Empire: World History - 165. A Massacre at Dawn

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

Arizona Territory, April 30, 1871. The canyon known as Aravaipa lies still in the predawn darkness, the only sounds to be heard in the early-morning calm the song of birds and the lilt of running water as it courses its way toward the nearby San Pedro River. But upon this paradise all hell is about to break loose. With Native American land being squeezed and squeezed by settlers, and relations becoming more and more violent as indigenous customs are degraded and exterminated, things are at breaking point in Arizona. Nearly 500 native men, women, and children have moved into the US military base, Camp Grant, for protection, yet, the Tucson Committee of Public Safety still see them as a threat. Listen as William and Anita are once again joined by Karl Jacoby as they discuss the Camp Grant Massacre and finish the story of 'How the West was Won'. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Anouska Lewis Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mparpoduk.com. Arizona Territory, April 30th, 1871. The canyon, known as Araviper, lies still in the pre-dawned darkness. the only sounds to be heard in the early morning calm, the song of birds and the lilt of running water as it courses its way towards the nearby San Pedro River.

Suddenly, out of the shadows, emerges a crowd of newcomers. As they draw near the intruders, some mounted on horseback, others on foot, whisper to one another in Spanish. As the group advances, the Apache's shelters come into view in the half-flight. The intruders begin to sprint upstream along the creek bed, passing at each goreter to club to death the adults and to seize or kill whatever children they can locate within. For many inne murdered while they slumber, the attack lasts but an instant. But as the early morning stillness is broken by hurried footfalls, the crack of club against bone and the barking of Apache dogs,

some in a awakening flee in terror. A few succeed in scaling the steep bluffs lining the canyon or hiding in the thick brush along the creek bank. Many others, however, fall victim to the men waiting in the rocks above, who fire down at them as the sun rises over the jagged peaks, its light reveals scores of inna corpses sprawled along the creek. Seeing the camp abandoned, its once sleeping inhabitants, either dead or dispersed, the attackers set the Apache's possessions and their empty

gauders ablaze before withdrawing. A quick count as the raiders reconnoiter a few miles away reveals that not one of them was killed or even injured in the assault. They succeeded, however, in seizing 29 Apache captives and in killing perhaps as many as 144 in naye, all of them sleeping women and children, in an attack lasting little. more than 30 minutes. Hello, welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Duremple. And what you just heard was the extraordinarily powerful extract from our guest's book,

Carl Jacobi, is where this author of Shadows at Dawn and Apache Massacre and the Violence of History. And it is an extract which brings a story to its climax that we're going to examine forensically. How did we get to this? It's called the Camp Grant Massacre. It is an absolutely brutal tale, which in many ways exemplifies what will become the entire destruction of Native American life in America.

Carl, thank you very much for being with us again. In the last episode, we were talking about, you know, this sort of peace protocol that had managed to lead to violence against the indigenous people, not just the Apache or Inay, but Native Americans wherever they might live in what is now the United States. And this comes from this desire to either force indigenous people onto reservations and or force them to assimilate and lose all contact with who they once were. Tell us about Camp Grant, first of all, because that's where that particular awfulness takes place. Give us a pencil sketch of where it is and why it is an important place. Sure.

So thank you for having me on. Camp Grant is the military camp, obviously, as it suggests. It's named after then-President Ulysses S. Grant. So it's an homage of sorts to this person who's seen as the architect of the so-called peace policy towards American Indians, which, as we mentioned, is ironically quite violent. And it's located at the intersection of two important waterways in sort of middle of our, what would now be the middle of Arizona, just north of Tucson. It's just a San Pedro River, which one's north-south.

And so this has actually been a sort of a route that's used going into Mexico for generations. And then the Ira Vlakel Creek. And as I tried to outline in the introduction, it's one of the few sources of running water in the area. And so it's an incredibly sort of valuable place for Native people. They've been struggling to hang on to this place, this site for years. And the U.S. Army has erected this camp right at the intersection there because they realize it's so important to native people, and they're trying to seize control of this particular space. And Carl, we had an impression of this last episode, but in case anyone listening didn't hear that.

in the immediate period preceding this, there's been a process of complete dehumanization of the Apache, the Inne, for many of the local inhabitants. And the policy dictated by Washington is regarded by many of the locals as an absurd, idealistic policy that doesn't take in what, in their words, would be savage barbarians capable of extreme violence who must be exterminated. Yes, I mean, it's really grim stuff. I mean, basically a lot of the local settlers in Arizona are advocating for a complete extermination of the Apache. And although from my perspective, the army is being quite violent in general towards the Apache. It's not violent enough towards the Apache for a lot of the settlers. I just wanted to say too. So I, of course, have been to Aravaipa Kenyan several times.

And I remember the first time I went there and you are going through what is a very desolate landscaper in the middle of sort of the northern edge of what would be the Sonoran Desert. And so this is the landscape that you see in a lot of Western movies with the big saguaro cactuses and the Palliverdes and stuff. And then you get into Arava and it's just this profusion, just this richness of wildlife and this richness of water and green paradise. And you can see why the Apaches were so closely or sort of so excited about this particular region and why they fought so hard to keep their presence there. It's gorgeous and it's very easy to live there.

