747016

research-article20172017
SGOXXX10.1177/2158244017747016SAGE OpenWelch

Article

SAGE Open

Earth, Wind, and Fire: Pinal Apaches,

October-December 2017: 1­–19
© The Author(s) 2017
DOI: 10.1177/2158244017747016
https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244017747016

Miners, and Genocide in Central Arizona, journals.sagepub.com/home/sgo

1859-1874

John R. Welch1

Abstract
The San Carlos Apache Tribe is a leading defender of Oak Flat, a large public campground on the western flanks of the
Pinal Mountains east of Phoenix. Oak Flat is sacred to many Apaches and other Native Americans and is listed in the
U.S. National Register of Historic Places. The Tribe is among the parties gravely concerned about the Resolution Copper
Mine, a joint venture of Rio Tinto Group and BHP Billiton Ltd. to privatize and industrialize Oak Flat’s public lands and
minerals. Archaeological sites, place names, stories, and ceremonial uses affirm the pre-1875 Apache occupation and ongoing
significance of Oak Flat. Historical records reveal how mining proponents combined industrial and annihilationist propaganda
to portray Apaches in the Pinal Mountains as subhuman impediments to civilization and profit. This inflammatory rhetoric
ignited vigilante and military campaigns between 1859 and 1874 that killed over 380 Pinal Apaches—including many women
and children—then confined survivors onto the San Carlos Reservation. Mining across Pinal Apache territory followed
promptly, claiming additional Apache lands inside and outside reservation borders. The stark historical injustice of the Pinal
Apache Genocide requires recognition and redress via the responsible governments and industries, including their successors
today. The obvious first step is simple avoidance of further harm to Apaches and Oak Flat. Truth must be a hallmark for
comprehensive cost–benefit assessments of proposed alterations of Indigenous homelands. Reconciliation must be a planning
goal for any mining or other consumptive uses of Indigenous sacred sites.

Keywords
American Indian trust responsibility, Apache archaeology, genocide, Indigenous environmentalism, mining impacts on health
and culture, truth and reconciliation

Whither the Roots of Resistance?
Indigenous people in North America and around the world
are leading efforts to protect ecosystems and create sustain-
able societies (Grossman & Parker, 2012; Hindery, 2013;
Willow, 2016). Such quests engage issues ranging from cli-
mate change, water security, and environmental justice to job
creation and corporate influence in governmental decisions
(Millet, 2015; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2016).
Lightening flash media reports on these controversies sel-
dom seek ultimate sources for Indigenous resistance. Even
when the roots of legitimate opposition are exposed, corpo-
rations and governments generally value industrialization
over conservation and typically discount national and inter-
national policies that empower Indigenous peoples to deter-
mine their destinies and safeguard their geographical and
cultural heritage (United Nations General Assembly, 2007;
Welch, Riley, & Nixon, 2009).
That many Indigenous peoples show more interest in
recounting historical injustices and protecting land and
water than in shiny prospects for future prosperity may be
because so many Indigenous territories and communities
remain vulnerable and exploited relative to their non-
Indigenous neighbors (Harvard Project on American
Indian Economic Development, 2007; United Nations
Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2009).
Numerous Indigenous peoples, including San Carlos
Apaches, seem to have reached tipping points and now
treat proposed harms to their homelands, communities, or
sovereignties as opportunities to expose and rectify politi-
cal and economic oppression.
San Carlos Apache opposition to the proposed Resolution
Copper Mine (RCM) on predominantly Tonto National
Forest (TNF) public land east of Phoenix (Figure 1) invites
in-depth inquiry into Indigenous resistance and whether the
1
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
Corresponding Author:
John R. Welch, Simon Fraser University, Archaeology Department and
School of Resource Management, Burnaby, British Columbia,
Canada V5A 1S6.
Email: welch@sfu.ca

