In the night West was aroused from sleep and informed that Mangas Coloradas had attempted to escape and had been shot dead by the guards. The accounts of the capture and execution of this famous Apache are confusing and contradictory. More than one soldier who was present at the time has left on record the assertion that the captive was tormented and enraged beyond endurance, and when forced to angry complaint, was shot. I give West’s own account of the event. He says that he investigated the death of Mangas Coloradas at once and found that he had made three attempts to escape between midnight, when he was placed under guard of a sergeant and three privates, and one o’clock when he was shot while, for the third time, attempting to escape. It seems too likely that General West had so deeply impressed the guard with the common feeling of himself and his command, that the rascal deserved death, that the soldiers believed they were carrying out the real desire of the commanding officer with respect to him. It is probable that the old chief was improperly treated in order to arouse his fury and give the guard an excuse for shooting him.
When Shirland took Mangas Coloradas, it was understood that the chief was to be permitted to return to his people at a certain time. The troops now marched to Pinos Altos and upon arriving there were approached by the followers of Mangas Coloradas. They were attacked by order of Captain McCleave, and eleven Indians were killed and one wounded. This affair was on January 19, 1863. The following day the troops came upon an Indian ranchería, and in a surprise attack killed nine of the Indians, wounded many more, destroyed the ranchería, and captured thirty-four animals–some of them Government mules previously stolen by the Indians. January 29, at Pinos Altos Mines, two hunting parties of the California Volunteers were attacked by the Apaches, and a sergeant and a private were killed. The Indians were driven off with severe punishment, losing twenty killed and fifteen wounded.
February 22, 1863, McCleave moved with his four companies to the site recommended for Fort West. The post was occupied that spring, but General West instructed McCleave not to erect buildings until further orders. On March 22 the Gila Apaches ran off sixty head of horses from the grazing ground near Fort West. Within three hours Captain McCleave was in pursuit, with one hundred poorly mounted men and five days’ rations on pack mules. The Indians had a good lead and they made fast time. Their trail led in a westerly direction. Following it for seventy miles, McCleave found that it continued down the Gila for five miles, and then across a divide to the Black River. By the time McCleave reached the Black River, the soldiers had been in the saddle more than three days, almost without sleep, and many of the horses were giving out. Signs indicated that they were now near the marauders. In the twilight they moved noiselessly up the stream two miles and made camp in the darkness and rain. At eight the next morning, just four days to an hour after the chase began, thirty men under Lieutenant Latimer, mounted on the only horses that were still fit for service, and thirty on foot led by McCleave started out to find a ranchería which they were sure was near by. Lieutenant French with the remainder of the command stayed behind to guard the broken-down horses, the pack animals, and provisions. McCleave climbed a mountain on the west side of the stream and proceeded twelve miles, without success. He then rested with his men in a heavy rain from one o’clock until daybreak. When daylight came, McCleave was able to make out from an elevated position the ranchería for which they were searching. Latimer was ordered to go in advance and charge the Indians with his cavalry. This was gallantly done. Part of the dismounted men began at once to catch and guard the stolen horses, while the others, from the bluff, took part in the battle. In twenty minutes the Indians were routed and the ranchería destroyed. Twenty-five were killed. All the Government horses that could be found, as well as a good many Indian horses, were secured. Private James Hall was mortally wounded, and on the return trip, when the soldiers were attacked by the Indians from the walls of a canyon, Lieutenant French was wounded. For alacrity and endurance in pursuit and bravery in attack, this expedition is perhaps unsurpassed in the history of Apache warfare.
In the Overland Monthly of September, 1870, there is a vivid account of this campaign by one who took part in it. Says the writer: ‘Our sole sustenance, four days and nights, had been hard bread and raw pork, with but four hours’ sleep during that time. . . . Out of one hundred horses with which we started, but thirty remained alive; and of these, but fifteen were capable of further service. . . . Most of the men had performed two days’ journey on foot, with all their accoutrements.”
There was, perhaps, no more completely successful expedition against the Apaches than that conducted by Thomas T. Tidball in early May, 1863. It was difficult, indeed, for an American officer to outwit and outmarch a band of Apaches; but in this instance the Indians were outdone both in craft and celerity. It was known to Colonel David Fergusson, in command at Tucson, that there was a very hostile and cruel band of Apaches who rendezvoused at a ranchería in Arivaipa Canyon. May 2, 1863, Fergusson gave Tidball orders to start that very night to chastise these dangerous Indians. He was to select twenty-five men from Companies I and K of the Fifth Infantry California Volunteers and was to be accompanied by ten volunteer American citizens, thirty-two Mexicans under Jesus Maria Elias, and about twenty Papagos from San Xavier, commanded by their brave and discreet governor, José Antonio Saborze. Nine tame Apaches were also to go along as guides. Tidball was to be in full command of this mixed force. It was the purpose to surprise the ranchería. They were to kill as many warriors as possible, but were to bring women and children back to Tucson as captives.
