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With Their Own Blood
A Saga of Southwestern Pioneers
By Virginia Culin Roberts TCU Press
Copyright © 1992 Virginia Culin Roberts
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87565-529-1
CHAPTER 1
CAPTURE
On a crisp Friday morning, March 16, 1860, a slender brook danced and twisted around live oaks and huge half-buried boulders in Madera Canyon in the Santa Rita Mountains of what is now southern Arizona. Blonde Larcena Pennington Page, age twenty-two, had no premonition of danger as she bent to fill buckets at the cold clear stream fed by winter snow melting on higher peaks and ridges. She and her ten-year-old companion, Mercedes Sais Quiroz, were alone beside a flickering campfire.
The day before, Larcena's young husband, John Hempstead Page, and his friend William Randall had brought her and the little girl by ox-wagon from Canoa ranch in the valley below. They had pitched their tents beside the creek. The two men were associated in a logging operation in the high recesses of the large canyon. They felled trees and sawed them into lumber sorely needed by settlers in this remote Gadsden Purchase region of New Mexico Territory. After breakfast, Randall had disappeared among the trees to hunt a deer for dinner and Page had hiked up to "the pinery," where his crew was already at work.
Larcena could hear the faint, reassuring thud of axes on wood, higher in the canyon. Other sounds were peaceful and pleasant: the burble of the brook, the screech of bluejays, the happy laughter of Mercedes, who was playing with Larcena's little dog. Five months earlier, twenty Apache renegades had raided Collumber's ranch near the pinery, making off with clothing, blankets, provisions, and an ox. But that incident was almost forgotten.
Larcena felt secure in this lovely spot and thought for a moment of why she was here. She and John Page had been married just eleven weeks earlier in the village of Tucson. After the wedding, Larcena stayed on there while her husband returned to the sawmill in the pinery where he and his partners had a business arrangement with rancher William Hudson Kirkland. Kirkland, then a twenty-seven-year-old, tall, thin Virginia-born bachelor, lived about thirteen miles from the pinery at the Canoa ranch on the Santa Cruz River. There he and Richard M. Doss dealt in lumber sales to the military and to the public. Page and his partners hauled the lumber they whipsawed to various places as Kirkland or Doss directed.
In Tucson, Kirkland engaged Larcena to teach his young ward, Mercedes, to read. Daughter of a Mexican widow, she was a bright, promising little girl, and Kirkland felt she deserved an education.
Page made the forty-mile ride from the Santa Ritas to town to be with his young wife as often as he could, but the infrequent, brief visits and the tiring trips made him determined to bring Larcena closer to the sawmill. Page now proposed to Kirkland that he move Larcena into a rude unused cabin near the Canoa ranch house. The rancher objected because of the risk of raiding Apaches, and he had another concern: he wanted Mrs. Page to continue tutoring Mercedes. John Page persisted, however, and finally got his way. Kirkland went to Tucson and sent Mercedes by stagecoach to Larcena at Canoa.
Shortly after arriving at Canoa, Larcena developed chills and fever, a common ailment along the rivers and streams of southern Arizona. Knowledgeable persons advised her that if she would get up into the higher mountain air she would soon improve. She asked John Page if he would take her with him on his next trip to the lumber camp. Her husband was willing to do even more: he would build a cabin for her up there.
Against his better judgement, Bill Kirkland agreed to let Mercedes go with Larcena. Page loaded a wagon with tools, a few furnishings, bedding, clothing, provisions and other supplies. He, Larcena, and Mercedes left Canoa in the wagon on Thursday morning, March 15. William Randall, "an experienced frontiersman" and one of Page's sawmill partners, accompanied them on horseback. They rumbled slowly uphill as their oxen pulled them into Madera Canyon along a road that Kirkland had made from Canoa to the lumberyard. Bill Kirkland speculated later that even then the five Tontos who captured Larcena and Mercedes the next morning may have been observing them.
