Like Solomon Warner, Richard Ewell was the grandson of a Revolutionary War veteran. His maternal grandfather, Benjamin Stoddert, had served as a cavalry major in the Continental Army, and after suffering a serious wound in the 1777 battle of Brandywine … Read More
If the Americans had better understood the impact depredations had made on generations of Hispanics on the Santa Cruz, they might have better appreciated how fortunate they had been since their arrival. With only small, ad hoc militias for defense, … Read More
The first westbound Butterfield Overland Mail coach arrived in Tucson at 8:30 in the evening on October 2, 1858, discharged a reporter for the New York Herald in front of the home of the widow Guadalupe Santa Cruz, and — … Read More
If Apache assaults and empty larders weren’t trial enough for struggling settlers like Solomon Warner, the Akes, and Elias Pennington’s brood in 1858, developments a thousand miles away in San Francisco had begun to affect public safety in the Gadsden … Read More
Army troops in the Gila Campaign killed forty Apache men and a woman, took twenty-six women and children prisoner, and seized a hundred horses in the Safford Basin. Other troops killed the Coyotero who murdered Navajo Agent H. L. Dodge, … Read More
Abandoning his search for pack stock and hardware at the end of March 1856, Solomon Warner left Rodolfo Spense in charge of his Tucson store, hired a man named Fox, and joined a Rio Grande emigrant train bound for California … Read More
When Solomon Warner and Rodolfo Spense’s freight train reached Tucson from Yuma on the first of March 1856, they found a handful of Mexican dragoons still garrisoned at the presidio, their departure just days away. Rather an adventurer, stone mason … Read More
Initially, most Apaches welcomed the Americans to the Pimería Alta, as victors in the Mexican-American War. They seemed pleased to meet these warriors who had sailed and marched all the way to Mexico City to defeat their longtime enemy in … Read More
In the middle of the nineteenth century, travelers completing the rugged jornada north of Tucson were often surprised to find a city scattered for twenty miles along the banks of the Gila River, above its junction with the Salt and … Read More