Produced by Barbara Kosker and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
[Illustration: JOHN H. CADY, 68 YEARS, SOLDIER OF FORTUNE, ON THE
SONOITA, DECEMBER, 1914]
ARIZONA'S YESTERDAY
BEING
THE NARRATIVE OF
JOHN H. CADY
PIONEER
Rewritten and Revised by
BASIL DILLON WOON
1915
Copyright, 1916,
By John H. Cady.
TO
THE PIONEERS WHO ARE LIVING
AND TO
THE MEMORIES OF
THOSE WHO ARE DEAD
_this book_,
in affectionate tribute to the gallant courage,
rugged independence and wonderful endurance
of those adventurous souls who formed the
vanguard of civilization in the early history of
the Territory of Arizona and the remainder of
the Great West,
_is dedicated_.
JOHN H. CADY
BASIL D. WOON
Patagonia,
Arizona,
Nineteen-Fifteen.
PREFACE
When I first broached the matter of writing his autobiography to John H.
Cady, two things had struck me particularly. One was that of all the
literature about Arizona there was little that attempted to give a
straight, chronological and _intimate_ description of events that
occurred during the early life of the Territory, and, second, that of
all the men I knew, Cady was best fitted, by reason of his extraordinary
experiences, remarkable memory for names and dates, and seniority in
pioneership, to supply the work that I felt lacking.
Some years ago, when I first came West, I happened to be sitting on the
observation platform of a train bound for the orange groves of Southern
California. A lady with whom I had held some slight conversation on the
journey turned to me after we had left Tucson and had started on the
long and somewhat dreary journey across the desert that stretches from
the "Old Pueblo" to "San Berdoo," and said:
"Do you know, I actually used to believe all those stories about the
'wildness of the West.' I see how badly I was mistaken."
She had taken a half-hour stroll about Tucson while the train changed
crews and had been impressed by the--to the casual observer--sleepiness
of the ancient town. She told me that never again would she look on a
"wild West" moving picture without wanting to laugh. She would not
believe that there had ever been a "wild West"--at least, not in
Arizona. And yet it is history that the old Territory of Arizona in days
gone by was the "wildest and woolliest" of all the West, as any old
settler will testify.
There is no doubt that to the tourist the West is now a source of
constant disappointment. The "movies" and certain literature have
educated the Easterner to the belief that even now Indians go on the
war-path occasionally, that even now cowboys sometimes find an outlet
for their exuberant spirits in the hair-raising sport of "shooting up
the town," and that even now battles between the law-abiding cattlemen
and the "rustlers" are more or less frequent. When these people come
west in their comfortable Pullmans and discover nothing more interesting
in the shape of Indians than a few old squaws selling trinkets and
blankets on station platforms, as at Yuma; when they visit one of the
famous old towns where in days gone by white men were wont to sleep with
one eye and an ear open for marauding Indians, and find electric cars,
modern office buildings, paved streets crowded with luxurious motors,
and the inhabitants nonchalantly pursuing the even tenor of their ways
garbed in habiliments strongly suggestive of Forty-fourth street and
Broadway; when they come West and note these signs of an advancing and
all-conquering civilization, I say, they invariably are disappointed.
One lady I met even thought "how delightful" it would be "if the Apaches
would only hold up the train!" It failed altogether to occur to her
that, in the days when wagon-trains _were_ held up by Apaches, few of
those in them escaped to tell the gruesome tale. And yet this estimable
lady, fresh from the drawing-rooms of Upper-Radcliffe-on-the-Hudson and
the ballroom of Rector's, thought how "delightful" this would be! Ah,
fortunate indeed is it that the pluck and persistence of the pioneers
carved a way of peace for the pilgrims of today!
Considering the foregoing, such a book as this, presenting as it does in
readable form the Arizona West as it _really was_, is, in my opinion,
most opportune and fills a real need. The people have had fiction
stories from the capable pens of Stewart Edward White and his companions
in the realm of western literature, and have doubtless enjoyed their
refreshing atmosphere and daring originality, but, despite this, fiction
localized in the West and founded however-much on fact, does _not_
supply all the needs of the Eastern reader, who demands the truth about
those old days, presented in a compact and _intimate_ form. I cannot too
greatly emphasize that word "intimate," for it signifies to me the
quality that has been most lacking in authoritative works on the Western
country.
When I first met Captain Cady I found him the very personification of
what he ought not to have been, considering the fact that he is one of
the oldest pioneers in Arizona. Instead of peacefully awaiting the close
of a long and active career in some old soldiers' home, I found him
energetically superintending the hotel he owns at Patagonia, Santa Cruz
county--and with a badly burned hand, at that. There he was, with a
characteristic chef's top-dress on him (Cady is well known as a
first-class cook), standing behind the wood-fire range himself,
permitting no one else to do the cooking, allowing no one else to
shoulder the responsibilities that he, as a man decidedly in the autumn
of life, should by all the rules of the "game" have long since
relinquished.