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(https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
2 SAGE Open
Figure 1. Resolution Copper Mine (RCM) impact area, nearby American Indian reservations, and Apache reservation severances
enacted to accommodate industriali mining and farming.
U.S. Federal Government and RCM operators are acting in
accord with established laws and policies to avoid and mini-
mize adverse environmental and social effects from mining.
The case study begins with Earth—the Indigenous home-
lands threatened by RCM and the archaeological and cultural
evidence for Apache links to the RCM impact area, espe-
cially Oak Flat, the area known to Western Apaches as
Chí’chil Biłdagoteel. Despite a decade of effective opposi-
tion by Apaches and environmentalists to the proposal to
swap Oak Flat for RCM properties elsewhere, members of
Arizona’s congressional delegation inserted provisions to
privatize Oak Flat into the 2014 National Defense
Authorization Act (Millet, 2015). The study continues with
Wind—the pernicious propaganda propagated by govern-
ments and mining proponents, beginning circa 1859, to
dehumanize Apaches and rationalize their extirpation from
the Pinal Mountains. The study’s deadliest element, Fire,
chronicles scorched earth campaigns that killed and removed
Apache and Yavapai aboriginal landowners. Based on this
explanation of what happened to the Pinal Apache stewards
of the Pinal Mountains, the study argues that improving
miner–Apache relations is contingent, minimally, on truthful
recognition of past harms, avoidance of further injuries, and
steps toward reconciliation. Federal actions to assess and
minimize RCM impacts, in particular, must be complete,
independently verifiable, and transparent enough to demon-
strate that RCM’s social, economic, and environmental ben-
efits unequivocally outweigh its massive and, as of late 2017,
incompletely disclosed social and environmental costs.
Earth: American Indian Ties to the
RCM Impact Area
San Carlos Apaches are the most vocal Oak Flat defenders
among the 10 federally recognized tribes of people whose
ancestors lived in and used the Pinal Mountains and the
RCM impact area prior to 1875 and into time immemorial.
San Carlos is one of four tribes that represent the Western
Apache (Ndee) cultural tradition. The other three are the
Payson Tonto Apache Tribe, the White Mountain Apache
Tribe, and the Yavapai-Apache Nation (Welch & Ferguson,
2007). The six non-Apache tribes with clear cultural and
Welch
historical ties to the RCM impact area represent the O’odham
tradition (Gila River Indian Community and Salt River Pima
Maricopa Indian Community), the Yavapai tradition (Fort
McDowell Yavapai Nation and the Yavapai-Prescott Indian
Tribe), the Hopi tradition (Hopi Tribe), and the Zuni tradition
(Pueblo of Zuni; Colwell-Chanthaphonh & Ferguson, 2006).
Historical and archaeological records seldom enable clear
distinction between Apache and Yavapai identities, and
Yavapai-specific evidence deserves follow-up study on par
with this investigation of Pinal Apaches.
The U.S. National Environmental Policy Act, National
Historic Preservation Act, and other federal and state policies
require studies of RCM and comparable land alteration pro-
posals to assess social and environmental impacts (Butzier &
Stevenson, 2014; Mortimer et al., 2011). Resolution Copper
(2016) lists dozens of these investigations, including many
archaeological studies, but omits important archaeological
reports (e.g., Buckles, 2008; Lindeman & Whitney, 2003).
As a complement to studies of RCM’s archaeological
impacts, TNF officials supervised an analysis of places and
values important to tribes. The project included site visits to
the RCM impact area and interviews with 94 representatives
from the 10 affected American Indian tribes. Western
Apache, Yavapai, Zuni, O’odham, and Hopi elders helped
document 404 sites and 46 springs threatened by RCM and
culturally significant to at least one tribe. The sites include
ancestral living, gathering, and hunting areas, trails, petro-
glyphs, landforms, water sources, and places of religious and
spiritual importance and observance (Hopkins, Colwell,
Ferguson, & Hedquist, 2015).
Western Apache Territorial Culture
One indicator of the importance of the RCM impact area in
Apache culture is that 65 of the 94 tribal representatives who
contributed to the TNF study are Western Apache elders and
younger cultural practitioners. Western Apaches are distinct
from the more sensationalized Chiricahua Apaches, who
maintained territories south and east of Western Apache
homelands (Basso, 1983; Goodwin, 1942; Opler, 1941).
Academics generally agree that Western Apaches moved
westward to establish themselves in the Salt and Gila River
basin uplands by the later 1600s (Bolton, 1919, pp. 162, 165,
169, 172, 180; Hämäläinen, 2008; Schroeder, 1952, pp. 143-
145; Welch, Herr, & Laluk, 2017). Prior to sustained contacts
with Americans, Western Apaches controlled over 11,000,000
acres of rugged mountains, deep canyons, desert basins, and
stream valleys (Figure 1) (Basso, 1983; Goodwin, 1942;
U.S. Indian Claims Commission, 1969).
Apache cultures and worldviews are inextricable from
their lands. Western Apache social structure featured territo-
rial bands comprised of local groups made up of extended-
family households. RCM would impact lands once used by
the Pinal Band, the T’iis Tsebán (Cottonwoods Gray in the
Rocks People) and the Aravaipa Band, the Tsé Binesti’é
3
(Surrounded by Rocks People; U.S. Department of
Agriculture Tonto National Forest [USDA TNF], 2015).
These two bands are collectively referred to as Pinal Apaches
(Goodwin, 1942, p. 3).
Western Apache oral histories link specific matrilineal
clans to specific clan origin places. Te’gotsugé (east of Oak
Flat; Figure 2) is the origin place for the five Apache rock
clans; three other clans trace their origins to Oak Flat or
nearby (Goodwin, 1942, pp. 606-607, 611, 615-617; USDA
TNF, 2015, section 7, p. 4). Prohibitions against marriages
between clanspersons serve to broaden clan networks and,
prior to the 1880s, facilitated Apache access to other group’s
lands. Agave, cactus fruits, pinyon nuts, acorns, and other
foods are typically available somewhere in Western Apache
territory, except late in winter, but kinship and clanship
ensured access whenever local foods were depleted (Basso,
1983; Goodwin, 1942, pp. 244-245). Farming complemented
gathering and hunting but is only productive in restricted
locations with favorable elevation, soil, and hydrologic con-
ditions. T’iis Tsebán maintained farms along Pinal Creek and
on the Salt River above Tonto Creek; Tsé Binesti’é farmed
along Aravaipa Creek and the San Pedro River (Goodwin,
1942, pp. 24-25, 28). Members of the T’iis Tsebán and Tsé
Binesti’é bands frequently intermarried, shared food, and
traveled without fear across one another’s territories (Record,
2008, pp. 50-52).
Western Apaches also obtained food by raiding neigh-
bors. Apaches distinguished raiding, armed sorties for live-
stock and produce, from warfare, mortal vendettas. Raiding
was more common during years and seasons of food scarcity,
especially January to March (Basso, 1971). Western Apaches
avoided interpersonal violence to conceal raiding tactics and
routes and to allow for the continued survival of farms and
ranches within range of possible future strikes. Apaches and
Yavapais shared the Pinal Mountains and other parts of the
RCM impact area, occasionally intermarrying and cooperat-
ing in foraging and raiding (Gifford, 1932; Goodwin, 1942,
p. 25; U.S. Indian Claims Commission, 1965, 1969).
Oak Flat
The stunningly beautiful, approximately 40-acre grove of
majestic Emory oak trees known as Oak Flat is the most sig-
nificant American Indian site within the proposed RCM
impact area. Ancestors of all 10 RCM-affected tribes left
behind material traces of their occupation and carried for-
ward memories and stories (Hopkins et al., 2015). The Oak
Flat vicinity is crossroads for cultures, histories, archaeolo-
gies, and spiritualities. That the English place name is a
translation of the Apache name, Chí’chil Biłdagoteel (a
broad flat of Emory oak trees), signals the place’s paramount
significance to Western Apaches.
Western Apache cultural and archaeological sites occur
across the RCM impact area, but the Chí’chil Biłdagoteel
vicinity stands out as the regional hub (Buckles, 2008;
4 SAGE Open
Figure 2. Western Apache Aboriginal Territory and band lands located therein.
Note. Also depicted are portions of neighboring groups’ Aboriginal Territories (Yavapai, Navajo, Chiricahua Apache, O’odham), as judicially determined by
the U.S. Indian Claims Commission.
Lindeman & Whitney, 2003). Apache archaeological evi-
dence in and near Oak Flat includes pottery sherds, petro-
glyphs, rock piles, roasting areas, and remnants of boulder
rings used as foundations for brush shelters by Apaches in
the mid-1800s and probably earlier (Table 1). These materi-
als represent campsites, food procurement and preparation
localities, and spiritual sites (USDA TNF, 2015). Chí’chil
Biłdagoteel is extraordinary because Apache sites elsewhere
are difficult to identify and seldom occur in related clusters
(Herr, 2013; Welch, 1997; Welch et al., 2017). J. Scott
Wood, the TNF archaeologist for four decades, said, “there’s
a good strong Apache archaeological presence up there”
(Heinsius, 2015). Wood also noted the area contains “the
single largest Apache archaeological site currently known”
(Davidson, 2016).
Oak Flat offers an unprecedented opportunity for collabo-
rations among archaeologists and Western Apache scholars
to fill voids in regional history and understandings of ancient
Apache lifeways. Apache place names, stories, songs, and
spiritual traditions relating to Chí’chil Biłdagoteel and the
RCM impact area further demonstrate the region’s ancient
and continuing significance, especially to Pinal Apaches
(Nosie, 2016; Nosie & Rambler, 2016; Rambler, 2015).
RCM threats to Oak Flat have overcome some Apaches’
reluctance to discuss Apache culture with outsiders. Upon
learning of new plans for mining, a San Carlos Apache Tribe
representative wrote of Oak Flat:
[The] area is of traditional importance to Apaches. . . . The most
effective way to respect and preserve these cultural resources is
to not disturb archeological sites in any way, to keep the area
natural, and to engage in activities that restore disturbed areas to
natural conditions. We do not want you to promote activities that
will serve to disturb this area through mining. (Cassa, 2002)
San Carlos Apache Tribe Chairman Terry Rambler (2014),
a T’iis Tsebán descendant, wrote:
Oak Flat is one of our religious places where our Gaan—spiritual
deities and Holy People—reside. Apache people have lived,
prayed, and died in the Oak Flat Area since time immemorial.
We are saddened that Congress, through an 11th hour rider, has
ignored the will of the people. We are concerned for our children
who may never see or practice their religion in their rightful
place of worship. . . . Apache people will not remain silent. We
are committed to shining light on the Land Exchange and the
proposed mine until we have no breath.
Welch 5

Table 1. Archaeological Sites with Apache Affinities in the Oak Flat National Register Historic District.

