On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

Still nearer was the “Picacho,” marking the line of the Great Southern Mail road; at its base the ranch of Charlie Shibell, where the stages changed teams and travellers stopped to take supper, the scene of as many encounters with the Apaches as any other spot in the whole Southwest. Follow along a little more to the left, and there comes the Santa Teresa Range, just back of Tucson, and credited by rumors as reliable as any ever brought by contraband during the war with being the repository of fabulous wealth in the precious metals; but no one has yet had the Aladdin’s lamp to rub and summon the obedient genii who would disclose the secret of its location.

Far off to the south rises the glistening cone of the Baboquivari, the sacred mountain in the centre of the country of the gentle Papagoes, and on the east, as we get down nearer to the Riito, the more massive outlines of the Santa Rita peak overshadowing the town of Tucson, and the white, glaring roof of the beautiful mission ruin of San Xavier del Bac.

Within this space marched the columns of the Coronado expedition, armed to the teeth in all the panoply of grim war, and bent on destruction and conquest; and here, too, plodded meek friar and learned priest, the sons of Francis or of Loyola, armed with the irresistible weapons of the Cross, the Rosary, and the Sacred Text, and likewise bent upon destruction and conquest—the destruction of idols and the conquest of souls.

These were no ordinary mortals, whom the imagination may depict as droning over breviary or mumbling over beads. They were men who had, in several cases at least, been eminent in civil pursuits before the whispers of conscience bade them listen to the Divine command, “Give up all and follow Me.” Eusebio Kino was professor of mathematics in the University of Ingoldstadt, and had already made a reputation among the scholars of Europe, when he relinquished his titles and position to become a member of the order of Jesuits and seek a place in their missionary ranks on the wildest of frontiers, where he, with his companions, preached the word of God to tribes whose names even were unknown in the Court of Madrid.

Of these men and their labors, if space allow, we may have something to learn a chapter or two farther on. Just now I find that all my powers of persuasion must be exerted to convince the readers who are still with me that the sand “wash” in which we are floundering is in truth a river, or rather a little river—the “Riito”—the largest confluent of the Santa Cruz. Could you only arrange to be with me, you unbelieving Thomases, when the deluging rains of the summer solstice rush madly down the rugged face of the Santa Catalina and swell this dry sand-bed to the dimensions of a young Missouri, all tales would be more easy for you to swallow.

But here we are. That fringe of emerald green in the “bottom” is the barley land surrounding Tucson; those gently waving cottonwoods outline the shrivelled course of the Santa Cruz; those trees with the dark, waxy-green foliage are the pomegranates behind Juan Fernandez’s corral. There is the massive wall of the church of San Antonio now; we see streets and houses, singly or in clusters, buried in shade or unsheltered from the vertical glare of the most merciless of suns. Here are pigs staked out to wallow in congenial mire—that is one of the charming customs of the Spanish Southwest; and these—ah, yes, these are dogs, unchained and running amuck after the heels of the horses, another most charming custom of the country.

Here are “burros” browsing upon tin cans—still another institution of the country—and here are the hens and chickens, and the houses of mud, of one story, flat, cheerless, and monotonous were it not for the crimson “rastras” of chile which, like mediæval banners, are flung to the outer wall. And women, young and old, wrapped up in “rebosos” and “tapalos,” which conceal all the countenance but the left eye; and men enfolded in cheap poll-parrotty blankets of cotton, busy in leaning against the door-posts and holding up the weight of “sombreros,” as large in diameter as cart-wheels and surrounded by snakes of silver bullion weighing almost as much as the wearers.

The horses are moving rapidly down the narrow street without prick of spur. The wagons are creaking merrily, pulled by energetic mules, whose efforts need not the urging of rifle-cracking whip in the hands of skilful drivers. It is only because the drivers are glad to get to Tucson that they explode the long, deadly black snakes, with which they can cut a welt out of the flank or brush a fly from the belly of any animal in their team. All the men are whistling or have broken out in glad carol. Each heart is gay, for we have at last reached Tucson, the commercial entrepôt of Arizona and the remoter Southwest—Tucson, the Mecca of the dragoon, the Naples of the desert, which one was to see and die; Tucson, whose alkali pits yielded water sweeter than Well of Zemzen, whose maidens were more charming, whose society was more hospitable, merchants more progressive, magazines better stocked, climate more dreamy, than any town from Santa Fé to Los Angeles; from Hermosillo, in Sonora, to the gloomy chasm of the Grand Cañon—with one exception only: its great rival, the thoroughly American town of Prescott, in the bosom of the pine forests, amid the granite crags of the foot-hills of the Mogollon.

Camp Lowell, as the military post was styled, was located on the eastern edge of the town itself. In more recent years it has been moved seven or eight miles out to where the Riito is a flowing stream. We took up position close to the quartermaster’s corral, erected such tents as could be obtained, and did much solid work in the construction of “ramadas” and other conveniences of branches. As a matter of comfort, all the unmarried officers boarded in the town, of which I shall endeavor to give a succinct but perfectly fair description as it impressed itself upon me during the months of our sojourn in the intervals between scouts against the enemy, who kept our hands full.

My eyes and ears were open to the strange scenes and sounds which met them on every side. Tucson was as foreign a town as if it were in Hayti instead of within our own boundaries. The language, dress, funeral processions, religious ceremonies, feasts, dances, games, joys, perils, griefs, and tribulations of its population were something not to be looked for in the region east of the Missouri River. I noted them all as well as I knew how, kept my own counsel, and give now the résumé of my notes of the time.