Vanished Arizona: Recollections of My Army Life

By Martha Summerhayes

“Written by the wife of an Army officer stationed in Arizona from 1874 to 1878, Vanished Arizona provides a clear picture of life on the frontier and the hardships faced by both the men and the women.”— Shelly Dudley, True West Published On: 2012-01-10

"Vanished Arizona is a classic and highly recommended to all those readers—even those keeping drug stores—who want to learn more about the distaff side of Army life during the late nineteenth century."—Roger D. Cunningham, Journal of America's Military Past

A lady, the desert, the army and the Apaches

This is the account of the life of a young army wife who followed her husband-a second lieutenant of infantry—after the turbulent years of the American Civil War, in which he had served, to what was considered the wildest and most remote of frontier outposts in the American south west. Life within the Army in Arizona came as something of a cultural shock to this gentle lady of New England who knew nothing of housekeeping-indeed she did not even know how to pack. This absorbing book takes us together with its author on a rites of passage experience as she lived, travelled, camped and came to have affection for the untamed land. Her husband was constantly engaged in campaigns against the Apache and Martha Summerhayes experience of them in peace and war also adds flavour to this unforgettable life of a woman in frontier day.—Print ed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Release date: Oct 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839746314

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© Barakaldo Books 2020, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

VANISHED ARIZONA

RECOLLECTIONS OF MY ARMY LIFE

BY

MARTHA SUMMERHAYES

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 5

Publishers’ Preface 6

List of Illustrations 7

Historical Introduction 8

DEDICATION 11

Preface 12

Chapter I—GERMANY AND THE ARMY 13

Chapter 2—I JOINED THE ARMY 16

Chapter 3—ARMY HOUSE-KEEPING 18

Chapter 4—DOWN THE PACIFIC COAST 24

Chapter 5—THE SLUE 27

Chapter 6—UP THE RIO COLORADO 30

Chapter 7—THE MOHAVE DESERT 34

Chapter 8—LEARNING HOW TO SOLDIER 40

Chapter 9—ACROSS THE MOGOLLONS 44

Chapter 10—A PERILOUS ADVENTURE 48

Chapter 11—CAMP APACHE 49

Chapter 12—LIFE AMONGST THE APACHES 53

Chapter 13—A NEW RECRUIT 60

Chapter 14—A MEMORABLE JOURNEY 63

Chapter 15—FORDING THE LITTLE COLORADO 67

Chapter 16—STONEMAN’S LAKE 70

Chapter 17—THE COLORADO DESERT 76

Chapter 18—EHRENBERG ON THE COLORADO 78

Chapter 19—SUMMER AT EHRENBERG 82

Chapter 20—MY DELIVERER 92

Chapter 21—WINTER IN EHRENBERG 95

Chapter 22—RETURN TO THE STATES 99

Chapter 23—BACK TO ARIZONA 103

Chapter 24—UP THE VALLEY OF THE GILA 107

Chapter 25—OLD CAMP MCDOWELL 110

Chapter 26—A SUDDEN ORDER 117

Chapter 27—THE EIGHTH FOOT LEAVES ARIZONA 121

Chapter 28—CALIFORNIA AND NEVADA 124

Chapter 29—CHANGING STATION 131

Chapter 30—FORT NIOBRARA 135

Chapter 31—SANTA FÉ 143

Chapter 32—TEXAS 151

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 158

Publishers’ Preface

THERE is a part of the story of the Winning of the West that has not yet been touched upon in any of the volumes of The Lakeside Classics. We refer to the part played by the army in its efforts to protect the intruding whites and keep on leash the resentful Indians. The story of the treatment of the Indians by our Federal Government is a sordid one, but for which the army was not responsible. As true soldiers, they obeyed orders and the blame belongs to apathy at Washington, resulting in the breaking of treaties, the appointment of dishonest and incapable Indian agents for political reasons, and the failure to man the territories with an honest judiciary and an effective and impartial police system. Had our government treated the Indians honestly and protected the red man as well as the white man against thieves and murderers, as has the Mounted Police of Western Canada, the proverb The only good Indian is a dead Indian would not have become the philosophy of the early frontiersmen and settlers.

In spite of the fact that this volume is a story of army life in the early 70s, it is not a story of campaigns, camp fires and battles, but that of a bride who forsook the culture and conveniences of a New England home to share the trials and privations of a young lieutenant who was assigned to a post in Arizona. At that time Arizona was virtually unknown and was a land inaccessible, of burning heat, and inhabited by a few frontiersmen, Indians and rattlesnakes. The story beautifully exemplifies that tradition of army wives who hold themselves always ready to follow their husbands wherever duty calls and the fulfillment of which has molded army women into such a unique fellowship.