Site number Summary and inferred site function or importance

AR-03-12-02-125 Possible Apache plain ware potsherds, fire cracked rock, roasting pit and chipped stone artifacts that
may represent Apache food roasting; circa 1930s boulder alignments
AR-03-12-02-171 4 non-Apache rooms, 1 curvilinear rock alignment (base for an Apache brush structure), O’odham
plain and painted potsherds, projectile point, 4 manos/metates, and chipped and ground stone
artifacts that may represent Apache reuse of an ancestral O’odham camp
AR-03-12-02-1259 Rock shelter with 3 masonry structures, a petroglyph, a bedrock metate, boulder alignments, Apache
plain ware, historical trash, and chipped and ground stone artifacts that may represent Apache reuse
of an earlier shelter and camp area
AR-03-12-02-1498 2 masonry rooms (probably O’odham), a rock pile, Apache and O’odham potsherds, and chipped and
ground stone artifacts that may represent Apache reuse
AR-03-12-02-1503 1 masonry structure with plain ware sherds and chipped stone artifacts; a possible Apache camp
AR-03-12-02-1505 Remains of a masonry and wooden corral with obsidian fragments, historical trash, ancestral O’odham
plain and buff ware potsherds, and chipped and ground stone artifacts
AR-03-12-02-1506 4 ancestral O’odham rooms, 2 curvilinear rock alignments (bases for Apache brush structures),
possible Apache plain ware sherds, historical trash, and chipped and ground stone artifacts that may
represent pre- or re-occupation by Apaches of a non-Apache camp
AR-03-12-02-1513 Possible Apache plain ware (and non-Apache plain ware) potsherds, and chipped stone artifacts that
may represent an Apache camp
AR-03-12-02-1515 About 30 acres with dozens of boulder alignments among bedrock outcrops (bases for Apache brush
“Apache Leap Camp” structures), 17 grinding features, Apache potsherds, ground and chipped stone tool fragments, and
historical period artifacts, including glass shards, metal fragments and modified tools, and U.S. Army
uniform buttons and epaulet scales. An Apache stronghold
AR-03-12-02-1516 A curvilinear boulder alignment, Apache and non-Apache plain potsherds, obsidian fragments, and
chipped and ground stone artifacts that may represent an Apache camp
AR-03-12-02-1518 5 curvilinear boulder alignments, 2 rock piles, cleared areas, plain and buff ware sherds (non-Apache),
and chipped and ground stone artifacts that may represent an Apache household cluster
AR-03-12-02-1519 A curvilinear rock alignment, rock piles, plain ware potsherds (some likely Apache), and chipped stone
artifacts that may represent Apache reuse of a camp
AR-03-12-02-1520 4 masonry structures (probably not Apache), boulder alignment, bedrock grinding feature, rock pile,
plain and painted (ancestral O’odham) potsherds, and chipped and ground stone artifacts that may
represent Apache reuse of a camp
AR-03-12-02-1521 Bedrock grinding features associated with petroglyphs consisting of 30-50 figures
AR-03-12-02-1528 Alcove defined by a boulder overhang
AR-03-12-02-1720 3 masonry structures, Apache potsherds, and chipped and ground stone artifacts that may represent a
pre-reservation Apache household cluster
AR-03-12-02-1721 4 masonry structures, a bedrock grinding feature, 4 rock clusters, potsherds, fire cracked rock and
chipped and ground stone artifacts that may represent a pre-reservation Apache household cluster

Source. U.S. Department of Agriculture Tonto National Forest (2015).

Wendsler Nosie, a former San Carlos chairman, said of Oak
Flat: “It always has been told for generations—and it is
embedded in our way—that this place has been holy and
sacred” (Brave NoiseCat, 2015).
The Inter Tribal Association of Arizona (2014), represent-
ing the 10 tribes directly affected by RCM as well as 11 less
affected tribes, also formally affirmed the significance of
Chí’chil Biłdagoteel:
Oak Flat has played an essential role in Apache, Yavapai and
other tribes’ religion, traditions, and culture for centuries and is
a holy site and traditional cultural property with deep tribal
religious, cultural, archaeological, historical and environmental
significance. . . . Oak Flat area is a place filled with power—a
place where Apaches go today for prayer, to conduct ceremonies
such as Holy Ground and the Sunrise Dance that celebrates a
young woman’s coming of age, to gather medicines. . . . Apache
elders teach their youth from the earliest of ages the meaning
and significance of their sacred places, including Oak Flat.
The convergence of oral traditions, archaeological evi-
dence, and persistent memories and feelings linked to Oak
Flat soundly refutes Dale Miles’ (2015) dubious claim that
Chí’chil Biłdagoteel was not and is not significant in
Apache culture and history. The evidence obliged TNF to
nominate, and the Keeper of the National Register to list,
Oak Flat in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
The area’s grassy basins, oak groves, boulder-studded
woodlands, canyons, springs, cliffs, and cultural sites col-
lectively embody and define a cultural landscape of historic
and current uses, predominantly by Apaches, of 4,309 acres
of TNF (USDA TNF, 2015).
6 SAGE Open

Figure 3. Royce’s (1899, pp. 922-923) Arizona and New Mexico map No. 1, depicting Arizona portions of Western and Chiricahua
Apache homelands (overlaps with Yavapai and O’odham lands not delineated) recognized in the treaty of Santa Fe; in the public domain.

Wind: Government Policy and Miner
Propaganda Regarding Pinal Apaches
Proof of Apache occupation of the Oak Flat vicinity prior to
1875 prompts an obvious inquiry: What happened to the
Pinal Apaches who had for generations used Oak Flat and
other parts of the RCM impact area?
Historical facts answer this question. Apache homelands
were claimed by Mexico until the 1848 treaty that ended the
Mexican–American War and the 1853 Gadsden Purchase
that added lands between the Gila River and today’s Mexican
border (Welch, 2016). Figure 3 illustrates the original
Arizona domain of Western and Chiricahua Apaches.
Royce’s (1899, pp. 922-923) Polygon 689 extends eastward
to the Rio Grande, depicting nonexclusive Apache territory
referenced in the Treaty of Santa Fe. That treaty obliges
Apaches to live exclusively under U.S. laws and jurisdiction
and the United States to “designate, settle, and adjust their
territorial boundaries, and . . . legislate and act as to secure
the permanent prosperity and happiness of said Indians”
Welch 7

Table 2. Annihilationist Government Policy and Miner Bombast Targeting Pinal Apaches.

Date and source Statement(s)

October 26, 1864 (“Apache
rangers” 1864, p. 1, col. 2)
October 31,1865 (Farish, 1916,
Vol. 4, p. 126)
September 22, 1868 (Major
General H. W. Halleck, 1869,
p. 49)
September 27, 1869 (General
Ord, 1870, pp. 121-122)
January 23, 1871 (“The Pacific
Coast,” 1871, p. 1)
August 26, 1871 (“Indian War
in Arizona,” 1871, p. 1)
September 26, 1871 (“The
Indians: The Campaign,”
1871, p. 1)
March 30, 1872 (“Arizona,”
1872, p. 1)
“a bill . . . adopted by the Legislature, authorizing the raising of not more than six companies of
rangers to fight Apaches. . . . [I]f we do not conquer the savages they will . . . drive us from
the country. . . . Extermination is our only hope, and the sooner it is accomplished the better
. . . Let the necessary work go on.”
Gen. John S. Mason, issues General Order No. 11: “All Apache Indians in this Territory are
hostile and all men old enough to bear arms who are encountered will be slain. . . . All
rancherias, provisions and whatever of value belonging to the Indians . . . will be destroyed.”
“The Apaches . . . are the natural and hereditary enemies of the whites. . . . They have
successfully expelled from that Territory the Aztecs, the Spaniards and the Mexicans; and
they will yield to our people only when compelled to do so by the rifle. . . . Murder and
robbery constitute almost the sole occupation of the Apaches . . . plundering and destroying
unprotected agricultural and mining settlements. . . . They will observe no treaties,
agreements, or truces. With them there is no alternative but active and vigorous war, till
they are completely destroyed.”
“On taking command of the department I was satisfied that the few settlers and scattered
miners of Arizona were the sheep upon which these wolves habitually preyed . . . I
encouraged the troops to capture and root out the Apache by every means, and to hunt
them as they would wild animals. . . . over two hundred have been killed, generally by parties
who have trailed them for days and weeks . . . lying in wait for them by day and following
them by night. Many villages have been burned, large quantities of arms and supplies of
ammunition, clothing and provisions have been destroyed. . . . Some of the bands, having the
fear of extermination before them, have sued for peace.”
“Gov. Safford . . . recommends a war of extermination against Apache Indians, and favors
the employment of volunteers composed of settlers . . . as more effective and cheaper than
regular troops.”
“Crook is bent on exerting the fullest strength of his command to punish hostile Indians. .
. . The Territory will be scoured as it never has been, and the Apaches warred upon in a
manner that will strike them with awe, and we believe produce an early peace.”
“Capt. Henry’s . . . have destroyed many rancheros and killed a number of Apaches . . . Gov.
Sofford [sic] and a company of 200 miners and Indian hunters had found rich gold placers in
the Pinal country, and were still scouting after gold and Apaches.”
“not only mining, but all classes of industry are seriously hindered by the atrocities of the
murderous Apaches. . . . Peaceable miners in the pursuit of their vocation are shot down,
pick and shovel in hand. . . . The inhabitants saw a glimmer of hope in the arrival of General
Crook, whose policy is to exterminate the Indians entirely as the most efficient means of
making peace with them.”

