On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

From the valley of the Verde to the town of Prescott, according to the steep roads and trails connecting them in 1871, was something over fifty-five miles, the first part of the journey extremely rough and precipitous, the latter half within sight of hills clad with graceful pines and cooled by the breezes from the higher ranges. The country was well grassed; there was a very pleasing absence of the cactus vegetation to be seen farther to the south, adobe houses were replaced by comfortable-looking dwellings and barns of plank or stone; the water in the wells was cold and pure, and the lofty peaks, the San Francisco and the Black Range and the Bradshaw, were for months in the year buried in snow.

CHAPTER IX.

THE PICTURESQUE TOWN OF PRESCOTT—THE APACHES ACTIVE NEAR PRESCOTT—“TOMMY” BYRNE AND THE HUALPAIS—THIEVING INDIAN AGENTS—THE MOJAVES, PI-UTES AND AVA-SUPAIS—THE TRAVELS OF FATHERS ESCALANTE AND GARCES—THE GODS OF THE HUALPAIS—THE LORING MASSACRE—HOW PHIL DWYER DIED AND WAS BURIED—THE INDIAN MURDERERS AT CAMP DATE CREEK PLAN TO KILL CROOK—MASON JUMPS THE RENEGADES AT THE “MUCHOS CAÑONES”—DELT-CHE AND CHA-LIPUN GIVE TROUBLE—THE KILLING OF BOB WHITNEY.

A few words should be spoken in praise of a community which of all those on the southwestern frontier preserved the distinction of being thoroughly American. Prescott was not merely picturesque in location and dainty in appearance, with all its houses neatly painted and surrounded with paling fences and supplied with windows after the American style—it was a village transplanted bodily from the centre of the Delaware, the Mohawk, or the Connecticut valley. Its inhabitants were Americans; American men had brought American wives out with them from their old homes in the far East, and these American wives had not forgotten the lessons of elegance and thrift learned in childhood. Everything about the houses recalled the scenes familiar to the dweller in the country near Pittsburgh or other busy community. The houses were built in American style; the doors were American doors and fastened with American bolts and locks, opened by American knobs, and not closed by letting a heavy cottonwood log fall against them.

The furniture was the neat cottage furniture with which all must be familiar who have ever had the privilege of entering an American country home; there were carpets, mirrors, rocking-chairs, tables, lamps, and all other appurtenances, just as one might expect to find them in any part of our country excepting Arizona and New Mexico. There were American books, American newspapers, American magazines—the last intelligently read. The language was American, and nothing else—the man who hoped to acquire a correct knowledge of Castilian in Prescott would surely be disappointed. Not even so much as a Spanish advertisement could be found in the columns of The Miner, in which, week after week, John H. Marion fought out the battle of “America for the Americans.” The stores were American stores, selling nothing but American goods. In one word, the transition from Tucson to Prescott was as sudden and as radical as that between Madrid and Manchester.

In one respect only was there the slightest resemblance: in Prescott, as in Tucson, the gambling saloons were never closed. Sunday or Monday, night or morning, the “game” went, and the voice of the “dealer” was heard in the land. Prescott was essentially a mining town deriving its business from the wants of the various “claims” on the Agua Fria, the Big Bug and Lynx Creek on the east, and others in the west as far as Cerbat and Mineral Park. There was an air of comfort about it which indicated intelligence and refinement rather than wealth which its people did not as yet enjoy.

At this time, in obedience to orders received from the Secretary of War, I was assigned to duty as aide-de-camp, and in that position had the best possible opportunity for becoming acquainted with the country, the Indians and white people in it, and to absorb a knowledge of all that was to be done and that was done. General Crook’s first move was to bring the department headquarters to Prescott; they had been for a long while at Los Angeles, California, some five hundred miles across the desert, to the west, and in the complete absence of railroad and telegraph facilities they might just as well have been in Alaska. His next duty was to perfect the knowledge already gained of the enormous area placed under his charge, and this necessitated an incredible amount of travelling on mule-back, in ambulance and buckboard, over roads, or rather trails, which eclipsed any of the horrors portrayed by the pencil of Doré. There was great danger in all this, but Crook travelled without escort, except on very special occasions, as he did not wish to break down his men by overwork.

The Apaches had been fully as active in the neighborhood of Prescott as they had been in that of Tucson, and to this day such names as “The Burnt Ranch”—a point four miles to the northwest of the town—commemorate attacks and massacres by the aborigines. The mail-rider had several times been “corraled” at the Point of Rocks, very close to the town, and all of this portion of Arizona had groaned under the depredations not of the Apaches alone but of the Navajos, Hualpais, and Apache-Mojaves, and now and then of the Sevinches, a small band of thieves of Pi-Ute stock, living in the Grand Cañon of the Colorado on the northern boundary of the territory. I have still preserved as relics of those days copies of The Miner of Prescott and of The Citizen of Tucson, in every column of which are to be found references to Indian depredations.

There should still be in Washington a copy of the petition forwarded by the inhabitants pleading for more adequate protection, in which are given the names of over four hundred American citizens killed in encounters with the savages within an extremely limited period—two or three years—and the dates and localities of the occurrences.

Fort Whipple, the name of the military post within one mile of the town, was a ramshackle, tumble-down palisade of unbarked pine logs hewn from the adjacent slopes; it was supposed to “command” something, exactly what, I do not remember, as it was so dilapidated that every time the wind rose we were afraid that the palisade was doomed. The quarters for both officers and men were also log houses, with the exception of one single-room shanty on the apex of the hill nearest to town, which was constructed of unseasoned, unpainted pine planks, and which served as General Crook’s “Headquarters,” and, at night, as the place wherein he stretched his limbs in slumber. He foresaw that the negotiations which Mr. Vincent Collyer had been commissioned to carry on with the roving bands of the Apaches would result in naught, because the distrust of the savages for the white man, and all he said and did, had become so confirmed that it would take more than one or two pleasant talks full of glowing promises to eradicate it. Therefore, General Crook felt that it would be prudent for him to keep himself in the best physical trim, to be the better able to undergo the fatigues of the campaigns which were sure to come, and come very soon.