Arizona Trails

Arizona Trails
The Story of Arizona

HOUSE AND CANAL BUILDERS OF THE DESERT—CLIFF DWELLERS OF THE UPLANDS

THE recorded history of primitive man begins not with the written word or page, but when he fashions and leaves behind him weapons, took and utensils of a time-resisting sub­stance, or protects his dead by interment, so within the confines of the territory now known as Arizona the earliest people of whom we have any real knowledge are the builders of canals and adobe houses in the Salt and Gila valleys, the cave and cliff dwellers and the stone house builders of the highlands of the State, and while their history is of necessity largely veiled from the investigator, still by study the ethnologist has learned much concerning their habits, and finally has been able to make shrewd conjectures as to what ultimately became of them.
In spite of the extravagant theories of imagina­tive romancers who would have us believe that these folk possessed a culture comparable to that
of Nineveh or Philae, we must keep in mind that they were Indians, and although they attained a civilization that was far above that of the savage tribes surrounding them, yet theirs were the lim­ited lives necessitated by an existence in an age of stone.
Nearly all of these ancient people were farmers. In the lower Salt and Gila River valleys, on ac­count of the aridity of the climate, they raised their crops by irrigation. According to surveys made by Herbert R. Patrick, James C. Goodwin and others, they constructed in the Salt River Valley 150 miles of main irrigating canals (in one place through solid rock), besides the necessary lateral ditches. These canals received their water from Salt River, which was raised to the required height by dams, doubtless built of brush and rock somewhat like those constructed by the early white settlers in the same region.
All canals and their laterals, it must be remem­bered, were dug by hand without the aid of either horses or metal implements. Stone hoes and wooden shovels made of the trunks of ironwood trees were perhaps the tools most employed, and the dirt was carried away in baskets, probably by the women.
Irrigating thus, these ancient people raised corn, beans, cotton and squash, also, probably, different native grasses, not as we would for stock, but for the edible seeds, which still form part of the Indian's diet The growth of cacti, too, may have been stimulated by the application of water, for many varieties of fruit from this thorny plant were highly prized by the aborigines. Nor must the possibilities of the mesquite bean and the squaw-berry as articles of diet be forgotten, and the trees and bushes which produce them were left on the farms to bear valuable crops for the husbandman.
Fields were cultivated by these primitive farm­ers and crops planted with the aid of sharpened sticks fashioned, as were the shovels, with the stone ax, assisted perhaps with fire. In addition to the more temporal dwellings made of reeds and brush with thatched roofs which housed some of the farmers on or near their own fields, they had towns that could almost be called cities, composed of substantial adobe houses exceedingly well built and often rising in pyramidal form to three or four stories in height. While many of them may have been used as communal dwellings or tenements, some were doubtless designed as storehouses for grain and various supplies and others were used as citadels or dedicated to devotional or civic pur­poses, as there is abundant evidence that religious and administrative activities occupied no incon­siderable portion of their time.
In 1887, Frank Hamilton Cushing, a member of the Hemenway-Southwestern archaeological expedition, explored the ruins of a community of these early people, which lie five miles west of the present town of Chandler. Here he found the remains of a veritable city, which he called "El Pueblo de los Muertos", "The City of the Dead",  in the center of which he uncovered many large communal houses and beyond them found the remains of more sparsely settled suburbs extend­ing for the distance of two miles.
The largest of these houses had even greater dimensions than the famous Casa Grande, and must have, for its time, made a most imposing appearance. It was surrounded by smaller edi­fices, and the entire group was enclosed by an adobe wall, which, it is evident, was built as pro­tection against marauding enemies as well as to insure privacy to its occupants.
As further evidence that these people lived in constant danger from surrounding savage tribes, to whom pillage was one of the natural occupa­tions of life, it may be noted that while there were windows and portholes in the outer walls of their houses, there were no doors. The dwellers and peaceable visitors entered and made their exit by means of ladders against the outer wall and trap doors in the roofs leading to the rooms within, which is the procedure in many of the modern pueblos.
The walls of the houses were made of adobe, and built not of sun-dried brick, but by piling on more and more clay until the top was reached. It was always seen to that the wall of the house was of sufficient thickness to insure at the same time protection against hostile tribes as well as the fierce summer heat of the desert In the better finished houses the clay surface of the inner walls was rubbed by hand until it attained a high polish.
The rafters between the stories were made of small tree trunks upon which was laid a layer of reeds, which in turn was covered with a coating of cement-like clay.
In the yards or streets of El Pueblo de los Muertos, Mr. Gushing found public ovens and large cooking pits lined with clay or natural cement. The largest of these pits was fifteen feet across and seven feet deep.
Within the houses were found the remains of many dishes and utensils of a pottery not unlike that fashioned by some of the modern Indians; also, there were stones for grinding corn, stone axes, hammers and hoes, cotton cloth, skin-dressing implements, bone awls, and a score of other articles of the chase and of war and of domestic and religious usage, including various lit­tle images, some not over an inch long, carved from stone—fetishes and what not.
All this, you see, is of the Stone Age, these peo­ple knowing nothing of the refining or smelting of ores. It is true that a roughly fashioned cutting instrument of copper was found by Frank Gushing in a small cave near Tempe, but it was doubtless smelted accidentally from a piece of ore that hap­pened to line a cooking pit. Also, in a ruin west of Phoenix, William Lossing discovered three little copper bells, like sleigh bells, with pebbles inside to serve as clappers. Their appearance shows them to be of unquestioned Mayan manufacture. One of them, now owned by Dr. E. H. Parker, of Los Angeles, is of beautiful design and fashioned out of fine copper wire coiled into shape and fused into one solid piece.
In the corners of certain rooms at El Pueblo de los Muertos what were taken to be remains of persons of importance were found buried in vaults. Others of their dead were first incinerated, and the remaining ash and charred bones were interred in urns made of pottery with inverted saucer-like lids.
Two of the skeletons found in Los Muertos were nearly six feet in length. Most of them, however, were short in stature.
In 1694, Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, a Jesuit friar, visited the now famous ruin called "Casa Grande", Big House, which lies about twelve miles from the present city of Florence and about three miles from the Gila River, and said mass there. Lieut. Juan Mateo Mange, who accom­panied the friar on a second visit, describes the principal ruin as but little more extensive than it is today, though at least one of the surrounding buildings, now nearly obliterated, then had not only walls but remains of ceiling beams as well.
The number of these aboriginal people who lived in the Salt and Gila valleys at any one time is largely a matter of conjecture. The 150 miles or more of irrigating canals which comprise the Salt River Valley system could have irrigated ap­proximately 240,000 acres of land, which would have been sufficient for the support of a hundred thousand people. Besides this there were canals on the Gila which could have provided sustenance for the support of a hundred thousand more. However, it is unlikely that all these canals were in use at any one time or that all of the fields under them were continually tilled.
The courses of the Salt and Gila rivers are, to some degree, ever changing. A spring flood might so cut the channel of the river at the intake of the canal that it may have taken a year or more to re­pair it, or it may have led to the abandonment of the canal in favor of a better location. Continuous cultivation in one spot might partially exhaust the soil, or in low lands alkali might rise to the surface.
Also, we do not know that all of the various centers of population, large and small, were occu­pied at the same time. Scientists like Bandelier and Mendeliff remind us that the modern Pueblan Indians frequently move an entire village. Speak­ing of the New Mexican Indians, in his "Final Report," Bandelier says, "With the exception of Acoma, there is not a single pueblo standing where it was at the time of Coronado;" and we read in Mendeliffs "Aboriginal Remains," "A band of 500 village-building Indians may leave the ruins of fifty villages in the course of a single century."
Still we must remember that the Hopi villages, except for the destruction of Awatabe, were pretty much in their present location at the time of Coronado, and that like them and Acoma, the larger aboriginal cities of the Salt and Gila coun­tries, as things temporal go, were reasonably per­manent
At Casa Grande the excavations made by Dr. J. W. Fewkes showed that in some cases communal houses were built upon the ruins of one or two earlier buildings. In its present form Casa Grande has been known since the seventeenth cen­tury. For how many centuries previously was the house as we now see it occupied? For how many centuries more were the earlier houses used?
One may easily be pardoned for believing that it would take considerable of an upheaval to induce the inhabitants of either Casa Grande or the Pueblo de los Muertos to abandon it.
So to go back to our original theme, even if the smaller villages could change their locations from time to time, and there might always be idle land under some of the canals, the total population of Casa Grande, El Pueblo de los Muertos, Casa Blanca, Snake Town, the Mesa Ruin, the Cross Cut Ruin and others that we have not even space to mention, these people who tilled the desert acres, who worshiped their gods in the sanctuaries, who danced on the hard earth of their plazas so many years ago—might easily have reached a very con­siderable number.
Cliff dwellings are found in all that portion of Arizona lying east of a longitudinal line bisecting Prescott and north of the latitude of Phoenix; occa­sionally, too, they are found in other parts of the State.
They are especially numerous along the upper reaches of the Gila and Salt, in the walls of the Canyon de Chelly, in and about Navajo Mountain, and other places where friable cliffs with natural recesses could be enlarged and chambers added to the original niches.
The perfected cliff dwelling consisted of a house of masonry built within these caves.
The simplest of the habitations might consist of but one small room, with the original rock form­ing all the sides but the front, while the more elaborate would be veritable castles—communal houses, perhaps five stories in height, and contain­ing as many as 140 rooms.
These various eyries occur at all levels, some only a few feet from the base of the cliff, others several hundred feet up its face, access to which could be had only by means of rude stairways cut in the rocks or by means of ladders, some of which are still in existence—well made with rounds tied to the two poles with stout pieces of bark.
In the better class of buildings the workman­ship is excellent The stones from which the walls were made, while rarely dressed, were carefully selected and skillfully laid in mortar, with both outside and inside surfaces regular and even. The walls were often plastered on the inside and occa­sionally on the outside as well. Sometimes the inner surfaces were covered with clay paint. All of the plastering was done by hand, and frequently the original finger prints can easily be discerned.
One of the best known cliff dwellings in Ari­zona is the one styled "Montezuma's Castle." This ancient communal dwelling, five stories in height and containing many rooms, is built in a large recess in the face of a precipitous limestone cliff facing Beaver Creek, a tributary of the Verde.
