being a bully, anyone could lick him.
"All this time I was engaged in farming and stock raising, and contracting with the Govern- ment, and about the year 1879 I sold out my place and moved to New Mexico ; sold out the Nutrioso farm to the first Mormon that ever came into that part of the country; bought more cattle and moved down to the San Francisco river in New Mexico, over the line, sixty-five miles above Clif- ton, Arizona, and the ranch is known as the 'W. S. Ranch' to this day. Then I moved five thousand head of cattle over on the San Fran- cisco river, and put a butchershop in Deming, N. M. At the time the Santa Fe and the South- ern Pacific met in Deming, I had butchershops at Deming, Silver City, in the mines, and the beef contract for Fort Bayard, nine miles out of Silver City.
"About the year 1882 I had 'dobe houses on the ranch, and about that time the Indians both- ered me some. Where I had settled on the San Francisco river was right in between San Carlos and the Agua Caliente, the Hot Springs, where
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they moved Geronimo and Victorio with the Apaches of their tribes; they moved them to the San Carlos reservation. They broke away and raided west of us, and then went down into Old Mexico, about six or seven hundred warriors, and we stayed there through all the time that they were still in Old Mexico. About the 28th day of April I said to a foreman I had by the name of Elliott,-I had twenty-eight head of horses running out to the spring between Mineral Creek and Deep Creek, where I used to water and feed them, five miles from the river,-I said to Elliott, 'I'm going out to get those horses, and we'll begin to-morrow to round up and brand cattle.' Some of the cattle, a thousand head that I got from the Mormons from Utah, had nothing but a road brand, and they were beginning to go back. I got on my horse and put my six shooter and Win- chester on, and started out. About two o'clock in the afternoon I got up to this spring, took the field glasses which I carried under my arm, and got on high ground and looked around, but no horses, and I looked around everywhere, and then looked over in the mines. There was a mining camp there, about eleven miners working. It was called the Kinney District; Kinney discov- ered it. They had cabins down there, and I looked over down on them. It was down in a canyon and they were prospecting for quartz. I looked all around, and about three o'clock I looked over there, and at last I got on my horses' trail. They were going up what was called Deep
Creek, about four miles or five, from Mineral
Creek. This spring where my horses watered was fine, open country, and I got on the trail and
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was following the horses, thinking they had just strayed off. Everything was quiet and though we had had some trouble the year before with a bunch of Indians, killing seven of them, they were quiet most of the time then, and when I was following my horses they seemed to be going right over the Mogollons towards the Hot Springs, the home of these Indians where they had been moved from, and at last it came dark on me; I could trail them no longer, and I started home and got to my ranch about twelve o'clock. When I got to my ranch there was Kinney and Chickering, two of the prospectors. They told me the Indians, between sundown and dark, com- ing from the Mogollons on the trail, had tackled their camp; that the Indians thought they had killed all of them, the prospectors, but Kinney and Chickering crawled off when they were shoot- ing at them, and got away after it became real dark, and got to my ranch. I said that I would bet they had got my horses; that they must have come over the Mogollons in the forenoon and taken the horses that I was trailing, and that it must have been Geronimo and Victorio. My foreman said he believed the same, but this Kinney was an Indian guide, and he said he did not think so; that it was a bunch of In- dians travelling through the country. That night, however, we got ready; we had plenty of guns and five or six hundred rounds of ammu- nition for each gun. We had portholes in the 'dobe house so we could fire out in every direc- tion; we had built the house that way knowing we were in an Indian country. I had two fine corral horses which I always kept in the corral,
