A debt of gratitude for the dedication of Earl Zarbin, Reba Grandrud, Kay Beckman and Isabella Knight who helped make this reproduction a reality. As with the fabled Phoenix, this document has risen from the ashes.

To the best of our ability this was reproduced exactly as written and printed in 1978. Exceptions are so noted.

Version 081606

INTRODUCTION

Each year thousands of people come to the Salt River Valley, some to visit and some to live. They see a thriving, growing community. But like many of us who have spent most, or all, of our lives here, they don't know much about the Valley's origins or how it developed.

The men and women who built the Valley were like us. They were trying to improve their own condition. In doing that, they contributed to the well-being of one another. Jack Swilling was one of them.

Swilling organized the first modern irrigating canal company a little more than a century ago. Water was then, and is today, the essential element around which everything in the Valley is built. Yet, many important decisions about water remain to be made today and will need to be made in the future. Knowing something about how we got where we are today may contribute to making the right decisions tomorrow.

Earl Zarbin joined the staff of The Arizona Republic in 1958 after working as a reporter for the Arizona Daily Star and the Kansas City Star-Times. As a free-lance writer and reporter, he was for many years the Phoenix correspondent for LIFE magazine and Fairchild Publications. Some of his essays on limited government have appeared in The FREEMAN magazine. He was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in history in 1954 from the University of Arizona. His interest in the water history of the Salt River Valley and his extensive research into the subject led to the series of articles in this booklet.

Maps by Kearney Egerton, The Arizona Republic

Cover photo: Jack Swilling and the captive Apache, Gavilan who lived with the Swilling

family, circa 1875. Photo courtesy Arizona State Library and Archives.

Inside photos: courtesy Arizona Historical Foundation Charles Trumbull Hayden University Library, Tempe. Arizona

Reproduced by Salt River Project with permission of Phoenix Newspapers, Inc., The Arizona Republic, and The Phoenix Gazette. These articles appeared in The Arizona Republic between August 13 and August 31. 1978

Recreated with permission of Earl Zarbin

Edited by: Neal Du Shane - Version 081506

Distributed free of charge, to historians of John William “Jack” Swilling

THE SWILLING LEGACY

It was August 1878, and in a cell in the depressing confines of a Yuma (County) jail, Jack Swilling was near death.

His health and strength had been failing for more than a year. He was in pain from old wounds, which included a bullet still in his body from a gunshot 24 years before.

Swilling knew he was dying. His thoughts turned to the Almighty, who would sit in judgment of the crime of which he was accused and who he prayed would see his wife and children through the difficulties ahead.

His wife, Trinidad Swilling married her in Tucson in 1864 when she was 17. She bore his children and endured, as did his good friends, his bouts of morphine and alcohol induced insanity.

Swilling, 48, reflected on the good deeds he had done and wondered if this, imprisonment for a robbery he didn't commit, was his reward.

He said he would give his life if it meant freedom for George Monroe and Andrew Kirby, who'd been charged with being Swilling's companions in the April 1878 holdup of a California-bound stagecoach west of Wickenburg.

Swilling wondered what there was in the robbery charges against him for his accusers-reward money or an opportunity to cheat his family "out of the old ranch?"'

In his despair, Swilling wrote of these things shortly before his death, which occurred at 6:30 p.m., August 12, 1878.

Readers of the Arizona Miner in Prescott, where Swilling first was jailed in connection with the robbery, learned of his death the next day.

But settlers in the Salt River Valley, depending on the weekly Salt River Herald for news, didn't read about it until August 17.

The Herald furnished a one-sentence report:

"Yuma, Aug. 13 - Jack Swilling died here last night in jail."

Nothing more. No comment. No attempt to review, even briefly, the life of the Arizona pioneer so important to the history of Phoenix and the Salt River Valley.

Herald publisher Charles E. McClintock was 21 years old and had been in Arizona a short time. He may not have appreciated Swilling's role in the rebirth of farming in the Valley. Or maybe he had been told by Swilling's detractors that Swilling was a scoundrel, was guilty of robbery and other crimes, and didn't merit more notice.

Whatever the reason, McClintock's news judgment was wrong in dismissing Swilling's death with a single sentence.

Although the setting for Swilling's death was unfortunate, he was known throughout the territory and for many years had been one of its most enterprising citizens.

He's remembered today for organizing the company that started the first modern irrigation canal in the Salt River Valley.

Before that, he was a teamster, prospector, miner, mill manager and owner, Indian fighter, Confederate soldier and deserter to the Union side, guide, farmer, mail rider and contractor.