Where this grizzled old Indian fighter, near his three-score-and-ten,
should have been white-haired, he was but gray; where he should have
been inflicted with the kindred illnesses of advancing old age he simply
owned up, and sheepishly at that, to a burned hand. Where he should have
been willing to lay down his share of civic responsibility and let the
"young fellows" have a go at the game, he was as ever on the
firing-line, his name in the local paper a half-dozen times each week.
Oh, no, it is wrong to say that John H. Cady _was_ a fighter--wrong in
the spirit of it, for, you see, he is very much of a fighter, now. He
has lost not one whit of that aggressiveness and sterling courage that
he always has owned, the only difference being that, instead of fighting
Indians and bad men, he is now fighting the forces of evil within his
own town and contesting, as well, the grim advances made by the
relentless Reaper.
In travels that have taken me over a good slice of Mother Earth, and
that have brought me into contact with all sorts and conditions of men,
I have never met one whose friendship I would rather have than that of
John H. Cady. If I were asked to sum him up I would say that he is a
_true_ man--a true father, a true and courageous fighter, and a true
American. He is a man anybody would far sooner have with him than
against him in a controversy. If so far as world-standards go he has not
achieved fame--I had rather call it "notoriety"--it is because of the
fact that the present-day standards do not fit the men whom they ignore.
With those other men who were the wet-nurses of the West in its
infantile civilization, this hardy pioneer should be honored by the
present generation and his name handed down to posterity as that of one
who fought the good fight of progress, and fought well, with weapons
which if perhaps crude and clumsy--as the age was crude and clumsy
judged by Twentieth Century standards--were at least most remarkably
effective.
The subject of this autobiography has traveled to many out of the way
places and accomplished many remarkable things, but the most astonishing
thing about him is the casual and unaffected way in which he, in
retrospect, views his extraordinarily active life. He talks to me as
unconcernedly of tramping hundreds of miles across a barren desert
peopled with hostile Indians as though it were merely a street-car trip
up the thoroughfares of one of Arizona's progressive cities. He talks of
desperate rides through a wild and dangerous country, of little scraps,
as he terms them, with bands of murderous Apaches, of meteoric rises
from hired hand to ranch foreman, of adventurous expeditions into the
realm of trade when everything was a risk in a land of uncertainty, of
journeys through a foreign and wild country "dead broke"--of these and
many similar things, as though they were commonplace incidents scarcely
worthy of mention.
Yet the story of Cady's life is, I venture to state, one of the most
gripping and interesting ever told, both from an historical and from a
human point of view. It illustrates vividly the varied fortunes
encountered by an adventurous pioneer of the old days in Arizona and
contains, besides, historical facts not before recorded that cannot help
making the work of unfailing interest to all who know, or wish to know,
the State.
For you, then, reader, who love or wish to know the State of Arizona,
with its painted deserts, its glorious skies, its wonderful mountains,
its magical horizons, its illimitable distances, its romantic past and
its magnificent possibilities, this little book has been written.
BASIL DILLON WOON.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE BOY SOLDIER 13
FOLLOWING THE ARGONAUTS 17
ROUGH AND TUMBLE ON LAND AND SEA 37
THROUGH MEXICO AND BACK TO ARIZONA 50
STAGE DRIVER'S LUCK 61
A FRONTIER BUSINESS MAN 71
VENTURES AND ADVENTURES 80
INDIAN WARFARE 92
DEPUTY SHERIFF, CATTLEMAN AND FARMER 102
IN AGE THE CRICKET CHIRPS AND BRINGS-- 115
ILLUSTRATIONS
JOHN H. CADY Frontispiece
OLD BARRACKS IN TUCSON 20
RUINS OF FORT BUCHANAN 28
CADY'S HOUSE ON THE SONOITA 44
RUINS OF FORT CRITTENDEN 60
THE OLD WARD HOMESTEAD 76
SHEEP CAMP ON THE SONOITA 92
CADY AND HIS FAMILY 108
ARIZONA'S YESTERDAY
THE BOY SOLDIER
"_For the right that needs assistance,
For the wrong that needs resistance,
For the future in the distance,
And the good that they could do._"
Fourteen years before that broad, bloody line began to be drawn between
the North and the South of the "United States of America," before there
came the terrific clash of steel and muscle in front of which the entire
world retreated to a distance, horrified, amazed, fascinated and
confounded; before there came the dreadful day when families were
estranged and birthrights surrendered, loves sacrificed and the blight
of the bullet placed on hundreds of thousands of sturdy hearts--fourteen
years before this, on the banks of the mighty Ohio at Cincinnati, I was
born, on September 15, 1846. My parents were John N. Cady, of
Cincinnati, and Maria Clingman Cady, who was of German descent, and of
whom I remember little owing to the fact that she died when I reached my
third birthday.
Ah, Cincinnati! To me you shall always be my City of Destiny, for it was
within your boundaries that I, boy and man, met my several fates. One
sent me through the turmoil and suffering of the Civil War; another sent
me westward mounted on the wings of youthful hope and ambition. For that
alone I am ever in the debt of Ohio's fairest city, which I hope to see
again some day before there sounds for me the Taps.... But I do not
know. The tide of life is more than past its ebb for me and I should be
thinking more of a quiet rest on the hillside, my face turned to the
turquoise blue of Arizona's matchless infinity, than to the treading
again of noisy city streets in the country of my birth.