(Kappler, 1904). Despite early cooperation among Western
Apaches and newcomers (Welch, 2016), government poli-
cies abetted American encroachments into Apache lands
(Table 2; Ogle, 1970).
As had been the case in California and Nevada, miners led
American incursions into Arizona. The “miners’ invasion of
the West that began in 1849 led to the exploration of every
mountain stream and valley. Miners looked for gold and
found silver in quantity as well. Congress responded with a
new mining act of 1872 allowing miners to take up land
claims” (Anderson, 2014, p. 310). By 1856, the United States
had established Fort Buchanan, south of Tucson, and the post
at the mouth of Aravaipa Creek later known as Camp Grant,
to thwart Apache raids, enable strikes against Apaches, and
protect miners (Thrapp, 1967). An 1859 article in the New
York Times incites the incipient convergence of popular opin-
ions, mining schemes, and government policies:
The Apache is as near the lobo, or wolf of the country, as any
human being can be to a beast. . . . They neither cultivate nor
hunt to any extent, but exist mainly . . . by plunder. . . . This is
the greatest obstacle to the operations of the mining companies.
. . . [W]hipping these wild tribes . . . into submission, and driving
them into reservations . . . with the penalty of death sternly
enforced if they pass their limits, is the only prompt, economical,
and humane process. . . . My greatest hopes for Arizona,
however, rest on the army. . . . Officers of various grades are
becoming interested in mines throughout that region. They . . .
have connections of influence and capital. (Dunbar, 1859, p. 2)
In 1862, the U.S. Army’s departmental commander,
General James Carleton, ordered Apache men to be killed
wherever found (Spicer, 1962, p. 247). In 1863, miners found
gold and silver near Prescott, northwest of Pinal Apache
lands. The initial U.S. government commitment to maintain
the travel corridor along the Mexican border through
8 SAGE Open
Chiricahua Apache territory soon expanded. The Pinal
Apaches, Aravaipa Apaches, Tonto Apaches, and Yavapais
took the brunt of American miners’ encroachments. In April
1864, the United States authorized Arizona Territorial
Governor John N. Goodwin to muster the First Arizona
Volunteer Infantry regiment. Over 350 men signed up to hunt
Apaches (Farish, 1918; Underhill, 1983). The Miner newspa-
per (also The Arizona Weekly Miner) exalted mining and
exhorted military and civilian campaigns against Apaches
(Table 2). One example of the exhortation:
Pinal Apaches . . . succeeded in stealing from the ranches a large
amount of valuable stock. . . . Mr. Woolsey . . . will organize a
company to hunt and punish the thieves, and if it is as successful
as the party . . . which slaughtered twenty or more of them, he
will have a good revenge. He . . . believes fully, as he has good
reason to, in the extermination policy. (“Indian troubles,” 1864)
General Carleton’s May 1864 order, also reported in The
Miner, required Apache “removal to a Reservation or by the
utter extermination of their men, to insure a lasting peace and
a security of life to all those who go to the country in search
of precious metals” (Carleton, 1864, p. 1). Federal
Government relationships with American Indians were man-
aged by “superintendents” charged to facilitate U.S.-Native
co-occupation. On March 2, 1865, Arizona’s Superintendent
of Indian Affairs, Charles D. Poston (1865), appealed to the
U.S. House of Representatives for additional military sup-
port for a distinctive approach to coexistence:
The Spanish explorers found . . . a people . . . practicing many of
the arts of civilization. . . . In antagonism to these interesting
people we have the barbarous Apaches. . . . [From] Time
immemorial their hand has been against every man. . . . For three
centuries they have stayed the progress of civilization. . . . Their
subjugation would open to our hardy miners an unexplored gold
field north of the Gila. . . . A sickly sympathy for a few beastly
savages should not stand in the way of the development of our
rich gold fields, or the protection of our enterprising frontiersmen.
Fire!
Annihilationist rhetoric is not always backed up by deeds,
but it was in Pinal Territory in the 1800s. Table 3 lists the 35
engagements with Apache fatalities; Table 4 lists the non-
Apache fatalities. Both rosters rely on Berndt Kühn’s
Chronicles of War (2014) to reduce bias in incident selection
and fatality tabulation. As a further means to reduce vagaries
in historical records and highlight contrasts between the two
inventories, the roster of Apache fatalities (Table 3) only lists
engagements in and adjacent to Pinal Apache territory, about
5,340 square kilometers well removed from Tonto, Cibecue,
and White Mountain Apache lands (see Figure 4). Table 4
lists incidents from an area more than twice as large (about
11,500 square kilometers), and includes all Americans,
Mexicans, and O’odham recorded as killed either near Pinal
territory or by Pinal or Aravaipa Apaches, anywhere. In
effect, the location criteria for inclusion in Table 4 were
relaxed until a like number of incidents could be presented
for comparison. The estimated locations of the lethal inci-
dents were then mapped to illustrate the concerted intensity
of the military–industrial extermination campaigns. The map
and tables highlight contrasts between the deliberate, state-
sponsored violence against Apache families and the occa-
sional, generally opportunistic killings of non-Apache men
by Pinal and Aravaipa Apaches.
Government complicity with miners’ anti-Apache agenda
has seldom shown restraint. The Legislature of the Territory
(1864) soon authorized mining claims by U.S. Army service-
men. Bigando (1985, pp. 4-5) describes a joint, Army-
prospector foray led by Captain H. Moulton and miner Calvin
Jackson into the Pinal Mountains. North of the future town of
Globe, the 1870 expedition staked numerous tracts, including
claims for Moulton and regional commander, Lt. Col. George
B. Sanborn. In another step toward convergence of military
and industrial interests, General George Stoneman, the newly
appointed Department Commander, ordered troops to “pros-
ecute a relentless Winter campaign against the Pinal and
Tonto branches” and “provide arms for civilians who desire
to accompany them” (“The Indians in Arizona,” 1871, p. 1).
Arizonans, especially miners, wanted still more Federal
Government aid. Farish (1918, Vol. 8, pp. 96-97) explains
that Arizonans in the early 1870s
were aroused to frenzy and demanded the immediate annihilation
or capture of the Apaches. . . . Stoneman went about his work
carefully. . . . Fully one-third of the Territory was, and always had
been in the hands of the Apaches. . . . Stoneman was accused of
spending too much time in the details of establishing new posts,
and the improvement of old ones, the building of roads, etc.
Arizonans greeted Stoneman’s tactics with withering criti-
cism in newspapers, relentless lobbying in Washington, and
bloody vigilanteism.
One citizen expedition against Apaches proved pivotal.
Before first light on April 30, 1871, about 150 Tucsonans and
Native allies slaughtered at least 85 Pinal and Aravaipa
Apaches, including about 77 women and children camped
under Army protection (Colwell-Chanthaphonh, 2007;
Jacoby, 2008; Kühn, 2014, p. 176; Record, 2008). The hor-
rific event pierced Washington officials’ hazy grasp of what
had been going on in Arizona. Congress swiftly ducked, ced-
ing most authority over Indian affairs to the Executive Branch.
The Army replaced Stoneman with Colonel George Crook, a
seasoned Indian subjugator, and suspended operations against
Apaches to allow visits by President Grant’s Peace Policy
envoys. Deliberations between Apache leaders and Vincent
Colyer resulted in Grant’s Executive Order of November 9,
1871, to establish the White Mountain Reservation boundar-
ies; talks with Oliver O. Howard precipitated the December
14, 1872, Order to expand the reservation boundaries through
the addition of a San Carlos Division (Figure 5 and Table 5;
Welch, 2016; Figures 1, 4).
Welch 9

Table 3. Thirty-Five Lethal Attacks on Apaches in and Near Pinal Apache Territory, 1859-1874.

