In 1906 the Indian population was estimated as being 14% of the whole population of Arizona, and that they are singularly law-abiding is argued from the fact that in the same year the Indians furnished only 3% of the convicts in the territorial prison.
Government and Education.—Arizona became a territory of the first (or practically autonomous) class in 1863. Her organic law thereafter until 1910 consisted of various sections of the Revised Statutes of the United States. From the beginning she had a territorial legislature. Congress retained ultimately direct control of all government, administration being in the hands of resident officials appointed by the president and Senate. Special mention must be made of the secret police, the Arizona Rangers, organized in 1901 to police the cattle ranges; they are “fearless men, trained in riding, roping, trailing and shooting,” a force whose personnel is not known to the general public. The legislature repealed the law licensing public gambling in 1907; enacted a law requiring the payment of $300 per annum as licence fee by retail liquor dealers; and provided for juvenile courts and probationary control of children. In 1907 the total tax valuation of property was $77,705,251; the net debt of the territory $1,022,972, and that of counties and towns $3,123,275. The receipts of the territorial treasury for the year ending on the 30th of June 1907 were $687,386, and the disbursements for the same period were $601,568. A homestead provision (1901) exempts from liability for debts (except mortgages or liens placed before the homestead claim) any homestead belonging to the head of a family, existing in one compact body and valued at not more than $2500; such a homestead a married man may not sell, lease or put a lien on without his wife’s consent. Personal property to the value of $500 is exempt from the same liability. The public school system was established in 1871. A compulsory attendance law applies to children between 6 and 14 years of age, but it is not generally obeyed by the Mexican element of population. In 1907 there was an enrolment of 24,962 out of 33,167 children of school age; there were six high schools—three new in 1906; and the average number of school days was 128.4. In the fiscal year ending June 1907, the total receipts for schools were $697,762, and the expenditures were $701,102. Illiteracy is high, amounting in 1900 to 23.1% of native males, above 21 years of age, and 30.5% of foreign males, principally because of the large number of Indians, Chinese, Japanese and Mexicans in the state. There are two normal schools at Tempe (1886) and Flagstaff (1899), a university at Tucson with an agricultural experiment station that has done much for the industries of Arizona; there is a considerable number of Indian schools, the largest of which are maintained by the national government, and the funds of the university come largely from the same source. The first juvenile reform school, called the Territorial Industrial school, was opened in 1903 at Benson. The territorial prison, formerly at Yuma, was abandoned for a modern building at Florence, Pinal county; and a hospital for the insane is 3 m. from Phoenix.
History.—The history of the South-west is full of interest to the archaeologist. A prehistoric culture widely distributed has left abundant traces. Pueblo ruins are plentiful in the basins of the Gila and Colorado rivers and their tributaries. Geographical conditions and a hard struggle against nature fixed the character of this “aridian” culture, and determined its migrations; the onslaughts of nomad Indians determined the sedentary civilization of the cliff dwellers. A co-operative social economy is evidenced by the traces of great public works, such as canals many miles in length. The pueblos of the Gila valley are held to be older than those of the Colorado. Casa Grande, 15 m. S.E. of a railway station of the same name on the Southern Pacific railway, is the most remarkable of plain ruins in the South-west, the only one of its type in the United States. It resembles the Casa Grande ruin of Chihuahua, Mexico, with its walls of sun-dried puddled clay, and its area of rooms, courts and plazas, surrounded by a wall. It was already a ruin when discovered in 1694 by the Jesuit father Kino. John Russel Bartlett described it in 1854, and in 1889 Congress voted that it be protected as a government reservation; in 1892 it was set apart by the government. Excavations were made there in 1906-1907 by Dr J. Walter Fewkes. Migration was northward. The valleys of the Salt river and its affluents, the Agua Fria, Verde and Tonto, are strewn with aboriginal remains; but especially important in migrations of culture was the Little Colorado. A very considerable population must have lived once in this valley. It is represented to-day by the still undeserted habitats of Zuñi (in New Mexico) and Tusayan; the Moquis, after the Zuñis, are in customs and traditions the best survival of the ancient civilization.