But this is to be a story of Arizona, and I must hasten through the
events that occurred prior to my leaving for the West. When I had
reached three years of age my father married again--a milliner--and
moved to Philadelphia. My grandmother, who had raised me practically
from birth, removed with me to Maysville in Kentucky, where I was sent
to school. Some of my pleasantest memories now are of that period in the
old-fashioned Kentucky river town.
Just after my ninth birthday my father came back to Maysville, claimed
me, took me to Philadelphia with him and afterwards turned me over to
one William Turner, his wife's brother, who was the owner of a farm on
the eastern shore of Maryland. I stayed at the Turner farm until the
outbreak of the Civil War in the fall of '61, when my father, who was
then working for Devlin & Son, clothiers, with headquarters at Broadway
and Warren streets, New York City, enlisted in Duryea's Zouaves as
orderly sergeant in Company K. The Zouaves wintered at Federal Hill,
Baltimore, and I joined my father and the regiment there. In the spring
we moved to Washington, joining there the great Army of the Potomac,
with which we stayed during that army's succession of magnificent
battles, until after the Fredericksburg fight in '63.
In Washington we were quartered at Arlington Heights and I remember that
I used to make pocket money by buying papers at the Washington railway
depot and selling them on the Heights. The papers were, of course, full
of nothing but war news, some of them owing their initial publication to
the war, so great was the public's natural desire for news of the
titanic struggle that was engulfing the continent. Then, as now, there
were many conflicting statements as to the movements of troops, and so
forth, but the war correspondents had full rein to write as they
pleased, and the efforts of some of them stand out in my memory today as
marvels of word-painting and penned rhetoric.
When Grant took command of the Army of the Potomac I left the army,
three or four days before reinforcements for General Sherman, who was
then making preparations for his famous "march to the sea," left for
Kentucky. At Aguire Creek, near Washington, I purchased a cargo of
apples for $900--my first of two exceedingly profitable ventures in the
apple-selling industry--and, after selling them at a handsome profit,
followed Sherman's reinforcements as far as Cincinnati. I did not at
this time stay long in the city of my birth, going in a few days to Camp
Nelson, Ky., where I obtained work driving artillery horses to Atlanta
and bringing back to Chattanooga condemned army stock. Even at that
time--1864--the proud old city of Atlanta felt the shadow of its
impending doom, but few believed Sherman would go to the lengths he did.
After the close of the war in 1865 I enlisted in Cincinnati, on October
12, in the California Rocky Mountain service. Before this, however, I
had shipped in the Ram Vindicator of the Mississippi Squadron and after
being transferred to the gunboat Syren had helped move the navy yard
from Mound City, Ill., to Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, Mo., where it
still is.
I was drafted in the First United States Cavalry and sent to Carlisle
Barracks in Pennsylvania, from which place I traveled to New Orleans,
where I joined my regiment. I was allotted to Company C and remember my
officers to have been Captain Dean, First Lieutenant Vail and Second
Lieutenant Winters. Soon after my arrival in New Orleans we commenced
our journey to California, then the golden country of every man's dreams
and the Mecca of every man's ambition.
FOLLOWING THE ARGONAUTS
_So it's Westward Ho! for the land of worth,
Where the "is," not "was" is vital;
Where brawn for praise must win the earth,
Nor risk its new-born title.
Where to damn a man is to say he ran,
And heedless seeds are sown,
Where the thrill of strife is the spice of life,
And the creed is "GUARD YOUR OWN!"_
--WOON.
When the fast mail steamer which had carried us from the Isthmus of
Panama (we had journeyed to the Isthmus from New Orleans in the little
transport McClellan), steamed through the Golden Gate and anchored off
the Presidio I looked with great eagerness and curiosity on the
wonderful city known in those days as "the toughest hole on earth," of
which I had read and heard so much and which I had so longed to see. I
saw a city rising on terraces from the smooth waters of a glorious bay
whose wavelets were tempered by a sunshine that was as brilliant as it
was ineffective against the keen sea-breeze of winter. The fog that had
obscured our sight outside the Golden Gate was now gone--vanished like
the mist-wraiths of the long-ago philosophers, and the glorious city of
San Francisco was revealed to view.
I say "glorious," but the term must be understood to apply only to the
city's surroundings, which were in truth magnificent. She looked like
some imperial goddess, her forehead encircled by the faint band of mist
that still lingered caressingly to the mountain tops, her countenance
glistening with the dew on the green hill-slopes, her garments quaintly
fashioned for her by the civilization that had brought her into being,
her slippers the lustrous waters of the Bay itself. Later I came to know
that she, too, was a goddess of moods, and dangerous moods; a coquette
to some, a love to others, and to many a heartless vampire that sucked
from them their hard-wrung dust, scattered their gold to the four winds
of avarice that ever circled enticingly about the vortex of shallow joys
that the City harbored, and, after intoxicating them with her beauty and
her wine, flung them aside to make ready for the next comer. Too well
had San Francisco merited the title I give it in the opening lines of
this chapter. Some say that the earthquake and the fire came like
vitriol cast on the features of a beautiful woman for the prostitution
of her charms; but I, who lost little to her lures, am not one to judge.
