Hughes Thomas Hughes L

• • • ARIZONA THE YOUNGEST STATE 593 Arizona pioneers. His body lies in the cemetery at Phcenix where the Daughters • of the American Revolution in 1906 erected a small headstone. • Poston was born in Hardin County, Kentucky, April 20, 1825. Orphaned at 12 years of age, he was reared by relatives. He studied law and was ad; mitted to practice at Nashville and also practiced at Washington. Some time after the acquisition of California, he went to San Francisco to employment as a , custom house clerk. His advent in the Southwest was, in 1854, leading a com , CHAPTER XLIX pany of thirty men for exploration. The party landed at Navachista in Jan uary of that year and journeyed through upper Sonora and through Arizona , SOUTHERN ARIZONA PIONEERS south of the Gila to Fort Yuma. With specimens of the mineral wealth he had \ , found he returned to California and thence went by way of the Isthmus to New Chas. D. Poston Wm. H. Kirkland Peter R. Brady Fritz Contzen Estevan Ochoa York, Kentucky and Washington, where he spent the following year enlisting -Samuel Hughes Thomas Hughes L. C. Hughes S. R. DeLong j. B. Allen the support of capital. -Fred C. Hughes C. B. Stocking R. N. Leatherwood S. H. Drachman E. In 1856, backed by an organized company, he entered Arizona again from \ N. Fish I. S. M ansfeld W. C. Greene Col. Kosterlits/r}} Pauline Cushman- · the east with a party largely German in constitution, and started mining near Pioneer Society. Tubac. In 1857 he was relieved of his position as manager by General IIeintzel- . man and was transferred to the company's office in New York. He was back Within the third volume of this work will be found a wealth of biography, again in Arizona later in charge of the company's business, and he was serving from which can be learned much more of the personal features of life in Arizona as recorder for DOlla Ana County, New Mexico, which county then embraced all within the past forty years than has been set forth in preceding pages. It has • of lower Arizona. For a part of that time Tubac had a newspaper to which been the editor's good fortune to have known many of these pioneers, most of Poston was a contributor. He had to flee for his life, however, together with them now passed away. They came to Arizona when it possessed few features Prof. R. Pumpelly and a number of American miners, when troops were · with that would make a land habitable and when rare pluck was needed to sustain drawn and Mexicans and Apaches alike descended upon the undefended mining life against adverse conditions of nature and of humanity. No saints were to be camps. During the Civil war he served for a while as volunteer aid to his old found among these men, yet evep their lives were at the disposal of a friend, friend, General Heintzelman, though his military title merely was one of / or even of the stranger who might be beset by savages on the road. Often arose courtesy. questions why they came and why they remained. It is probable that few of Poston was very active in the work leading up to the organization of the them appreciated a fact now undisputed, that there had arisen in their breasts new Territory of Arizona in 1863. Those men who secured the offices in the new \ a love for the country itself, with a relative degree of contentment that could subdivision seem to have been the ones who had helped most in putting through not have been reached elsewhere. Of the work and character of' some of these the congressional act of establishment. He did not enter Arizona with the pioneers it has been thought well worth while to present a few notes. It is not to official party, however . He went overland to San Francisco by the northern be expected that these will be found more than fragmentary in themselves or that stage route and thence, in company with J. Ross Bro,vne, made his way into they will cover omissions in personal reference heretofore made. The names the new territory through Yuma. According to Browne, Poston knew every mainly are of people personally known to the writer and their selection has foot' of the country, talked· Spanish like a native, believed in the people and been made almost casually, generally suggested in the consideration of events climate, had full faith in the silver, impli~itly relied upon the gold and never dealt with heretofore. , doubted that Arizona.. was the grand. diamond in the rough; withal he talked and acted like a man perfectly sane. He admitted, however, that while Arizona was • POSTON, "THE FATHER OF ARIZONA" prolific in reptiles and the precious metals, it was painfully destitute of every~ . , , Most notable among