Mexican period of Arizona
Encyclopedia
In 1821, Mexico won its independence
from Spain after a decade of war. The revolution
had destroyed the colonial silver mining industry and had bankrupted the national treasury
. Along the northern frontier, funds that had supported missions, presidios and trading routes were reduced. As missions began to wither without military protection, Mexico began auctioning off more land (land grants). The revolution also impacted the relationship between the Europeans, Pueblos and non-pueblo natives such as the Apache and Navajo.
The Mexican period came to a close with the influx of Americans. In 1846, the annexation of Texas led to the Mexican-American War, ultimately resulting in the Mexican Cession
, in which the United States acquired the region of Arizona north of the Gila River
in 1848. The California gold rush brought more Americans through Arizona. The Mexican period closed with the Gadsden Purchase
in 1854 and the last of the Mexican army leaving Tucson in 1856.
never materialized. These were typical events of the late colonial period.
During the following decades, the Republic of Mexico plunged into bankruptcy
and civil war. The first to collapse was the Provincias Internas
, which had centralized political and military power in the north under the authority of a comandante general. In 1824, Mexico dismembered the system and partitioned itself into states, which frequently acted independently of one another even in military affairs. In April 1835, for example, Chihuahuan authorities negotiated a peace treaty
with Chihuahua Apaches (so-called Mimbreños, Gileños, and Mogolloneros) led by "General" Juan José Compá and sixteen other chiefs at the mining community of Santa Rita del Cobre in southwestern New Mexico. That left the Chiricahuas free to raid Sonoran communities like Sahuaripa on the western slopes of the Sierra Madre. Sonoran officials protested the treaty and mounted a counterattack against the Chiricahuas, but Chihuahuan forces did not join their countrymen. Mexican authority
became almost as diffuse as authority among the Apaches.
Struggles for power within the Mexican states compounded disunion among the states themselves. In Sonora, a series of military strongmen dominated politics
during the nineteenth century. These strongmen, including José de Urrea and Manuel Mariá Gándera, who owned a hacienda
at the old mission of Calabasas, manipulated factions among the Yaquis, Opata, and Apaches to advance their own ends. They also drew presidial forces into their interminable civil wars, leaving the northern frontier exposed and defenseless for months at a time. In 1832, many families had to abandon Tubac because its garrison had been reduced to the captain, his aide, and three retired soldiers. The Tubaqueños probably sought refuge with their Tucson neighbors, hoping that strength of numbers would keep the Apaches at bay.
The biggest blow to Arizona was the dismantling of the Apache rationing system in 1831. Ethno-historian William Griffen estimated that 2,496 Apaches received weekly supplies of beef, corn, sugar, and other foodstuffs from presidial commanders in Chihuahua, Sonora, and New Mexico in 1825. Such rations had been an important part of the economy of many Apache groups since the 1790s. Their abrupt withdrawal forced Apaches to leave their camps near the European settlements and return to raiding.
One particularly brutal incident occurred on April 22, 1837, when a group led by John Johnson, an Anglo living in Sonora, pursued an Apache raiding party that had stolen Sonoran cattle. Johnson's party followed the cattle tracks into the Animas Mountains in southwestern New Mexico, where it encountered the camp of Juan José Compá, the same Apache who had made peace with the Chihuahuans the year before. For two days Johnson and the Apaches talked, and then Juan José and other chiefs relaxed enough to gather around some brown sugar
and parched corn Johnson offered. When they did, Johnson turned what may have been a swivel gun
upon them and cut down at least twenty Apaches including Juan José.
The cycle of attack and counterattack accelerated during the 1830s and reached its peak the following decade. The attacks were particularly devastating because of the Anglo American gunrunners in New Mexico. With the opening of the Santa Fe Trail
in 1821, Anglo American traders began exchanging firearms and ammunition
for horses and mules. Comanches received the weapons first, followed by Navajos, Apaches, and Utes. While Mexico reeled from one coup to another, Indian access to firearms transformed the balance of power in the Southwest. Apache groups lost the battle against the Commanches for control of the Southern Plains, but other groups held their grounds in the mountains of Arizona and New Mexico long after the Apachería became part of the United States.
Not all Mexican-Apache alliances broke down during the 1830s. When Apaches from most peace camps rose in revolt, many Apache Mansos in Tucson under the leadership of Chief Antuna resisted the call to arms. At a parley with the Pinal Apaches, a band who lived near modern Globe, violence
erupted when the Tucson contingent refused to join their kinsmen. One Manso and one Pimal were killed. Thereafter, Antuna and his people served as scouts for the Tucsonese, extending the effective range of the Tucson presidio far beyond the valley of the Santa Cruz.
Tucson in the 1830s was as much an Apache as a Mexican community. Sonoran census of 1831 listed only 465 Mexican inhabitants, whereas Tucson's Apache Manso community in 1835 was said to include 486 individuals. Many lived north of the presidio along the east bank of the Santa Cruz. Some cultivated their own fields or occasionally worked for Mexican farmers, and they also moved freely back and forth between Tucson and the surrounding mountains, hunting deer and bighorn sheep
, gathering cactus fruit, and roasting agave. During the first half of the nineteenth century, their way of life remained Apachean despite the fact that they were allies, not enemies, of the Mexicans living along the Santa Cruz.
Relations between the Mexicans and the Pimas steadily declined. Hispanic settlers had been moving onto O'odham lands across the Santa Cruz River since the eighteenth century. Following Mexican independence, the pressure grew more intense, especially after the Franciscan missions began to wither and decay. By 1843, the fields at Calabasas, Guevavi, and Sonoita were completely deserted. At San Xavier only about one-eighth of the land previously cultivated for mission purposes lay under the plow. Throughout the colonial period, missions served as a buffer between Indians and Hispanic settlers in the Pimería Alta. When the mission system crumbled, O'odham land tenure
disintegrated as well.
of the Tumacacori mission received title to a long strip along the Santa Cruz River south of Tubac encompassing the former mission lands of Tumacacori, Calabasas, and Guevavi. Part of this grant was the land auctioned off in Guaymas
in 1846. In 1812, Agustín Ortiz purchased the site of Arivaca, an important mining and ranching center since the mid eighteenth century, at public auction
. Charles Poston purchased that hacienda from Ignacio Ortiz in 1856 for $
10,000.
However, most grants in Arizona were made after Mexico gained independence. In 1821, Tomás and Ignacio Ortiz received a total of about 17000 acres (68.8 km²) of land known as San Ignacio de la Canoa and located between Tubac and modern Sahuarita
. The following year, the ranch of San Bernardino
east of modern Douglas
became the property of Lieutenant Ignacio Pérez. It totaled more than 73000 acres (295.4 km²) in Arizona and northeastern Sonora
. León Herreros acquired San José de Sanoita in 1825, while "Ramón Romero and other shareholders, their children, heirs, and successors received title to San Rafael de la Zanja in the San Rafael Valley the same year. The Mexican government issued five more grants, including Buenavista
, San Rafael del Valle, San Juan de las Boquillas y Nogales, Tres Alamos, and the Babocómari ranch, between 1826 and 1831.
During the 1820s and 1830s, Sonoran ranchers strove to colonize the grasslands of southeastern Arizona. Their legal tool was the land grant
and their instrument of occupation was the mixed-breed longhorn cow
. These longhorn, or their descendants, roamed the range as feral survivors long after their masters were gone.
Hispanic Arizona was again making an effort to roll back the borders of the Apachería. The land grants established Mexican title
to much of the Santa Cruz and San Pedro valleys. They also extended Mexican domain over the plains south of the Chiricahua Mountains
. Most of the cattle country ended up in the hands of the Elías-González family or their relatives. During the colonial period, the Spanish government supported the mission and the presidial systems in order to insure royal control over the northern frontier. By the 1820s, however, private capital
had become the usual method of colonization, and most of that capital belonged to a network of elite families who dominated northern Sonora at the time. They provided the livestock and took the risks.
If the Elías-Gonzálezes and their neighbors had received the land grant twenty years earlier, when they would have been protected by the presidios and the Apache peace program, they might have succeeded, but beginning in the 1820s, the Apaches began to burn their buildings and kill their cowboys, run off their horses, and slaughter their beef. By 1840 most of the grants had been abandoned. Even though the U.S. Court of Private Land Claims
eventually confirmed eight of the Spanish and Mexican land grants in the early twentieth century, none of the descendants of the original grantees managed to hold on to their titles. John Slaughter owned the San Bernardino Ranch
north of the U.S.-Mexico border, and Colin Cameron's San Rafael Cattle Company had acquired the San Rafael de la Zanja grant. Largescale ranching did not return to the area until the 1880s after most of the Apaches had been confined to reservations
. When it did, American land-and-cattle companies, not the Mexican elite, held them.