My memories of San Francisco are at any rate a trifle hazy now, for it
is many, many years since I last saw the sun set over the Marin hills.
An era has passed since the glamour of the Coast of High Barbaree
claimed my youthful attention. But I remember a city as evil within as
it was lovely without, a city where were gathered the very dregs of
humanity from the four corners of the earth. What Port Said is now, San
Francisco was then, only worse. For every crime that is committed in the
dark alleys of the Suez port or the equally murky callejons of the
pestholes of Mexico, four were committed in the beautiful Californian
town when I first went there. Women as well as men carried "hardware"
strapped outside, and scarcely one who had not at some time found this
precaution useful. The city abounded with footpads and ruffians of every
nationality and description, whose prices for cutting a throat or
"rolling a stiff" depended on the cupidity of the moment or on the
quantity of liquor their capacious stomachs held. Scores of killings
occurred and excited little comment.
Thousands of men were daily passing in and out of the city, drawn by the
lure of the Sierra gold-fields; some of these came back with the joy of
dreams come true and full pokes hung around their necks, some came with
the misery of utter failure in their hearts, and some--alas, they were
many, returned not at all.
The Barbary Coast was fast gaining for itself an unenviable reputation
throughout the world. Every time one walked on Pacific street with any
money in pocket he took his life in his hand. _"Guard Your Own!"_
was the accepted creed of the time and woe to him who could not do so.
Gold was thrown about like water. The dancing girls made fabulous sums
as commissions on drinks their consorts could be persuaded to buy.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent nightly in the great temples
devoted to gambling, and there men risked on the luck of a moment or the
turn of a painted wheel fortunes wrung from the soil by months and
sometimes years of terrific work in the diggings. The most famous
gamblers of the West at that time made their headquarters in San
Francisco, and they came from all countries. England contributed not a
few of these gentlemen traders in the caprices of fortune, France her
quota, Germany very few and China many; but these last possessed the
dives, the lowest kind of gambling places, where men went only when they
were desperate and did not care.
We were not at this time, however, to be given an opportunity to see as
much of San Francisco as most of us would have liked. After a short stay
at the Presidio we were sent to Wilmington, then a small port in the
southern part of the State but now incorporated in the great city of Los
Angeles. Here we drew our horses for the long trek across the desert to
our future home in the Territory of Arizona. There was no railroad at
that time in California, the line not even having been surveyed as far
as San Jose, which was already a city but, instead of being, as now, the
market-place for a dozen fertile and beautiful valleys, she was then
merely an outfitting point for parties of travelers, prospectors,
cattlemen and the like, and was also a station and terminus for
various stage lines.
[Illustration: OLD BARRACKS (1912) ON NORTH SIDE OF ALAMEDA STREET, NEAR
MAIN, WHERE Co. C, 1st U. S. CAVALRY, CAMPED IN 1866 ON ITS ARRIVAL IN
TUCSON]
Through San Jose, too, came those of the gold-seekers, bound for the
high Sierras on the border of the desert, who had not taken the
Sacramento River route and had decided to brave instead the dangers of
the trail through the fertile San Joaquin, up to the Feather River and
thus into the diggings about Virginia City. Gold had been found by that
time in Nevada and hundreds of intrepid men were facing the awful Mojave
and Nevada deserts, blazing hot in day-time and icy cold at night, to
seek the new Eldorados. Since this is a book about pioneers, and since I
am one of them, it is fitting to stay awhile and consider what
civilization owes to these daring souls who formed the vanguard of her
army. Cecil Rhodes opened an Empire by mobilizing a black race; Jim Hill
opened another when he struck westward with steel rails. But the
pioneers of the early gold rushes created an empire of immense riches
with no other aid than their own gnarled hands and sturdy hearts. They
opened up a country as vast as it was rich, and wrested from the very
bosom of Mother Earth treasures that had been in her jealous keeping for
ages before the era of Man. They braved sudden death, death from thirst
and starvation, death from prowling savages, death from the wild
creatures,--all that the works of man might flourish where they had not
feared to tread. It is the irony of fate that these old pioneers, many
of whom hated civilization and were fleeing from her guiles, should have
been the advance-guard of the very Power they sought to avoid.
The vast empire of Western America is strewn with the bones of these
men. Some of them lie in kindly resting places, the grass over their
graves kept green by loving friends; some lie uncared for in potters'
fields or in the cemeteries of homes for the aged, and some--a vast
horde--still lie bleached and grim, the hot sand drifted over them by
the desert winds.
But, wherever they lie, all honor to the pioneer! There should be a day
set apart on which every American should revere the memory of those men
of long ago who hewed the way for the soft paths that fall to the
generation of today.
What San Bernardino is now to the west-bound traveler, Wilmington was
then--the end of the desert. From Wilmington eastward stretched one
tremendous ocean of sand, interspersed here and there by majestic
mountains in the fastnesses of which little fertile valleys with clear
mountain streams were to be discovered later by the pioneer
homesteaders. Where now are miles upon miles of yellow-fruited orange
and lemon groves, betraying the care and knowledge of a later generation
of scientific farmers, were then only dreary, barren wastes, with only
the mountains and clumps of sagebrush, soapweed, cacti, creosote bushes
and mesquite to break the everlasting monotony of the prospect.
