Christmas in Arizona Territory

CHRISTMAS IN ARIZONA TERRITORY Light and Joy in a Lonesome Land

As newspaperman George Smalley rode along Big Bug Creek just south of Prescott prior to Christmas 1898, he saw the hillside above the camp come alive with light. The trails leading down from the mountains were thick with miners and their families heading to the community party at the schoolhouse, and each carried a lantern. of what Christmas meant to Arizona's resolute pioneers-light and joy in a lonesome land.

The glow bathed the fallen snow, broken only by the shadows of children dancing with glee at the thought of meeting Santa Claus.

The episode described in the Arizona Republican served as an eloquent portrait Every town, hamlet and tent camp celebrated the holiday, each in its own way. And they were very much frontier productions-small, unsophisticated and spare. If Apache raids were possible during a rendition of Silent Night, just post a guard and sing away.

In the late 1870s, Tucson's gamblers loaded a rented wagonful of food and gifts to distribute along with gold pieces to poor families. Late at night, when their cargo was gone, the "sporting men" stood on the flatbed and threw change to kids in the street.

The Arizona Daily Star reported that Christmas Day for a typical Tucson family in 1889 included a big meal and a leisurely wagon ride to Fort Lowell or Mission San Xavier del Bac.

"At the university," the newspaper noted, "those of our local nimrods who were not after quail in the mesquite brush, displayed their marksmanship at turkey shooting."

The first Christmas celebration in Prescott was in 1864 at Gov. John Goodwin's log mansion. He opened his home to all the town's citizens, according to historian After a final verse of 'Silent Night,' the families departed for their respective homes with at least one armed man accompanying each group.

Sharlot Hall. Hunter Sam Miller provided deer, antelope and wild turkey to supplement the beef barbecued in the governor's back yard.

Writer J. Ross Browne told of a Christmas party at Fort Yuma in 1864 at which the ladies broke eggshells containing dust-probably ashes and gilt paper over the heads of the men, "in true Spanish style." One of them was Browne himself. In Adventures in the Apache Country, he wrote: "The mischievous beauty struck me exactly on the spot where time has already laid his relentless hand; and I was not surprised at the merry shouts of laughter that ensued; for if my head looked like any thing upon earth, it must have borne a close resemblance to a boulder surmounted by croppings of gold and silver."

Some Arizonans spent their first Christmas huddled around a campfire. Pioneer Evans Coleman described Mormons traveling from Utah to Holbrook, stopping to mark the day amid a circle of wagons.

Kerosene lanterns lit the encampment as bells were tied around the necks of the horses to tell of approaching trouble. Each of the mothers hung wool stockings stuffed with piñon nuts, parched corn and candy sticks from the bows of her family's sleeping wagon.

Christmas dinner, served from a camp kettle, consisted of beans flavored with ham bone, fried potatoes and onions, saltrising bread and pudding seasoned in vinegar.

After the family settled into their new Arizona home, usually a cabin with a mud floor and no windows because glass was so scarce, Christmas got a bit more elaborate. But not much more, especially in the Territory's early years.

Children's gifts were rarely store-bought. A boy might have received a whittled top or a homemade ball consisting of a chunk of rubber wrapped with string and bits of rag. Mother would have provided the finishing touches by covering it with deer hide. His sister probably got a small knitted handbag, or a rag doll that hung from the tree on Christmas Eve.

Frontier deprivations mothered ingenuity in other ways, too.

When it snowed in the southern Arizona town of St. David, writer Olive Kimball Mitchell's father would harness two of the family horses to a sheet of iron, fasten bells to it and load the children on board. Off they'd go, caroling across the San Pedro Valley on their homemade sled.

Another family tradition was cutting the tree.

Mitchell's father would load some beef jerky and a few slices of bread and honey into a wagon before heading with the children for Cedar Hollow, where the best evergreen trees grew.

At home the tree was placed in a big can of sand in the parlor and trimmed with cookies, tufts of cotton to represent snow and red-paper chains glued with paste made of flour and water.

Prescott's first tree was in the home of I.N. Rodenburg in 1865. He and six others, well armed against Indians, went into the woods to cut a fir tree, after which residents helped provide decorations, according to Orick Jackson, in his 1908 book The White Conquest of Arizona.

Women searched their trunks for bits of ribbon. Tallow candles were cut in half and tied to branches with bits of string. Candy was made from brown sugar and put into manila bags sealed with flour paste.

Rodenburg and his friends searched the town and found only one musical instrument-a battered old fiddle, minus one string, played by a man who knew only one song"The Arkansas Traveler."

The partiers got around this humiliation by ordering the fiddle's owner to play the song halfway through, then start at the beginning and play it again in a different cadence.

In 1893, at the mine settlement of Tip Top in the Bradshaw Mountains, residents planned a celebration ball without liquor. This prohibition drew an editorial gasp from the Prescott Morning Courier, which likened a dance without booze to "a jackass without a voice."

But the newspaper promised that "feminine loveliness will be there to scatter cheer and peppermint lozenges," and hoped everyone would turn out to see Little Bare Feet, the finest round dancer in Arizona, "sling his extremities" on Christmas Eve.

Then, in a nose-in-the-air swipe at the prevalence of rodents in mine towns, the Courier suggested everyone tote their own poison: "Come one, come all, and bring a box of Rough on Rats."

Saloon pranksters didn't halt their activities on such a religious day. Newspaperman and historian J.H. McClintock recounted an incident in Holbrook in 1890, when a group of drunks set out to rob Santa Claus during his appearance at the schoolhouse. Kind elves brought word of the impending stickup, allowing Santa to greet the four masked robbers with a big revolver pulled from his buffalo robe overcoat. He fired four shots at the men's feet, sending them Scampering into the darkness, then walked serenely into the back door of the school and went about his business.

"But just think of Santa with a .45 Colt six-gun in his pocket," McClintock wrote. He told of another incident, perhaps true, but unprovable, that occurred in a mining camp saloon on Christmas Eve.

In walked a slender, white-haired old man, apparently sick. He sat by the pot-bellied stove to get warm, then moved to the piano, where his playing and singing brought tears to the bystanders.

Many bought drinks for him. At closing time, the bar owner didn't have the heart to turn the visitor out, so he gave him a blanket and allowed him to sleep in the saloon. Next morning the owner found the old man gone and the safe open, a white wig on the floor next to it.

Trouble of a different kind threatened Bisbee's first community Christmas party in 1881, according to a collection of stories on file at the Bisbee Mining and Historical Museum.

Apaches were spotted in the hills during the day, and as night approached, the men of the camp grabbed their rifles and headed to the schoolhouse on Brewery Gulch.

Inside, around a tree decorated with chains of red and green paper and strings of berries and popcorn, Santa Claus handed out bags of candy, nuts and fruit. The men with children stayed inside, close to their rifles, while those without agreed to keep watch outside.

The party ended when a figure appeared in the doorway and silently signaled that Indians were nearby. After a final verse of "Silent Night," the families departed for their respective homes with at least one armed man accompanying each group. They all arrived safely.

The worst trouble of the night occurred as Santa was giving the children their presents. He leaned too close to a candle and his imitation beard caught fire. He jerked it off, smothered the blaze, and continued his merry work.

The kids were so caught up in the joy of Christmas that none of them seemed to mind that their hero's face was now as smooth as their own. Al