This history begins in the early 1800s. At the time, the United States of America consisted of a union of twenty-four sovereign states, Missouri having been admitted August 10, 1821, as the twenty-fourth state.

The population of the U.S.A., according to the fourth U.S. census released in August of 1820, was 9,600,000 people, of whom more than 230,00 were free Negros and 1,500,000, slave Negros. It is officially reported that 8,385 immigrants arrived in the country during 1819.

James Monroe, the fifth President, was in office, with John Quincy Adams as his Secretary of State, W. H. Crawford, his Secretary of Treasury, and J. C. Calhoun as Secretary of War. D. D. Tompkins was Vice President.

Attention of the vigorous young nation was divided between domestic and foreign problems. Of the domestic questions, slavery was by far the most deep-rooted. Missouri had been admitted as a slave state only because Maine, the twenty-third state, had been admitted free. This was the substance of the Missouri Compromise Act.

Another domestic question of import and of later significance to Arizona and the West was the passage, on April 24, 1820, of the Public Land Act, permitting the purchase of tracts of eighty acres or more at a minimum price of $1.25 per acre.

Foreign issues found the United States at variance with Russia, France, England, and Spain. The Russians were claiming the North American west coast south to 51 degrees and exclusive rights in the North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea. It was this claim to the fifty-first parallel that, a couple of years later, gave rise to the slogan, loudly chanted throughout the United States, of "54-40 or fight." The "54-40," of course, referred to the United States' claim that the Russians should be allowed no further south than 54 degrees 40 etc. The United States won its point April 17, 1824, in a treaty with Russia, establishing 5440 as the recognized Northern boundary of the Oregon country, the Rocky Mountains remaining its eastern line.

In 1823 the famous Monroe Doctrine was issued, warning European nations not to assist Spain in her struggles against her rebellious American colonies. It declared the American continents were not henceforth "to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers." Primarily intended as a rebuke to Russia, it also served warning to the British and French not to step on the toes of this dynamic young nation.

In 1825 when John Quincy Adams was president, the United States recognized as a very significant development the opening of the Santa Fe Trail between the Missouri River and New Mexico. It augured good things in the expansion of trade to the West. So, also, did W. H. Ashley's explorations of the northern Great Plains. In 1825, also, the Erie Canal was completed between the Hudson River at Troy, New York, and Lake Erie at Buffalo. Three hundred forty miles long, the Erie has ever since remained one of the principal trade avenues between east and west. Still today it is regarded as the main means of transporting grain from the West to New York. Its completion at a time when men like Ashley and Jed Smith were pioneering new trails and reopening old ones in the Southwest further stimulated the already intense interest of Easterners in the West and Southwest.

Other significant defense in the United States' during the era of the mountain men' in Arizona include: a Supreme Court decision stating the Federal power to make war and treaties includes the right of annexation, and that the power of Congress to govern territories cannot be questioned. That was in 1828. In the same year, the construction of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was begun as the first long railroad in the United States. The following year, the first locomotive used on a commercial railroad in America was imported from England for the Carbondale to Honesdale railroad in Pennsylvania. That was the same year Andrew Jackson was inaugurated as seventh President of the United States.

In 1830, immigration to the United States had reached more than twenty-three thousand people per year. On May 28, 1830, President Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, legalizing Jackson's policy of the general removal of Indians to reservations west of the Mississippi. It launched several years of intermittent war with Indians in the Southeast. In August of 1830, Peter Cooper's locomotive ran on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the first successful use of steam in United States railroad transportation.

In 1831, the Supreme Court of the United States denied the right of an Indian tribe to sue in federal courts, because an Indian tribe is not a foreign nation. The following year the Oregon Trail from the Missouri at Independence by way of the Platte and Snake River valleys to the mouth of the Columbia was established as the main route of American settlement of the Oregon country. Also, in 1832, the Black Hawk War in Illinois and Wisconsin was precipitated by the pressure of white people on the Indians and by the Indians' resistance to the policy of trans-Mississippi removal. In that war there was, serving as a captain, a young man by the name of Abraham Lincoln.

Three years later, in 1835, Samuel Colt patented the revolver which became typically the weapon of the Western frontiersmen. In that same year, immigration to the United States totaled more than 45,000, an increase of more than five hundred per cent since 1820. A year later, in 1836, Texas declared her independence from Mexico. The story of the defense of the Alamo at San Antonio is credited with having inspired Texans -- most of whom were of American origin -- to prosecute their revolt successfully. Texas desired re-annexation to the United States, but instead received recognition as an independent nation on March 3, 1837. Also, in 1836, Arkansas was admitted as a slave state and the twenty-fifth member of the Union.

