Arizona's yesterday : $b Being the narrative of John H. Cady, pioneerCady, John H. (John Henry)
History
Arizona's yesterday : $b Being the narrative of John H. Cady, pioneer
Cady, John H. (John Henry)
Cady, John H. (John Henry), 1846-1927; Frontier and pioneer life -- Arizona; Pioneers -- Arizona -- Biography
"Tell you about it?" I repeated, as if astonished. "Why, didn't I ask
you if you had investigated the thing fully? Did I ask you to go into
the deal blindfold? It wasn't my business to tell you about any tax."
And with that he had to be content.
* * * * *
I was now out of the dance-hall business for good, and I looked about
for some other and more prosaic occupation to indulge in. Thanks to the
deal I had put through with the confiding stranger with the ready cash,
I was pretty well "heeled" so far as money went, and all my debts were
paid. Finally I decided that I would go into business again and bought
a grocery store on Mesilla street.
The handing out of canned tomatoes and salt soda crackers, however,
speedily got on my nerves. I was still a comparatively young man and my
restless spirit longed for expression in some new environment. About
this time Paola, my contract-wife, who was everything that a wife should
be in my opinion, became a little homesick and spoke often of the home
she had left at Sauxal, a small gulf-coast port in Lower California.
Accordingly, one morning, I took it into my head to take her home on a
visit to see her people, and, the thought being always father to the
action with me, I traded my grocery store for a buckboard and team and
some money, and set forth in this conveyance for Yuma. This was a trip
not considered so very dangerous, except for the lack of water, for the
Indians along the route were mostly peaceable and partly civilized. Only
for a short distance out of Tucson did the Apache hold suzerainty, and
this only when sufficient Papagos, whose territory it really was, could
not be mustered together in force to drive them off. The Papago Indians
hated the Apaches quite as much as the white man did, for the Papago
lacked the stamina and fighting qualities of the Apache and in other
characteristics was an entirely different type of Indian. I have reason
to believe that the Apaches were not originally natives of Arizona, but
were an offshoot of one of the more ferocious tribes further north.
This I think because, for one thing, the facial characteristics of the
other Arizona Indians--the Pimas, Papagos, Yumas, Maricopas, and
others--are very similar to each other but totally different from those
of the various Apache tribes, as was the language they spoke. The
Papagos, Pimas, Yumas, Maricopas and other peaceable Indian peoples were
of a settled nature and had lived in their respective territories for
ages before the white man came to the West. The Apache, on the other
hand, was a nomad, with no definite country to call his own and
recognizing no boundary lines of other tribes. It was owing to Apache
depredations on the Papagos and Pimas that the latter were so willingly
enlisted on the side of the White man in the latter's fight for
civilization.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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