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never turned them out, and Kinney asked me to give him and Chickering these two horses next morning and they would go up and see what the Indians were doing. I told them they had better not go as I was sure it was Geronimo and Vic- torio, and that they would catch them and kill them. My old foreman told me to give them the horses if they wanted to go, and I gave them the horses, but told them to go up on the bank, and not to go up the road in the brush. They didn't take my advice though, but rode up the road in the brush, and it wasn't but a half an hour until the horses came back on the run without their riders, and ran into the corral. The Indians could have killed the horses easy enough, but they thought they would come and take my ranch and take the horses, and they followed these horses right down, we could see them across the river; there seemed to be two or three hundred of them right out in the open ground some distance away, and we knew then that it was Geronimo and Vic- torio. I had fifteen men and we were all stand- ing in the open in front of the house. We fired at the Indians, thinking they didn't have as good guns as we had, because we had as good guns as that day could produce, but when they fired at us a rain of bullets came like hail. I was shot through the leg, a flesh wound, and Mur- ray, who came over the plains with me, was shot through the left arm, and Wilcox, who was stand- ing in the door, fell dead. I hollered to my men to fall down and we did, and crawled into the house, they still firing at us, and we got into the house and there were protected. They sur- rounded the house, but we kept firing at them
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through the portholes, and they tried to rush us all day, but when they would come near the house we would fire and we killed and wounded a large number of them. We fought from eight o'clock in the morning until ten at night, when they quit and went off aways and made fires and cooked their supper. They shot lots of my cattle for spite ; my cattle were all around in the valleys and hills. I counted afterwards over six hun- dred of my cattle killed; fine American cattle. After everything quieted down my foreman took another man, John Foster, who afterwards died in the Soldier's Home in California, and they got them two horses and wrapped old sacks around their hoofs, and run the horses twenty- five miles to Duck Creek, where there was a ranch, and got other horses and rode into Silver City that night, and then the men of Silver City, everybody in Silver City, started out to help us; got wagons, horses and anything, and started out. The next morning, however, the Indians didn't tackle us again, and we thought it strange that we couldn't see any dead Indians lying around, but they took their dead away. It seems that they went over to Eagle Creek, where a man by the name of Stevens had married a squaw, and there was a lot of Indians there, adjoining the San Carlos Reservation, to get more ammunition from Stevens' Indians, but they wouldn't give them any, and they got into a fight there. Cap- tain Kramer, with four companies of the 6th Cavalry was coming from Fort Apache ; he heard the Indians was down in our country and he ran into this band of Geronimo and Victorio, had a fight with them, and lost twelve of his soldiers.
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This was the reason they didn't tackle us again. I guess they couldn't get ammunition. Captain Kramer came over to the ranch that afternoon and I was never so glad to see anyone as I was to see him and his soldiers. They were the first to get there; the Silver City people didn't get in for quite a spell. The Indians ran away and went up the river, and at Los Lentes they swung around and killed all the people in Los Lentes, thirty-six families; never left a chick nor child. They went marauding and never spared anybody, killed people everywhere.
"Fred, my son, was a boy of perhaps three or four years of age, and he was with me in that fight. Both he and his mother were with me in that fight, and, speaking of Fred, I remember so often that when we thought him not old enough to think of such things he would say: 'Papa, when I get big I am going to be a good man and a great man,' and that has been typical of his actions, for he has developed a big country at Colter and spent much time and money for public welfare. He was County Supervisor of Apache County for five years, a Delegate to the Constitu- tional Convention and is now serving his second term in the State Senate (1918). He is also a Democratic National Committeeman and, al- though only thirty-nine years of age, I look for- ward to a great future for him. After this fight I took my family to Silver City, and kept them there all summer in the Hotel.
"I sold that ranch two years afterwards to an English company headed by Lord Woolsey's son ; sold out my butcher shops in Deming, Silver VI-20
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City, etc., and then went up the river sixty-five miles further, and bought four thousand cattle and a big ranch, and sixteen thousand sheep from a rich Spaniard, Don Luis Baca. I kept that ranch for three years, and sold that to another English company ; that ranch was known as the 'S. U. Ranch.' Then I went to Kansas and stayed there to educate my children ; kept a feed- ing ranch and raised fine cattle there for several years.