In 1837, Michigan was admitted as the twenty-eighth state, without slavery. Martin Van Buren was inaugurated as the eighth President of the United States, and in May of that year the famous panic of 1837 begin. The culmination of a period of wild speculation, reckless loans by banks which had been favored with Federal deposits and the mortgaging of expected income for internal improvement, the panic of 1837 tended to force more attention on the West. Merchants and farmers whose holdings had been wiped out were very receptive to stories of the golden opportunities in the West.

In 1838, the Great Western and the Sirius diverted eyes eastward momentarily, as they made the first successful crossings of the Atlantic under steam power exclusively. In that same year, the Iowa Territory was created out of that part of the Wisconsin Territory lying west of the Mississippi. By 1840, immigration into the United States had reached more than 84,000, more than a thousand per cent of the rate only twenty years before.

William Henry Harrison, the ninth President of the United States, was inaugurated March 4, 1841. He died a month later, and John Tyler succeeded as tenth President. A year later, in August of 1842, the United States signed with Great Britain the Ashburton Treaty, settling a dispute over the northeastern boundary of the United States which had threatened war. In that same year, John C. Fremont, an officer in the United States Army who later became known as "The Pathfinder," begin his series of explorations of the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Great Basin, California, Arizona, and southern Oregon.

During this whole period, especially after the panic of 1837, more and more news about the potential of the West seeped back to the East. Throughout the East there was a growing conviction that the West was a land of potential riches and of opportunity. Farmers and merchants were beginning to demand that the United States government find means -- peaceful or otherwise -- of annexing this rich land to the country. The election of Harrison in 1840 was interpreted as meaning western farmers were dissatisfied with the lack of progress in Washington toward the accomplishment of this goal.

President Tyler, however, showed little interest in the demands for western expansion. Thus in 1844, Tyler's party, the Whigs, lost to James K. Polk of Tennessee. Principal issues in the campaign were the Texas and Oregon territory questions. In January of 1844, a Texas annexation treaty had been signed between Texas and the United States, making Texas a state of the Union with its public lands going to the national government. The Senate rejected this treaty, however, partly because Texas was a slave state. The election later that year showed that the people of the United States wanted Texas to become a state and also that they demanded sole control of Oregon territory.

On March 1, 1845, Congress as a joint resolution for the annexation of Texas, one in which the United States lost several of the advantages it had in the abandoned treaty. Three days before he retired from office, President Tyler signed this joint resolution. On December 29, 1845, Texas was formally admitted as the twenty-eighth state, one of fifteen having slavery.

Meanwhile Polk was committed by the campaign he had conducted to the goal of obtaining by purchase, diplomatic negotiation, or warfare, the lands of Oregon and California territories. These regions were already well populated with American farmer-emigrants. In 1841, the first American settlers had blazed the Oregon and California trails through the Rocky Mountain Plateau, the Great Basin, and the Sierra Nevadas into Northern California. In that same year, the Workman-Rowland party followed the southern route, probably the Old Spanish Trail, from New Mexico to Los Angeles

Other settlers followed fast, making their way across the Great Plains and plateaus, through mountain passes and over mountain peaks in their rugged covered wagons, resolutely facing whatever dangers lay along the trail in the hope of finding a rich new life of rich new soil. The United States was beginning to ring with slogans; people talked the the country's "manifest destiny;" they heralded "the universal Yankee nation," and called for "an ocean-bound republic." The halls of Congress were treated to such oratory as, "The Rocky Mountains are mere molehills. Our destiny is onward," and, more ominously, "Let the emigrants go on -- and carry their rifles."

So alert was the entire country to the probability of war with Mexico that in 1842 a United States Navy commodore, Thomas A. C. Jones, heard a number that this war had broken out; and he promptly, without provocation, seized Monterey, California. While the incident was inconclusive, it clearly demonstrated the fact that the United States was more than many to back its pioneers with military might. That this action by Commodore Jones did not precipitate the war immediately is conclusive events of Mexico's preoccupation with her own internal problems.

In 1843, the real flood of emigrants to the Columbia Valley via the Oregon Trail began. The following year some of these Oregon settlers journeyed southward into California, there to be joined by others who had crossed the High Sierras.

Thus, citizens of the United States were journeying into land claimed by another nation (Oregon, claimed by Great Britain) and land actually owned by another nation, (California and New Mexico, owned by Mexico.) They were simply appropriating land by squatters' rights, claiming as their own whatever part suited them. Nor were a so foolhardy as they might appear. They knew there government was committed almost irrevocably to back them.

