Stop 14. Sam Hughes House
Trivia Answer
Which U.S. president signed the Congressional bill that created the U.S. Territory of Arizona? Abraham Lincoln; 1863.
Sam & Atanacia Hughes: True Pioneers.
You should be standing on the southeast corner of Main Avenue & Washington Street at the north end of the Corbett property.
Across Washington Street on the northeast corner is the original home of Samuel Hughes.
At the beginning of this tour, I wrote that the early citizens of Tucson not only had to deal with problems we never even consider. In fact, they thought differently. The following is an example of what I meant.
Sam Hughes (1829 – 1917) was one of Tucson’s earliest Anglo pioneers. Hughes, born in Wales, came to the Southwest with a knack for real estate trading. He was known to be generous and civic minded.
Mr. Hughes served on the town council in the 1870s and Pima County School Board in the 1870s and 1880s.
Mr. Hughes insisted that Tucson children receive a good education, perhaps because he had almost no formal schooling. He also supported several churches of various denominations. When he straggled into Tucson in 1858, he was dying.
They called his disease “consumption”. We now know it as tuberculosis or TB. However, as so many thousands found out, our hot, dry air has curative powers. Mr. Hughes lived another 59 years, in which he did exceedingly well for himself, his family, and the community.
In Tucson, he opened a butcher shop and contracted to supply meat to stage stations, and later to the U.S. Army. One of his stores was at Camp Crittenden, near Sonoita. Eventually, he invested in mining, flour mills, cattle, hardware and newspapers, and pursued a special interest in real estate.
You may recall that Mr. Hughes built the Cosmopolitan Hotel at Main and Pennington and later sold it to Mrs. Orndorff.
Hughes was a staunch Union supporter. He left Tucson for California when Confederate troops briefly occupied the Old Pueblo in 1862. Soon, he returned with Union troops … lots of Union troops. The very presence of the 1800-strong California Column approaching Tucson forced the 120-some Confederates out of Tucson and back to the Rio Grande from whence they came.
Here you might enjoy our slideshow about the Battle of Picacho Peak where dedicated reenactors staged the Civil War skirmish that occurred some 50 miles north of Tucson. Great fun!
Thus, for a few months, Tucson was the capitol of the Western Confederate States. The Stars & Bars flew over El Presidio. (Almost no one knows that little historic gem.)
In 1862, at the age of 32, Sam Hughes was a financially successful bachelor. He wanted a lady to share his life. Just a few doors down on Main Avenue, in the home of his friend and business partner, Hiram Stevens, resided the little sister of Stevens’ wife, Petra. Her name was Atanacia Santa Cruz (1850 – 1934).
One thing led to another, and Mr. Hughes proposed marriage to Atanacia. They were married on May 27, 1862. Atanacia was not yet 12-years-of-age.
In their long marriage, she gave him 15 children, 10 of whom survived to adulthood. Hughes provided well for his young bride and family.
Atanacia was a skilled seamstress. A beautifully embroidered quilt she made is among items in the Arizona Historical Society’s collection.
Mr. Hughes was proud to cast his first vote for an American president after statehood in 1912 at age 84. He and Atanacia celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary the same year.
Mr. Hughes died in 1917, a decade before Tucson named a school in his honor. Later, they named a whole neighborhood for him.
Atanacia died in 1934 at the age of 84. When she was born, Tucson was a tiny Mexican village in the state of Sonora, Mexico. When she died, Tucson was a successful American Southwestern city of about 40,000 residents.
Read About The Most Notorious Mass Murder Trial In Tucson History or Skip To Stop 15
A Gathering At The Hughes Home
If you had been on this corner on the afternoon of April 28, 1871, you would have seen a mob in front of the Hughes home.
Here too were a couple of large freight wagons, loaned by merchant Louis Zeckendorf, being loaded with food, barrels of water, the most modern repeating rifles and plenty of ammunition … supplied to Sam Hughes by Governor Safford. They referred to themselves as the Tucson Safety Committee.
