Fort Yuma

“ We resigned ourselves to the dreadful heat, and at the end of two more days the river had begun to narrow, and we arrived at Fort Yuma, which was at that time the post best known to, and most talked about by army officers of any in Arizona. No one except old campaigners knew much about any other post in the Territory. ”

“ Fort Yuma is probably the hottest place on earth. The thermometer stays at one hundred and twenty in the shade there all the time—except when it varies and goes higher. It is a U.S. military post, and its occupants get so used to the terrific heat that they suffer without it. There is a tradition (attributed to John Phenix [It has been purloined by fifty different scribblers who were too poor to invent a fancy but not ashamed to steal one.—M. T.] ) ”

“ He organized a battalion of recruits and convalescent soldiers at Vera Cruz, and marched them to the city of Mexico. From 1849 till 1855 he served in California, where he had some rough experience with the Coyote and Yuma Indians, and established Fort Yuma on the Colorado river. ”

“ The Lieutenant having five men wounded in this engagement, he wanted some one to carry a dispatch to headquarters requesting the General to forward an ambulance, and George Jones being a light man who could stand the ride better than any one in the crowd, the Lieutenant chose him to make the ride. It took us five days to come from Fort Yuma, and George took three horses and made the round trip in seven and one-half days. We remained here in this camp something like three months, but did not have another fight of any consequence with the Indians during our stay in this place. ”

“ They had had a brush with the rebels at Picacho, a point about forty-five miles west of Tucson. Lieutenant Barrett, Company A, First Cavalry, California Volunteers, and three men of the same company, had been killed. They had secured three rebel prisoners. The poor devils were under guard beneath some cottonwoods in their camp. They were now on their return to Fort Yuma.
The next morning our command moved out with more alacrity than usual, for we felt that we were now the advance of the "Column," and we would meet the rebels, too. A short march of twelve miles brought us to Oatman Flat. ”

“ The Post here was established about 1857 to overawe the Yumas, then a stalwart and numerous tribe of Indians, occupying both banks of the Colorado for a hundred miles or more. Though much reduced, they still numbered over a thousand souls; and physically speaking, were the finest specimens of aborigines we had seen yet. They cultivate the river-bottoms to some extent, and raise barley, wheat, beans, melons, etc.—for their surplus of which, when any, they find a ready market at Fort Yuma and Arizona City. ”

“ Since this narrative was first written, a very severe battle, lasting several weeks, has taken place between the allied Mohaves and Yumas on the one side, and the Cochopas on the other. The former lost over three hundred warriors; the latter but few, less than threescore. Among the slain was the noble Francisco. It is rumored at Fort Yuma, that during the engagement the allied tribes were informed by their oracles that their ill-success was owing to Francisco; that he must be slain for his friendship to the whites; then victory would crown their struggles ”

“ Boxes of soap that weigh twelve pounds when shipped to Fort Yuma weigh only ten pounds after having been there for several weeks. Hams lose 12 per cent. in weight and rice 2 per cent. Eggs lose their watery contents by evaporation and become thick and tough. The effort to cool one’s self with an ordinary fan is vain, because the surrounding atmosphere is of higher temperature than the body. The earth under foot is dry and powdery and hot as flour just ground, while the rocks are so hot that the hands cannot be borne upon them. ”

“ The year 1855 found him undaunted, still pressing on to the dictates of duty to his beloved sisters. Every failure and mishap but kindled his zeal anew. Parties of men organized late in 1855 to hunt gold on the Mohave River, about one hundred miles from San Bernardino. He joined several of these, with the promise from men among them that they would turn their excursion into a hunt for his kindred. Once he succeeded in getting as far as, and even beyond (though further north) Fort Yuma. ”

