If you have driven around Saguaro National Park’s western unit you have probably seen signs for the Ez-Kim-In-Zin Picnic Area. Maybe you’ve wondered about the name, but the park’s websites offer only information about the CCC picnic tables there. It’s another piece of local history people-in-charge don’t like to talk about, a piece which shaped Southwestern culture and whose residues impact us and our neighbors today.
The genocidal Indian Wars, which Theodore Roosevelt called “the most righteous of all wars…wars with savages,” raged as settlers and soldiers took the native lands for themselves. Miners kidnapped Apache girls and sold them into slavery. Apaches fought back to preserve the nomadic way of life they brought into Arizona and New Mexico about the same time the conquistadores were claiming New Spain for themselves.
While Apache raids into Mexico and on Tohono O’odham villages kept tensions high, Apache peace efforts were met with duplicity and force of arms. When a White Mountain Apache band took a young Mexican boy in 1861, Lt. George Bascom marched in pursuit and met Cochise. The legendary Chiricahua leader entered Bascom’s camp peacefully and offered to send his scouts to return the boy. Bascom held Cochise and his family hostage, but they escaped and a bloody escalation began.
Chief Mangas Coloradas accepted an invitation to talk peace in 1863 and was bound and burned with fire-heated bayonets, then shot. General George Crook arrived in Arizona in 1871 determined to “pacify” the Apaches with force. Captured Chiricahuas were “deported” to a Florida military prison.
Geronimo’s war began in 1858 when Mexican soldiers killed his wife, mother and three small children, and by the 1880s his band of 35 men, women and children was hunted by 5,000 U.S. and 3,000 Mexican troops, along with 1,000 vigilantes. Surrendering for a fourth and final time in the Peloncillo Mountains in 1886, the Apache war of resistance ended with 27 years of imprisonment in Florida, Alabama, Oklahoma, and, finally, back to Arizona. On his death bed in 1909 after being put on exhibit in Wild West shows, Geronimo said, “I should have never surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive.”
Eskiminzin was chief of the Aravaipa Apache band which, tired of conflict, surrendered their weapons at Camp Grant on the Aravaipa River in April, 1871, under the protection of Lt. Royal Whitman and his troops. Ezkiminzin told Whitman, “We have faith in you. You have spoken to us like men and not dogs…The Aravaipa will keep peace with the Americans.” Five hundred Apaches, technically now prisoners-of-war, came in from the mountains, disarmed, and prepared for a fiesta to celebrate peace.
In Tucson, however, a group of Americans led by Alamo veteran and Texas Ranger William Oury, the first mayor of Tucson, recruited Mexican and Tohono O’odham men angry with Apache raids. They were given weapons by Arizona Adjutant General Sam Hughes, and Arizona Citizen editor John Wasson beat the drums for vengeance, blaming the Aravaipas for raids by other bands and praising the Governor of Sonora for raising the bounty for Apache scalps to $100. Sidney De Long, who had become rich outfitting the military, supplied food for the attackers. Hiram Stevens, a partner of Sam Hughes, led a group of armed men to block the road to Camp Grant, taking two soldiers sent to warn Whitmore prisoner. They made sure the sleeping Indians could be taken by surprise.
Just before dawn on April 30, 1871, the raiders, led by Lieutenant Thomas T. Tidball from Fort Lowell in Tucson and scout Jesús María Elias, moved into Camp Grant with clubs and swords and began smashing the skulls of the sleeping Apaches. Victims were nearly all women and children as all but eight of the band’s men were out in a hunting party. Shooters stationed on hillsides picked off fleeing Indians. Apache women were raped before being murdered and thirty Apache children were kidnapped to be sold into slavery.
The slaughter of Indian women and children was not new to Indian killers. In her award-winning Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz notes that practice began in 1609 when the Jamestown settlers, led by John Smith, launched war against the Powhatans for not voluntarily giving up their land, food and labor. The legend of Chief Powhatan’s daughter, Pocahontas, saving John Smith’s life, is questioned by many historians.
