THE MASSACRE AT TUBAC

Snuggled on the banks of the Santa Cruz River, lay the little post of Tubac, a supply post in 1849 for outlying mines and ranches, a change station for the stage lines, and a distribution point for the news of the wide mountain ranges about it. At Tubac cattleman and miner, trader and traveler stopped to exchange gossip as they went in and out of the hills on their various duties. A rugged pioneer camp, Tubac held all that such a place usually contained. It had its good and its bad, but with few exceptions, all were hardy and brave, for such was the demand of that portion of the frontier.

In the surrounding hills, the warrior bands of the Apache roamed. Hardly a week passed but the smoke of the signal fires could be seen twisting above the peaks of the Santa Rita Mountains or the Patagonias as the marauding braves gathered their forces for another hawk-like swoop on some isolated ranch or mine camp. Tales of death were not strange to Tubac and its inhabitants.

As they tilled their fertile fields, they found nearly as much use for their rifles as for their plows.

But the Apaches could not halt the camp. The valley fields were green with crops; potatoes, beans, maize, and hay grew prolifically. The hills furnished good heavy mesquite logs for fires and for building posts and fences, while the adobe bricks of the native Mexicans gave the buildings their walls. Not far away, as miles are read, sat the mission of Tumacacori, where the Franciscan fathers schooled the peaceful Papago Indians in the trades and arts of the white man. The valley of the Santa Cruz, despite its warlike neighbors, was a peaceful place, located in a setting of much natural beauty. A wagon train toiled over a trail swinging down into the long green valley. The oxen quickened their pace, and men, women, and children looked with glad eyes on the rolling expanse of green trees and tilled fields. Here would be a temporary haven from a pitiless sun and the dry, dust-filled air of the desert road. Here would be rest, water, and fresh food, a change from the jolting wagons and the almost tasteless jerky which had furnished food for the travelers for many miles. Tubac, to the party of the wagon train, appeared an oasis indeed.

The fates, however, had different plans, and as the train pulled slowly into the green valley, the riders ahead trotted their horses into the village of Tubac only to pull up short, muttering curses beneath their beards.

Death and destruction lay all about them. In the trails and in the fields, the bodies of the men and women who had made Tubac their home were scattered, bearing in their mutilated condition mute evidence of ferocity. Smoldering fires marked empty homes. Adobe walls remained to show where a house had stood. All was desolation. Not a head of stock remained nor a living human being.

To these men of the trails, the sign left by the Apache war party was easily read. Within the 12 hours before the wagons' arrival, the Apaches had swooped down on the little valley settlement. The battle had been sharply fought, but brief. Numbers had been in favor of the Indians, and they had quickly carried their objective. The town's population evidently had died to a man. The Apaches had not escaped unscathed. Many marks of blood and battle showed where the rifle or the pistol of a pioneer had counted coup, but the Apaches never left their dead, and the exact extent of their losses was not known.

The travelers did what little could be done. The bodies were gathered up from the widespread scene of the fight and, in a common grave, returned to the earth. A huskyvoiced circuit rider, who was a member of the wagon train, stood at the end of the long pit, clad in homespun jeans and hickory shirt. As the clods began to fall, he raised his voice in a simple prayer. A short pause, and to the accompaniment of a wailing fiddle, a hymn was sung. The mound grew rapidly and the task was completed.

It was not for the members of the wagon train to mourn long. Life asked too much of them, and with the philosophy bred of the trail, they accepted what they found before them. For 15 days, they camped at the scene of the massacre. Oxen were shod and rested, and horses and mules cared for while the women and children gathered the crops from the fields to replenish the wagons' larders against the long trail that lay ahead.

Then, with renewed strength, the teams were yoked again, and the lurching wagon train drew out of the green valley, once more quiet in the peaceful sun of early summer.

Tubac and its dead lay behind, its tragedy but incidents of the trail.

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