ing in its associations with the past. Day and night the common subject of conversation was murder; and wherever our attention was attracted by the beauty of the country, or the richness of the soil, a stone-covered grave marked the foreground.

"The history of Bill Rhodes, at whose ranch we camped, was an example. In the full tide of success, this daring frontiersman returned to his home one evening, and found his comrades murdered and himself surrounded by a large band of Apaches. By some means, he managed to break through their lines; but his horse being jaded, it soon became apparent that escape was impossible. Just as the pursuing Indians were upon him, he flung himself into a willow thicket and there made battle. A circle was made around him by the blood-stained and yelling devils, who numbered at least thirty; but he was too cool a man to be intimidated by their infernal demonstrations. For three hours, he kept them at bay with his revolver; although they poured into the thicket an almost continuous volley of rifle shots and arrows. A ball struck him in the left arm, near the elbow, and nearly disabled him from loss of blood. buried the wounded part in the sand and continued the fight till the Indians, exasperated at his stubborn resistance, rushed up in a body, determined to put an end to him at once. He had but two shots left. With one of these he killed the first Indian that approached, when the rest whirled about and stood off. They then addressed him in Spanish, calling him by name, and telling him he was a brave man, and if he

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would come out, they would spare his life. 'No,' said he, ‘D—n you, I'll kill the last one of you before you shall take me!' He had given such good evidence of his ability in that way that they held a parley and concluded he was about right; so they retired and left him master of the field. Bill Rhodes' Apache fight is now one of the standard incidents in the history of Arizona."

In reference to the Cochise war, Chas. D. Poston says: "The men, women and children killed; the property destroyed, and the detriment to the settlement of Arizona cannot be computed. The cost of the war against Cochise would have purchased John Ward a string of yokes of oxen reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and as for his woman's son, Micky Free, he afterwards became an Indian scout and interpreter, and about as infamous a scoundrel as those who generally adorn that profession.”

A little prior to this time a company of Maine lumbermen under a captain named Tarbox, established a camp in the Santa Rita mountains to whipsaw lumber at one hundred and fifty dollars per thousand feet, and were doing well. The Heintzelman mine bought all they could produce. They built a house and corral on the south side of the Santa Cruz River, on the road from Tucson to Tubac, called the Canoa, which became a convenient stopping place for travellers on the road. Poston, who had charge of the mine, had made a treaty with the Indians, by which the Indians were to leave them undisturbed in the working of their properties, and they, in turn, were not to interfere with the

Indians in their frequent raids into Mexico. One day, twenty-five or thirty Mexicans rode into Tubac and said the Apaches had made a raid on their ranches and carried off all their horses and mules over the Babaquivera plain, intending to cross the Santa Cruz river between the Canoa and Tucson. The Mexicans wanted the men at the mine to join them in a cortada (cut-off) and rescue the animals, offering to divide them equally for their assistance. This was declined because the Apaches had faithfully kept their treaty with the whites at the mine and the whites felt it was their duty in good faith to do the same. The Mexicans went to Canoa and made the same proposition to the lumbermen, who accepted it. They succeeded in forming an ambuscade and fired on the Apaches when they reached the river. The Apaches fled at the fire, leaving the stolen stock behind them. The Mexicans made a fair division and from the sales of the mules to merchants in Tucson, the lumbermen were enabled to add many comforts to their camp at the Canoa on the Santa Cruz.

Within a month thereafter, when the inhabitants of Tubac were passing a quiet Sunday, a Mexican vaquero came riding furiously into the plaza, crying out: "Apaches! Apaches! Apaches!" When he had recovered sufficiently to speak intelligently, he gave the information that the Apaches had made an attack on the Canoa and killed all the settlers. It was late in the day and nearly all the men had gone to the mine, but about a dozen horses and men were mustered. Early the next morning, they started for the Canoa, and when they reached that place

a little after sunrise, it looked as if it had been struck by a hurricane; doors and windows were smashed and the house was left a smoking ruin. The former inmates were lying around, dead; three of them had been thrown into the well head foremost. Seven men were buried in a row in front of the burned house. By the tracks it was thought that there was not less than eighty mounted Apaches in this raid, and they carried off 280 head of animals from the Canoa and the adjoining ranches.

Lieutenant Ives in his exploration in 1857, notes the change of attitude of the Mohave Indians towards the command and attributes it to the machinations of the Mormons who persuaded the Indians that it was the intention of the Americans to divest them of their lands. This was the statement made to the Lieutenant by one of the head chiefs of the Mohaves, and his personal friend.

Emigrants to California continued to pass over the Beale trail, oftentimes suffering the loss of their stock, and sometimes being murdered outright by the Mohaves, Cocopahs, and Tontos. In 1857 and 1858, the Mojaves were brought under subjugation by Colonel Hoffman, which was greatly aided by the establishment of Fort Mohave in 1858, and in 1859 Fort Breckenridge was established for the protection of the Overland Stage route.

In regard to conditions in this part of Arizona, at that time, Van Tramp, in his work entitled, "Our Southwestern Empire" says:

"From 1857 to 1860, a large amount of capital was expended in transporting and erecting ma

chinery, and developing the silver mines south of Tucson; but in consequence of the inaccessible nature of the country, and the high rates of duties levied upon all importations through Sonora, these enterprises were carried on at great expense and under extraordinary difficulties. Boilers weighing six thousand pounds and heavy engines had to be transported in wagons from Lavaca, in Texas, to the Rio Grande, and thence across the continent to the silver regions, a distance of twelve hundred miles. The roads were almost as nature had made them, rough and rocky, abounding in ruts, pitfalls, and heavy sands, and every mile of the way from the Rio Grande was beset with dangers. Fierce and barbarous Indians lurked behind the rocks and in the deep arroyos, ever on the alert to plunder and murder the little bands of white men who toiled wearily through the inhospitable desert. The sufferings of these hardy adventurers were almost without parallel in the history of human enterprise. Hunger and thirst and burning suns and chilling nights, were among the least of the trials to which they were subject, sudden death from hidden foes or cruel and prolonged torture, stared them in the face at every step. The wayside was lined with the bleached bones of unfortunate men who had preceded them, straggling parties who had fallen victims to the various perils of the journey.

"When after weary months of toil and suffering, the jaded teamsters arrived in Arizona with their precious freight-now literally worth its weight in silver-they found no established homes, no prosperous communities of families to