On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

Of all the mission churches within the present limits of the United States, stretching in the long line from San Antonio, Texas, to the presidio of San Francisco, and embracing such examples as San Gabriel, outside of Los Angeles, and the mission of San Diego, there is not one superior, and there are few equal, to San Xavier del Bac, the church of the Papago Indians, nine miles above Tucson, on the Santa Cruz. It needs to be seen to be appreciated, as no literal description, certainly none of which I am capable, can do justice to its merits and beauty. What I have written here is an epitome of the experience and knowledge acquired during years of service there and of familiarity with its people and the conditions in which they lived.

My readers should bear in mind that during the whole period of our stay in or near Tucson we were on the go constantly, moving from point to point, scouting after an enemy who had no rival on the continent in coolness, daring, and subtlety. To save repetition, I will say that the country covered by our movements comprehended the region between the Rio Azul in New Mexico, on the east, to Camp MacDowell, on the west; and from Camp Apache, on the north, to the Mexican pueblos of Santa Cruz and Madalena, far to the south. Of all this I wish to say the least possible, my intention being to give a clear picture of Arizona as it was before the arrival of General Crook, and not to enter into unnecessary details, in which undue reference must necessarily be had to my own experiences.

But I do wish to say that we were for a number of weeks accompanied by Governor Safford, at the head of a contingent of Mexican volunteers, who did very good service in the mountains on the international boundary, the Huachuca, and others. We made camp one night within rifle-shot of what has since been the flourishing, and is now the decayed, mining town of Tombstone. On still another evening, one of our Mexican guides—old Victor Ruiz, one of the best men that ever lived on the border—said that he was anxious to ascertain whether or not his grandfather’s memory was at fault in the description given of an abandoned silver mine, which Ruiz was certain could not be very far from where we were sitting. Naturally enough, we all volunteered to go with him in his search, and in less than ten minutes we had reached the spot where, under a mass of earth and stone, was hidden the shaft of which our guide had spoken.

The stories that have always circulated in Arizona about the fabulous wealth of her mineral leads as known to the Spaniards have been of such a character as to turn the brain of the most conservative. The Plancha de la Plata, where a lump of virgin silver weighing over two thousand pounds was exhumed; the “Thorn Mine,” or the “Lost Cabin Mine,” in the Tonto Basin; the “Salero,” where the padre in charge, wishing to entertain his bishop in proper style, and finding that he had no salt-cellars ready, ordered certain of the Indians to dig out enough ore to make a solid silver basin, which was placed in all its crudity before the superior—all these were ringing in our ears, and made our task of moving the rocks and débris a very light one.

Disappointment attended our discovery; the assays of the ore forwarded to San Francisco were not such as to stimulate the work of development; the rock was not worth more than seventeen dollars a ton, which in those years would not half pay the cost of reduction of silver.

We were among the very first to come upon the rich ledges of copper which have since furnished the mainstay to the prosperity of the town of Clifton, on the border of New Mexico, and we knocked off pieces of pure metal, and brought them back to Tucson to show to the people there, on returning from our scouts in the upper Gila.

On one occasion the Apaches ran off the herd of sheep belonging to Tully, Ochoa & DeLong, which were grazing in the foot-hills of the Santa Teresa not two miles from town. The young Mexican who was on duty as “pastor” kept his ears open for the tinkle of the bell, and every now and then would rouse himself from his doze to look around the mesquite under which he sat, to ascertain that his flock was all right. Gradually, the heat of the day became more and more oppressive, and the poor boy, still hearing the tintinnabulation, was in a delightful day-dream, thinking of his supper, perhaps, when he half-opened his eyes, and saw leering at him a full-grown Apache, who had all the while been gently shaking the bell taken an hour or two before from the neck of the wether which, with the rest of the flock, was a good long distance out of sight behind the hills, near the “Punta del Agua.” The boy, frightened out of his wits, screamed lustily, and the Apache, delighted by his terror, flung the bell at his head, and then set off at a run to gain the hills where his comrades were. The alarm soon reached town, and the sheep were recovered before midnight, and by dawn the next day were back on their old pasturage, excepting the foot-sore and the weary, too weak to travel.

Our scouting had its share of incidents grave, gay, melancholy, ludicrous; men killed and wounded; Apaches ditto; and the usual amount of hard climbing by day, or marching by night upon trails which sometimes led us upon the enemy, and very often did not.

There was one very good man, Moore, if I remember his name correctly, who died of the “fever”—malaria—and was carried from the “Grassy Plain” into old Camp Goodwin, on the Gila, near the Warm Spring. No sooner had we arrived at Goodwin than one of the men—soldier or civilian employee, I do not know now—attempted to commit suicide, driven to despair by the utter isolation of his position; and two of our own company—Sergeant John Mott and one other, both excellent men—dropped down, broken up with the “fever,” which would yield to nothing but the most heroic treatment with quinine.

In a skirmish with the Apaches near the head of Deer Creek, one of our men, named Shire, was struck by a rifle ball in the knee-cap, the ball ranging downward, and lodging in the lower leg near the ankle bone. We were sore distressed. There was no doctor with the little command, a criminal neglect for which Cushing was not responsible, and there was no guide, as Manuel Duran, who generally went out with us, was lying in Tucson seriously ill. No one was hurt badly enough to excite apprehension excepting Shire, whose wound was not bleeding at all, the hemorrhage being on the inside.