Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/190

 Prescott as they had been in that of Tucson, and to this day such names as "The Burnt Ranch"—a point four miles to the northwest of the town—commemorate attacks and massacres by the aborigines. The mail-rider had several times been "corraled" at the Point of Rocks, very close to the town, and all of this portion of Arizona had groaned under the depredations not of the Apaches alone but of the Navajos, Hualpais, and Apache-Mojaves, and now and then of the Sevinches, a small band of thieves of Pi-Ute stock, living in the Grand Cañon of the Colorado on the northern boundary of the territory. I have still preserved as relics of those days copies of The Miner of Prescott and of The Citizen of Tucson, in every column of which are to be found references to Indian depredations.

There should still be in Washington a copy of the petition forwarded by the inhabitants pleading for more adequate protection, in which are given the names of over four hundred American citizens killed in encounters with the savages within an extremely limited period—two or three years—and the dates and localities of the occurrences.

Fort Whipple, the name of the military post within one mile of the town, was a ramshackle, tumble-down palisade of unbarked pine logs hewn from the adjacent slopes; it was supposed to "command" something, exactly what, I do not remember, as it was so dilapidated that every time the wind rose we were afraid that the palisade was doomed. The quarters for both officers and men were also log houses, with the exception of one single-room shanty on the apex of the hill nearest to town, which was constructed of unseasoned, unpainted pine planks, and which served as General Crook's "Headquarters," and, at night, as the place wherein he stretched his limbs in slumber. He foresaw that the negotiations which Mr. Vincent Collyer had been commissioned to carry on with the roving bands of the Apaches would result in naught, because the distrust of the savages for the white man, and all he said and did, had become so confirmed that it would take more than one or two pleasant talks full of glowing promises to eradicate it. Therefore, General Crook felt that it would be prudent for him to keep himself in the best physical trim, to be the better able to undergo the fatigues of the campaigns which were sure to come, and come very soon.

The Apaches are not the only tribe in Arizona; there are sev