The most blatant land grab occurred in 1844. Far to the south, in the port of the Guaymas
, the Mexican government declared that the mission lands of Tumacacori had been abandoned and auctioned them off for five hundred pesos
to Francisco Alejandro Aguilar. The few Pimas who had not been driven away by Apache depredations neither knew about nor consented to the sale
. Aguilar was the brother-in-law of Manuel Mariá Gándara, one of the most powerful military strongmen in Sonora. He turned Calabasas into his own private hacienda, and by the late 1840s Pima
dispossession along the Santa Cruz was nearly complete.
Some presidial soldiers became so poor that they had to sell their weapons to feed their families. In 1840 and 1841 the Mexican government campaigned against the Tohono O'odham of the western deserts, their former allies. The colony reached its nadir at midcentury. In 1843 the Apaches killed at least thirty shareholders of the San Rafael de la Zanja grant at La Boca de Noria near modern Lochiel. Ranching ceased in the San Rafael Valley. Five years later, at least fifteen Tucsonenses, including nine presidial soldiers, rode into ambush in the Whetstone Mountains
. By the time the bodies could be recovered, they were so decomposed that the remains had to be carried back to the presidio of Santa Cruz in sacks. Tubac itself was abandoned once again after an Apache assault in January 1849.
of their river. The Gila governor demanded papers of identification...their leader replied that they came only to visit the Indians along the Gila in order to obtain mule
s and horses from them and to find out where there might be other rivers abounding in beaver
."
The foreigners Pacheco referred to were a group of Anglo American trappers led by Ceran St. Vrain
and William Sherley Williams, better known to his fellow mountain men as Old Bill. The movement of American trappers and traders
blazing the Santa Fe
trail soon became a torrent. Ten years after Pacheco warned about foreigners in Arizona, Anglo rebels took Texas from Mexican hands, and, in 1848, Mexico ceded more than half its territory to the United States, including Arizona north of the Gila River. By 1853 the United States expanded past Tucson. In Pacheco's time, Arizona was already a part of the American frontier.
Despite their romanticizations
by later generations, the first American frontiersmen in Arizona were adventurers and businessmen rather than mountain men. They entered Arizona from their headquarters
in Taos, New Mexico
, to hunt the beavers between the upper Gila River and the Colorado
delta
. Independent trappers like Old Bill flourished in the Southwest until people in the eastern United States began to wear hats made from silk
rather than beaver felt
.
The first American trappers to set foot on Arizona soil were Sylvester Pattie and his son James, who spent the winter of 1825-1826 trapping along the San Francisco
, Gila, and San Pedro rivers. James left an account of his travels that described encounters with bears, "panthers", Indians, and "wild hogs", or javelina. Pattie was the first Anglo to describe Arizona and the first of many to exaggerate the ferocity of its human and animal inhabitants.
Despite its embellishments, Pattie's narrative constitutes the most extensive firsthand account of early trappings in the Southwest, which was much different from trapping in the North
, where Indians participated in the trade and formed close relationships with many non-Indian trappers. During the winter of 1826-1827, Pattie returned to Arizona with a group of French trappers led by Miguel Robidoux, one of six brothers who had grown up trapping and trading along the Missouri River
. After visiting a village of Spanish-speaking Pimas who cultivated corn, wheat, and cotton
along the south bank of the Gila, Robidoux and his companions made their way to a "Papawar" settlement about a mile up the Salt River. The Indians were likely Yuman-speaking Maricopas, allies of the Pimas who had engaged in extensive warfare with their Mohave and Quechan enemies for centuries. That evening they killed all of the trappers except for Pattie, Robidoux, and another Frenchman. After fleeing, the three men met another group of trappers led by Ewing Young
, and returned to exact their revenge. Pattie claimed that 110 Indians were killed in the incident. Similar hostilities broke out whenever trappers traveled through the Apachería or trapped beaver in Mohave territory along the Colorado.
Trappers continued to explore Arizona and travel to California, where they sold the furs to ships trading with the Mexican settlements of the Pacific Coast. By the time the Southwestern fur trade had declined in 1833, most of the famous mountain men in Western history had passed through Arizona. Because they exported their furs through northern New Mexico and California, they had little reason to visit Tucson and Tubac, causing them to avoid confrontations with the Mexicans along the Santa Cruz. The mountain men had little effect on Arizona's economy and ecology
. Beaver populations had recovered by the next decade.
from Spain that it had given up in the French and Indian War
(Seven Year war
) (1753–1763). After the disastrous losses of French troops in the Haitian Revolution
(1791–1804); Napoleon decided to withdraw his troops from Haiti and sell the Louisiana Territories. In 1803 Thomas Jefferson
(with Congressional approval) agreed to purchase this territory. This put United States territory adjacent to the Spanish claimed territories. After Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821 it picked up the Spanish territorial claims. Lacking their own colonists and desperate to fill empty spaces to help protect them from raiding Comanche
s, Mexico invited Americans and other foreign colonists to settle in Texas in 1824. By 1830 there were already more than twice as many Anglos as Mexicans there (7,000 to 3,000). By 1836 the ratio had risen ten to one. Sam Houston
finally led his forces to victory at San Jacinto
(1836) and the Texas Revolution
was over. The ever changing Mexican governments never formally accepted the results of the Texas Revolution but never had the will or money to do anything about it. Before and after the Texas revolution Mexicans in Texas were already a minority group
. In 1842, Mexico's secretary of state
, Lucás Alamán, warned, "Where others send invading armies the Americans send their colonists." From 1836-1845 Texas remained an independent republic despite stated preferences to join the union. The U.S. Congress in this period argued over adding another slave state to its roster. Finally in 1845, in a political move by President John Tyler
, Texas was accepted as a new slave state.
Displeased with the United States for the annexation of Texas Mexico had already broken off relations with the United States in March 1845 after . Six months later, President James Polk sent John Slidell
to Mexico City to attempt to buy California and New Mexico. When the ever changing Mexican government refused to negotiate, Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor
to occupy disputed territory between the Nueces River
and the Rio Grande. A Mexican attack on U.S. troops preceded a U.S. declaration of war on Mexico in May 1846.
A primary objective of newly elected President James K. Polk
in the war was the settlement of the Texas boundary with Mexico and acquisition of the Alta California territory. Most American pioneers and politicians considered Arizona a wasteland, a desert, and an Indian-infested obstacle between Santa Fe, New Mexico
and San Diego
. Although several U.S. military expeditions passed through the area on their way to the west, they did so as quickly as possible, and none of them stayed.
General Stephen Watts Kearny, commander of the Army of the West, after securing New Mexico
led the first group of United States soldiers to cross Arizona. Kearny led a detachment of about 90 "wilderness-worn dragoons" from Santa Fe on September 25, 1846. They were guided part of the way by Kit Carson
, who had been had been sent to deliver a message to Polk about the successful acquisition of California
by Captain John C. Fremont
's California Battalion
's militia and Commodore Robert F. Stockton
's Pacific Squadron
sailors and marines. Carson was pressed into service as a guide back to California and his messages east were carried by others. Under Carson's direction, Kearny and his men descended the Gila River
and spent the next two months following the river's passage to the Colorado River
at the Yuma Crossing
. The expedition marched through the populous agricultural villages of the Gila Pima
Indians, but completely bypassed Tubac, Arizona
and Tucson, Arizona
--about the only Mexican settlements in Arizona. These were the first American soldiers in Arizona.
The next expedition swung farther south and went through Tucson, Arizona
on its way to California. This was the Mormon Battalion
, a battalion of about 500 Latter Day Saints from the Midwest who 'volunteered' for duty in order to prove their patriotism
and earn badly needed cash to help their families survive the winter of 1846-47 and prepare for their own trip west. Their orders were to blaze a wagon trail across the southern Great Plains and the Southwest to California. When they reached Santa Fe, New Mexico
Lieutenant Colonel Philip St. George Cooke
took command and led the battalion to San Diego, California
. The Mormons left Santa Fe in October 1846. They had to double-team their wagons to get over the Sacramento Mountains in south central New Mexico and lower them by rope down Guadalupe Pass in the northern Sierra Madre
mountains. Their encounters with the Indians were peaceful but the wild feral bulls (Texas Longhorns) of southeastern Arizona charged their caravan and gorged some of their mules.
