Focus on Nature: Harris' Ground Squirrel and Other Survivors

The Civil War in Arizona: The Confederates Occupy Tucson

Beginning in 1854, residents of the southern half of sprawling New Mexico Territory (which then included all of today's Arizona and New Mexico) agitated in vain for a separate Territory of Arizona. Their opportunity finally came with the igniting of the Civil War. United States troops departed eastward, and Texas Confederate cavalry rode up the Rio Grande Valley from El Paso to Mesilla (now a suburb of Las Cruces, New Mexico). On August 1, 1861, the establishment of "Arizona Territory, Confederate States of America" was proclaimed locally. On January 18, 1862, the Confederate Congress passed enabling legislation, and on February 14 President Jefferson Davis officially proclaimed Arizona Territory a part of the Confederacy.

Local volunteers promptly formed mounted companies and joined the Southern cause. A few months later, some of those frontier rebels were ordered to ride west from Mesilla in a probing movement that might lead to a Confederate occupation of California.

THEY HAD BEEN ON THE TRAIL the better part of February, these scruffy frontiersmen, and the last thing they desired right now was a battle with Indians or white men uniformed in blue. Romance and glory be damned; all they looked for on this blustery, chilly day was shelter of a sort, any sort, for themselves and their exhausted horses.

Through sleet, snow, and driving rain, they had inched their way west from Mesilla across nearly 300 miles of windswept steppes gray with winter grass. Mile by mile they had picked a path through rock-clogged passes streaked with snow. Their commanding officer, Capt. Sherod Hunter, admitted that it was "violently stormy."

In all that time, they had seen only one white man's village, and that one-on the banks of the Mimbres River-consisted only of a scattering of hauntingly empty abandoned shells, ransacked by the Apaches.

The horsemen knew enough Spanish to call their ordeal a jornada, and this was a hell of a jornada, a desert passage desolate with winter-dulled yucca, cactus, and greasewood. On their back trail, east of Apache Pass, was a sodden dirt mound marking the end of the ordeal for one of their comrades-dead not from gunshot, lance, or arrow but relieved at last from the pleurisy that made his every breath a scourge of pain. Before they finished this mission, there would be more such mounds.

On this wintry day, Captain Hunter and his Company A, Arizona Rangers, Provisional Army of the Confederate States of America, could see the little smudges of smoke that escaped from the cooking fires in the village ahead. By nightfall Hunter and his companions expected to share the warmth of those fires, taking possession of what had been until now the latest addition to the United States-and the least considered.

Hunter's mounted men clattered down the last gravelly grade, making their notso-grand entry into a typical North Mexican village. They splashed through scattered pools of brown water in La Plaza de la Mesilla, a lofty name for a barren mud lot bordered by a motley scattering of a dozen or so one-story adobe buildings. From glassless openings in the house walls and from doorways closed only by draped cattle hides, the town's inhabitants cautiously watched. The date was Friday, February 28, 1862. The village was Tucson, Arizona.

A handful of stores and several score more houses-squat mud cubeshuddled near the melting substance of the old adobe-walled Spanish presidio. Into the center of the former military post the cavalrymen crowded, nearly filling the littered space the natives occasionally called La Plaza de las Armas.

The Confederates met no opposition. Tucson was all theirs: its rutted streetsmuddy now but dusty in other seasonsits hordes of dogs, its elusive scorpions, its saloons and its fears.

Tucson's populace was expecting an Indian attack momentarily. Seven months earlier, U. S. troops had abandoned the area for Eastern battlefields, and the Apaches had had free rein. By now, in their fright and desperation, the villagers would have welcomed the arrival of Satan himself, if accompanied by a few fallen angels with firearms. Captain Hunter was no devil, but (PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 14 AND 15) Confederate troops under the command of Capt. Sherod Hunter arrive in Tucson on Friday, February 28, 1862. (LEFT) Sherod Hunter, a respected leader, later won honors in Louisiana and promotion to major before disappearing into Mexico after the war.(OPPOSITE PAGE) Rebels raise the Confederate colors. "Probably the hoisting of yet another flag was no longer of much interest to the Spanish-speaking residents of Tucson," comments the author.some of his men might well have qualified as "fallen." A tough, hard-bitten bunch, the rebels bore scarcely any resemblance to an organized military force, but they were commanded by a leader they had learned to respect. They provided reassurance enough for los Tucsonenses who milled about the newcomers.