Meanwhile, American infiltration of the New Mexico territory and into what is now Arizona continued. In 1828, gold had been discovered in the Ortiz Mountains of New Mexico, about thirty miles from Santa Fe. The Old Placers Strike, as it was called, is said by some historians to be the first important gold strike west of the Mississippi brought to the tension of the Anglo-Americans. It brought Americans swarming into New Mexico, some twenty years before the Gold Rush of 1849. The Old Placers is said to have produced eighty thousand dollars a year for a number of years; and just as its yield began to decline another strike was made in 1839 at the site of the future town of Golden. While few records, if any, exist to detail the fact, it is more than probable that these strikes impelled prosecutors to explore extensively the mountains of Arizona at that time.

Thus by the mid-forties, the United States was committed to a course that made war with both Great Britain and Mexico seem inevitable, and the brash young nation chose to have a showdown with its more powerful opponent first. The United States announced that it would take steps to protect its "national rights" in Oregon. Instead of precipitating the anticipated war, however, the announcement induced Great Britain to sit down at the conference table and to accede to a treaty, signed June 15, 1846, which adjusted the Oregon boundary and confirmed United States ownership of the portion south of the forty-ninth parallel. The rather cocky attitude of the entire nation at that time is reflected in an excerpt from the diary of President Polk under date of January 4, 1846, "the only way to treat John Bull was to look him straight in the eye."

Meanwhile, the conflict with Mexico was going ever more complex and difficult of diplomatic solution. For a number of years the American government had sent emissaries to Mexico City with instructions to buy or barter for the northern provinces of Mexico. The Mexican government had been consistent in refusing to sell or yield any of this territory. Thus when Texas was first recognized as an independent nation and then later annexed as a state in the Union, the Mexicans deeply resented it. Actually Mexico never legally agreed that Texas had won her independence in the first place. In fact, there was in Mexico a strong coterie that wanted to initiate a punitive war against the United States at that time.

Thus, Mexico was not at all receptive when John M. Slidell arrived as an emissary from President Polk in December, 1845, the same month in which Texas became the twenty-eighth state. Slidell was empowered to buy from Mexico all of the disputed land west of Texas to the Pacific Ocean. The price he was authorized to offer was $25,000,000 plus United States payment of American citizens' damage claims against Mexico. Wyllys says the United States "was offering Mexico a rather good price for the regions west of Texas, at least a better price than she could get by going to war." It was, at least from the American viewpoint bond when values, a princely amount to give Mexico for such a vast and relatively unsettled region."

Slidell stayed in Mexico until March, 1846, futility attempting to sell the Mexican government on what the United States sincerely considered a generous bargain. Possibly the generosity was prompted, however, by expediency. Both Great Britain and France at that time were taking possession of in the Pacific Ocean at a tremendous rate, and both seemed bent upon possessing the coast of California south of San Francisco Bay. The United States was attempting to acquire legal claim to this land from Oregon south before her competitors could establish any claim, legal or illegal.

Mexico's attitude, on the other hand, may have been prompted not so much by belligerent confidence as by the hope that she could incite her three powerful adversaries into fighting each other. If such a conflict did take place, there was at least hope that they would so weaken each other as to give Mexico a good chance of retaining her possessions. At any rate, Mexico adamantly refused to yield to the persuasion of Slidell or even to the arguments of her exiled president, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, whom President Polk had engaged to reenter Mexico and persuade his countryman to the United States' point of view.

While all of the questions discussed here were germane to the case, the formal diplomatic issues upon which the question of war between the United States and Mexico devolved concerned the boundary of Texas. Texas claimed the vast region extending to the source of the Rio Grande, plus a long running from there north to the forty-second parallel and, in addition, the area between the upper Rio Grande and the one-hundredth meridian, which now forms the western boundary of most of Oklahoma. In other words, Texas claimed about half of present New Mexico and a large part of present Colorado.

Conversely, the Mexicans claimed the southern boundary of Texas should be not the Rio Grande but the Rio Nueces, which river Mexico consisted was the northern boundary of Mexican state of Tamaulipas. As for the Texan western boundary, Mexico claimed it was a line running northward from about the middle of the Nueces to the Red River, near the point where the Red crossed the one-hundredth meridian. This definition would have made Texas about one-half its present size.

Implicit, even though perhaps not expressed in the talks between the two governments, was the knowledge that the stake for which they were playing was the region which now constitutes approximately the southwestern quadrant of the United States. The United States said it was morally and legally obliged to protect Texas' territory, while Mexico stood on her constitutional obligation to protect Tamaulipas' territory. Finally, the conflict was focused on the area between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. Texas pointed out that this region had been largely unoccupied and unsettled except for a few ranches near the coast. In the Texan view it was a no-man's-land and of no great value to Mexico.