the pioneers of the Southwest was Charles D. Poston, thing for the convenience of civilized man. • to whom in later years came the enduring title 'of "Father of Arizona." His I-lis services as Indian commissioner were short, for at the first election he life was full of official honor and activity. His mental endowment, education was chosen delegate to Congress and forthwith departed for his field of duty at and training all contributed to place him high among his fellow men. He was Washington, taking the Panama route, with a mileage charge of $7,000. That , industrious in forwarding his own ambitions. His service to the territory had he had accomplished something is indicated by the fact that the First Legisla- • I been acknowledged by legislative resolutions and by the granting even of a ture tendered its thanks to him" for the earnest, able and efficient manner in • pension. Yet his death, June 24, 1902, in Phcenix, was on the floor of an adobe which he has discharged the duties of sU'perintendent of Indians." No record hut, wherein he had lived for several years, solitary and under most squalid is at hand of Poston '8 service as delegate, but it would appear that he did not conditions. His burial was at the expense of a number of friends, all of them view with equanimity his retirement from Congress. 592 • , • • - • 594 ARIZONA THE YOUNGEST STATE ARIZONA THE YOUNGEST STATE 595 , Late in 1866, the Legislature passed a concurrent resolution reciting that a sun flag, it was his dream to erect a temple where the deity should ·be wor - information had been received that "Hon. Chas. D. Poston, late delegate to shipped with solemnity on the uprising of the sun, a glorious manifestation of Congress from this territory, has circulated in Washington a report that Hon. celestial omnipotence. Financially he was hardly able to do more than build John N. Goodwin, delegate-elect to Congress from this territory, was elected the road, so, to secure the necessary funds, Poston wrote a lengthy letter to the through fraud and misrepresentation and that said Hon. Chas. D. Poston has Shah of Persia, reciting all the alleged facts he had secured concerning the • further announced his determination to contest the seat of Hon. John N. Good ancient races and urging upon the monarch the religious duty and high advisa- win in Congress upon grounds as aforesaid." The Legislature thereupon for bility of reestablishing on the Western Continent the faith of Zoroaster, after mally declared" That we firmly believe the election of Hon. John N. Goodwin the years of darkness that had followed the suppression of the sun cult as fOllnd to have been, in all respects, regular, and that he was honestly and fairly elected by the Spaniards. It is told that the Shah, through diplomatic channels, ex by a majority of all the legal votes case in this territory, for delegate, and that tended to Colonel Poston his felicitations and best wishes, but no money was no fraud or undue influences were used by said Hon. John N. Goodwin, or his returned; and now the road is only a ruin, like the rough stOlltl watch tower on friends, to procure such election; that we regret exceedingly, and must condemn the summit that had given Poston his idea. It was Poston's wish that he be without reserve, as most detrimental to our interests, the position taken by said buried on the summit of this butte and possibly a sentimental State Legislature Hon. Chas. D. Poston, having, as we conceive it does, a direct tendency to place some day may make provision for this and for the erection thereon as well of a Hon. John N. · Goodwin, our delegate, in a false position before Congress, lessen memorial shaft wherefrom may be reflected to the people below the first rays • ing his influence therein." of the rising sun. Poston himself, in his little poetical volume, "Apache Land, " thus made He wrote in rather bitter strain concerning' his official position, which paid • reference to a subsequent failure, when he ran for delegate against Governor only $500 a year, "a recompense for my arduous pioneering and the loss of an McCormick: ample estate by confiscation and robbery." H e had an extra allowance of $100 a year for contingent expenses and rent, but acknowledges that there was little The Tucson people were quite elate, or no busines.'3 in the office. So he filled in his time at Florence by the writing They'd swapped the capital for a delegate; All for this exalted honor itch, of an allegorical sort of work in verse ~mtitled "Apache Land," published in And would swap the devil for a witch; San Francisco in 1878.

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