The Safety Committee consisted of 148 men: 94 Papago warriors, traditional enemies of the Apaches; 48 Mexicans, and 6 Americans.
Their purpose: to wipe out the Aravaipa Apaches who were camped at the confluence of the San Pedro River and Aravaipa Creek. At this time, these Apaches were under the protection of the U.S. Army at Camp Grant about 6 miles from the Indian village.
It was illegal for a white man to give or sell an Indian a firearm, so the Papago warriors would use their weapon of choice … war clubs.
This “Committee” was led by (a) Sidney DeLong, a prominent merchant; (b) Juan Elias, a rancher who had lost hundreds of cattle and 2 brothers in Apache raids; and (c) William Oury, who had fought with Sam Huston against Santa Ana after the Alamo fell. Later, Mr. Oury who had fought the Comanches as a Texas Ranger, became the publisher of Arizona’s first newspaper before becoming a successful Tucson businessman and politician.
While other Apache bands continued to raid, these Aravaipa Apaches had surrendered and settled down to farm in Aravaipa Canyon. They felt perfectly protected by the nearby soldiers and would sleep peacefully at night. The Safety Committee knew this.
The Tucsonan’s hatred of all Apaches was further inflamed by the fiery editorials of the Citizen’s editor, John Wasson. The solution to the Indian problem was, he wrote, the “… slaying of every Apache man, woman, and child.” Wasson, Tucson honored by naming the tallest peak in the Tucson Mountains for him. Wasson was, to the citizens of Tucson, what Joseph Goebbles was to Hitler, a master of hate-filled propaganda.
The Safety Committee’s plan was to leave Tucson under cover of darkness, travel the 60 miles to Aravaipa Canyon, and attack the Apaches at first light on April 30th.
Hiram Stevens, perhaps the wealthiest merchant in Tucson, and territorial delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives, did not go with the mob. Rather he sent armed men to where Camp Grant Road (now Oracle) crossed Canada del Oro to stop any messengers attempting to warn the Indians or the soldiers.
The Camp Grant Massacre
The plan was expertly executed. At first light on the morning of April 30, 1871, the Apaches were taken completely by surprise. Most of the Apache warriors were not in camp, but in the mountains hunting and gathering mescal.
The historical record is somewhat unclear, but between 125 and 144 Aravaipa Apaches died in the slaughter. All but 8 were women, children or old men. Most had been clubbed to death in their beds. The young Apache girls had been raped, then mutilated. All had been scalped. 26 young children were taken captive and sold into slavery in Tucson and Mexico.
None of the Safety Committee members were badly injured or killed. Their leaders were welcomed home and celebrated as conquering heroes. Sidney DeLong was rewarded by being elected the newly incorporated City of Tucson’s first mayor. A public school and an entire Tucson neighborhood were named in honor of Sam Hughes (albeit posthumously).
The President Is Outraged!
However, when President Grant heard about this attack, he was outraged and ordered Gov. Safford to bring the perpetrators to trial or he, the President, would put Arizona Territory under martial law. The president apparently did not know that Safford was an accomplice.
In October (6 months after the massacre) a grand jury indicted 100 of the “alleged” assailants and accomplices on 106 counts of murder.
Two months later the case went to trial. For 5 days, the defense attorneys offered the jury a laundry list of Apache depredations. The defense argued “justifiable homicide”. No Apaches were allowed to testify. The jury took 19 minutes to acquit all of the defendants.
Years later, Sidney DeLong, was the only defendant to publicly express remorse.
Decades later, in an interview in her home for the Arizona Historical Review, Atanasia Hughes told the reporter:
“We suffered no qualms … what we had done was right.”
“No, Mr. Hughes did not go to Camp Grant but he furnished the means to go; he approved of the plan and gave ammunition and the arms; yes, they were given out from this very room we are sitting in … well we finally got peace, but not till after the citizens took things into their own hands. I don’t think we gave much credit to the troops … But, ah! The citizens, they were different. They were always ready.”