Date Personnel, location, description & casualties Kühn page

November 19, 1859 8th Infantry command kills 3 Apaches and captures 15 cattle in attack on Pinal Apaches near 71
San Pedro River
December 25, 1859 U.S. Army command kills 6 Apaches in skirmish, Pinal Mountains (Capt. Elliott wounded) 72
May 7, 1863 Command of California Volunteers and civilians kills about 50 Apaches (1 soldier killed) and 99
captures 16 Apache children in attack on camp in Aravaipa Canyon
November 5, 1863 Command of California Volunteers kills 1 Apache in ambush of 7 Apaches at Gila River near 103
Pinal Mountains
June 8, 1864 Command of 58 California Volunteers kills 8 Apaches, captures 9 Apache women and 108
children, in attack in Aravaipa Canyon
July 31, 1864 Command of California and New Mexico Volunteers kills 2 Apaches (1 woman, 1 boy) 110
shooting at 2 Apache prisoners attempting to escape, near Pinal Creek
August 1, 1864 Command of California and New Mexico Volunteers kills 1 Apache woman and captures 1 110
Apache woman in attack on Apaches east of Pinal Creek
August 3, 1864 Command of California and New Mexico Volunteers executes 2 Apache prisoners (men) at 110
Pinal Creek
August 5, 1864 Command of California and New Mexico Volunteers kills 5 Apaches in ambush on 15 Pinal 110
Apaches at Pinal Creek
March 31, 1866 Command of 1st Infantry and 200 Pimas kills 25 Pinal Apaches and captures 16 in attack on 122
camp about 25 miles north of the Gila River
April 21, 1868 8th Cavalry command kills 2 Apaches near Camp Grant 138
May 1, 1868 8th Cavalry command kills 6 and mortally wounds 2 Apaches in an attack on a small camp at 138
the Gila River, near Camp Grant
April 29, 1869 Command of 1st Cavalry and 14th Infantry kills 25 Pinal Apaches and captures 8 in attack on 150
camp in Santa Teresa Mountains
May 24, 1869 Command of 1st Cavalry and 32nd Infantry kills 4 Pinal Apaches and captures 2 in attack on 152
42 dwellings near Mineral Creek
June 3, 1869 Command of 1st Cavalry kills 2 Pinal Apaches in attack on camp near Mineral Creek 152
June 4, 1869 Command of 8th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry, and 14th Infantry kills 20 Pinal Apaches and captures 4 152
children in attack near Pinto Creek
August 11, 1869 Command of 1st Cavalry under Maj. John Green kills 3 Apaches and captures 2 children in 155
attack on camp near Aravaipa Creek
December 16, 1869 Command of 8th Cavalry and 1st Cavalry kills some Apaches and captures Apache women 161
and children at Pinto Creek
January 7, 1870 Command of 1st Cavalry kills 3 Apaches after pursuit to the Gila River near Camp Grant 162
April 30, 1870 Command of 1st and 3rd Cavalry and 21st Infantry kills 11 Apaches in attack on camp in Pinal 165
Mountains
June 5, 1870 Command of 1st and 3rd Cavalry kills at least 30 Apaches (9 men and 21 women and 167
children) in attack in Apache Mountains
October 29, 1870 Command of 1st Cavalry kills 4 Apache men in Pinal Mountains 170
January 1, 1871 Command of 1st and 3rd Cavalry kills 9 Apaches and destroys a camp, Pinal Mountains, near 171
the Gila River
February 1871 Cavalry command kills 1 Apache in attack on a Pinal Apache camp, Pinal Mountains 173
April 11 & 12, 1871 Command of 3rd Cavalry kills 29 Apaches in two attacks on camps, Apache Mountains 175
March 8, 1874 Command of 5th Cavalry kills 13 Apache men and captures 34 women and children at 198
Eskiminzin’s camp, Pinal Mountains
March 25-26, 1874 Command of 5th Cavalry kills 12 Western Apaches in attack on camp, Superstition Mountains 198
April 2, 1874 Command of 5th Cavalry kills 47 Apaches and captures 50 women and children in attack on 198
camp, Pinal Mountains
April 3-14, 1874 Command of 5th Cavalry kills 14 Apache men and captures 30 women and children in attacks 198
on camps, Pinal, Mescal, and Santa Teresa Mountains
April 28, 1874 Command of 5th Cavalry kills 23 Western Apaches in attack on a camp in Aravaipa Mountains 199
April 28-30, 1874 Two 5th Cavalry attacks kill 3 Apaches and capture 11 199
May 23, 1874 Apache scouts kill 4 Pinal Apaches, Santa Catalina Mountains 200
June 6, 1874 Command of 5th Cavalry kills 4 Aravaipa Apaches, Santa Teresa Mountains 200
ca. June 7, 1874 Apache scouts kill 1 Pinal Apache 200
July 1874 Apache scouts kill 7 Pinal Apaches 201

Source. Kühn (2014).

10 SAGE Open

Table 4. 34 Lethal Attacks on Non-Apaches by Pinal Apaches or in Pinal Apache Territory, 1859-1874.

Date Personnel, location, description & casualties Kühn page

August 3, 1860 Pinal Apache attack on engineering party in San Pedro River Valley mortally wounds 1 civilian 77
April 25, 1861 Attacks by Pinal Apaches in Santa Rita Mountains kill 3 civilians 83
January 8, 1865 Pinal Apache attack west of Fort Grant kills 1 civilian 120
March 22, 1866 Ambush of 7 soldiers by at least 75 Apaches west of Cottonwood Springs, kills 4 soldiers, 121
mortally wounds 1 soldier
May 20, 1867 Attack by Pinal Apaches at Cañada del Oro kills 1 Mexican and 2 ‘tame’ Apaches 129
June 4, 1867 Attacks by Apaches on ranches near Camp Grant kill 1 Mexican and 1 civilian and wound 2 130
Mexicans and 1 Indian
Mar 25, 1868 14th Infantry command led by Capt. Guido Ilges on 50 Apaches near Cottonwood Springs 137
results in death of 1 soldier:
July 9, 1868 Fight near Camp Grant kills 1 Mexican 140
July 15, 1868 Apache attack near Camp Grant kills 1 Mexican 140
February 26, 1869 Attack by 50 Western Apaches, probably Pinals, on 2 wagons near Camp Grant kills 2 148
civilians and wounds 1 soldier
March 21, 1869 Attack by 30 Apaches on 2 wagons 10 miles from Camp Grant kills 1 civilian and wounds 2 149
infantrymen
May 11, 1869 Attack by ~200 Apaches on wagons at Cañada del Oro claims 3 Mexican lives 151
October 5, 1869 Ambush of mail coach by Pinal and Chokenen Apaches at Dragoon Pass kills 4 soldiers and 2 157
civilians
November 25, 1869 Apaches mortally wound 1 civilian 6 miles from Florence 160
November 30, 1869 Apaches kill 1 prospector 9 miles from Florence 160
February 1, 1870 Attack by ~50 Pinal Apaches on wagon train north of Tucson kills 1 soldier and 2 civilians 163
April 13, 1870 Apache ambush kills 1 civilian near San Pedro settlements 165
May 28, 1870 Attack by Pinal, Aravaipa, and Cibecue Apaches on wagon train south of Camp Grant kills 1 166
civilian and 2 Mexicans
January 31, 1871 Apache attack on wagon near Florence kills 1 Pima 172
February 14, 1871 Pinal Apache attack 12 miles west of Camp Pinal kills 1 Mexican 173
March 9, 1871 Pinal Apache attack on a wagons between Camp Grant and Camp Pinal kills 1 soldier and 1 174
Mexican
March 14, 1871 Apache attack on herd at Camp Pinal kills 2 civilians 174
May 28, 1871 Attack by Eskiminzin on ranch near Camp Grant kills 1 civilian 177
July 13, 1871 Attack led by Eskiminzin on wagon train east of Cienega Station kills 1 soldier; soldiers kill 13 178
Apaches
August 4, 1872 1 Mexican killed in vigilante attack on Apaches 186
November 22, 1872 Apache attack on Ward’s camp near Camp Grant kills 1 Mexican 188
May 27, 1873 Apache attack on ration day at San Carlos kills 1 soldier 193
September 12, 1873 Apache attack on 4 prospectors on Pinal Creek kills 1 civilian 195
January 31, 1874 Apache attack led by Chunz and Cocinay on wagons at San Carlos Agency kills 1 civilian and 197
mortally wounds 1 civilian
February 3, 1874 Apache attack on ranch near Camp Grant kills 6 Mexicans 197
February 8, 1874 Apache attack on wagon southeast of Florence kills 1 civilian 197
March 1874 Attack by Eskiminzin on wagon train near Florence kills 1 civilian 198
March 9, 1874 Pinal Apache attack northwest of Tucson kills 1 Mexican 198
May 6, 1874 Western Apaches kill 1 Mexican, Santa Catalina Mountains 199

Source. Kühn (2014).

