In the Land of Giant Candles

of the various governors. These, it should be explained, are based mainly on the returns of county assessors. Not a very dependable source at the best. The governors' report of 1885, for example, states plainly that "it is a matter of common knowledge that not more than half the cattle on the ranges are reported by the owners for taxation purposes.

In a short article such as this it is not possible to tabulate each year. However, the following table will give the reader a fair idea as to the growth of the cattle business in the territory.

The years 1919 to 1925, inclusive, were banner years, the number for each year standing above a million head for all cattle. The peak year in numbers was 1919, with a total of 1,170,000. It is interesting to note that the peak year for the whole United States was in 1894, when we had over seventy million cattle

of all classes. Based upon these figures it shows the cattle industry to have stood very regularly as the sixth industry in the state. Previous to 1880 the cattlemen had no market excepting local demand unless the animals were trailed out of the territory, a not very satisfactory method of marketing livestock. However, with the building of the two transcontinental railroads across Arizona in 1880-81 the cattle business picked up rapidly. The railroads, of course, opened the large eastern markets to Arizona livestock, and buyers from the corn-belt states as well as steer buyers for the open ranges in the northwest, took annually many thousands of feeder steers from Arizona ranges. These animals did exceedingly well on the luxurious steer ranges in states such as Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, etc. When they came to the Chicago and Kansas City markets grown to four-year-olds, the range men who raised them never would have known them but for the brand he placed on them as calves. The little potbellied two-year-old steers he shipped three years ago had widened out into regular oxen.

In 1893, for example, Governor Kibbey (Continued on Page 15)

The Battle of Apache

DURING those years when hardy determined white settlers and bronzed, hard-riding United States dragoons were engaged in a bloody struggle with the Apache tribes for control of the Southwest, many desperate encounters took place in what is now Arizona. Outstanding among the major conflicts of that warfare was the decisive “Battle of Apache Pass,” which was fought on the 14th day of July, 1862. At that period, before the days of the railroads, there were two passes which emigrants could use in traveling from the Rio Grande to the Rio Colorado, via Tucson and Maricopa Wells. One was known as “Railroad Pass,” so named by Lieutenant John G. Parke in 1855, while engaged in explorations for a transcontinental railroad line. It is a wide, low break between the Pinalono Mountains on the north and the rugged Chiricahua Range on the south and across its astonishingly easy gradient is now constructed the Southern Pacific Railroad. The other was “Apache Pass,” of dark and bloody history, some distance to the south. This mountain gateway is a narrow gorge that cuts across the northern end of the Chiricahua Range and was used by the first overland stage companies and all emigrants seeking to reach the gold fields of California by what was called the southern route. Springs were located in this pass and water, which bubbled out from the rocks, was always certain. While Railroad Pass offered a natural wagon road, it was without water, so overland travelers invariably preferred Apache Pass-on account of its unfailing water supply-although it was one of the worst Apache-infested areas in the entire Southwest. The whole region was a fine open range, gramma grass growing everywhere, and was the home and hunting grounds of the Chiricahua Apachesthe boldest and most warlike of all the Apache Nation. Cochise was the greatest warrior of this savage tribe. He had been friendly to the first Americans who came into the country, but ill treatment at the hands of Lieutenant George NCE Bascom, at Apache Pass, in the early part of 1861, and the treacherous killing of Mangas Coloradas, chief of the Apache Nation, near Pinos Altos, New Mexico in 1863, caused him to go on the warpath.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As far as love for their native deserts and mountains was concerned, the Indian tribes of Arizona differed not a whit from the aboriginal inhabitants of other sections of the United States. And it was that very attachment for their desert and mountain homes, where they had lived from time immemorial, that caused the Apache Indians to fight-much of the time successfully-against the power of Spain, Mexico and the United States. It was not understandable to the Indians of the Southwest, inexperienced in the sophistry of the white race, why a more powerful people coveting their lands should drive them, like hunted animals, from the only homes that they had ever known. During the course of a speech in the House of Representatives, Charles D. Potson, while discharging the duties of Territorial Delegate to Congress from Arizona, thus spoke of the Colorado River Indians the Yumas, Mohaves, Yavapais, Hualapais, Supias and Chimehuevis: "These people having been citizens of the Mexican government, are not, according to our theory, entitled to any right in the soil; and therefore no treaty with these Indians for the extinction of their title to the soil would be recognized by this government. It is a fiction of law which these Indians in their ignorance are not able to understand. They cannot see why the Indians of the Northeast have been paid annuities since the foundation of this Government for the extinction of their title, while the Indians who were formerly subject to the Spanish and Mexican Governments are driven from their lands without a dollar. It is impossible for these simple-minded people to understand this sophistry. They consider themselves just as much entitled to their land, which their ancestors inhabited before ours landed on Plymouth Rock, as the Indians of the Northeast. They have never signed any treaty relinquishing their right to the public domain."

This same statement prevailed among the entire Indian population of Arizona and New Mexico and inspired the Apache leaders-Mangas Coloradas and Cochise -to superhuman efforts of resistance against the ever-increasing ranks of reckless and daring adventurers who, taking their lives in their hands, ventured into this region of danger and death. Cochise, especially, was an unwavering advocate of the “prior ownership” theory and, to the time of his death, viewed the region as the ancestral home-from a time out-dating the records of history of the Apache Nation.