CADY'S SHEEP CAMP ON THE SONOITA, DECEMBER 8, 1914. BUILT IN 1884[ToList]
Sometimes bands of whites would take the place of the soldiers and revenge themselves on Apache raiders. There was the raid on the Wooster ranch, for instance. This ranch was near Tubac. Wooster lived alone on the ranch with his wife and one hired man. One morning Apaches swooped down on the place, killed Wooster and carried off his wife. As she has never been heard of since it has always been supposed that she was killed. This outrage resulted in the famous "Camp Grant Massacre," the tale of which echoed all over the world, together with indignant protests from centers of culture in the East that the whites of Arizona were "more savage" than the savages themselves. I leave it to the reader to judge whether this was a fact.
The Wooster raid and slaughter was merely the culminating tragedy of a series of murders, robberies and depredations carried on by the Apaches for years. Soldiers would follow the raiders, kill a few of them in retaliation, and a few days later another outrage would be perpetrated. The Apaches were absolutely fearless in the warfare they carried on for possession of what they, rightly or wrongly, considered their invaded territory. The Apache with the greatest number of murders to his name was most highly thought of by his tribe.
When the Wooster raid occurred I was in Tucson. Everybody in Tucson knew Wooster and liked him. There was general mourning and a cry for instant revenge when his murder was heard of. For a long time it had been believed that the Indians wintering on the government reservation at Camp Grant, at the expense of Uncle Sam, were the authors of the numerous raids in the vicinity of Tucson, though until that time it had been hard to convince the authorities that such was the case. This time, however, it became obvious that something had to be done.
The white men of Tucson held a meeting, at which I was present. Sidney R. De Long, first Mayor of Tucson, was also there. After the meeting had been called to order De Long rose and said:
"Boys, this thing has got to be stopped. The military won't believe us when we tell them that their charity to the Indians is our undoing—that the government's wards are a pack of murderers and cattle thieves. What shall we do?"
"Let the military go hang, and the government, too!" growled one man, "Old Bill" Oury, a considerable figure in the life of early Tucson, and an ex-Confederate soldier.
The meeting applauded.
"We can do what the soldiers won't," I said.