Wild bulls were the only antagonists the battalion had to face in the nearly empty southwest deserts. The Mormons were the first representatives of the U.S. government to meet the sparse Mexican population of Arizona who were located only in Tucson and Tubac, Arizona
. The initial encounter took place at a mescal distillery between the San Pedro and Santa Cruz valleys. There the teetotaling
Mormons met a sergeant
and several soldiers from the Tucson presidio. The sergeant politely requested that Cooke and his men make a detour around Tucson. Cooke politely declined.
Two days of sparring followed as Tucson's veteran commander, Antonio Camadurán, attempted to persuade the Mormon Battalion
not to enter the community. When all threats and pleas for an armistice failed, Comadurán withdrew his outnumbered garrison about 10 miles (16.1 km) to Mission San Xavier del Bac
, Arizona. The result was a peaceful day of trading between the Mormons and the few Mexican inhabitants of Tucson. The battalion lumbered into town on December 17. The Tucson residents offered the soldiers food and water, and the soldiers responded by bartering clothing for the beans and flour they needed.
By the time Cooke and his troops had left the next morning, the only shots that had been fired came from one of the battalion's pickets, who mistook the returning civilians for Mexican soldiers during the night. No one was injured and no one died. Cooke sent a note apologizing to Comodurán for the inconvenience. With it he enclosed a letter to the governor of Sonora
Mexico. The letter assured the governor that Cooke had not come "as an enemy of the people whom you represent; they have received only kindness at my hands."
After General Winfield Scott
seized Mexico City in September 1847 Nicholas Trist
sat down with the ever changing Mexican authorities and helped to write the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, which Congress ratified the following March. Having no good maps or experience in Arizona the United States Mexican boundary in Arizona was set at the Gila River
. In return for $18,250,000 in cash payments and claims assumed by the U.S. government, the United States won confirmation of its title to Texas. It also annexed the California territory and New Mexico territory, which included Arizona north of the Gila River. Because Tucson and Tubac are below the Gila river there were no Mexican residents in Arizona when they were annexed, just Indian tribes. The Gadsen Purchase of more land below the Gila River from the ever present Mexican President Santa Anna
added these towns to the U.S. territory and added territory easier for building a railroad.
along the American River
, Alta California
belonged to the United States. The gold rush
drew thousands of Americans and Mexicans, leaving many towns in Sonora nearly depopulated. Gold-seekers overwhelmed the little communities of southern Arizona. By the time the rush was over, 50,000 people had gone through the region on their way to the California goldfields.
The Gila Trail leading to the California mines crossed the Sierra Madre at Guadalupe Pass and swung down the Santa Cruz Valley through Tumacacori, Tubac, and Tucson. From there it followed Cooke's wagon road north to the Pima villages and west to the junction of the Gila and Colorado. Ninety-two miles of the trail were without water, and another was across the Mojave Desert
west of the Colorado. As perilous as it was, however, the Gila Trail became the main path connecting Arizona to the United States.
Miners also provided valuable information about Arizona's Native Americans. Though they were impressed with the Gila Pimas, who gave them wheat and corn, they viewed the Quechans of the Colorado River with suspicion. Apaches left the Anglo Americans alone, viewing them as potential allies in their continuous war against the Mexicans. After one inconsequential skirmish near Guadalupe Pass, the Chiricahua war chief Mangas Coloradas even told a group of Americans that he loved them.
Despite their hatred of Mexicans, the Apaches depended upon Mexican livestock for food and to see them through hard times. At about 9:00 A.M.
of December 16, 1850, a large number of Apaches, perhaps as many as 361, came out of the Catalina Mountains and caught Tucson by surprise. The Tucsonenses fled to the presidio or to the large adobe
convent on the west bank of the Santa Cruz River. The Apaches rounded up their animals, killed four of their neighbors, and took two Mexican boys and Apache Manson women captive. Suddenly afterward the Apaches offered to make peace. A treaty might have been secured if the O'odham had not ridden in from San Xavier and descended upon the Apaches, driving them away. Apaches often made truces with one Mexican community in order to raid another, and livestock stolen in Sonora was often bartered in Chihuahua and New Mexico.
A cholera
epidemic broke out in 1851. The establishment of "military colonies" in Tucson and Tubac by Americans aggravated the situation of Anglo American invasion. To prevent the loss of any more territory, the Mexican government decided to grant each recruit a plot of land in return for a six-year tour of duty. In Tucson, military officials confiscated land already being cultivated by civilians or retired presidio soldiers, turning farmers against the soldiers who were supposed to protect them.
Many residents of Mexican Arizona greeted the Treaty of Mesilla with relief. In 1853, President Franklin Pierce
dispatched James Gadsden
, a railroad speculator from North Carolina
, to present Mexican president Santa Anna
with five different plans to purchase more of northern Mexico. The most ambitious offered $50 million for Baja California and much of Sonora, Chihuahua, and Coahuila. The least extensive sought Arizona south of the Gila River and the Mesilla Valley of New Mexico. That was the one Santa Anna accepted. In return for $10,000,000, the United States received nearly 30000 square miles (77,699.6 km²) of deserts and mountains. With it came Tucson, Tubac, and Tumacacori.
When the House of Representatives
ratified the Gadsden Purchase
on June 29, 1854, Mexican Arizona became a part of the United States. Most inhabitants of the region welcomed the change. Mexican Arizona fell under U.S. law, and presumably, U.S. protection. There were possibilities of new markets for beef and flour, and of the Apaches finally being kept at bay. Mexican troops remained in Tucson until March 1856, but when they headed south, only a few civilians went with them. U.S. troops rode into southern Arizona in late 1856 to take possession of the region
, and Mexican as well as Anglo immigrants began to trickle into the area.
Mexican War of Independence
The Mexican War of Independence was an armed conflict between the people of Mexico and the Spanish colonial authorities which started on 16 September 1810. The movement, which became known as the Mexican War of Independence, was led by Mexican-born Spaniards, Mestizos and Amerindians who sought...
from Spain after a decade of war. The revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
had destroyed the colonial silver mining industry and had bankrupted the national treasury
Treasury
A treasury is either*A government department related to finance and taxation.*A place where currency or precious items is/are kept....
. Along the northern frontier, funds that had supported missions, presidios and trading routes were reduced. As missions began to wither without military protection, Mexico began auctioning off more land (land grants). The revolution also impacted the relationship between the Europeans, Pueblos and non-pueblo natives such as the Apache and Navajo.
The Mexican period came to a close with the influx of Americans. In 1846, the annexation of Texas led to the Mexican-American War, ultimately resulting in the Mexican Cession
Mexican Cession
The Mexican Cession of 1848 is a historical name in the United States for the region of the present day southwestern United States that Mexico ceded to the U.S...
, in which the United States acquired the region of Arizona north of the Gila River
Gila River
The Gila River is a tributary of the Colorado River, 650 miles long, in the southwestern states of New Mexico and Arizona.-Description:...
in 1848. The California gold rush brought more Americans through Arizona. The Mexican period closed with the Gadsden Purchase
Gadsden Purchase
The Gadsden Purchase is a region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico that was purchased by the United States in a treaty signed by James Gadsden, the American ambassador to Mexico at the time, on December 30, 1853. It was then ratified, with changes, by the U.S...
in 1854 and the last of the Mexican army leaving Tucson in 1856.
Mexican-Indian relations
During the 1830s and early 1840s, some Apache groups threatened the Mexican settlers of Arizona. For example in 1824, Apaches began running off horse herds from Tumacacori and other Santa Cruz communities. Around this time to the south, a Yaqui leader named Juan Banderas envisioned a pan-Indian nation taking shape in northwestern Mexico and launched a series of revolts in Sonora. Antuna, chief of Tucson's Apache Mansos group, warned that the Yaquis were planning to attack Tucson with Tohono O'odham, Yumas, and Western Apaches, and though the assaultAssault
In law, assault is a crime causing a victim to fear violence. The term is often confused with battery, which involves physical contact. The specific meaning of assault varies between countries, but can refer to an act that causes another to apprehend immediate and personal violence, or in the more...
never materialized. These were typical events of the late colonial period.
During the following decades, the Republic of Mexico plunged into bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
and civil war. The first to collapse was the Provincias Internas
Commandancy General of the Provincias Internas
The Provincias Internas or Commandancy General of the Internal Provinces of the North was a colonial, administrative district of the Spanish Empire, created in 1776 to provide more autonomy for the frontier provinces in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, present day northern Mexico and southwestern...
