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3. The Place Facing Colonialism
- University of Nebraska Press
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Arizona is a poor place to live—anyone that has ever been here can testify and everyone seems to be looking forward to a time when they will leave. Tis as out of the way and as far from a railroad and civilization a person can get in the United States. —henry porter, surgeon, U.S. Army The melancholy howl of the coyote, aforetime heard in the echoing darkness, and rattle of stage coach . . . are sounds now banished by the chime of church bells, whistle of locomotives and rumble of Pullman coaches over the greatest railroads on the continent. —alice blackwood baldwin, officer’s wife Reaching Clifton, an Arizona mining town, after a hard day’s march, Lt. John Bigelow pondered whether he should go without supper when his only choice to get one was to eat in what to him was “a typical mining town amusement hall.” The establishment, Bigelow described, was filled with Mexicans, Americans, Irish, Germans, and others gathered principally around the bar, playing billiards, engaged in heated conversations, or enjoying the square and round dances with themselves or in the company of lewd women. “I took in the animated scene,” he wrote anxiously and “questioned to myself The Place Facing Colonialism 65 the propriety of my being where I was.” Contemplating a quick exit, Bigelow was shortly introduced to “a couple of well-dressed gentlemen ,” of which one proved to be the governor of the territory. That eased his nervousness, the restaurant having customers from the respectable white middle class Bigelow saw himself representing . “I had no further concern as to the propriety of my situation,” he concluded, being now able to enjoy his evening in the company of respectable men.1 A short distance away, Anton Mazzanovich, an Austrian-born enlisted man, entered the Southern Pacific Railroad whistle stop and cattle shipping center Willcox, Arizona. Much like Clifton, Willcox was filled with gambling joints, saloons, and dance halls that were regularly packed with Chinese, white cowboys, Mexicans, Indians , and soldiers. Mazzanovich enjoyed the atmosphere and freely indulged himself in the activities the town offered. “Here was the real thing,” he wrote. Although many Southwest settlements looked suspicious to officers, enlisted men found in them gambling and “tarantula juice,” enjoyed free from the restraints of middle-class control so pervasive inside the army villages.2 The experiences and attitudes of Bigelow and Mazzanovich —alongside the statements made by Henry Porter, who wrote in 1873, and Alice Baldwin, who described Arizona in the mid-1880s—reveal much about the complex and changing dynamics between white army people and the Southwest. Most army posts in the region were concentrated in the Apache heartlands, the area bordered roughly by Prescott and the Mogollon Rim in the north, the junction of Gila and Salt Rivers in the west, and the Rio Grande in the east. Army personnel visited the settlements of this area, met its multicultural mix of peoples, socialized with some of them and fought others, and traversed crisscross its varied landscapes. Much like they had done during their journeys to the Southwest, officers, wives, and soldiers again categorized the world around them. They assessed the social makeup and natural geography of this Apache heartland with the needs of the colonizers in mind and against their norms [18.219.236.62] Project MUSE (2024-04-23 11:56 GMT) 66 The Place Facing Colonialism and standards of what a proper society and place ideally looked like. In army minds was also the burning question of white futures: was the area suitable and welcoming for white civilization and incorporation to the nation? All white army people never built exactly the same relationships or discourses, and the boundaries of exclusion were seldom fixed, but proved flexible and fluid. When ranking peoples , the question of racial mixing took a major role in army views of Hispanic peoples, but with Anglos ethnicity was largely irrelevant and much depended on behavior, morals, and character. Army discourses of the place ranged from those where south-central Arizona and New Mexico were described as backward, perilous, and exotic to visions of a potentially prosperous area. While officers and enlisted soldiers differed in their social connection to the colony , at heart white army people shared a strong belief in civilization and progress. The way many army writings represented the Apache heartlands as decadent, dangerous, and backward and many of its peoples as immoral and inferior before civilized forces had the opportunity to...