My Comanche Grandfather and the Apaches

There were several different bands of Apache:  the Mescalero, the Western Apache, and the Chiricahua.  The Chiricahua was split into several tribes: The Warm Springs Chiricahua (Chihene), the Western (Bedonkohe), the Central Chokonei), and the Southern (Nednai).  All of these were loosely allied and wore similar clothing.  Buckskin was the traditional clothing along with calf-high moccasins.

These would protect against the sharp thorns of cactus and Devil's Claw - they're also beautiful!

Only adults wore these.  In fact, children wore nothing unless the weather turned bad.

In a single day, Apache could travel farther and faster than any other Native American.  Walking was their life because they weren't farmers and so had to continually move to find food. 

They spoke Athapaskan which is the language spoken by Native Americans of northwestern Canada and Alaska.  That's kinda odd, because, if you trace the Apache's migration you find them coming from the Great Plains region, forced from there by Comanche Indians.


Because they migrated to the region of the continent that they did, they are said to be the first to discover the horses left behind by the earliest of Spanish explorers.  They grew to be phenomenal horsemen. 

My grandfather (1891 - 1972), born in Chillicothe, Texas, was part Comanche.  Chillicothe is just about 18 miles from Quanah - named after the Comanche, Quanah Parker.  Just like Cochise had his stronghold in the Dragoon Mountains, Quanah had his home in the Medicine Mounds between Chillicothe and Quanah.

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Back to ol' Ed Schieffelin

Schieffelin's 1860 .44 caliber Henry rifle and other personal belongings of Schieffelin's

Most of America's miners during the 1800's came here from Wales and other coal-producing countries.  They brought the most up-to-date mining technology, and they came to partake of the freedoms America had to offer.  They were hard men, as I've said, and their women or families may or may not have immigrated with them.

In 1847, Schieffelin was born in America's number one coal mining state of Pennsylvania (until itty-bitty West Virginia surpassed it in 1930.)  In the mid-1850's Schieffelin was with his father and brothers in Oregon where they tried their hand at raising cattle and grain, but kept some interests in mining activities, too.

In 1865, at the ripe old age of 17, Ed set out on his own to do a little prospecting.  He didn't go south; first he went east to Coeur d'Alene, then dropped into Nevada and Death Valley, back into Colorado and then further east into New Mexico.

You have to remember that there were no convenience stores every few miles - or even every few thousand miles.  By the time he caught up with civilization in 1876, one David P. Lansing of Phoenix, Arizona described Schieffelin as "about the strangest specimen of human flesh I ever saw. He was 6 feet 2 inches tall and had black hair that hung several inches below his shoulder and a beard that had not been trimmed or combed for so long a time that it was a mass of unkempt knots and mats. He wore clothing pieced and patched from deerskins, corduroy and flannel, and his hat was originally a slouch hat that had been pieced with rabbit skin until very little of the original felt remained."  Now THAT would have been a sight to see!  Wish I had a picture of that!  Who's an artist?  Wanna draw that sight up and send it to me??

He is obviously headed west by then, and he kept going until he reached California, still looking for gold, always looking for minerals just layin' there for the pickin.'  But he's been lookin' for twenty-two years!!  Judging by that sighting in Phoenix, I'm thinkin' he wasn't findin' a whole lot.

I guess that's why he was willing to go down into Tombstone territory and possibly suffer the slings and arrows of the Apache nation.  What did he have to lose?  And so he did, and he struck it rich three separate times there!

Perseverance.  I always thought I had a lot of perseverance - but twenty plus years of it?  Mercy, I don't know if I've persevered at anything except marriage and rearing children for that long!  (Did you know children are "reared" and animals are "raised?"  I tossed that one in there for free :)  No, folks, not very many people strike it rich overnight, and those that do usually haven't a clue how to handle the money and so squander it.  Rich isn't for everyone - but I'd like to give it a try just once...

Schieffelin died in Oregon in 1897 and requested:  It is my wish, if convenient, to be buried in the dress of a prospector, my old pick and canteen with me, on top of the granite hills about three miles westerly from the city of Tombstone, Arizona, and that a monument such as prospectors build when locating a mining claim be built over my grave ... under no circumstances do I want to be buried in a graveyard or cemetery."

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Accessing Our Blog

If you like our blog, TheTravelersTwo, you can "subscribe" for free by clicking on the "broadcast" icon at the top right corner or by bringing out the right hand toolbar and clicking on that icon at the bottom of the list.  It will put that icon on your toolbar at the top of your browser screen and whenever you click on that icon it will take you directly to the most recent blog post.  I try to post every day. 