, which had centralized political and military power in the north under the authority of a comandante general. In 1824, Mexico dismembered the system and partitioned itself into states, which frequently acted independently of one another even in military affairs. In April 1835, for example, Chihuahuan authorities negotiated a peace treaty
Peace treaty
A peace treaty is an agreement between two or more hostile parties, usually countries or governments, that formally ends a state of war between the parties...
with Chihuahua Apaches (so-called Mimbreños, Gileños, and Mogolloneros) led by "General" Juan José Compá and sixteen other chiefs at the mining community of Santa Rita del Cobre in southwestern New Mexico. That left the Chiricahuas free to raid Sonoran communities like Sahuaripa on the western slopes of the Sierra Madre. Sonoran officials protested the treaty and mounted a counterattack against the Chiricahuas, but Chihuahuan forces did not join their countrymen. Mexican authority
Authority
The word Authority is derived mainly from the Latin word auctoritas, meaning invention, advice, opinion, influence, or command. In English, the word 'authority' can be used to mean power given by the state or by academic knowledge of an area .-Authority in Philosophy:In...
became almost as diffuse as authority among the Apaches.
Struggles for power within the Mexican states compounded disunion among the states themselves. In Sonora, a series of military strongmen dominated politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
during the nineteenth century. These strongmen, including José de Urrea and Manuel Mariá Gándera, who owned a hacienda
Hacienda
Hacienda is a Spanish word for an estate. Some haciendas were plantations, mines, or even business factories. Many haciendas combined these productive activities...
at the old mission of Calabasas, manipulated factions among the Yaquis, Opata, and Apaches to advance their own ends. They also drew presidial forces into their interminable civil wars, leaving the northern frontier exposed and defenseless for months at a time. In 1832, many families had to abandon Tubac because its garrison had been reduced to the captain, his aide, and three retired soldiers. The Tubaqueños probably sought refuge with their Tucson neighbors, hoping that strength of numbers would keep the Apaches at bay.
The biggest blow to Arizona was the dismantling of the Apache rationing system in 1831. Ethno-historian William Griffen estimated that 2,496 Apaches received weekly supplies of beef, corn, sugar, and other foodstuffs from presidial commanders in Chihuahua, Sonora, and New Mexico in 1825. Such rations had been an important part of the economy of many Apache groups since the 1790s. Their abrupt withdrawal forced Apaches to leave their camps near the European settlements and return to raiding.
One particularly brutal incident occurred on April 22, 1837, when a group led by John Johnson, an Anglo living in Sonora, pursued an Apache raiding party that had stolen Sonoran cattle. Johnson's party followed the cattle tracks into the Animas Mountains in southwestern New Mexico, where it encountered the camp of Juan José Compá, the same Apache who had made peace with the Chihuahuans the year before. For two days Johnson and the Apaches talked, and then Juan José and other chiefs relaxed enough to gather around some brown sugar
Brown sugar
Brown sugar is a sucrose sugar product with a distinctive brown color due to the presence of molasses. It is either an unrefined or partially refined soft sugar consisting of sugar crystals with some residual molasses content, or it is produced by the addition of molasses to refined white...
and parched corn Johnson offered. When they did, Johnson turned what may have been a swivel gun
Swivel gun
The term swivel gun usually refers to a small cannon, mounted on a swiveling stand or fork which allows a very wide arc of movement. Another type of firearm referred to as a swivel gun was an early flintlock combination gun with two barrels that rotated along their axes to allow the shooter to...
upon them and cut down at least twenty Apaches including Juan José.
The cycle of attack and counterattack accelerated during the 1830s and reached its peak the following decade. The attacks were particularly devastating because of the Anglo American gunrunners in New Mexico. With the opening of the Santa Fe Trail
Santa Fe Trail
The Santa Fe Trail was a 19th-century transportation route through central North America that connected Missouri with Santa Fe, New Mexico. Pioneered in 1822 by William Becknell, it served as a vital commercial and military highway until the introduction of the railroad to Santa Fe in 1880...
in 1821, Anglo American traders began exchanging firearms and ammunition
Ammunition
Ammunition is a generic term derived from the French language la munition which embraced all material used for war , but which in time came to refer specifically to gunpowder and artillery. The collective term for all types of ammunition is munitions...
for horses and mules. Comanches received the weapons first, followed by Navajos, Apaches, and Utes. While Mexico reeled from one coup to another, Indian access to firearms transformed the balance of power in the Southwest. Apache groups lost the battle against the Commanches for control of the Southern Plains, but other groups held their grounds in the mountains of Arizona and New Mexico long after the Apachería became part of the United States.
Not all Mexican-Apache alliances broke down during the 1830s. When Apaches from most peace camps rose in revolt, many Apache Mansos in Tucson under the leadership of Chief Antuna resisted the call to arms. At a parley with the Pinal Apaches, a band who lived near modern Globe, violence
Violence
Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...
erupted when the Tucson contingent refused to join their kinsmen. One Manso and one Pimal were killed. Thereafter, Antuna and his people served as scouts for the Tucsonese, extending the effective range of the Tucson presidio far beyond the valley of the Santa Cruz.
Tucson in the 1830s was as much an Apache as a Mexican community. Sonoran census of 1831 listed only 465 Mexican inhabitants, whereas Tucson's Apache Manso community in 1835 was said to include 486 individuals. Many lived north of the presidio along the east bank of the Santa Cruz. Some cultivated their own fields or occasionally worked for Mexican farmers, and they also moved freely back and forth between Tucson and the surrounding mountains, hunting deer and bighorn sheep
Bighorn Sheep
The bighorn sheep is a species of sheep in North America named for its large horns. These horns can weigh up to , while the sheep themselves weigh up to . Recent genetic testing indicates that there are three distinct subspecies of Ovis canadensis, one of which is endangered: Ovis canadensis sierrae...
, gathering cactus fruit, and roasting agave. During the first half of the nineteenth century, their way of life remained Apachean despite the fact that they were allies, not enemies, of the Mexicans living along the Santa Cruz.
Relations between the Mexicans and the Pimas steadily declined. Hispanic settlers had been moving onto O'odham lands across the Santa Cruz River since the eighteenth century. Following Mexican independence, the pressure grew more intense, especially after the Franciscan missions began to wither and decay. By 1843, the fields at Calabasas, Guevavi, and Sonoita were completely deserted. At San Xavier only about one-eighth of the land previously cultivated for mission purposes lay under the plow. Throughout the colonial period, missions served as a buffer between Indians and Hispanic settlers in the Pimería Alta. When the mission system crumbled, O'odham land tenure
Land tenure
Land tenure is the name given, particularly in common law systems, to the legal regime in which land is owned by an individual, who is said to "hold" the land . The sovereign monarch, known as The Crown, held land in its own right. All private owners are either its tenants or sub-tenants...
disintegrated as well.
Land grants
Before Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821, the Spanish government had made a few small grants of land in southern Arizona. In 1789, Toribio de Otero petitioned for a lot from the Tubac presidio in return for military service. The land remained in the Otero family until 1938. In 1807, the O'odhamO'odham
The O'odham peoples, including the Tohono O'odham or Papago, the Pima or Akimel O'odham, and the Hia C-ed O'odham, are an indigenous Uto-Aztecan peoples of the Sonoran desert in southern and central Arizona and northern Sonora, united by a common heritage language, the O'odham language...
of the Tumacacori mission received title to a long strip along the Santa Cruz River south of Tubac encompassing the former mission lands of Tumacacori, Calabasas, and Guevavi. Part of this grant was the land auctioned off in Guaymas
Guaymas
Guaymas is a city and municipality located in the southwest part of the state of Sonora in northwestern Mexico. The city is located 117 km south of the state capital of Hermosillo, and 242 miles from the U.S. border, and is the principal port for the state. The municipality is located in the...
in 1846. In 1812, Agustín Ortiz purchased the site of Arivaca, an important mining and ranching center since the mid eighteenth century, at public auction
Auction
An auction is a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder...
. Charles Poston purchased that hacienda from Ignacio Ortiz in 1856 for $
Dollar
The dollar is the name of the official currency of many countries, including Australia, Belize, Canada, Ecuador, El Salvador, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, and the United States.-Etymology:...
10,000.
However, most grants in Arizona were made after Mexico gained independence. In 1821, Tomás and Ignacio Ortiz received a total of about 17000 acres (68.8 km²) of land known as San Ignacio de la Canoa and located between Tubac and modern Sahuarita
Sahuarita, Arizona
Sahuarita is a town in Pima County, Arizona, United States. Sahuarita is located south of the Tohono O'odham Nation and abuts the north end of Green Valley, 15 miles south of Tucson...