Arizona north of the Gila, save for a very limited and intermittent missionary effort and for scant exploring expeditions, was practically unknown to the whites until well after the beginning of American rule. The Santa Cruz valley, however, has much older annals of a past that charms by its picturesque contrasts with the present. Arizona history begins with the arrival in Sonora in 1536 of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, who, although he had not entered Arizona or New Mexico, had heard of them, and by his stories incited the Spaniards to explore the unknown north in hope of wealth. Marcos de Niza, a Franciscan friar to whom the first reconnaissance was entrusted, was the first Spaniard to enter the limits of Arizona. He crossed the south-eastern corner to Zuñi in 1539, passing through the Santa Cruz valley; and F.V. de Coronado (q.v.) was led by Fray Marcos over the same route in 1540; while Hernando Alarcon explored the Gulf of California and the lower Colorado river. Members of Coronado’s expedition explored the Moqui country and reached the Grand Canyon, and after this a succession of remarkable and heroic explorations followed through the century; which however accomplished little for geography, further confusing and embellishing rather than clearing up its mysteries. All this has left traces in still living myths about the early history of the South-west. Early in the 17th century considerable progress had been made in Christianizing the Pimas, Papagoes and Moquis. Following 1680 came a great Indian revolt in New Mexico and Arizona, and thereafter the Moquis remained independent of Spanish and Christian domination, although visited fitfully by rival Jesuits and Franciscans. In 1732 (possibly in 1720) regular Jesuit missions were founded at Bac (known as an Indian rancheria since the 17th century) and at Guevavi. The region south of the Gila had already been repeatedly explored. In the second half of the century there was a presidio at Tubac (whose name first appears 1752) and some half-dozen pueblos de visita, including the Indian settlement of Tucson.
A few errors should be corrected and some credit given with reference to this early period. The Inquisition never had any jurisdiction whatever over the Indians; compulsory labour by the Indians was never legalized except on the missions, and the law was little violated; they were never compelled to work mines; of mining by the Indians for precious metals there is no evidence; nor by the Jesuits (expelled in 1767, after which their missions and other properties were held by the Franciscans), except to a small extent about the presidio of Tubac, although they did some prospecting. Persistent traditions have greatly exaggerated the former prosperity of the old South-west. The Spaniards probably provoked some inter-tribal intercourse among the Indians, and did something among some tribes for agriculture. Their own farms and settlements, save in the immediate vicinity of the presidio, were often plundered and abandoned, and such settlement as there was was confined to the Santa Cruz valley. From about 1790 to 1822 was a period of peace with the Apaches and of comparative prosperity for church and state. The fine Indian mission church at Bac, long abandoned and neglected, dates from the last decade of the 18th century. The establishment of a presidio at Tucson in 1776 marks its beginning as a Spanish settlement.
The decay of the military power of the presidios during the Mexican war of independence, the expulsion of loyal Spaniards—notably friars—and the renewal of Apache wars, led to the temporary abandonment of all settlements except Tubac and Tucson. The church practically forsook the field about 1828.
American traders and explorers first penetrated Arizona in the first quarter of the 19th century. As a result of the Mexican War, New Mexico, which then included all Arizona north of the Gila, was ceded to the United States. California gold discoveries drew particular attention to the country south of the Gila, which was wanted also for a transcontinental railway route. This strip, known as the “Gadsden Purchase” (see [Gadsden, James]), was bought in 1854 by the United States, which took possession in 1856. This portion was also added to New Mexico. The Mexicans, pressed by the Apaches, had, in 1848, abandoned even Tubac and Tamacácori, first a visita of Guevavi, and after 1784 a mission. The progress of American settlement was interrupted by the Civil War, which caused the withdrawal of the troops and was the occasion for the outbreak of prolonged Indian wars.