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Geronimo and the Presidents Bush

According to Wikipedia - and you all know how much we love and trust Wikipedia - according to Wikipedia, the super secret Yale University society, Skull and Bones, may have done some serious grave robbing in 1918 and stolen the skull and some of the bones of Geronimo.  Those doing the alleged stealing included one Prescott Bush, grandfather and great-grandfather to the Presidents Bush.

Seems back during World War I, young Prescott was serving as an Army volunteer at Fort Sill, Oklahoma along with five members of their Yale Skull and Bones Club.  I'm certain that if the story is true, those frisky young men thought it would be cool to "acquire" some actual bones for the Club's "tomb."  Supposedly they also got Geronimo's silver bridle, saddle horn and bit.

This is very serious business to the Apaches because of their tribal traditions.  Traditions aside,
how would you feel if your father's grave had been robbed and his bones secreted away?

First, Geronimo's grave was not even marked back in 1918, so how did they even find the grave?
Second, no one knew about the theft until 1986 when an anonymous envelope containing a log book, photos, and a letter of explanation showed up at the San Carlos Reservation.  Would you be surprised to know that the Skull and Bones attorney claimed that the 1918 log book was a hoax?  (Why would a college club need an attorney???) 

Wikipedia  goes on to say: Then, in 2006, Marc Wortman discovered a 1918 letter from Skull & Bones member Winter Mead to F. Trubee Davison that claimed the theft:

The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club... is now safe inside the tomb and bone together with his well worn femurs, bit and saddle horn.

This generated a letter being sent to George W. Bush requesting his attention to resolving the question of his grandfather's alleged theft.  Apparently there was no resolution because in 2009, a lawsuit was filed on behalf of Geronimo's descendants naming Skull and Bones, Robert Gates (U.S. Secretary of Defense) and Barack Obama, asking for the return of Geronimo's bones.

Up jumps The New York Times with an article saying the attorney "acknowledged that he had no hard proof that the story was true."  The Bush family also says there is no truth to the story.  But now you, at least, have the information in that vault of your memory, and if the subject comes up at your next family gathering you can share your latest and greatest info :)

Geronimo!

Geronimo married Cochise's daughter,  Dos-teh-seh, after his first wife, the love of his life, was murdered by the Mexicans.  (In all, Geronimo had nine wives, a number befitting a warrior of his fame.)

Born in what is now New Mexico in 1829 of the Bedonkohe band of Chiricahua Apaches, Geronimo was first known as Goyathlay, meaning "yawns a lot."  That might have described him as a baby, and even up to the murder of his mother, wife and three children, but soon after that he became known as Geronimo.

Where was Geronimo when his camp was being overrun and his family killed?  Well, there are two sides to every coin.  Geronimo was out raiding a Mexican town (some say trading...) 

After the murder of Geronimo's family, Geronimo went into the wilderness to grieve.  While there he heard a voice say, "No gun will ever kill you. I will take the bullets from the guns of the Mexicans … and I will guide your arrows." That's pretty powerful!


What does the name Geronimo mean?  One can only guess.  It's a handle that was given to him after a particularly bloody encounter with the Mexicans.  Seems the Mexicans were screaming something that sounded like "Geronimo" to everyone that heard it - but no one has yet to figure out what it means!  Some think maybe the Mexicans were shouting desperately for Saint Jerome to save them, crying "Jeronimo."  (That might be true, because Saint Jerome is remembered in the Catholic faith as having a very bad temper!)  That's plausible to me.  Some say the Mexicans were simply mispronouncing the Indian's given name, Goyathlay.  Some say there was a play back in Spain that was popular at the time, and the story resembled Geronimo's.  The name of the play's main character?  Geronimo.  Regardless, "Geronimo" is the name the world knows him by now.

Geronimo had a murderous hate for the Mexicans after the death of his first wife, but he was okay with Americans - in the beginning.  Of the first white men that he encountered he thought they were nothing like the rapacious Mexicans.  His father-in-law, Cochise, had negotiated a deal that would allow the Americans to ship mail and goods across their lands and for Americans in general to traverse the Apache lands unmolested.  Geronimo was okay with that.  But eventually the depravity of mankind showed itself thanks to the California gold rush miners of 1849.

