War-Time in Arizona

The invasion of Sonora in the summer of 1857 by filibusters from California, generally called the "Crabb Expedition," caused the pall of death to fall on the boundary line of Mexico. Forty-two Americans had been massacred at Caborca, and many Mexicans had been killed. The abrasion was so serious that Americans were not safe over the Mexican boundary, and Mexicans were in danger in the boundaries of the United States.

Gabilonda, who was the only Mexican officer who protested against the massacre, came very near being mobbed by Americans in Tucson, although he was perfectly innocent of any crime,—on the contrary, deserved credit for his humanity in rescuing the boy Evans. Gabilonda was subsequently tried by a Mexican court martial organized by Pesquiera, the Governor of Sonora, and acquitted. He lived to a green old age as Collector of Mexican customs on the boundary line, and died honored and respected.

When I returned from San Francisco to the mines, in the winter of 1857, the country was paralyzed; but by the talisman of silver bars the mines were put in operation again, and miners induced to come in from Mexico. Christmas week the usual festival was given at Arivaca, and all the neighbors within a hundred miles invited.

In 1858 the business of the Territory resumed its former prosperity, and the sad events of the "Crabb Expedition" were smoothed over as far as possible. The government had subsidized an overland mail service at nearly a million a year, called the Butterfield line, with daily mails from St. Louis to San Francisco, running through Arizona. The mail service of the West has done a great deal to build up the country; and population came flocking into the Territory with high hopes of its future prosperity.

General Heintzelman obtained a furlough, and came out to superintend the mines. Colonel Samuel Colt, of revolver fame, succeeded him as president of the company, as he had contributed about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in money and arms to its resources, with the intention of enlisting as much capital as might be required from New England. Machinery was constructed on the Atlantic seaboard, and hauled overland from the Gulf of Mexico to the mines,—1350 miles.

The Apaches had not up to this time given any trouble; but on the contrary, passed within sight of our herds, going hundreds of miles into Mexico on their forays rather than break their treaty with the Americans. They could have easily carried off our stock by killing the few vaqueros kept with them on the range, but refrained from doing so from motives well understood on the frontiers. There is an unwritten law among ranchmen as old as the treaty between Abraham and Lot.

In 1857 a company of lumbermen from Maine, under a captain named Tarbox, established a camp in the Santa Rita Mountains to whipsaw lumber at one hundred and fifty dollars per thousand feet, and were doing well, as the company bought all they could saw. They built a house and corral on the south side of the Santa Cruz River, on the road from Tucson to Tubac, called the Canoa. This wayside inn formed a very convenient stopping place for travelers on the road. One day twenty-five or thirty Mexicans rode into Tubac, and said the Apaches had made a raid on their ranches, and were carrying off some hundred head of horses and mules over the Babaquivera plain, intending to cross the Santa Cruz River between the Canoa and Tucson. The Mexicans wanted us to join them in a cortada (cut off), and rescue the animals, offering to divide them with us for our assistance; but remembering our treaty with the Apaches, and how faithfully they had kept it, we declined. They went on to the Canoa, where the lumbermen were in camp, and made the same proposition, which they accepted, as they were new in the country and needed horses and mules. The lumbermen joined the Mexicans, and as they could easily discern the course of the Apaches by the clouds of dust, succeeded in forming an ambuscade and fired on the Apaches when they reached the river. The Apaches fled at the fire, leaving the stolen stock behind.

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 passing 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 Bascomb, to pursue the Apaches and recover Micky Free and the oxen. Bascomb 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 Bascomb, of Lexington, was accounted a very eminent clergyman of the Presbyterian Church. This is a very different family from Bascomb of the Confederate X roads.

Lieutenant Bascomb'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 Bascomb 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 Butterfield 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 Pass, 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 Saturday 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:—