Farming then, indeed, was almost as little thought of as irrigation, for
men's minds were fixed on the star of whitest brilliancy--_Gold_. Men
even made fortunes in the diggings and returned East and bought farms,
never realizing that what might be pushed above the soil of California
was destined to prove of far greater consequence than anything men would
ever find hidden beneath.
The march to Arizona was both difficult and dangerous, and was to be
attempted safely only by large parties. Water was scarce and wells few
and far between, and there were several stretches as, for instance, that
between what are now known as the Imperial Mountains and Yuma, of more
than sixty miles with no water at all. The well at Dos Palmas was not
dug until a later date. Across these stretches the traveler had to
depend on what water he could manage to pack in a canteen strung around
his waist or on his horse or mule. On the march were often to be seen,
as they are still, those wonderful desert mirages of which so much has
been written by explorers and scientists. Sometimes these took the form
of lakes, fringed with palms, which tantalized and ever kept mockingly
at a distance. Many the desert traveler who has been cruelly deceived by
these mirages!
Yuma, of which I have just spoken, is famed for many reasons. For one
thing, the story that United States army officers "raised the
temperature of the place thirty degrees" to be relieved from duty there,
has been laughed at wherever Americans have been wont to congregate. And
that old story told by Sherman, of the soldier who died at Yuma after
living a particularly vicious existence here below, and who soon
afterwards telegraphed from Hades for his blankets, has also done much
to heighten the reputation of the little city, which sometimes still has
applied to it the distinction of being the hottest place in the United
States. This, however, is scarcely correct, as many places in the
Southwest--Needles in California, and the Imperial Valley are
examples--have often demonstrated higher temperatures than have ever
been known at Yuma. A summer at the little Colorado River town is quite
hot enough, however, to please the most tropical savage. It may be
remarked here, in justice to the rest of the State, that the temperature
of Yuma is not typical of Arizona as a whole. In the region I now live
in--the Sonoita Valley in the southeastern part of the State, and in
portions around Prescott, the summer temperatures are markedly cool and
temperate.
Yuma, however, is not famed for its temperature alone; in fact, that
feature of its claim to notice is least to be considered. The real
noteworthy fact about Yuma from a historical point of view is that, as
Arizona City, it was one of the earliest-settled points in the Territory
and was at first easily the most important. The route of the major
portion of the Forty-Niners took them across the Colorado River where
Fort Yuma was situated on the California side; and the trend of
exploration, business and commerce a few years later flowed westward to
Yuma over the picturesque plains of the Gadsden Purchase. The famous
California Column ferried itself across the Colorado at Yuma, and later
on the Overland Mail came through the settlement. It is now a division
point on the Southern Pacific Railway, just across the line from
California, and has a population of three or four thousand.
At the time I first saw the place there was only Fort Yuma, on the
California side of the river, and a small settlement on the Arizona side
called Arizona City. It had formerly been called Colorado City, but the
name was changed when the town was permanently settled. There were two
ferries in operation at Yuma when our company arrived there, one of them
run by the peaceable Yuma Indians and the other by a company headed by
Don Diego Jaeger and Hartshorne. Fort Yuma had been established in 1851
by Major Heintzelman, U.S.A., but owing to scurvy (see De Long's history
of Arizona) and the great difficulty in getting supplies, the Colorado
River being then uncharted for traffic, it was abandoned and not
permanently re-established until a year later, when Major Heintzelman
returned from San Diego. The townsite of Colorado City was laid out in
1854, but floods wiped out the town with the result that a permanent
settlement, called Arizona City, was not established until about 1862,
four years before I reached there.
The first steamboat to reach Yuma with supplies was the Uncle Sam, which
arrived in 1852. Of all this I can tell, of course, only by hearsay, but
there is no doubt that the successful voyage of the Uncle Sam to Yuma
established the importance of that place and gave it pre-eminence over
any other shipping point into the territories for a long time.
Until the coming of the railroad, supplies for Arizona were shipped from
San Francisco to the mouth of the Colorado and ferried from there up the
river to Yuma, being there transferred to long wagon trains which
traveled across the plains to Tucson, which was then the distributing
point for the whole Territory.
Tucson was, of course, the chief city. I say "city" only in courtesy,
for it was such in importance only, its size being smaller than an
ordinary eastern village. Prescott, which was the first Territorial
Capital; Tubac, considered by many the oldest settled town in Arizona,
near which the famous mines worked by Sylvester Mowry were located;
Ehrenberg, an important stage point; Sacaton, in the Pima and Maricopa
Indian country, and other small settlements such as Apache Pass, which
was a fort, were already in existence. The Gadsden Purchase having been
of very recent date, most of the population was Indian, after which came
the Mexicans and Spaniards and then the Americans, who arrogantly
termed themselves the Whites, although the Spaniards possessed fully as
white a complexion as the average pioneer from the eastern states. Until
recently the Indian dominated the white man in Arizona in point of
numbers, but fortunately only one Indian race--the Apache--showed
unrelenting hostility to the white man and his works. Had all the
Arizona Indians been as hostile as were the Apaches, the probabilities
are that the settlement of Arizona by the whites would have been of far
more recent date, for in instance after instance the Americans in
Arizona were obliged to rely on the help of the peaceful Indians to
combat the rapacious Apaches.