. The following year, the ranch of San Bernardino
San Bernardino Ranch
San Bernardino Ranch is a site in the southern San Bernardino Valley in the region of the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge in extreme southeast Cochise County, Arizona that is significant for its association with the beginning of cattle ranching in southern Arizona and northern Mexico. The...
east of modern Douglas
Douglas, Arizona
Douglas is a city in Cochise County, Arizona, United States. Douglas has a border crossing with Mexico and a history of mining.The population was 14,312 at the 2000 census...
became the property of Lieutenant Ignacio Pérez. It totaled more than 73000 acres (295.4 km²) in Arizona and northeastern Sonora
Sonora
Sonora officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 72 municipalities; the capital city is Hermosillo....
. León Herreros acquired San José de Sanoita in 1825, while "Ramón Romero and other shareholders, their children, heirs, and successors received title to San Rafael de la Zanja in the San Rafael Valley the same year. The Mexican government issued five more grants, including Buenavista
Buenavista
Buenavista may refer to:*Canary Islands, Spain:**Buenavista, Breña Alta, La Palma a settlement in Breña Alta, La Palma**Buenavista del Norte, a municipality in Tenerife*Colombia...
, San Rafael del Valle, San Juan de las Boquillas y Nogales, Tres Alamos, and the Babocómari ranch, between 1826 and 1831.
During the 1820s and 1830s, Sonoran ranchers strove to colonize the grasslands of southeastern Arizona. Their legal tool was the land grant
Land grant
A land grant is a gift of real estate – land or its privileges – made by a government or other authority as a reward for services to an individual, especially in return for military service...
and their instrument of occupation was the mixed-breed longhorn cow
Texas longhorn (cattle)
The Texas Longhorn is a breed of cattle known for its characteristic horns, which can extend to tip to tip for steers and exceptional cows, and tip to tip for bulls. Horns can have a slight upward turn at their tips or even triple twist. Texas Longhorns are known for their diverse coloring...
. These longhorn, or their descendants, roamed the range as feral survivors long after their masters were gone.
Hispanic Arizona was again making an effort to roll back the borders of the Apachería. The land grants established Mexican title
Title (property)
Title is a legal term for a bundle of rights in a piece of property in which a party may own either a legal interest or an equitable interest. The rights in the bundle may be separated and held by different parties. It may also refer to a formal document that serves as evidence of ownership...
to much of the Santa Cruz and San Pedro valleys. They also extended Mexican domain over the plains south of the Chiricahua Mountains
Chiricahua Mountains
The Chiricahua Mountains are a mountain range in southeastern Arizona which are part of the Basin and Range province of the southwest, and part of the Coronado National Forest...
. Most of the cattle country ended up in the hands of the Elías-González family or their relatives. During the colonial period, the Spanish government supported the mission and the presidial systems in order to insure royal control over the northern frontier. By the 1820s, however, private capital
Capital (economics)
In economics, capital, capital goods, or real capital refers to already-produced durable goods used in production of goods or services. The capital goods are not significantly consumed, though they may depreciate in the production process...
had become the usual method of colonization, and most of that capital belonged to a network of elite families who dominated northern Sonora at the time. They provided the livestock and took the risks.
If the Elías-Gonzálezes and their neighbors had received the land grant twenty years earlier, when they would have been protected by the presidios and the Apache peace program, they might have succeeded, but beginning in the 1820s, the Apaches began to burn their buildings and kill their cowboys, run off their horses, and slaughter their beef. By 1840 most of the grants had been abandoned. Even though the U.S. Court of Private Land Claims
United States Court of Private Land Claims
The United States Court of Private Land Claims , was a United States court created to decide land claims guaranteed by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in the territories of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, and in the states of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming.-Origins:During Spanish and Mexican rule...
eventually confirmed eight of the Spanish and Mexican land grants in the early twentieth century, none of the descendants of the original grantees managed to hold on to their titles. John Slaughter owned the San Bernardino Ranch
San Bernardino Ranch
San Bernardino Ranch is a site in the southern San Bernardino Valley in the region of the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge in extreme southeast Cochise County, Arizona that is significant for its association with the beginning of cattle ranching in southern Arizona and northern Mexico. The...
north of the U.S.-Mexico border, and Colin Cameron's San Rafael Cattle Company had acquired the San Rafael de la Zanja grant. Largescale ranching did not return to the area until the 1880s after most of the Apaches had been confined to reservations
Indian reservation
An American Indian reservation is an area of land managed by a Native American tribe under the United States Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs...
. When it did, American land-and-cattle companies, not the Mexican elite, held them.
The most blatant land grab occurred in 1844. Far to the south, in the port of the Guaymas
Guaymas
Guaymas is a city and municipality located in the southwest part of the state of Sonora in northwestern Mexico. The city is located 117 km south of the state capital of Hermosillo, and 242 miles from the U.S. border, and is the principal port for the state. The municipality is located in the...
, the Mexican government declared that the mission lands of Tumacacori had been abandoned and auctioned them off for five hundred pesos
Mexican peso
The peso is the currency of Mexico. Modern peso and dollar currencies have a common origin in the 15th–19th century Spanish dollar, most continuing to use its sign, "$". The Mexican peso is the 12th most traded currency in the world, the third most traded in the Americas, and by far the most...
to Francisco Alejandro Aguilar. The few Pimas who had not been driven away by Apache depredations neither knew about nor consented to the sale
Sales
A sale is the act of selling a product or service in return for money or other compensation. It is an act of completion of a commercial activity....
. Aguilar was the brother-in-law of Manuel Mariá Gándara, one of the most powerful military strongmen in Sonora. He turned Calabasas into his own private hacienda, and by the late 1840s Pima
Pima
The Pima are a group of American Indians living in an area consisting of what is now central and southern Arizona. The long name, "Akimel O'odham", means "river people". They are closely related to the Tohono O'odham and the Hia C-ed O'odham...
dispossession along the Santa Cruz was nearly complete.
Some presidial soldiers became so poor that they had to sell their weapons to feed their families. In 1840 and 1841 the Mexican government campaigned against the Tohono O'odham of the western deserts, their former allies. The colony reached its nadir at midcentury. In 1843 the Apaches killed at least thirty shareholders of the San Rafael de la Zanja grant at La Boca de Noria near modern Lochiel. Ranching ceased in the San Rafael Valley. Five years later, at least fifteen Tucsonenses, including nine presidial soldiers, rode into ambush in the Whetstone Mountains
Whetstone Mountains
The Whetstone Mountains are a mountain range in southeastern Arizona. Major ranges in the region are part of sky island ranges called the Madrean Sky Islands. Part of the Coronado National Forest, the range is one of the least accessible areas...
. By the time the bodies could be recovered, they were so decomposed that the remains had to be carried back to the presidio of Santa Cruz in sacks. Tubac itself was abandoned once again after an Apache assault in January 1849.
American trapping
In early November 1826, Ignacio Pacheco, the mayor of Tucson, reported that "the Gila Pimas, represented by a village governor and two of his men, arrived at this presidio with news of sixteen foreigners bearing arms along the banksStream bed
A stream bed is the channel bottom of a stream, river or creek; the physical confine of the normal water flow. The lateral confines or channel margins, during all but flood stage, are known as the stream banks or river banks. In fact, a flood occurs when a stream overflows its banks and flows onto...
of their river. The Gila governor demanded papers of identification...their leader replied that they came only to visit the Indians along the Gila in order to obtain mule
Mule
A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. Horses and donkeys are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes. Of the two F1 hybrids between these two species, a mule is easier to obtain than a hinny...
s and horses from them and to find out where there might be other rivers abounding in beaver
Beaver
The beaver is a primarily nocturnal, large, semi-aquatic rodent. Castor includes two extant species, North American Beaver and Eurasian Beaver . Beavers are known for building dams, canals, and lodges . They are the second-largest rodent in the world...
."
The foreigners Pacheco referred to were a group of Anglo American trappers led by Ceran St. Vrain
Ceran St. Vrain
Ceran St. Vrain , also known as Ceran de Hault de Lassus de St. Vrain, was a major fur trader near Taos, New Mexico, where he and his partner William Bent established the trading post of Bent's Fort. St...
and William Sherley Williams, better known to his fellow mountain men as Old Bill. The movement of American trappers and traders
Merchant
A merchant is a businessperson who trades in commodities that were produced by others, in order to earn a profit.Merchants can be one of two types:# A wholesale merchant operates in the chain between producer and retail merchant...
blazing the Santa Fe
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...
trail soon became a torrent. Ten years after Pacheco warned about foreigners in Arizona, Anglo rebels took Texas from Mexican hands, and, in 1848, Mexico ceded more than half its territory to the United States, including Arizona north of the Gila River. By 1853 the United States expanded past Tucson. In Pacheco's time, Arizona was already a part of the American frontier.
