Page 209 - Cooke's Peak - Pasaron Por Aqui

Chapter 7
Peace at Last and the Closing of the Frontier, 1874-1892
Major changes occurred during this period
that Fredrick
closing of the Frontier. Much of the free land, upon which people for many years would be willing to settle, already had some citizens ensconced on it. In this process, much of Turner’s “orderly progres- sion” of trappers and traders, cattlemen, miners, and farming by families and agrabusinesses had ap- peared in the Southwest. The wave of emigrants had reached the sea and washed back onto much of the land between the Mississippi and the coast.
Conflicts between the citizens and the Apaches, with the Military acting as referees, ebbed and flowed and the continuing low-key confrontation occasionally exploded when one or another Apache leader was provoked beyond his self-established limits of tolerance. Between the short bloody wars, there were periods of relative peace and economic development in the Southwest. The mining industry flourished with new sources of precious metals lo- cated in the mountains around Pinos Altos and Sil- ver City. On Cooke’s Peak, or Standing Mountain as the Apaches called it, a much different type of mining developed. Miners congregated to dig high quality lead ore near the top of the mountain and to form stable communities.
New communications and transportation systems aided the military in coordinating their efforts to report the news to the citizens and to move soldiers quickly to newly threatened areas. The telegraph and heliograph were used extensively by the military to counter the Indians’ ability to move undetected or fade away from a raid before a column of soldiers could be dispatched. Transportation networks by stageline were rebuilt and expanded until the rail- road advanced through the southern edge of the country and joined with other rail lines that had been
progressingslowlyfromtheeast. Followingthein- troduction of the iron horse to the Southwest, with its special cars for transporting emigrants and their
possessions, the road that for years had been the lifeline between the East and West fell into disuse, neglect, and abandonment. Never again would it carry the life blood of the country past the foot of Cooke’s Peak.
A Period of Relative Peace and Economic Development
The closing of Fort Cummings in late 1873 was apparently justified, because only a few violent inci- dents marred the period from 1874 to 1879. The road that passed through Cooke’s Canyon was again open to relatively peaceful travel by the various citizens passing east or west. Emigrants, stage pas- sengers, freighters, and stockmen once more watered at the spring before continuing on.
The continued military presence in present-day New Mexico and Arizona, subsistence requirements for Indian reservations, and an increasing popula- tion concentration all required more beef. John Simpson Chisum (Figure 47) had carved out a huge cattle empire along the Pecos River in New Mexico and found the Arizona markets an outlet for many of his “Jingle Bob” cattle. In 1875, Chisum supplied the firm of Ewing and Curtis of Tucson with cattle to fulfill their beef contract to the Arizona Territory Indian Agencies. That summer, probably in several drives, Chisum cowboys herded 11,000 head across
1 the Rio Grande and through Cooke’s Canyon.
The summer of 1877 saw the continued use of the road by cattle herds headed for Arizona. Chisum drove another herd through to a beef contractor, and First Lieutenant John Little traveled from Fort Bayard to Fort Cummings to meet his brother who was bringing through a herd. Little’s brother had started from Kansas, and the herd included a 3-year- old cross-breed bull valued at $500."
Jackson Turner termed the
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