Apache Trail.

[tapoutking]

Reading a book on Arizona and New Mexico from the 1800's (more like a diary) and it contains some very detail information about the whereabouts of Apache villages, gold mines etc in the area. Anyone familiar with the area?

 

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[TucsonHiker]

What is the name of the book? Sounds interesting.

 

[tapoutking]

Adventures in Arizona & New Mexico by Samuel Woodwirth Cozzens.

Alot of GREAT info on Arizona and New Mexico including gold and silver mining and the areas in which the Indians were taking gold. I have the Hard Back version and it has a small map of his routes. Wish it were bigger though.

 

[Skywola]

Sometimes, if you have a very small map or photo, if you scan it with a scanner, then blow it up in Photoshop,
you can find things that do not show up normally.

 

[tapoutking]

Im going to try that, although a loop will probably work fine with the map.

 

[Skywola]

I live in Mesa, Arizona . . . . Have spent time in the Bradshaws and Superstition Mountain area, some in Payson area.
I do not have a great vehicle for two tracking though . . . what I got made it across the Bradshaws only due to the madness of the driver!

 

[Gork]

Reading a book on Arizona and New Mexico from the 1800's (more like a diary) and it contains some very detail information about the whereabouts of Apache villages, gold mines etc in the area. Anyone familiar with the area?

If you would like two other good books about Apache Indians in Arizona I would suggest the following:
Life Among the Apaches by John C. Cremony and Adventures in the Apache Country by John Ross Browne.
I particularly like Cremony's book as he was the translator for the Bartlett surveying team during the Gadsden Purchase in the early 1850s. He also guided prospectors along what was to later become the Butterfield Trail in Arizona. He has a great description of his fight with Apache Indians near what is now Texas Hill, Arizona. In 1862 he was back in Arizona serving with the California Column.

 

[TheNewCatfish]

Cabeza de Vacca's report to the Queen of Spain (translated into english) is also a must read. The Exploration of North America was vastly different from the Southern Continent. The Cheyanne indians and Apache in particular were absolutely terrifying to the Conquistadors. They didn't fight anything like the people of South America. In one account of a skirmish with the Cheyanne, de Vacca describes how a Cheyanne warrior ran back and forth infront a skirmish line of soldiers who fired repeatedly, until the warrior lifted his bow and shot an arrow into the face of one of the riflemen from 150 paces without even stopping to loose the arrow. Cannons were useless and muskets were nearly useless. Sword, spear and crossbow were their only effective weapons. For this, Conquistadors had to fight from breastworks to prevail. These triangle shaped fortifications were situated down in draws or canyons where the attackers would be funneled into a tight fire zone by the terrain. Walls were about 30 feet long with large boulders to the outside and smaller rocks used on the inside. The height of the wall was only 3 and a half feet. Just tall enough for a soldier to squat behind.

 

[Rawhide]

Catfish, think I may have found some of those triangle defenses. I would muck like a copy of your map. If you up to sharing, there is a lot of ground out here to cover.

 

[TheNewCatfish]

One of these primitive forts exists just outside Big Spring, Texas along the Comanche War Trail in WildHorse Canyon. Surprisingly, locals always knew about the structure, which was easily recognized in aireal photos on Google Earth. They assumed it was a corral, or maybe the cellar of some settler's house. I went to the location and recovered a 2 lb. Spanish carronade (cannon) ball from inside the structure. Clearly this was NO corral or basement. Without having read Cabeza de Vacca's journal, the locals were unable to figure out what the structure was. Hope this helps with your explorations.

 

[TheNewCatfish]

I'll go back on Google Earth and retrieve the exact co-ordinates of the structure on the map so you can view it for yourself and compare it to what you've found.

 

[Rawhide]

That would be nice, I am finding stone walls, and boulders arranged all the time.

 

[TheNewCatfish]

The boulders on the outside of the wall would be quite large, so they couldn't be pulled down easily. Stones about a foot and half in diameter weighing over 100 lbs. Stones on the inside wall about the size of honey dew melons, (six or eight inches in diameter). People have been building field breastworks this way since Roman times. Not all fortifications were triangle shaped. It's just easier to defend three walls than four. Smaller positions were built in a circlular pattern, which may or may not have had several shooting ports added to the design. Such structures were primitive, temporary, defensive positions and were not intended as a permanent shelter. You won't find evidence of roofs or flooring. Nor is it unusual to find cannon ordinance buried in these structures, because the indians couldn't forge iron. So there was no danger leaving it behind. A retreating force often did abandon their heavy ordinance in order to move faster.

 

[pippinwhitepaws]

I went to high school in superior...I used to believe if it was a hole in the ground, I was required to enter an see why it was dug..
done things on route 88 that were not too bright...'specially back when the road was one lane of dirt.

find a copy of " AL Sieber, chief of scouts" if you want a review of how the military operated in the southwest.