Cochise County in southeastern Arizona was the scene of a number of violent conflicts in the 19th-century and early 20th-century American Old West, including between white settlers and Apache Indians, between opposing political and economic factions, and between outlaw gangs and local law enforcement. Cochise County was carved off in 1881 from the easternmost portion of Pima County during a formative period in the American Southwest. The era was characterized by rapidly growing boomtowns, the emergence of large-scale farming and ranching interests, lucrative mining operations, and the development of new technologies in railroading and telecommunications. Complicating the situation was staunch resistance to white settlement from local Native American groups, most notably during the Apache Wars, as well as Cochise County's location on the border with Mexico, which not only threatened international conflict but also presented opportunities for criminal smugglers and cattle rustlers.
Factional hostilities emerged as soon as American settlers began arriving in southern Arizona in large numbers in the 1860s and 1870s. The Gadsden Purchase of 1853 had opened the territory to Americans, and the sudden growth of settlement and investment proved a source of great enmity between local Apaches and the American newcomers. Pima County and later Cochise County were the primary battleground for most of the resulting quarter-century of warfare, which was almost constant in the region until the late 1880s.
In addition to the Native American conflicts, there was also considerable tension between rural residents of Cochise County, who were for the most part Democrats from the agrarian Confederate States, and more urban residents living within the region's few developed towns, who were largely Republican business owners from the industrial Union States. The division created polarizing sectional alliances and culminated in countless local feuds, the most well-known of which has been called the Cochise County feud or the Earp–Clanton feud, which included the historic Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in the town of Tombstone and Wyatt Earp's Vendetta Ride in the early 1880s. Dr. George E. Goodfellow famously described Tombstone, the capital of Cochise County, as the "condensation of wickedness."
Formation of Cochise County
The land that now comprises Cochise County, along with the rest of modern Arizona south of the Gila River and a small part of southwestern New Mexico, was Mexican territory until 1853, when it was purchased by the United States in the Gadsden Purchase. Cochise County was created on February 1, 1881 from the eastern portion of Pima County. It was named after the legendary Chiricahua Apache war chief Cochise, who was a pivotal figure in the Apache Wars before his death in 1874. The county seat was Tombstone until 1929, when it moved to Bisbee.
Cochise County is almost a perfect square in the southeasternmost corner of the state: . It covers a land area of –1.5 times the size of the state of Connecticut–and shares an border with the Mexican state of Sonora. The county also includes of the San Pedro River watershed. Most of Cochise County is dominated by basin and range topography, with high-altitude rocky plateaus and forested mountain ranges (including the Dragoon Mountains and the Chiricahua Mountains) separated by broad, low-lying valleys of Sonoran Desert scrub. Dragoon Summit divides the county.
Apache Wars
The Apache Wars were Arizona's and New Mexico's most prominent conflict for more than 30 years in the latter half of the 19th century, as well as one of the lengthiest conflicts in all of the Indian Wars. The land that is now Cochise County is located in the ancestral homeland of the Chiricahua Apache, who fiercely resisted American encroachment on their territory for decades. The Chiricahua War began as the American Civil War was beginning, when the southern part of New Mexico Territory (of which present-day Arizona was a part) had nominally joined the Confederate States of America as Confederate Arizona and both Union and Confederate armies vied for control of New Mexico and the important emigrant trail and stagecoach route passing through the area en route to California.
Cochise and the Bascom Affair
In January 1861, a band of Apaches raided the ranch of John Ward, stole some livestock, and kidnapped the son of a Mexican woman who lived with Ward. Ward wrongly believed that the unrelated Chiricahua Apache chief Cochise and his followers were responsible and he demanded that the United States Army confront Cochise, recover the livestock, and rescue the boy. A month later, the army responded by sending Lieutenant George Nicholas Bascom and fifty-four men into Apache Pass, where several people had been massacred by the Chiricahuas in the past. After setting up camp about a mile from a Butterfield Overland Mail waystation, Bascom lured Cochise and several of his relatives into his tent and threatened to hold him hostage until Ward's property and the boy were returned. Furious and insulted, Cochise cut through the wall of the tent, eluded the guards posted outside, and attempted to free the other hostages by offering to exchange them for several of his own prisoners. When Bascom refused, the Chiricahuas killed their prisoners, and Bascom responded by hanging Cochise's hostage relatives.
The incident triggered a series of retaliations that soon erupted into full-scale war across a vast portion of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. The fighting did not come to any significant end until 1886, when the Apache shaman Geronimo surrendered to the U.S. Army at Skeleton Canyon. But even after Geronimo's surrender, warriors like Massai and the Apache Kid continued to raid settlers' ranches for years into the 20th century.
Battle of Apache Pass
Between 1861 and 1886, there were dozens of skirmishes between white soldiers or settlers and Apaches in Cochise County. The biggest of these battles occurred when Cochise and Mangas Coloradas attempted to ambush a detachment of the California Column as it made its way east through Apache Pass in the Chiricahua Mountains. During the ensuing Battle of Apache Pass, on June 15, 1862, Captain Thomas L. Roberts and 126 men routed 500 Apaches from their fortified positions overlooking the area. Sixty-six Apaches were killed while the Americans suffered only five casualties. The army then built Fort Bowie to protect the trail that led through the pass.