Whatever its actual value, the area between Rio Grande and the Nueces served admirably as an excuse for beginning the war. On April 25, 1846, the armies of Mexico and the United States met in battle in this disputed region. General Zachary Taylor's trips had crossed the Nueces March 28 and, shortly afterward, a Mexican army crossed the Rio Grande. Word of the battle reached Washington slowly, of course, so that it wasn't until May 19, 1846, that President Polk, having obtained congressional approval, proclaimed, "By the act of the Republic of Mexico, a state of war exists between that government and the United States."

Taylor had arrived on the banks of the Rio Grande opposite Matamoras, erected fieldworks, and waited for an overt act by the Mexicans. General Ampudia notified Taylor to break camp, and, within twenty-four hours, to retire beyond the Nueces. When Taylor made no reply, General Arista, successor to Ampudia, advised Taylor that he "considered hostilities commenced, and should prosecute them." Taylor thereupon sent a party of sixty-three dragoons up the valley of the Rio Grande to find whether or not the Mexicans had crossed the river.

Taylor's company found the Mexicans had crossed and an force rather larger than the dragoons'. The Mexicans killed or wounded seventeen Americans, and surrounded the company and forced it to surrender. This initial success augured ill for the Mexicans, however, for as soon as word of the affair reached Washington, the country was swept with a flaming war spirit. The cry was raised that our country had been invaded and that American blood had been spilled on American soil. The country was ready and anxious to muster all its force and beat Mexico.

General Taylor led a successful campaign deep into the heart of Mexico by land, and General Winfield Scott embarked with an army to land at Vera Cruz and march inland to capture Mexico City, much after the fashion of Cortes three and a quarter centuries earlier.

Meanwhile in the Pacific areas in 1844, Commodore John Drake Sloat was appointed commander of American naval forces in the Pacific, replacing Commodore Jones who had made the abortive attack on Monterey. On October 25, 1845, Sloat received instructions from Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft as follows, "Should Mexico, however, the resolutely bent on hostilities, you will be mindful to protect the persons and interests of citizens of the United States near your station, and should you ascertain beyond a doubt that the Mexican government as declared war against us, you will at once employ the force under your command to the best advantage. The Mexican ports on the Pacific are said to be open and defenseless. It you ascertain with certainty that Mexico has declared war against the United States, you will at once possess yourself of the Port of San Francisco, and blockade or occupy such other ports as your force may permit."

Sloat followed instructions scrupulously. He waited in the harbor of Mazatlan from November until June, playing cat-and-mouse with Admiral Seymour, commander of a British fleet obviously awaiting the opportunity to raise the British flag over California. However, on June 7, 1846, Sloat received reliable word that the war had started, and on the eighth he sailed for Monterey. He outdistanced the British, Sloat's flagship, the Savannah, being one of the fastest vessels in the world at that time. On July 7, he took possession of Monterey, and commanded John B. Monterey, commander of the sloop, Portsmouth, at San Francisco to take possession of the fort there and of the surrounding country. Montgomery carried out the successfully, and captured the Port of San Francisco.

"Sixteen days after Commodore Sloat arrived at Monterey, Admiral Seymour, in his flagship, the Collingwood, sailed into the harbor, and, much to his disappointment, found the American flag hoisted above the fort," Farish writes.

"It seems the irony of Fate that, Sir Francis Drake having hoisted the first British flag over California, it should have been taken from the British Government by one of his descendants, the American Commodore, John Drake Sloat."

John C. Fremont deserves no small share of credit for conquest of California. By now a lieutenant colonel, Fremont in 1845 had led a party of about sixty well-armed in rugged American mountain men and soldiers into California. He had had arguments with Mexican officials in California and even had threatened to fight them. Fremont's presence in the country encouraged the Americans (estimated to number about two thousand) in California to resist the Mexican officials and prepare for revolt.

Fremont spent the winter of 1845-1846 at Klamath Lake in southern Oregon; however, in the of 1846, he received secret oral instructions from Washington, and immediately moved south into California with his command. The Americans in California in the meanwhile had organized under what they called the Bear Flag. These people joined Fremont's command, and were sufficiently strong to drive the Mexicans south.

Meanwhile in Santa Fe, American traders and merchants were busily preparing the Mexicans for the inevitable outbreak of hostilities. They used all of their considerable influence to persuade the Mexicans to yield peacefully to the coming American conquest. They even carried this sales campaign as far afield as Chihuahua City. In the of 1846, Santa Fe caravans were stopped, the traders fearing to move valuable merchandise along it lest it be confiscated by the Mexicans.

Immediately following the presidential proclamation of war, Colonel (later General) Stephen Watts Kearny was ordered to gather the Army of the West. The call for volunteers attracted a preponderance of young men from the Mississippi Valley, especially Missouri, clearly demonstrating that the Mexican war was a Westerners' war. Enlistees gathered quickly at Fort Leavenworth on the Missouri River near Kansas City.