Yuma is the place where the infamous "Doc" Glanton and his gang
operated. This was long before my time, and as the province of this book
is merely to tell the story of life in the Territory as I saw it, it has
no place within these pages. It may, however, be mentioned that Glanton
was the leader of a notorious gang of freebooters who established a
ferry across the Colorado at Yuma and used it as a hold-up scheme to
trap unwary emigrants. The Yuma Indians also operated a ferry, for which
they had hired as pilot a white man, whom some asserted to have been a
deserter from the United States army. One day Glanton and his gang,
angered at the successful rivalry of the Indians, fell on them and slew
the pilot. The Glanton gang was subsequently wiped out by the Indians in
retaliation.
When the Gila City gold rush set in Yuma was the point to which the
adventurers came to reach the new city. I have heard that as many as
three thousand gold seekers congregated at this find, but nothing is now
to be seen of the former town but a few old deserted shacks and some
Indian wickiups. Gold is still occasionally found in small quantities
along the Gila River near this point, but the immense placer deposits
have long since disappeared, although experts have been quoted as saying
that the company brave enough to explore the fastnesses of the mountains
back of the Gila at this point will probably be rewarded by finding rich
gold mines.
I will not dwell on the hardships of that desert march from Yuma to
Tucson, for which the rigors of the Civil War had fortunately prepared
most of us, further than to say that it was many long, weary days before
we finally came in sight of the "Old Pueblo." In Tucson I became, soon
after our arrival, twenty years old. I was a fairly hardy youngster,
too. We camped in Tucson on a piece of ground in the center of the town
and soon after our arrival were set to work making a clean, orderly
camp-park out of the wilderness of creosote bushes and mesquite. I
remember that for some offence against the powers of the day I was then
"serving time" for a short while and, among other things, I cut shrub on
the site of Tucson's Military Plaza, with an inelegant piece of iron
chain dangling uncomfortably from my left leg. Oh, I wasn't a saint
in those days any more than I am a particularly bright candidate for
wings and a harp now! I gave my superior officers fully as much trouble
as the rest of 'em!
[Illustration: RUINS OF OLD FORT BUCHANAN, DECEMBER 7, 1914]
Tucson's Military Plaza, it may be mentioned here, was, as stated,
cleared by Company C, First United States Cavalry, and that body of
troops was the only lot of soldiery that ever camped on that spot, which
is now historic. In after years it was known as Camp Lowell, and that
name is still applied to a fort some seven miles east of Tucson.
Captain Dean had not come with us to Arizona, having been taken ill in
California and invalided home. Lieutenant Vail, or, as he was entitled
to be called, Brevet-Major Vail, commanded Company C in his absence, and
he had under him as fearless a set of men as could have been found
anywhere in the country in those days. Vail himself was the highest type
of officer--stern and unbending where discipline was concerned, and
eminently courageous. Second Lieutenant Winters was a man of the same
stamp, and both men became well known in the Territory within a few
months after their arrival because of their numerous and successful
forays against marauding Indians. Vail is alive yet, or was a short time
ago.
After some weeks in Tucson, which was then a typical western town
peopled by miners, assayers, surveyors, tradespeople, a stray banker or
two and, last but not least by any means, gamblers, we were moved to
old Camp Grant, which was situated several hundred yards downstream from
the point where the Aravaipa Creek runs into the San Pedro.
Among others whom I remember as living in Tucson or near neighborhood in
1866 were:
Henry Glassman,
Tom Yerkes,
Lord & Williams,
Pete Kitchen,
---- Tongue,
The Kelsey boys,
Sandy McClatchy,
Green Rusk,
Frank Hodge,
Alex. Levin,
Bob Crandall,
---- Wheat,
Smith Turner,
"Old" Pike.
Glassman lived most of the time at Tubac. Yerkes owned the Settlers
Store in Tubac. Lord and Williams owned the chief store in Tucson and
were agents for the United States Mail. Pete Kitchen was at Potrero
Ranch; but Pete, who was more feared by the Indians than any white man
in the Territory, deserves a whole chapter to himself. Tongue was a
storekeeper. Green Rusk owned a popular dance house. Hodge and Levin had
a saloon. Wheat owned a saloon and afterwards a ranch near Florence. The
remainder were mostly gamblers, good fellows, every one of them. "Old
Pike" especially was a character whose memory is now fondly cherished by
every pioneer who knew him. He could win or lose with the same perpetual
joviality, but he generally won. The principal gambling game in those
days was Mexican monte, played with forty cards. Poker was also played a
great deal. Keno, faro and roulette were not introduced until later,
and the same may be said of pangingi, the Scandinavian game.