The bottom of the building is forty feet above the base of the cliff, and the natural rock which overhangs it gives admirable protection from wearing storms. Thus preserved from the ele­ments and inaccessible to visitors save by means of ladders, it is in comparatively good repair and presents a sharp contrast to the buried communal houses of the desert
Ladders were also used as means of passage from floor to floor, and, as is the case in all aborigi­nal dwellings, the doorways are small; this is for excellent reasons. In the winter a small door admits less cold air than a large one and is more easily covered by a skin curtain or a stone. Also, it must be remembered, that the aborigine was ever more or less at war with his neighbor. If a friend, upon entering the house, must of necessity bow Kis head, it may be ascribed to courtesy; if an enemy is forced to assume the same posture in making his entry, he is in an admirable position for you to crack him over the head with your stone ax.
In addition to those in Arizona, cliff dwellings in large numbers, many of them most interesting and elaborate, have been found in New Mexico and Southern Colorado and Utah, and from them altogether have been taken such a variety of arti­cles that we have even a better conception of their inhabitants, perhaps, than in the case of the desert canal builder.
Many of the articles, especially stone imple­ments, were similar to those found in the Pueblo de los Muertos.   Special mention, however, should be made of some of the highland pottery, beautiful in color and design, and with a glaze that has never been equalled by the modern Indian. A curious feather cloth has been found, in addition to different cotton weaves; also, fiber mats and sandals, as well as bone awls, beads and the like. From the cliffs we learn that the leaves of the mescal were used as an article of food as well as the usual squash, corn and beans.
Dessicated bodies, or mummies, in good state of preservation have been exhumed from care­fully sealed tombs. The bodies had first been wrapped in cotton cloth of fine texture, then in a piece of coarser cotton cloth or feather cloth, and finally all enclosed in matting tied with a cord made of the fiber of cedar bark.
The cliff dwellers, though to a less extent than the canal builders of the desert, also were farmers. Leading from "Montezuma's Well," a small, curious basin of very deep water, ten miles north of Montezuma's Castle, an ancient canal of these people can easily be followed. The water was and is strongly impregnated with lime and made a coating of natural cement which remains to mark the sides and bottom of this waterway of an all-but-Torgotten day.
In considering these people it must be remem­bered that not all of the tribesmen of the cliff dwellers lived in cliffs. In the famous ruins in the Rito de los Frijoles (Bean Canyon) in New Mexico, the ancient city of Ty-u-on-yi, all the part of one tremendous communal dwelling, resting on the canyon floor, according to Bandolier, was occu­pied by a portion of the same people who at the same time were dwelling in the cliffs of the Rito's sides. There was also a type of small stone house that was built on the New Mexican plateau whose antiquity is supposed to antedate the cliff dwell­ings. The larger communal house of the New Mexican plateau came later. Stone houses in Ari­zona, like the one whose ruins now stands on the brink of Montezuma's Well, were doubtless built and occupied by the cliff dwellers.
As a little sidelight on the manners of these people, it is interesting to note that near many of the cliff dwellings, as well as in different places near the old desert habitations, aboriginal artists have carved smooth surfaces of the cliffs and large boulders with a variety of drawings, pricked into the surface of the rock by means of stone imple­ments.
Some of these, like the pictographs which adorn the cliff above Apache Springs on the south side of the Superstition Mountains, are, for the most part, outlines of animals—mountain sheep, deer, antelope, mountain lions and th£ like. Clearly this was simply an open-air gallery where the artists of the tribe produced evidences of their skill for the pleasure and admiration of their fel­low tribesmen.
Other drawings, like some of those found in San Tan Canyon, near the Gila, doubtless have a symbolic meaning. Here we find the conventional drawings of a deity, the sun with rays, and various geometrical designs, all of which seem to have had an esoteric significance.
There is abundant evidence that the tribes of these ancient people, as is the case with many of the modern Pueblo Indians of the Southwest, were divided into various clans, each of which had its own private ceremonies, and it is thought that some of these drawings were symbolic of their ritual.
Just who the various peoples were—the canal and the house builder of the desert, and the cave, cliff and house dweller of the highlands—is a matter of more or less conjecture. Different groups of them doubtless talked different lan­guages and in some cases were possibly of differ­ent stock, yet all seemed to be linked together by a similar culture and a similar state of civilization.
The accepted theory is that these people came from the south, but whether their culture was the result of some connection with other advanced tribes is obscure.
The Mayan bell found by William Lossing cer­tainly indicates that articles of trade had found their way up from the Mayan country. In the University of Arizona, Prof. Byron Cummings has a number of stones found in the Salt River Valley on which faces and other designs are etched that bear strong resemblance to Toltec work, and although the contrary has often been stated to be the case, at least one image bearing the Aztec char­acteristics has been found in the Salt River Valley; so it would seem well within the limits of possibilities that not only did our people have knowledge of the higher cultural tribes mentioned, but also may have had their tribal blood enriched by them.
Conservative as they are, Indian blood changes steadily, if but slowly. Members of friendly tribes intermarry in the usual way. Male members of hostile tribes steal women from one another, also in the usual way. Navajos are said to have learned blanket weaving from stolen Pueblan women—their descendants inheriting the inclina­tion and aptitude.
As has always been the case since our knowl­edge of man commenced, a group of humans, stimulated by new conditions of environment or changed by some new infusion of blood suddenly, in this respect or that, rises head and shoulders above its fellows, and afterwards its descendants, influenced further by environment or habit as well as heredity, add to and crystallize these traits into form, and a new people takes its place in evolu­tion's long march upward. Thus it may have been with the tribes we are considering.
As to when they first made their appearance in Arizona the question, naturally, is a most interest­ing one. In speaking of the cliff dwellers, George A. Dorsey, curator of anthropology at the Field Museum, says:
"... It must be admitted in regard to cer­tain ruins, there is no evidence that they were not occupied several thousand years ago," while Ralph Emerson Twitchel, in his "Leading Facts of New Mexican History," writes, "Just when the occupancy of the cliffs began, whether five hundred or five thousand years ago, will probably always remain a mooted question."
Persistent stories are heard of ruins found where lava has flowed over built walls or ollas, giving proof of an antiquity that reaches back to no one can say how many thousands of years. There is just one thing that keeps us from repeat­ing here some of the most interesting of these. Prof. Byron Cummings, of the University of Ari­zona, who has for years been making scientific investigations of Arizona ruins, said every time he heard of a ruin that had been covered by lava he had visited it—but he had never found the lava.
Some of the writers are of the opinion that the ruins in the Salt River Valley are even older than the cliff dwellings. Frank Cushing was of the opinion that the people who built "Los Muertos" were there considerably over a thousand years ago.
That the tribes into which these people were divided lived for a long period in their various places of abode may be easily deduced from the range of antiquity shown in the condition of the different ruins. The walls of the present Casa Grande, for example, both in the upper and lower floors, were in fairly good condition centuries after other communal houses along the Salt were re­duced to mounds of earth, while with the cliff dwellings, if one did not know better, an observer might fancy that Montezuma's Castle was peopled a decade ago, it is in such good repair.
No less interesting than the question of who these people were is the one, what became of them all? The old, popular theory was that at a time long ago the desert, canyon and mountain-top were all teeming with countless multitudes of people when suddenly, all in a day perhaps, some awful catastrophe, some dire cataclysm occurred, and to the last man, woman and child they were wiped from the face of the earth! Dramatic, truly; only it can scarcely be so.
As to just what did happen, while there was no aboriginal Gibbon to write in graphic sentences of their decline and exit, let us see if by keeping in mind all we know we can not place a picture before our eyes that will not be wholly remote from the truth.
To begin with, let us turn our mental calendars back to the time when the Moors ruled Spain and Pepin was King of the Franks, and conjure a vision of the irrigated farms and communal dwell­ings of the desert people of the Salt River Valley.
It is late summer, and in a field our aboriginal farmer, clad only in sandals and breech clout (additional clothing is for a cooler season), gathers his rather runty ears of corn and big pods of beans. Working with him is his broad-backed spouse, wearing possibly a kilt of antelope skin, with a cotton garment of some sort covering the upper part of her body. She piles the corn and beans into her basket, and on her head carries load after load to the family granary.
On an adjoining farm, perhaps, the woman may be kneeling at the grinding stones making meal of the blue and white kernels of corn piled beside her, putting quite as much muscle into her work as do the men near by who are dressing skins or polishing hand axes.
If we shift our point of view some eighty miles to the northeast to the Verde River we shall see, on the same day perhaps, a distant kinsman of our desert rancher, climbing by means of well built ladders up the face of a precipitous cliff a hun­dred feet or more, carrying a basket full of flat stones to where his waiting spouse, standing on the edge of a niche in the rock, mortars the stones in the wall that will make the front of their domi­cile. Still on the same day, if our mental vision holds out, we can look down upon a highland vil­lage on the Mogollon plateau and see in front of a house resembling in shape the desert dwelling, but made of stone, a woman before a primitive loom weaving cotton cloth, while the men make arrow heads of pieces of obsidian, or, if we drop in later, and enter one of the ceremonial chambers, we might see some of the older members of the tribe debating matters of tribal importance or taking part with the priests in a ceremonial petition to Those Above" for rain, or success in battle.
Years, even centuries, of such life go on; there is water for the farmer and game for the hunter. Then comes a change, and drought follows drought. Down in the desert country the corn in the granaries is almost exhausted. There comes a day when the predecessors of the savage Ute or Apache attack the village on the Salt and carry it by storm. They kill the defenders, fire the roofs and watch the walls topple over on the bodies of their victims. What corn there is left they carry away.
Is it difficult to imagine after an experience like this that the fleeting remnant from the village thus sacked would go by night, a frightened band of fugitives, to join their kinsmen who lived in the fastnesses of the rocks? What if the tillage of the soil would be less fruitful; it was enough if the caverns in the lofty cliffs would give them sanctuary.
However, we need not imagine that all of the inhabitants of the desert ranches went at one time or that war was always the impelling force. We have already seen how such calamities as pesti­lence, loss of irrigation water, or deterioration of the soil might cause a community to move from one spot to another in the same region. These and similar happenings might induce a people to leave their former surroundings altogether.
Still more centuries pass and we witness the final abandonment of the cliffs. Why did they leave? Perhaps it slowly developed that the eyries were not as impregnable as first appeared. Certainly it must have been difficult to store water enough in their caves to withstand a long siege, and always there must have been auxiliary meth­ods of defense and counter attack.
