er with indignant
protests from centers of culture in the East that the whites of Arizona
were "more savage" than the savages themselves. I leave it to the reader
to judge whether this was a fact.

The Wooster raid and slaughter was merely the culminating tragedy of a
series of murders, robberies and depredations carried on by the Apaches
for years. Soldiers would follow the raiders, kill a few of them in
retaliation, and a few days later another outrage would be perpetrated.
The Apaches were absolutely fearless in the warfare they carried on for
possession of what they, rightly or wrongly, considered their invaded
territory. The Apache with the greatest number of murders to his name
was most highly thought of by his tribe.

When the Wooster raid occurred I was in Tucson. Everybody in Tucson knew
Wooster and liked him. There was general mourning and a cry for instant
revenge when his murder was heard of. For a long time it had been
believed that the Indians wintering on the government reservation at
Camp Grant, at the expense of Uncle Sam, were the authors of the
numerous raids in the vicinity of Tucson, though until that time it had
been hard to convince the authorities that such was the case. This time,
however, it became obvious that something had to be done.

The white men of Tucson held a meeting, at which I was present. Sidney
R. De Long, first Mayor of Tucson, was also there. After the meeting had
been called to order De Long rose and said:

"Boys, this thing has got to be stopped. The military won't believe us
when we tell them that their charity to the Indians is our undoing--that
the government's wards are a pack of murderers and cattle thieves. What
shall we do?"

"Let the military go hang, and the government, too!" growled one man,
"Old Bill" Oury, a considerable figure in the life of early Tucson, and
an ex-Confederate soldier.

The meeting applauded.

"We can do what the soldiers won't," I said.

"Right!" said Oury, savagely. "Let's give these devils a taste of their
own medicine. Maybe after a few dozen of 'em are killed they'll learn
some respect for the white man."

Nobody vetoed the suggestion.

The following day six white men--myself, De Long and fierce old Bill
Oury among them, rode out of Tucson bound for Tubac. With us we had
three Papago Indian trailers. Arrived at the Wooster ranch the Papagos
were set to work and followed a trail that led plain as daylight to the
Indian camp at Fort