There were several tribes of Apaches wintering at Camp Grant the winter
we went there, if I remember correctly, among them being the Tontos and
Aravaipas. All of them, however, were under the authority of one
chief--Old Eskiminzin, one of the most blood-thirsty and vindictive of
all the old Apache leaders. The Government fed these Apaches well during
the winter in return for pledges they made to keep the peace. This was
due to the altruism of some mistaken gentlemen in the councils of
authority in the East, who knew nothing of conditions in the Territory
and who wrongly believed that the word of an Apache Indian would hold
good. We, who knew the Indian, understood differently, but we were
obliged to obey orders, even though these were responsible in part for
the many Indian tragedies that followed.
The Apache was a curious character. By nature a nomad, by temperament a
fighter, and from birth a hater of the white man, he saw nothing good in
the ways of civilization except that which fed him, and he took that
only as a means to an end. Often an Indian chief would solemnly swear to
keep the peace with his "white brethren" for a period of months, and the
next day go forth on a marauding expedition and kill as many of his
beloved "brethren" as he could lay his hands on. Every dead white man
was a feather in some Apache's headdress, for so they regarded it.
One day Chief Eskiminzin appeared with a protest from the tribes against
the quality of the rations they were receiving. It was early spring and
the protest, as we well knew, was merely his way of saying that the
Indians were no longer dependent on what the government offered but
could now hunt their own meat. Our commanding officer endeavored to
placate the old chief, who went back for a conference with his men. Then
he re-appeared, threw down his rations, the others doing the same, and
in a few minutes the entire encampment of Apaches was in the saddle.
Some little time after they had gone Lieutenant Vail, suspecting
trouble, sent a man down the trail to investigate. A few miles away was
a ranch owned by a man named Israels. The scout found the ranch
devastated, with Israels, his wife and family brutally slain and all the
stock driven off. He reported to Vail, who headed an expedition of
retaliation--the first I ever set forth on. We trailed the Indians
several days, finally coming up with them and in a pitched battle
killing many of them.
This was just a sample of the many similar incidents that occurred from
time to time throughout the Territory. Invariably the Military attempted
to find the raiders, and sometimes they were successful. But it seemed
impossible to teach the Apaches their lesson, and even now there are
sometimes simmerings of discontent among the surviving Apaches on their
reservation. They find it difficult to believe that their day and the
day of the remainder of the savage Indian race is gone forever.
It was during this stay at Fort Grant that Company C was ordered to
escort the first Southern Pacific survey from Apache Pass, which was a
government fort, to Sacaton, in the Pima Indian country. The route
abounded with hostile Apaches and was considered extremely dangerous. I
have mentioned this as the "first Southern Pacific survey," but this
does not mean that there were not before that other surveys of a similar
character, looking to the establishment of a transcontinental railroad
route through the Territory. As early as 1851 a survey was made across
Northern Arizona by Captain L. Sitgreaves, approximating nearly the
present route of the Santa Fe Railway. A year or two later Lieutenant A.
W. Whipple made a survey along the line of the 35th degree parallel.
Still later Lieutenant J. G. Parke surveyed a line nearly on that of the
Southern Pacific survey. At that time, just before the Gadsden treaty,
the territory surveyed was in the republic of Mexico. These surveys were
all made by order of the then Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, who
aroused a storm of protest in the East against his "misguided attention
to the desolate West." But few statesmen and fewer of the outside public
in that day possessed the prophetic vision to perceive the future
greatness of what were termed the "arid wastes" of Arizona and
California. This was shown by the perfect hail of protest that swept to
the White House when the terms of the Gadsden Treaty, drawn up by a man
who as minister to a great minor republic had had ample opportunities to
study at his leisure the nature of the country and the people with whom
he dealt, became known.
This Southern Pacific survey party was under the superintendence of
Chief Engineer Iego--I believe that is the way he spelled his name--who
was recognized as one of the foremost men in his line in the country.
The size of our party, which included thirty surveyors and surveyors'
helpers in addition to the soldier escort, served to deter the Indians,
and we had no trouble that I remember. It is perhaps worthy of note that
the railroad, as it was afterwards built--it reached Tucson in 1880--did
not exactly follow the line of this survey, not touching at Sacaton. It
passed a few miles south of that point, near the famous Casa Grande,
where now is a considerable town.
Railroad and all other surveying then was an exceedingly hazardous job,
especially in Arizona, where so many Indian massacres had already
occurred and were still to occur. In fact, any kind of a venture that
involved traveling, even for a short distance, whether it was a small
prospecting or emigrant's outfit or whether it was a long "train on
hoofs," laden with goods of the utmost value, had to be escorted by a
squad of soldiers, and often by an entire company. Even thus protected,
frequent and daring raids were made by the cruel and fearless savages,
whose only dread seemed to be starvation and the on-coming of the white
man, and who would go to any lengths to get food.
Looking back in the light of present day reasoning, I am bound to say
that it would be wrong to blame the Apaches for something their savage
and untutored natures could not help. Before the "paleface" came to the
Territory the Indian was lord of all he surveyed, from the peaks of the
mountains down to the distant line of the silvery horizon. He was
monarch of the desert and could roam over his demesne without
interference save from hostile tribes; and into his very being there was
born naturally a spirit of freedom which the white man with all his
weapons could never kill. He knew the best hunting grounds, he knew
where grew excellent fodder for his horses, he knew where water ran the
year around, and in the rainy season he knew where the waterholes were
to be found. In his wild life there was only the religion of living, and
the divinity of Freedom.