Again we wish our increasing body of friends and patrons A Merry Christmas and a New Year of Happiness and Prosperity.

THE PUBLISHERS

List of Illustrations

Portrait of Martha Summerhayes

Frontispiece Facing Title Page

White Mountain Apache Indian Scouts, 1875

Barney’s Store at Ehrenberg, 1875

Our Quarters at Ehrenberg, 1875

Our Quarters at Old Camp McDowell, Arizona, 1877

Fort Yuma, Arizona, and Railroad Bridge on the Great Colorado, 1877

Officers’ Quarters, Fort Niobrara, Nebraska, 1887

Ох-team Fording the Niobrara River. Hauling Wood to the Fort

Ох-teams Hauling Wood to Fort Niobrara, Nebraska, 1888

Old Palace of the Spanish Viceroys, Santa Fé

Our Morning Rides at Santa Fé, New Mexico, 1889

John W. Summerhayes, Major and Quartermaster, U.S.A.

Historical Introduction

AN ancient and much-worn jest relates that while the Pilgrim Fathers had to endure the hardships of the wilderness, the Mothers, in addition to these trials, had to endure the Fathers. Such has been the lot of woman the world over. Wherever her man has gone, she has followed, enduring, in addition to his hardships the many trials attending her own peculiar status. To the dominant male have commonly been reserved the pleasures of leadership and high adventure, along with the not insignificant one of relating his exploits for the delectation of posterity. The woman’s rôle, frequently no less important, has gone unnoted and unsung. Emerson Hough, able historian of the frontier, affirms, in a paragraph which we have formerly quoted,{1} that the chief figure of the American West is not the long-haired, fringed-legginged man riding a raw-boned pony, but the gaunt and sad-faced woman sitting on the front seat of the wagon, following her lord where he might lead, her face hidden in the same ragged sunbonnet which had crossed the Appalachians and the Missouri long before....There was the great romance of all America—the woman in the sunbonnet; and not, after all, the hero with the rifle across his saddle.

So it has been with the army. Throughout all our history women have accompanied their men to war, whether as the wives of common soldiers and officers, or in the capacity of nurses, laundresses, and camp-followers generally. Many accompanied General Arthur St. Clair upon his disastrous invasion of the Ohio wilderness in 1791; and when his army was destroyed, the victorious savages drove stakes through their bodies and crammed their mouths with earth, saying, You wanted our land; now get your fill of it. To lonely Fort Dearborn at the mouth of Chicago River in the summer of 1803 came the wife of Captain John Whistler with her numerous brood of children, one of them destined to become a world-famous engineer, and in turn the father of a world-renowned artist. The magic of the latter’s talented brush has made his mother’s face more widely known, perhaps, than that of any other woman of modern times. Of her mother-in-law, Mrs. John Whistler, few living people have ever heard, and none have seen her likeness; yet what a story this cultivated woman might have recorded of her madcap elopement from the Old World to the New, and of her many diligent years as army wife and mother at the lonely wilderness posts which made possible the birth of such cities as Fort Wayne, Cincinnati, and Chicago!

On important occasions, however, women have recorded their stories, usually for the enjoyment of their immediate families, less frequently for that of the public at large.

During the thirty-odd years since the publication of the Lakeside Classic Series was begun, three narratives of pioneer women have been issued;{2} and the present Editor is proud of the fact that he has been privileged to edit them all. None of the three authors was an army wife, although one (Mrs. Kinzie) was much in contact with the army. Our present volume is the fourth narrative related by a woman, and the first by an army wife, to be included in the Lakeside Classics Series.

Martha Summerhayes, the author, was a cultivated New England girl, a descendant of famed Rev. Jonathan Edwards. She was born at Nantucket, Mass., October 21, 1846, and here she grew to womanhood. The character of her education is suggested by the fact, alluded to in the opening chapter of her narrative, that she spent two years in study in Germany. Following her return to Nantucket, she married Lieutenant Summerhayes, and as an army bride set out in the spring of 1874 for Wyoming Territory. It was a hometown marriage, for Lieutenant Summerhayes was also a native of Nantucket, where he was born in 1835. In early manhood he spent some time at sea in whaling ships, and a short period as a trapper on the Upper Mississippi. He served in the Civil War as an officer in a Massachusetts regiment, and following the war entered upon a forty-year career in the regular army.

