Stoicism of Indian
The following incident shows something of the character of these Ishmaelites of the desert. On one occasion five of them had been tried at Florence for the killing of someone in the Superstition mountains, and sentenced to be hanged. The night previous to the day of the hanging, while in their cells, with the death-watch outside, three of them, to avoid the ignominy of death by hanging, committed suicide by self-strangulation. This they could do only by each putting a cord around his neck and deliberately choking himself to death. The three were found dead in the morning when the guards entered their cells.
Of course it is not possible to recall the names of all of the many whose lives were a sacrifice to the safety and prosperity of the great commonwealth that was to follow, but I have in mind that on June 7, 1886, Thos. Hunt, a prospector, was killed near Harshaw, and on June 9 of the same year Henry Baston was killed near Arivaca. On September 22, 1888, W. B. Horton, post trader at San Carlos, was killed by one of the Indians on the reservation. But in this case punishment was swift, as the Indian police almost immediately killed the murderer while he was attempting to escape from the reservation.