There's the profusion of all the life they depend on. Well, where there's water, there is life. And that's why, you know, this camp grant is set up here. Let's talk about the camp commander, a man called, well, you would say lieutenant, Royal Whitman, lieutenant to us in our old money. But tell us about a Royal Whitman. Who is he exactly, the camp commander? Well, so like a lot of the officers at this time, he's a veteran of the Civil War,

almost all the U.S. Army officers who are involved in the so-called Indian War, is the term I don't agree with. We could talk about that more if you want to later, but they're all veterans of the Civil War. He's originally from Maine, so he's a northerner. He actually worked as a saddle maker before he goes into the Army during the Civil War, and then I think decided that he liked being in the military more than making saddles, so he ends up staying in the military afterwards, and then he gets posted out to Arizona. And so when all this is happening, actually, at Camp Grant, he's just very recently arrived. He arrives in November of 1870. And what kind of guy is he? Is he, what's his attitude to these indigenous peoples?

So as best we know, you know, he doesn't write, I wish he kept a diary. I mean, if I were to give him instructions of the historian, he needed to keep a diary or something. But he is, you know, he's from the North, he's one of these kind of reformers, so to speak, which is to say that, you know, out of the kind of abolitionist group that was fighting the Civil War, I think that's why he volunteered for the Civil War. And so he now, you know, sees himself as trying, as we'll see when we get into the specifics, trying to reform Indian society as well. So he's very much of the kind of grant peace policy group. I mean, I've seen his monument is at Arlington Cemetery. And let me just describe it to you, because, you know, I think it's one of the only representations we have with his face,

but Royal Whitman, it's an engraved thing in stone. And he looks a little bit like, you know, a Dickensian man of letters. You know, he's got this sort of an uncular kindly face, a big full mustache and a beard. It looks less like a military man and more like, you know, an uncle who'd probably be quite kind to you. And yet he's associated one of the most bloody chapters in Native American history, but more of that in a moment. So we're talked about, so he arrives at 1870. I mean, do we know what he's like?

Do we know what he's like to his men, what they think of him? I think he's just a kind of generic officer, to be quite honest. I mean, he does reveal some interesting sort of traits. What happens is the Apache's come and they want to make a treaty with him, and you reveal some very interesting traits then, but I don't think there was anything prior to that moment. All right, well, let's not blow that surprise. So he's just a run of the mill. He's a run of the mill, returnee from the Civil War.

February 1871, a small group of Apache women approach the fort. And they're actually there because they're looking for a kid, aren't they, who's gone missing? Yes. So they're looking for a child of one of them who's gone missing that has been seized by the army and they're trying to get the child back. It's important to note that often Apache women were the negotiators initially during a lot of these peace arrangements. And that's done in part because women are seen as not a threat. And so you would send them in. And then also an elder women, which is often what I think these women were, you know, first they're not childbearing years, but also elder women in Apache society are valued elders, and they're sort of seen as

having the authority to make this kind of negotiation. My sense is they're trying to get the child back immediately, but they're also Whitman and his men have just moved in to Camp Grant. They're sort of moving into replace the previous union. And I think they're trying to take the measure of them and try to figure out what kind of person is this. So they don't have the child. But it turns out this child is not in the camp, as the women suspect he might be. So they go away, but they come back a week later because they want to trade. And so, you know, that sort of gives the impression that they don't feel under threat by Whitman or his men at all. Right. No, so Whitman gives them some pieces of what they call mantah or sort of calico cloth and makes them some gifts.

He's trying to develop some sort of relationship with these women. And then I think the next step is that once the Apache women feel that he's not a threatening character, and you have to realize that there are certain army units that have been out killing Apaches at this time, then they send in some more people to negotiate with him. Okay. And I mean, what he says is he knows, Whitman's kind of a little torn here, because he knows the peace policy, says he needs to move all of the people in Arizona to Fort Apache, to the reservation there.

But they want to go somewhere else to that Garden of Eden that we described. just at the beginning, a place of water, this beautiful valley. So what goes through his head at the time? What's he going to do about that? Yeah, he's been placed in a very difficult position. So there is only one reservation for Apaches in Arizona at the time. It's a fair amount to the north. It's the famous or infamous Fort Apache reservation. And when he suggests that... And is that good territory, or is that very barren and neglected? No, it's not bad, actually. It's fairly cool. It's up in the hills. But what the leaders of the Apache, he meets with two Apache leaders named Ashki Vanzan and Captain Chiquito. And they say,

well, that's not us. They're actually, they're a group that's known as the Arabipa Apache who are from this region. And they say, we are not part of that Apache group. This is part of the issue we were talking about in the previous episode that the Apache are not a unified tribe. And so the army is trying to stick them all in one place because you're all Apache, but they're actually, they don't have any of different guns. Yeah. They don't feel any kinship or, and they might even have some tension with that group. So they don't want to move there. They want to be in this area that they're familiar with and that they've long used, which is Aravaipa Canyon. So they advocate for staying there. But this places Whitman in a little bit of a problem because the peace

policies you're supposed to help reform indigenous people, but he doesn't really have a reservation that he can put them in. And so he de facto, in essence, begins to create a quasi-official, quasi-unfficial reservation in Aravaipa on the grounds initially of the fort for these Apache people, because he sees if I don't do this, they'll probably leave and I'll be engaged in some sort of conflict with them. And there's a chieftain, Eshim and Z, who he's talking to. Haschki Vanzan, yeah. How'd you pronounce him?