When President U. S. Grant later called it “purely murder,” Wasson defended the Camp Grant Massacre in his paper. One hundred and four men were arrested, charged with murdering between 118 and 144 Apaches, and found “not guilty” by a jury in just 19 minutes. By the Spring of 1873 Western Apache resistance was broken. Reservations were established, but miners and ranchers trespassed and claimed the land. The government then decided to herd the Indians into one big reservation and began relocating tribes.
How the killers are remembered:
William Oury – “Ranching resumed in the 1850s after the American occupation…joined by Americans Bill Kirkland, Pete Kitchen and Bill Oury. These bold men held stubbornly to the land despite frequent raids by roving bands of Apaches.” Arizona: A Cavalcade of History, Revised, by Marshall Trimble (Rio Nuevo Publishers, Tucson, 2003). Appointed first Mayor of Tucson in 1864, Oury – labeled a “History-Maker” by the University of Arizona in 1967 — also served as sheriff of Pima County from 1873 to 1877 (Arizona Daily Star, July 23, 2013.) About the massacre, Oury said they had the “full satisfaction of a job well done.” Note: Oury admirer Marshall Trimble is Arizona’s State Historian.
Sam Hughes — “Hughes was a man of vision, principles, and courage. When Confederate forces occupied Tucson at the onset of the Civil War, around 1860, Hughes moved back to California rather than live under the Confederate flag. He left his financial interests to a friend until 1862 when he accompanied the first battery of Union soldiers to return to Southern Arizona.
“In the early 1870s Hughes helped to incorporate the City of Tucson, refused the Mayorship and served as an alderman on the first city council. In 1871 he helped early territorial governor A.P.K. Safford establish public education in the Territory saying it was ‘the pride of my life.’” (Sam Hughes Neighborhood Association, 2018)
John Wasson – HON. RAUL M. GRIJALVA of arizona in the house of representatives Thursday, May 7, 2009 (Congressional Record)
Mr. GRIJALVA. Madam Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to the Tucson Citizen which is closing after 138 years. The Arizona Citizen was founded in 1870, by John Wasson, a newspaper man from California, with help from Richard McCormick, the territory’s governor and later territorial delegate to Congress…
As the state’s oldest newspaper, the Tucson Citizen has been a part of Arizona’s history. During its existence, the Citizen reported on Arizona’s biggest stories, among them the 1881 gunfight at the OK Corral and the 1934 arrest of bank robber John Dillinger…Losing the Tucson Citizen is losing a piece of history and losing a bit of family.
Lt. T. T. Tidball — “…was told on starting: ‘All grown males are fair game; the women and children capture and bring here.’’ His company consisted of twenty-five picked men, ten citizens, thirty-two Mexicans and twenty Papagoes. Jesus Maria Elias accompanied him as guide. Captain Tidball marched five nights, hiding by day to avoid being seen. He thus managed to fall upon the Indians unawares, and killed over fifty, besides wounding many more. He took ten prisoners and captured sixty-six head of stock. He lost one man, a civilian by the name of Thomas C. McClellan, who accompanied the expedition. This was a heavy blow to the Apaches of that vicinity. (History of Arizona, Vol. 2, by Thomas Edwin Farish, University of Arizona Board of Regents, 1915.) “Captain Tidball returned to Santa Cruz (California) where his war record won him immediate election as country clerk and appointments … as assessor.” (Santa Cruz Public Library website, 2018)
Jesús María Elias – Following his 1896 death from ”pulmonia,” the Arizona Daily Citizen reported: “Toward the end came to a brave man. Jesús María Elías, one of the oldest and most noted of Arizona frontier men, a daring Indian fighter and government scout. He came of a family of famous fighters. Originally there were four brothers in a family, all born and raised in Tucson, now there are but two, Cornelius was killed in an Indian fight and today Jesús crossed the great divide. He was captain of the expedition that wiped out the renegades at old Fort Grant. His brother Juan was also in that celebrated conflict. In days ago he was well to do but misfortune came and he died a poor man. He leaves, besides a widow, two daughters and one son. He will be buried under the auspices of the Arizona Pioneers, from the Catholic church at 7 o’clock tomorrow morning.” Pioneer Families of The Presidio San Agustín Del Tucson, Archaeology Southwest.org.