After a short sojourn at Fort D. A. Russell, near Cheyenne, Mrs. Summerhayes went with her husband’s regiment to Arizona, which in the middle seventies was probably the most turbulent and least civilized area between the borders of Canada and Mexico. Here, during the years from 1874 to 1878 she underwent the experiences which supply most of the contents of her book, Vanished Arizona, although as a matter of chronological fact the relation covers also, more briefly, the succeeding twenty years. A decade later still, with old age upon her, she wrote, with the aid of some old letters, the narrative of her army years, which she had been in the habit of relating in the form of stories to her children. Upon retiring from active service, Colonel Summerhayes lived for a time in New Rochelle, then in Washington, and finally in Nantucket, where he died in March, 1911. Mrs. Summerhayes died in Schenectady, May 12, 1911.{3}

The ascent of Arizona from wilderness savagery to civilization and Statehood proved arduous and stormy. The region was visited and to some extent exploited by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century (the coming year marks the four-hundredth anniversary of Coronado’s exploration). They encountered, and before long became embroiled with, the Apache Indians, who through the centuries were to win a merited reputation as the craftiest and most implacable foes of the white man in the entire Southwest. Their early contacts with the Americans were friendly, but white misdeeds soon embittered them and from about 1860 onward hostilities were continuous. In 1871 General George H. Crook was sent to take command of the Department of Arizona; he offered the hostile bands the alternative of peace with justice, or extermination. Two years of steady campaigning accomplished his purpose. Those hostiles who had not been slain surrendered to Crook in the summer of 1873, and for the first time in 300 years the trails and mountains were free from marauding Apaches. The state of peace lasted for two years, when Crook was transferred to another station, and his successors proved unequal to the task of administering his policy of firmness combined with strict justice to his red wards.

A season of renewed discord followed, which kept the Territory in turmoil for another decade. It terminated only with the final surrender of Geronimo in the autumn of 1886. Much has been written and published about the period which covers Mrs. Summerhayes’ sojourn in Arizona. The point of view of the soldiers concerning it is perhaps best expressed in the notable narratives of Capt. John G. Bourke (On the Border with Crook) and Col. Britton Davis (The Truth About Geronimo). These narratives (and others), however, deal with military and public affairs, reflecting the thoughts and experiences of army officers. Mrs. Summerhayes records the observations and thoughts of a woman, who shared the daily life of such an officer. From her one may learn many things about the U.S. Army, and about the land that Vanished Arizona was, which no man would think of, or, thinking, would trouble to record.

Vanished Arizona was first published at Philadelphia in 1908. The author had but a modest expectation concerning the interest her narrative would arouse, and she was evidently both surprised and pleased by its reception. Accordingly in 1910 she prepared a new edition, somewhat revised and with a small amount of additional material, which was privately printed at Salem, Mass., in 1911. The present edition (the third) reproduces the first edition (of 1908). The present Editor is responsible for the footnotes, and for certain minor typographical and other changes which scholarly good sense have seemed to him to render advisable. The illustrations are likewise from the first edition of the book, but not all of those contained in it have been reproduced. The map, drawn to illustrate the narrative, is the handiwork of the Editor’s wife, Letitia M. Quaife.

M. M. QUAIFE

Detroit

October, 1939.

DEDICATION

TO MY SON

HARRY SUMMERHAYES

WHO SHARED THE VICISSITUDES OF MY

LIFE IN ARIZONA, THIS BOOK IS

AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED

Preface

I HAVE written this story of my army life at the urgent and ceaseless request of my children.

For whenever I allude to those early days, and tell to them the tales they have so often heard, they always say: "Now, mother, will you write these stories for us? Please, mother, do; we must never forget them."

Then, after an interval, Mother, have you written those stories of Arizona yet? until finally, with the aid of some old letters written from those very places (the letters having been preserved, with other papers of mine, by an uncle in New England long since dead), I have been able to give a fairly connected story.

I have not attempted to commemorate my husband’s brave career in the Civil War, as I was not married until some years after the close of that war, nor to describe the many Indian campaigns in which he took part, nor to write about the achievements of the old Eighth Infantry. I leave all that to the historian. I have given simply the impressions made upon the mind of a young New England woman who left her comfortable home in the early seventies, to follow a second lieutenant into the wildest encampments of the American army.

Hoping the story may possess some interest for the younger women of the army, and possibly for some of our old friends, both in the army and in civil life, I venture to send it forth.

Chapter I—GERMANY AND THE ARMY

THE stalwart men of the Prussian army, the Lancers, the Dragoons, the Hussars, the clank of their sabers on the pavements, their brilliant uniforms, all made an impression upon my romantic mind, and I listened eagerly, in the quiet evenings, to tales of Hanover under King George, to stories of battles lost, and the entry of the Prussians into the old Residenz-stadt; the flight of the King, and the sorrow and chagrin which prevailed.

