On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

“Enchiladas” and “tamales” are dishes of Aztec origin, much in vogue on the south side of the Rio Grande and Gila. The former may be described as corn batter cakes, dipped in a stew of red chile, with tomato, cheese, and onions chopped fine.

“Tamales” are chopped meat—beef, pork, or chicken, or a mixture of all three—combined with corn-meal and rolled up in husks and boiled or baked. Practically, they are croquettes. These dishes are delicious, and merit an introduction to American tables. No one can deny that when a Mexican agrees to furnish a hot supper, the hot supper will be forthcoming. What caloric cannot be supplied by fuel is derived from chile, red pepper, with white pepper, green, and a trifle of black, merely to show that the cook has no prejudices on account of color.

The banquet may not have been any too grand, out in the open air, but the gratitude of the bright-eyed, sweet-voiced young señoritas who shared it made it taste delicious. Tucson etiquette in some things was ridiculously strict, and the occasions when young ladies could go, even in parties, with representatives of the opposite sex were few and far between—and all the more appreciated when they did come.

If ever there was created a disagreeable feature upon the fair face of nature, it was the Spanish dueña. All that were to be met in those days in southern Arizona seemed to be possessed of an unaccountable aversion to the mounted service. No flattery would put them in good humor, no cajolery would blind them, intimidation was thrown away. There they would sit, keeping strict, dragon-like watch over the dear little creatures who responded to the names of Anita, Victoria, Concepcion, Guadalupe, or Mercedes, and preventing conversation upon any subject excepting the weather, in which we became so expert that it is a wonder the science of meteorology hasn’t made greater advances than it has during the past two decades.

The bull fight did not get farther west than El Paso. Tucson never had one that I have heard of, and very little in the way of out-door “sport” beyond chicken fights, which were often savage and bloody. The rapture with which the feminine heart welcomed the news that a “baile” was to be given in Tucson equalled the pleasure of the ladies of Murray Hill or Beacon Street upon the corresponding occasions in their localities. To be sure, the ceremony of the Tucson affairs was of the meagrest. The rooms were wanting in splendor, perhaps in comfort—but the music was on hand, and so were the ladies, young and old, and their cavaliers, and all hands would manage to have the best sort of a time. The ball-room was one long apartment, with earthen floor, having around its sides low benches, and upon its walls a few cheap mirrors and half a dozen candles stuck to the adobe by melted tallow, a bit of moist clay, or else held in tin sconces, from which they emitted the sickliest light upon the heads and forms of the highly colored saints whose pictures were to be seen in the most eligible places. If the weather happened to be chilly enough in the winter season, a petty fire would be allowed to blaze in one of the corners, but, as a general thing, this was not essential.

The summer climate of Tucson is sultry, and the heat will often run up as high as 120° Fahr.; the fall months are dangerous from malaria, and the springs disagreeable from sand storms, but the winters are incomparable. Neither Italy nor Spain can compare with southern Arizona in balminess of winter climate, and I know of no place in the whole world superior to Tucson as a sanitarium for nervous and pulmonary diseases, from November to March, when the patient can avoid the malaria-breeding fall months and the disagreeable sand storms of the early spring.

The nights in Tucson during the greater part of the year are so cool that blankets are agreeable covering for sleepers. There are times in Tucson, as during the summer of 1870, when for more than a week the thermometer never indicates lower than 98° by day or night. And there are localities, like forts or camps—as they were then styled—Grant, MacDowell, Mojave, Yuma, Beale’s Springs, Verde, and Date Creek, where this rule of excessive and prolonged heat never seemed to break. The winter nights of Tucson are cold and bracing, but it is a dry cold, without the slightest suggestion of humidity, and rarely does the temperature fall much below the freezing-point.

The moment you passed the threshold of the ball-room in Tucson you had broken over your head an egg-shell filled either with cologne of the most dubious reputation or else with finely cut gold and silver paper. This custom, preserved in this out-of-the-way place, dates back to the “Carnestolends” or Shrove-Tuesday pranks of Spain and Portugal, when the egg was really broken over the head of the unfortunate wight and the pasty mass covered over with flour.

Once within the ball-room there was no need of being presented to any one. The etiquette of the Spaniards is very elastic, and is based upon common sense. Every man who is good enough to be invited to enter the house of a Mexican gentleman is good enough to enter into conversation with all the company he may meet there.

Our American etiquette is based upon the etiquette of the English. Ever since King James, the mild-mannered lunatic, sold his orders of nobility to any cad who possessed the necessary six thousand pounds to pay for an entrance into good society, the aristocracy of England has been going down-hill, and what passes with it for manners is the code of the promoted plutocrat, whose ideas would find no place with the Spaniards, who believe in “sangre azul” or nothing. There was very little conversation between the ladies and the gentlemen, because the ladies preferred to cluster together and discuss the neighbors who hadn’t been able to come, or explain the details of dresses just made or to be made.