Camp Grant massacre
32°50′54″N 110°42′17″W / 32.848305°N 110.704654°W
Camp Grant Massacre | |
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Camp Grant, Arizona Territory | |
Date | April 30, 1871 |
Attack type | Mass murder |
Deaths | 144 |
Perpetrator | O'odham warriors, Mexican and American civilians |
The Camp Grant massacre, on April 30, 1871, was an attack on Pinal and
Background
This section needs additional citations for verification. (April 2012) |
Some historians feel the reduction of Indian hostilities in the region had triggered fears of economic crisis in Tucson, since the Federal government was reducing funds for pacifying and controlling hostile tribes, mostly Apaches. Merchants who survived on the "blankets for peace" economy, were afraid their source of income would soon be lost. In early 1871, to bolster public support for increased hostilities and increased federal funding of "gifts" to the Apaches, several Arizonans allegedly staged mock raids on isolated settlements. One of these settlements was in Aravaipa Canyon.
Indian affairs in early 1870s Arizona lurched back and forth between peace and war. Each new round of hostilities brought increasing conflict between the
A major problem faced by Arizona's military was they had too few soldiers for too vast an area of land. Most chronicles of the time regarded Apaches as the biggest menace, but Yuman-speaking Yavapais, who were often identified as Apache Mohaves or Apache Yumas, killed and mutilated settlers just as often. Divided into four subtribes, the Tolkapaya, or Western Yavapais, the Yavepe and the Wipukpaya or Northeastern Yavapais and the Kewevkapaya or Southeastern Yavapais, the Yavapais ranged from the Colorado River to the Tonto Basin. Like the Apaches, they were mobile and extremely independent, their only political authorities being war chiefs and advisory chiefs selected by local groups. This made it extremely difficult for the United States Army to run down or negotiate with more than one Yavapai group at a time. Troops had to pursue the Yavapais across rough desert terrain. Many of the soldiers deserted, fleeing places like Camp Grant, a sun-scorched collection of adobe buildings.
Camp Grant
Early in 1871, a 37-year-old
Whitman may have suspected that peace could not last. He urged Eskiminzin to move his people to the White Mountains near
Massacre
On the afternoon of April 28, six
Aftermath
Lieutenant Whitman searched for the wounded, found only one woman, buried the bodies, and dispatched
Within a week of the slaughter, a local businessman, William Hopkins Tonge, wrote to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs stating, "The Indians at the time of the massacre being so taken by surprise and considering themselves perfectly safe with scarcely any arms, those that could get away ran for the mountains."[3] He was the first person to refer to what had taken place as a massacre.
The military and the
Site of Camp Grant and the massacre
The massacre occurred in the vicinity of Camp Grant. In 1871, its location was on an upper terrace on the east bank of the San Pedro River, just north of the junction with Aravaipa Creek. The camp was in the vicinity of 32°50'51.22"N, 110°42'11.91"W. The Camp Grant site was near the present Aravaipa Campus of Central Arizona Community College, which is located between the towns of Mammoth and Winkelman on Arizona State Route 77. Few remains of the site are visible.[4]
Current authorities place the massacre site south of the Aravaipa Creek and about five miles upstream from Camp Grant.[5] No marker is at the site of the massacre, and the location is only generally known.[6]
In 2021, descendants of those massacred opposed the siting of a massive copper mine at Oak Flat, proximate to the massacre site.[7]
Sources
- Leighton, David. 2013. "Street Smarts: Adventurous life led Oury here, "Arizona Daily Star, July 23, 2013 Street Smarts: Adventurous life led Oury here
- Jacoby, Karl; Patricia Nelson Limerick (2009). Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History. Penguin Group. ISBN 978-0143116219.
- Norman Boucher (October 2009). "Historian of Memory". Brown Alumni Magazine. Retrieved 2009-10-22.
- Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Chip. 2007. Massacre at Camp Grant: Forgetting and Remembering Apache History. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
- Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Chip. 2003. The Camp Grant Massacre in the Historical Imagination. Journal of the Southwest 45(3):249–69.
- Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Chip. 2003. Western Apache Oral Histories and Traditions of the Camp Grant Massacre. American Indian Quarterly 27(3&4):639–66.
- Hammond, George P. 1929. The Camp Grant Massacre: A Chapter in Apache History. Berkeley: Proceedings of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association.
- Hastings, James E. 1959. The Tragedy at Camp Grant in 1871. Arizona and the West1(2):146–60
- Langellier, J. Phillip. 1979. Camp Grant Affair, 1871: Milestone in Federal Indian Policy? Military History of Texas and the Southwest 15(2):17–30.
- Beal, Tom. 2009. "Curing 'amnesia' about state's most blood-soaked day", Arizona Daily Star, May 3, 2009 Curing 'amnesia' about state's most blood-soaked day
See also
- List of massacres in Arizona
- Camp Grant, Arizona
References
![]() | This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (February 2008) |
- ^ a b "On that Sunday morning, 128 people, mostly women, were murdered between seven and eight o'clock. Just one adult survived—a woman who was permanently paralyzed by bullets—and the only others were 28 babies in their papooses, who were taken to Tucson to be sold as slaves to other Indian tribes. The vigilantes, led by William Oury, a fifty-four-year-old Virginian, justified their actions by saying they had taken revenge for the murder of several pioneers, who had found gold and other valuable minerals in the hills of Arizona, and had therefore decided that the Apache land should be theirs. "Through the greater part of the year 1870, and the first part of 1871, these Indians had held a carnival of murder and plunder in all our settlements until our people had been appalled and almost paralyzed," Oury said in a presentation he made to the Arizona Pioneers' Society in 1885." Finlay, Victoria. Jewels: A Secret History (Kindle Locations 2575–79). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
- ^ Phil Konstantin, "This day in North American Indian history", p. 107
- ^ Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Chip. Western Apache Oral Histories and Traditions of the Camp Grant Massacre. The American Indian Quarterly – Volume 27, Number 3&4, Summer/Fall 2003, pp. 639–66.
- ^ "Arizona's Camp Grant Massacre". Desert USA. Retrieved 25 February 2012.
- ^ Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Chip. "Western Apache Oral Histories and Traditions of the Camp Grant Massacre". American Indian Quarterly, Summer & Fall 2003, Vol. 27, nos. 3 & 4, photo at 640, map at 641. Archived from the original on 9 June 2015. Retrieved 25 February 2012.
- ^ Cottrell, Janice (June 6, 2009). "Camp Grant". American Pioneer & Cemetery Research Project. Neal Du Shane.
- ^ Why the Camp Grant Massacre Matters Today, Sapiens, Chip Colwell, April 30, 2021. Retrieved May 4, 2021.