Haschki Vanzan, is what it would be. Haschik Vanssen, yeah. I'm not super fluent in Apache, but that would be a little closer to then what would you say. Okay, and Hashkamansen has no interest in being sort of pushed around, I guess. What does he say to Whitman? He says, you know, we don't want to go to Fort Apache. We're willing to, we like to stay here in Iroipa Canyon. And his, you know, their community has long been based in Aravaipa Canyon. So, I mean, are they happy with what he's offered, you know, this sort of makeshift reservation that he's trying to put up?

I think so. I mean, well, certainly it's better because you have to realize that if they're not on this reservation, they're vulnerable to being attacked by the army and killed. And so, you know, the Apache are trying to, in essence, they're trying to do what the US wants them to do, which is to be on some sort of reservation. To move to a safe zone in, to use contemporary terminology. Or a contained zone. It contains zone. It contains a more, really.

Some place where they have a relationship with the army and feel that they won't be vulnerable to the kinds of spectacular violence and surprise attacks that could happen otherwise from the army. So in this contained zone, which is very near the camp, I mean, what kind of housing are we talking about? Are we talking about the old Adobe-style sort of dwellings that are hastily put up? There's some photos of it which you can see that the camp really doesn't exist anymore. I've walked around where it used to be.

There's a flat area right where Arava Creek and San Pedro River meet. And that's where it used. That was the parade ground of the camp. And there were sort of these Adobe, you know, using a Mexican technique, Adobe houses for the soldiers. Initially the Apaches are just making their, what they call, wikiups often a sort of a brush shelter with often have a piece of canvas over it. And that's where they're staying. They initially are saying quite close to the soldiers. Once Whitman sort of feels, and what Whitman is doing,

he's monitoring them quite closely. So every couple of days, he will go out and take roll call and count how many Apaches are there. He's also trying during this time, and this is part of his reformer impulse, feeling that he needs to, you know, teach the Apaches how to work. And, you know, I mean, they've been supporting themselves for centuries, millennia, but he feels like he has to teach them how to work. Do we have a clear idea of what he's teaching them? Is he doing pottery or what? No, no, no. So he wants them to go work as sort of field hounds. He will pay them, particularly Apache women, sort of little little chits if they go and collect grays for the horses for the soldiers. And then eventually he tries to set them to work harvesting crops for nearby white settlers, sort of turning them into a, you know, a working laboring class for the white settlers. And these chits, they can then trade for things that the Apaches want, you know, cloth, more cloth or things like that.

So in his view, he's doing two things. He's both working the peace policy to make sure that there's no violence. Plus, he's trying to, in his eyes, civilize the savages. But also, cheap labor. Yeah, he's getting hay for the horses. Yeah, he's teaching them about capitalism. But obviously, you know, whenever white sellers are trying to teach native people about capitalism, And they're usually trying to slot the native person into that very bottom wrong of the society.

They're not making them into the entrepreneurs. They're like they want them to be the laboring class. So that's what they're doing. And eventually it seems to, I think mainly for the safety reasons and also perhaps for the sense that they can get some supplies, there's about 500 Apaches who come in to this site. And mainly women and children, not the men. There's a combination of both. I think the men, you know, often during the U.S. Army policies, they would kill all the the men, so I think the men are a little more reticent about coming in. But eventually, Whitman allows them

to move upstream a little bit so they're not just on the grounds of the Army fort, but they move about four or five miles into the canyon where it's better watered and it's more, it's more lush down in that part. But despite this, I mean, it feels like a trusting act to say, okay, you know what, you can move a bit further so we don't count you every morning. But there are settlers around the area who say, actually, no, hang on a minute, they're raiding us, they're robbing from us, and there is a great deal of a cloud of suspicion that is swirling around Camp Grant and Whitman himself. Yeah, so, you know, Whitman is a new person in Arizona, the local press in Tucson to the south. You have to realize as well, there's a sort of overlay of the post-Civil War going on here.

So most of the whites in Tucson at this time were former Confederates. And Whitman is a former union officer, right? Oh, very interesting. That's a whole different. So they don't trust him. It is blue, right? There's some built intention there. And then Whitman is seen as coddling the Apaches when he should be out killing them or, you know, making the reservation to more of a prison.