Presumably wilh the changes in fighting tactics it appeared that a village on a mesa top fronting a high escarpment offered as much protection and far more conveniences than a shallow recess five hundred feet up a precipitous cliff. Possibly the time came when the dwellers in these retreats felt strong enough to cope with their enemies on differ­ent terms.
Two things we may be positive about: they did not go because they had to go, and they were not annihilated. Scourged by pestilence they doubtless were, and ravaged by war, but a rem­nant ever remained. The cliff dwellers left their eyries because they wanted to, and moved to the table-lands because they thought the change would be an improvement on their former way of living.
Indeed, as we look at the ruins of the villages up and down the Little Colorado and throughout Tusayan, we can see that they did very consider­able moving during the many years before the Spaniards came, and, also, to some extent after­wards.
Here we arrive at the answer to our problem. The people we have been considering never were exterminated. Their descendants are living today, and their relation with the ancient people is shown not only by the similarity of their building, their pottery and the patterns in their cloth, but by studying the ruins of the ancient ceremonial chambers and bits of sacerdotal paraphernalia found within them and fitting them to what we know of the modern tribes, the connection between the two is undeniable.
It is not to be expected that the stock has been kept pure all the centuries from the Pueblo de los Muertos or Montezuma's Castle to the present, but the characteristics of the people and much of its culture has been kept intact, and the Hopi of Ari­zona, and the inhabitants of such pueblos as Zuni, Acoma and Cochiti in New Mexico, in all likeli­hood are the direct descendants of both the canal builder of the desert and the cliff dweller of the hills.
THE COMING OF THE SPANIARDS

ALTHOUGH Fray Marcos of Niza was the first white man, so far as authenticated records go, to enter the land that is now known as Arizona, there is a possibility that the distinction should belong to another, who, like De Niza, was also a member of the Order of St Francis.
Early in 1538 the provincial of the Franciscans of New Spain sent Juan de la Asuncion and Pedro Nedal on a mission beyond the borders of New Galicia (Sinaloa), and although it has never been satisfactorily verified, it is believed by some au­thorities that Asuncion, at least, may have reached either the Gila or Colorado rivers near the con­fluence of those streams, though in summing up the matter the careful Bandolier says the evidence does not come up to the requirements of historical certainty.
The immediate events leading up to the famous journey of De Niza may be said to have had their genesis with the arrival of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca and his companions in Culiacan at the end of their perilous trip across the continent
De Vaca, it will be remembered, was treasurer and "high constable" of the ill-starred expedition of Don Panfilo Narvaez, who was authorized by the Council of the Indies to sail for the New World and conquer the country from the Rio de las Palmas to the Cape of Florida.
From its start the history of the expedition is a continuous narration of disaster. Landing on the west coast of Florida, April 14, 1528, the four hun­dred men that made up the company decreased in numbers with appalling inevitableness. Two hun­dred and forty-seven was the count, when, after losing their ships and facing starvation in a hos­tile country, they embarked in rude boats of their own manufacture. In a stormy voyage along the northern coast line of the Gulf of Mexico their numbers decreased to eighty, and later to four by additional disasters. These four, however, De Vaca, Alonzo del Castillo Maldonado, Andres Dorantes and his negro slave, Estevan, a native of Morocco, have made enduring names for them­selves in history.
After many attempts they succeeded in escap­ing from the natives who held them in semi-captivity near the coast, when they struck out boldly toward the west through what was to them an absolutely unknown wilderness, hoping that somehow they would find the settlements of New Spain.
Doubtless even with their wonderful endurance and intrepid courage they would have failed had it not been for the reputation that Castillo and De Vaca achieved as medicine men, both themselves and the Indians believing that they could cure all diseases and even raise the dead by supernatural powers.
The first of their countrymen they met was a small scouting party encountered after many months of arduous traveling through Texas (possi­bly New Mexico), Chihuahua and Sonora. Here, soon after they had crossed the Rio Yaqui, they came up with Capt. Diego de Alcaraz, who, with his men, was engaged in the common occupation of Spanish soldiers under the cruel Guzman, of har­rowing and enslaving the natives.
April 1,1536, eight years after they had landed in Florida, the four refugees arrived in Culiacan, where "with tears and praising God," they were received by the alcalde, Melchior Diaz.
De Vaca was the historian of the party, and although his account was in the main temperate and conservative, it made a profound sensation in New Spain, the more so as it was coupled with fabulous rumors then current in Mexico concern­ing a wonderful country to the north. The most persistent of these tales, started by stories of Indians and romantically embellished, concerned the seven wonderful cities of Cibola, which in the end finally proved to be seven Indian villages in the Zuni country, New Mexico. In the stories, however, these towns were larger than the City of Mexico itself, and in the center of a land so rich in gold and silver that cooking utensils were made of these precious metals.
The year before De Vaca reached civilization, Antonio de Mendoza, an able and deeply religious man, had been appointed viceroy, and upon the arrival of the refugees at the capital he entertained them royally, and determined, upon hearing their story, that for the glory of the church and emperor, he would add this country of the north to their dominion.
After consulting with Bishop Bartolome de las Casas and Francisco Vasquez Coronado, the vice­roy decided that instead of sending at the outset a large force of soldiers, he would dispatch one or two friars to spy out the land.
Friars were always good travelers, resourceful, and, where there was a chance of winning souls, wholly fearless. With their piety and tact they might easily make a better impression upon the natives of the country than the soldiers, and hav­ing no worldly interests to bias their reports, they could be believed implicitly.
At that time Marcos de Niza, a member of the Franciscan brotherhood, was holding the office of vice commissioner of New Spain and engaged, under the viceroy's orders, in instructing a large number of friendly Indians in the tenets of the church as well as teaching them the Spanish lan­guage. He was held in high esteem by his own order, and had been with Pizarro in Peru.
Impressed with the fitness of the man, the viceroy selected him to undertake this perilous excursion into the Northwest With the friar he would send Estevan, the negroid Moor (whom Mendoza had already purchased from Andres Durantes) and a number of the Christian Indians that had been with De Vaca and who might be able to act as interpreters with part at least of the northern tribes.
Thus, without ostentation, the excursion started, Coronado accompanying it as far as Culiacan. From that point, on March 7, 1539, Fray Marcos having a companion in a Friar Onorato, the party journeyed northward.
For a while everything went most auspiciously, the natives being specially friendly, as word had been sent out that the viceroy had ordered that the Indians should not thereafter be enslaved but treated with all kindness. However, when they reached the Indian village of Petatlan, Onorato was taken ill, and Fray Marcos was obliged to go on without him.
The expedition followed the line of the coast for several leagues, but after crossing the Rio Mayo turned inland, and upon reaching the im­portant village of Vacapa, the friar decided to remain for a time, sending Estavan ahead to make a reconnaissance.
He told the negro to go north fifty or sixty leagues, and if he made any discoveries of moment, either to return in person or to send a message and stay where he was until he should arrive.
As the negro had no knowledge of writing, the message was to be sent by a cross. One the size of a man's hand would indicate the discovery to be of small importance, while if the matter was of very great moment, indeed, one twice that size might be sent. Imagine the good friar's state of mind when, four days later, the Indians returned bearing a cross as tall as the friar himself, and with it came not alone the old story of Cibola, but accounts of three other magnificent cities which lay beyond them, Marata, Acus and Totonteac, whose glories even outshone those of Cibola.
It may be said here that such towns really existed, much as they, or similar Indian pueblos, exist today, interesting undoubtedly, but scarcely glorious; Marata being, like Cibola, in the Zuni country, while Acus is the high-perched Acoma, and Totonteac one of a group of Hopi towns now in ruins.    
Glowing as was the report that his servant sent him, the worthy Fray Marcos does not seem to have been specially stampeded, for he waited two days longer and then continued his journey, going up the beautiful Sonora Valley, of which he "took possession" in the name of the viceroy and the emperor.
The Indians he found here, whom he called the "Painted Ones," and who may have been the Pimas or Papagos, received the reverend traveler with all kindness, presenting him with quail, rabbits and pine nuts. They also told him that the people of Totonteac wore garments made of stuff like his woolen frock which they obtained from animals about the size of greyhounds.
When they reached the head of the valley the friar and his party passed over the divide and descended into the valley of the San Pedro, where a short journey brought them into what is now the border of Arizona.
All along the Rio San Pedro, Fray Marcos reported that he found a most prosperous people who lived in villages a quarter to a half a league apart, and were well dressed and wearing many turquoises.
When he reached the mouth of the San Pedro, he crossed the Gila above the confluence of the two streams, and, while camping there, received his first word from Estavan since the message of the cross. The negro, it seemed, was having what may be described as a tour de luxe through the country, for the Indians reported that he had decked himself out with feathers about his wrists and ankles, and, like a field marshal might carry a baton, bore with him a gourd adorned with two feathers, one of red and one of white, besides a string of bells.
Certainly he had succeeded in impressing the natives with his importance, for they had given him as an escort of honor, three hundred or more men and women. He was not waiting for orders from his pious master, as he had been instructed. Quite the contrary. He was the conquering hero going through the country in state, while his bare­foot, brown-gowned master might follow as he would. He left word that he was on his way to Cibola, which lay beyond the mountains.
On May 9, 1539, Fray Marcos again set out on his journey, following the path Estavan had taken, selecting only thirty men of the large number of natives who wanted to accompany him. After they had left the camp, to his great surprise, his guides soon led him into a well-beaten trail which they followed for much of their journey, and each night he found a shelter which had been prepared by members of his own party who had gone ahead.
For twelve days they journeyed through the White and Mogollon mountains, whose peaks were covered with snow, living well on the deer, rabbit and quail with which his hospitable guides pro­vided him; then, when near the Continental divide, they were met by an Indian who had been with Estavan, and who brought the direful information that while the negro had indeed reached Cibola, instead of meeting with the cordial welcome he had hoped for, he had been slain.
At this, naturally, the friar's escort was much alarmed, but with the aid of gifts, De Niza induced them to proceed with him. The next day they came across two more of Estavan's escort who gave him the details of his servant's murder.
It seems that when Estavan had come in sight of Cibola he had sent his much adorned gourd ahead to the chiefs of the town, and doubtless remembering what prestige the claim had given De Vaca, instructed his envoys to say that he was a great medicine man.