“ Thou white and dried-up sea! so old! So strewn with wealth, so sown with gold! Yes, thou art old and hoary white With time and ruin of all things, And on thy lonesome borders Night Sits brooding o'er with drooping wings.—JOAQUIN MILLER.
The country had grown steadily more unfriendly ever since leaving Fort Yuma, and the surroundings of Camp Mojave were dreary enough.
But we took time to sort out our belongings, and the officers arranged for transportation across the Territory. Some had bought, in San Francisco, comfortable travelling-carriages for their families. They were old campaigners ”

“ I had found some cheap clothing at the Pima villages, which he had quickly razeed to fit him; and with this, and with his glossy black hair—which, when I found him, had the appearance of having been hacked off with a dull knife—neatly cut, his appearance had changed wonderfully. A neater little figure than he now presented you would have to go far to see. We slept every night at or near one of the old stage stations, and by care and good-fortune escaped attack by the Apaches, through the whole trip down the Gila to Fort Yuma. ”

“ Her trial runs were satisfactory, and by April Captain Johnson was back in San Francisco, where he reported that she had successfully carried the entire cargo of supplies up to the fort and was then tied up at Yuma awaiting the arrival of other ships.^^
The early years of navigation on the river were difficult ones. Fate was not kind to boats on the Colorado. On September 20, 1854, the boiler of the General Jesup exploded while she was tied up at Ogden's Landing on the Sonora bank below Yuma, killing one man and scalding others. ”

“ It is a powerful, warlike tribe, at war with the whites almost continually since the latter entered the country. A large part of the tribe is on the Fort Stanton reservation in eastern New Mexico, while another portion, under the chief Victoria, has for a long time been devastating the border settlements of New Mexico. The Tonto-Apaches, collected in large numbers on the San Carlos reservation in Arizona, where they are doing something at farming, are of Yuma stock. ”

“ Mountains of a jagged, eccentric formation follow its general course northward. Peaks impressively counterfeiting human work. Castle Dome, Chimney Peaks, Picacho, and Cargo Muchacho, loom up along the horizon, a fitting prelude to the marvels of Arizona.
It was at the close of an Indian war that this visit was made. It had been said, in rumors much exaggerated, that the whole white civilization of the Territory was in danger by the outbreak, and troops—but now on their return—had been hurried thither from all sides. The first view of Indians, therefore, at Yuma was of a double interest. ”

“ Little attention was paid to such insignificant markings of civilization as dress, cleanliness, or community pride; and the ill-kept adobe houses, yards, and streets of Yuma bore mute evidence to a careless and carefree existence. Life, however, was not humdrum. Frontiers thrive on activity. In Yuma the frequent periods of idleness were punctuated by occasional Indian uprisings, the escapades of "gun toting" bad men, and the arrival of the steamer at the wharf.
With the cry of "Steamboat coming!" Yuma sprang into activity, for the arrival of a boat was a festive occasion. ”

“ Then it was that the deserters and bounty-jumpers held council of the situation, and being of one mind as to the unpleasing outlook, took wing and troubled the service no more, and the old Fourteenth, weaker in numbers but stronger in men than it had been since Fredericksburg, was landed at Yuma, where it was appointed to garrison the abandoned posts and protect the overland mail from the depredations of the Apaches, who had been working their will of late upon the unprotected settlements in southeastern Arizona. ”

“ So near the sea-level, it is said to be less rarefied, and to comprise, therefore, a greater quantity of oxygen to a given bulk, than that of mountain districts, which, in purity and dryness, it resembles. It is thought to be beneficial in lung troubles. Yuma, among its arid sand-hills, has aspirations to be a sanitarium. Civilized people also may yet resort there to engage in a sensible sun-worship, basking in the genial heat, and then plunging into the river, after the fashion of the resident Indians, who make of it in this way a kind of natural Turkish bath. ”

“ The valley of the Colorado River in Arizona, the peninsula of California and portions of the eastern shore of the Gulf of California, formed the home of the Yuma stock. They were found in these regions by Coronado as early as 1540, and own no traditions of having lived anywhere else. The considerable differences in their dialects within this comparatively small area indicates that a long period has elapsed since the stock settled in this locality and split up into hostile fractions.
It has also been called the Katchan or Cuchan stock, and the Apache, that being the Yuma word for “fighting men” ”

