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CHIRICAHUA
A Pioneer Log Cabin in Bonita Canyon The History of the Stafford Cabin |
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I. HISTORY OF THE STAFFORD CABIN (continued)
E. HOME LIFE IN BONITA CANYON DURING THE 1880s AND 1890s
Pauline Stafford became pregnant within a few years of settling at Bonita Canyon, but the couple's first child died in childbirth. The parents reportedly named the child Reveley, an old family name; they buried the baby in a small simple grave with a rudely carved "R STAFFORD" on a rough stone, in the south part of the orchard where it remains.29
29Another story has been circulated in which the child was named Reveille because of its birth during reveille at the military camp downstream; this is unlikely as the military camp was not in place until September of 1885, by which time Mary Pansy Stafford had been born.
Ja Hu and Pauline went on to have six children, five living to adulthood: Mary Pansy (called Pansy) born January 15, 1885, Anna Mae born December 1, 1886, Ruby Evelyn born September 30, 1888, Thomas Asa born May 30, 1890, and Clara Clementine born June 10, 1892. Stafford added a room to the cabin, of a slightly larger-diameter logs, between 1881 and 1885, around the time the first baby was due. It appears that the family of seven lived in these small quarters for most of its existence; by the time another addition was constructed near the turn of the century, almost half of the family had left or died.30
30Stafford Papers and personal communication, Wheeler and Murray. Torres and Baumler, Faraway Ranch, p. 64.
One would hope that Pauline had assistance with her many births by a midwife or neighbor lady. Ja Hu Stafford considered himself able to take care of the medical needs of his family, and may have assisted with the births. Years later a neighbor, Neil Erickson, recalled a time in late 1886 (about the time that Anna Mae was born) when he "was summoned to go and get [neighbor Mary Riggs] to perform an act of kindness for my near neighbor Mrs. Pauline Stafford." While the nearby residents lived at widespread locations, they no doubt helped each other as necessary. Erickson wrote to his new wife in 1887 that "Mr. and Mrs. Stafford send their best regards to you and wish you would come out here and live. They say that it's kind of lonesome now with this house [the Erickson cabin] empty."31
31Neil Erickson, "A Tribute to Mary B. Riggs," newspaper and date unknown, and Neil to Emma Erickson, February 23, 1887, Faraway Ranch Papers.
Pauline revealed some of the family's hardship in a letter she wrote to her sister in Utah announcing the birth of second child Anna Mae in December, 1886. "She is doing well but I am not strong enough yet to do much but take care of baby and Pansy. . . . I would liked to have sent you some money but I have been sick so much that Stafford has had to be with me all the time so he has not had any chance to make any . . . ."
Three years later the Staffords continued to struggle to make ends meet, as Pauline wrote in January, 1890:
. . . it seems like it is very hard to get A nough money to buy our own nessecaries / it was a very dry Summer last Summer and the Cattle men did not have any fat beef Cattle to sell so they have not got any money and they are the pepol that we get most of our money from / Some of the Cattle men are deep in debt to the Merchants . . . .
Nevertheless, the children received gifts during the Christmas of 1889:
[Pansy] got for Christmas a kitchen and doll and four handkerchiefs. May got a running turtle a doll and four handkerchiefs the baby got two dolls and a pretty little blue Sacque, and I got six glass sauce plates one scarf for a chair and a silver sugar spoon. Stafford got a Mustache cup and two linen towels. It will be Pansy's birthday on the 15 and I have to make a dress for her before then for a present and I am going to have a dinner party for her.32
32Pauline Stafford to Clara Madsen, December 21, 1886 and January 5, 1890, Stafford Papers.
Life at Bonita Canyon in the 1880s brought excitement and danger at times. Until 1886 Indians remained a potential threat to the settlers. A family story relates how Pauline shot at a Black soldier who approached the cabin, perhaps thinking he was an Indian; the only casualty was one of Stafford's prize fruit trees which the bullet severed. Wild animals lurked about the homestead, chasing the kids and injuring the livestock. Pauline wrote in 1886 how "a Panther caught Nellies 4 months and a half old colt about 200 yards from the house and Stafford shot and killed it / it measured 6 feet 8 inches from the end of his nose to the end of his tail / it measured 30 inches around the girth / 8 inches around the fore leg / the Panther was a male." Bobcats entered the house on at least two occasions only to be dispatched by Ja Hu Stafford with a knife. Stafford wrote in his journal of killing a bear on October 6, 1887.33
33Pauline Stafford to family, August 19, 1886, Stafford Papers; Journal of Ja Hu Stafford.