And then one of the issues that we've talked about in the last episode is that the Apaches are in a very large group and very dispersed. And so there are Apache raids taking place. But the settlers in Tucson tend to think they're all from Camp Grant. And so that Whitman should be punishing at least these Apaches, you know, that he's not being hard enough on them. Right. Okay. And some of the stories start to, you know, really take hold. So there is a, the killing of the Worcesters is not all that it seems. So we know we had extracts from the Arizona Minor before we, you know, never backwards at coming forward to spewing hatred against the native population. God, what they would have made of this. So tell us about the Worcesters in their ranch and the truth of the killing of the Worcesters.

Yeah, the Worcesters, the story is very interesting. And when I finally unraveled it, I was quite, I don't know, a little proud of myself and sort of revealing, because I think it was very revealing how this event gets misremembered. So, you know, there are some killing of settlers that takes place, and there's someone in a ranch just south of Tucson in a place called Tubac, where he is killed, and there's a woman who is either various accounts killed or taken captive. And eventually this gets made into the story that she is Worcester's wife and she's pregnant, she's his white woman. And sort of, so this is that you can see the tremendously fraught image of the white woman. Well, they give her a name, Leslie Worcester.

Leslie Worcester, yeah, yeah. She'll carry on the future of the white race and all of these sorts of things. But it turns out that she's actually a Mexican woman named... Trinidad Aguirre. Trinity Jad Aguirre. And she wasn't married to Worcester at all. She wasn't pregnant. But she's sort of, I think later on after the spectacular violence takes place, that they sort of need a rationale.

And so they need to sort of think that they were acting to protect white women. One of the things that's a little detail that's interesting too is that after the massacre, they say, oh, we found this brooch, which was belonging to Mrs. Worcester. But of course, they found that afterwards. And it's one of the things that never gets mentioned before. And it's not even clear they found it or belonged to her. I see this as very close to the kind of narrative about imperiled white womanhood. Yeah, this is in the aftermath of 1856.

when you had the women of Kornpour massacred and allegedly raped. The massacre was true, the rape was not, but it became this great light motif. And exactly this period in India or having memorials erected all over India for these women. And this fear of white women's purity being somehow sullied by, quote, savages is very much in the air at this time. Well, I mean, the other issue that's happening in the U.S. is that, so this is immediately after the Civil War and the lynching narrative is getting produced in the U.S. South, which is the fear of white women being imperiled by freed African slaves. And in many respects, you see a similar narrative being produced here in the West around white women being threatened

by native men. And so this in both cases in the U.S., it generates the need for tremendous retaliatory violence, right, because you have to protect white women at any cost. Right. So the way in which this starts off, you know, the blood is up because of this kind of hashtag fake news, slightly fake news. news. I mean, we don't know who, you know, what happened to Trinidad, Aguilera, but we do know that something bad happened, but it wasn't to a woman called Leslie. But they set up, the Settlers, so Committee of Public Safety led by a man called William Uri. Now, tell us about William Uri. He's he. No, he's a, he's a fascinating character. One thing just important to sort of set him

against Royal Whitman is he's a southerner. So he's from Virginia. He goes out, I think he's one of the younger sons. So sort of leaves the family plantation, goes out to Texas. There's some stories that he actually was in the Alamo and briefly sort of was one of the last people to send out to deliver a message before Santana attacked. That's a little bit difficult to decipher because, as I later discovered, a lot of people would claim to have been in the Alamo when they weren't. Never was. Because there was a lot of cachet to that, obviously. But he was in Texas, and we know he was a Texas ranger. He actually fought against Mexicans in the U.S.-Mexico War.

He's quite militaristic. Militaristic. He does this very interesting thing then, which is after the war, he actually marries a Mexican woman named Inez Cruz. And he bounces around, goes to California for the gold rush. But then the 1850s, he ends up in Tucson. And he becomes the leading dairyman in person. He is a very large ranch, which has dairy cattle.

You guys have got to see the English. It's absolutely set at this time. It's about massacists, and it's particularly about herders who are trying to be cattle. Carl and I are going to watch it together. Watch it, okay? Right. But one of the things I want to underscore is that often the notion is that this violence towards indigenous people was sort of done by the outcasts of society, right?

But Uri is one of the most successful, most prominent white settlers in Tucson at the time. And he's also, like a lot of the white settlers at the time, are actually intermarried with members of the Mexican community. There's many more white men than white women at the time. So almost all the prominent men are actually intermarried with Mexican women. So the point I really want to emphasize is that the people who are leading this attack are not sort of these scoundrels and rogues or whatever, the scum of society. They're like the leading figures. They're the cream of the crop, such as it was in Tucson at the time. But Carl, you also make the point that the people who are gathering around him are not just other white settlers.