The party traveled five nights in utter silence, resting and concealing themselves by day. Not a gun was fired; never was a fire lighted. The ranchería was taken completely unawares. The evening and night before the battle, the company had traveled sixteen hours over frightful precipices, through gloomy canyons and chasms heretofore untrod by white men. At dawn they fell upon the encampment, numbering more than twice their own force, killed more than fifty Apaches and wounded as many, took ten prisoners, and captured sixty-six head of stock. Thomas C. McClelland was the only man killed in the attacking party.
October 23, 1863, by a General Order, Carleton created the new military District of Northern Arizona. He did this because the discovery of gold in the region of modern Prescott was attracting many prospectors from the Pacific Coast, Mexico, and the East. Previous to 1863 there were no white settlers in northern Arizona. But now Carleton thought it necessary to place a military force in this region to protect the miners from the Apaches and to insure order among the prospectors and adventurers until a civil government should be organized. He ordered the following officers and troops to proceed to the new gold fields without delay: Major Edward B. Willis of the California Volunteers; Captain Herbert M. Enos, U. S. Army; Dr. Charles Lieb, acting-assistant surgeon; and Companies C and F, First Infantry California Volunteers, under Captains Hargrave and Benson; and Captain Pishon, with thirty, rank and file, of Company D, First Cavalry, California Volunteers. A board of officers were named to fix the site of a military post, to be named Fort Whipple, and to submit a plan for it. During the coming winter the troops were to live in huts. The site first chosen was about seventy miles south of the San Francisco Mountains on Rio Verde. As soon as the site of the territorial capital was selected, Assistant-Inspector General N. H. Davis and Governor Goodwin recommended that the location of the post be changed; so, May 27, 1864, Major Willis wrote to Carleton to inform him that the site for Fort Whipple “is a mile and a half northeast from the town now being built on Granite Creek [ Prescott].”
King Woolsey, Arizona’s great Indian fighter, had a famous encounter with the Tonto Apaches in the early winter of 1864. This affair has always been alluded to as “The Massacre at Bloody Tanks” or “The Pinole Treaty.” During the winter of 1863-1864, the Indians had been very busy running off the stock of the settlers in Peeples’ Valley and thereabout. In January Woolsey led a company of the settlers against these marauders. The official report of the engagement is very brief: “On January 24, 1864, a party of thirty Americans and fourteen Maricopa and Pima Indians, under King S. Woolsey, aide to the Governor of Arizona, attacked a band of Gila Apaches sixty or seventy miles northeast of the Pima Village and killed nineteen of them and wounded others. Mr. Cyrus Lennon of Woolsey’s party was killed by a wounded Indian.”
But the account of the battle as it has come down to us from Arizona pioneers is much more detailed and colorful. First the party struck into the Tonto Basin in pursuit of their enemies. A few miles from the present site of Miami, they found that they were encircled by Indians on the hills above. There was with Woolsey’s party an interpreter Jack, a young Yuma Indian who had been a captive among the Apaches for a time. He persuaded about thirty of the leading Apaches to come down without arms for a council. He told them that he and his white friends were there to make peace and bring gifts. Leaving the main body of his men about two hundred feet in the rear, with instructions to open fire on the Apaches when he should give the signal by putting his hand up to his hat, Woolsey went forward with three others (each one with two revolvers secreted under his coat) to hold council with the chiefs. As they were seated in a semicircle, so the story goes, an Apache entered the group drawing two lances at his heels, while another one appeared and secretly distributed a handful of knives to the Indians. Then came an Indian boy almost out of breath to announce that the Big Chief ordered them all to leave the conference, as it was his intention to wipe out all the whites and their Indian allies. Woolsey now gave the prearranged signal, and at the same time shot the chief seated at his side. The others who were with him used their pistols in like manner. The men at the rear, who were armed with rifles, made havoc among the Indians who had remained on the mountains. So severe was the punishment administered to the Tonto Apaches that they did not trouble the settlers again for a long time. The reason that this affair is always spoken of as “The Pinole Treaty” is the fact that a widespread report has persisted to the effect that the gift of pinole that was given to the Indians had been treated with strychnine and that about forty Indians died of poison. The writer does not give credence to this sinister story.
No sooner was the Territorial Government set up in 1864 than Governor John N. Goodwin went to work to acquaint himself with the wide wild domain over which he was to rule. He visited the mining settlements that had sprung up about Fort Whipple, traveled eastward as far as the Verde and Salt Rivers, and in March visited Tucson. From Tucson, April 4, he wrote a long personal letter to General Carleton at Santa Fe, giving an account of his explorations and making recommendations concerning military protection for the settlers and the officers of Government. Two weeks earlier than this