A local Tucson businessman named William Hopkins…
May 1871 CE
A local Tucson businessman named William Hopkins Tonge s the first person to refer to what had taken place as a massacre..
He writes to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs within a week of the slaughter at Camp Grant, stating that "The Indians at the time of the massacre being so taken by surprise and considering themselves perfectly safe with scarcely any arms, those that could get away ran for the mountains." (Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Chip. Western Apache Oral Histories and Traditions of the Camp Grant Massacre. The American Indian Quarterly - Volume 27, Number 3 & 4, Summer/Fall 2003, pp. 639-666.)
The military and the Eastern press call it a massacre, so President Grant informs Governor A.P.K. Safford that if the perpetrators are not brought to trial, he will place Arizona under martial law.