Camp Grant, Arizona

Camp Grant was the name used from 1866 to 1872 for the United States military post at the confluence of the San Pedro River and Aravaipa Creek in the Arizona Territory.

In 1859, the time of the decision to found the military post on the San Pedro River at the mouth of Aravaipa Creek, the site was uniquely situated to command important avenues of then current Indian travel.

To the west running up the Camp Grant Wash a road/trail extended over a divide toward the Santa Cruz River Valley and Tucson.

To the north, only 10 miles down the valley, lay the Gila River and along it the Kearny Expedition trail extended from the Rio Grande to California.

The post was placed to block the fourth route to the east, the Arivaipa Canyon connection to the San Pedro Valley.

Because Arivaipa canyon cut through a mountain range and because it had wood and water all along its length, it was a much used east-west Apache travel route.

[3] The military fort at the junction of Aravaipa Creek and the San Pedro River had the purpose of providing security for a steadily increasing stream of settlers and miners into this area of the Arizona territory, both before and after the end of the Civil War.

For more than two full centuries prior to the United States involvement in the New Mexico/Arizona area, Apache bands had been engaged in warfare to resist the Spanish advance in Northern Mexico.

The Spanish employed a method of conquest in which the first step was to conquer Indian tribal groups using the horse and superior technology including steel weapons and, later, firearms.

By their determined resistance over two centuries the surviving Indian tribes of the American southwest, but primarily the Apaches, brought the advance of the Spanish to a halt at about the border of present day U.S. and northern Mexico.

The price of this autonomy and freedom was a continuous bitter guerrilla warfare between the Indian groups and the outposts of Spanish civilization – the communities, ranches and missions in the Mexican Territories of Chihuahua, Sonora and New Mexico.

Spanish military units marched from supply centers and went into the areas belonging to the Indians and sought out resisting tribes, and attempted to kill or captured them.

In these trading sessions, the trader sometimes resorted to treachery, lulling the Indian group into a sense of complacency (sometimes employing mescal), and then capturing them, killing those who resisted.

Indians who felt wronged would then indiscriminately kill Hispanic persons, sometimes first subjecting them to torture, and would conduct or participate in raids and ambushes whose goal was retaliation/revenge more than economic gain.

Following the Mexican War, for a brief time the Apache adopted the view toward the people of the United States that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", but this did not last, and in response to the growing invasion of Anglos, and the inevitable conflicts that arose, Indian raiding parties began attacking US ranches, camps, prospectors, freighters, wagon trains, stages, immigrants and small groups and settlements of all kinds.

They employed advance preparation, swift movement, and surprise, with sophisticated and well-coordinated small-unit tactics honed by generations of experience.

During the period of the existence of a fort on the San Pedro River, from 1860 to 1872, the U.S. Army garrison was constantly occupied by responding to these raids, and pursuing and attempting to interdict and kill or capture the raiders.

However, the Army kept up pursuit, and did inflict casualties, and the resulting slow attrition of the relatively small Apache bands eventually had an impact.

The United States military post at the confluence of the San Pedro River and Aravaipa Creek in Arizona Territory existed from 1860 to 1872.

The army abandoned and burned Fort Breckinridge in July, 1861, as well as other posts in southern Arizona to keep them from falling into possession of the Confederacy.

The change in spelling reflected disillusion with the former Vice President, for whom the fort was originally named, since after the Civil War started he "went south" and became a Confederate general.

After the Civil War was over, in November 1865 the post was re-constructed yet again by five companies of the 2nd Regiment California Volunteer Infantry commanded by Colonel Thomas F.

Army and civilian authorities began discussing various sites for reservations for Apache bands scattered throughout the Arizona and New Mexico territories.

As more Apache arrived, Whitman created a refuge (or "rancheria") along Aravaipa Creek about 1⁄2 mile east of Camp Grant, and wrote to Col. Stoneman (who was then in California) for instructions.

In addition, Tucson residents viewed themselves as surrounded by a vast land area in which deadly Apache raiding parties operated freely, with little or no effective check by soldiers from Camp Grant or other Arizona posts.

As Pinal and Avavaipa Apache collected at Camp Grant in early 1871, raids continued in Arizona—19 settlers had been killed and 10 wounded between March 7 and 29.

[12] On the morning of April 28, 1871 a group of 6 Americans and 48 Mexicans left Tucson for Camp Grant, along with 94 Tohono O'odham (aka Papago) Indians.

The Papago were traditional enemies of the Pinal/Aravaipa Apache based on a long history of inter-tribal warfare, with ingrained and deep seated hatreds.

[12] At the trial, the defense of those accused focused exclusively on the history of Apache raids, killings and depredations in the years preceding the event.

He undertook a survey of military posts and potential reservations sites throughout the Arizona Territory, and attention naturally focused on Camp Grant.