Brad Rollings and other contemporary Tucsonans who suffer from a revisionist bent in Arizona history would do well to try to understand the context and the mindset that all the players had in that far off time of brutal tragedy, in the year of 1871.

It was before the railroad came to Tucson. Every place was far away. The Army had been decimated and withdrawn from Arizona by the Civil War. The country was run by a federal government that did not consider this armpit of secessionist sympathy one of their favorite places. Apaches were raising hell in the opinion of ranchers farmers and settlers; and whites were threatening the Apaches' very existence in the opinion of Apaches.

The party that did the deed at Camp Grant was mostly Papagos, who Bonnie Henry had the integrity to call "Papagos" which they are in our language.

The Papagos, who are counted among the most peaceful of Indian tribes, hated the Apaches with fully justified passion. The Apaches for a couple of centuries had treated Papagos like so many bunny rabbits, raiding them incessantly. The hundred plus Papago warriors in 1871 took bloody revenge on Apaches of all genders and sizes in the manner of Indians and Judeo-Christians, (Exodus 32:27-29) i.e. "kill them all." The whites and Mexicans armed with the Adjutant General's rifles, stationed themselves at the edge of the camp where they picked off the escapees.

Sam Hughes, the Adjutant General, had given the militia rifles to the 6 Anglos and 48 Mexicans. (They were called "Mexicans" in those days, even if they had been born here for five generations.) Does handing over the rifles justify renaming a school 125 years after the fact?

One has to know something about Apaches in order to form a judgement on this case. Apaches are relative late comers to Arizona, arriving in strength in the 18th century, well after the Spaniards who explored the area in the 16th and set up colonies in the 17th. Apaches wandered in from the north and east where they had established temporary doman in the area of Nebraska and Oklahoma during their long trek down from Alberta, which long trek was shared by their cousin nomadic tribe, the Navajo.

Their arrival in New Mexico and Arizona was marked by chaos among the sedentary local tribes, because the Apaches were warriors. They were neither builders, nor herders, nor farmers, they were simply RAIDERS. They raided, they took slave captives to do their work, they slaughtered as necessary, and they stole what they needed. It was the Apache way, and their antisocial habits were largely shared by the Navajo. Like nomads the world over (Huns and Mongols for example), their "territory" was wherever they were camped.

At first they left the Mexicans alone, preying on the easier local Indians instead, but soon their greed exceded their intelligence and they started hitting on Mexican rancherias and villages. The Mexicans were armed with Arquebus, cannon, and musket, which proved vastly superior to Apache armament. (Check out the poorly made Apache bows, arrows, and spears in the AZ State Museum.) So the Mexicans prevailed in the contest. Things had gotten so bad in the 18th century that Mexicans hunted Apaches like varmints, shooting them on sight.

When Americans arrived in the mid-nineteenth century, the Apaches breathed a sigh of relief and welcomed them with open arms as natural allies against the hated Mexicans. Americans reciprocated of course, needing all the help they could get at the time, and they drove the Mexicans out of the northern half of Mexico during the Mexican War of 1848. Six states, the entire "American Southwest", was annexed to the United States as a result of this war that had taken place only 23 years before 1871.

It wasn't long before culture shock set in. The Apaches figured they were safe to continue "the Apache Way", raiding their sedentary bretheren. But the Americans didn't show much tolerance. The erstwhile allies were soon at one anothers' throats in a kill or be killed contest for who's going to dominate life and death in Arizona.

The Americans had the contest as good as won, when suddenly the Civil War (1861-1865) pulled nearly all the military support out of the West. The dastardly Rebs even sent emissaries to some Western tribes promising autonomy on whatever land they could steal from now-helpless Yankee farmers and ranchers. The eighteen sixties and early seventies are bloody with Indian battles that the Indians often won.

The Camp Grant "massacre" takes place at the end of this era of helplessness. Our Army was far too small to do much good against aggressive Indians. U.S.Grant was blowing steam when he condemned the vigilante action in Arizona. His administration was embarrassed that they had no military force to project out here, when it was clearly necessary.

Grant's pronouncement of "murder" was blatantly hypocritical, because Sherman and Sheridan who had demonstrated "total war" in Georgia and Virginia in 1864 had been under Grant's command. Otto von Bismarck (the father of modern warfare) later credited those American generals with showing him how to do it.

And so Mr. Rollings, the Camp Grant Massacre is properly called a tragedy, but it is not a "war crime", and Sam Hughes, the Arizona Adjutant General, acted within his authority, in good faith, according to his protective function.