Pima County Board of Supervisors Chair Richard Elias, a descendant of the “famous fighters,” told the Arizona Daily Star in 2009, “The violence of the times was no excuse for what happened…They knew this was wrong…” Elías said he is proud of his family’s pioneer history, but “not all the moments.”
Francisco Galerita – “Oury blamed the stealing of livestock from San Xavier on April 10 on the Camp Grant Apaches. Elías contacted an old ally named Francisco Galerita, who was the leader of the Tohono O’odham at San Xavier. They devised a plan to get rid of the problem once and for all. At dawn on April 30, the Tohono O’odham crept into the Apache refuge and began to kill, mutilate and rape its occupants – most of which were women and children.” (Experience Arizona.) Note: The Tohono O’odham and San Xavier websites make no mention of Galerita or the Camp Grant Massacre.
Sidney De Long – Tucson’s first elected mayor, “was born in New York in 1828. He studied civil engineering and in 1849 sailed to San Francisco. He joined Company C, 1st California Infantry in 1861 and rose to quartermaster of the regiment, coming with it and the California column through Tucson. He was mustered out in 1866 and returned to Tucson where he became associated with the Tully and Ochoa mercantile and freighting firm. He was the first mayor of Tucson in 1872 and for 15 years was post trader at Fort Bowie. He held many official positions and was secretary of the Arizona Pioneers’ Historical Society from 1905 until his death.” (Arizona Historical Society)
Hiram Stevens – “made himself a tidy fortune in mining, ranching and shepherding; he also sold provisions to the Army and dealt in hardware. His role in the Camp Grant Massacre of Native Americans in 1871–like his accomplices he was acquitted of murder–did not keep him from handily winning election to Congress in 1874 as a Territorial delegate. This enterprising character took advantage of his neighbor Duffield’s demise that same year by buying up his house and incorporating it into his own. As he rose in status and wealth, Stevens kept enlarging his house, the better to entertain his political cronies at elaborate parties. For all his success, Stevens died by his own hand… in 1893. He shot himself in the head after trying–and failing–to kill his wife.” (Tucson Weekly, April 5, 2001)
Lt. Royal Whitman, later known as “the most hated man in Arizona,” was officer-in-charge of the Camp Grant Post. (DesertUSA.com, 2018.) He was court-marshaled on trumped up charges. Local newspapers – particularly Wasson’s Arizona Citizen – tried to implicate Whitman in the massacre he tried to stop.
The City of Tucson has named a recreation center, a park and a street after William Oury. Sam Hughes has a Tucson neighborhood and elementary school named for him. John Wasson has a national park mountain and three Pima County streets named after him. Jesús María Elias has an avenue bearing his name. Hiram Stevens has an avenue named for him and his house is maintained as an exhibit by the Tucson Museum of Art. Sidney De Long has a street named for him, as well as a peak in the Santa Catalina Mountains. Thomas McClellan gets a street name. There is a Whitman Street, but nothing indicates it was named for Lt. Royal Whitman.
Eskiminzin gets a remote history-free picnic area. The names of the victims do not appear to have been recorded. They get nothing.
This is not about “white guilt,” or political persuasions. You and I were not there and did not participate in the atrocities. Most readers might be – should be — horrified at this bloody level of “manifest destiny” that formed our part of the United States. But we can make the local icons – Oury, Hughes, Wasson, Tidball, Elias, Galerita, Stevens, DeLong – right-sized. We can recognize that genocidal wrongs were done and perhaps speak out to prevent further damage to the lives and culture of those our “founders” stole the land from. We can, at least, not officially honor the names of murderers and rapists and kidnappers. It’s the right thing to do.
POSTSCRIPT: Advance copies of this article were sent on the 50th anniversary of the My Lai Massacre, and a week before the student marches against gun violence, to the various authorities in charge of naming, including the Sam Hughes Neighborhood Association, the elementary school principal, PTA, and TUSD, Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson Parks Commission, Mayor and Council, Chair of the Pima County BOS, PC Development Services, Saguaro National Park, and US Forest Service. Two weeks later there has not been a single response. Is it that bureaucrats find it too much to deal with? Or is it that the racism so many deny exists is so pervasive that, even as the nation’s youth rise against mass murder, they don’t care? Is it that it’s only Indians, still?