At Fort Leavenworth, also, the Santa Fe merchants gathered their wagons and availed themselves of escort of the soldiers. To avoid overcrowding at Leavenworth and to it his army into the field as quickly as possible, Kearny sent his army into the Southwest in small detachments. As soon as a group reached sufficient strength, it was sent for to Bent's Fort, a fur-trading post established by Charles and William Bent on the American side of the Arkansas in southeastern Colorado.

When Kearny arrived at this rendezvous, he found that, in addition to his seventeen-hundred-man army, he had also under his protection some four hundred wagons of Santa Fe traders. The merchandise they carried was estimated at about a million dollars' value. This freight constituted a real lure for the Mexicans who might be expected to resist the advance of the army. However, Kearny had a force which was, if not large, at least powerful. Included in it were eight hundred tough, mounted frontiersmen under the command of Colonel Alexander W. Doniphan, the Missouri Mounted Volunteers. While the balance of nine hundred soldiers included necessarily a proportion of green and inexperienced troops, there was also a significant segment of men well trained in frontier fighting.

Thus, on July 31, Kearny felt confident to issue to the people of New Mexico a proclamation promising their civil and religious rights would be respected by invading American army and inviting them to yield without resistance. He sent a message to Governor Manuel Armijo of New Mexico suggesting that he submit to the American army and thus avoid bloodshed. In a further attempt to substitute diplomacy for warfare, Kearny commissioned James W. Magoffin, a genial, Irish-American Santa Fe trader to act as the advance agent for the American army in Santa Fe. Magoffin was instructed to assure of Mexican and American merchants in Santa Fe that they not only would be treated well but they would receive contracts for supplying the army.

These preparations paid off. The Army of the West Advanced to Las Vegas, New Mexico, arriving August 15. Encountering no resistance, Kearny entered the town and addressed the population from a housetop. He told them kindly but firmly they had nothing to fear if they submitted peacefully to American rule. In almost every town through which the army advanced on its way to Santa Fe, Kearny made similar speeches, which were usually very effectual in avoiding violence.

By the time the army arrived at Santa Fe, Governor Armijo had disbanded his Mexican militiamen and sent them home. Kearny marched past the defense works in Apache Canyon, east of Santa Fe, and not a shot was fired. There Kearny received a Mexican justice of the peace, who rode out from Santa Fe to inform him Armijo had left for Chihuahua after disbanding his army. Juan Bautista Virgil was acting Governor in Armijo's absence.

On August 18 General Kearny led the Army of the West into Santa Fe and raised the Stars and Stripes over the ancient Palace of the Governors and received the welcome of Virgil. On the nineteenth, Kearny addressed the people of Santa Fe and reassured them as he had the populations of other towns. In the next few days the chiefs of the nearby pueblos came to Santa Fe to take the pledge of allegiance to the United States.

Kearny himself then led a party of his soldiers south to El Paso to confirm the that theMexican army had been completely withdrawn. Satisfied on this point, he returned to Santa Fe about the middle of September and began preparations to follow orders he had received. He was leave whatever men were necessary to garrison New Mexico and to undertake some expeditions southward toward Chihuahua. The balance he himself was to lead into California, there to cooperate with the U.S. military and naval force undertaking the conquest of that region.

Kearny proved himself to be an able administrator as well as military leader by issuing on September 22 a proclamation which established an American civil government in Santa Fe. He appointed temporary officials and gave them a code of laws and a bill of rights upon which to operate.

This, then, became the first United States government which had jurisdiction over what is now Arizona. Wyllys points out, however, "There were probably no Americans in the region [Arizona] at the time;... who could have appreciated the importance of such an event."

On September 25, 1846, Kearny and three hundred dragoons left Santa Fe and headed for California. Marching southward down the Rio Grande Valley, on October 6 Kearny met Kit Carson, the famous mountain man and scout, who was hurrying east with dispatches reporting the conquest of California had been accomplished by United States naval forces and Fremont's volunteers. Carson said that he and the fifteen men with him had heard, at the copper mines on the Gila, from friendly Apaches, that New Mexico had been conquered by Kearny, thus making the Mexican war appear virtually to be over.

Kearny agreed, and persuaded Kit Carson to turn around and guide the Kearny force by the Gila route to California. Kearny had with him Thomas Fitzpatrick, famous mountain man, and Antoine Robidoux, one of four famous brothers, as guides and interpreters. Neither one of them, however, had been across the Gila route. Thus Kearny ordered Fitzpatrick to take Carson's dispatches east under the guard of two hundred of the dragoons Kearny had with him. Both Kearny and Carson agreed that there was no need to take a large force to California since that country had been conquered.