After about five years on the homestead the isolation decreased. In the Fall of 1885 a detachment from the Tenth Cavalry composed of Black enlistees, known to some Indians as "Buffalo Soldiers", camped in Bonita Canyon about a quarter mile west from the Staffords.
In October of that year Troop H, under the command of Capt. Charles L. Cooper, established a semi-permanent camp at Bonita Canyon. The troop was given this mission: to guard the water source; to prevent Apache renegades from escaping to Mexico through the canyon; to act as couriers for the southern mail service out of Fort Bowie; and to protect the local ranchers from Indian attack. Later joined by Troop E, the original detachment to have camped there, the ranks grew to almost 100 men and a similar number of horses. These numbers diminished in April 1886 when Troop I, with a strength of about 50 men, relieved Troops E and H. After a year of uneventful duty at Bonita Canyon, the soldiers abandoned the camp on September 15, 1886; Geronimo had surrendered and the Arizona Indian Wars had ended.34
34Mark F. Baumler "The Tenth Cavalry and the Camp at Bonita Canon, Arizona Territory," chapter in Tagg, The Camp at Bonita Canon, pp. 37-44.
Undoubtedly the proximity of the military camp had a significant impact on the Staffords' daily life. Apart from the supposed shooting incident at the cabin, Ja Hu Stafford reportedly sold produce to the encampment. His daughter Clara recalled that Ja Hu "sold vegetables to the Negro soldiers who were camped . . . right across Newton Creek there from [what later became] Faraway [Ranch] . . . ."35
35Ibid., p. 52; oral history of Clara Stafford Wheeler.
Four years after the 10th Cavalry left, Bonita Canyon experienced an Indian scare when "Big Foot" Massai, a Chiricahua Apache who had escaped from a train deporting Chiricahuas to Florida in 1886, appeared up the canyon accompanied by his pregnant wife. Neil Erickson, the Staffords' neighbor from 1888 to 1918, wrote an account of the story in his memoirs many years later:
The first we heard of Massai after he escaped from the train was in the early part of May 1890. Mr. J. Hue Stafford and family, wife and two children, and a young girl, Mary Fife, myself and family, wife and one child, and my brother John, were the only residents in Bonita Canyon about twelve miles south of Ft. Bowie, then garrisoned with two troops of Cavalry and one Company of Infantry.
This bright and early May morning Mr. Stafford was going to the fort with vegetables for officers and soldiers stationed there. He had his horses in a small enclosure about three-quarters of a mile above the house up in the canyon. He was on his way there to get the horses when he spied in a sandy place in the road a moccasin track. He stopped for a moment to consider and then returned home to protect his wife and children . . . .
On arriving home he sent Mary Fife down to my house a quarter of a mile to warn me. She came like a whirlwind, skirts a flying, and said, "The Indians are coming down the canyon."
About this time Mrs. Stafford with her two children, Pansy and Anna May, came down to my house . . . .
Stafford found that one of his horses had been stolen from his pasture; Massai was pursued but apparently escaped to Mexico after safely depositing his pregnant wife at the San Carlos Reservation to the north. Stafford's horse was eventually found and returned later that year. In one of Erickson's accounts (Erickson's story appeared in numerous versions in the press) he described Mary Fife as an employee of the Staffords; in another account, a Mrs. Fife served as a nearby midwife. Mrs. Fife may have been the mother of Mary, a young unmarried girl.36
36Leavengood, "Faraway Ranch History;" autobiographical letter reminiscence by Emma Erickson, January 10, 1946, p. 65, Chiricahua National Monument; Murray, personal communication.
Civilization crept closer to Bonita Canyon in August of 1887 when the government established Brannock post office on the Riggs Home Ranch at the forks of Pinery and Bonita Creeks. Brannick Riggs, the pioneer neighbor of the Staffords, became the first appointed postmaster (the postal office inadvertently misspelled the name as "Brannock"). Until 1887 the Staffords had traveled to Dos Cabezos, some 20 miles away, for mail. Brannick and Mary Riggs established a private school at their ranch, which circa 1886 became part of a new El Dorado School District #16. Within a few years the district constructed a schoolhouse closer, to Bonita Canyon, where all of the Stafford children attended school.37
37Barnes, Arizona Place Names, p. 61; Murray, personal communication. The name Dos Cabezos changed to the currently used Dos Cabezas in 1948 (Arizona Republican, November 6, 1948).