For I was living in the family of General Weste, the former Stadt-commandant of Hanover, who had served fifty years in the army and had accompanied King George on his exit from the city. He was a gallant veteran, with the rank of General-Lieutenant, ausser Dienst. A charming and dignified man, accepting philosophically the fact that Hanover had become Prussian, but loyal in his heart to his King and to old Hanover;{4} pretending great wrath when, on the King’s birthday, he found yellow and white sand strewn before his door, but unable to conceal the joyful gleam in his eye when he spoke of it.

The General’s wife was the daughter of a burgomaster and had been brought up in a neighboring town. She was a dear, kind soul.

The house-keeping was simple, but stately and precise, as befitted the rank of this officer. The General was addressed by the servants as Excellenz and his wife as Frau Excellenz. A charming unmarried daughter lived at home, making, with myself, a family of four.

Life was spent quietly, and every evening, after our coffee (served in the living-room in winter, and in the garden in summer), Frau Generalin would amuse me with descriptions of life in her old home, and of how girls were brought up in her day; how industry was esteemed by her mother the greatest virtue, and idleness was punished as the most beguiling sin. She was never allowed, she said, to read, even on Sunday, without her knitting-work in her hands; and she would often sigh, and say to me, in German (for dear Frau Generalin spoke no other tongue), Ach, Martha, you American girls are so differently brought up; and I would say, "But, Frau Generalin, which way do you think is the better? She would then look puzzled, shrug her shoulders, and often say, Ach! times are different I suppose, but my ideas can never change."

She told me of her marriage with young Lieutenant Weste, of her children, and of the days before Hanover became Prussian. She described to me the brilliant Hanoverian Court, the endless festivities and balls, the stately elegance of the old city, and the cruel misfortunes of the King. And how, a few days after the King’s flight, the end of all things came to her; for she was politely informed one evening, by a big Prussian major, that she must seek other lodgings—he needed her quarters. At this point she always wept, and I sympathized.

Thus I came to know military life in Germany, and I fell in love with the army, with its brilliancy and its glitter, with its struggles and its romance, with its sharp contrasts, its deprivations, and its chivalry.

I came to know, as their guest, the best of old military society. They were very old-fashioned and precise, and Frau Generalin often told me that American girls were too ausgelassen in their manners. She often reproved me for seating myself upon the sofa (which was only for old people) and also for looking about too much when walking on the streets. Young girls must keep their eyes more cast down, looking up only occasionally. (I thought this dreadfully prim, as I was keen to see everything.) I was expected to stop and drop a little courtesy on meeting an older woman, and then to inquire after the health of each member of the family. It seemed to take a lot of time, but all the other girls did it, and there seemed to be no hurry about anything, ever, in that elegant old Residenz-stadt. Surely a contrast to our bustling American towns.

A sentiment seemed to underlie everything they did. The Emperor meant so much to them, and they adored the Empress. A personal feeling, an affection, such as I had never heard of in a republic, caused me to stop and wonder if an empire were not the best, after all. And one day, when the Emperor, passing through Hanover en route, drove down the Georgen-strasse in an open barouche and raised his hat as he glanced at the sidewalk where I happened to be standing, my heart seemed to stop beating, and I was overcome by a most wonderful feeling—a feeling that in a man would have meant chivalry and loyalty unto death.

In this beautiful old city, life could not be taken any other than leisurely. Theaters with early hours, the maid coming for me with a lantern at nine o’clock, the frequent Kaffee-klatsch, the delightful afternoon coffee at the Georgen-garten, the visits to the Zoological gardens, where we always took our fresh rolls along with our knitting-work in a basket, and then sat at a little table in the open, and were served with coffee, sweet cream, and butter, by a strapping Hessian peasant woman—all so simple, yet so elegant, so peaceful.

We heard the best music at the theater, which was managed with the same precision, and maintained by the Government with the same generosity, as in the days of King George. No one was allowed to enter after the overture had begun, and an absolute hush prevailed.

The orchestra consisted of sixty or more pieces, and the audience was critical. The parquet was filled with officers in the gayest uniforms: there were few ladies amongst them; the latter sat mostly in the boxes, of which there were several tiers, and as soon as the curtain fell, between the acts, the officers would rise, turn around, and level their glasses at the boxes. Sometimes they came and visited in the boxes.

As I had been brought up in a town half-Quaker, half-Puritan, the custom of going to the theater Sunday evenings was rather a questionable one in my mind. But I soon fell in with their ways, and