Kearny and Carson and the remaining one hundred dragoons journeyed to the copper mines at Santa Rita on the Gila. There they met with Mangas Coloradas (Red Sleeves), one of the greatest chieftains of the Apache people. They then set off down the Gila Trail, the route so well known to the beaver hunters and which Young and St. Vrain had taken a full twenty years before. Kearny bypassed the Mexican garrison at Tucson, Kearny confident that very shortly it would receive word of the conquest of California and of New Mexico and therefore would be de-commissioned. He did pause, however, near the mouth of San Pedro on November 2 to trade with the Apaches there. They visited the Casa Grande, and later had a friendly visit the Pimas of the middle Gila Valley. Kearny's reaction to these peaceable people was quite emphatic, "Wild Indians surpassing many of the Christian nations in agriculture, little behind them in the useful arts and immeasurably before them in honesty and virtue."

The progress of the Army of the West -- or rather that small segment which finally crossed what is now Arizona with General Kearny -- was relatively uneventful, at least for nearly two months. On November 22, however, near the confluence of the Gila and Colorado, Lieutenant William H. Emory, one of Kearny's two military engineers, wrote the following in his report: "As we approached the end of our day's journey, every man was straightened in his saddle by our suddenly falling on a camp, which, from the trail, we estimated at one thousand men, who must have left that morning. Speculation was rife, but we all soon settled down to the opinion that it was General Castro and his troops; that he had succeeded in recruiting an army in Sonora, and was now on his return to California."

General Castro was the Mexican officer whom Fremont had defeated in California. If he had succeeded in recruiting an army in Sonora, it meant instantly very bad trouble for the Army of the West. Thus, Carson was sent ahead to scout. He found nothing until nightfall, when he and Lieutenant Emory and a party of dragoons found a small camp of Mexicans. The Mexicans claimed to be harmless horsetraders, traveling from California to Sonora with a herd of five hundred head. Wyllys says, "Who these men were has always been a question; but Emory firmly believed that at least one of them was a Mexican officer. Their stories disagreed, both about their trade and about the state of affairs in California; but Kearny, obeying his street orders 'to conciliate the inhabitants, and render them friendly to the United States,' let them go on their horses unmolested."

The following a Emory's men captured a Mexican horseman and took from him important dispatches of a military nature. These disclosed that California had been recaptured by the Mexicans, that the Americans had been expelled from Santa Barbara, Puebla de Los Angeles, and other places. This news gave added significance to a warning Carson had received from one of the horsetraders, to the effect that it would be dangerous to go on to Los Angeles with a force as small as Kearny's.

Thus Kearny and his small army proceeded westward with redoubled caution. Fording the Colorado a few miles below the junction of the Gila, they were guided by Carson to 7 California where they participated in the final reconquest of southern California. This was completed on January 13, 1847 when Fremont received the surrender of Andres Pico, commander of the Californians, at Rancho Cahuenga near what is now Hollywood.

Another army crossed Arizona shortly after Kearny and his Army of the West. This was the famous Mormon Battalion, and its March had a notable effect on the future of Arizona. The battalion was recruited by United States officers in Iowa. Its organization began at the frontier town of Mount Pisgah and was completed at Council Bluffs. It was mustered into service July 16, 1846. Five hundred forty men, followers of Brigham Young on the Mormon trek accordance Iowa territory, had volunteered their services. All were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

At least three theories are advanced as to why the battalion was formed. One is that the battalion was authorized in order to cement the loyalty of Young and his followers to the United States. Another is that Young encouraged the formation of the battalion in order to prove loyalty of the Mormons as American citizens. The third, and rather gratuitously cynical, theory is that President Young capitalized on the outbreak of the Mexican war in order to secure expense-paid passage for some of the younger men of his church to the West. There is also a good possibility that Young hoped some of the members of the battalion in their journeys through the Southwest might find the ideal spot for the permanent supplement of the main body of the Mormon people.

By the time the Mormon Battalion reached Santa Fe, it had been reduced in number to four hundred eighty-six. The fifty-four had been forced to drop out by simplistic, inability to keep up the pace due to lack of experience in frontier travel and so on. There were also twenty-five women and a number of children with the battalion when it arrived in Santa Fe early in October.

On October 13 Captain (later Lieutenant Colonel) Philip St. George Cooke assumed command by order of General Kearny. Cooke further depleted the ranks by ordering eighty-six of the men together with most of the women and children at to Missouri as physically unfit to make the journey to California. On October 19 Cooke had only three hundred ninety-seven men and five women ready to set out with him from Santa Fe. They were undertaking a history-making march to blaze a wagon road to California.

