Last night, after the closing of the 2nd Trump Impeachment Trial, I finished reading Elliot Arnold’s 1976 historical fiction novel about ‘The Camp Grant Massacre.’ I was struck by the some of the text in the denouement scenes post massacre. Recall that the Camp Grant Massacre happened within approximately five miles of the US Army’s Arizona Territory post, Camp Grant, 150 years ago on April 30, 1871, when a US Army officer, my great great grandfather, had accepted the surrender of starving Pinal and Aravaipa Apaches who were being hunted to the point of extermination. Without official authority, other than President Grant’s new peace policy toward native tribes, he established a reservation and accepted the tribe’s surrender of weapons in exchange for feeding and establishment of a settlement on their ancestral home, the Little Running Water, the Aravaipa Creek, which bleeds out of the Aravaipa Canyon. The entire book builds toward the massacre committed by an association of Anglo Americans, and Mexican Americans, from Tucson, and the Tohono O’odham Indian tribe from the Tubac area, and resulted in the deaths of approximately 125 Apaches, 117 women and children, and eight males, who were teens and seniors, most of which were bludgeoned to death or killed by hand in close range, in a 30 minute killing spree. The locals had been wiped to a frenzy by the Tucson Arionian, the local paper, with cries to seek revenge against the unarmed Apaches at Camp Grant, for alleged atrocities committed by Apaches, but likely not by the bands resident at Camp Grant, in the recent past. The passage I quote comes after the Massacre, when Lt Whitman tries to get the Chief, Eskiminzen to talk about what happened two days after the event:
‘… “Two nights ago while my people slept, the people of Tucson, white men, Mexicans, Papago Indians, stole in, hoping to kill us all… They knew we had no arms, or they would not have come. They killed more than a hundred of my people, almost all of them women and children…. I ask you , what shall we do.”
Whitman remained silent… He hoped the Apache would say more. He thought how agonizing it must be for Eskminizin to hold it in.
“We saw you with your people buy our dead and we do not think you know they were coming or we would not be here together.” Eskiminzen looked away.
“By my word as a man I knew nothing about this,” Whitman said. “And I had no means to overtake them-nor was I authorized to take punishment in my own hands.”
“If we were white people?” Eskiminzin asked.
“I could still not on my own deal punishment.”
Eskinimzen raised his head. “If Indian massacred whites?”
Whitman’s jaw tightened. “Yes,” he agreed. “That’s the way it is.”
The book more or less ends at the massacre, spelling out very briefly a bit more about how events played out, including the trial the President Grant demanded, and that resulted in a five day trial and a 19 minute jury deliberation acquitting all 100 defendants.
I hadn’t anticipated seeing examples of white privilege and vigilante justice in the book that remind of the storming of the Capitol that we witnessed on January 6th, in our time, just a little over a month ago, and yet there were those reminders and analogies staring me in the face. I guess the good news is that in 150 years, we’ve gone for a unanimous verdict to acquit to at least seven choosing to convict instead of finding not guilty as charged.
As for a review of the book, I’ll note Elliott succeeds in capturing the multiple factions involved in the Camp Grant Massacre 100 years after the event, and well before the in-depth histories written about the event that delved into the the perspectives and cultures of the Aravaipa and Pinal Apaches, the Tohono O’olhams, the Mexicans (recently made American’s after the Gadsden Purchase), the AZ Territory Americans of Tucson, and the US Army 3rd Cav stationed at Camp Grant. In that sense, the book is triumphant, as I did not expect to be taken in so completely by the book. I marveled at Elliott’s ability to get into the heads of all groups and individuals concerned, including Royal Whitman and Eskeminzin.
The history surrounding the massacre also is extremely interesting, as evidenced by the some four other books written about the CGM in the past 10-15 years, with more coming out soon, including a biography of Captain Chiquito, and hopefully soon thereafter a publication of Royal Whitman’s as yet unpublished personal journal of the event. The book, despite being historical fiction and preceding the many indepthy studies, overall does pretty well at capturing the event.
Interestingly, the book could have continued on another two to three hundred pages to review what happened to Whitman, the Aravaipa and Pinal Apaches, both Eskeminzin and Chiquito, through the trial of the Tucsonites, the subsequent Reservation years, well up to the present, when the people of Tucson apologized for what the founding fathers of the city did to the Aravaipa Apaches some 125 years later. I can make an argument that it’s motion picture, perhaps even a mini-series, waiting to happen. It offers arguably far more to a modern audience than, let’s say, The Last of the Mohicans, as we try to deal with a diverse multi-racial America with a waning majority white dominance of the electorate.
Let me end by quoting, in part, the “Minority Report” like jury instructions from Judge Titus to the jurors of Tucson deciding the fate of 100 of the Camp Grant Massacre perpetrators, some of whom were or soon became leading citizens and founding fathers of Greater Tucson:
“… To kill one engaged in actual unlawful hostilities, or in undoubted preparation with others for active hostilities, would not be murder. In a country like this, the resident is not bound to wait until the assassin, savage or civilized, is by his hearth, or at his bed-side, or at his door, or until the knife of the assassin is at his throat. If he has undoubted evidence that others are preparing, alone or in combination, to destroy him and his property, he may anticipate his foe and quell or destroy him to secure his own personal safety. In a country like this, with few people, with none or very little police, filled with murderous savages far more numerous than the orderly and peaceful, that I charge you is the law. Any other rule of human life and action would place the quiet citizen in the power of his deadly and lawless enemy.