There's a whole racial mixture of people that are going to come and join this Lynch Bob. Yeah, so Tucson at the time is not a predominantly Anglo-City. Tucson has this very long history. It was originally on Tonowtham Village. It then becomes a Spanish settlement in a Mexican town and then eventually kind of the center of Anglo-American Arizona. And most importantly of all is the home of JJ Kale, we should say it, point, shouldn't me? Am I right about that? Oh, the musician? I did not know that. Okay. So he's got a mixed racial group around him as well. I mean, we know he's married to a Mexican woman,

but I'm sort of interested in this plan of revenge that heats up in this boiling blood of the fake Leslie attack story, Leslie Worcester story. Who is it who sort of surrounds him and says, we are with you, no matter what you want to do? So they have various meetings of this committee on defense that they're supposed to be, you know, protecting themselves against the Apache. And they eventually reach out to other groups that have their own sort of beefs with the Apache. So one of these groups would be the Tonowtham, who are the local indigenous people. And this is that longer history that we were talking about in the first episode, where the, there are indigenous tensions that are actually sort of already there prior to the arrival of Europeans and then get exacerbated by European colonialism. So the

Tonowtham, in fact, some of the Tonawtham originally lived in Aravipe Canyon generations ago and were pushed out by the Apache. So I think they have their own. So they've got beef. How does he know that? How would Uri have the local contacts? I don't know if he knows that older history, but he does know that they... They don't like them.

They don't like them. That during the Mexican period, the Tonowtham are often sort of auxiliaries with the Mexican force. against the Abacchi. And one of the people who led this, there was a very prominent Mexican family in town called the Alias family, led by two brothers. There's Jesus, and there's also one Elias. And this was a group.

Their ranch was very close to the Papago. And so I think that what happened is Wuri knew the Alias family. The Elias family knew the Papagoes. And so you get this very multicultural group. Confederation of Revenge, I like to think of it. Whose idea is it to launch an attack or a map? massacre on this camp grant.

I mean, it's a little, so supposedly the committee on defenses, you know, they have this meeting and I think they work themselves up into this fever pitch. What I think is quite interesting is when it ultimately becomes, so that's predominantly Anglos at the time, but when it ultimately becomes time to go on the attack, it's only six Anglos who participate, a larger group of Mexicans and then a large group of indigenous people of Tono Atham. And I think this is also interesting because, and it's somewhat different around some of the other sort of infamous massacres that happened in this latter half of the 19th century, where it isn't just whites against indigenous people. You see this kind of very broadcast of people, which I think allows you to get a sense of the deep history that's going on here.

There's indigenous tensions. There's tensions between Mexicans and indigenous people. And there's also Anglos who are involved as well. I have to say, as a read, it hugely added to the kind of nuance and the complexity of the story. That it's not just a John Wayne film in reverse with incredibly virtuous people in black hats. And it's like we always say it's not black and white. Exactly. This is not a black and white story.

But the attack itself with this handful of American Six, you said, and then others, this cast of others, they attack actually, sadly on my birthday, 28th of April, 1871, that they are going to hit the camp. do they plan to do this? What are they taught themselves up with? Well, I mean, you have to realize what they're doing is quite extreme because they're basically, the camp is right next to a U.S. military base. So they're almost, they're going against the U.S. military, right? So it's a very vigilante attack that they're planning. And one of the things they have to do is they cannot let the U.S. military know what they're doing. So they have to take a kind of less well-traveled back road. Avoiding the fort.

Avoiding the fort and avoiding sort of public roads that the army might notice that they were on when they're going up there. And what are they armed with? What are they got? Well, it depends a little bit on which participants you're talking about. So the Tonowatham have come up with these very effective clubs. You know, you don't have to stop and reload it or anything. They just will club people. Made of wood.

Made of wood. Made of musquite wood, usually. But they also work their sort of connections. one of the officials in Arizona is named Sam Hughes, and he has sort of the militia guns, and they get him to release some of those guns, more or less secretly, to the Anglo and Mexican vigilantes, so that they're very well armed. And these are, you refer to them, sharps and Spencer carbine. Sharp's and Spencer Carbine.

So I'm not an expert on the military hardware, but during the Civil War, there's a pretty rapid transformation in the technology of going from sort of single-shop. muskets to more rapid-firing guns. And so this is the latest military technology, which will allow you to fire multiple times against an enemy at this time. Okay, so what we've got now is an impression of people who are heavily, heavily armed,

who are creeping up the backways, you know, to the top of steep bluffs. They're overlooking the Aravape Canyon. And is there positioning with the guns? Is that so that if anyone runs away from what is about to happen, they will be shot rather than be allowed to escape? Yes. I mean, so it was really powerful to walk in illuminating in a sort of gruesome way to walk Arava Canyon,

which I ultimately did with some of the members of the survivors' families. And it has a very steep sort of gullies. And so the camp was all on the floor of the valley right along the creek where the Apaches were. And so the attackers, the Anglos and the Mexicans seemingly are up, mainly on the hill with the guns. and then the Tono Watham, who are the majority, are run into the encampments. And because they have clubs, they can also begin to kill people quietly, silently. And then once the Apaches awaken and try to flee, then they're supposed to be picked off by the kind of the snipers on the top of the block.

So it's quite well planned. These guys know what they're doing. The fact that they kill, it's a little hard to know exact numbers, but somewhere almost around 150 Apaches and don't lose a person in the attack, suggest how asymmetrical it is, right? It's the element of surprise, but also how well-armed they are, and also the way the landscape just bottles in the Apaches. It would be very hard to get up the faces of that canyon and escape.

