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KING WOOLSEY'S PINOLE TREATY ARIZONA THE YOUNGEST STATE A. H. Peeples had many graphic reminiscences of affrays had with the red devils. Hardly a week passed without an encounter between the miners and the Indians. One affair was especially notable at the time. Mr. Peeples, who was living in what is now Peeples' Valley, a short distance. above Antelope, having lost twenty- nine head of horses and mules, stolen from him in the winter of 1863 - 4, organized a party of seventeen men to pursue the. Indian thieves. King Woolsey was selected as captain, a place to which he was well fitted by long experience in the savage warfare of the Southwest. The trail of the stolen horses led down the Hassayampa, through the Cave Creek country to about the site of Fort McDowell, on the Verde. The men were all on foot ,having only enough stock to pack their provisions and blankets. When the Verde was reached, all were tired and provisions were low, so, leaving the rest of the party to recruit, Peeples and several others took the pack horses and crossed the Salt River and Gila Valleys to Maricopa Wells. Here old Juan Chivari, the Maricopa Chief, was found, and expressed a wish to aid in the expedition. The offer was gladly welcomed, and when the return to the Verde camp was made there was added to the party a reinforcement of Maricopa and Pima braves, the leader being the Chief himself, and an additional white volunteer. The trail was then taken up afresh, leading around the base of Superstition Mountain and through by the way of Devil's Canon to a point nine miles west of where Globe now stands. Here at daylight the party came upon the Apaches at some natural tanks in the bottom of a mountain valley. The hills seemed to swarm with Indians. A member of the pursuing party was a young Apache, who had been captured by Mr. Peeples, and who had learned many of the ways of the white man. This Apache boy was sent out to parley with the Apaches and soon returned to camp with a large number of Indians who said they wished to have a "peace talk." Blankets were spread upon the ground and upon them all squatted. The Indian boy was true to his friends, however, and warned them that the Apaches were only waiting their opportunity to kill the whole party. \par }{\plain A movement of treachery was soon discovered and the fight began in bloody earnest. The whites and Maricopas were overmatched by far in number, but had an advantage in that only a few of the Apaches had guns, the others being armed with bow and arrow and spear. The fight was long continued and fierce, but bad at length to be given up, as the Apaches were being heavily reinforced. A running fight was kept 'up and all succeeded in escaping except Allan, the man who had joined at Maricopa Wells. He was thrust through the heart with a spear. The Apache boy and the Maricopas fought like fiends, bringing away twenty-four Apache scalps, though there is no telling how many were killed in all. Juan Chivari took charge of the retreat, keeping up the march all night, and, by resorting to a number of Indian stratagems such as building camp fires and then pushing on, managed to avoid the pursuers. Allan's body was brought away and buried on the bank of Salt River. The locality where the fight took place is known to this, day as "Bloody Tanks," and, though formerly a gathering place for Apaches, where feasts were held on the flesh of horses and cattle taken on their range, now is said to be shunned by them. The modern city of Miami lies nearby. Though Peeples denied the story, in early days there was belief that Woolsey had spread a feast of Pinole, which first had been mixed with strict nine, and that forty Indians thus were killed by poison. Hence the affair generally was called the "Pinole Treaty." One of the members of the Woolsey party was Elias S. Junior, a pioneer both of northern and southern Arizona, and generally known as "Black Jack." It is told that Junior had a blood feud with all Indians and that in Nevada he had participated in the wiping out of several bands of Pahute Indians. The official report of the famous fight at Bloody Tanks, that of the "Pinole Treaty," follows: "On January 24, 1864, a party of thirty Americans and fourteen Maricopa and Pima Indians, under Col. King S. Woolsey, aid to the to the Governor of Arizona, attacked a band of Gila Apaches sixty or seventy miles northeast of the Pima villages and killed nineteen of them and wounded others. Mr. Cyrus Lennon of Woolsey 's party was killed by a wounded Indian." On August 11 Woolsey again distinguished himself by killing fourteen Indians in an assault upon an Indian rancheria. With him at the time was a' small detachment of California volunteers from Whipple. In the same month Woolsey reported that, while on a scout near the Rio Prieto, one of his men, W. J. Beauchamp, was ambushed and killed by the Indians. Major Willis, commanding at Fort Whipple, in January reported that the Indians had run off eleven head of government cattle from Walker's mines. In March the same officer, with forty soldiers and fourteen citizens, killed five Indians near the San Francisco River (the Verde).. In June a detachment of Major Willis' command attacked a party of Apaches near the Salinas (Salt) River and killed four of them. Five Indians were killed by Captain Benson's command, which left Whipple in June on a scout. In March, according to the official record, "The Apache Indians attacked Mr. Goodhue and four other persons between the Hasiampa and Granite Creek. Goodhue was killed. The men with him succeeded in driving the Indians off. The Indians also attacked a train near Weaver, Arizona, and mortally wounded a Mr. Rykman and a Mexican. Another of the party was slightly wounded. The Indians took all the stock and plundered the wagons." Back of the Henrietta mine, in the Big Bug district, is the ruin of a stone cabin that in 1865 for a day was held by a half - dozen pioneer miners against the assaults of nearly 100 Apaches. The Indians had only one gun, but showered arrows from behind rocks. Within the cabin were T. W. Boggs, John Raible , John Masterson, Tom Goodwin, Bill Gavin and Chris Scott. Relief came, led by John Marion, later the distinguished editor of the Prescott Courier, who heard the shooting and ran back to Walker to give the alarm. Thank You Sandra
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