Despite their romanticizations
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
by later generations, the first American frontiersmen in Arizona were adventurers and businessmen rather than mountain men. They entered Arizona from their headquarters
Headquarters
Headquarters denotes the location where most, if not all, of the important functions of an organization are coordinated. In the United States, the corporate headquarters represents the entity at the center or the top of a corporation taking full responsibility managing all business activities...
in Taos, New Mexico
Taos, New Mexico
Taos is a town in Taos County in the north-central region of New Mexico, incorporated in 1934. As of the 2000 census, its population was 4,700. Other nearby communities include Ranchos de Taos, Cañon, Taos Canyon, Ranchitos, and El Prado. The town is close to Taos Pueblo, the Native American...
, to hunt the beavers between the upper Gila River and the Colorado
Colorado River
The Colorado River , is a river in the Southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, approximately long, draining a part of the arid regions on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains. The watershed of the Colorado River covers in parts of seven U.S. states and two Mexican states...
delta
River delta
A delta is a landform that is formed at the mouth of a river where that river flows into an ocean, sea, estuary, lake, reservoir, flat arid area, or another river. Deltas are formed from the deposition of the sediment carried by the river as the flow leaves the mouth of the river...
. Independent trappers like Old Bill flourished in the Southwest until people in the eastern United States began to wear hats made from silk
Silk
Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The best-known type of silk is obtained from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity...
rather than beaver felt
Felt
Felt is a non-woven cloth that is produced by matting, condensing and pressing woollen fibres. While some types of felt are very soft, some are tough enough to form construction materials. Felt can be of any colour, and made into any shape or size....
.
The first American trappers to set foot on Arizona soil were Sylvester Pattie and his son James, who spent the winter of 1825-1826 trapping along the San Francisco
San Francisco River
The San Francisco River is a river in the southwest United States, the largest tributary of the Upper Gila River. The river originates in Arizona and flows into New Mexico before it curves around and enters the Gila down stream from Clifton, Arizona....
, Gila, and San Pedro rivers. James left an account of his travels that described encounters with bears, "panthers", Indians, and "wild hogs", or javelina. Pattie was the first Anglo to describe Arizona and the first of many to exaggerate the ferocity of its human and animal inhabitants.
Despite its embellishments, Pattie's narrative constitutes the most extensive firsthand account of early trappings in the Southwest, which was much different from trapping in the North
Northern United States
Northern United States, also sometimes the North, may refer to:* A particular grouping of states or regions of the United States of America. The United States Census Bureau divides some of the northernmost United States into the Midwest Region and the Northeast Region...
, where Indians participated in the trade and formed close relationships with many non-Indian trappers. During the winter of 1826-1827, Pattie returned to Arizona with a group of French trappers led by Miguel Robidoux, one of six brothers who had grown up trapping and trading along the Missouri River
Missouri River
The Missouri River flows through the central United States, and is a tributary of the Mississippi River. It is the longest river in North America and drains the third largest area, though only the thirteenth largest by discharge. The Missouri's watershed encompasses most of the American Great...
. After visiting a village of Spanish-speaking Pimas who cultivated corn, wheat, and cotton
Cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....
along the south bank of the Gila, Robidoux and his companions made their way to a "Papawar" settlement about a mile up the Salt River. The Indians were likely Yuman-speaking Maricopas, allies of the Pimas who had engaged in extensive warfare with their Mohave and Quechan enemies for centuries. That evening they killed all of the trappers except for Pattie, Robidoux, and another Frenchman. After fleeing, the three men met another group of trappers led by Ewing Young
Ewing Young
Ewing Young was an American fur trapper and trader from Tennessee who traveled Mexican southwestern North America and California before settling in the Oregon Country. As a prominent and wealthy citizen there, his death was the impetus for the early formation of government in what became the state...
, and returned to exact their revenge. Pattie claimed that 110 Indians were killed in the incident. Similar hostilities broke out whenever trappers traveled through the Apachería or trapped beaver in Mohave territory along the Colorado.
Trappers continued to explore Arizona and travel to California, where they sold the furs to ships trading with the Mexican settlements of the Pacific Coast. By the time the Southwestern fur trade had declined in 1833, most of the famous mountain men in Western history had passed through Arizona. Because they exported their furs through northern New Mexico and California, they had little reason to visit Tucson and Tubac, causing them to avoid confrontations with the Mexicans along the Santa Cruz. The mountain men had little effect on Arizona's economy and ecology
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
. Beaver populations had recovered by the next decade.
The Mexican-American War
The Spaniards had long feared that other European powers were planning to invade their very sparsely populated northern frontier territories. They intermittently sparred with the French and English in the Mississippi Valley and watched the Russians expand down the Pacific coast. Prior to 1803 France under Napoleon Bonaparte regained the Louisiana TerritoryLouisiana Territory
The Territory of Louisiana or Louisiana Territory was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 4, 1805 until June 4, 1812, when it was renamed to Missouri Territory...
from Spain that it had given up in the French and Indian War
French and Indian War
The French and Indian War is the common American name for the war between Great Britain and France in North America from 1754 to 1763. In 1756, the war erupted into the world-wide conflict known as the Seven Years' War and thus came to be regarded as the North American theater of that war...
(Seven Year war
Seven Years' War
The Seven Years' War was a global military war between 1756 and 1763, involving most of the great powers of the time and affecting Europe, North America, Central America, the West African coast, India, and the Philippines...
) (1753–1763). After the disastrous losses of French troops in the Haitian Revolution
Haitian Revolution
The Haitian Revolution was a period of conflict in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which culminated in the elimination of slavery there and the founding of the Haitian republic...
(1791–1804); Napoleon decided to withdraw his troops from Haiti and sell the Louisiana Territories. In 1803 Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
(with Congressional approval) agreed to purchase this territory. This put United States territory adjacent to the Spanish claimed territories. After Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821 it picked up the Spanish territorial claims. Lacking their own colonists and desperate to fill empty spaces to help protect them from raiding Comanche
Comanche
The Comanche are a Native American ethnic group whose historic range consisted of present-day eastern New Mexico, southern Colorado, northeastern Arizona, southern Kansas, all of Oklahoma, and most of northwest Texas. Historically, the Comanches were hunter-gatherers, with a typical Plains Indian...
s, Mexico invited Americans and other foreign colonists to settle in Texas in 1824. By 1830 there were already more than twice as many Anglos as Mexicans there (7,000 to 3,000). By 1836 the ratio had risen ten to one. Sam Houston
Sam Houston
Samuel Houston, known as Sam Houston , was a 19th-century American statesman, politician, and soldier. He was born in Timber Ridge in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, of Scots-Irish descent. Houston became a key figure in the history of Texas and was elected as the first and third President of...
finally led his forces to victory at San Jacinto
Battle of San Jacinto
The Battle of San Jacinto, fought on April 21, 1836, in present-day Harris County, Texas, was the decisive battle of the Texas Revolution. Led by General Sam Houston, the Texian Army engaged and defeated General Antonio López de Santa Anna's Mexican forces in a fight that lasted just eighteen...
(1836) and the Texas Revolution
Texas Revolution
The Texas Revolution or Texas War of Independence was an armed conflict between Mexico and settlers in the Texas portion of the Mexican state Coahuila y Tejas. The war lasted from October 2, 1835 to April 21, 1836...
was over. The ever changing Mexican governments never formally accepted the results of the Texas Revolution but never had the will or money to do anything about it. Before and after the Texas revolution Mexicans in Texas were already a minority group
Minority group
A minority is a sociological group within a demographic. The demographic could be based on many factors from ethnicity, gender, wealth, power, etc. The term extends to numerous situations, and civilizations within history, despite the misnomer of minorities associated with a numerical statistic...
. In 1842, Mexico's secretary of state
Secretary of State
Secretary of State or State Secretary is a commonly used title for a senior or mid-level post in governments around the world. The role varies between countries, and in some cases there are multiple Secretaries of State in the Government....