You have to run deeper into the canyon. A few people hide in the brush. Yeah, or hide in the brush and try to escape that way. I mean, the way you describe it, the way William beautifully read it at the beginning of the program, it just reminded of those awful scenes. You know, when hunters went out on the ice and just clubbed baby seals, you know, that you've got children who are completely defenseless or people who are completely

asleep and not doing anything who are just wiped out by this sort of very brutal shattering of skulls and bones. Yeah, I mean, it's just, I don't know what else to say. It's just complete violence and complete gruesome. Well, look, on this miserable picture, which, you know, we began with, let's take a break. And then when we come back from the break, let's talk about what happens in the aftermath of this bloodlet. It's an April morning in 1871. And Luternel Lieutenant Whitman is just tucking into his breakfast when a messenger arrives to say that something terrible is about to happen. Tell us about this, Caldrakabin. Yes. So Lieutenant Whitman is the officer in command of Camp Grant, and he's about to eat breakfast, and he gets the message that

there is a group of vigilantes who are about to attack the Apache encampment, which is on the incipient or quasi-reservation that's located very close to his establishment. There are about five miles apart, where his camp, where his headquarters are and where the Apaches are camping. So just out of, he can't hear the shots of the, you can't know, so just out of your range. Picking down the people trying to climb up the canyon, he hasn't heard any of that. Yeah, so Whitman goes there and he's the first sort of written eyewitness accounts we have of the aftermath of the massacre. Just, you know, bodies strewn everywhere, some of them mutilated, and a lot of the Apaches

traumatized. Many of them, kids, some of them women. Kids, exactly, kids, young women. And then a lot of the Apaches are traumatized and don't want to speak to him. And I think part of this is just the trauma of what they've gone through. Part of it also is, to be honest, the Apaches don't know. They thought maybe they could trust Whitman, but they don't know. Was he involved in this particular?

Did he let them end? You know, was he involved in this massacre? So it's a very kind of fraught and horrific moment. The reason that Whitman didn't find out earlier is that the party who was going out to attack from Tucson, they took this back route, but they were very worried that the army would find out about it. So they actually sent some men to block any transmissions along the main route. It goes from Tucson to Camp Cran. So, I mean, so well planned.

So, you know, this is an extermination that's very well planned. I'm just going to read a little bit of what Whitman saw when he went into this camp for the first time. I saw the dead bodies of several women that I recognized, he says. Two were lying on their backs entirely naked and shot through the breast, apparently, with pistol balls. I saw the dead bodies of children, perhaps six. They had died apparently by gunshot wounds. I recollect one child, perhaps two years of age, with the arm neatly cut off. Besides an old man, the only other dead body of a male was a boy.

Perhaps he was 16 years of age. So just to give you an idea of what he walked into when he did finally get the messenger. Predominantly women and children, right, which are the almost always in these kinds of attacks. They're the most vulnerable. They're the least able to escape. and so it sort of just emphasizes the extermination, exteratory aspect of it because they're killing women and children. Now, Carl, you give an impression that the local press immediately jumps in

giving a very slanted account and initially proclaiming the massacre as a great victory against violent Apache tribesmen. Whitman begins to fight back on that with a more sober account of a massacre, doesn't he? Yes, well, I mean, the word massacre that you mentioned is kind of the key term. So initially in the press, it's not called a massacre. It's called a victory. And the notion here is that they've protected. It's not seen as an act of aggression. It's seen as an act of protection for the settlers. Self-defense is how they describe it. Yeah. These guys have the right to self-defense. Against the Apache violence. And then Whitman ultimately begins to disrupt that by writing some letters that get

published in some of the press, not the local Arizona press, which hates Whitman, but in of the Eastern Press. And this creates this whole debate about what is this? Is this a massacre? Is this, you know, a righteous self-defense? And so that's one of the sort of debates that lingers over this incident. And this provides a whole series of inquiries that give you your raw material. You have an amazing amount of raw material to work with when you're writing this book. Because there's a trial eventually. I mean, it takes a while. But I mean, there is a trial for this, isn't there? Yeah. But because, so this thing becomes, comes a cause celebrity, you have to realize this is happening at Camp Grant, which is named after

President Ulysses as Grant, who is president at the time, who is the author of the peace policy. So it's not just, it is a horrific massacre, but it's a horrific massacre that really cuts this issue about what is the peace policy in the first place. And it's really an attack on the, you know, the federal control of Indian policy and General Grant himself, President Grant himself. And his authority, yeah. It's a PR nightmare, as they'd say today. Yeah, so Grant comes out very strongly against it.

He calls it murder in an interview that he does. And so, you know, prior to this, there had never, ever, I mean, tremendous acts of violence against indigenous people. You know, William mentioned this before. They're poisoning indigenous people in Arizona with stricken eye. None of that had ever been brought to trial. There never had ever been in Arizona any trial of any white person for killing a native person before this.