Miners were hard men.  The miners who came west were hard men who knew no social boundaries and knew that there was no lawmen to prevent them from "entertaining" themselves or perpetrating horrors on whomever they pleased.  The Apache they considered an enemy, and the miners would poison their watering holes, kill the men and do unspeakable things (I mean really, really awful things that I can't even type into the blog!!) with the Apache women and children.  The Apache had a social structure that valued women and children; the miners had zero restraints on their behavior.

Geronimo was never made a chief.  He was always too angry, too impetuous - he was smart, but he lacked wisdom.  Two years after Cochise made peace with the Americans and agreed to settle on a reservation, Cochise died and there was no one to keep Geronimo in check.  But there also was no one to keep the Army in check either.  On instructions from Washington, D.C., the Reservation Cochise had negotiated for was closed, and the Apache were forced to move to a mosquito invested piece of trash land.  The land was so worthless they couldn't even begin to grow a crop - though the Apache were never farmers to begin with.

Geronimo left the reservation with a band of warriors and began raiding down into Mexico for things that they wanted or needed.  Their attacks weren't for land acquisition or retaliation.  Raiding was the Apache way of life, a way to get the things they needed, and if the other guy wasn't man enough to protect his own stuff, well, he didn't deserve to keep it anyway. 

Geronimo didn't care that the sheer number of Americans dwarfed the whole Apache tribe.  (There's that lack of wisdom again.)  Geronimo felt that as long as they had their secret stronghold in the Dragoon Mountains they would always be free to live the old ways.

Slowly but surely, as braves were killed during raids or skirmishes with the cavalry, Geronimo's band of warriors was growing smaller and smaller.  He knew he had to increase his numbers, and it dawned on him that he could simply go to the reservation and force all Apaches to join him in the stronghold or be killed on the spot.  In essence, he kidnapped his tribe back!  Not all of them were happy about the deal.  They were tired of running and being chased and losing loved ones to the battle.  Most just wanted to be left alone.

One Indian, not an Apache but someone that was swept up in Geronimo's wholesale kidnapping scheme, chose to sneak away and go back "home"  to the reservation.  When he got there, General Crook realized that he now had someone who could guide the Army back to the Stronghold.  At that, as they say, was that.

In 1886, Geronimo was off raiding in Mexico when he had a vision that the Stronghold was being overtaken.  He immediately headed back, and sure enough, Crook was waiting for him.  Geronimo was the very last Native American of any tribe to stop fighting against the spread of white settlers.


Over the next several years Geronimo and his last band of raiding warriors were bounced around, first to a prison in Florida, then a prison camp in Alabama, and then Fort Sill in Oklahoma. In total, the group spent 27 years as prisoners of war.  (I wonder what happened to those awful miners ???)

In 1905, at the age of 76, Geronimo was still trying to petition for his peoples return to the Dragoon Mountains, and he received a private audience with President Theodore Roosevelt.  He published an autobiography in 1905, too.  (How many Native Americans did that?  Actually, the first autobiography was published in 1829, A Son of the Forest, The Experiences of William Apes, A Native of the Forest Written by Himself.  Apes was a Pequot Indian born in 1797 in what is now Connecticut.)

True to the vision he had received as a young man, Geronimo did not die in battle.  In February, 1909, as he was traveling home one evening, his horse threw him and, after lying on the cold ground all night, he was found by a friend.  Six days later he passed on, but with his dying words you could tell he had never really stopped wanting revenge:  "I should never have surrendered," Geronimo, still a prisoner of war, said on his deathbed. "I should have fought until I was the last man alive."


Geronimo was a warrior's warrior, but he was a man driven more by revenge than principle.  I admire Cochise much, much more.

Geronimo was buried at Fort Sill, Oklahoma in the Apache Indian Prisoner of War Cemetery.  But that's not the end of the story....

Cochise, Chief of the Chiricahua Apache

Cochise, a major Chiricahua Apache chief, died in 1874.  No one knows in what year he was born, but it could have been as early as 1799.  In his own language, his name "Cheis" meant "having the quality or strength of oak."   I had always understood Apaches to be short in stature, but Cochise is reported to have been 6' and almost 200 pounds - no small man!  They also said he had "chiseled" features though there apparently are no photographs of him.

Cochise led his branch of the Apache tribe, the Chiricahua, in raids against the encroaching Mexican settlers.  Twas nothing new - the Apaches had been resisting the Spanish/Mexicans since the 1600's.  Back in Spain someone came up with the bright idea of giving them garbage firearms and all the liquor they could drink to ultimately make them dependent on the Spanish government for their next "fix."  (I think Ancient Rome catered to the baser desires of its citizens to keep their focus off of politics, too.)  This "Galvez Peace Policy" worked pretty good for Spain.  But once Mexico won its independence from Spain, the Policy was dropped (for whatever reasons), and the Apache went back to raiding.  Cochise's father was killed during these interactions, and Cochise himself was captured in 1848 by the Mexicans, but they traded him back to the tribe for a dozen or so Mexican prisoners.