* * *
Larcena finished her simple chores, then showed Mercedes the smooth, hollow balls that grew on the oaks. The curious child began to collect them eagerly. Larcena stretched, easing a persistent ache in her back. She was tall for a woman of that time. She turned her gray-blue eyes westward, where brushy canyon slopes widened to frame a magnificent view. Spread before her lay the panorama of the Santa Cruz Valley—the golden desert plain three thousand feet below, basking in sunlight under a cloudless spring sky. Azure mountains curved the far horizon. But the sight failed to inspire her this morning. She felt listless, a condition she hoped would soon improve in the invigorating altitude. She glanced back at the girl intently gathering oak balls and decided that the reading lesson could wait a few minutes. The men would not be back in camp for some time.
Larcena ducked into her tent, leaned back in the rocking chair John Page had brought along for her, and closed her eyes. Her little dog curled up beside her. Only a moment later he growled and jumped up barking. She scolded him and told him to lie down, but sudden, terrified screams from Mercedes brought Larcena to her feet, just as a black-haired, copper-skinned Apache burst through the tent flap.
Larcena lunged for the Colt revolver hidden in the bedding. A rough brown hand snatched it from her. She darted from thetent, but the Indian caught her arm. Mercedes shrieked again and started to run toward her, but another brave, emerging swiftly from behind the trees, seized the child.
For most of her life Larcena Pennington Page had lived in danger of being captured by Indians. Now all at once she was surrounded by five Apaches, obviously unfriendly. Their black eyes gleamed in their swarthy faces. They indicated by sign language and in Spanish that they had just killed her husband as he drank from a spring in the canyon above and that the saddle they carried was his. She choked off an involuntary, anguished scream of denial as she felt a spearpoint prick her breast.
The Indians facing Larcena were a long way from their tribe's domain north of the Gila River. They were wiry, short-statured men of the Tonto band, with shoulder-length hair cut in a bang across the eyebrows. They wore breechcloths and high-top buckskin moccasins. Their slim, nearly naked bodies showed little of the muscular development possessed by the sturdy lumbermen. Each carried a bow, quiver of arrows, and a lance.
Terrified and numbed by the thought of John Page dead, his young bride watched as the Tontos proceeded to loot and vandalize the camp. What they did not choose to take, they ruined. White clouds rose where they slashed open heavy flour sacks and dumped the contents on the ground. They strewed other supplies and food in mingled heaps. They took Larcena's feather bed up on a knoll—the bed she and John had shared the night before—and shook it until feathers flew. At that, she screamed again in sudden anger. Again the lancepoint silenced her.
The Apaches gathered up their booty and pushed the woman and girl ahead of them uphill in a northerly direction. They climbed rapidly through the oaks over a ridge and into another canyon. The slopes were steep and rocky, dotted with thorny agaves, clumps of wild grass, small shrubs, and trees. The brush beside the narrow path caught at Larcena's apron and long, bulky skirt. Her "spencer," a form-fitting jacket which she had needed in the morning chill, soon felt too warm. Her fair face grew flushed and her breathing labored.
She tore off and dropped pieces of her apron and broke twigs from trees, when she could do so unobserved. Furtively, she told Mercedes to do likewise. However, the Indians soon separated them to prevent their talking. One took Mercedes on ahead; another dropped back to watch for pursuit.
* * *
William Randall returned from his deer hunt at noon and found Larcena and Mercedes gone, the camp devastated. He rushed uphill to the pinery where Page and his crew were felling trees. Bill Kirkland later reported that upon hearing the dreadful news Larcena's husband jumped onto Randall's horse "and raced at breakneck speed ... to Canoa where the horse fell dead from the exertion." There, Kirkland dispatched a fast rider eastward over the mountain passes to Fort Buchanan, the region's small military post, with an urgent plea for help. He himself prepared to ride to Tucson, forty miles north, to organize another search party. Meanwhile, Richard Doss accompanied John Page as he hurried back to the lumber camp and, with several companions, set out on Larcena's trail.