The townsfolk noted that, in addition to their revolvers, these bearded, dirty Americans carried short-barreled U. S. Cavalry musketoons (model 1847 smoothbores), antiquated but adequate for the immediate task. Hunter's company could defend Tucson against direct onslaught by the Apaches. Raiders might steal livestock from the outskirts by night or cut short the lives of individuals or small parties venturing to leave by day, but Indian attack on the village itself now seemed unlikely. Hunter deferred for another day the greater question: did he have enough resources to hold off a Union force from the West Coast that, if it came, surely would outnumber his company?Federal soldiers held Fort Yuma, gateway to Arizona on the west. Somewhere in California, more Union volunteers were mobilizing. A colonel in blue might try to push an army across the desert, a difficult and risky move but one that Hunter had to anticipate. A more cautious Union commander might prefer a landing at Guaymas on the Gulf of California, the Sea of Cortes, and push his way northward through pliant Sonora, a shorter and easier route, with probably only minor international repercussions. The Confederate captain would have to be alert to both possibilities.

Not all of the Confederate cavalry in the vicinity of Tucson entered the settlement that Friday. Remaining in camp a short day's ride to the east was Col. James Reily of Texas, who had accompanied Hunter from Mesilla on a special assignment. Escorting the colonel was a separate platoon of about 20 mounted volunteers led by Lt. Jack Swilling, who had his good points but, nonetheless, came to bear the characterization "notorious."

Colonel Reily entered the village the next day to preside at the raising of the Confederate flag over the remains of the presidio. Reily was the ranking officer in Tucson that March 1, but after raising the colors he would not remain long. The responsibility for Tucson and western Arizona was all Hunter's. Reily's orders were to make a hurried trip into Mexico to seek out the governor of neighboring Sonora and urge him to resist any Union attempt to move troops through Mexican territory. Reily also was to try to enlist the governor's support for the purchase of supplies for the rebel army that was advancing up the Rio Grande toward Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

At the flag-raising ceremony, Colonel Reily must have spoken of the new era that had arrived in Arizona-now at last its own Territory, no longer ruled from faroff Santa Fe. He may have led a prayer, for he was a pious man. No one bothered to record his words. Probably the hoisting of yet another flag was no longer of much interest to the Spanish-speaking residents of Tucson.

Bugler John Day of Hunter's company can be assumed to have played a role in the ceremony, and possibly there was a small Mexican band to add to the formalities of the day. Whether or not members of the predominantly Hispanic population attended, surely some of Tucson's American residents were present to watch. Some would cheer.

Wild horses couldn't have kept former Overland Stage agent William Sanders (Bill) Oury from watching the Confederate flag go up. Bill reportedly "danced a jig" when the rebel cavalry first arrived. Bill was a fiery Southerner.

Pioneer merchant Solomon Warner probably watched the flag-raising as well. Only six years earlier, Warner had arrived in Tucson with a mule train of goods, 11 days before the Mexican garrison hauled down its flag as a result of the Gadsden Purchase and United States acquisition of the region. Now, the New York-born merchant doubtless pondered what