After the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), when the United States took over control of the New Mexico-Arizona Territory, the Apaches settled down and got along pretty good with the white man.  Apaches were even known to supply stage stops with firewood!

Occasionally frisky warriors would raid settlers for cattle or other things, but raiding turned to out-'n-out war for Cochise when, in 1861, he was personally accused of raiding a homestead and kidnapping a young white boy, Felix Tellez.  Lieutenant George Bascom tricked Cochise into joining him at a stage stop one evening and arrested him with the intent of holding him in custody until the truth could be discovered.  Cochise didn't appreciate this "handling" and cut his way out of the backside of the tent that he was being held in.  It wasn't a planned escape, so it not only took Bascom by surprise, but it also caught Cochise's family by surprise.  Bascom detained the family members left behind and so - tit for tat - Cochise captured some white folks.  When negotiations broke down, both sides killed their hostages, including Bascom's killing Cochise's brother and two of his nephews.  Not good! and Cochise went to warring bigtime.

Just two years later, Cochise lost his father-in-law, Mangas Coloradas, when the cavalry tricked Mangas into coming to a peace parley, took him prisoner and then murdered him.  (Not cool to mess with your wife's daddy!!)

Mangas Coloradas WAS born in the 1700's (1793 to be exact.)  He hated the Spanish/Mexicans for atrocities committed against his Membreno branch of the Apaches of southwest New Mexico, so during the Mexican-American War he offered to help the Americans.  Later, a bunch of miners got ahold of Mangas Coloradas in one of the mining camps and whipped him.  From that point forward he joined his son-in-law, Cochise, in the war against ANY foreign settlement of Apache lands.

Thousands of lives later (well, some texts say hundreds - others say as many as 5,000, so I'm thinkin' "thousands" is a pretty good compromise number...), and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of property damage, the U.S. government decided to sue for peace in 1872.  By then, most of southeast Arizona had been wiped clean of Mexican AND American settlements by Apache raiders.  Setting aside land - a huge section of land - in the beautiful and cool southeastern corner of the Arizona Territory (where Tombstone sits) allowed Cochise to agree, saying,"The white man and the Indian are to drink of the same water, eat of the same bread, and be at peace."

When Cochise died of natural causes two years later, his warriors took his body into the Dragoon Mountains east of Tombstone and lowered him and his needs for the happy hunting ground into a crevice in the rocks.  Cochise's family and one white man, Tom Jeffers, the only white man Cochise ever befriend and never lost trust in, were the only ones to know the location - and the intel died with them.  No one has ever divulged the exact location, but the area is still known as Cochise's Stronghold.

Remember the boy Cochise was accused of kidnapping?  Ten years passed and Felix Tellez turned up as a Cavalry scout.  He swears Cochise's Chiricahua Apaches were NOT the ones to have kidnapped him lo those many years ago.  Had Lt. Bascom simply treated Cochise with respect things might have turned out a bit better, eh?

Cochise's son, Taza, succeeded him as tribal chief, went to Washington, D.C. to represent the Apaches and died of pneumonia while there.  What do you do with a body in the late 1800's?  How do you get it back to Arizona?  You don't.  Taza is buried in Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.  There was a movie made in 1954, "Taza, Son of Cochise," starring Rock Hudson.  (Who knew???)

There was also a TV series called "Broken Arrow" depicting the relationship between Cochise and Tom Jeffers that produced 72 episodes from 1956 to 1958.  Michael Ansar played Cochise and he was perfect for the part.  It was excellent show!!

Cochise's other descendants are said to currently reside at the Mescalero Apache Reservation, near Ruidoso, New Mexico.

Cochise County Courthouse, Tombstone, Arizona

It's a mighty fine building, but as the courtyard to the right was where the hangings took place, mmmm, not my favorite place in town!  Pretty sharp lookin' for 1882, eh? It's a State Historic Park and Museum now since the County Seat was moved in 1929 to Bisbee.  (Who ever heard of Bisbee, Arizona??)