In the 1930’s, Mrs. Hughes repeated the narrative she wanted to believe when she told the reporter “… we finally got peace.” Wrong. Tucson, and Southern Arizona finally got peace only when Geronimo and his 20-some renegades finally surrendered in September 1886; 15 long and bloody years after the Camp Grant Massacre.
Mixed Feelings About The Apaches
To the Mexicans and Americans, the Apaches were vermin to be shot on sight. Yet, in a strange way, the hostile Apaches were a major business opportunity.
Tucson merchants and freight haulers were dependent on the very lucrative government contracts to supply the soldiers with beef, fruits, vegetables, hay, and anything else they needed. Many Tucsonans also supplied beef and other goods to the reservation Indians at the expense of the U.S. Army. (Many Apaches, such as Geronimo, actually preferred mule meat over beef.)
On the one hand, if the Hostiles continued to elude the Army, they would continue raiding and killing Mexicans and Americans. Farming and ranching would continue to be extremely dangerous.
On the other hand, if the U.S. Army succeeded in peacefully concentrating all the Apaches on reservations, there would no longer be a need for the soldiers to be in the Territory. Nearly all business in Tucson would dry up.
To make matters worse for Tucsonans, if the reservation Apaches took up farming and ranching and became self-sufficient, as the Grant administration hoped, they could eventually be in competition with Mexican and American farmers and ranchers, including Tucson’s leading merchants.
Of course, no Mexican or American considered that they were a part of the Apache problem. Yet, the more settlers, miners, farmers, ranchers, and merchants came to Southern Arizona, the less access the Apaches had to fresh water and good places for hunting and gathering food.
Thus, Mexican and Anglo population growth forced the Apaches into ever more raiding just to survive. This issue would not finally be resolved until September 1886 when Geronimo surrendered and the last of the Apache resistance was broken.
For more about the Camp Grant Massacre CLICK HERE.
George Hand mentions Sam Hughes in his diary 4 years after this incident.
January 1, 1875 (New Year’s Day) “Cold but pleasant morning. I made some eggnog. Everywhere the boys are all drunk before breakfast. I went to the races with (Marshal) Davis. We rode out with Sam Hughes. I got very tight (drunk). Everyone was drunk all evening. I went home with Bedford and slept with the sister of Bernardo. Expenses today $10.00. Won on Grey Eagle $48.00 (about $1,200 today)”
Tucson Trivia Question
- What is the name of the Tucson attraction with the smallest exhibits?
Directions and Link to Stop 15: El Presidio del Tucson.
Head east on Washington Street for two blocks. Continue past the Art Museum’s parking lot on your right. Cross Meyer Avenue and continue past Old Town Artisans and La Cocina Restaurant & Bar. Go one more block to Washington Street & Court Avenue.
Turn right (south) on Court and go a half block to the entrance of El Presidio del Tucson. Enter and pay the cashier $5 per person.
Or Stop For Shopping, Food, & Drinks
Alternatively, on this short walk to El Presidio, you may want to wander into Old Town Artisans. Six unique shops. When I want a special gift for someone, I usually shop here first.
If you wander out the back of Old Town Artisans, you will discover the courtyard that is La Cocina Cantina. They have good pub grub and a full bar. Jo is the owner/manager. Say “Hi” to Jo for me. The La Cocina courtyard is very similar to what our Tucson pioneers had at Levin’s Beer Gardens at the west end of Pennington Street down by the river. Except at La Cocina the beer is always cold.
Alternatively, just two and a half blocks north on Court Street is El Charro Cafe, owned and operated by the Flores family since 1922. Excellent Mexican cuisine. Best margaritas. Carlotta Flores is the chief chef. Say “Hi” to Carlotta for me.
Click here to learn about Stop 15: El Presidio del Tucson.