, Lucás Alamán, warned, "Where others send invading armies the Americans send their colonists." From 1836-1845 Texas remained an independent republic despite stated preferences to join the union. The U.S. Congress in this period argued over adding another slave state to its roster. Finally in 1845, in a political move by President John Tyler
John Tyler
John Tyler was the tenth President of the United States . A native of Virginia, Tyler served as a state legislator, governor, U.S. representative, and U.S. senator before being elected Vice President . He was the first to succeed to the office of President following the death of a predecessor...
, Texas was accepted as a new slave state.
Displeased with the United States for the annexation of Texas Mexico had already broken off relations with the United States in March 1845 after . Six months later, President James Polk sent John Slidell
John Slidell
John Slidell was an American politician, lawyer and businessman. A native of New York, Slidell moved to Louisiana as a young man and became a staunch defender of southern rights as a U.S. Representative and Senator...
to Mexico City to attempt to buy California and New Mexico. When the ever changing Mexican government refused to negotiate, Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor
Zachary Taylor
Zachary Taylor was the 12th President of the United States and an American military leader. Initially uninterested in politics, Taylor nonetheless ran as a Whig in the 1848 presidential election, defeating Lewis Cass...
to occupy disputed territory between the Nueces River
Nueces River
The Nueces River is a river in the U.S. state of Texas, approximately long. It drains a region in central and southern Texas southeastward into the Gulf of Mexico. It is the southernmost major river in Texas northeast of the Rio Grande...
and the Rio Grande. A Mexican attack on U.S. troops preceded a U.S. declaration of war on Mexico in May 1846.
A primary objective of newly elected President James K. Polk
James K. Polk
James Knox Polk was the 11th President of the United States . Polk was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He later lived in and represented Tennessee. A Democrat, Polk served as the 17th Speaker of the House of Representatives and the 12th Governor of Tennessee...
in the war was the settlement of the Texas boundary with Mexico and acquisition of the Alta California territory. Most American pioneers and politicians considered Arizona a wasteland, a desert, and an Indian-infested obstacle between Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...
and San Diego
San Diego, California
San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round...
. Although several U.S. military expeditions passed through the area on their way to the west, they did so as quickly as possible, and none of them stayed.
General Stephen Watts Kearny, commander of the Army of the West, after securing New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
led the first group of United States soldiers to cross Arizona. Kearny led a detachment of about 90 "wilderness-worn dragoons" from Santa Fe on September 25, 1846. They were guided part of the way by Kit Carson
Kit Carson
Christopher Houston "Kit" Carson was an American frontiersman and Indian fighter. Carson left home in rural present-day Missouri at age 16 and became a Mountain man and trapper in the West. Carson explored the west to California, and north through the Rocky Mountains. He lived among and married...
, who had been had been sent to deliver a message to Polk about the successful acquisition of California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
by Captain John C. Fremont
John C. Frémont
John Charles Frémont , was an American military officer, explorer, and the first candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party for the office of President of the United States. During the 1840s, that era's penny press accorded Frémont the sobriquet The Pathfinder...
's California Battalion
California Battalion
The first California Volunteer Militia was commonly called the California Battalion was organized by John C. Fremont during the Mexican-American War in Alta California, present day California, United States.-Formation:...
's militia and Commodore Robert F. Stockton
Robert F. Stockton
Robert Field Stockton was a United States naval commodore, notable in the capture of California during the Mexican-American War. He was a naval innovator and an early advocate for a propeller-driven, steam-powered navy. Stockton was from a notable political family and also served as a U.S...
's Pacific Squadron
Pacific Squadron
The Pacific Squadron was part of the United States Navy squadron stationed in the Pacific Ocean in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Initially with no United States ports in the Pacific, they operated out of storeships which provided naval supplies and purchased food and obtained water from local...
sailors and marines. Carson was pressed into service as a guide back to California and his messages east were carried by others. Under Carson's direction, Kearny and his men descended the Gila River
Gila River
The Gila River is a tributary of the Colorado River, 650 miles long, in the southwestern states of New Mexico and Arizona.-Description:...
and spent the next two months following the river's passage to the Colorado River
Colorado River
The Colorado River , is a river in the Southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, approximately long, draining a part of the arid regions on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains. The watershed of the Colorado River covers in parts of seven U.S. states and two Mexican states...
at the Yuma Crossing
Yuma Crossing
Yuma Crossing is a site in Arizona and California that is significant for its association with transportation and communication across the Colorado River. It connected New Spain and Las Californias in the Spanish Colonial period in and also during the Western expansion of the United States. ...
. The expedition marched through the populous agricultural villages of the Gila Pima
Pima
The Pima are a group of American Indians living in an area consisting of what is now central and southern Arizona. The long name, "Akimel O'odham", means "river people". They are closely related to the Tohono O'odham and the Hia C-ed O'odham...
Indians, but completely bypassed Tubac, Arizona
Tubac, Arizona
Tubac is a census-designated place in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, United States. The population was 949 at the 2000 census. The place name Tubac is an English borrowing from a Hispanicized form of the O'odham name, which translates into English as "rotten". The original O'odham name is written...
and Tucson, Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
Tucson is a city in and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States. The city is located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116 with a metropolitan area population at 1,020,200...
--about the only Mexican settlements in Arizona. These were the first American soldiers in Arizona.
Tucson, Arizona
Tucson is a city in and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States. The city is located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116 with a metropolitan area population at 1,020,200...
on its way to California. This was the Mormon Battalion
Mormon Battalion
The Mormon Battalion was the only religiously based unit in United States military history, and it served from July 1846 to July 1847 during the Mexican-American War. The battalion was a volunteer unit of between 534 and 559 Latter-day Saints men led by Mormon company officers, commanded by regular...
, a battalion of about 500 Latter Day Saints from the Midwest who 'volunteered' for duty in order to prove their patriotism
Patriotism
Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...
and earn badly needed cash to help their families survive the winter of 1846-47 and prepare for their own trip west. Their orders were to blaze a wagon trail across the southern Great Plains and the Southwest to California. When they reached Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...
Lieutenant Colonel Philip St. George Cooke
Philip St. George Cooke
Philip St. George Cooke was a career United States Army cavalry officer who served as a Union General in the American Civil War. He is noted for his authorship of an Army cavalry manual, and is sometimes called the "Father of the U.S...
took command and led the battalion to San Diego, California
San Diego, California
San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round...
. The Mormons left Santa Fe in October 1846. They had to double-team their wagons to get over the Sacramento Mountains in south central New Mexico and lower them by rope down Guadalupe Pass in the northern Sierra Madre
Sierra Madre Occidental
The Sierra Madre Occidental is a mountain range in western Mexico.-Setting:The range runs north to south, from just south of the Sonora–Arizona border southeast through eastern Sonora, western Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Durango, Zacatecas, Nayarit, Jalisco, Aguascalientes to Guanajuato, where it joins...
mountains. Their encounters with the Indians were peaceful but the wild feral bulls (Texas Longhorns) of southeastern Arizona charged their caravan and gorged some of their mules.
Wild bulls were the only antagonists the battalion had to face in the nearly empty southwest deserts. The Mormons were the first representatives of the U.S. government to meet the sparse Mexican population of Arizona who were located only in Tucson and Tubac, Arizona
Tubac, Arizona
Tubac is a census-designated place in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, United States. The population was 949 at the 2000 census. The place name Tubac is an English borrowing from a Hispanicized form of the O'odham name, which translates into English as "rotten". The original O'odham name is written...
. The initial encounter took place at a mescal distillery between the San Pedro and Santa Cruz valleys. There the teetotaling
Teetotalism
Teetotalism refers to either the practice of or the promotion of complete abstinence from alcoholic beverages. A person who practices teetotalism is called a teetotaler or is simply said to be teetotal...
Mormons met a sergeant
Sergeant
Sergeant is a rank used in some form by most militaries, police forces, and other uniformed organizations around the world. Its origins are the Latin serviens, "one who serves", through the French term Sergent....
and several soldiers from the Tucson presidio. The sergeant politely requested that Cooke and his men make a detour around Tucson. Cooke politely declined.
Two days of sparring followed as Tucson's veteran commander, Antonio Camadurán, attempted to persuade the Mormon Battalion
Mormon Battalion
The Mormon Battalion was the only religiously based unit in United States military history, and it served from July 1846 to July 1847 during the Mexican-American War. The battalion was a volunteer unit of between 534 and 559 Latter-day Saints men led by Mormon company officers, commanded by regular...
not to enter the community. When all threats and pleas for an armistice failed, Comadurán withdrew his outnumbered garrison about 10 miles (16.1 km) to Mission San Xavier del Bac
Mission San Xavier del Bac
Mission San Xavier del Bac is a historic Spanish Catholic mission located about 10 miles south of downtown Tucson, Arizona, on the Tohono O'odham San Xavier Indian Reservation...