Settlers from the United States began showing up in Tombstone about 1848, and they were lookin' for gold - or silver, or any other mineral they could "spend."  The Indians weren't too worried about a bunch of men who spent all of their time burrowing into the ground and from a nation which had just finished fighting a war with their enemies the Mexicans.  (Mexican American War of 1846-1848)

In 1863, Arizona was carved out of the New Mexico Territory and became a Territory unto itself.

Soon enough, names like Cochise and Geronimo and Cochise's son, Natchez, and  Mangas Coloradas became familiar to Americans and the Battle of Apache Pass in 1862 made headlines across the continent.

By 1864, a census showed 4,575 non-Indians were permanent residents of Arizona - not hardly enough to worry the Indians about, except that they were petitioning the U.S. military all the time for protection.

By 1872, relative peace had been accomplished and the Chiricahua Apache Reservation had been established which encompassed the Dragoon and Chiricahua Mountains and the Sulpher Springs and San Simon Valleys.  But twas not to last....

In 1876 that Reservation was closed and the Apaches were moved by the Army to the San Carlos Reservation (commonly referred to as "Hell's Forty Acres") which had also been created in 1872.

Two years later, Ed Schieffelin discovered a silver lode and the boom was on.  Tombstone was founded in 1879 and became the county seat when Cochise County was created in 1881.

(All those dates.  How boring.  However, I'm always curious as to how long it took for this or that:  10 years here, 2 years there, 40 years overall.  It just kinda puts things into context for me.  If I don't give you the dates, and you're curious like me, how will you know??)

Ol' Ed Schieffelin

The Lucky Cuss, the Tough Nut and the Contention - all were finds discovered, claimed and worked by Ed Schieffelin, his brother, Al, and a miner friend of theirs, Dick Gird.  Ed came out of California intent on prospecting the Grand Canyon and, finding it an unlikely source, picked up a grubstake and lit out for one of the most dangerous, unwelcoming places in the west: southern Arizona Territory.  If the snakes didn't get ya' the Apaches probably would - and I'd rather die of snake bite!  One guy chided him, saying, "The only thing you'll find down there is your tombstone."  He didn't find it, though, he founded it.




What you need to know, what drew Wyatt Earp and made Doc Holliday and Big Nose Kate join Wyatt, is that Tombstone in 1880 - due to it's miners wealth - was the most cultivated city west of the Mississippi and bigger even than San Francisco!  Tombstone even had an exceptional opera house where none other than Lily Langtry and (surprise!)  Eddie Foy performed.

Ol' Ed has been inducted into the Mining Hall of Fame for his discoveries.  Even after selling his claims for $600,000 to a Philadelphia syndicate he never quit mining.  Ol' Ed died in Oregon in 1897  - workin' a couple of his claims.

Last Hanging at the Tombstone Courthouse

On July 28, 1900 the Sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona posted notice of the last hanging in Tombstone.

The two young men being hanged were Texans.  They had been convicted of cattle rustling, of course, but they were also thought to be cold-blooded killers of two local lawmen in April of 1899.  All their Texas kin thought they had been judged unfairly on the murders.  The governor of Texas even pleaded to have their sentences commuted, but to no avail. The Texas family even traveled to Washington, D.C. to petition President McKinley. Nonetheless, the brothers William and Tom Halderman "swung to eternity," as one witness said.



So, what's the backstory?  Unrequited love, of course.  Seems one of the lawmen was in love with one of the girls the Halderman brothers were sharing breakfast with when the sheriff and deputy came to arrest them for rustlin'.  Seems the deputy shot first.  The boys actually believed the sheriff was killed by a bullet from the deputy's gun!  The Halderman brothers so strongly believed themselves innocent of the murders that they refused to participate in a jailbreak that took place before their trial. 

It's said that the girl's daddy made the girls lie during their testimony, believing Tombstone neighbors would seek retribution if the Halderman's were set free.  Seein' as how one of those girls later committed suicide and the other spent the rest of her life in an asylum for the insane, maybe they were forced to lie.

Regardless, the Texans went home without their sons, and to this day those boys have eternal residence in Tombstone's famous Boothill Cemetery.

Granpa's great uncle Henry was the sheriff of Palestine, Texas.  He was there for the last hanging.  Seems a railroad crew came to town, and there was a rape.  Uncle Henry chased the guy all the way to Huntsville, brought him back to Palestine, a trial was held and justice duly followed.  There's pictures of the actual hanging at the old high school museum in Palestine.

Big Nose Kate's Saloon

Originally the Grand Hotel, it devolved after burning down several times, and is now just Big Nose Kate's - and it's where Ike Clanton and the McLowery's (Wyatt Earp's nemesis at the OK Corral) spent their last night on this earth.