When drunk and using morphine to ease the pain of old wounds, Swilling was insulting, quarrelsome and sometimes violent. Sober, he was generous, hospitable, and a friend to all.

He was ambitious and willing to take risks, both with his personal safety and with his property. Besides the original Swilling Irrigating and Canal Company, he may have been associated with six other canal ventures.

He served as justice of the peace and as postmaster of the Phoenix Settlement. His ranch became the assembly point for visitors and others who came to the Valley.

After leaving the Valley in 1873, he prospected and opened a number of gold mines in the Black Canyon country north of Phoenix. He hauled lumber for the Tip Top Mine in the Bradshaw Mountains and helped in the organization of the town of Gillett. He also operated a ranch beside the Agua Fria River.

Not everyone liked Swilling. If they didn't like his politics or the way he did business, he gave them a couple of other reasons to take offense. First was his sometimes drunken and brawling behavior. Second was his desertion from the Confederate Army. Many of the Southerners who settled here might overlook the first, but they wouldn't forgive the second.

Some myths have grown up about Swilling. One was that the agricultural potential of the Valley wasn't recognized until he happened along. Another was that in 1866 and 1867 he worked as a wagon driver in the Valley for John Smith, who had a contract to supply hay to Camp McDowell on the Verde River.

Swilling's early years in Arizona

Jack Swilling, the father of irrigated agriculture in the Salt River Valley, was born April I, 1830, in South Carolina.

His father, George W., owned slaves and raised cotton on a 220-acre plantation. Swilling's mother, Margaret, was said to have been a well-educated Southern belle.

"Thus," wrote historian Geoffrey Mawn in a paper about Swilling in the Hayden Library, Tempe, "it seems probable that Jack received a good basic education at home and general training in the useful profession of farming."

Part of Swilling's youth was spent in Georgia where, when he was 17, he enlisted for military duty in the war between Mexico and the United States. He served as a private and musician.

An item in the Arizona Daily Miner of Aug. 17, 1878, after his death, stated, "Swilling participated in seven hotly contested battles in Mexico, during the Mexican war, and received from Gen. Scott a medal for his bravery."

Swilling was discharged in July 1848, in Mobile, Ala. When he returned to Georgia, he and a brother, Berry, enlisted in the Georgia cavalry.

Little is known of Swilling's movements between then and 1857. One unverified story is that he went to Missouri, married, and fathered a daughter.

In a letter he wrote just before his death in a Yuma jail in 1878, he said that in 1854 he "was struck on the head with a heavy revolver and my skull was broken, and was also shot in the left side, and to the present time carry that bullet in my body.

"No one knows what I have suffered from these wounds,"

The dying man wrote. "At times they render me almost crazy. Doctors prescribed, years ago, morphine, which seemed to give relief, but the use of which, together with strong drink, has at times-as I have been informed by my noble wife and good friends-made me mad, and during these spells, I have been cruel to her, at all other times I have been a kind husband."

In 1857, Swilling was employed as a teamster with an ox train, apparently joining it in Arkansas and accompanying it to Fort Belknap, Texas. The train arrived in Mesilla, New Mexico Territory (which included Arizona) in June 1858, but it isn't known whether he was with it.

About that time, Col. Jacob Snively, who played a role in the Texas revolution against Mexico, discovered placer gold along the Gila River approximately 24 miles east of Yuma.

A mining camp, Gila City, sprang up. Among the gold seekers attracted to the placers was Swilling. The richest strike he made was the friendship he developed with Snively. It ended when Snively was killed by Indians in 1871.

In the winter of 1859-60, the Overland Mail Co. aided in the organizing of the Gila Rangers to pursue and punish Yavapai Apaches who had been conducting raids against the stage company. Swilling was elected captain of the 25 member unit.

Swilling's "ranging company" was assisted by Maricopa Indians, who lived along the Gila River.

In addition to a couple of fights with the Apaches along the Hassayampa River, north of the Gila River, the rangers noted mineral signs. Fear of the Indians apparently prevented immediate prospecting of the country.

In the spring of 1860, Swilling was at Pinos Altos, New Mexico Territory, where Snively and a couple of other men discovered gold.

Swilling organized a mining company and operated a gambling house. He reportedly killed a man named Printer at a dance hall, but the reason is unknown.

With the outbreak of the Civil War and the removal of

In the early 1860s, the Apache Indians controlled most of the areas south of Tucson, east of the San Pedro River and north of the Salt and Gila rivers, except in the vicinity of the Pima Villages. Arizona was part of New Mexico Territory until 1863.

Union troops, the Pinos Altos miners organized a military company, the Arizona Guard, to fight Indians. Swilling was elected first lieutenant and was given the same rank when the company was impressed into the Confederate Army in 1861.

