THE CRABB FILIBUSTER DIED IN SONORA

HENRY CRABB'S FATAL 1857 SONORAN EXPEDITION

The date was April 7, 1857, and the men from Arizona were moving fast across the desert of the Mexican state of Sonora. It was a small group, no more than two dozen, but tough. "We were flying," John Reid would write a year later. Fly-ing as fast as their bare feet could take them. They were heading back to the border in full retreat. They had little food or water. They would come to relish a meal of horse-flesh, a drink of blood.

Behind them in the town of Caborca, near the walls of the old mission church, another group of North Americans lay dead. More than 50 had been brought out with the dawn of this day, their hands tied behind their backs, then shot in batches of five and 10.

Their leader died last, one Henry Alexander Crabb. He was the reason the men of Arizona were in Mexico, the reason the survivors were running for their lives. Nearly 50 years later, another man in that retreat touched on the lack of information, if not foresight, that had gotten the men who formed the Tucson Valley Company into the bloody mess created by Henry Crabb.

"Our understanding was that there would be no possible danger of having to fight our way through Sonora," stated John Capron in 1906. Capron was one of the recent arrivals into Arizona Territory following the Gadsden Purchase in 1854. They were men looking for their futures and their fortunes in the land that had just become part of the Union. In March of 1857, the opportunity arose.

Two men rode into the Santa Cruz Valley to recruit for an expedition into Mexico. Capron recalled 17 men signing on. John Reid's list was longer, 24 who came in from the towns of Tucson, Tubac, and Calabasas. They stood to earn land in Sonora and the chance to get at the rich minerals beneath that land.

The leader they had yet to meet also would profit. According to Reid, Crabb's payment would include "being allowed to hold office" in the government of Sonora.

Pitifully little is known about most of the men of the Tucson Valley Company. Capron did recall a fellow by the name of Chambers, "a carpenter who was the oldest man." Wilkins was a young Texan, "a royally brave fighter." Hart also was a Texan, who said, "that he had never been lost in his life." He would have his chance to prove it. Reid's roster includ-ed a Louis, a Butcher, and a Murphy. Capron lists two "travelers through the coun-try," with no names at all.

The man they elected their captain would become far better known. Granville Oury also was a newcomer to the Territory but would go on to a position of note as a member of one of the pioneering Anglo families of the city of Tucson.

On April 1, the members of the Tucson Valley Company mounted up at the Sopori silver mine northeast of Arivaca and rode south. They were heading right into the middle of a filibuster.

The "filibuster" of the 1850s was not an endless stream of words designed to produce a legislative stalemate. It was a stream of armed men moving into someone else's country, politics, revolution. Mexicans knew the phenomena well, especially the people of its northern state of Sonora.

In recent years, armed men had been invited into the area, given the right to colonize and mine in return for their added guns against Apache raids. However, an invitation extended by a government far to the south was not always agreeable to those expected to play host.

The French had entered Sonora with Charles Pindray in 1851 and Gaston de Raousset Boulbon in 1852. Pindray's "colonization" ended with de-sertions, disease, death, and his own suicide or murder.

Boulbon ended up fighting battles with Sonoran forces, making a second foray into their state in 1854, and finally dying before a firing squad that year in the port town of Guaymas.

Then there was William Walker, no known relation to the author. Here was a man who did nothing to stifle the urge to declare himself president every time he placed one foot on foreign soil. That happened often enough. He invad-ed Baja, California, in 1853, declared Sonora his own in 1854. By 1855 he had extend-ed his ambitions to Nicaragua. He too would be executed, in 1860 in Honduras.

The Tucson Valley Company's entry into Mexico proved far less eventful. They did notice the armed inhabitants and hostility of soldiers in the few towns they passed. However, at one point they were told that the man they had agreed to follow was in control of the town of Caborca to the southwest. It may have been a savvy ploy to move them on because Crabb wasn't in control of anything and hadn't been for some time.

A resident of California, Crabb was an attorney, a proslavery Whig, and a state legislator who married into a family with ties in Sonora. On a visit there in 1856, he had possibly, probably, struck a deal with Ignacio Pesquiera or with his supporters. Pesquiera was a military leader who wanted political control of the state. Crabb could raise an army of "emigrants" in California, return to Sonora, and help support that government should it be necessary.

In January of 1857, Crabb and his California followers, a number of ex-state legislators and political string pullers among them, steamed out of San Francisco. They landed in San Pedro, outfitted in Los Angeles, and marched into Fort Yuma and Arizona. They left their mark on the maps of the area. A spot where they stopped in the Gila River Valley still bears the name Filibuster's Camp.

Crabb warned the Mexicans he was coming, writing to a government official in Sonora, "If blood be shed, on your head be it all and not on mine." The words would prove horribly ironic.

