1879–80
Gila Crossing. During this winter there was a heavy fall of snow.[1]
Blackwater. At an abandoned store above Casa Blanca, the walls of which are yet standing, a white man was killed by two young men, who were caught before they secured the money of the victim, robbery being the motive for the deed. The one who did the shooting was taken to the county jail at Florence.
1880–81
Gila Crossing. At the beginning of the year a man was bitten and killed by a rattlesnake at Gila Crossing.
Blackwater. The murderer mentioned in the record of the preceding year was hanged at Florence.
1881–82
Gila Crossing. During a tizwin drunk at Salt River two young men killed each other. The Casa Blanca people went to Gila Crossing to participate in a feast and dance.
Blackwater. The Pima police were sent from Sacaton to arrest some Kwahadkʽs living at their village about 50 miles south of the agency. Two were killed.[2]
1882–83
 (a) |
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Gila Crossing (a), Blackwater (b). An epidemic of measles prevailed among the Pimas and Maricopas, causing the death of many persons.
- ↑ An event of such rarity that it is mentioned but twice in these records of seventy years.
- ↑ The Kwahadkʽs had been drinking tizwin, and as they had never been interfered with by the agent they were not conscious of having trangressed any laws. Furthermore, drunkenness was the rule among the few whites with whom they came in contact, and it was a privilege that the Kwahadkʽs indulged in but once or twice a year. Old inhabitants at Sacaton tell me that the agent was working prisoners upon a reservation farm and selling the crop for his own profit. The Pimas had been committing no misdemeanors or crimes that offered any excuse for imprisoning them and the crops needed attention, but nevertheless he ordered his police to bring in the Kwahadkʽs dead or alive. One of the young Kwahadkʽs frankly declared his innocence of any intentional transgression and defied the police to take him from his home. He was promptly shot. As the police were returning to Sacaton they were overtaken by the father of the murdered man, who told them that he had nothing to live for, as they had killed his son and they might as well kill him. The police obligingly complied with his request. "Innocent and unoffending men were shot down or bowie-knifed merely for the pleasure of witnessing their death agonies. Men walked the streets and public squares with double-barreled shotguns, and hunted each other as sportsmen hunt for game. In the graveyard of Tucson them were 47 graves of white men in 1860, and of that number two had died natural deaths, all the rest having been murdered in bar-room quarrels." Life Among the Apaches, by John C. Cremony, 117.