“ In spite of the consul's opinion, there were many whispered rumours of war, of silent automobiles loaded with firearms that stole out of town under cover of the night and returned in four days, and another of a river channel that could be followed and was followed, the start being made, not from Yuma, but from another border town farther west. A year before there had been an outbreak at this place of certain restless spirits,—some whites included,—and they went along the northern line of Mexico, sacking the ranches and terrorizing the people. The La Bolsa ranch was among those that suffered. ”

“ The party contained some discharged vaqueros who were anxious to interview the ranch foreman, but fortunately for him he was absent. Then they turned south to Chihuahua and joined the army of Madero. War, to them, meant license to rob and kill. They were not insurrectos, but bandits, and this was the class that was most feared.
Meanwhile I had not given up the idea of a possible companion. Before coming to Yuma I had entertained hopes of getting some one with a motor boat to take me down and back, but there were no motor boats, I found. ”

“ So soon as those sticks had burned through so as to leave an effective club at each end, a single sharp cry gave the signal, upon which each Yuma present, probably a hundred, seized his burning brand, and commenced the work of death, dealing blows to the nearest American, while an other large party rushed fully armed upon the scene, and quickly dispatched their unprepared and unsuspecting visitors. The Americans fought with desperation, discharging their six-shooters and using their knives with bloody effect, but were soon overcome by resistless numbers, and slain to a man. ”

“ That night the conduct of the Apache Yuma scouts was incomprehensible. Nothing would induce them to go ahead or out on the flanks; they cowered about the rear of column, yet declared that the enemy could not be hereabouts. At two in the morning Mr. Billings found himself well through a pass in the mountains, high peaks rising to his right and left, and a broad [Pg 226] valley in front. Here he gave the order to unsaddle and camp for the night.
At daybreak all were again on the alert: the search for the trail was resumed. Again the Indians refused to go out without the troops ”

“ When these people come west in their comfortable Pullmans and discover nothing more interesting in the shape of Indians than a few old squaws selling trinkets and blankets on station platforms, as at Yuma; when they visit one of the famous old towns where in days gone by white men were wont to sleep with one eye and an ear open for marauding Indians, and find electric cars, modern office buildings, paved streets crowded with luxurious motors, and the inhabitants nonchalantly pursuing the even tenor of their ways garbed in habiliments strongly suggestive of Forty-fourth street and Broadway ”

“ They were generally hostile to Americans, and Forts Yuma and Mohave were erected to keep them in subjection. Early travellers frequently commented upon their physical beauty, but contact with the whites rapidly pauperized and debauched them. At present some fifteen hundred Mohave are located at the Colorado River and San Carlos reservations, in Arizona; the Yuma, to the number of about a thousand, are at the Mission Agency of California, and at San Carlos; and about three hundred Maricopa are living on the Pima reservation, in Arizona.—Ed. ”

“ Save for a few brief stretches in Texas and Arizona there was no wagon road. El Paso and Tucson were the only towns between the termini. A few far-flung military outposts, whose troops of dragoons were having a hard time of it to hold their own against the Comanches and Apaches, afforded the only semblance of protection from the Indians.
Horsemen carried the first mail-sacks across this wilderness of dark mountains and flaming deserts. On that initial trip Silas St. Johns and Charles Mason rode side by side over the stretch from Cariso Creek to Jaeger’s Ferry, where Yuma stands to-day. ”

“ That looked pretty good to us, for Injin chasing was our job, so we started in to collect. Did pretty well, too, for about three months, and then the Injins began to get too scarce, or too plenty in streaks. Looked like our job was over with, but some of the boys discovered that Mexicans, having straight black hair, you couldn't tell one of their scalps from an Apache's. After that the bounty business picked up for a while. It was too much for me, though, and I quit the outfit and pushed on alone until I struck the Colorado about where Yuma is now. ”