Building a State in Apache Land Part 4

The Mexicans made a fair division, and the mule trade was lively with the lumbermen and the merchants in Tucson. With the proceeds of their adventure the lumbermen added many comforts and luxuries to their camp at the Canoa on the Santa Cruz, and travelers reveled in crystal and whisky.

About the next full moon after this event, we had been pa.s.sing the usual quiet Sunday in Tubac, when a Mexican vaquero came galloping furiously into the plaza, crying out: "Apaches! Apaches! Apaches!" As soon as he had recovered sufficiently to talk, we learned that the Apaches had made an attack on Canoa, and killed all the settlers.

It was late in the day; the men had nearly all gone to the mines, and we could only muster about a dozen men and horses; so we did not start until early next morning, as the Mexican said there were "Muchos Apaches."

When we reached the Canoa, a little after sunrise, the place looked as if it had been struck by a hurricane. The doors and windows were smashed, and the house a smoking ruin. The former inmates were lying around dead, and three of them had been thrown into the well, head foremost. We buried seven men in a row, in front of the burnt houses.

As well as could be ascertained by the tracks, there must have been fully eighty Apaches on horseback. They carried off on this raid 280 head of animals from the Canoa and the adjoining ranches.

There were some companies of the First Dragoons eating beef at Fort Buchanan. The commanding officer was notified, and sent some troops in pursuit, but the Apaches were in their strongholds long before the dragoons saddled their horses.

The pursuit of Apaches is exceedingly dangerous, as they are very skillful in forming ambuscades, and never give a fair fight in an open field. Their horsemanship is far superior to American troops, who are for the most part foreigners, and exceedingly awkward.

The second serious trouble with the Apaches was brought about by a far more foolish cause than the first, and it was much more disastrous.

In the winter of 1857 a somber colored son of Erin came along on foot to the presidio of Tubac, and solicited the rights of hospitality, food and a fire. Whether he had been run out of California by the Vigilance Committee, as many of our "guests" had been, or was escaping legitimate justice, was not in question; the imperative cravings of the stomach admit of very scant ceremony; so I took John Ward in to dinner, and provided him with all the comforts of home.

At bed-time he asked me if he might sleep in the front room by the fire; to which I reluctantly consented, taking good care to lock and bar the door between us.

The next morning after breakfast I gave John Ward some grub, and advised him to push on to Fort Buchanan, on the Sonoita, where he could probably get some employment.

He went on to the Sonoita and took up a ranch, forming a temporary partnership with a Mexican woman, according to the customs of the country at that time.

She had a little boy who also appeared to be partly of Celtic descent, as he had a red head, and was nicknamed "Micky Free." This probably formed the only matrimonial tie between John Ward and the Mexican woman.

In the course of time John Ward got a hay contract, a wagon, and a few yoke of oxen, and appeared to be thriving at Uncle Sam's expense. Fort Buchanan was garrisoned by a portion of the First Regiment of dragoons.

The most of the men were Germans, and could not mount a horse without a step-ladder.

In the early part of 1858 John Ward got drunk, and beat his step-son Micky Free until he ran away to Sonora. Ward became so blind drunk that he could not find his oxen; so he went to the Fort and complained to Major Stein, the commanding officer, that the Apaches had stolen his oxen and carried off the woman's boy.

Major Stein was a very good man, and very capable of running a saw-mill in Missouri, where he came from. He listened to John Ward's tale of woe, and ordered out a detachment of the First Dragoons, under Lieutenant Bas...o...b.. to pursue the Apaches and recover Micky Free and the oxen.

Bas...o...b..was a fine-looking young fellow, a Kentuckian, a West Pointer, and of course a gentleman; but he was unfortunately a fool; although his uncle, Preacher Bas...o...b.. of Lexington, was accounted a very eminent clergyman of the Presbyterian Church. This is a very different family from Bas...o...b..of the Confederate X roads.

Lieutenant Bas...o...b..s command pursued some Apaches, who had been raiding in Sonora, into the Whetstone Mountains, where they called a parley. The Apaches were summoned to camp _under a white flag_; and feeling perfectly innocent of having committed a crime against the Americans, fearlessly presented themselves before Lieutenant Bas...o...b..and his boys in blue. They positively denied having seen the boy or stolen the oxen; and they told the truth, as was well known afterward; but the Lieutenant was not satisfied, and ordered them seized and executed.

