Funerals, especially of children, were generally without coffins, owing to the great scarcity of lumber, and nearly always with music at the head of the procession, which slowly wended its way to the church to the measure of plaintive melody.
Birthdays were not observed, but in their stead were kept the days of the saints of the same name. For example, all the young girls named Anita would observe Saint Ann’s day, without regard to the date of their own birth, and so with the Guadalupes and Francescas and others.
I should not omit to state that there were whole blocks of houses in Tucson which did not have a single nail in them, but had been constructed entirely of adobes, with all parts of the wooden framework held together by strips of rawhide.
Yet in these comfortless abodes, which did not possess ten dollars’ worth of furniture, one met with charming courtesy from old and young. “Ah! happy the eyes that gaze upon thee,” was the form of salutation to friends who had been absent for a space—“Dichosos los ojos que ven a V.” “Go thou with God,” was the gentle mode of saying farewell, to which the American guest would respond, as he shifted the revolvers on his hip and adjusted the quid of tobacco in his mouth: “Wa-al, I reckon I’ll git.” But the Mexican would arrange the folds of his serape, bow most politely, and say: “Ladies, I throw myself at your feet—À los pies de VV., señoritas.”
Thus far there has been no mention of that great lever of public opinion—the newspaper. There was one of which I will now say a word, and a few months later, in the spring of 1870, the town saw a second established, of which a word shall be said in its turn. The Weekly Arizonian was a great public journal, an organ of public opinion, managed by Mr. P. W. Dooner, a very able editor.
It was the custom in those days to order the acts and resolutions of Congress to be published in the press of the remoter Territories, thus enabling the settlers on the frontier to keep abreast of legislation, especially such as more immediately affected their interests.
There may have been other matter in the Weekly Arizonian besides the copies of legislative and executive documents referred to, but if so I never was fortunate enough to see it, excepting possibly once, on the occasion of my first visit to the town, when I saw announced in bold black and white that “Colonel” Bourke was paying a brief visit to his friend, Señor So-and-so. If there is one weak spot in the armor of a recently-graduated lieutenant, it is the desire to be called colonel before he dies, and here was the ambition of my youth gratified almost before the first lustre had faded from my shoulder-straps. It would serve no good purpose to tell how many hundred copies of that week’s issue found their way into the earliest outgoing mail, addressed to friends back in the States. I may be pardoned for alluding to the reckless profanity of the stage-driver upon observing the great bulk of the load his poor horses were to carry. The stage-drivers were an exceptionally profane set, and this one, Frank Francis, was an adept in the business. He has long since gone to his reward in the skies, killed, if I have not made a great mistake, by the Apaches in Sonora, in 1881. He was a good, “square” man, as I can aver from an acquaintance and friendship cemented in later days, when I had to take many and many a lonesome and dangerous ride with him in various sections and on various routes in that then savage-infested region. It was Frank’s boast that no “Injuns” should ever get either him or the mail under his care. “All you’ve got to do with ’n Injun’s to be smarter nor he is. Now, f’r instance, ’n Injun’ll allers lie in wait ’longside the road, tryin’ to ketch th’ mail. Wa’al, I never don’ go ’long no derned road, savey? I jest cut right ’cross lots, ’n’ dern my skin ef all th’ Injuns this side o’ Bitter Creek kin tell whar to lay fur me.” This and similar bits of wisdom often served to soothe the frightened fancy of the weary “tenderfoot” making his first trip into that wild region, especially if the trip was to be by night, as it generally was.
Whipping up his team, Frank would take a shoot off to one side or the other of the road, and never return to it until the faint tinge of light in the east, or the gladsome crow of chanticleer announced that the dawn was at hand and Tucson in sight. How long they had both been in coming!
Through it all, however, Frank remained the same kind, entertaining host; he always seemed to consider it part of his duties to entertain each one who travelled with him, and there was no lack of conversation, such as it was.
The establishment of the rival paper, the Citizen, was the signal for a war of words, waxing in bitterness from week to week, and ceasing only with the death of the Arizonian, which took place not long after. One of the editors of the Citizen was Joe Wasson, a very capable journalist, with whom I was afterward associated intimately in the Black Hills and Yellowstone country during the troubles with the Sioux and Cheyennes. He was a well-informed man, who had travelled much and seen life in many phases. He was conscientious in his ideas of duty, and full of the energy and “snap” supposed to be typically American. He approached every duty with the alertness and earnestness of a Scotch terrier. The telegraph was still unknown to Arizona, and for that reason the Citizen contained an unusually large amount of editorial matter upon affairs purely local. Almost the very first columns of the paper demanded the sweeping away of garbage-piles, the lighting of the streets by night, the establishment of schools, and the imposition of a tax upon the gin-mills and gambling-saloons.