Whether the Cibolans may have thought that Estavan's "medicine" was bad, and that he prac­ticed an art as black as his skin, or whether, as some commentators suggest, the gourd was a sym­bol of a people with whom the city was at enmity, or whether it was simply the arrogance of the man, in any event the chiefs received the deputa­tion with every indication of enmity, and throwing the gourd to the ground, told their visitors to say to their chief that he must leave at once or "not one of them would be left alive."
However, no matter how much Estavan may have lacked in tact and obedience, he seems to have had no want of courage, for, decked with feathers and bells, he advanced confidently to the town, which was the usual pueblan community made up of adobe pyramidal houses—anything but the magnificent city of the Cibolan traditions.
When the negro reached the edge of the vil­lage, which was situated on a sharp rise of ground, the chiefs would allow neither him nor his escort to enter, but stripped the negro of his trappings and robbed him of his possessions.
The discomfited visitors spent the night out­side of the walls, and in the morning, while trying to escape, the Cibolans pursued and killed not only Estavan but some of his followers.
It may be noted here that Cibola was, in all probability, Hawaikuh, one of the cities of the Zunis just across the border from Arizona in New Mexico. A tradition is still current there that a long time ago a very bad "Black Mexican" from the south visited them, and they killed him with stones and buried him under them. A variation of the tale is that the "Wise Men" of the pueblo escorted him to its edge and gave him a kick so powerful that he never struck earth again until he reached the country from whence he came.
The possibilities of what the Cibolans in their present state of mind might do to a second for­eigner might well have daunted even Fray Marcos' strong heart, but instead of retreating, with gifts and brave words to encourage his escort, he went resolutely forward, determined to have a look, at least, at the city of his dreams, no matter what the cost
When he came in sight of the pueblo he was much affected. From a distance the several stories of its perhaps two hundred dwellings did make something of an appearance, especially when an observer had an imagination strong enough to supply what vision failed to record.
With due solemnity and deliberation, though every minute must have been fraught with danger, Fray Marcos of Niza raised a mound of stones, planted a cross on it and in due form "took pos­session" of all the country he could see, in the name of the viceroy and the emperor.
However, when the ceremony was over, "with more fright than food,0 as he frankly put it, he hastily started on his return journey to New Spain.
When several months later he reached the City of Mexico and had audience with Mendosa, he had a great tale to unfold. Coronado after­wards very flatly said that the most he told was not so at all, and the little that was so was ex­tremely highly colored, but we must remember that when the gallant captain said that he was a greatly disappointed man.
It is far more likely that the good Fray Mar­cos, whose excellent reputation covered many years—was simply a glorious and unreliable optimist.   Much of his conversation with Arizona Indians had doubtless been confined to signs, and he translated what they really did mean into what he wanted them to mean. Other enthusiasts have done the same thing. In any event, he spun a great yarn. The buildings were not only many stories in height and built of stone, but the walls were set with turquoises. The women wore strings of gold beads, and the men girdles of gold and white woolen dresses, and they had sheep and cows and partridges and slaughter­houses and iron forges. And as if this were not enough, he added, 'They use vessels of gold and silver, for they have no other metal, whereof there is greater use and more abundant than in Peru."
It is wholly possible that de Niza did not tell the viceroy all the things that are attributed to him, but what he did tell was enough to make
Mendosa immediately decide upon the conquest of the country.    
Although he enjoined the greatest secrecy upon the friar, the story was too sensational to keep, and within a few days the capital was aflame with excitement. Here was a chance for such captains as Cortez, Guzman and Alvarado to conquer more worlds; here was an opportunity for the scores of young nobles lounging about the plazas of the city to gain both gold and glory.
The captains took the first ship for Spain, where they hoped to get permits for exploration from the Emperor Charles, while the young blades daily besieged Mendoza for commissions.
The viceroy was a man of quick action, and while his rivals were still across the sea petitioning their monarch, Mendoza completed his plans. Don Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, a young Spanish nobleman, and for a short time governor of New Galicia, was to be captain general, and Pedro de Castaneda de Nacera, also of good birth, historian.
The army of conquest, which was to be of suffi­cient size to absolutely insure success, was mobil­ized at Compostella, on the Pacific Coast, and on the morning of February 23, 1540, the most splen­did body of troops ever brought together in New Spain passed out of the city before the admiring eyes of Mendoza and his staff.
First came three hundred cavaliers, young men of the best blood of Spain, mounted on the pick of the horses of the country, with Coronado, clad from head to foot in a glittering coat of mail, at their head. Other cavaliers, too, wore armor, and all had their heads protected with iron helmets or vizored head-pieces of bullhide. Each carried a lance in his right hand, whil?< a sword clattered at his belt. To add a finishing note to the mag­nificence of these young gallants, bright-colored blankets hung gorgeously from shoulder to ground.
The cavalry was only the first battalion, and back of them walked footmen with crossbow or arquebus, or with sword and shield, and still be­hind them came the light artillery with wicked-looking field pieces strapped to the backs of stout mules.
The final division of all was composed of servants and slaves leading extra horses and pack animals loaded with the belongings of the elegant young horsemen, and driving before them herds of oxen, cows and sheep. No wonder the people cheered and the viceroy was congratulated upon the country of gold that would be added to his domain.
The distance to Culiacan, their first objective, was eighty leagues, but so impeded were the move­ments of the army by the herds and pack animals that they did not arrive at their destination until March 28th.
The November before, Melchior Diaz, with a small escort, had been sent north on a reconnais­sance to verify, if possible, de Niza's report. He had gone forward as far as the Gila River country, and upon his return had met Coronado before the captain general had arrived at Culiacan.
His reports verified many of the details Fray Marcos had given of the early part of his journey, and as he had not penetrated far enough into the country to prick the Cibola bubble, Coronado com­pleted his energetic plans for continuing his enter­prise.
At Culiacan, influenced doubtless by what Diaz had said regarding the difficulties of traveling through the land to the north, Coronado now di­vided his forces. The first section was to consist of seventy-five or eighty cavaliers, thirty foot sol­diers and four priests, one of which would be de Niza. The second division would include the pack animals and the herds.
Two weeks were consumed in reorganizing the forces, and at the end of that time Coronado ad­vanced with the lighter battalion, leaving the others to follow more leisurely.
To further insure the success of the great enter­prise, the viceroy meanwhile was outfitting two supply ships which ultimately sailed from Nativi-dad on May 9th under the command of Hernando de Alarcon. These ships were joined by a third, and with great difficulties sailed up the Gulf of California, which had already been explored by Ulloa. At the mouth of the Colorado, Alarcon left the ships and with two small boats made two dif­ferent trips up the river in search of some tidings from Coronado. On the second trip he went a considerable distance above the mouth of the Gila River where he erected a great cross and buried letters for Coronado, with a notice on a conspicu­ous tree telling where they could be found. How­ever, they heard nothing of the expedition, and sailed for home.
In the meanwhile Coronado and his men, in spite of rough going, advanced along a route not greatly different from that taken by Fray Marcos, and on July 7th finally came in sight of Hawaikuh.
Alas for the golden stories of the friar! These soldiers of fortune, in their present state of mind, had no rosy spectacles of romance through which to view the Indian village that lay before them. Castanada said, "It looked as though it had been all crumpled up together."
When they saw the advancing company of Spaniards a number of the Indians came out of their houses to meet them. Coronado sent for­ward part of his cavalry and two of the priests to parley with them, but the Indians greeted their visitors with a volley of arrows. At this the Span­iards raised their battle cry of "Santiago," and charged, and the Indians, dismayed at the steel swords and the hoofs of the horses, fled back to their walls. The invaders then advanced in force up a steep pathway leading to the village, which was perched upon the mesa. As the white men came up, the Indians stood on the terraces of their pyramidal houses and hurled stones and shot arrows at them.
On came the Spaniards, with Coronado at their head. His shining armor made a conspicuous tar­get for the missiles of the Indians, and a few minutes later he was felled to the earth. His fol­lowers quickly rallied to his aid, and soon took the place by storm, with none of their men killed and but few injured.
They immediately possessed themselves of the town, searching vainly for jewels and precious metals. But even if there proved to be no stew pots of gold, no frying pans of silver or pieces of turquoise set in the walls, there was plenty of corn and a place to rest, which after all was what they most needed
Had they not been expecting so much, both the people and the town ought to have been full of interest for the soldiers. The Indians, culturally, were far ahead of any others they had seen since leaving Mexico.   Their houses were built of stone and the people themselves were clothed in beau­tifully dressed skins and cotton cloth. Besides corn, they raised on their primitive farms squash and beans.
Coronado remained at Cibola, making it his headquarters for some considerable time. Shortly after his arrival he sent Don Pedro de Tovar, with an escort of cavalry, on into the Hopi country, of which he had heard much from the Cibolans.
When Tovar arrived at one of the principal Hopi towns, the inhabitants refused to allow him to enter, when Friar Juan de Padilla urged the Spaniards to attack. One charge with the horses and guns thoroughly cowed the Hopis, who there­upon sued for peace, and loaded their conquerors with pine nuts, turkeys and other food.
When the expedition returned to Cibola, Coro­nado took a number of semi-precious stones they had collected, and with a painted deer skin, made up a package for the viceroy, which he dispatched, together with a letter, by Juan de Gallego. With Gallego went Fray Marcos, now decidedly unpopu­lar as well as unhappy in the camp. Melchior Diaz, who was to send forward the second divi­sion of the army, also accompanied them.
After an uneventful journey the three returning travelers found the army in a comfortable camp on the Sonora River, reaching there about the middle of September.
Soon the army went north, when Diaz, who had been left in command of the camp, which was to be made permanent, decided to try to find the sup­ply fleet and Alarcon.
With twenty-five men he traveled northwest until he reached the Colorado River, but though he found the letters Alarcon had left, the fleet had already departed. The expedition came to an ab­rupt end when, upon an inauspicious day, Diaz was accidentally transfixed with a lance and died. His followers immediately returned to the military camp on the Sonora River.
When Tovar had returned from the Hopi coun­try he told Coronado that the natives had told him of a great river that lay to the northwest, whose banks were peopled with a race of giants. The captain general thereupon sent Don Garcia Lopez de Cardenas and twelve cavaliers to explore it
At the Hopi villages Cardenas found guides, and from thence proceeded over the plateau coun­try, which they found cold in spite of the summer season, and after several days were rewarded by seeing the Grand Canyon of the Colorado.