, Arizona. The result was a peaceful day of trading between the Mormons and the few Mexican inhabitants of Tucson. The battalion lumbered into town on December 17. The Tucson residents offered the soldiers food and water, and the soldiers responded by bartering clothing for the beans and flour they needed.
By the time Cooke and his troops had left the next morning, the only shots that had been fired came from one of the battalion's pickets, who mistook the returning civilians for Mexican soldiers during the night. No one was injured and no one died. Cooke sent a note apologizing to Comodurán for the inconvenience. With it he enclosed a letter to the governor of Sonora
Sonora
Sonora officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 72 municipalities; the capital city is Hermosillo....
Mexico. The letter assured the governor that Cooke had not come "as an enemy of the people whom you represent; they have received only kindness at my hands."
After General Winfield Scott
Winfield Scott
Winfield Scott was a United States Army general, and unsuccessful presidential candidate of the Whig Party in 1852....
seized Mexico City in September 1847 Nicholas Trist
Nicholas Trist
Nicholas Philip Trist was an American diplomat.Trist was born in Charlottesville, Virginia. He attended West Point and studied law under Thomas Jefferson, whose granddaughter he married. He was also private secretary to Andrew Jackson.Through political connections, Trist was appointed U.S...
sat down with the ever changing Mexican authorities and helped to write the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, which Congress ratified the following March. Having no good maps or experience in Arizona the United States Mexican boundary in Arizona was set at the Gila River
Gila River
The Gila River is a tributary of the Colorado River, 650 miles long, in the southwestern states of New Mexico and Arizona.-Description:...
. In return for $18,250,000 in cash payments and claims assumed by the U.S. government, the United States won confirmation of its title to Texas. It also annexed the California territory and New Mexico territory, which included Arizona north of the Gila River. Because Tucson and Tubac are below the Gila river there were no Mexican residents in Arizona when they were annexed, just Indian tribes. The Gadsen Purchase of more land below the Gila River from the ever present Mexican President Santa Anna
Antonio López de Santa Anna
Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón , often known as Santa Anna or López de Santa Anna, known as "the Napoleon of the West," was a Mexican political leader, general, and president who greatly influenced early Mexican and Spanish politics and government...
added these towns to the U.S. territory and added territory easier for building a railroad.
The Gold Rush of 1849
The following year, commerce united people in both countries for a time. The Gold Rush of 1849 ignited the largest mining rush in American history. Since Coronado's expedition, Spaniards had dreamed of Quivara and the Seven Cities of Cíbola, but when gold was found at Sutter's MillSutter's Mill
Sutter's Mill was a sawmill owned by 19th century pioneer John Sutter in partnership with James W. Marshall. It was located in Coloma, California, at the bank of the South Fork American River...
along the American River
American River
The American River is a California watercourse noted as the site of Sutter's Mill, northwest of Placerville, California, where gold was found in 1848, leading to the California Gold Rush...
, Alta California
Alta California
Alta California was a province and territory in the Viceroyalty of New Spain and later a territory and department in independent Mexico. The territory was created in 1769 out of the northern part of the former province of Las Californias, and consisted of the modern American states of California,...
belonged to the United States. The gold rush
Gold rush
A gold rush is a period of feverish migration of workers to an area that has had a dramatic discovery of gold. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, and the United States, while smaller gold rushes took place elsewhere.In the 19th and early...
drew thousands of Americans and Mexicans, leaving many towns in Sonora nearly depopulated. Gold-seekers overwhelmed the little communities of southern Arizona. By the time the rush was over, 50,000 people had gone through the region on their way to the California goldfields.
The Gila Trail leading to the California mines crossed the Sierra Madre at Guadalupe Pass and swung down the Santa Cruz Valley through Tumacacori, Tubac, and Tucson. From there it followed Cooke's wagon road north to the Pima villages and west to the junction of the Gila and Colorado. Ninety-two miles of the trail were without water, and another was across the Mojave Desert
Mojave Desert
The Mojave Desert occupies a significant portion of southeastern California and smaller parts of central California, southern Nevada, southwestern Utah and northwestern Arizona, in the United States...
west of the Colorado. As perilous as it was, however, the Gila Trail became the main path connecting Arizona to the United States.
Miners also provided valuable information about Arizona's Native Americans. Though they were impressed with the Gila Pimas, who gave them wheat and corn, they viewed the Quechans of the Colorado River with suspicion. Apaches left the Anglo Americans alone, viewing them as potential allies in their continuous war against the Mexicans. After one inconsequential skirmish near Guadalupe Pass, the Chiricahua war chief Mangas Coloradas even told a group of Americans that he loved them.
Despite their hatred of Mexicans, the Apaches depended upon Mexican livestock for food and to see them through hard times. At about 9:00 A.M.
12-hour clock
The 12-hour clock is a time conversion convention in which the 24 hours of the day are divided into two periods called ante meridiem and post meridiem...
of December 16, 1850, a large number of Apaches, perhaps as many as 361, came out of the Catalina Mountains and caught Tucson by surprise. The Tucsonenses fled to the presidio or to the large adobe
Adobe
Adobe is a natural building material made from sand, clay, water, and some kind of fibrous or organic material , which the builders shape into bricks using frames and dry in the sun. Adobe buildings are similar to cob and mudbrick buildings. Adobe structures are extremely durable, and account for...
convent on the west bank of the Santa Cruz River. The Apaches rounded up their animals, killed four of their neighbors, and took two Mexican boys and Apache Manson women captive. Suddenly afterward the Apaches offered to make peace. A treaty might have been secured if the O'odham had not ridden in from San Xavier and descended upon the Apaches, driving them away. Apaches often made truces with one Mexican community in order to raid another, and livestock stolen in Sonora was often bartered in Chihuahua and New Mexico.
A cholera
Cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...
epidemic broke out in 1851. The establishment of "military colonies" in Tucson and Tubac by Americans aggravated the situation of Anglo American invasion. To prevent the loss of any more territory, the Mexican government decided to grant each recruit a plot of land in return for a six-year tour of duty. In Tucson, military officials confiscated land already being cultivated by civilians or retired presidio soldiers, turning farmers against the soldiers who were supposed to protect them.
The Gadsden Purchase
Franklin Pierce
Franklin Pierce was the 14th President of the United States and is the only President from New Hampshire. Pierce was a Democrat and a "doughface" who served in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. Pierce took part in the Mexican-American War and became a brigadier general in the Army...
dispatched James Gadsden
James Gadsden
James Gadsden was an American diplomat, soldier and businessman and namesake of the Gadsden Purchase, in which the United States purchased from Mexico the land that became the southern portion of Arizona and New Mexico. James Gadsden served as Adjutant General of the U. S...
, a railroad speculator from North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
, to present Mexican president Santa Anna
Antonio López de Santa Anna
Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón , often known as Santa Anna or López de Santa Anna, known as "the Napoleon of the West," was a Mexican political leader, general, and president who greatly influenced early Mexican and Spanish politics and government...
with five different plans to purchase more of northern Mexico. The most ambitious offered $50 million for Baja California and much of Sonora, Chihuahua, and Coahuila. The least extensive sought Arizona south of the Gila River and the Mesilla Valley of New Mexico. That was the one Santa Anna accepted. In return for $10,000,000, the United States received nearly 30000 square miles (77,699.6 km²) of deserts and mountains. With it came Tucson, Tubac, and Tumacacori.
When the House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
ratified the Gadsden Purchase
Gadsden Purchase
The Gadsden Purchase is a region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico that was purchased by the United States in a treaty signed by James Gadsden, the American ambassador to Mexico at the time, on December 30, 1853. It was then ratified, with changes, by the U.S...
on June 29, 1854, Mexican Arizona became a part of the United States. Most inhabitants of the region welcomed the change. Mexican Arizona fell under U.S. law, and presumably, U.S. protection. There were possibilities of new markets for beef and flour, and of the Apaches finally being kept at bay. Mexican troops remained in Tucson until March 1856, but when they headed south, only a few civilians went with them. U.S. troops rode into southern Arizona in late 1856 to take possession of the region
Region
Region is most commonly found as a term used in terrestrial and astrophysics sciences also an area, notably among the different sub-disciplines of geography, studied by regional geographers. Regions consist of subregions that contain clusters of like areas that are distinctive by their uniformity...
, and Mexican as well as Anglo immigrants began to trickle into the area.