Some Arizonans retreated from extermination policies,
but the massacre emboldened rather than deterred both addi-
tional propaganda and miner incursions into Pinal Apache
lands (Blankenburg, 1968). The Arizona Government
promptly published a pamphlet to justify the Camp Grant
Massacre and spur further Army killings and mining
expansions:
The Territory is covered with the ruins of cities and towns that
were once undoubtedly inhabited by a people of industry. . . .
The cause of their destruction was undoubtedly the ravages of
the implacable Apache, and our people now begin to realize, that
unless assistance is given them, that they only await a similar
fate. (Legislature of the Territory, 1871, pp. 3-4)
By August, the New York Times reported,
Welch
Figure 4. Pinal Mountains and surrounding areas, with the estimated locations of the 35 encounters resulting in over 380 Apache
deaths (see Table 3) and the 34 encounters resulting in about 69 non-Apache deaths (small circles; see Table 4).
Gov. Spafford [sic], with 300 well-armed men and two months’
provisions, has entered the Pinal and Magallan Mountains . . .
determined to prospect fully the regions from which so many
parties of whites have been driven back by Apaches. (“The
Indians: A Prospecting Party,” 1871, p. 1)
Crook’s General Order No. 10 (November 21, 1871)
required all Apaches to remain within the boundaries of the
recently established reservation or be killed. In the Tonto
Basin Campaign authorized by that same order, Crook orches-
trated a multipronged scouring of Tonto Apache homelands
(and northern reaches of Pinal Apache land). The campaign
built on previous U.S. Army operations’ effective tactics:
relentless pursuits by cavalry units guided by Apache scouts,
dawn ambushes, and destruction of homes, food stores, and
agricultural fields (Thrapp, 1967, p. 119; Welch, 2016, pp.
94-98). The 15-month campaign killed or captured almost all
Western Apaches reliant on lands beyond the newly desig-
nated reservation borders. General Orders No. 12, April 7,
1873, states that “announcement is made of the surrender of
large numbers of Indians lately hostile” and directs officers
“to enable the friend of any renegades still at large to bring
11
them in upon their proper reservations. . . . [S]traggling bands
. . . will be forced to surrender or be destroyed” (Bourke,
1873). “May 1, 1873 marks the date on which the United
States took from the Western Apache Indians their Indian title
to all of their aboriginal lands located outside of the boundar-
ies of the reservation established by the Executive Orders”
(U.S. Indian Claims Commission, 1969). By late in 1874, the
sounds of Apache kids playing in their mountains and can-
yons were largely replaced by miners’ picks, shovels, drills,
and dynamite blasts.
Aftermath
Seldom do historical documents pick up so clearly and so
vividly where archaeological records end, but this is the case
for the Oak Flat vicinity. Territorial newspaper articles,
Indian policies, and military correspondence converge on the
truth that mining was the main motivation behind the Pinal
Apache extermination campaigns. Tallies from military and
civilian hunts (Table 3) yield grim statistics: American cam-
paigns killed over 380 Pinal Apaches, a reckoning that
excludes the Camp Grant Massacre. Table 4 reveals that,
12
Figure 5. Western Apache lands initially reserved for their
exclusive benefit (all polygons north of the line labeled “2nd
Standard South”) and subsequent severances from those lands
(polygons 541, 546, 573, 592, 602, 720) (Royce, 1899: AZ-2) (see
also Figure 1); in the public domain.
during the same 15 years, Pinal Apaches were responsible
for fewer than 70 deaths. There are gray areas in the records,
but no mentions of women and children dying at the hands of
Pinal Apaches have surfaced. Accounts of American aggres-
sion, however, boast about the methods of subjugation:
Without judicial process or specific provocation, profes-
sional soldiers and gangs of militarized hunters stalked and
murdered Apache men, women, and children, often as they
slept, seldom taking prisoners. In contrast, 15 of the 34 inci-
dents that precipitated non-Apache fatalities occurred during
the season of hunger in the region’s uplands (January to
March). These and many other incidents listed in Table 4 are
likely attributable to intercepted Apache raiding expeditions.
Stoneman (1871) quipped the Pinal Apaches “must either
starve, steal, or be fed.” In another candid admission about
the lopsided slaughter, General John Pope (1871) wrote,
“depredations of the Apaches have been continuous for
twenty-five years past, but they are insignificant in extent
and generally confined to the plunder of a few sheep and
mules and the occasional murder of a lonely sheepherder.”
The 1860s and early 1870s were, for Western Apaches,
a cataclysmic period of loss—of life, of land, of liberty,
and of sovereignties over people and territory (Lahti,
2012). The pertinent chapter (three) of Ogle’s (1970)
Federal Control of the Western Apaches, 1848-1886 is
titled “Extermination—A frontier panacea.” Referenced
SAGE Open
luridly elsewhere as “The Apache Wars” (see Hutton,
2016), the reality is that Americans, like the prior Spanish
and Mexican incursions, invaded and annexed Western
Apache territory using all available means. Western
Apaches were deeply apprehensive and their responses
were almost exclusively defensive. Major John C. Cremony
(1868, pp. 286-287) wrote,
The Apaches entertain the greatest possible dread of our
discoveries of mineral wealth in their country. . . . They know
and feel that wherever mineral wealth exists to such an extent as
to render it available, the white man fastens upon it with
ineradicable tenacity. . . . The occupation of mines involves the
possession of water facilities and sufficient fuel. To occupy a
water privilege in Arizona and New Mexico is tantamount to
driving the Indians from their most cherished possessions, and
infuriates them to the utmost extent.
The U.S. Indian Claims Commission (1965) adjudication
of Western Apache and Yavapai claims to their aboriginal
territories affirmed
hostilities commenced simultaneously with the arrival of miners
. . . and continued almost without interruption until Genera1
Crook rounded up the surviving Indians. . . . [M]ilitary
commanders . . . with varying degrees of success, sent their
troops out to track down, attack, kill and capture Indians. . . .
Finally, following a series of meetings held by Vincent Colyer .
. . a reservation was set apart. . . . Indians were directed to
remove to this reservation and stay within its borders. This
directive failing to be effective, General Crook, in the fall and
winter of 1872-1873, waged a vigorous campaign throughout
the area until virtually all the Indians had either surrendered to
troops in the field or else had come into a military post. (U.S.
Indian Claims Commission, 1965, pp. 79-80)
In effect, Western Apache leaders agreed to remain within
their reserved lands—roughly half of the territory their peo-
ple had exclusively occupied a generation prior, about
5,500,000 acres—in exchange for the balance of their land
(about 5,900,000 acres; see Table 5) and solemn Federal
Government guarantees of assistance (Welch, 2016,
pp. 82-88). Grant’s envoys and generals laid out the initial
reservation boundaries to avoid further conflicts with miners
and to allow Western Apaches to sustain their families
through hunting, gathering, and expanded farming and
ranching operations. These facts expose all claims that
Apaches were the aggressors and got what they deserved,
especially such claims leveled at T’iis Tsebán and Tsé
Binesti’é families, as vacuous and callous justifications of
astonishingly irresponsible journalism, governance, and law
enforcement, all to facilitate mining and other commodifying
appropriations of Apache land.
But logics of justice, aboriginal rights, and sustainability
were no match for the rapacious, race-based mind-sets that
ruled Arizona for its first century. Federal and Territorial
Government allegiances to the agreements made by Grant’s
Welch
Table 5. Important Federal Government Acts Affecting Western Apache Lands.
Action and date
Assumption of U.S. jurisdiction over Western Apaches and their
territory, per Finding of Fact No. 11, (21 Ind. Cl. Comm. 189,
218), May 1, 1873
Executive order to establish White Mountain Reservation,