Coming unexpectedly upon this tremendous marvel of Nature, it is no wonder that they were filled with amazement at its magnitude and majes­tic beauty. For several days they explored the rim, trying vainly to find a trail leading to the river, which to them looked like a silver thread, and which the Indians insisted was half a league wide. Three of the most active of the men did make one effort to climb down the sides, but hours after returned to say that they had attempted the impossible, for "rocks which from the tops had appeared to be no taller than a man, were found upon reaching them to be taller than the tower of the cathedral at Seville."
The discovery of the Grand Canyon of the Colo­rado practically ended the explorations of Coronado in Arizona.
After the return of Cardenas, the captain gen­eral marched eastward into New Mexico, where the record of his explorations was sadly marred by the bad faith and cruelty shown by the Span­iards to the Indians.
Ever lured on by the will-of-the-wisp stories of gold told them by the Indians, who soon discov­ered the white man's madness for the yellow metal, they journeyed into Texas, Oklahoma and even Kansas, where their farthermost point seems to have been reached somewhere beyond the Arkan­sas River.
Finally, following many disasters, two years from the time they had started so auspiciously from Compostella, Coronado led his army back to Mexico. With the ranks of his army depleted by death, his men dressed in tattered skins of animals, worn by hardships and privations, their leader entered the capital of New Spain, "very sad and very weary, completely worn out and shame­faced," feeling that he was held responsible not only for their failure to find gold, but also for the fate of those who had died on the inhospitable deserts of the north. Nevertheless, though the viceroy received him with coldness, and though his name is tarnished with the treatment his men showed the natives, yet by reason of his splendid courage and dogged persistence in continuing his explorations in the face of constant perils, Coronado and such captains as Melchior Diaz have won for themselves enduring and justly earned fame.
The inability of Coronado to find any trace of gold in the country to the north effectively ended all efforts at exploration in that direction until in 1582 (forty years after Coronado's return), when Antonio de Espejo led a small expedition into New Mexico with the double purpose of looking for two missing Franciscans and searching for precious minerals. They made one trip into what is now Arizona, Espejo with nine followers going west to the Hopi villages and afterwards prospecting for metals in a section that probably included Yavapai County.
In 1598 Don Juan de Onate organized a large expedition, consisting of 400 men, 130 of which were accompanied by their families, 10 Franciscan friars, 83 wagons and 7,000 head of cattle, with a view of permanently colonizing the fertile country along the upper Rio Grande. Like Espejo, he made one exploring trip into Arizona, where, after visiting the Hopi and other Indian villages, he did some fruitless searching for minerals. At a later time Onate went as far west as the Colorado River down which he journeyed to its mouth.
The battles with the Indians of this really re­markable commander, his troubles with members of his army, his success in establishing colonies, belong to the annals of New Mexico rather than to those of Arizona, still it should be mentioned that Onate's expedition marked the beginning of the settlement of New Mexico by the Spaniards, and with the exception of a brief period following the revolt of the natives in 1680, its occupation by the white race was thereafter continuous.

SPANISH MISSIONS IN ARIZONA AND NORTHERN SONORA
SPANISH MISSION DAYS

SPANISH mission activities among the Indians of Arizona began early in the seventeenth century when friars from the colonies on the Rio Grande first visited and later took resi­dence among the Hopis in the pueblos east of the Painted Desert. However, at the time of the New Mexican Revolt in 1680, four Franciscans, who were ministering in five of the towns of Tusayan, were killed by their parishioners and thereafter all through the Spanish rule the Hopis refused to have anything to do with the white man's religion.
Among the Indians to the south the Spaniards were much more successful. The work here began with the arrival of the Jesuits in 1690. The padres of this order continued in charge of the field for seventy-seven years, when, in 1767, they were suc­ceeded by the Franciscans, who for sixty years more, like their predecessors, labored diligently and unselfishly for the salvation of their charges, until, in 1827, Mexico becoming independent of Spain, the Franciscans were banished from the country.
The southern missionary field covered all of what was then known as Pimeria Alta, which, roughly, was bounded on the north by the Gila and on the east by the San Pedro. On the south it ran well into Sonora, and on the west extended to the Rio Colorado and the Gulf of California. Although both Jesuits and Franciscans in this dis­trict tried to reach the northern tribes, their efforts were barren of success. Even in Pimeria Alta north of the present Mexican line but two missions of any permanency were established by the Jesuits and but two more were added by the Franciscans.
The first and greatest of the Jesuit missionaries was Father Eucebio Kino. He was a native of Trent in the Austrian Tyrol, and believing that he owed his recovery from a serious illness to the intercession of St. Francis Xavier, resigned a pro­fessorship at the College of Ingolstadt in Bavaria to devote his life to the salvation of the Indians in the New World.
In February, 1687, we find him near the present town of Ures in Sonora, where he founded his first mission, Nuestra Senora de los Dolores, which place he made his headquarters up to the time of his death, and from which he made his many mis­sionary journeys to Arizona.
In December, 1690, Father Juan Maria de Sal-vatierra, superior and visitador, came to Dolores, and as he and Father Kino were inspecting the different missions and visitas which the latter had established in the district, they were met at Tucu-babai on the Rio Altar by a delegation of Sobai-puris Indians. These natives had journeyed south­ward from about the locality of San Xavier to ask if missionaries could not be sent to their own country.
Gladly acceding to their request, shortly after­wards the two Jesuits journeyed northward, cross­ing the border at or near the Santa Cruz River, being the first white men to enter what is now Arizona from the south since Coronado's visit one hundred and fifty years before.
Salvatierra immediately returned to Mexico, leaving Kino, who remained a little while longer, investigating the possibilities of the country as a missionary field.
Although he had little encouragement from the superiors of his order, Father Kino took a great interest in the Papagos, Pimas and other friendly tribes of Indians living in that part of Pimeria Alta, now known as Arizona, and during the re­maining sixteen years of his administration of missionary affairs from Dolores, made no less than fourteen journeys through different parts of that country.
At this time the most northerly of the precidios or garrisons of the Spaniards was at Fronteras, situated near the San Pedro River, in northern Sonora. From this presidio there operated a fly­ing squadron whose purpose it was to defend the missions and missionaries from hostile Indians, particularly the Apaches, who about a half century before first appeared in Arizona, coming from the north, and from the time of their arrival gave evidences of the predatory and murderous charac­teristics which later turned Arizona into a verita­ble charnel house.
However, in spite of manifold dangers, sometimes guarded by an escort of soldiers, sometimes only accompanied by a companion friar or Indian guides, and often traveling alone, Father Kino jour­neyed up and down the Santa Cruz, the San Pedro and Gila rivers, preaching and ministering to Papagos, Pimas, Sobas, Coco-Maricopas and Yumas who lived in that district. The good father must have possessed a wonderful personality and adaptability as well as great courage, for nearly everywhere the Indians seem to have received him gladly, listened to his teachings and given him their children to be baptized.
Knowing of the missions farther to the south, the natives were anxious to have like communities established in their own country, and although Father Kino's greatest desire was to see this accom­plished, he was unable to get the support to carry out the plan. Nevertheless, at many of the villages the natives built little adobe churches where Father Kino and his few associates might hold mass on their all too infrequent visits.
The padres, besides ministering to their charges spiritually, also looked after their temporal well being. These people were semi-agricultural, liv­ing in villages and having little fields of maize, beans, squash and cotton. The padres gave them seeds of new varieties of grain and vegetables, and even helped them make a start raising horses, sheep and cattle. The success thus gained may be gathered by a letter written by Father Kino him­self:
"The greater the means, the greater our obligation to seek the salvation of so many souls in the very fertile lands and valleys of these new con­quests and conversions. There are already rich and abundant fields, plantings and crops of wheat, maize, frijoles, chickpeas, beans, lentils ... in them vineyards, . . . reed brakes of sweet cane for syrup and panoche. . . . There are many fruit trees, as figs, quinces, oranges, . . . with all sorts of garden stuff, . . . garlic, let­tuce,   .   .   .   Castilian roses, white lilies."
Mining in Arizona, too, had its first slight begin­ning in early Jesuit times, for our diligent and practical father mentions more than once veins of minerals which he had seen in various parts of the country.
In 1694, acting on information he received from the Indians, our Padre Kino visited the since famous pre-historic ruins on the Gila, now known as the Casa Grande, being doubtless the first white man to see them. It is also interesting to note that, although the present church building at the mis­sion of San Xavier del Bac was not commenced until many years afterwards, it is recorded that in 1701 Father Kino laid the foundation for a large church at that place.
In 1710, at the age of seventy, while still actively engaged in this work, this intrepid old soldier of the cross passed to his reward. It is told that dur­ing his mission work he baptized no less than forty-eight thousand Indians. Of him Calvijero says: "In all of his journeys he carried no other food than roasted corn; he never omitted to celebrate Holy Mass and never slept on a mattress. As he wandered about he prayed incessantly or sang hymns or songs. He died as saintly as he lived."
At the time of Father Kino's death the only permanent mission existing in what is now Ari­zona was at Guevavi, and what with the hostility of the Apaches and the weakness of the garrisons, the padres were unable to do missionary work north of that place for the next twenty years. Indeed, it is quite likely that no Spaniards what­ever entered the district unless it was an occa­sional expedition of the soldiers from Fronteras. By 1732, however, conditions had so changed that the Jesuits were able to make San Xavier del Bac a permanent mission, placing Father Felipe Seges-ser in charge, while Juan Bautista Grasshoffer was made the resident priest at Guevavi. From that time on there were gathered at these two places Indian neophytes who received spiritual instruc­tion from the padres and labored under their direction.
As we know, the Spaniards were ever in search of the precious metals. An attempt, at least, at mining in Pimeria Alta was made early in 1726, and ten years later, at Arizonac, southwest of Gue­vavi and just south of the Arizona line, the famous Planchas de Plata were discovered. Here great plates or balls of native silver were found; one immense lump, it is said, weighed nearly three thousand pounds. In fact, the mine was so rich that when the fame of the strike reached Spain the king promptly appropriated it for himself.