Crabb was entering Mexico with less than 100 men but armed with the belief an army of 1,000 was sailing from California to join him. There was no such army. It had never been recruited by his agent in San Francisco. And, army or not, deal or not, Crabb's presence was no longer desired by Ignacio Pesquiera. He had already taken over in Sonora, and, as Crabb marched deeper into his territory, the ally turned adversary issued his own fighting words: "Mueran los filibusteros," Pesquiera proclaimed. "Kill the filibusters."

By April 1, the day the Arizonans had moved out, Crabb was in Caborca, having fought his first skirmish with Mexican troops outside town. The soldiers and townspeople had moved behind the protective walls of the mission church.

Crabb and his men positioned themselves in adobe houses across the plaza.

Had they ever arrived, the men of the Tucson Valley Company might have found that church strangely familiar. It was the fraternal twin of San Xavier del Bac, the mission south of Tucson. The Mexican church had also been constructed by the Franciscans and the same architectmason who had worked at San Xavier. None of this would have been of any importance to Crabb because by April 4, reinforcements were arriving in Caborca. Not his, Sonora's. Crabb was surrounded.

was the fraternal twin of San Xavier del Bac, the mission south of Tucson. The Mexican church had also been constructed by the Franciscans and the same architectmason who had worked at San Xavier. None of this would have been of any importance to Crabb because by April 4, reinforcements were arriving in Caborca. Not his, Sonora's. Crabb was surrounded.

A few miles to the east, the Tucson Valley Company was having its own problems. They were in a ravine facing what John Reid recorded as a force of 400 to 500 men. Granville Oury was offered safe conduct home if his men would lay down their arms. His response was to pull the troop back into a thicket of trees, hunker down, and wait for night. Both sides exchanged fire. One of the men from Arizona was shot in the thigh. John Capron did the honors: "I took out my butcher knife, caught up the ball and flesh and gave it a slash." The bullet was removed.

The Company moved out under cover of darkness and the overhang of a bluff, horses left behind. Eventually they would become separated into three groups. Reid said they did make it close enough to Caborca to hear the "incessant hum of hundreds of Mexican voices," an indication they weren't going to meet Henry Crabb this trip.

Capron had been shot in the arm that first night. At one point, he was left behind for dead, reduced to scrambling, crawling after his compatriots. Two of their group disappeared, a Joseph Thomas and the man known as Chambers. They were never seen again by the Company.

Reid and an E.B. Redford also found themselves lost from the group. Deprived of water for days, Redford was in bad shape. "His face was shrunken, his eyes unusually hollow, his tongue swelled and his lips parched," wrote Reid.

They were barefoot now, their boots torn to ribbons from tromping across an unforgiving land of cactus and rock, lacerating "each foot from heel to toe," wrote Reid. Their wounds began to fester.

John Capron's party had some slim luck. They found a wounded horse. It became their food. Reid's party found a cow. He wrote it "enabled us to quaff with savage relish the contents of the jugular." They were followed, watched, shot at. They found the body of one of their own, Bill Woods, killed at a water hole. There were moments of kindness. Near the town of Altar, a woman offered the suffering Capron a blanket to keep off the cold of another night in the Sonoran Desert.

It took them six or eight days to get back across the border, depending on the account you read. Incredibly, they lost only four men. Crabb lost everything. On April 6, a flaming arrow was shot onto the thatched roof of the house (or houses) that still provided Crabb and his men some protection. He surrendered, some said with the condition his men would have a fair trial. Others say there was no such promise, and there was no trial. However, there was a pardon. The youngest of the small army, 15-year-old Charles Evans, was taken to safety by the Mexican captain Hilario Gabilondo and later released to return to his home in California. Crabb died last and alone. Following his execution, his head was cut off and placed in an earthen jar. Sources agree on that but not on what became of it.

There was more dying to be done. Sixteen followers of Crabb, late arrivals from California, were captured near Caborca and executed. Four more would die in Sonoita, Arizona, shot by Mexican soldiers who had crossed the line. The Crabb Expedition was over.

The doors of the church of Caborca are closed now. The rear of the structure has been severely damaged by flooding and violent course changes of the Rio Conception. Yet, it still seems sturdy, protective. These days it is tourists who come here from the north and stare at the bullet marks in the facade. In the plaza, children watch them and practice their English. "What time is it? " one asks loudly as a tourist nears. They giggle. The visitor turns to them and says with a smile, "Son las diez. It is 10," and joins in the friendly laughter. Another border crossed but this time so gently done. Then, like the Tucson Valley Company, the tourists move on, at a more gracious pace perhaps but still heading home.

They were barefoot now, their boots torn to ribbons from tromping across an unforgiving land of cactus and rock.