Four Apache chiefs were seized and tied. Cochise (in the Apache dialect Wood) managed to get hold of a knife, which he had concealed, cut his bonds, and escape. He was a very brave leader, and after having wreaked a terrible vengeance for the treachery of American troops to the Apaches, died in peace at the Indian Agency in the Chiricahua Mountains, 1874.

The war thus inaugurated by this Apache chieftain lasted fourteen years, and has scarcely any parallel in the horrors of Indian warfare. The men, women, and children, killed; the property destroyed, and the detriment to the settlement of Arizona cannot be computed. The cost of the war against Cochise would have purchased John Ward a string of yokes of oxen reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific; and as for his woman's son, Micky Free, he afterwards became an Indian scout and interpreter, and about as infamous a scoundrel as those who generally adorn that profession. I am on very friendly terms with him and all his family, and would not write a word in derogation of his character, or of his step-father, John Ward, but to vindicate history.

The Vigilance Committee of San Francisco sent a considerable number of unsavory immigrants to Arizona, who with the refugees from Mexico, Texas and Arkansas, rendered mule property rather insecure in the early days.

Gambling has been an industrial pursuit since the first settlement of the country, and the saloon business flourishes with the prosperity of the times. Strange to say, amidst this heterogeneous population there has never been a vigilance committee.

The Company and the country (synonymous terms) continued to improve, with occasional interruptions by the Apaches, until the beginning of 1861, when the reverberations of the gun fired at Sumter were heard in the Arizona mountains. A newspaper had been started by the company at Tubac, called _The Arizonian_. Our mail came overland by b.u.t.terfield coaches, at the rate of a hundred miles a day, but at last we waited for "the mail that never came." In the spring of 1861 a coach was started out from the Rio Grande with thirteen of the bravest buckskin boys of the West, and ten or twelve thousand dollars in gold, to pay off the line and withdraw the service; but the Apaches waylaid the coach in Stein's Pa.s.s, killed all of the men, and captured the gold.

In the month of June the machinery was running smoothly at Arivaca, the mines were yielding handsomely, and two hundred and fifty employees were working for good wages, which were paid punctually every Sat.u.r.day afternoon.

One day an orderly from Fort Buchanan rode up to headquarters and handed me a note from Lieutenant Chapin, enclosing a copy of an order from the commanding officer of the Military Department:--

Santa Fe, June, 1861, Commanding Officer, Fort Buchanan:--

On receipt of this you will abandon and destroy your Post; burn your Commissary and Quartermasters'

stores, and everything between the Colorado and Rio Grande that will feed an army.

March out with your guns loaded, and do not permit any citizen within fifteen miles of your lines.

(Signed) Major General Lynde

A council of the princ.i.p.al employees was called, and the order laid before them. The wisest said we could not hold the country after the troops abandoned it,--that the Apaches would come down upon us by the hundred, and the Mexicans would cut our throats. It was concluded to reduce the ore we had mined, which was yielding about a thousand dollars a day, pay off the hands, and prepare for the worst.

About a week afterwards the Apaches came down by stealth, and carried off out of the corral one hundred and forty-six horses and mules.

The Apaches are very adroit in stealing stock, and no doubt inherit the skill of many generations in theft. The corrals are generally built of adobe, with a gate or bars at the entrance. It was a customary practice for the Apaches to saw an entrance through an adobe wall with their horsehair ropes (cabrestas).

The corral at Arivaca was constructed of adobes, with a layer of cactus poles (ocquitillo) lengthwise between each layer of adobes. The Apaches tried their rope saw, but the cactus parted the rope. The bars were up, and a log chain wound around each bar and locked to the post; but they removed the bars quietly by wrapping their sc.r.a.pes around the chain, to prevent the noise alarming the watchman. The steam engine was running day and night, and the watchman had orders to go the rounds of the place every hour during the night; but the Apaches were so skillful and secretive in their movements that not the least intimation of their presence on the place was observed,--not even by the watchdogs, which generally have a keen scent for Indians.