In the meantime affairs at the missions, both in Arizona and Sonora, were going in a way not at all idealistic The Pima and Papago Indians, from which tribes were gathered most of the neophytes, although comparatively tractable and peace-lov­ing, were wholly unused to discipline and the white man's standard of labor. The zealous fathers seemed to have pushed them rather far, for on November 21, 1751, through the entire district of Pimeria Alta, the Pimas and Papagos joined the Ceres in a bloody revolt. The two priests in charge of San Xavier and Guevavi fled to Suamca in Sonora, which was protected by a nearby presidio. Two other of the padres were killed at their mis­sions in Sonora, as were about a hundred other Spaniards. Smelting furnaces that had been erected were destroyed by the Indians, and mine shafts filled in wherever found.
By some means, within the next two years, priests and parishioners were reconciled; possibly the presidio, or garrison, which was established at Tubac in the Santa Cruz Valley, 1752, may have been a potent influence to that end. In any event the friars returned to Guevavi and San Xavier, and in 1754 established an important visita at Tumacacori, conveniently near the soldiers of the new garrison.
We now read of Spanish colonists beginning to come up from the south, and see mentioned the name of Tucson, which is spoken of as an Indian village the fathers visited from San Xavier.
The friars seemed to have attained some suc­cess in regaining the confidence of their charges when suddenly, in 1767, King Charles HI expelled all of the Jesuits from his kingdom. Several rea­sons are given for this act: that it was the influ­ence of the Freemasons in the Spanish court; that the Pima uprising showed incompetency on the part of the fathers in charge; that the enemies of the order had showed the king a forged letter purporting to be from the Jesuit superior general and containing allegations that seriously affected the monarch's title to the crown. In any event a devoted and zealous body of earnest workers who, whatever mistakes they may have made, labored unselfishly in the face of grave dangers, were abruptly discharged with no, thanks from the coun­try whose frontier they had tried so hard to civil­ize. The church records show that altogether there were nineteen of the order who worked in this field.
Immediately upon their removal the mission property was turned over to the royal comisario, and the Marquis de Croix, then viceroy of Mexico, sent an urgent appeal to the Franciscan college at Queretero, Mexico, asking for at least twelve priests of that order.
In response to this request fourteen Francis­cans were sent to Sonora and there assigned to the different missions throughout the district. The church property was formally turned over to the order, and each friar was allowed by the crown the meager stipend of $300 a year towards defray­ing the expenses of his work.
A year had elapsed since the Jesuits had gone, and the two missions in Arizona, Guevavi and San Xavier, were in a deplorable condition. Not only had the property been sadly neglected by the civil custodians, but also the year of freedom from restraint enjoyed by the neophytes made the dis­cipline imposed upon them seem very irksome. Gradually, however, some of the Indians returned; some, who were wholly under the care of the padres, were furnished food and clothing for them­selves and families; others simply worked for pay by the day.
Of all of the Franciscans in Pimeria by far the most conspicuous figure was Father Francisco Garces, who was assigned to San Xavier with the Indian village of Tucson as a visita. He was a younger man on entering his work than Father Kino, but no one could have been more zealous in his labors, more unmindful of the dangers of a hostile frontier, or more undaunted by the poverty of the missions. His faith and courage lifted him to a plane where failure could not reach him.
So great were his zeal and piety that it was felt even by the Indians, who venerated him as an oracle and a holy man. However, he could be as stern with those who were hostile to his teachings as he was patient and kindly to those who listened.
As an object lesson, he had a servant carry before him a large banner, which on one side portrayed the likeness of the Virgin Mary, and on the other a picture of a lost soul, writhing in the flames of hell. If, on visiting a new community, the natives were hospitable, he turned to them the picture of the mother of Jesus; if unfriendly, the lost soul was exhibited as a warning of their own inevitable fate.
The first missionary journey of Father Garces was made to the Gila country within a few months of his arrival at San Xavier. The young padre kept a very complete diary, and what he tells of the various tribes is full of interest. The Pimas and Coco-Maricopas lived in much the same coun­try they do now, and Father Garces was especially impressed with the amount of cotton they grew, which they wove into blankets for both their men and women. The men also wore a cotton breech-cloth, while the women clad themselves in a short skirt made of the same material.
While the Pimas, Papagos and Coco-Maricopas treated the priests with uniform kindness, the Apaches continued to be a perpetual menace, raid­ing the missions whenever the opportunity offered and ready at all times for both thievery and murder.
Early in his ministry Father Garces became ill, and Fray Gil, who was in charge of Guevavi, came to assist him. In Gil's absence, the Apaches sacked Guevavi, damaged the mission building and killed all but two of the little band of soldiers that was guarding it.
Later the same year the Apaches attacked San Xavier, destroying the mission buildings, but under Garces' direction it was quickly repaired.
In spite of continuous obstacles and dangers, the mission showed steady improvement   In 1772 there was at San Xavier a fairly capacious adobe church building with, including men, women and children, two hundred parishioners. They had cul­tivated fields and cared for considerable live stock. At the visita of San Jose del Tucson there were about two hundred people, but no place of wor­ship, so some time during the year the zealous Fray Francisco Garces built at the foot of a hill, called "El Cerro del Tucson," a stone church, a mission house with a wall of adobe around it, as a protection against the Apaches. The pueblo stood about half a mile west of the present city of Tucson.
At this time Guevavi had eighty-six people, the Indians there doing a little farming. Tumacacori had a population of ninety-three, but though there were both church and priest house, there was no minister in charge. There was also a small unfin­ished church at San Ignacio, just east of Guevavi. Calabasas, in the same district, was a visita with sixty-four people but no church. Add to this a little military post at Tubac, with less than fifty soldiers, and we have practically all of the mission communities of Arizona.
As early as Father Kino's time it had been the ambition of both the padre and the military au­thorities to establish an overland route between the missions of Pimeria Alta and those of Cali­fornia. Finally, to this end, in 1774, Captain Juan Bautista de Anza, comandante of the presidio at Tubac, undertook the establishment of a trail. On January 8th he left Tubac with thirty-four soldiers, going by the way of Caborca on the River Altar, then northwest to the junction of the Gila and Colorado, and then, after a difficult march across the desert, on to San Gabriel, near Los Angeles. On this expedition the church was represented by Padres Garces and Juan Diaz, both of whom were interested in the Yuma and other Indian tribes liv­ing on the Colorado, and among whom there had been much talk of establishing a mission.
In September, 1775, De Anza led a second party into California, starting from Horcasitas, and going through San Xavier down the Gila. This expedi­tion journeyed as far as the Golden Gate in Cali­fornia, where they founded a settlement, which in time became San Francisco.
Early in the year of 1776, while Adams, Han­cock and their associates on the Atlantic Coast were occupied with events leading up to a famous Declaration of Independence concerning one King George, Father Garces, with his banner borne before him, thinking of very different matters in­deed, was journeying northward up the west bank of the Colorado River into unknown country, hop­ing to reach the Hopis, to whom he was especially anxious to preach the gospel. He encountered the Mohave and Chemehuevi Indians, probably near the present town of Parker, who received him cor­dially. After making a casual side trip of a hun­dred miles or so to south central California, he returned to Arizona and journeyed trails hereto­fore untrodden by white men into central Arizona. Somewhere near Prescott he met the Yavapai tribe, and induced five of them to act as his guides to Hopi land.
En route to the pueblos they visited the Havasu Indians, who lived then as they do now, down in the depths of the picturesque and beautiful Cata­ract Canyon, and marveled much over the charm of the spot
When he reached Oraibe, the cliff city of the Hopis, he found the natives still most antagonistic to the religion of the Spaniards. While offering the sorely disappointed Father Garces no violence, they would neither receive the simple gifts he had brought them, nor allow him to remain. They had no objection to the friar as a man, and permitted him to take his burros to the sheep corral and wander through the town, which he did with much curiosity, recording what he did and saw most minutely in his diary.
The people gave every evidence not only of superior intelligence, but of considerable material prosperity. The houses, he said, were of more than one story in height, with doors closed by bolts and keys of wood.
They had sheep, which, of course, came from the Spanish settlements on the Rio Grande, and Father Garces notes with interest that the ewes were larger than those of Sonora. Also, he said, they raised chickens, had gardens in which grew all of the common vegetables, and besides that, little orchards of peach trees. Their clothing was both picturesque and well made, the women wear­ing woolen smocks made of blanketing, sleeveless and reaching to the heels. Over this was worn a second smock of black or white with a girdle of various colors. Some of the men wore leathern jackets fitted with sleeves, and they completed their apparel with trousers and moccasins.
That night, evidently believing that the friar's presence would make "bad medicine," the Pueb-lans would not allow Father Garces to enter their houses, so, forced to sleep in the street, he writes that his rest was disturbed by the harangues of different local orators and the playing of a flute.
After remaining at the Hopi villages for three days, he was told definitely that it was time for him to depart. With crucifix raised before him, he made a final appeal, but the Indians would have nothing of his teaching, and gently but firmly escorted him to the edge of the town.
Sadly disheartened by his failure, he returned to the Colorado River, journeying southward through the land of the Mojaves, and then east­ward, again visiting the Coco-Maricopas and Pimas.
He reached San Xavier September 17th, after a journey of over twenty-five hundred miles, in the course of which he visited nine tribes and met some twenty-five thousand Indians.
Since the establishment of the church at the "Pueblito del Tucson" four years earlier, this set­tlement seems to have steadily grown in impor­tance. Spanish settlers came there and the same year that Father Garces made his long journey to the Hopi country military quarters were erected there, and the soldiers moved north from Tubac to occupy them. About this time the settlement seems to have taken unto itself a new patron saint, for hereafter, instead of being known as San Jose del Tucson, it was called San Agustin del Pueblito del Tucson. Fancy a Southern Pacific brakeman announcing such a name to a car of passengers!
Naturally the settlers at Tubac made a vigorous protest against the abandonment of their military post, but they seem to have received scant satis­faction from the authorities, who not only did not return the soldiers, but insisted that certain set­tlers who wished to leave for Mexico must stay where they were.
The Franciscans were ever desirous of reaching farther into the frontier with their missions, and the crown administrators appreciated thoroughly that no other pioneers could, at so little cost to the State, so successfully enlarge their country's bor­ders. So it was that when Padre Garces and accompanying friars had, with Captain de Anza, visited the rich delta country of the Colorado where the Yuma Indians had their productive fields, both the representatives of the church and the military had been impressed with the thought that this would make an ideal spot for a new religious center.