"I came back to Arizona along in the early nineties to where I had first settled. Fred was born right in the Nutrioso valley. I engaged in the stock business in the same place; my boys went into the same business and I have been travelling in California and all over for the last few years. I never worked very much after my boys grew up. I have three sons and one girl. The girl married Tom Phelps and she is living up there too. I was married in Springerville in 1875 to a southern girl by the name of Rosa Rudd, the daughter of Dr. Wm. Rudd, one of the first pioneers of that country.
"When I left Wisconsin for Arizona, we first came down in the boat from Eau Claire on the Chippewa river, run on a boat and come to Davenport, Iowa, and there I chartered cars and came to the end of the Santa Fe Railroad at Atchison, Kansas, and then started in the wagons. I drove one wagon; we had one wagon with grub, one with the reaper and mower, and one with tools, etc. One of the boys, Murray, was a blacksmith, and he made puzzle hobbles which we put on the horses at night. No one could take them off but ourselves and we drove
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our horses clear through to Springerville, which was then Round Valley. We would take turns guarding them at night and we never lost a horse. We were the three Jims, Jim Colter, Jim Mur- ray, and Jim Powell, the latter a Canadian who came out with us.
"The way we came to start was that this man Moore whom I spoke of, wrote to a man named Lamb; I didn't know Moore myself, but Lamb told us about it. Lamb had a little pair of mules, and he wanted to go to Arizona. I had good, heavy wagons, and he said he was going to take Moore's family, and when we got down to start on the boat, a drive of about fifty miles, he was there with his little pair of mules and the Moore family of five children. Lamb came to me and said that he was out of money, and wanted to know if he could come along anyhow. It pro- voked me to have him start off without telling me first that he was short, but I told him to come on anyhow, and we brought the whole bunch through with us. He was an old man and we didn't even have him stand guard at night, but took care of the whole bunch. I had to furnish them with grub and paid all their expenses."
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CHAPTER XV. SURVEYING LAND IN TERRITORY.
JOHN WASSON APPOINTED SURVEYOR GENERAL - BIOGRAPHY OF-HIS ACCOUNT OF CONDITIONS IN ARIZONA IN 1871- SURVEYS MADE IN SANTA CRUZ AND GILA VALLEYS AND IN VICINITY OF PRESCOTT-SPANISH AND MEXI- CAN LAND CLAIMS-MINING-EXPEDITION BY GOVERNOR SAFFORD - TIMBER, AGRICULTURE AND GRAZING.
John Wasson, who was appointed Surveyor General of the Territory by President Grant in 1870, came into the Territory during that year from California, holding that position for three terms, until August, 1882. During the time of his residence here he started the "Tucson Citi- zen." He returned to California at the time of his retirement from office, and, at the time of his death was President of the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Normal School. He died at Pomona, California, on January 16th, 1909, at the age of seventy-six years. In his first report to the Commissioner of the General Land Office at Washington, under date of August 30th, 1871, he gives a short but interesting account of con- ditions in Arizona at that time which follows:
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"REPORT OF THE SURVEYOR GENERAL OF ARIZONA TERRITORY.
"UNITED STATES' SURVEYOR GEN- ERAL'S OFFICE.
"Tucson, Arizona Territory, "August 30th, 1871. "Sir :-
"In compliance with your instructions of April 17th, 1871, I herewith present in duplicate a report of the surveying operations within the District of Arizona, for the fiscal year ending June 30th, 1871.
"Arizona was made a separate Surveying Dis- trict by an Act approved July 11th, 1870; the President caused my commission to be executed July 12th, but the official notice of it did not reach me until November 5th, upon which day I executed my bond and entered upon the duties of the office.