At the break of day the Apaches gave a whoop, and disappeared with the entire herd before the astonished gaze of five watchmen, who were sleeping under a porch within thirty yards. A pursuit was organized as soon as possible; but the pursuers soon ran into an ambuscade prepared by the retreating Apaches, when three were killed and two wounded. The rest returned without recovering any of the stock.

This loss of stock made very lonesome times at Arivaca, as it could not be replaced in the country, and we had no animals to haul ores, fuel, or provisions; only a few riding and ambulance animals, which had to be kept in stables and fed on grain.

About the same time the Apaches made an attack on the Santa Rita Mining Hacienda, and the eastern side of the Santa Cruz River had to be abandoned.

At Tubac, the headquarters of the company, where the old Mexican cuartel furnished ample room for storage, about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of merchandise, machinery and supplies were stored. The Apaches, to the number of nearly a hundred, surrounded the town and compelled its evacuation. The plunder and destruction of property was complete. We had scarcely a safe place to sleep, and nothing to sleep on but the ground.

The women and children were escorted to the old pueblo of Tucson, where the few people remaining in the Territory were concentrated; and they remained there in a miserable condition until the troops arrived from California under General James A. Carlton, United States Army, commonly called "Carlton's Column."

General Carlton, upon arriving in the Territory, issued an order declaring martial law between the Colorado and the Rio Grande. These troops garrisoned the country between the rivers, and drove out the rebel troops, who had come in from Texas under the Confederate government.

After the abandonment of the Territory by the United States troops armed Mexicans in considerable numbers crossed the boundary line, declaring that the American government was broken up, and they had come to take their country back again. Even the few Americans left in the country were not at peace among themselves,--the chances were that if you met in the road it was to draw arms, and declare whether you were for the North or the South.

The Mexicans at the mines a.s.sa.s.sinated all the white men there when they were asleep, looted the place, and fled across the boundary to Mexico.

The smoke of burning wheat-fields could be seen up and down the Santa Cruz valley, where the troops were in retreat, destroying everything before and behind them. The government of the United States abandoned the first settlers of Arizona to the merciless Apaches. It was impossible to remain in the country and continue the business without animals for transportation, so there was nothing to be done but to pack our portable property on the few animals we kept in stables, and strike out across the deserts for California.

With only one companion, Professor Pumpelly, and a faithful negro and some friendly Indians for packers, we made the journey to Yuma by the fourth of July, where we first heard of the battle of Bull Run. Another journey took us across the Colorado Desert to Los Angeles, and thence we went by steamer to San Francisco, and thence via Panama to New York.

It was sad to leave the country that had cost so much money and blood in ruins, but it seemed to be inevitable. The plant of the Company at this time in machinery, materials, tools, provisions, animals, wagons, etc., amounted to considerably over a million dollars, but the greatest blow was the destruction of our hopes,--not so much of making money as of making a country. Of all the lonesome sounds that I remember (and it seems ludicrous now), most distinct is the crowing of c.o.c.ks on the deserted ranches. The very chickens seemed to know that they were abandoned.

We were followed all the way to Yuma by a band of Mexican robbers, as it was supposed we carried a great amount of treasure, and the fatigue of the journey by day and standing guard all night was trying on the strongest const.i.tution in the hot summer month of June.

An account of the breaking up of Arizona and our journey across the deserts to California has been given by Professor Pumpelly, in his book, "Across America and Asia." The subject is so repugnant that the harrowing scenes preceding the abandonment of the country are only briefly stated.

The Civil War was in full blast upon my arrival in New York, and the change of venue from Apache Land was not peaceful. The little balance to my credit from the silver mines was with William T. Coleman & Co., 88 Wall Street, and I put it up as margin on gold at $132 and sold for $250.

After resting a while in New York I went down to Washington, and found my old friend General Heintzelman in command of what was technically called "The Defenses of Washington." The capital of the nation was beleaguered!

The Civil War and its results set Arizona back about twenty years.

The location of the Iturbide Grant had been continued in Sonora and Lower California, under direction of Captain--afterwards General--Stone, an officer for the United States Army, of engineering ability. I had first become acquainted with him when he was quartermaster at Benicia Barracks, in California, and met him the last time when he was chief of staff to the Khedive of Egypt at Grand Cairo, on the Nile.

Pesquiera, the governor of Sonora, held the state in quasi-independence of Mexico, and drove the surveying party under Stone out of Mexico by force of arms.