But because this is such a horrific event, because of the fact that it's so closely linked to General Grant himself, President Grant, I should say, at this point. There really is a lot of pressure from the federal government that you have to bring a trial. There has to be a trial of these people because this is such an awful event. Yeah. And really, I mean, there's some real horrors in this. If you want to do a Law and Order Corruption special, here you go. One of the men who's a district attorney at the time not only had advanced knowledge of the attack,

but participated in several of the meetings that planned and led up. up to the attack. This is going to be a great movie when they make one call. Uri, just to say again, he's a big herdsman. He's got a huge hordes, so he employs hundreds of people. I don't know of hundreds. I mean, Tucson's a pretty small place at the time, but he's, you know, he's very influential. He's really well regarded. He's a dairy farm. He's the big cheese. He's the big cheese. He's literally the big cheese. He's literally the big cheese. One of the other participants, Sydney DeLong,

gets elected mayor just a couple weeks after the massacre. And I have to believe the fact that Sydney DeLong was known to have participated in the massacre was actually a political plus at that particular time. So, I mean, it does seem like the whole system is corrupt. Let's just very briefly go through what the trial ended up with, because I'm very keen to talk about what this means today to Native Americans. So, I mean, just what happens? So how does the trial conclude and where does it leave everybody? So this, like I said, this is a first trial ever in Arizona for a white person for killing indigenous people. They actually put on trial not just the whites, but they also put on trial a number of the Mexicans and a large number of the Tonowtham Indians as well. There's something like over 100 people put on trial.

And in fact, the very first photo we have of Tucson is a photo that was taken outside of the courthouse of all of the defendants sitting there, which I think shows how this event was so integral to creating the history of the region. So they have a multi-day trial. And for me as a historian, this was great because there was a transcript actually that I was able to locate at the trial. So you have direct testimony of some of these people who are participating. Was this something you found, Carl, that had never been used before in the council? I don't think it ever had been. There had been very little writing about the Camp Grant Massacre.

And I actually ended up putting it on a website that I can give you guys the link to. Yes, we'll put that in our newsletter, which anyone who is a member of the Empire Club gets. But then the judge basically gives a very sort of weighted or slanted direction to the jury, almost sort of giving up the notion of self-defense as the rationale for what they did. And then the jury goes and it's 19 minutes or something. 19 minutes they come back with a verdict of non-guilty. The other thing that's interesting is that there is no. they call some of the Anglos settlers, they call actually at least one of the Tono

atham leaders there. They call some of the Mexicans as well. They don't call any Apaches to the stand. So we never get, the whole trial transcript gives you sort of three sides of the story, but the fourth side, which would be most important, which would be the Apache side, they're never called. They would never be thought to appear as witnesses in the trial. Do you have any Apache sources at all about the massacre? There are some oral histories that were done of survivors in, say, the early 20th century. One of the very early anthropologists among the Apache who learned Apache named Granville Goodwin went out and took accounts. So we do have some of those.

And there are stories that Apaches have passed down about the massacre. Although we can talk about this more. It's actually within Apache culture, it's interesting. I think Western historians like to dig into this gruesome stuff. And within Apache culture, it's often seen as not healthy, psychically healthy to be investigating death and destruction and such terrible things. And it was a little bit, it made me feel quite ghoulish actually when I first came to the reservation because I'd be like, huh, you know, let's talk about this terrible massacre. And, you know, they're a little bit like, what is wrong with you? And that I did actually, I have to say writing this book was, it took me to some dark places because it's a very grim story.

And there were moments when I thought, I think the Apache maybe have a better attitude about this. that you're not supposed to talk about the dead and not really wallow in it so much. Perhaps, but it is a milestone because what it tells Native Americans, no matter what tribe they come from, is that you will not get justice here. This will happen and you will not get justice here.

I mean, let's talk about where we are today because we do have Native American reservations, even to this day. You say you went to the reservation to talk to people who were descended from. What is the situation with, you know, what is left of these tribes that once lived and inhabited most of the United States. So most of the survivors of the Camp Grant massacre

moved to a reservation that's known as San Carlos Indian Reservation. And in some ways, it's a very, it's a very beautiful spot, although it's not the lush spot that Ara Vipa was. And the soldiers who were stationed there early used to call it Hell's 40 acres or something because it was so hot there. But one of the things that was striking early on when the book was published, I actually did a presentation in Tucson with an Apache Elder. And this was a, the book was published in 2008. So this was right during the so-called Great Recession in the United States. You know, the unemployment rate had hit 10% or something in the United States and people were just freaking out about how terrible this economy was. And the Apache Elder said, you know, that's maybe bad, but you have to realize

the unemployment rate on San Carlos is 50%, something like that. And that's every year. Like, that's not just this one year where we're seeing this as a crisis. It's just a constant economic challenge. What are the trades, what do people do today to get by in these reservations? Well, you know, they have a casino. I mean, part of the issue, which I think is related to this history, is they're in a very isolated spot. They're not, they're eventually pushed into a spot that's way off from Tucson and way off from Phoenix. So it's not like you could commute to those places to work. There's not a lot of industry. So they have a tribal herd of cattle. that they raise, they have a casino, people do beautiful arts and crafts, and that those are,

there's not a lot of tourists coming by, it's hard to sell them. So it's a, you know, it's a very, it'd be culturally rich area, but it's a very economically depressed area. We talked about Hollywood representations of the Old West. I mean, the ones, there are revisionist TV programs, at least, which are trying to address the kind of situation that, that now Indians on reservations are facing. I'm thinking of Yellowstone in particular, the one, the Kevin Costner one, where they are. I've never watched Yellowstone, but... Lutia and I'd be watching far too much telly and not studying enough history. It's kind of interesting.