Built from wooden timbers and adobe in 1880, the Grand had all the upscale trimmings you might find in Tucson or Flagstaff or Phoenix:  carpets from Brussels, France, black walnut baluster rail, walnut furniture, rare oil paintings...  Cowboys, being the transient souls that they were, called this place home when visiting the Tombstone area.  After nights on the hard, snake and scorpion covered hills of Arizona you can imagine that this was heaven on earth to them.

Now, Kate's story is an amazing one.  She was born in Pest (Budapest), Hungary in November of 1850.  She was the daughter of a doctor, Michael Haroney, and his second wife, Katarina Baldizar, and was the oldest of the seven children.  Unfortunately both her father and mother died when she was just 14, and the children were placed in foster homes.

Before her parents passed away, Dr. Haroney, in 1862, became the personal physician of Maximillian, the French-controlled Mexican emperor.  By this time Kate had accomplished an education expected of someone with her families influence, and she could speak Hungarian, French, Spanish and English fluently.  One might expect great things from this young lady.  (I had a girlfriend in high school who's parents were from Czechoslovakia and Germany.  She was fluent in those languages AND French, Spanish, Latin and English.  She was a straight "A" student and we expected she would end up as a translator at the United Nations.  Last I heard she was a bar maid in Las Vegas.  Stories aren't that far apart, eh?)

With the death of her parents, however, Kate began to fend for herself rather than languish in foster care.  She stowed away on a steamship bound for St. Louis, Missouri in 1867.  She enrolled herself in a convent school in St. Louis, and a year later she married and had a child.  Tragedy strikes Big Nose Kate again when both husband and child die.

By 1874 Kate has found her connection to history by working as a prostitute in a "sporting house" owned by Wyatt Earp's brother's wife, Nellie "Bessie" Earp, in Wichita, Kansas.  From there it was to Fort Griffin in Texas where she met up with the true love of her life, "Doc" Holliday.  Ol' Doc got cross-wise with the law there in Fort Griffin and, after allegedly burning down a hotel as a distraction to break Doc out of jail, the two of them lit out for Dodge City back in Kansas where they met up with Wyatt.

Staying for a couple of months in the Dodge House Hotel on Front Street, Doc's major source of income was from faro and poker games, though he did ply his trade as a dentist from time to time.  Hearing amazing stories of opportunity from their friend Wyatt Earp, they moved onto the now booming town of Tombstone in the Arizona Territory.  (Arizona didn't become a state until 1912.)

It was there, in 1881, that the gunfight at the OK Corral took place.  In later years, Kate was able to get her rememberances of that historic event down on paper, and they are now part of the legend.

After the shoot out and manhunt that followed, she went with Doc to Glenwood, Colorado where he died of "consumption."  We now know it was tuberculosis, a very common ailment back then.  (Interestingly enough, tuberculosis is becoming a problem again today as more foreigners who've never been vaccinated move to America and spread the disease here again.  Hospitals are VERY adamant about Granpa staying up to date on his TB shots before starting a single day at work.)

But Kate's life doesn't end there.  She marries again, he dies of alcoholism, she moves back to Arizona, works as a housekeeper, and at the age of 80 becomes one of the first women allowed in the Arizona Pioneer's Home in Prescott.  There she becomes a patient's advocate and ministers to her fellow residents, too.  Big Nose Kate dies at the age of 90 in November of 1940, just before World War II.  What an amazing span of life!  From before the Civil War to just before World War II!

Somewhere along the way she took up the name Kate Elder - and, yes, the 1965 John Wayne movie, "The Sons of Katie Elder," took its name from her.  Kate was, in fact, like the mother in that movie, extremely well liked by everyone in the community, who were all aware of her honesty and her poverty and her capacity for love and compassion.

Big Nose Kate's Saloon?  Well, there's never any evidence that she owned it or actually worked as a "soiled dove" while in Tombstone.  Sure sounds good on the marquee though, huh?

Prostitution was legal in Tombstone and, believe it or not, the city turned over the money collected for the licenses to prostitute to become the sole source of financial support for Tombstone's schools! Although considered to be a profession of sin, large contributions helped to build area churches, and during times of illness, the parlor houses not only housed the sick, but the girls provided their care.

Big Nose Kate.  What a lady!!

Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce in the Tombstone Territory

Yup, that was really his handle:  Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce.  He became an item in Tombstone in 1881 after killing a mining official, Philip Schneider, in Charleston a few miles away.  Some say folks over there were pretty chapped about the killing and were intent on lynching Johnny.  Others say the mob didn't want to lynch Johnny, they wanted to set him free.  Some say Johnny Ringo and Ike Clanton were the leaders of the lynch mob, but there's not much to support that claim.  Regardless, the Charleston constable, George McKelvey, hustled the guy over to Tombstone where he was turned over to Wyatt Earp until things could get judged.

Wyatt (he's generally referred to in text as "Wyatt" because his brothers were usually just as involved in the going's on as he was.  To say "Earp" wasn't very definitive...)  Wyatt locked ol' Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce in Vogan's Saloon and Bowling Alley with Wyatt's brother, Virgil, Doc Holliday and other lawmen as guards.  I'm thinkin' these guys chose the saloon so they could make themselves comfortable while they waited for whatever trouble might come their way!

And, yes, I said "Bowling Alley."  In 1879, in Tombstone, Arizona, Jim Vogan and Jim Flynn opened a wholesale liquor store and "sampling room" along with a 10-pin bowling alley right there on the main street.

Well, it was a pretty tense time for awhile, but real soon Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce was taken under heavy guard on into Tucson to await trial.  He never made it to the courtroom though, because he managed an escape just a couple of months later.  In May he was indicted by a Grand Jury for the murder.

His last known whereabouts was about that same time somewhere in the Dragoon Mountains.  Seems he was riding hell-bent-for-leather to get out of the Tombstone Territory, never to be seen around those parts ever again

Johnny's real name was Michael O'Rourke..

Tombstone

Onward to Phoenix and south through Tucson, then over to the east and drop down to just a few miles north of the Mexican border.  We arrive in Tombstone, Arizona, "The Town Too Tough To Die," just in time to set up our tent. 

We locate our spot in the campgrounds by finding... a tombstone!  That's kinda spooky!



Once the tent is set up, we head into town at dusk to see what's goin' on.  It's about the same size as it was back in the 1800's and the buildings are still original - which makes it so very authentic it almost seems not to be reality.  There are very few folks on the street this Thursday evening - probably very much like it was in the 1800's - but, check this out!  They're in period costume!

I understand that Helldorado is coming up in a couple of days.  But apparently folks around here dress like this a lot, and there are "gunfights" held in the streets every day of the week.  Tourist dollars are the lifeblood of this town.

It's a beautiful evening for a stroll.  I thought our trip to Tombstone would get me away from politics - only to find that the shoot out at the OK Corral was between the Democrat farmers and the Republican townspeople.  This "Union officer" professes to have been a Republican at one time, but now leans to the Democrat side of life.


The sun is not quite down, but the moon shines over Tombstone.  We think it's a marvelous evening!

A Trip to Tombstone, Arizona

Yup!  Think the O.K. Corral and Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday!  Woo-hoo!!  And the weekend we decide to go is Tombstone's annual Helldorado Days celebration.  This could be pretty good!

We toss the tent in the back of the van and head on down to Tombstone Territory. East on the Interstate, south on 93 to Phoenix.  We stop for a couple of photo ops - mostly Joshua Trees - and then I see a Saguaro cactus!

When I was five years old, the youngest of the four of us kids, Daddy rented a beach house somewhere around San Diego for several weeks?  months?  (I was just turning five!  You expect me to remember details like that??)  I don't remember Daddy being there, but Momma loaded us kids up in the car along with a school-teacher friend of hers, Mrs. Denton, and Momma drove us out there from Texas following the famous Route 66.  I remember having a Davy Crockett coloring book and coloring black bears all the way there.  I remember stopping by the side of the road for photo ops with Saguaro cactus.  Almost 60 years later, I got to do it again!  Okay, I'm not on Route 66 - but I'm in Arizona, and it's a Saguaro.  Don't be a party-pooper!

I celebrated my fifth birthday at that beach house.  I remember that I got a "see-below raft" which was a little air mattress with a piece of clear plastic that I could look through and see the little fishes as I played along the waterline.  And one night there was something called a grunion run where everybody grabbed buckets and headed to the beach.

Grunion runs are a totally unique Southern California phenomenon.  The fish are only 5-6 inches long, and they are only found along the southern California and Mexican Baja coastline.  Completely unlike any other fish, grunion want to be washed up on shore so that they can lay their eggs in the wet sand.  On the next wave they are washed back to sea.  Even more remarkable is the fact that, according to the California Department of Fish and Game, "grunion make these excursions only on particular nights, and with such regularity that the time of their arrival on the beach can be predicted a year in advance."  Amazing.