Their guides were two of the best known and most resourceful of old-time mountain men, Pauline Weaver and Antoine Leroux. Encumbered with wagons, the march of the Mormon Battalion necessarily was slow. They followed Kearny's route through the Rio Grande Valley, then turned southwest from the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico. They passed through the Mimbres Valley and found a suitable pass through the mountains of the Continental Divide at Guadalupe Pass near the junction of the present-a Arizona, New Mexico and Sonora boundaries. Cooke later raised the question of whether they had gone through Guadalupe Pass or had taken another more difficult route due to faulty guiding of Leroux. There journey then carried them down into Sonora and passed San Bernardino, Padre Kino's old rancho. There on December 2 they traded with Apaches without incident; however, Cooke later commented, "The Apaches traded to New Mexico the spoil of; they have done so for years -- Sonora would do well, and is not ill-disposed, to claim the protection of the United States."

The battalion rejoiced a week later to reach the San Pedro Valley where there was shade and grass and water in the river. They traveled through the Valley from the vicinity of Bisbee to near Benson, a journey of some fifty miles which led them past the deserted rancho of San Pedro. It was here the battalion fought its one and rather bizarre battle of the war. It encountered herds of fierce wild bulls, remnants of the cattle of the deserted ranchos. Nor was this entirely a comic opera type of fight. Cooke reports the animals attacked without provocation in some instances and charged men, horses, teams, and even wagons, overturning them or knocking them off the road. He says one bull received two bullets through its heart and two through the lungs and still ran on a man.

Cooke received word that several small garrisons of Mexicans had been assembled at Tucson. Probably they totaled no more than a hundred fifty men, obviously no match for much larger Mormon Battalion. Cooke had no desire to shed any blood, and he took every means available to avoid it. Once he was intercepted by four or five Mexican soldiers, the sergeant in charge of whom old Cooke the commandant requested the Americans not to pass through Tucson. He added the commandant had orders to prevent such passage, but that the Americans would be free to travel on either side. Cooke replied that he would not attack a weak garrison, but that he wanted the people to realize the Americans were there friends and that the battalion wished to purchase flour and other supplies. A little later a group of Mexican officers authorized to make an armistice came to Cooke. The terms arrived at in this being were rejected by the Mexicans, and Cooke was forced to march on Tucson ready for battle.

The Mexican troops, however, had departed and taken with them most of the population. Thus, on December 17, 1846, the Mormon Battalion took possession of Tucson and raised the American flag for the first time in Arizona.

The battalion stayed in Tucson only one day. The troops that had left town had either dispersed or retired to the other garrison towns of Tubac, Fronteras, and Santa Cruz. Cooke stayed in town only long enough to procure a provisions for his very poorly equipped and supplied company and to leave a note for the commander of the presidio, Comaduran. In it he apologized for having been "compelled to break up your quarters at this coast." He also includes a letter to be forwarded to governor Manuel Maria Gandara of Sonora. The letter was a masterpiece of diplomacy and exclaimed to the governor the purposes of the Mormon Battalion's march and that it came not as an enemy of the Mexican people but rather as a friend. It suggested that the real interests of the Sonorans lay with the United States, not with the Mexican government which had been, for a number of years, so ineffectual and torn by inner strife.

Henry Standage, a Mormon soldier and a member of the battalion, wrote, "We were kindly treated by the people of Tucson, who brought Flour, Meal, Tobacco, Quinces to the camp for sale and many of them giving such things to the Soldiers." Standage's Journal covers his service as a member of the Mormon Battalion from July 19, 1846 to July 19, 1847. It is a well-written document of twelve thousand words, and reposes now in the office of the Arizona State Historian. In his later years Standage became a resident of Mesa and bequeathed his manuscript to his grandsons, Orrin and Clarence Standage.

Cooke's description of the town is rather complete. "Like Santa Fe, Tucson is not seen until very close by, Cooke wrote. "Of course, its adobe houses are the same in appearance but inferior. There is a wall with abutments and battlements in bad repair, which surrounds the barracks; it is on the highest round. The town is not on the bottom. It is a more populous village than I had supposed, containing about five hundred... Beside the very large stone Church above and an adobe one here, there is another, very large, at a small Indian village close by. There are no priests at the presidio."

Setting out again westward on December 18, the battalion descended the Santa Cruz and Gila, reaching the Pima villages four days later. There they met guides which Kearny had sent back for them, and there also they rested and enjoyed the hospitality of the friendly Pimas. Cooke and other partners chroniclers of the march were as enthusiastic as Kearny about the Pima Indians.

It took the band until January 7th and 8th to reach the junction of the Gila and Colorado. The journey was uneventful except for the great privations suffered by the soldiers. Water was extremely scarce, as was food. The Mormons had been poorly equipped in the beginning, but by this time there clothes -- especially their shoes -- were tattered and there other supplies and equipped were equally worn. There livestock, horses and mules, also had suffered greatly from the lack of forage, making it necessary for the soldiers to travel almost entirely on foot.

