Lieutenant Whitman, who may suspect that peace…
April 1871 CE
Lieutenant Whitman, who may suspect that peace cannot last, has urged Eskiminzin to move his people to the White Mountains near Fort Apache, which had been established in 1870, but he has refused.
During the winter and spring, William S. Oury and Jesús María Elías had formed a Committee of Public Safety, which blames every depredation in southern Arizona on the Camp Grant Apaches.
After Apaches ran off livestock from San Xavier on April 10, Elías had contacted his old ally Francisco Galerita, leader of the Tohono O'odham at San Xavier.
Oury had collectedarms and ammunition from his followers.
Six Americans, forty-eight Mexicans, and ninety-two O'odham gather along Rillito Creek and set off on a march to Aravaipa Canyon on the afternoon of April 28.
One of the Americans is William S. Oury, the brother of Granville Henderson Oury.
At dawn on Sunday, April 30, they surround the Apaches at Camp Grant.
O'odham are the main fighters, while the Americans and Mexicans pick off Apaches who try to escape.
Most of the Apache men are off hunting in the mountains.
All but eight of the corpses are women and children.
Twenty-nine children are captured and will be sold into slavery in Mexico by the Papago and the Mexicans themselves.
A total of one hundred and forty-four Aravaipas and Pinals had been killed and mutilated, nearly all of them scalped.
Lieutenant Whitman searches for the wounded, finds only one woman, buries the bodies, and dispatches interpreters into the mountains to find the Apache men and assure them that his soldiers had not participated in the "vile transaction."
The following evening, the surviving Aravaipas will begin trickling back to Camp Grant.
Many of the settlers in southern Arizona consider the attack justifiable homicide and agree with Oury.