However, both Captain de Anza and Father Garces were of the opinion that it would be dan­gerous to establish a mission unless it could be strongly guarded by soldiers, for while the Yumas were agricultural, they were far more warlike than either the Pimas or Papagos, and the upris­ing of 1751 had not been forgotten. The powers higher up finally gave orders for the establishment of such a mission, but there were many things that made for delays, and it was not until early in 1779 that Father Garces and Father Juan Diaz were given orders to hold themselves in readiness to proceed to the country of the Yumas as soon as the necessary military force and supplies could be obtained. Then came more waiting when, finally, an army of twelve privates and a sergeant were furnished as the military equipment of the peril­ous undertaking and the intrepid dozen and one, together with the two priests, made the journey to the Colorado.
The executive head of the Indians at that time was one Chief Palma, a dignitary of no mean sta­tion, for he had not only received a military deco­ration from Captain de Anza, but had been to the City of Mexico and been baptized in the cathedral.
The loaves and fishes of the religion of the Spaniards had been very attractive to this Indian warrior. Coincident with the establishment of the proposed mission, Palma had been promised an unlimited amount of smoking tobacco, which he very much enjoyed; and a fine suit of clothes, entirely superfluous, considering the climate of Yuma and the sartorial habits of his tribe, but adding greatly to his dignity and standing. There­fore he was very anxious for the mission to be established.
Naturally, the amount of gratuities which the two priests were able to bring with them was very small, and the disgruntled aboriginal executive received the ecclesiastical arrivals with tempered cordiality. Nevertheless, the tact of Father Garces seems to have tided things over pretty well until a year later, when twenty-one soldiers, twelve laborers and twenty colonists journeyed over the deserts to the new settlement, each bringing with him a wife and a family of children.
To make their welcome at the hands of the expectant savages doubly sure, these new colonists calmly took possession of what Indian fields they wanted, and asked the natives the old question, "What are you going to do about it?" For the time being it seemed nothing was done about it, and a pueblo was established on the west side of the river at the mouth of the Gila, which was called Concepcion, and a second village was laid out three leagues farther south and christened the unassuming name of San Pedro y San Pablo de Bicuner.
For nearly two years the colonies maintained a precarious existence. The Yumas, next to the Apaches, were considered the most dangerous In­dians of the Southwest; add to that fact that the soldiers were brutal and licentious and we find a condition that made disaster a little less than inevitable.
The padres, who realized fully the harvest that all this was leading to, did all they could to restrain their countrymen and placate the Indians, but the trouble was past mending.
The proverbial last straw was laid upon the none too patient camel's back in June of 1781 through the aggressions of a new arrival of sol­diers. Captain Fernando Rivers, lieutenant-governor of Lower California, with a party of sol­diers and emigrants, stopped at Concepcion on his way to Santa Barbara. Part of his expedition he sent on to California, part back to Sonora, while, with a handful of soldiers, he remained, camping on the east side of the Colorado, where he pastured his horses and cattle—nearly a thousand head— upon the mesquite beans on which the Yumas largely depended for food.
On Tuesday, June 17,1781, the lightning struck! At Concepcion, while in the very act of celebrating mass, Father Garces was clubbed to death by the natives for whom he had labored so earnestly. The comandante of the village, who was also in the church at the time, was killed in trying to reach his command, as was the corporal who followed him. It is recorded that the heroic Garces gave the dying soldier absolution even though he was at the point of death himself.
At Bicuner, the two priests, Diaz and Moreno, were killed, and, after having desecrated the images and altar, the savages destroyed the church.
They next attacked the force of Captain Rivera, and although the Spaniards entrenched themselves and made a valiant defense, within a few hours the last man was killed.
Two friars, through the aid of Chief Palma, who it seems was not wholly in accord with his bloody tribesmen, succeeded in getting clear of the settlement, but were finally pursued and killed.
When the news of the massacre reached the comandante of the military forces, General de Croix, he at once began plans for the severest retributive measures. Though chafing under the delay, it was a year before he could spare the nec­essary force, but in September, 1782, he sent a hundred and sixty soldiers, who, combining with a company of Spaniards and allied friendly In­dians from California, engaged the Yumas to deadly purpose. They did thorough work, one hundred and ten of the Yumas were killed, with eighty-five captured and ten Christian prisoners recovered.
The story was told by the liberated captives that after the massacre the Yumas would not live in the vicinity of Concepcion, for every night a ghostly procession of the slain would wend its way about the mission, each carrying a candle, while a tall figure in white walked at its head, bearing a cross.
It must be remembered that, however much the Spaniards suffered from the Yumas, there had been provocation for their ghastly work. No such extenuation could be credited to the Apaches. With them raids upon weaker people, either red men or white, for the purpose of plunder, was part of the plain matter of living, and the murders which accompanied these predatory acts were often committed in pure wantonness. So persistent were they in their attacks upon the settlements in the Santa Cruz Valley and other parts of Pimeria Alta that, in 1786, General Ugarte, the comandante, began a vigorous campaign against them in whicli work he was gladly aided by organized companies of Pima and Opata allies.
Diplomacy as well as military prowess seems to have had a part in these operations, for at the end of an energetic campaign a treaty was made wherein the Indians were to be furnished rations which cost the crown from $18,000 to $30,000 a year, and a policy adopted thereafter which surely should meet with the approval of those who con­sider that the gentle Apaches would never have given Arizona any trouble had it not been for the unkind treatment afforded them by the whites. The old chronicle says that they were furnished with supplies, encouraged to form settlements near the presidios, and as a crowning consideration, taught to drink intoxicating liquors.
Still, even with all this thoughtfulness, occa­sionally not only the Apaches, but even independ­ent groups of the younger Pimas and Papagos went raiding. However, the military forces seem to have been strong enough to promptly bring them back to the paths of peace and mescal, and so quiet was the time in comparison with what went both before and after that from 1787 to 1815 may be considered almost the golden period of mission history, or at least gilded well enough so in look­ing back through the vista of a century it reflects a golden glamour not wholly unpleasant. Not only were the missions prosperous, but settlers came in from Mexico, and stock raising and farming were engaged in in favored localities. Trade was car­ried on with Sonora by means of pack trains. Strongly guarded by armed escorts, the arieros would load their pack mules with hides, wool, buckskin and rich ore, and take the long journey over hills and deserts to Hermosillo or Guaymas and bring back zarapes, mantillas, cloth, sugar, imported wines, jewels and silver coins.
Cattle and horses were raised along the Santa Cruz and the San Pedro, and in such ranchos as the San Bernardino, and driven down to the port of Guaymas and turned into Spanish gold.
It was probably just prior to this time that a beginning was made on the present beautiful mis­sion of San Xavier. Padre Baltasar Carillo was in charge of the mission from 1780 to 1794, and it is fairly well established that the work was started early in his administration.
There is a date, "1797," cut on one of the inner doors of the church, which very likely records the year of the structure's completion. This was dur­ing the administration of Padre Carillo's former assistant, Padre Narciso Gutierres, who in turn was assisted at different times by Mariano Bardoy, Ramon Lopes and Angel Alonzo de Prado.
It will be noticed that all, with perhaps one exception, are very characteristic Spanish names, and it is to these men who built for the glory of God rather than for their own aggrandizement that the honor of making possible this beautiful structure erected in the midst of the desert is due.
Under the administration of these devoted fathers we may picture Arizona mission life at its best. We can hear the mellow tones of the bells in the tower of San Xavier filling the little valley of the Santa Cruz with their music We can see in the early morning the Indian neophytes, stolid, but wholly devout, with uncovered heads and san­daled feet, assemble for matutinal prayers, and the rite once over, watch them with clear con­science shuffling off to breakfast of corn cakes and frijoles to discuss the cock-fight scheduled for the following Sunday afternoon.
As the day proceeds we witness an animated picture. At a brickyard a vigorous padre, with his gown tucked up out of the way of his feet, is di­recting the firing of a kiln; at the smithy, a friar blacksmith is cunningly fashioning hinges for a door to the church or putting a bolt in an ox bow, which, by the way, will be tied to the beast's horns. Woodworkers are making boards with hand saws from timbers brought down from the Santa Cata-lina Moimtains on the backs of mules or burros, and in the fields are Indians irrigating or weeding the mission gardens. At noon there are more corn cakes, prayers and frijoles; in the afternoon, more work; in the evening, mission bells again bring in the tired workers to spiritual and material nour­ishment. The day, especially if it is Saturday, may be closed by a baile where the Indians dance on the hard ground to the music of the harp and the guitar. Yet we hear that some of the neophytes, preferring paganism with indolence to piety cou­pled with labor, would occasionally run away!
At Guevavi, the oldest mission of Arizona, there never seems to have been more than a small adobe churchy but at Tumacacori a very beautiful mission building was erected. Fray Beltasar Carillo was at Tumacacori from 1794 to 1798, and Fray Gutier-res from that time until 1820, and it is likely to these men, who did the building at San Xavier, should be given the credit for Tumacacori as well.
The mission of San Xavier del Bac, beyond all question the most beautiful edifice in the South­west, is kept in fairly good repair. On the other hand, Tumacacori, which was not only more beau­tiful but far more ambitious than many of the California missions of nation-wide fame, is now, through most deplorable neglect, in sad decay.
Beginning with the Mexican wars of independ­ence against Spanish rule, the short years of the prosperity of the missions of Pimeria Alta came swiftly to an end. From 1811 on, money and food were inadequately and irregularly supplied the soldiers at the garrisons, and the military force became thoroughly disorganized. Rations to the Apaches also were cut down, and in consequence the redskins promptly resumed their old habits of stealing stock, raiding ranches and murdering settlers.
The padres did the best they could to hold their neophytes together, but on September 2,1827, came the end of mission days. With the independence of Mexico achieved, orders were given at the capi­tal for the expulsion of the Franciscans, and they soon left the country.
San Xavier was placed under the charge of the secular parish priest at Magdalena, but that was miles away, and naturally visits could be made but rarely.
In a letter written in 1835, Don Ignacio Zuniga, former commander of the northern presidios, stated that since 1820 no less than five thousand lives had been lost in Pimeria, and that at least a hundred ranchos, haciendas, mining camps and other settlements had been destroyed, and from three thousand to four thousand settlers had been obliged to quit the northern frontiers. He also speaks of the hostility of the Pimas and Papagos, who had doubtless suffered at the hands of the military, as well as from the usual raids of the Apaches.