I mean, it's a popular series, American series, but it is, it does address, you know, some of the historic steps which led to men owning huge swathes of America now and who lived there before and that kind of thing. The Indian casino, I mean, you touched on it has a casino, and that is one of the things that popular culture often associates with Indian reservations that there's a casino. Just, I mean, for those who don't know, why is that a thing,

happens? Because of the Indian Gaming Act, it's basically seen that the indigenous people sort of have the right as part of their sovereignty to run casinos on their land if they want. So one of the aftermath of this is the Tono Atham also have their casino, but the Tono Atham are closer to Tucson. And so their casino is much more robust and flourishing than the Apache casino, which is in the middle of nowhere. And so it doesn't really get that many tourists there. All of the depictions I've seen in modern popular culture of misery, deprivation, unemployment, addiction issues, you know, that kind of thing. I mean, do you have, do you have some happy, happy ever-after stories that you might share? Well, I think, I mean, I'm saying as an outsider, I mean,

I've made some good friends. I think there's some amazing, you know, the culture and everything else, but I do think that economically they're quite challenged. And I think that, you know, the United States has not even begun to face up to the ways that they've sort of structurally disempowered and impoverished these people. I feel like there's a slow violence. You know, we talk about this kind of fast violence during the 19th century of the Camp Grant massacre. But there's a slow violence of economic deprivation, which then leads to substance abuse issues, which then leads to, you know, unemployment and all of those other sorts of issues, which just leads to, it just makes for a very difficult situation for the Apache.

Do you feel that the kind of history you've been writing, Carl, which tells the unvarnished truth about how the West was one and that it was one with extreme violence and with something approaching genocide and ethnic cleansing. Is that widely known when your students come to Columbia and study with you? Are they aware what their history is? Or do you constantly have them with their jaws dropping to the ground and saying, I don't know in this. It's interesting. I think on some level, and Columbia students are a very particular group, but on some level, I think most Americans realize that they don't know the specifics, but I think they realized there were these tremendous crimes that have enabled non-Indigenous people to enjoy the vast majority of the continent

at the expense of indigenous people. They don't know the specifics. Camp Grant and very few people had really talked about it until I wrote the book. Is it changing? Do you find that there's now, I mean, just making this series over the last five, six episodes, we've seen a great deal of a very good new work and some really remarkable writing, some of it from Native American historians? It's definitely changing within the academy. One question I always ask myself as a scholar as to how much does this really get out. And I think one of the difficult parts is we write our books and all of that, but so many Americans get their history, as it were, from TV shows and movies. And it's very, very hard for us to undo a lot of that. And so I certainly don't feel

that most Americans, although I certainly would, would describe what happened to indigenous people as a genocide. People sometimes get very angry when I talk about it that way. Do you have that? We all sit here writing imperial history and trying to work against the grain with some of the stuff the British did. And we both have colleagues who, one, David Dona Sugar, who has to go to book festivals with a bodyguard, and another Sattlam Sangara who gets sacks full of hate mail. Do you get a bit of that when you go around America telling people that their ancestors were war criminals? I guess I'm not famous enough for that to have happened.

So I haven't. One thing I did do, actually, after this, it was very interesting. One of the members of the Elias family, who is the Mexican who guides the group that attacks Camp Grant, he reached out to me, and I knew some of the members of Capiton Chiquito's family, the Apache family. And so we actually were able to have a lunch together in Tucson, which was very interesting. With the victim and the perpetrator's descendants. But I didn't have any of the Uri family, so there's sort of a limit. I've never had anyone from the Uri family reach out to me.

They're still around. Are they still ranching? I don't know, actually. So he only had one daughter, so I don't know. I don't think the Uri name is there, and I don't know exactly what happened. His daughter married a U.S. Army officer, but again, sort of where that family ends up going, I don't actually know. Well, look, we may not know that, but we know so much more than when we started.

Thank you so much for being with us. Carl Jacobi, the author of The Excellent Shadows at Dawn, the Apache massacre and violence of history. What we haven't perhaps said as clearly as we should is that Carl's book is not only an extraordinary masterpiece of research. It's also, as we saw at that, reading at the beginning, absolutely beautifully written and deeply moving. And it's very beautifully written, the way that you study it from four different angles, all the different participants. And yet there's no repetition, there's no feeling that you're going over the same ground. It's very cleverly written. I thought it was a wonderful piece of writing as well as an extraordinary piece of research.

Thank you. I was really trying to break with the usual narrative mode in telling this story, which I thought was really important in trying to tell a story that's this complicated and this violent. Thank you very much, Carl. So that's all from us, from me, William Del Ripple. And me, Anita Arnden. Until the next time we meet, goodbye.