The Westernmost Skirmish of the Civil War

By the mere breadth of one state, California, the armed conflict between the Union and Confederate armies failed to reach from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Two or three days before April Fools' Day in 1862, a Federal cavalryman was wounded in the shoulder by a bullet fired by a Confederate soldier. It happened in the vicinity of Gila Bend. The placeabout 130 miles east of Fort Yuma on the California border, the Colorado Riverwas then in New Mexico Territory. Today it is in Arizona. And while no historic marker identifies the desert spot or proclaims the event, this was the westernmost site of bloodshed occasioned by military troops during the American Civil War.

What led to this engagement was the fact that Texas, which had seceded from the Union in February, 1861, a year later sent Captain Sherod Hunter and a 100-man company of Confederate Volunteers to take control of a sympathetic Tucson and, hopefully, carry the Confederate flag to California's border.

Hunter and his men occupied Tucson without resistance, then fanned out into the countryside to arrest Northern sympathizers and to search for provisions. They found both when they encountered Ammi White, a miller living in the Pima Indian villages along the Gila River, who had a lively business selling flour ground from wheat grown by the Pimas.

Meanwhile, in mid-1861 “the spirit of rebellion became manifest in California,” and southern California, especially San Bernardino, became “the hot-bed of secessionism” in the state. The United States government made sure California remained in the Union by dispatching a half-dozen companies of California Volunteers, three of cavalry and three of infantry, to the scene. Command of the Southern District of California was turned over to Colonel James Carleton, and it was he who organized an expedition of California Volunteers to go to Fort Yuma and eastward to engage the Southern forces in Arizona and New Mexico. Within a few months, more than 2000 men and as many animals made the trek from Los Angeles to Fort Yuma and beyond.

On March 3, 1862, Captain Hunter, a Lieutenant Tevis, and an escort of twenty men rode to the Pima villages, arrested Ammi White, confiscated his property, and distributed some 1500 sacks of White's wheat to the Pimas from whom he had presumably bought it in the first place. Hunter explained in a letter to a superior officer what happened next: “While delaying at the Pima Villages, awaiting the arrival of a train of fifty wagons which was reported to be en route for that place for said wheat (which report turned out to be untrue), my pickets discovered the approach of a detachment of cavalry, and which detachment, I am happy to say to you, we succeeded in capturing without firing a gun. This detachment consisted of Captain [William] McCleave and eight of his men, First California Cavalry.

(OPPOSITE PAGE) From 1851 to 1863, what is today the northern portion of Arizona was part of the Territory of New Mexico. The southern part, below the Gila River, was added with the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. That area was briefly occupied by Confederate Volunteers in 1862.

(THIS PAGE) On April 15, 1862, a skirmish was fought between Union and Confederate troops at Picacho Pass, an event that started the Southern forces retreating toward Texas. By June 8, James Henry Carleton, commanding the California Column, bad arrived in Tucson, reasserted U.S. sovereignty, and placed the area under martial law.

"My pickets on yesterday reported troops at Stanwix's Ranch, which is on this side of Fort Yuma eighty miles."

A version of McCleave's capture reported by a Federal officer was less laconic and more damaging to McCleave's reputation for wisdom: "[Captain McCleave] then went on to White's, getting there at daylight. Knocking at the door, he found a person who answered and of him inquired if Mr. White lived there. Receiving an answer in the affirmative, he desired to see Mr. White personally. He was told that he should be called, and Captain Hunter, who was sleeping in the same house at the time, was awakened and informed of an officer and two men of the U.S. troops being there. He came out and represented himself as Mr. White, asking Captain McCleave if those were all the men he had with him, to which the captain replied, 'No; I have six more at the next station.' In the meantime, more of Hunter's men had collected, and Hunter suddenly drew his pistol and announced his being a captain in the Confederate Army, at the same time informing McCleave that he was his prisoner. McCleave had, however, thinking that he was amongst friends (seeing no uniforms), taken off his arms, and his men were putting up their horses."

However the capture may have occurred, Colonel Carleton tried to make the best of an embarrassing situation. "It may turn out to be a good thing," he wrote, "that these men have been taken; it will make all others more vigilant.... His capture will teach others to have out an advance guard to give notice of danger, even if the whole party be but of three persons."

Anxious to rescue McCleave and his men as well as to rout the Southerners from Arizona, California Volunteers started moving in force up the Gila River from Fort Yuma on March 22. There were three companies: one of ninety-seven infantry men and two of ninety-two and eightythree cavalrymen each-272 soldiers in all. Mountain man Pauline Weaver was sent ahead to the Pima villages as a scout. Major Edwin Rigg, commanding at Fort Yuma, noted that "McCleave's company is pawing for the advance. Captain [Nathaniel] Pishon's men are full of fight, and Captain William] Calloway writes...that his men [infantry] are in fine order."

Those who were "pawing for advance" soon pawed their way into Confederate cavalry. A two-man patrol had gone out from Grinnel's Ranch, eighty-four miles from Fort Yuma, to reconnoiter the area around Gila Bend, another forty-eight miles to the east. Major Rigg wrote Colonel Carleton on April 2: "I have just received information that the pickets at Gila Bend had been driven in by a party of Hunter's command, and one of Captain McCleave's men shot in the shoulder, a flesh wound only. Captain Pishon made chase, but could not come up with them."

The date was either March 29 or March 30. The wounded man, who with his partner chose to flee rather than to sur-render when called upon to do so by Hunter's troopers, was Private William Semmilrogge, Company A, 1st Cavalry, California Volunteers.

It was neither Gettysburg nor Shiloh, but it was the farthest west of any shooting engagement between troops during the Civil War. Two weeks later, on April 15, a patrol of California Volunteers ran into a patrol of Captain Hunter's forces at Picacho Pass, about forty miles northwest of Tucson, where they fired a volley or two at each other. A Union officer, James Barrett, and two enlisted men, Privates Johnson and Denerd, were killed; two Confederates were captured. These were the westernmost deaths inflicted by the military in a Civil War encounter.

Colonel Carleton had observed, "The soldiers of California will soon learn, I trust, that our business is an earnest business, and a serious business, and no child's play."

He was right.

Selected Reading

Civil War Battles in the West, edited by LeRoy H. Fischer. Sunflower University Press, Manhattan, Kansas, 1981.

The Civil War in the Western Territories, by Ray Charles Colton. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1959.