Tucson Pima Arizona United States

Jesuit missionary Eusebio Francisco Kino had visited the Santa Cruz River valley in 1692, and founded the Mission San Xavier del Bac in 1700 about seven miles (eleven kilometers) upstream from the site of the settlement of Tucson.

A separate Convento settlement had been founded downstream along the Santa Cruz River, near the base of what is now "A" mountain.

Hugo O'Conór, the founding father of the city of Tucson, Arizona, authorizes the construction of a military fort in this location, Presidio San Agustín del Tucsón, on August 20, 1775 (near the present downtown Pima County Courthouse).

Hugo O'Connor, born in 1732 in Dublin, Ireland, into the Gaelic-Irish aristocratic O'Connor family, is a descendant of king of Ireland Turlough Mor O'Conor.

For political and religious reasons, when he was eighteen years old—like many other Irish aristocrats—O'Connor had left his homeland and moved to Spain where his cousins Alexander and Dominic O'Reilly, were serving as officers in the Spanish Royal Army; he had been established in Aragon.In his youth he had joined the regiment of Volunteers of Aragon, eventually acquiring the title of major.

During his years in the military, he had been sent to Cuba and Mexico City, where he had distinguished himself by his ability as a military strategist and was appointed captain for the Northern Territory to exercise dominion in the region.

He had gone to Texas to investigate a dispute around San Agustín de Ahumada Presidio between Governor Ángel de Martos y Navarrete and Rafael Martínez Pacheco (future governor of Texas).

It was at this time that he obtained the title of inspector general of the Provincias Internas (general inspector of the Interior Provinces).

Later, in 1767, he had been appointed governor of Texas, in replacement of Martos and Navarrete.

On assuming office, he had found that one of its major cities, San Antonio, had been shattered by frequent attacks of several native tribes.

Therefore, the new governor set up a garrison at Los Adaes to protect the city.

In 1771 he had become commander of the Chihuahua frontier and in January 20, 1773 he had been appointed commandant inspector of presidios under the office of colonel.

He and Governor Juan María Vicencio de Ripperdá had rejected the petition of Antonio Gil Y'Barbo that the settlers be allowed to return to their original homes.

To strengthen the protection of Nueva Vizcaya and Coahuila, O'Connor decides to expel the Apaches in the region, making war against these peoples in 1775 and 1776, killing a large number.

The Apaches who survive flee to more western areas.

The United States buys approximately seventy-seven thousand square kilometers (thirty thousand square miles) of land from Mexico, to facilitate railroad building in the Southwest, on December 30, 1853.

By the Treaty of Mesilla that is to take effect on June 8, 1854, the Gadsden Purchase refers to the region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico that the United States acquires from Mexico.

The purchase includes lands south of the Gila River and west of the Rio Grande that the U.S. needs to build a transcontinental railroad along a deep southern route, which the Southern Pacific Railroad will later complete in 1881–1883.

The purchase also aims to resolve other border issues.

The first draft is signed on December 30, 1853, by James Gadsden, U.S. ambassador to Mexico, and by Antonio López de Santa Anna, president of Mexico.

The U.S. Senate will vote in favor of ratifying it with amendments on April 25, 1854, and will then transmit it to President Franklin Pierce.

Mexico's government and its General Congress or Congress of the Union will take final approval action on June 8, 1854, when the treaty takes effect.

The purchase is the last substantial territorial acquisition in the contiguous United States, and defines the Mexico–United States border.

The financially-strapped government of Santa Anna has agreed to the sale, which will net Mexico ten million dollars (equivalent to two hundred and twenty million dollars in 2016).

After the devastating loss of Mexican territory to the U.S. in the Mexican–American War (1846–48) and the continued filibustering by U.S. citizens, Santa Anna may have calculated it was better to yield territory by treaty and receive payment rather than have the territory simply seized by the U.S.

Several proposals for a division of the New Mexico territory and the organization of a separate Territory of Arizona in the southern half of the territory,  expanded as a result of the Gadsden Purchase, advanced as early as 1856.

These proposals arise from concerns about the ability of the territorial government in Santa Fe to effectively administer the newly acquired southern portions of the territory.

The first proposal dates from a conference held in Tucson that convenes on August 29, 1856.

The conference issues a petition to the U.S. Congress, signed by two hundred and fifty-six people, requesting organization of the territory and electing Nathan P. Cook as the territorial delegate to Congress.

The bill for the organization of the Arizona territory is introduced into the House of Representatives in January 1857, but the proposal is defeated on the grounds that the population of the proposed territory is yet too small.

Later a similar proposal will be defeated in the Senate.

The proposal for creation of the territory is controversial in part because of the perception that the New Mexico Territory is under the influence of southern sympathizers who are highly desirous of expanding slavery into the southwest.

The New Mexico territorial legislature adopts a resolution in favor of the creation of the Arizona territory in February 1858, but with a north-south border along the 109th meridian, with the additional stipulation that all the native tribes of New Mexico will be removed to northern Arizona.

Thirty-one Arizonan delegates, impatient for Congress to act, convene in Tucson in April 1860 and adopt a constitution for a provisional territorial government of the area south of 34 degrees north.

The delegates elect Dr. Lewis S. Owings as provisional governor.

Territorial secession conventions called at Mesilla and Tucson on March 28, 1861, adopt an ordinance of secession of the southern part of New Mexico Territory, establish a provisional Arizona Territory with Owings as its governor, and petition the Confederate Congress for admission.

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.

A Tucson grand jury had indicted one hundred of the Camp Grant assailants with one hundred and eight counts of murder in October 1871.

The trial, two months later, focuses solely on Apache depredations; it takes the jury just nineteen minutes to pronounce a verdict of not guilty.

Western Apache groups soon leave their farms and gathering places near Tucson in fear of subsequent attacks.

As pioneer families arrive and settle in the area, Apaches will never be able to regain hold of much of their ancestral lands in the San Pedro River Valley.

Many groups of Apaches join up with the Yavapais in Tonto Basin, and thence a guerilla war begins that will last until 1875.