Meanwhile a convention at Tucson in 1856 sent a delegate to Congress and petitioned for independent territorial government. This movement and others that followed were ignored by Congress owing to its division over the general slavery question, and especially the belief of northern members that the control of Arizona was an object of the pro-slavery party. A convention held in April 1860 at Tucson undertook to “ordain and establish,” of its own motion, a provisional constitution until Congress should “organize a territorial government.” This provisional territory constituted all New Mexico south of 34° 40′ N. Officials were appointed and New Mexican legislation for the Arizona counties ignored, but nothing further was done. In 1861 it was occupied by a Texan force, declared for the Confederacy, and sent a delegate (who was not admitted) to the Confederate congress. That body in January 1862 passed a formal act organizing the territory, including in it New Mexico, but in May 1862 the Texans were driven out by a Union force from California. By act of the 24th of February 1863 Congress organized Arizona territory as the country west of 109° W. long. In December an itinerant government sent out complete from Washington crossed the Arizona line and effected a formal organization. The territorial capital was first at Prescott (1863-1867), then at Tucson (1867-1877), again at Prescott (1877-1889), and finally at Phoenix (since 1889).
There have been boundary difficulties with every contiguous state or territory. The early period of American rule was extremely unsettled. The California gold discoveries and overland travel directed many prospecting adventurers to Arizona. For some years there was considerable sentiment favouring filibustering in Sonora. The Indian wars, breeding a habit of dependence on force, and the heterogeneous elements of cattle thieves, Sonoran cowboys, mine labourers and adventurers led to one of the worst periods of American border history. But since about 1880 there is nothing to chronicle but a continued growth in population and prosperity. Agitation for statehood became prominent in territorial politics for some years. In accordance with an act of Congress, approved on the 16th of June 1906, the inhabitants of Arizona and New Mexico voted on the 6th of November 1906 on the question of uniting the territories into a single state to be called Arizona; the vote of New Mexico was favourable to union and statehood, but these were defeated by the vote of Arizona (16,265 against, and 3141 for statehood). In June 1910 the President approved an enabling act providing for the admission of Arizona and New Mexico as separate states.
Bibliography.—For the Colorado river and the Grand Canyon see those articles; for the Sonoran boundary region, Report of the Boundary Commission upon the Boundaries between the United States and Mexico (3 vols., Washington, 1898-1899, also as Senate Document No. 247, vols. 23-25, 55 Congress, 2 Session); for the petrified forest of the Painted Desert, L.F. Ward in Smithsonian Institution Annual Rep., 1899; for the rest of the area, various reports in the U.S. Geological Survey publications, bibliography in Bulletin Nos. 100, 177.—Fauna and Flora: U.S. Department of Agriculture, North American Fauna, No. 3 (1890), No. 7 (1893); U.S. Biological Survey, Bulletin No. 10 (1898); publications of the Desert Botanical Laboratory at Tucson; also titles under archaeology below, particularly Bandelier’s “Final Report.”—Climate, Soil, Agriculture: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Climate and Crop Service, Arizona, monthly reports, annual summaries; Arizona Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletins.—Mineral Industries: U.S. Geological Survey publications, consult bibliographies; The Mineral Industry, annual (New York and London).—Government: Arizona Revised Statutes (Phoenix, 1887); Report of the Governor of Arizona Territory to the Secretary of the Interior, annual.—Archaeology: An abundance of materials in the Annual Report, U.S. Bureau of Ethnology for different years; consult also especially A.F.A. Bandelier, “Contributions to the History of the South-western Portion of the United States,” in Archaeological Institute of America, Papers, American Series, vol. 5 (Cambridge, 1890); “Final Report of Investigations among the Indians of the South-western United States,” ib. vols. 3 and 4 (Cambridge, 1890-1892); other material may be found in Smithsonian Institution, Annual Report, 1896, 1897, &c., and many important papers by J.W. Fewkes, F.W. Hodge, C. Mendeleff and others in the American Anthropologist and Journal of American Ethnology.—History: H.H. Bancroft, History of Arizona and New Mexico (San Francisco, 1887); A.F.A. Bandelier, “Historical Introduction to Studies among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico,” in Archaeological Institute of America, Papers, American Series, vol. 1 (Boston, 1881); The Gilded Man (El Dorado) and other Papers (New York, 1893); G.P. Winship, “The Coronado Expedition,” in U.S. Bureau of Ethnology, 14th Annual Report (1892-1893), pp. 339-613, with an abundant literature to which this may be the guide. The traditional errors respecting the early history of the Spanish South-west are fully exposed in the works of Bancroft and Bandelier, whose conclusions are supported by E. Coues, On the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer, Francisco Garcés (2 vols. New York, 1900).