The Indian Wars
Learn about the military conflicts between U.S. forces and Native American tribes during the late 19th century, and how these wars shaped Arizona’s frontier.
From the late 1850s to the late 1880s, military units were fighting the Indian Wars. During the Civil War, the military was fighting in the East, but the Apaches were raiding ranches, Overland Stage stations, and wagon trains. Military posts such as Fort Defiance, Fort Whipple, Fort Apache, Fort Verde, Fort McDowell, Fort Lowell, Fort Bowie, and more were scattered throughout Arizona.
During the Civil War, three skirmishes occurred in Arizona between soldiers of the North and South—Picacho Peak, Stanwix Station, and La Paz on the Colorado River. The South was interested in the gold in California, and the North was going to protect it.
With the Civil War still going on and Carleton still fighting the Navajos, the U.S. War Department authorized Governor John Noble Goodwin of Arizona to raise five companies of Arizona Volunteers in 1864. Recruitment was delayed for a year, but by the fall of 1865, more than 350 men had been issued into service under the command of nine officers. The overwhelming majority were Mexicans, many of them from Sonora, or O'odham and Maricopas from the Gila River villages, had grown up fighting Yavapais and Apaches, as had their fathers and grandfathers.
For the next year, they guarded wagon trains between Prescott and La Paz and campaigned relentlessly across central Arizona. According to the Third Arizona Territorial Legislature, the volunteers inflicted "greater punishment on the Apaches than all other troops in the territory." Traveling "barefoot and upon half rations", they killed 150 to 175 Apaches and Yavapais while losing only ten men in combat themselves.
If their enlistments had been extended, as many territorial officials and army officers requested, the centuries-old alliance of Hispanic, O'odham, and Maricopa frontiersmen might have conquered the Apachería for the Anglo newcomers.
The ‘Apache problem’ was finally quelled with the surrender of Geronimo in 1886 at Fort Bowie.