Swilling accompanied Capt. Sherod Hunter's company into Arizona in February 1862. The Confederates raised their flag in Tucson on Feb. 27, then sent scouting parties north to the Gila River, the route to California.

Hunter's troops captured a party of Union scouts commanded by Capt. William McCleave. Another captive was Ammi M. White, agent to the Pima and Maricopa Indians.

Bancroft's History of Arizona and New Mexico said that Swilling took part in the only known skirmish between Union and Rebel troops near "El Picacho, in southern Pinal County, on the 15th day of April, 1862."

Later historians said that when the battle was fought Swilling was escorting White and McCleave east to New Mexico, an account confirmed by McCleave.

Blue, Gray - and Gold

It isn't surprising that Jack Swilling deserted the Confederate Army.

The miners at Pinos Altos, New Mexico Territory, organized a military unit-the Arizona Guard-to fight the Indians. Swilling was lieutenant.

But when Southern troops arrived, the unit was pressured into joining the rebel army.

When the Union's California Column, commanded by Col. James H. Carleton, advanced into Arizona, the Confederate forces that had occupied Tucson beat a hasty retreat eastward to the Rio Grande.

Swilling apparently had no desire to accompany the rebels into Texas-and uncertainty. Moreover, he did not sympathize with the South.

He had said as much to Capt. William McCleave, who had been captured in Arizona by Confederate scouts and who had been escorted by Swilling to Mesilla, aside the Rio Grande, in April 1862.

Thus, when the opportunity arose, Swilling departed and soon was riding as a messenger for Carleton's men.

By early 1863, Swilling was the guide for the Walker Party, a group of Southern sympathizers who had gone to New Mexico from California under the leadership of Capt. Joseph R. Walker. The group reportedly had intended to link up with the rebels, but were dissuaded by the Union's presence.

The Walker Party prospected for gold in New Mexico, then, with Swilling as its guide, decided to try its luck in Arizona.

Before Swilling left for Arizona, Carleton authorized an expedition to capture Mangas Coloradas, chief of the Mimbres Apaches and a famed war chief.

Swilling played a leading role in the Indian's capture, but was not involved in his killing a few hours later by Northern soldiers.

He brought the Walker Party into Arizona via Tucson and the Pima and Maricopa Indian villages on the Gila River. The group followed the Gila west to the Hassayampa River, then turned north. It prospected in areas where Swilling and the Gila Rangers had seen mineral signs during the winter of 1859-60.

On May 10, 1863, the prospectors created the Pioneer Mining District. They eventually moved farther north to Lynx Creek, where they reportedly found rich placers near the future site of Prescott.

Historian James Barney wrote that Swilling and a few companions were on their way to the La Paz placers, near the Colorado River, when they discovered Rich Hill, near Weaver Creek. This may have been in August 1863.

Barney said $106,000 in gold was mined in three months, but Thomas Edwin Farish, a state historian, wrote that "several millions of dollars were taken out, and Jack

Swilling accumulated quite a fortune."

The late Bert Fireman, longtime columnist for The Phoenix Gazette, and executive director of the Arizona Historical Foundation at Arizona State University, said Swilling sent Carleton a couple of gold nuggets from Rich Hill.

Fireman said he believed the gold helped convince Carleton that the capital of the newly organized Territory of Arizona-created in February 1863-should be located to the north instead of at Tucson, where Southern sympathizers once held sway.

Carleton persuaded the territory's first officials to locate in the northern mining area.

"So I contend that it was really Swilling's influence that led the capital to be in northern Arizona," Fireman said.

Some historians believe Swilling was with King S. Woolsey, a rancher, in January 1864 and took part in a massacre of Indians at Bloody Tanks, near present-day Miami in Gila County.

Another writer maintained that Swilling was prospecting at the time with a group of Americans and Mexicans on the Agua Fria River.

In March 1864, Swilling was at Fort Whipple, 17 miles north of where Prescott soon would be started. He was among 52 citizens who signed a letter, dated March 15, asking Richard C. McCormick, secretary of the territory, to run as delegate to Congress.

Others who signed the letter were Woolsey and Robert W. Groom, who had a cabin on the Hassayampa River.

At Groom's cabin a visitor to the Territory from New Mexico met Swilling and later sent a letter that was published April 5, 1864, in the Rio Abajo Press in Albuquerque. The unidentified visitor wrote:

"I was fortunate enough to meet with Jack Swilling, whose name is associated with early discoveries here.

"Jack is a tall, athletic, bluff, straightforward, frank man, over six feet high, light complected, with a clear, bright eye, and determination written on every lineament on his face.