"The records of all previous surveys in Ari- zona being in the California office, the year well advanced, and then being the most favorable sea- son for field operations, I deemed it best to pro- ceed to California, procure the official books, papers, etc., appertaining to this district, as well as other necessary supplies not obtainable here, and personally see that they were not delayed in transit. By so doing, early in January every- thing required to practically inaugurate field work was at hand, except my general instruc- tions, which were not received until March 3rd. Knowing that unexpended balances were passed to the General Fund of the Treasury, and that less than half the fiscal year remained, I deemed
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it important to Arizona that surveys should com- mence, and therefore, without other directions than the law, I employed a complement of officers, entered into contracts, and ordered work to proceed, and am gratified to say that in all essential particulars, the Department approved the steps taken in advance of specific instruc- tions. By such prompt action the appropriation of $10,000 for surveys, less $385.39, was ex- hausted prior to June 30th, and this small bal- ance contracted for, and since that date the field work therefor has been executed, but not re- ported to your office.
"The surveys performed and their locality are set forth in the accompanying documents. The money should have been expended in executing surveys in the vicinity of Prescott, but the meridian line was not extended there, and the route of it lay through a section infested with hostile Indians. Applications to the command- ing officer of the Military Department for an es- cort to protect the Deputy in the extension of the meridian, brought no response, and, there- fore, I directed work performed in the Santa Cruz and Gila Valleys, where present and pros- pective population most demanded it. Surveys under the appropriation for the present fiscal year are now going forward in the settled valleys and timbered sections in and around Prescott under two deputies, and most of the farmers who have occupied their lands for from one to seven years, will soon have an opportunity to procure titles.
"In accordance with instructions, I submitted estimates, with some explanatory reasons there-
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for for the surveying service in this District for the fiscal year ending June 30th, 1873, on the 27th July last, a copy of which is herewith trans- mitted and made part of this report. In that document I made no reference to the necessity of establishing the boundary line between New Mexico and Arizona. It is evident that this should be provided for by an appropriation at the ensuing session of Congress, for, before the close of the fiscal year ending in 1873, sub- divisional surveys may be demanded in the vicin- ity of the Territorial boundary ; and, aside from this consideration, there are many others, such as jurisdiction of courts, locality of voters and tax payers, that readily suggest themselves.
"LAND CLAIMS UNDER THE LAWS OF SPAIN AND MEXICO.
"A proviso of the appropriation act of July 15th, 1870, makes it the duty of the Surveyor- General of Arizona, under instructions from the Secretary of the Interior, 'to ascertain and re- port upon the origin, character and extent of the claims to lands in said Territory under the laws, usages and customs of Spain and Mexico.' Many such claims are reported to exist within this Dis- trict, but as to their extent and validity I am unprepared to give an opinion. Verbal and written applications have been made to me by parties as agents or claimants, of such claims, for information as to the prescribed method of initiating and conducting proceedings necessary to establish their titles under the United States laws. To the end that they might be correctly informed, on March 1, I addressed a letter to the
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General Land Office, a copy of which I trans- mitted to the Secretary of the Interior, suggest- ing that the contemplated instructions be fur- nished to my office. As yet, none have been re- ceived by me.
"Applications for but two mineral land sur- veys have been made, and none for subdivisional surveys under the Acts of May 3rd, 1862, and March 3rd, 1871, although under the latter act some are contemplated.
"The townsite of Arizona City has been sur- veyed and the completed plats and notes for- warded to the local and General Land Office. It is hoped that the subdivisional surveys will here- after be extended over all townsites in advance of a demand for their entry, which is already done at Tucson and Prescott, and since the survey, the authorities of Tucson have filed an application for entry, and those of Prescott probably soon will.
"MINING.
"I have no statistics on mining, in Arizona, of sufficient accuracy to justify their presentation. However, it is a leading branch of industry now, and destined to be of vast importance. It would presently be very large but for the distances from cheap transportation, and notably because of the persistent hostility of the Indians in nearly every mining district.
"Very many mines, heretofore operated with large returns have been practically abandoned for the latter reason. Excepting near the Colo- rado River, life and property are not, at this time, regarded safe from Indian attacks in the mining sections; therefore, exploration is
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