* * *
All day the tireless Tontos hurried their captives over "a rocky and mountainous trail, penetrating deeper and deeper into the mountain." Here patches of snow lay in the shade of taller trees. The Indians had to shove, poke, and threaten in order to make Larcena keep up, weak as her illness had left her. At times the Apache carrying her "six-shooter," as she called it, aimed the pistol at her head. Seeing their dissatisfaction with her progress, she grew more and more afraid for her life. They taunted her repeatedly in broken Spanish. Mercedes understood enough to comprehend that they were planning to kill her teacher. Sobbing, the little girl managed to fall back and tell Larcena.
At last the Apaches halted briefly. One old Indian handed Larcena a cup of melted snow, which she and Mercedes drank gratefully. Another hid behind bushes and rocks and "made believe he was shooting white people." Larcena felt sure he was communicating his intentions toward her. The Indians, who showed no sign of fatigue, relentlessly forced their victims onto the trail again. Larcena exerted herself, convinced that if she did not maintain their rapid pace they would kill her; but her strength was so diminished that she continually fell behind.
At sunset they climbed a narrow ridge that fell off sharply on one side. They had now come perhaps fifteen miles from the lumber camp. The Apache in the rear came running up to say that he had seen pursuers in the distance. The Tontos renewed their demands for speed, but Larcena was too exhausted to comply. One of the Indians suddenly bent toward her. Locking a forearm behind her knees, he quickly straightened, hoisted her over his shoulder and proceeded along the trail with scarcely a pause. When he tired, another of her captors carried her.
The lumbermen, however, continued to gain on them. The Tontos suddenly halted. They forced Larcena to remove her heavy clothes. Obeying their commands, she stripped down to a thin chemise. They took her shoes, chattering at her all the while. She thought they were saying that many "of their people had been killed by her people ... pong! pong! pong!" Then they impatiently signaled her to move ahead on the trail.
As Larcena turned and took the first weary step, a lance thrust seared her back. She stumbled off the edge of the ridge. Some of the Apaches followed down the steep slope, spearing her repeatedly and hurling boulders at her head. A large pine tree blocked her fall and she lodged against it, senseless. The Indians dragged her to the far side of the tree and returned to the trail, leaving her to die, or thinking her already dead. One of them swooped up the wailing Mercedes, another put on Larcena's shoes and snatched up her clothes, and they all vanished quickly from the spot.
It was twilight when the sound of her dog barking on the trail above her aroused Larcena. "Here it is, boys!" rang out a voice that she recognized with joy as her husband's. He and his companions were going back and forth on the ridge above her, trying to solve the riddle of the tracks on the trail. Page had just found the print of her shoes, now worn by one of the Apaches. Larcena tried to call out to him, but she was so nearly lifeless that she could neither make an audible sound nor move. In the gloom, the lumbermen did not see the evidence of her tumbling into the ravine. Following her shoeprints slowly in the dim light, they resumed their pursuit of the Indians. Despair overwhelmed Larcena. She lapsed again into unconsciousness as dark as the cold night that swiftly and silently closed in around her.
CHAPTER 2
THE PENNINGTONS
The battered, bleeding woman lying in the mountain snow had married twenty-six-year-old John Hempstead Page on Christmas Eve, 1859. They were a vigorous, confident young couple ready to face frontier hardships together. Chance had led them by widely separated paths, thousands of miles from their native states, to the Gadsden Purchase where they first met.
Larcena was born in Tennessee on June 10, 1837, the third child of frontier farmer Elias Green Pennington and his wife, Julia Ann Hood. From these two stalwart pioneers she inherited strength, a firm religious faith, and a cheerful, optimistic outlook on life. Her parents, both of English descent, originated in the Carolinas. About the time of their marriage in 1831, they moved to Tennessee. There, before Julia was twenty-three, she gave birth to their first four children—James, Laura Ellen, Larcena Ann, and Caroline. Elias had some education, but Julia, apparently, could neither read nor write. However, her character might be glimpsed in her twelve children, who, with one exception, were mutually loving and loyal, the sons kind and considerate toward their sisters.