A melancholy ending, surely, for a period that had promised so much—Guevavi, Tumacacori and San Ignacio deserted, a squalid town at Tubac, another but little better at Tucson, where the in­habitants depended more on the adobe wall for protection than on the soldiers, and San Xavier with priestless altar and silent bells.
But the one bright ray perhaps in all this depressing cloud was the fact that the Papago neophytes did not forget—but hid securely the altar furniture for the time when their simple faith told them the fathers would return, and kept the affection for them in their hearts.
We shall see later that this faith was not unre­warded.
THE ARRIVAL OF THE AMERICANS

THE efforts of Mexico to free herself from the rule of Spain had their beginning in 1810 with the revolution inspired by Hidalgo, the fearless, liberty-loving curate of Durango. Although after brief successes Hidalgo suffered death at the hands of the king's soldiers, the cause triumphed, and in 1822, with the treaty signed by General Iturbide for Mexico and Viceroy O'Donoju for Spain, the independence of the country was achieved.
However, even independence does not solve all of a nation's civil problems. In 1822, with great acclaim, Iturbide was crowned emperor; in 1823 he was compelled to give back his crown; in 1824 he was executed by the new republic. What makes this of special interest to the Arizonan is that his state within those three years was a colony of the king of Spain, an outlying district of a New World monarch and a territory of the Republic of Mexico.
In 1824 the new constituent congress joined New Mexico to Chihuahua and Durango in one "Estado Interno del Norte." As the capital was to be lo­cated in Chihuahua, Durango objected to the arrangement, whereupon the obliging law-makers made a territory of New Mexico and formed Chihuahua and Durango into states.
The capital of New Mexico was, of course, Santa Fe, which then contained a population of about forty-five hundred people, and while the houses were of adobe, they were comfortable and picturesque, being built around a central court or patio. They were furnished simply, and bright­ened with Navajo blankets.
Altogether that part of New Mexico had a popu­lation of over twenty thousand whites and eight thousand friendly Pueblo Indians. Along the upper Rio Grande were irrigated ranchos, rich in horses, cattle, grains, sheep and fruit A good wine was made and there was a steady commerce between the territory and Chihuahua City.
In contrast to this prosperity, in the western part of the territory—the present Arizona—by rea­son of the constant menace of the Apaches, things were in a sad condition. All the ranches had been abandoned, and the only Spanish settlements were the villages of Tubac and Tucson, whose existence was made possible by small garrisons of soldiers. At Tucson there was the additional protection of a surrounding adobe wall.
The only mines that were worked to any extent in this section under Spanish or Mexican rule were the Planchas de Plata already mentioned and the Santa Rita del Cobre copper mines, which were located at the foot of Ben Moore Mountain, nine miles from the modern Silver City.
The Santa Rita was worked as early as 1804, and the ore extracted was so rich that it was sent by pack animals to Chihuahua, where it was con­verted into the copper coinage of the country.
Three mines were included in the Planchas de Plata group, the Las Cruces, the Tupustetes, and the Arizona or Arizuma, from which great chunks of pure silver were taken, one mass alone weigh­ing 2,700 pounds! Both the Santa Rita and the Planchas de Plata mines had to be deserted from time to time on account of attacks by the Apaches.
The first citizen of note from the United States to penetrate into the Southwest was Lieut Zebulon M. Pike, who, in 1806, with twenty-two men, was sent by his superiors to explore the country of the Arkansas and Red rivers. In January of 1807 he built a small fort on the upper waters of the Rio Grande, in Spanish territory, believing, as he after­wards explained, that he was on the American side of the Red River.
He was arrested by Spanish dragoons and taken to Governor Alencaster at Santa Fe, who treated him as a guest rather than a prisoner, but never­theless took him on to Chihuahua to explain mat­ters to the military chief, General Salcedo.
When Pike returned to the States his account of the richness of the Spanish settlements in New Mexico created much excitement not only among the adventurers, but also among the enterprising frontier merchants who were always ready to send argosies into danger where there was a chance for large profit
The romantic story of the "Trail" that was made from Independence, Missouri, to Santa Fe and the great caravans of mule and ox teams that went over it is well known.
From 1822 to 1844 were the halcyon days of dangers braved, adventures encountered and for­tunes won. The amount of merchandise carried over the trail the first year was $15,000; the last, $450,000.
Naturally, many of the bolder spirits among those who went to Santa Fe ultimately made their way yet farther west. As a result, early in 1824, while the Franciscans were still holding mass at San Xavier and Tumacacori, American trappers and hunters were exploring the Gila, Salt, Colo­rado and other rivers, finding in favorable locali­ties plenty of beaver and an abundance of game almost everywhere they went.
There were at that time fourteen or more tribes of Indians in Arizona, which were scattered pretty much all over the state. Many of these tribes, like the Pimas, were uniformly hospitable to the new­comers; others, like the Mojaves, were friendly enough if treated with tact, but quick to resent ill treatment; and still a third class, as was the case with the Yumas, were almost always either sus­picious or actively hostile.
The Apaches were divided into a number of small clans, including the Chiricahuas, Mimbres, Pinalenos, Coyoteros, Aravaipas, Tontos, San Car­los, the Mojave Apaches and the Yuma Apaches.
To understand the Apache one must get his point of view.   To him life was a perpetual warfare. If a neighboring tribe had something that he wanted, and he was strong or cunning enough to get it, there was no reason why he should not take it; and, as we have seen before, the slaying of an antagonist on a raid was simply an incident of the business in hand—a sort of Frederick the Great or Napoleon point of view. Add to this that the Apache was ever ready to avenge a wrong ten­fold, and one can begin to understand why, down to as late as 1886, he was the perpetual Sword of Damocles that hung over the Arizona pioneer.
In justice to the Indian, however, it must be said that in his trouble with the whites he was not always the aggressor. Sometimes the white man was as bad as the Apache with less excuse for his depravity.
There is an old story, the scene of which is laid at the Santa Rita copper mine, of which many variations are told, and in which there is probably enough truth to be an illuminating commentary on conditions in the Southwest at that time. Dur­ing 1838, so one account gives the date, the Mim-bres Apaches, under their chief, Juan Jose, who lived along the present Arizona-New Mexico boundary, were giving so much trouble to the trap­pers and the Mexicans who were working the Santa Rita mines that drastic retaliatory measures were decided upon. At this time there were sev­eral parties of trappers on the headwaters of the Gila. The captain of one of these was an English­man by the name of James Johnson, who sug­gested a plan whereby the Mimbres would be "settled" for all time. After arranging the matter with the managers of the Santa Rita, he invited Juan Jose and his people to come to the mine for a big feed. Within a hundred yards of the place selected for the feast, and pointing directly at the spot, Johnson concealed a six-pound howitzer, loaded to the muzzle with slugs, musket balls and nails, under a pile of pack saddles. A sack of flour was given the Indians to divide, and while the Indians crowded about it Johnson touched his lighted cigar to the vent of the gun, killing and wounding a score or more, among them Juan Jose. The massacre, so the stories go, was completed by other trappers and Mexicans.
The surviving members fled, but only to plot a fearful revenge. The copper mines were wholly dependent on Chihuahua for supplies, which were brought in guarded pack trains. After the mas­sacre the time for the train came and passed with no word concerning it. Finally, the provisions were all but exhausted. The only hope the miners and their families had of escaping starvation was to cross the deserts that lay between the mines and the settlements. They started, but the Apaches, who had destroyed the train, attacked and killed them all but four or five, who, after suffering incredible hardships, finally reached Chihuahua.
Many stories, differing wholly in detail, but agreeing in essential parts, are told of John Glan-ton, another candidate for perpetuation in the halls of infamy. About 1845 depredations by the Apaches became so continuous that the Mexican authorities, joined by wealthy rancheros, offered $100 for the scalp of every Apache warrior, $50 for the scalp of a squaw and $25 for that of a child. Glanton became covetous for some of this blood money, but disliking the dangers incident to track­ing the wary Apache, decided that the hair cover­ing the peaceful Pima did not greatly differ from that of the quarry upon whom the reward had been set, so took to pot-shooting not only friendly Indians, but even Mexicans themselves, exchanging the scalps for money at Chihuahua. However, it was a business that any conservative life insurance company would have classed as extra hazardous, and finally Glanton and his accomplices were caught red-handed while scalping Mexicans they had murdered. Glanton escaped to New Mexico, but was later killed by the Yuma Indians, who took his worthless life in payment for gold he had stolen from them.
Prominent among the early trail makers of the state were Sylvester Pattie and his son, James, who entered the country in 1824. In an account afterwards written by James their adventures are graphically set forth and include many battles with the Indians, suffering from heat and thirst on the desert, perils by tidal waves on the Colorado, and finally the death of the elder Pattie in a Cali­fornia Spanish prison.
The most picturesque of the pioneer adven­turers was undoubtedly Bill Williams, for whom Bill Williams Mountain and Bill Williams Fork were named.   We hear of him in 1825, in the Far Northwest, from which point he trapped and fought Indians as far south as Sonora. Long, sinewy and bony, with nose and chin almost meet­ing, he was the typical plainsman of the dime novel. He always rode an Indian pony, and his Mexican stirrups were as big as coal scuttles. His buckskin suit was bedaubed with grease until it had the appearance of polished leather; his feet were never incased in anything but moccasins, and his buckskin trousers had the traditional fringe on the outer seam. Naturally, Indian signs were an open book to him, and he was even readier to take a scalp than an Apache, who preferred to crush the heads of his victims and let the hair stay. At the age of sixty he died a natural death caused by a bullet from a Ute Indian.
A far different type of man was Kit Carson, who was the ablest plainsman of them all, and more than once rendered valuable aid to the nation. He was Fremont's guide throughout his explorations, and to him rather than to his chief should have been given the title of "Pathfinder."
He was a boy of seventeen when we first hear of him with a party of trappers on the Gila, and soon thereafter was a member of Ewing Young's party, where he gave a good account of himself in a battle with the Apaches. Originally from Ken­tucky, after 1832 he made his home in New Mexico, but was often in Arizona, where the Indians re­spected his character as well as his daring and skill with the rifle. Withal he was the most unassum­ing of men, never boasting, and with a voice as soft as a woman's. In appearance he was rather below the average in height, but muscular and of almost incredible endurance.

Source:  The Story of Arizona By William Henry Robinson Published by The Berryhill Co., 1919

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