(April 30, 1871). The Camp Grant Massacre was a violent attack on Pinal and Aravaipa Apaches surrendered to the United States Army at Camp Grant, Arizona Territory, along the San Pedro River. The confederacy of Mexican-Americans, Anglo-Americans and Tohono O'odham from Tucson, mistakenly believed that the peacefully encamped Apaches had committed several raids in the preceding weeks. Catching the Apaches off guard, the attackers murdered more than 100 Apaches, almost all women and children. Several Apache girls were raped. Another 28 or 30 children were taken captive, kept in Tucson homes and most sold as slaves to Mexicans across the border in Sonora.

Within a week of the slaughter a local Anglo named William Hopkins Tonge (or Touge) wrote to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs stating that "The Indians at the time of the massacre being so taken by surprise and considering themselves perfectly safe with scarcely any arms, those that could get away ran for the mountains." ^*

In October of 1871, a Tucson grand jury indicted 100 of the assailants with 108 counts of murder. The trial two months later focused solely on Apache depredations; it took the jury just 19 minutes to pronounce a verdict of not guilty. Western Apache groups soon left their farms and gathering places near Tucson in fear of subsequent attacks. As pioneer families arrived and settled in the area, Apaches were never able to regain hold of much of their ancestral lands in the San Pedro River Valley.

Sources:

Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Chip. 2003. The Camp Grant Massacre in the Historical Imagination. Journal of the Southwest 45(3):249-269.

Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Chip. 2003. Western Apache Oral Histories and Traditions of the Camp Grant Massacre. American Indian Quarterly 27(3&4):639-666.

Hammond, George P. 1929. The Camp Grant Massacre: A Chapter in Apache History. Berkeley: Proceedings of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association.

Hastings, James E. 1959. The Tragedy at Camp Grant in 1871. Arizona and the West 1(2):146-160.

Langellier, J. Phillip. 1979. Camp Grant Affair, 1871: Milestone in Federal Indian Policy? Military History of Texas and the Southwest 15(2):17-30.

Arizona | Massacre | Western Apache | San Pedro River | History of Arizona