Elias, too, had much to do with that. He was good-humored, quiet, sober and hard-working. He loved his wife and was an affectionate father. Even in later years when people referred to him as "Old Pennington," he was physically impressive—"large, tall, with a fine face and athletic frame." By then he was clean-shaven, although bearded in earlier years, with fair hair, blue eyes, and an aquiline nose. J. Ross Browne, a traveler who met him in Tucson in 1864, described him as eccentric: when other Arizona settlers had fled the rampaging Apaches, Elias and his family had remained, "seeming rather to enjoy the dangers than otherwise." Nevertheless, Elias Green Pennington was "apparently a man of excellent sense," according to Browne, who stated that he had never seen a better example of the fearless American frontiersman.
A Pennington family tradition holds that Elias and his brother John were the sons of one Elijah Pennington. Elijah, they say, had been a soldier at Valley Forge in the terrible winter of 1777 and had received a large bounty land grant in Virginia as a reward for his Revolutionary War service. There he reared eight boys and eight girls and became wealthy growing fine tobacco. He had a stern belief in self-reliance. When a son became twenty-one, Elijah gave him a rifle, a dog, a horse and saddle, and $2100 in silver, then told him to go out and make his own fortune. As each daughter married, he endowed her to an equivalent extent, instructing her that divorce or separation was sacrilegious and that she should not expect to return to his house under such circumstances.
Elias' children did not hear this legend—true or mythical—from him. He made few if any references to his background and seldom if ever heard from relatives. There may have been an estrangement, some emotional distance even greater than the miles that separated them.
When Tennessee became too populated to suit Elias, and when he heard of vast frontiers opening in the new Republic of Texas, he moved his family there. They reached the region that is now Fannin County, just south of present-day Oklahoma and the Red River, in November, 1839. Elias homesteaded 640 acres on Bullard's Creek, a branch of the Bois d'Arc.
It was good, well-watered farmland, with lovely, mature trees—pin oak, Spanish oak, hickory, hackberry, hawthorn, andpersimmon—which the surveyor used as markers. Elias built his cabin about seven miles west of "the Honey Grove," an area which soon developed into a small town. The first settlers had come to the region only three years earlier, finding friendly Kickapoo Indians and Shawnees to the north and Caddos to the south. But the Cherokees and other bands had been hostile from 1837 through 1839, when they were soundly defeated by the whites.
There was peace while Elias and Julia built their home and when their fifth child, John Parker Pennington, was born on December 24, 1840. Three-year-old Larcena, holding fast to James, who was seven, could safely romp out to the field which their father cleared, plowed and planted in the spring. That freedom was curtailed, however, when Indian raids began again. Although a treaty is said to have forever eliminated the danger of Indian attack there by 1843, that cannot be entirely true, for hostilities hit near the Pennington farm at least three years later. Overconfident of their security, settlers had grown careless.
Ten of the Pennington's neighbors formed the Honey Grove Baptist Church in 1846. Elias was the first to join after its organization. They met for worship at each other's homes; in October, 1848, they met at Pennington's. But six months later, meeting at a school near his cabin, they dissolved their church because some members had been murdered by Indians and others had left the vicinity. On that disappointing day, the elders gave Elias a certificate affirming his good standing in the congregation, dismissing him as an orderly member, and giving him up "to the Lord or any Baptist church of the same faith." He later carried that precious document with him into Arizona, where no Baptist church existed until years after he died, stretched out in a plowed field with Indian arrows in his back.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from With Their Own Blood by Virginia Culin Roberts. Copyright © 1992 Virginia Culin Roberts. Excerpted by permission of TCU Press.
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