The law which constitutes our code, criminal as well as civil, has grown up in quiet, populous and strongly policed communities very different from this. It is the same in principle here as there. Here, however, in cases such as this, the administration of law requires peculiar care and caution to avoid judicial murder. The circumstances which constitute and control human motives here, are far graver than those of old, quiet communities with law supported by numerous population and adequate police. There the safety of the man is secured by others charged with the personal security of all the citizens. Here, amid innumerable perils, the citizen must take care of himself. Under heaven he has no one else to look to. In Arizona, arms are as necessary in travel and even in the isolated home or camp, as food or clothing. The farmer and herder carry them at the plow, and with the herd or the flock. By day they are on the person; by night, at the hand of the sleeper.
Men thus schooled possess characters and convictions of right and wrong very different from those of old and quiet communities. It is the bold, restless and adventurous who come here. No others cut loose from the place where they were cradled and all the amenities of home. Subject such persons to the trials above detailed, and you have exactly the characters belonging to one class of these defendants, painfully alert, fearful with the fears of brave men, and there is nothing more painful, suspicious and ready to meet deadly conflict for self or for a comrade. It was to trace, if possible, the motives of the defendants, to the acts for which they stand indicted, that I permitted the very considerable range the testimony of this case has taken.
If there ever was a case in which the law of life–Thou shalt not kill–announced in the oldest and most revered of all known codes, and repeated in everyone promulgated since, should be most cautiously applied, it is the present one in which the defendants have been schooled to agonizing apprehension, where the blood red line of a “a troubled frontier” is expanded into a vast domain of blood, where the very roads are traced by the gore and the graves of fallen wayfarers, where every copse may shelter its skulking murderers, where the very atmosphere is heavy with death, and where brave and honest men are compelled by stealthy night travel to avoid the light of day, lest it should guide the lead or steel of the assassin to the heart or the brain of his victim. I do not mean that–here or elsewhere–the boundaries of right and wrong should vibrate like a weaver’s shuttle, but in a case such as the present, we should test the motive of the defendants by every actuating circumstance, to ascertain whether that motive was malice, or morbid apprehension, or a maddening sense of wrong, or misconceived right, or intolerable suffering, or gloomy despair, or conflicting impulses, involving these defendants in moral darkness, and impelling them in spite of themselves to do the deed charged in the indictment…
It is alleged in the indictment that the Apaches at the time the assault charged was made, were prisoners of war and thus under the protection of the United States. For all the purposes of the present case, this may be accepted as a true statement of their condition. Every government owes protection to all person within its limits and jurisdiction, while they are obedient to its laws and at peace towards other persons within the same limits. If they violate these laws or assail other persons subject to the common government, it is its duty to punish or restrain the law breakers and to prevent the assaults. All persons forfeit the right of government protection, who persist in infringing its law, or in assailing, murdering and despoiling other persons entitled to the same protection. It is the duty of government to protect all persons and classes of persons within its limits and jurisdiction from the wrongs and assaults of all other persons within the same. This is necessary to prevent civil and social conflict and bloodshed. If, however, government allows one class of persons within its limits and jurisdiction persistently to assail and spoil another, then, the injured class is remitted to its natural right of self-defense, and may use force enough for this purpose…
It is alleged in the indictment that the Apaches at the time the assault charged was made, were prisoners of war and thus under the protection of the United States. For all the purposes of the present case, this may be accepted as a true statement of their condition. Every government owes protection to all person within its limits and jurisdiction, while they are obedient to its laws and at peace towards other persons within the same limits. If they violate these laws or assail other persons subject to the common government, it is its duty to punish or restrain the law breakers and to prevent the assaults. All persons forfeit the right of government protection, who persist in infringing its law, or in assailing, murdering and despoiling other persons entitled to the same protection. It is the duty of government to protect all persons and classes of persons within its limits and jurisdiction from the wrongs and assaults of all other persons within the same. This is necessary to prevent civil and social conflict and bloodshed. If, however, government allows one class of persons within its limits and jurisdiction persistently to assail and spoil another, then, the injured class is remitted to its natural right of self-defense, and may use force enough for this purpose.
The application of these rules of law to the present case is clear. The government of the United States owes its Papago, Mexican and American residents in Arizona protection from Apache spoliation and assault. If such spoliation and assault are persistently carried on and not prevented by the government, then the sufferers have a right to protect themselves and to employ force enough for the purpose. It is also to be added that if the Apache nation or any part of it persists in assailing the Papagos, or American, or Mexican residents of Arizona, then if forfeits the right of protection from the United States, whether that right is the general protection which a government owes all persons within its limits and jurisdiction, or the special protection which is due to prisoners of war, as the Apaches killed on the 30th of April of last, are claimed to have been in the indictment... “
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rwb historically speaking 