The permanent settlement of Neil and Emma Erickson in the summer of 1888 gave a new dimension to pioneer life in Bonita Canyon. The Ericksons claimed the next homestead to the west in 1886 and moved into a three-room house only a quarter-mile walk from the Staffords' cabin in 1888. The Ericksons brought with them a baby girl, Lillian, and during the first half of the 1890s they had two more children at Bonita Canyon, providing playmates for the Stafford youngsters. Erickson, a Swedish immigrant carpenter, had been a U.S. Army cavalry trooper stationed at Fort Craig, New Mexico Territory, when he met Emma in 1883. After his discharge they married and filed for the Bonita Canyon homestead, which Neil visited sporadically to work on the land and existing dwelling, the one reportedly built by Newton and later used by Captain Charles L. Cooper and his family as a dwelling during the "Buffalo Soldier" days. The couple and their daughter Lillian, born at Fort Bowie on February 9, 1888, moved to Bonita Canyon permanently in the summer of 1888.
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| Figure 7.—In wash with "old man Stafford and kids" (noted by Neil Erickson), circa 1900. (WACC 86-16-0255) |
That Christmas the Ericksons brought a new life to the little valley. Emma Erickson later wrote:
None of the neighbors at that time had seen a Xmas tree. I decorated a nice Xmas tree for the Stafford family . . . [they] thought it was wonderful. And I had appropriate gifts for all the family and I invited as many of the neighbors as our little house would hold to come and celebrate Xmas with us.38
38Autobiographical letter reminiscence by Emma Erickson, pp. 60-61, January 10, 1946, Chiricahua National Monument.
After that Emma had yearly Christmas parties, which got so large that they eventually had to be held at the El Dorado schoolhouse. She distributed gifts to families all over the area. Emma also reportedly taught the neighbor women to preserve fruits and vegetables.39
39Leavengood, "Faraway Ranch History," p. 32.
Pauline Stafford's letters to her sister Clara in Utah provided a vivid look into the home life in the cabin during the 1880s and 1890s. The family was poor, having a double burden of many children and limited opportunities for income. For some time Pauline had her sister Clara buy shoes in Utah for the family for two dollars a pair; in one letter she asked her sister to buy an extra pair for "little Thomas, as the ones he is wearing are looking rather shabby and will not last long"; she asked Clara to loan the two dollars as a favor because "Mr. Stafford" would only let her send "2 dollars, all the money we could spare at present."40
40Pauline Stafford to Clara Madsen, March 12, 1894, Stafford Papers.
Nevertheless the children received some presents, as Pauline wrote in thanks to Clara, adding a slice of home life in Bonita Canyon in 1894:
The Children were very aggreable Supprised to get the Valentines and Handkercheifs you sent them they were just simply delighted Even the baby was Pleased / She has not been very well for several days taken Cold in her eyes they were so Painful yesterday that she could scarcely see out of them Swelled almost Shut but to day they were very much better / Clara is a great Papas Baby She sleeps in Papas arms all night and crys if I want to take her. She speaks a good many words and she says them very Plain She calls Thomas Boy all the time this morning when Pansy and May started to school she went to the door and called, Bye Children. I told her Aunt Clara was going to send her a Pair of Shoes and then she looked down at her shoes and laughed. . . . I want to put Thomas in pants the 30 day of May that is his birthday he will be 4 years old then . . . .
In an earlier letter, dated September 5, 1892, Pauline writes of some dissatisfaction in the rough life at the homestead:
Mr. Stafford has been thinking of selling out and going back to North Carolina his old home where he was born he has a place their that was left to him and his brother by his father. If he could have sold outlast Spring he would have gone to Old Mexico but I am glad that he did not for the United States is good enough for me. It has been a very dry Summer here and thier is a great scarcity of grass and water for the cattel on the plains and valleys.41
41Pauline Stafford to Clara Madsen, February 21 [?], 1894 and September 5, 1892, Stafford Papers.
Nevertheless, Stafford and his family stayed on at Bonita Canyon for another 25 years.
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Last Updated: 25-Aug-2008