November 9, 1871
Executive order to increase size of White Mountain Reservation
and create “San Carlos division,” December 14, 1872
Executive order to open White Mountain Reservation land in Gila
River Valley to non-Indian use, August 5, 1873
Executive order to open Reservation land east of 109° 30’ west
longitude (east-most 26 miles, approximately) for non-Indian use,
July 21, 1874
Executive order to open Reservation land east of Globe to non-
Indian use, April 27, 1876
Executive order to open Reservation land along western boundary
for non-Indian use, March 31, 1877
Congressional act to open Reservation land south of Salt River and
north of Chromo Butte to non-Indian use, February 20, 1893
Agreement to exclude from Reservation the “Mineral Strip” south
of Gila River, February 25, 1896 (ratified by Congressional act
June 10, 1896, 29 Stat. 358)
Congressional act to partition White Mountain Reservation into
Fort Apache and San Carlos reservations, June 7, 1897 (30 Stat.
64, 86)
Congressional act to open a “small tract” to mining and give
proceeds to tribe, March 2, 1901 (31 Stat. 952)
Executive order to open San Carlos Reservation land in southwest
corner to non-Indian use, December 22, 1902
San Carlos Mineral Strip Act to return land to Reservation for
benefit of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, 1990 (104 Stat. 1047)
Approximate difference between Western Apache Aboriginal
title lands (~9,400,000 acres) and remaining Reservation land
(~3,500,000 acres) =
peace envoys to provide land sufficient to sustain Western
Apache needs were short-lived. In 1875, the Federal
Government closed the Camp Grant, Camp Verde, Chiricahua,
and Fort Tularosa Reservations; opened these erstwhile ref-
uges, too, to non-Indians; and set about resettling all Western
and Chiricahua Apaches at San Carlos. Figure 6 shows, and
Table 5 lists, the more than 2,000,000 acres taken from the
White Mountain and San Carlos reservations and opened to
non-Apache miners, farmers, and ranchers from 1873 to
1902.
The traces of silver and gold found during Governor
Safford’s 1871 expedition (Table 2) touched off waves of
prospecting and resulted in the staking of the Silver King,
Hub, and Irene claims on the Pinal Mountains’ western
flanks (Figure 6) (Tenney, 1927; Walker & Chilton, 1991).
By 1880, stock certificates were being issued for nearby
mines (Figure 7). By 1882, more than 100 additional
claims had been staked and hundreds of miners occupied
the Pinal and Hastings settlements, the predecessors of the
Town of Superior, Resolution Copper’s headquarters
13
Affected land (mostly severed acres)
Western Apache Aboriginal Territory: ~9,400,000 acres
(Figure 3, Royce polygon 689)
Original White Mountain Indian Reservation Add
~4,000,000 acres
Add ~1,250,000 acres
Subtract ~1,300,000 acres (Figure 5, Royce polygon 546)
Subtract ~950,000 acres (Figure 5, Royce polygon 573)
Subtract ~100,000 acres (Figure 5, Royce polygon 592)
Subtract ~55,000 acres (Figure 5, Royce polygon 602)
Subtract ~115,000 acres (Figure 5, Royce polygon 720)
Subtract ~230,000 acres (Royce, not depicted)
San Carlos Indian Reservation since 1990, ~1,800,000
acres; Fort Apache Reservation ~1,700,000 acres
Subtract ~231 acres (location indeterminate) (Royce, not
depicted)
Subtract ~39,000 acres (Royce, not depicted)
Add 10,650 acres (104 Stat 1047)
~5,900,000 acres
(Briggs, 2015; Cox, 1882). Production data for the Magma
Mine, the Superior District’s largest and longest-lived,
enumerate a small fraction of the billions in wealth
extracted from Pinal Apache lands: “1,299,718 short tons
of copper, 36,550 short tons of zinc, approximately
686,000 ounces of gold and 34.3 million ounces of silver”
(Biggs, 2015, p. 8).
Miners and their political pawns were unapologetic about
killing Apaches, destroying their possessions, or taking their
lands. In a further exposition of voracious frontier mentality,
the Territorial Legislature (Legislature of the Territory of
Arizona, 1885) petitioned the U.S. Congress for all lands
remaining in Apache hands, asserting,
that the Indians now occupying these vast reservations,
comprising the richest mineral, agricultural and timber lands of
the Territory, have made no use of said lands, but simply
withhold the same from public use and occupation, and are a
perpetual menace to the peaceful settler, retarding progress,
paralyzing prosperity . . .
14
Figure 6. Portion of Cox’s 1882 map of the Pioneer (Superior)
Mining District.
Note. Each of the rectilinear polygons along the pediment depicts a mining
claim. The dark rectangles are the Pinal and Hastings townsites. Map in
the public domain. Photo by author.
That the San Carlos and White Mountain Reservations . . .
covering the fountain heads of all our most important streams,
now . . . serving as the abode and lurking places of a discontented,
idle and vicious horde of savages, a curse and a plague to
civilization and a danger and disgrace to the Territory.
That the present apparent quietness of the Apache Indians,
neither reassures or deceives . . .
That your Memorialists believe that these Indians ought and
should be removed from our midst to some part of the Indian
Territory, where they may learn the rudiments of education and
become in time peaceable. (p. 374)
Genocide?
Since codification in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (United Nations
General Assembly, 1948), genocide has meant
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole
or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
a) Killing members of the group;
b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the
group;
SAGE Open
c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in
part;
d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the
group;
e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Scholars and lawyers agree that genocide should be refer-
enced sparingly to conserve the term’s legal, symbolic, and
political potency (Bartrop, 2008). Anderson (2014, p. 12) goes
further, arguing that genocide is not a generally applicable
descriptor for U.S. Indian Policy because a “legitimate gov-
ernment must plan, organize, and implement . . . a concerted
effort to kill large numbers of people or indeed to annihilate a
given people.” More recently, Madley (2015) has welded the
mandate to conserve the term’s potency to a framework for
focused investigations using the 1948 criteria. Madley (2016)
follows his own advice in an authoritative California study.
This research also adopts Madley’s framework, revealing
that Federal and Territorial officials colluded with industrial
boosters to remove T’iis Tsebán and Tsé Binesti’é from their
rightful homelands, dead or alive. After 1874, once the Western
Apaches’ self-appointed Federal trustee had the upper hand, it
distributed to non-Apaches the wealth from Apache’s aborigi-
nal and reservation lands (Welch, 2016). Beginning in the later
1870s, the U.S. government saw fit to distribute Apache chil-
dren—first dozens, then hundreds—to boarding schools and
non-Indian families (Adams, 1995; Jacobs, 2009). State-
sponsored Apache scalp bounties may have continued in
Arizona into the 1880s (“Money for Indian Scalps,” 1885).
Madley (2015, p. 132) further recommends research into
those who prospered by and through genocide. The beneficia-
ries from the Pinal Apache Genocide, from the 1870s to the
2010s, are mining corporations. Early mining proponents
planned and implemented genocide using predominantly pub-
lic resources (i.e., the U.S. Army). These proponents then
rushed in to claim and privatize the spoils. Their 21st-century
successors now appear poised to prosper through reinvestment
of profits and political influence ostensibly traceable to geno-
cide. RCM and its parent company, Rio Tinto, remain commit-
ted to influencing U.S. Government decisions about the use of
public lands and minerals, regardless of additional harms to
those lands, to Native Americans, or to National Register his-
toric sites and sacred places (see, for example, Barrios, 2017).
Since the mid-1800s, miners have enlisted and rewarded gov-
ernment officials for complicity in relentless quests to elevate
mining above other interests, including common laws, human
rights, Christian values, and other moral codes. In October
2017, the U.S. filed fraud charges against Rio Tinto for mis-
leading investors (Lynch & Hume, 2017).
Reflections and Recommendations