Conflicts and feuds
Rural vs. town interests
Many of the ranchers and Cowboys who lived in the Cochise County countryside were resentful of the growing power of the business owners and townspeople who increasingly influenced local politics and law in the county. A cowboy in that time and region was generally regarded as an outlaw. Legitimate cowmen were referred to as cattle herders or ranchers.
The ranchers largely maintained control of the country around Tombstone, due in large part to the sympathetic support of Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan, who favored the Cowboys and rural ranchers and who grew to intensely dislike the Earps. Behan tended to ignore the Earps' complaints about horse thieving and cattle rustling by the McLaury and Clanton families.
The townspeople and business owners welcomed the Cowboys, who had money to spend in the numerous bordellos, gambling halls, and drinking establishments. When lawlessness got out of hand, they enacted ordinances to control the disruptive revelry and shootings. As officers of the law, the Earp brothers held authority at times on the federal, county and local level. They were resented by the Cowboys for their tactics as when Wyatt Earp buffaloed Curly Bill when he accidentally shot Marshal Fred White. The Earps were also known to bend the law in their favor when it affected their gambling and saloon interests, which earned them further enmity with the Cowboy faction.
Under the surface were other tensions aggravating the simmering distrust. Most of the leading cattlemen and Cowboys were Confederate sympathizers and Democrats from Southern states, especially Missouri and Texas. The mine and business owners, miners, townspeople and city lawmen including the Earps were largely Republicans from the Northern states. There was also the fundamental conflict over resources and land, of traditional, Southern-style "small government" agrarianism of the rural Cowboys with Northern-style industrial capitalism.
Lawmen vs. outlaws
During the rapid growth of Cochise County in the 1880s at the peak of the silver mining boom, outlaws derisively called "Cowboys" frequently robbed stagecoaches and brazenly stole cattle in broad daylight, scaring off the legitimate cowboys watching the herds. It became an insult to call a legitimate cattleman a "Cowboy." Legal cowmen were generally called herders or ranchers.
The lines between the outlaw element and law enforcement were not always distinct. Doc Holliday had a reputation as a killer, though modern research has only identified three individuals he shot. He was also friends with Bill Leonard, who was implicated in a stagecoach robbery. Cowboy Frank Stilwell was a known cattle rustler and served as an assistant Sheriff under Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan. Cowboy and outlaw Texas Jack Vermillion was a friend of the Earps who deputized him after Virgil Earp was maimed in an ambush.
Murder of Deputies Adams and Finley
At the behest of Judge Charles Silent, Territorial Marshal Crawley Dake deputized John H. Adams and Cornelius Finley. While traveling north to company headquarters in September 1878, less than two weeks after they were deputized, five Mexicans intercepted Adams and Finley, who they believed were carrying gold ore, and killed them. They failed to find any ore however. One of the suspects in the killings was Florentino Saiz, who the Arizona Weekly Star identified as "the 1878 murderer of Deputy U.S. Marshals Cornelius Finley and John Hicks Adams on September 2, 1878". During the Coroner's Inquest into the death of Morgan Earp, Pete Spence's wife, Marietta Duarte, implicated her husband and four other men, including Florentino Cruz, in Morgan's murder. Saiz and Cruz may have been the same person.ODMP U.S. Deputy Marshals Finley In 1879, the Mexican federal government refused to allow Dake to extradite two of the suspects. Unable to find justice in the courts for his brother's murder, Wyatt Earp began a vendetta, and killed Florentino Cruz on March 22, 1882 at a wood camp near South Pass of the Dragoon Mountains.
Smuggling and cattle rustling
From early in the history of Pima County, bandits used the border between the United States and Mexico to raid across in one direction and use the other as sanctuary. In December, 1878, and again the next year, Mexican authorities complained about American outlaw Cowboys who stole Mexican beef and resold it in Arizona. The Arizona Citizen reported that both U.S. and Mexican bandits were stealing horses from the Santa Cruz Valley and selling the livestock in Sonora, Mexico. Arizona Territorial Governor Fremont investigated the Mexican government's allegations and accused them in turn of allowing outlaws to use Sonora as a base of operations for raiding into Arizona.
The Clanton and McLaury clans were among those allegedly involved in the clandestine cross-border livestock smuggling from Sonora into Arizona. The illegal cattle operations kept beef prices lower and provided cheap stock that helped small ranchers get by. Many early Tombstone residents looked the other way when it was "only Mexicans" being robbed.
The Clanton family led by Newman Haynes Clanton had a ranch about southeast of Tombstone that was a way station for stolen Mexican beef. He was assisted by his sons Ike, Billy, and Phin Clanton. Frank and Tom McLaury had a ranch outside of Tombstone that they used to buy and re-sell stolen Mexican cattle.