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Troops in Arivaca camp From 1916 to 1919, U.S. Cavalry troops patrolled Arizona’s south-central borderland from this camp in Arivaca. (Photo courtesy of Origin and Fortunes of Troop B: The Connecticut National Guard, by James L. Howard, 1921) |
Column No. 14
Bob Ring, Al Ring, Tallia Pfrimmer Cahoon
The 1910s and 1920s were a particularly dangerous time along the border between
Arizona and Mexico.
Just after Phil Clarke bought the Ruby general store in 1913, “unknown parties”
shot and killed another storekeeper, Jasper S. Scrivener, owner of the store at
Oro Blanco camp (old Oro Blanco) just three miles away. The Tucson Daily Citizen
reported Scrivener’s murder:
As the scene of the crime is only two miles from the Mexican border, it is quite
probable that the murderer has crossed. Scrivener was in his store at the time
and the shooting was done through the window. He is said to have had $1,400 in
gold dust on the premises.
Ever wary of bandits from nearby Mexico, Phil Clarke kept loaded guns in every
nook and cranny of his Ruby store.
In later years Clarke told this humorous story about a Mexican customer,
illustrating the lengths that Clarke would go to protect his family and store:
As he was leaving he spotted a rain gauge that I had recently put up. It was an
old-fashioned large style apparatus that stood on a big pipe. He wanted to know
what on earth it was. I told him it was a new weapon that held poison gas. All I
had to do was press a button in my bedroom and it would release a big spray of
gas, enough to kill a whole regiment of soldiers! He was very impressed and
carefully rode way around it as he left.
Whether or not this fanciful story had anything to do with it, as Clarke said
later:
I never did have trouble to speak of with the Mexicans because they were friends
of mine. The bad element amongst them knew that I was a good shot. I was once
Golden Gloves bantamweight champion of the U.S. and they had seen my fists on
occasion and respected my ability.
Cattle-rustling was also a problem along the border. Referring to the area south
of Arivaca, the editor of the Nogales Oasis wrote in 1915:
. . conditions with the cattlemen out in that part of the country are very
unsatisfactory. Petty depredations from the Mexican side of the line are
frequent and almost continuous and the loss of cattle is heavy . . estimates
that within a few months, between Sasabe and Nogales at least 1,000 head of
cattle have been run across the line and slaughtered.
Mexican revolutionists also plagued the border between the United States and
Mexico from Texas to California. From 1910 to the late 1920s, Mexico suffered a
number of violent revolutions. There were many incidents of murder, robbery,
kidnapping for ransom, property destruction, and even an invasion of U.S.
Territory by “Pancho” Villa, who raided Columbus, New Mexico in March 1916.
The U.S. response to Villa’s raid was to send a punitive expedition under
General John J. Pershing into Mexico. (For almost a year, Pershing’s troops kept
Villa on the run, but they never captured him.)
A second U.S. response to Villa’s Columbus, New Mexico raid was the mobilization
of the National Guard. On June 18, 1916, U. S. President Woodrow Wilson “called
out the militia from every state in the country for service on the Mexican
border.”
The U.S. established new military camps in remote areas, including one at
Arivaca, just north of Ruby. The first troops in Arivaca were Connecticut
National Guardsmen, who arrived in August of 1916. The Utah Cavalry replaced the
Connecticut National Guard in late 1916.
On January 26, 1917, a border incident occurred at Casa Piedra (Stone House),
just three miles south of Ruby and 16 miles south of the new military camp at
Arivaca. According to the next day’s Tucson’s Arizona Daily Star:
The trouble started yesterday morning when six American cowboys rode to the line
to drive back some American cattle which are reported to have been close to the
line, but on the American side. When they started to drive the cattle away they
were fired on by a force of twenty Mexican cavalry.
The cowboys reportedly withdrew northward until 14 U.S. cavalrymen from Troop E,
Utah Cavalry, from Arivaca reinforced them. Later that day, an additional 18
troopers from the Arivaca camp arrived to increase the American force. The
troopers left a few of the men at Ruby to guard the Montana mine. (This was the
time when the Goldfield Consolidated Mining Company was busy developing the
mining property.) The Americans and Mexicans exchanged fire for the rest of the
day, with no American casualties. By the next morning, the Mexicans had departed
and the so-called “Battle of Ruby” was over.
This was not a major international incident, but in the Oro Blanco Mining
District, “hard feelings between Americans and Mexicans were intensified by this
episode.”
In February 1917, after a negotiated settlement with Mexico, the 10th U.S.
Calvary returned to the U.S. with General Pershing from Mexico and replaced the
Utah Cavalry in Arivaca. The 10th Calvary, made up of African American troopers,
began to patrol south-central Arizona on a regular basis. (The 10th Cavalry’s
squadron camp was at Camp Stephen D. Little in Nogales, but detachment squadrons
occupied camps at Arivaca and the village of Oro Blanco. Soldiers also manned a
troop outpost in Bear Valley, a few miles east of Ruby.)
The Yaqui Indians also contributed to border turbulence near Ruby. The Yaqui
used a border-crossing trail through Bear Valley to smuggle arms and ammunition
to their tribesmen in Mexico who had for some time been in revolt against the
Mexican government. The Yaquis would sneak across the border, work in U.S. mines
and on ranches to accumulate money, then purchase rifles and ammo and return to
their people in the Yaqui River section of Sonora.
On January 9, 1918, a group of about 30 Yaquis, traveling on foot through Bear
Valley, ran into a group of 10th Cavalry troopers. The Yaquis apparently mistook
the black soldiers of the 10th Cavalry for Mexican soldiers and opened fire.
Following a short fight, U.S. troopers captured 10 Yaquis. There were no
American casualties.
National Guard troops, first deployed to Arivaca in August 1916, remained there
only three years. By late 1919 the troops in Arivaca had departed, leaving the
border area near Ruby unprotected.
This would have grave consequences for Ruby just a few months later.
(Sources: Tucson Daily Citizen; Nogales Oasis; Phil Clarke “Recollections of
Life in Arivaca and Ruby, 1906-1926,” Arizona Historical Society; Nogales
Herald; U. S. Army Center for Border History; Mary Noon Kasulaitis, “National
Guard Operations in Arivaca, Connection, 1998; Arizona Daily Star; Carol Clarke
Meyer, “The Rise and Fall of Ruby,” The Journal of Arizona History, 1974; Major
Albert G. Scooler, “Cavalry’s Last Indian Fight,” Armor, 1970)
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Troops in Arivaca camp From 1916 to 1919, U.S. Cavalry troops patrolled Arizona’s south-central borderland from this camp in Arivaca. (Photo courtesy of Origin and Fortunes of Troop B: The Connecticut National Guard, by James L. Howard, 1921) |
Next time: The Fraser Brothers Mining Story