The battalion crossed the Colorado on January 9 and struck out across the California desert toward Warner's ranch between San Diego and Los Angeles. The suffering from heat, hunger, and thirst on this final phase of the journey was acute. It took the weary, bedraggled column twenty days finally to reach the coast, arriving on January 29, 1847.

The reconquest of Southern California had been accomplished by this time, and the Mormons were given garrison duty in towns along the coast until there discharge at Los Angeles on July 16, 1847. The story of the Mormon Battalion, a unique one in American history, has been well chronicled in the journals of Colonel Cooke, Standage, and at least two other members of the battalion. Christopher Layton was a member of the group, and supplied his daughter, Mrs. Selina Layton Phillips, with data for a book of his life which was printed in 1911. Another interesting work is B. H. Roberts', written by a man of Arizona and his book, Mormon Settlement in Arizona, James H. McClintock, late Arizona State Historian, has also gone into considerable detail on the subject.

The important significance of the Mormon Battalion's march across Arizona lay in the fact that it mapped the first feasible wagon route across the part of what is now the United States. It also inspired many other members of the battalion to return to Arizona in later years and settle here. Throughout the West the Mormons have been outstanding colonizers, and nowhere more so than in Arizona. It is significant that a number of Arizona's most prosperous and well-found towns they are situated on or near the route marked by the Mormon Battalion, and either were found or early were populated by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Some of them are Safford, Thatcher, Mesa, and St. David. While proving themselves loyal Americans and hardy soldiers, the Mormons at the same time noted and remembered the valleys in which prosperous settlement could be founded.

At least two other American military expeditions came into Arizona during the Mexican war or immediately thereafter. One from New Mexico conducted a brief campaign against the Navajos in 1846, winning from these Indians provinces of cooperating with Anglo-Americans. Late in 1848 a battalion of United States dragoons under command of Major Lawrence P. Graham visited Tucson briefly and without incident after marching down the Gila and Santa Cruz. It crossed the Colorado November 22 and went on to California.

Meanwhile, General Winfield Scott had captured Mexico City September 14, 1847, and the American naval blockade of the Mexican ports had broken the military strength of Mexico and put to flight President Santa Ana. During the last months of 1847 and January, 1848, diplomats of Mexico and the United States arrived at the peace terms which were incorporated in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. It was signed on February 2, 1848 at a little suburb of Mexico City. The United States Congress, after some heated discussion, finally ratified it, and President Polk proclaimed it to be in effect July 4, 1848.

Thus July 4 assumes a special significance for Arizona, New Mexico, California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming, for on that date all of that land officially was ceded to the United States.

By the terms of the treaty the United States paid Mexico only fifteen million dollars for this tremendous territory included in the Mexican cession. It will be recalled that before the war Slidell had been empowered to offer twenty-five million dollars for the same area. Under the treaty, also, the United States assumed claims of American citizens against Mexico in the amount of three million dollars. The boundary line between the United States and Mexico as defined in the treaty ran from the Rio Grande to the Colorado, due west along the southern line of the farmer Mexican territory of New Mexico from a point near Paso del Norte to its western end near the Continental Divide, "thence, northward, along the western line of New Mexico, until it intersects the first branch of the river, Gila...... thence down the middle of the said branch and of the said river, until it empties into the Rio Colorado."

In the treaty provision was made for the full protection of navigation rights for both American and Mexican ships on the Gila and Colorado rivers. The treaty also carefully defined mutual rights and interests in the building of any highway, railroad, or canal through the Gila Valley.

One of the points of argument in Congress during the debate on the ratification of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was the fact that it conceded to Mexico the area south of the Gila River. Kearny and Cooke both had demonstrated the feasibility of a wagon road across this territory, and it was thought to be one of the most valuable of trans-continental routes. However, it was an election year, and Polk and his party were anxious to have the war formally ended and peace reestablished before the election campaigns began. Thus they pushed the treaty through Congress and yielded the southern Gila Valley to Mexico. It was a mistake which would be corrected partially a few years later but only after some bitter controversy.

Thus on July 4, 1848 all of what is now Arizona north of the Gila became American territory. There were no Anglo-American settlements in the territory at that time, and there were only a very few scattered Mexican settlements. A large part of the territory was known only to mountain men and scouts like Kit Carson and Pauline Weaver. It remained in virtually the same condition in which Coronado and Marcos de Niza and Padres Kino and Garces had found it. There was little to indicate that it stood on the verge of a tremendous, sudden and permanent colonization and prosperity. It would take another fifteen years to achieve separate status as a territory, however, and another sixty-four years to attain statehood.

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