When the white man came he, too, found the fertile places, the running
water and the hunting grounds, and he confiscated them in the name of a
higher civilization of which the savage knew nothing and desired to know
less. Could the Indian then be blamed for his overwhelming hatred of the
white man? His was the inferior, the barbaric race, to be sure, but
could he be blamed for not believing so? His was a fight against
civilization, true, and it was a losing fight as all such are bound to
be, but the Indian did not know what civilization was except that it
meant that he was to be robbed of his hunting grounds and stripped of
his heritage of freedom. Therefore he fought tirelessly, savagely,
demoniacally, the inroads of the white man into his territory. All that
he knew, all that he wished to understand, was that he had been free and
happy before the white man had come with his thunder-weapons, his
fire-water and his mad, mad passion for yellow gold. The Indian could
not understand or admit that the White was the superior, all-conquering
race, and, not understanding, he became hostile and a battling demon.
So intense was the hatred of the white man among the Apaches
of the period of which I speak that it was their custom to
cut off the noses of any one of their women caught in illegal
intercourse with a white man. This done, she was driven from
her tribe, declared an outcast from her people, and
frequently starved to death. I can remember many instances of
this exact kind.
ROUGH AND TUMBLE ON LAND AND SEA
"_'Twas youth, my friend, and joyfulness besides,
That made me breast the treachery of Neptune's fickle tides._"
When Spring came around in the year 1867 we were moved to Tubac, where
we were joined by K Company of my regiment and C Company of the
Thirty-Second Infantry. Tubac, considered by some to be the oldest town
in Arizona, before the consummation of the Gadsden Treaty was a military
post at which the republic of Mexico regularly kept a small garrison. It
was situated on the Santa Cruz River, which at this point generally had
considerable water in it. This was probably the reason for the
establishment of the town, for water has always been the controlling
factor in a settlement's progress in Arizona. The river is dry at Tubac
now, however, except in unusually rainy seasons, irrigation and cattle
having robbed the stream of its former volume.
At the time we were quartered there Tubac was a place of no small
importance, and after Tucson and Prescott were discounted it was
probably the largest settlement in the Territory. Patagonia has now
taken the position formerly occupied by the old adobe town as center of
the rich mining zone of Southern Arizona, and the glories of Tubac (if
they can be given that name) are, like the glories of Tombstone, gone.
Unlike those of Tombstone, however, they are probably gone forever.
Tombstone may yet rise from the ashes of her splendid past to a future
as one of the important towns of the Southwest, if the stories of untold
riches near by her are to be believed.
A little to the east of Tubac and separating that town from Patagonia is
Mount Wrightson, one of the highest mountains in Arizona. Nicknamed "Old
Baldy" after its famous namesake in California, this mammoth pile of
rock and copper was in the old days a landmark for travelers, visible
sometimes for days ahead on the wagon trails. It presaged near arrival
in Tucson, for in a direct line Old Baldy is probably not further than
forty miles from the Old Pueblo.
We camped at Tubac during the summer and part of the winter of 1867 and
I remember that while we were there I cooked a reception banquet to
Colonel Richard C. McCormick, who was then and until 1869 Governor of
the Territory of Arizona. I forget his business in Tubac, but it was
either an electioneering trip or one of inspection after his appointment
to the office of Governor in 1866.
In the early part of 1868 we moved to Fort Buchanan, which before the
war had been a military post of considerable importance. It received its
name from the President before Lincoln and was garrisoned by
Confederates during the Civil War. We re-built the fort and re-named it
Fort Crittenden, in honor of General Thomas L. Crittenden, a son of the
Hon. John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, who was then in command of the
military district embracing that portion of the Territory south of the
Gila River. Crittenden was beautifully situated on the Sonoita, about
ten miles from where I now live and in the midst of some of the most
marvelously beautiful scenery to be found on the American continent.
Fort Crittenden is no longer occupied and has not been for some time;
but a short distance toward Benson is Fort Huachuaca, where at present a
garrison of the Ninth Cavalry is quartered.
During part of 1868 I carried mail from where Calabasas is now--it was
then Fort Mason--to Fort Crittenden, a proceeding emphatically not as
simple as it may sound. My way lay over a mountainous part of what is
now Santa Cruz county, a district which at that time, on account of the
excellent fodder and water, abounded with hostile Indians.
On one occasion that I well remember I had reached the waterhole over
which is now the first railroad bridge north of Patagonia, about a half
mile from the present town, and had stopped there to water my horse.
While the animal was drinking I struck a match to light my pipe--and
instantly I ducked. A bullet whistled over my head, near enough to give
me a strong premonition that a couple of inches closer would have meant
my end. I seized the bridle of my horse, leaped on his back, bent low
over the saddle and rode for it. I escaped, but it is positive in my
mind today that if those Apaches had been better accustomed to the use
of the white man's weapons I would not now be alive to tell the story.