Page 164 - Cooke's Peak - Pasaron Por Aqui

Rodman West had sent Captain William McCleave toward Tucson to examine the route for water and forage. McCleave and several other men were cap- tured by Captain Hunter’s advanced patrols, without a shot fired. Another advance patrol was dispatched and the resulting skirmish forced Hunter to abandon Tucson on May 4. While retreating toward the Rio Grande the following day, Hunter was attacked by Apaches at Dragoon Springs but his
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losses were limited to six horses.
With the Confederates abandoning Tucson and
the Californians definitely on their way, some of the citizensofTucsonfledeastalso. WhentheOury party passed through Apache Pass, Mina Oury noted that the skeletons of the six Indians executed by Bascom, Irwin, and Morrow were still hanging from the trees. Upon reaching Fort Fillmore, Mina’s husband, Granville Henderson Oury, was elected the new Captain of the Arizona Rangers
during a reorganization prior to evacuation.169 During the hot summer months of May, June, and July, the Confederates continued to perform rear guard duty between Dona Ana and El Paso and prepared to evacuate the Territory. This strategic withdrawl would have to be accomplished by small parties, because of the intense heat and the shortage of water on the route between El Paso and San Antonio. The Confederates lacked transportation, so they took all the horses, mules, and wagons they could find in El Paso. George Giddings again suf- fered a temporary disaster when the retreating sol- diers stripped his stage line. Also short of supplies, the Confederates resorted to “foraging” from the local populace. On at least two occasions this resulted in a fire-fight, and in one instance, on July 1, some of the men were killed. Captain William H. Cleaver and five of his men were killed by citizens in
the Mesilla Valley. The last Texans did not leave El
Paso until July 12, and it was August before the °
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stragglers reached San Antonio.
Not all of the Confederates evacuated to San An-
tonio. Many were left in various hospitals and some deserted. Eugene Zimmer, a member of the Arizona Guards whose name was always last for role call, was the first of several men to desert following Colonel William Steele’s reorganization of the unit on July 1, 1862. Others soon followed Zimmer’s example. They were: on July 4, Henry Clay “Hank” Smith; on July 6, John W. “Jack” Swilling, John M. Smith, Thomas Buchanan, H. D. Allen (or Nelson),
and William Smith; on July 7, Andrew Kittson, E. C. Marcey (or Marcy), Fitz Martin, William Fisher Scott, and Conrad Stark. Of these men, three must have joined forces and headed for California be- cause John Smith, Buchanan, and Stark were all
Confederate Invasion and Withdrawal
It is highly
Californians.
William Fredrick Milton Arny, a government In-
dian Agent, writing for the Santa Fe New Mexican, offered a fitting epitaph for the Confederate in- vasion and subsequent withdrawal:
The destruction caused by the Texan invasion in 1861 and ’62 has had a most disastrous effectuponthiscountry. Theyconsumedits substance, caused the loss of almost its entire mercantile and mining capital, and much in- jured the agricultural interests; it impoverished thewholecountry. TheIndiansseeingthatthe whites were at war, increased in boldness, and compelled the abandonment of many mines and settlements, while fear of Texans and war induced nearly half the Mexican population of the Mesilla Valley to flee to Mexico, from
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whence they are slowly returning.
The native New Mexicans who stayed referred to the
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conflict simply as “the War with the Texans.”
In retrospect, much of the commercial sector los- ses were offset later by profits from supplying the many troops stationed in the Southwest to combat the Indians and forestall reinvasion by the Con- federates. Indeed, one historian claims that many citizens profited during the Confederate occupation aswell. Inadditiontothesmallfarmers’benefiting from a ready market, the Civil War was instrumental
in ending the peonage system that had held many in • 17S
virtual slavery.
The Civil War, as far as the Southwest was con-
cerned,wasover. Naturally,nooneknewitatthe time. The Confederate military included Arizona Territory in their Transmississippi Department until the end of the war, and occasionally officers such as Coopwood or Sibley agitated for reinvasion, but without serious consequences. It was perhaps fitting in a way that in later years the music played over the
killed by Indians at Apache Pass.
probable that they were part of a group of miners from Pinos Altos killed near the east entrance to the pass when they ran into the rear guard of Apaches waiting to ambush elements of Carleton’s advancing
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