With that kind of advance warning people can plan a really fun grunion party. Everybody grabs a bucket and chases the lil' critters down by, well, the bucketful!  Then you take 'em home and fry 'em up just like catfish.  (Only I'm thinkin' Momma didn't take any home 'cause she's not big on fish fryin'.) 

All of those memories from one lil' ol' cactus.  But that was also the summer my daddy left us.  He wouldn't divorce Momma until years later, but he never lived with us again.  I suppose one must take the good with the bad in life.  Momma was my best friend, so life pretty much continued the way it always had - except Momma must have been pretty miserable -- for years.  She never remarried, but she worked two jobs to support us four kids, and was always ready to play dominoes, cards, go bowling, Momma was always up for a trip, but she never remarried.

The Old Pahreah Town Site

It's another movie location that draws Granpa down this road: "Sergeants" starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Joey Bishop, filmed here long after the townsfolk were driven out by repeated flash flooding.  But it's the scenery that quickly captures his lens!

The townspeople pronounced Pahreah, "pah-ree-UR."  It's an old Paiute word for muddy water (or elk river, depending on who you ask.)  John Wesley Powell recorded it as "Paria" on his 1870's surveys. 

A fella by the name of Peter Shirts was the first to settle here in 1865.  Indians drove the settlers out, but by 1870, the town re-established itself upstream a bit and included church and school buildings.  By 1893 they even had a post office!  Though repeated flooding drove them out of this location, to this day families of the pioneers and Paiute's who still live in this area come here regularly to honor their ancestors by caring for their cemetery.

Each block represents a grave and the large marker in the center lists the names and dates.  Ellen Smith lived only three days in 1882 - from December 23 until the day after Christmas.  How heartbreaking!  The next year her sister (?), Tabitha Smith, died at the age of twelve.  Ruperta Twitchell died a month after her second birthday, a brother (?), John lived less than six months.  Dennis Smithson lived just eighteen months...  Times were hard back then.  Life was precious because it was so precarious.  The land was beautiful, but hearts were broken.

All of these different - totally different - geological formations are all in the area around Pahreah.  What a fabulous place to grow up in!  It's truly a shame that flash floods drove the people away, and now no one but us crazy folks who are willing to go off-road ever see this stuff!

Grand Staircase-Escalante and The Old Spanish Trail

So you're claustrophobic and have absolutely no desire to squeeze into a slot canyon?  No worries.  Arizona's wide open spaces are also beautiful!  Again, I have to choose from dozens and dozens of Granpa's excellent pictures (sigh.)

We're in the area of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument on the Old Spanish Trail today.

It's known as the Old Spanish Trail because this is the trade route the Spanish used beginning in 1829 to trade with the Native Americans between here and Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Mission.  Wagons were impractical on these trade routes due to the variety of terrain that had to be crossed, so most caravans were made up of the sure-footed mules.  Eventually there would be mule trains of a hundred or more animals, each carrying 300 pound packs. 

Twenty-five year old Antonio Maria Armijo led the first expedition in 1829.  He had resounding success, moved his parents from the New Mexico Territory to California, married Dolores Engracia Duarte y Peralto, (the daughter of a very influential California rancher at the time), and leveraged all of his successes into a 13,000 acre land grant in the Napa Valley in 1840.  He was awarded the title of "Don" and continued his successes until his death in 1851.

We're going to mosey down a Utah State Scenic Backway known as Cottonwood Road #400.  We could follow it all the way to Kodachrome Basin State Park - but I don't think Granpa's gonna go that far - besides, we're not 4-wheel drive and parts of this might require that.  So we're goin' off-roading!!  Yea!

Out The Other Side

We emerge into the sunlight. It's taken about 45 minutes to tour this canyon - seems like 5.  

Now, just imagine a flash flood coming down this wide wash and essentially slamming into a dead end.  The only place the water can go is through this slot.  As fast as it was racing down the wash, that speed is multiplied exponentially as it's forced through this opening. 

See the crack off to my left?  That's how all of the slot canyons begin, with a tiny crack in the wall...






Our trip back through the canyon - the only way out - is much, much faster.  I think everyone is about exhausted their photo shots, and it's not difficult to keep them moving.  Back to the Suburban, pack ourselves back in, and again we see the deep green, freshly rained on flowering vegetation as we drive back through the wash and up the embankment.

But I can't resist sharing at least one more picture of the inside of Upper Antelope Canyon outside of Page, Arizona!