consequences might follow this latest change of flags. A Union man, Warner may have been making note of the numbers and character of Hunter's company, hoping to inform Fort Yuma by messenger. Scrawny Mark Aldrich also would have been a quiet observer. He was from Illinois, where he had been one of five men tried (and found not guilty) for the mob assassination of Mormon prophet Joseph Smith in 1844. Aldrich had arrived in Tucson even before Warner and was considered one of the leading citizens of the community. He had served briefly as the town's first American alcalde (mayor and judge); he resigned the post in frustration over the town's lawlessness. Among others at the ceremony would have been burly Fritz Contzen, a laborer from Waldeck, Germany; William Finley of New York, routed from his Tubac farm by Apaches; Tom Venable, a carpenter originally from Virginia; and businessman Estevan Ochoa, a native of Chihuahua and a supporter of territorial status for Arizona. One spectator, 23-year-old teamster and sometime rancher Tom Childs from Mississippi, was so caught up in the spirit of the day that he immediately enlisted in Captain Hunter's company. Certainly Tucson's staunchest secessionist, "Colonel" Palatine Robinson (a gentleman from Virginia by way of Kentucky), stood nearby. Handsome, chival-rous, a dealer in wet and dry goods, and one of the rich men of this frontier, Robinson was a card player who had terminated one game in Tucson with a homicide. Though he wore a stovepipe hat and carried a dandy's cane, Robinson was seasoned-he had fought off an Indian attack on the plains when he and his wife came West to seek a cure for his tuberculosis. What was truly noteworthy about Colonel Robinson was Mrs. Robinson, who was yet in her mid-twenties. Travelers through Tucson commented about her in their journals; she was a sight for their tired eyes. Clearly Sarah Robinson was something special. In this little world of dark-eyed, dark-haired señoritas, she was the fair-complexioned belle of the Amer ican colony.

Somewhere in Tucson was one John W. Jones, and he was neither secessionist nor neutral. Jones was there on secret business, sent to Tucson earlier by the Union commandant at Fort Yuma. Hunter came across Jones and, suspicious of his cover story, required him to take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy. A few days later, Hunter allowed Jones to leave town, provided he didn't travel the stage road to Fort Yuma. So Jones scurried south toward Mexico, then turned west along the notorious desert route nicknamed El Camino del Diablo. Jones was a lucky man. This was not the last time the Confederates would come across the ubiquitous John Jones. On Monday, March 3, Colonel Reily and his escort departed for Sonora. For the time being, Captain Hunter could be less concerned about the possibility of Yan-kee attack from that direction. He could expect a warning if Reily learned of a Union landing at Guaymas. Also, now that there was once again cavalry in the vicinity, the threat of Indian depredations seemingly faded.

Shortly after Reily's departure southward, Hunter and his company left the settlement. The Confederate troops headed northwest, bound for the Gila River and possibly points west. The young officer needed to make friends with the Pima Indians, learn what the Union troops at Fort Yuma were up to, and assess the possibility of opening comCommerce.

Communication with Southern sympathizers in California. Hunter could not foresee that within a few nights he would be face to face with Capt. William McCleave, a tough Irishman recently commissioned in the Union's California Volunteers after years of frontier service as a Regular Army sergeant. Trotting out of Tucson, the Confederate captain and his motley band of rebels were only a week away from their first encounterter with blue-clad troops from the Pacific Coast. The brief Civil War in the Arizona desert was under way.

Hunter captured the Union captain and eight enlisted men without a shot. As Hunter's scouts probed within 80 miles of California, the San Francisco Bulletin exclaimed, "The Secesh are bringing the war pretty close." In March, Hunter's men exchanged shots with Union soldiers at Stanwix Station, 48 miles west of Gila Bend, in what proved to be the westernmost shooting engagement of the Civil War. (See Arizona Highways, January 1987.) In mid-April, 10 of the rebels and a slightly larger number of Union scouts fought to a draw in a skirmish at Picacho Pass, northwest of Tucson. Hunter evacuated Tucson in May, ahead of the Union's 2,300-man California Column pushing east from Fort Yuma. On February 24, 1863, Washington moved at last to create the Territory of Arizona, U. S. A, from the western half of the Territory of New Mexico. Hunter fought on, winning honors in Louisiana and promotion to major. At war's end, be returned briefly to Tennessee and then disappeared into Mexico.