"He is a quiet man, but interesting in conversation, and is, I judge, a man of warm and generous impulses."

Mills, mines, and farm

Jack Swilling married Trinidad Escalante, 17, in Tucson on April 13, 1864.

It isn't known what brought Swilling to Tucson, though various writers have said he was sent there by Indian fighter and rancher King S. Woolsey to buy flour and supplies for another foray against the Apaches.

One such report is found in an entry in the Hayden Pioneer Biographical File at Arizona State University. It said:

"After the fight at the Wheatfield’s, near present-day Miami, Woolsey sent Swilling with a detachment of men to Tucson to buy flour for a second expedition."

The difficulty with that statement is that there wasn't a "fight at the Wheatfield’s."

Woolsey's report of the expedition, which "left the Agua Fria ranch about 6 p.m., June 1," was printed in the Arizona Miner in September 1864 and was reprinted by Thomas Edwin Farish in his History of Arizona.

Woolsey's report indicated that it was around the end of June when the party came upon "a beautiful valley covered with corn and wheat fields." The next day "the whole command was . . . engaged in cutting and threshing wheat, and our horses and mules were feeding."

As for a fight, Woolsey said in his report, "Notwithstanding the failure to find and kill Indians, I think the expedition has been of great benefit."

Not too long after the 93 men had left the Agua Fria ranch, Woolsey sent "a pack train to the Pimo Villages" because their supplies were low. The pack train included 36 animals and 23 men led by Henry Jaycox.

Swilling apparently wasn't a member of the expedition, because the Arizona Miner of Aug. 10, 1864, reported:

"Thanks - We have received a fine lot of new potatoes from Jack Swilling, Esq., of the Lower Hassayampa."

Woolsey's party was in the field 87 days. It's doubtful that Swilling was with it and cultivating potatoes many miles away at the same time.

There's a possibility that Woolsey asked Swilling to go to Tucson sometime after the fight with the Apaches at Bloody Tanks in January 1864, for something motivated Swilling to go there.

Whatever the reason, besides getting married, Swilling was said to have joined Charles Trumbull Hayden and two other men in buying Grant's Flour Mill, which was located on the Santa Cruz River about two miles south of Tucson. Swilling had come to the rescue of Hayden's wagon train in an 1861 encounter with Indians.

Swilling sold his interest in the flour mill for $1,000 to William F. Scott, a transaction recorded in the Pima County Book of Records of May 17, 1864, to Dec. 26, 1865.

In September 1864 Swilling was said to have discovered a very large and rich gold ledge about 10 miles from People's ranch.

"People's" was undoubtedly Abraham H. Peeples, one of the discoverers of the Rich Hill placers along with Swilling and frontiersman Pauline Weaver.

In October, Swilling unsuccessfully tried to organize a large company to explore the Apache country to "learn the mineral wealth" and "to have it settled whether the white or the Indians are to rule here, and to feel, if possible, that the property he has acquired is secure," the Arizona Miner reported.

Swilling, in February 1866, was reported managing the Curtain-Chase Mill near Wickenburg, crushing gold-bearing quartz rock from the Vulture Mine, discovered by Henry Wickenburg in the fall of 1863.

Swilling bought the mill, apparently intending to move it to the Prescott area, but he shortly became involved in promoting another expedition, this one to explore for minerals between the White and Chiricahua mountains in eastern and southeastern Arizona.

An account of this expedition by John B. Montgomery, one of the pioneer settlers in the Salt River Valley, put 45 men in the party, though another report said there were 80 to 100.

The expedition was over by October 1866, because Swilling by then was delivering mail from the Pima villages to Prescott. He carried the mail until April or May 1867.

The Miner of Aug. 10, 1867, mentioned that "Swilling and Wickenburg are honest farmers, and have fine crops." Swilling had a ranch adjoining Wickenburg's beside the Hassayampa River. Presumably, the first of Swilling's children was born there.

It was in September, 1867, according to tradition, that Swilling visited the Salt River Valley hay camp of John Smith and decided that the evidence of former habitation meant the Valley could be successfully irrigated.

In October, after returning to Wickenburg, the Miner carried an account of Swilling killing a man with a double-barreled shotgun on Sept. 30, but there apparently was no effort to prosecute him because the man had threatened to kill Swilling.

Another October item said that "Swilling, Wickenburg and (Frederick L.) Brill have . . . raised excellent crops of corn, sugar cane and vegetables."

Reports of the formation of the Swilling Irrigating and Canal Co. were carried in the Miner in November.

The Salt River Valley in the 1860's . . . .

Just when Jack Swilling