History, it is often said, repeats itself. Archaeologists and his-
torians have chronicled where and how cultural groups have
distributed themselves over the West’s plateaus, deserts, and
Welch
Figure 7. Stock certificate, mineral creek mining company, Pinal County, Arizona, 1880.
Source. http://media.liveauctiongroup.net/i/9372/10324600_1.jpg?v=8CDA5BD0950CC00
mountains. Displacement, reduction, and removal have
received less attention (cf. Spicer, 1962, with Welch, 2017).
The Pinal Mountains reverberate with successive govern-
mental interventions over many decades to eliminate
Apaches from consideration in relation to mining proposals.
In 2014, instead of respecting their oaths of office and the
Apaches, a few Arizona politicians advanced the comatose
RCM proposal by crafting provisions for a land exchange
and impact assessment tailored to authorize further destruc-
tion and privatization of Apache sacred places and American
public lands and resources (Mikkelson, 2016; Millet, 2015).
In the past and in 2017, arguments that mining creates wealth,
provides good jobs, and supports vital communities gener-
ally neglect the downsides. In the area surrounding Oak Flat
and other world regions that have hosted numerous large
mines, the local benefits of mining pale in comparison to bio-
physical and sociocultural costs and consequences (see
Bernhardt & Palmer, 2011; Bridge, 2003).
It is also said that history belongs to the victors. This is
true in the narrow sense that most published accounts of
Pinal Apache history have been authored by non-Apaches. It
is also true in the institutional and practical senses that
Apaches and their allies must use non-Apache rules in quests
to unsilence their histories, save ancestral and public lands
from imminent destruction, and secure their futures
(Dongoske, Pasqual, & King, 2015; Greenberg & Greenberg,
2013; Willow, 2016). The Pinal Apache Genocide helps
explain Apaches’ persistent emotional and spiritual connec-
tions to Oak Flat and the depth and persistence of their oppo-
sition to RCM. Insidious forces that Jacoby (2008) calls the
Violence of History have suppressed evidence that bolsters
Apache claims and appeals while also marginalizing rea-
soned calls, like the one issued here, for overdue justice.
15
What nothing can or must ever be allowed to erase, how-
ever, is truth. Robust bodies of archaeological and historical
evidence unequivocally confirm the presence of Pinal
Apaches in the Oak Flat vicinity and across the RCM impact
area. Arizona and U.S. Governments deliberately prosecuted
the Pinal Apache Genocide to enable industrial mining and
the distribution of resultant profits from Apache lands to
industrial allies. The Pinal Apache Genocide requires recog-
nition as both history and as a factor affecting contemporary
relations among those who live and work in its dark shadow,
including RCM personnel, Federal and Arizona State
Government officials, and the residents of Pinal and neigh-
boring counties. Suspicions about industrialization voiced by
Apaches and other tribes’ representatives derive not only
from ancient senses of sacredness but also from persistent
duties to homelands and long-muted histories of severance
therefrom (Deloria, 1994; Spicer, 1971). After maintaining
their traditions across centuries of oppression both overt and
insidious, Apache memories, stories, and claims to their
lands may well emerge stronger and more resilient from the
RCM controversy. Apaches take history seriously and per-
sonally and so, too, should others affected by it (Basso,
1996). That means everybody.
What history has yet to record are commitments by the pro-
ponents of the Pinal Apache Genocide and their successors to
acknowledge and atone for these still-reverberating injustices.
Studies of historical trauma show how past harms and oppres-
sions travel across generations to cause major effects on
Indigenous peoples’ health and wellness (Fast & Collin-
Vézina, 2010; Schaepe, Angelbeck, Snook, & Welch, 2017).
The Pinal Apache Genocide constitutes a moral and legal
mandate for action. Using Federal and international laws
(United Nations General Assembly, 2007; Welch et al., 2009),
16
applicable RCM policies (Rio Tinto, 2010), and principles of
transparency, accountability, and independent verifiability
(Scott, 2014), the next U.S. Government intervention in Pinal
Apache territory should be a comprehensive review of the
RCM proposal. Truth and reconciliation protocols developed
to address individual and collective trauma and to enable
restorative justice (Scott, 2014) recommend prompt action on
the part of the U.S. to engage San Carlos Apaches and other
representatives of other affected tribes in respectful determina-
tions of whether and how RCM and other mining might pro-
ceed in their homelands. In any case, the Federal Government
must abandon, in Arizona and elsewhere, land management
policies and practices that institutionalize conceptions of
aboriginal landowners as denizens of the past and impedi-
ments to progress, caricatures that confine tribal concerns to
and within physical protections for specific archaeological
sites (Dongoske et al., 2015). There will never be a better,
easier, or less expensive time than now for the United States of
America to escape military–industrial capture, embrace its
public and Indian fiduciary duties, and fulfill its higher mani-
fest destiny as a guarantor of truth and justice for all.
This historical case study is as much about the future as
the past. Asking what happened to the Pinal Apaches who
created an abundant archaeological record around Oak Flat
has revealed a genocide hidden in plain sight. Beyond chron-
icling another chapter of injustice, the study indicates clear
directions for addressing the legacies of recurrent and occa-
sionally lethal colonial encounters between industrialists and
American Indians (“Dakota Access Pipeline,” 2016). The
Federal Government must decide, history will record, and
voters shall judge whether the foreign-owned RCM shall
inflict additional harms on Apaches, other American Indians,
and their homelands. The Oak Flat sacred place contains far
more than copper ore. The area harbors the material and
memorial proof for Pinal Apache occupation of the Pinal
Mountains and for government-sponsored mass killings and
race-based persecutions that haunt all American lands, lives,
and institutions. The reverberant consequences of the Pinal
Apache Genocide and comparable inhumanities will con-
tinue to debilitate our democracy so long as silence reigns.
All who cherish justice and simple kindness should question
how much and how long to accept genocide as a basis for
how we treat our lands and neighbors across the American
West, and beyond.
Acknowledgments
I gratefully acknowledge information and assistance provided by
Mark Altaha, Kelly Bannister, Dinah Bear, Hugo Cardoso, Vern
Grant, Saul Hedquist, Sarah Herr, Erin Hogg, Karl Hoerig, Joe Kalt,
Berndt Kühn, Jami Macarty, George Nicholas, Seth Pilsk, Terry
Rambler, Ramon Riley, Dave Schaepe, Ken Travous, Maria Vejar,
Scott Wood, and many librarians at the University of Arizona,
Arizona State Museum, Rogers School of Law, and Special
Collections Library and the Arizona Historical Society. Clayton
Crawford and Raul Campos expertly prepared Figures 1, 2, and 4.
SAGE Open
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared the following potential conflicts of interest
with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article: The research and writing for this article were supported in
part by the Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada and
the San Carlos Apache Tribe.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support
for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article:
Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society, Tucson; San Carlos
Apache Tribe; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada. Simon Fraser University’s Open Access Fund provided the
open access publication fees.
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Author Biography
John R. Welch is a professor at Simon Fraser University, jointly
appointed in the Department of Archaeology and the School of
Resource and Environmental Management. Prior to joining the
SFU faculty in 2005, Welch served as the White Mountain Apache
Tribe archaeologist and historic preservation officer, 1996-2005.