Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/243

 Many enlisted men rendered service of a most important and efficient character, which was also acknowledged at the same time and by the same medium; but, on account of lack of space, it is impossible for me to mention them all; conspicuous in the list are the names of Buford, Turpin, Von Medern, Allen, Barrett, Heineman, Stanley, Orr, Lanahan, Stauffer, Hyde, and Hooker.

In the first week of April, a deputation from the hostile bands reached Camp Verde, and expressed a desire to make peace; they were told to return for the head chiefs, with whom General Crook would talk at that point. Signal fires were at once set on all the hills, scouts sent to all places where they would be likely to meet with any of the detachments in the Tonto Basin or the Mogollon, and all possible measures taken to prevent any further hostilities, until it should be seen whether or not the enemy were in earnest in professions of peace.

Lieutenant Jacob Almy, Fifth Cavalry, with whose command I was on duty, scoured the northwest portion of the Tonto Basin, and met with about the same experiences as the other detachments; but I wish to tell that at one of our camping-places, on the upper Verde, we found a ruined building of limestone, laid in adobe, which had once been of two or three stories in height, the corner still standing being not less than twenty-five feet above the ground, with portions of rafters of cottonwood, badly decayed, still in place. It was the opinion of both Almy and myself, after a careful examination, that it was of Spanish and not of Indian origin, and that it had served as a depot for some of the early expeditions entering this country; it would have been in the line of advance of Coronado upon Cibola, and I then thought and still think that it was most probably connected with his great expedition which passed across Arizona in 1541. All this is conjecture, but not a very violent one; Coronado is known to have gone to "Chichilticale," supposed to have been the "Casa Grande" on the Gila; if so, his safest, easiest, best supplied, and most natural line of march would have been up the valley of the Verde near the head of which this ruin stands.

Another incident was the death of one of our packers, Presiliano Monje, a very amiable man, who had made friends of all our party. He had caught a bad cold in the deep snows on the summit of the Matitzal Range, and this developed into an attack of