We understand Col. Bonneville says he has taken the names
of all the Americans, between the Rio Grande and the Santa
Cruz, and they number only one hundred and eighty. Come and
pay us a longer visit, Colonel, and count again. There are
nearly that number in and around Tucson alone, and there
are a good many of us that dislike to be denationalized
in so summary a manner. The Overland Mail Company alone,
employs some seventy five Americans, between here and the
Rio Grande, and they justly think, they have a right to be
included, as well as the farmers living on the San Pedro
and the Miembres rivers, it is hardly fair to leave them
out. It is nearly as bad as cutting down the Americans on
the Gila and Colorado to twelve. When there are ten times
that number. Try it again Colonel, for evidently there is a
slight mistake, some where.
In the same issue is a notice illustrating the production difficulties
characteristic of a frontier press:
We have to apologize to the readers of the Arizonian, for
the delay in issuing this our regular number; the detention
has been unavoidably caused, by the indisposition of our
printer. We hope it may not occur again, and will not as
far as lays in our power to prevent it.
When examined as recently as 1932, a Library of Congress binding
contained 10 issues of the _Arizonian_ from the year 1859, beginning
July 14; however, that early issue has been missing from the binding
at least since 1948. One mark of provenance occurs among the remaining
issues: an inscription on the issue of August 18, the upper half of
which has been cut away but which unquestionably reads, "Gov Rencher."
The recipient was Abraham Rencher (1798-1883), a distinguished North
Carolinian who was serving as Governor of the Territory of New Mexico
in 1859. By whatever route, these issues reached the Library early
enough to be recorded in _A Check List of American Newspapers in the
Library of Congress_ (1901).
[Illustration: (Column from _Arizonian_)]
[Footnote 128: See Douglas C. McMurtrie, _The Beginnings of Printing
in Arizona_ (Chicago, 1937), p. 31, note 9.]
[Footnote 129: See Estelle Lutrell, _Newspapers and Periodicals of
Arizona 1859-1911_ (Tucson, 1950), p. 7-8, 63-64. For more on Cross
and Mowry, see Jo Ann Schmitt, _Fighting Editors_ (San Antonio, 1958),
p. 1-21.]