Arizona, The Youngest State
McClintock, 1913, page 484
One of the bloodiest features of Arizona's history was the
Pleasant Valley War or Tonto Basin War. It began with the
driving southward from near Flagstaff of several bands of
sheep, reputed to have been the property of the Daggs brothers.
Theretofore, the Rim of the Mogollons had been considered the
"dead line" south of which no sheep might come. There were
allegations at the time that the Tewksbury brothers had been
employed to take care of any trouble that might materialize
over the running of sheep out of bounds. At first there
seemed to be little active opposition, but early in 1885 a
Mexican sheepherder was killed. The opposition centered
around the Graham family to which gathered a considerable
number of cowboys and cattlemen.
Tom Graham later told how at first he tried to use a form of
moral persuasion. Not wishing to kill anyone ,there would be
a wait till the sheepherder began the preparation of his
evening meal and then, from the darkness Graham would drop a
bullet through the frying pan or coffee pot. This intimation
out of the night usually was effective in inducing the herder
to forget his hunger and to move his band very early the next
Several old residents of the Tonto Basin section decided that
twenty-nine men had been killed in the war and that twenty two
graves of men of the graham faction could be found in the
vicinity of the old Stinson ranch. Only four of the Tewksburys
died, but the most awful feature of all was the manner of the
death of two of them. John Tewksbury and one Jacobs had brought
in bands of sheep "on shares." Both were ambushed near the
former's home and killed. Their bodies, in sight of the house
were left to be devoured by hogs, while members of the Tewksbury
family were kept away by a shower of bullets from a hillside
on which the Grahams watched. Finally Deputy Sheriff John
Meadows entered the valley, to bury what was left, defiant of
the wrath of the Grahams. The Tewksburys were half bloods,
their mother a California Indian and it is probably their
actions thereafter were based upon the Indian code of revenge.
Few were left of the Blevins family of the Graham faction.
The men shot at Holbrook by Sheriff Owens were active
Grahamites. The elder Blevins was killed in the hills
near the Houdon ranch and a skeleton found in after years
is assumed to have been his. Al Rose was killed at the
Houdon ranch by a party of a dozen Tewksburys as he was
leaving the house in the early morning. The favorite
mode of assassination was from ambush on the side of a
trail. One of the last episodes was the hanging of
three of the Graham faction, Scott, Stott and Wilson,
on the Rim of the Mogollons by a large party of Tewksburys.
The three had been charged, possibly correctly, with
wounding a Tewksbury partisan named Laufer and summary
retribution was administered by hanging them on pine
trees, hauled up by hand, with ropes brought for the
purpose. John Graham and Charles Blevins were shot
from their horses in the fall of 1886 by a posse from
Prescott, headed by Sheriff William Mulvenon, as the
riders were approaching under the impression that the
officers had departed from a mountain store in which
the visitors still were in hiding. Both were mortally
wounded. Mulvenon made several trips into the Basin.
There was a bloody battle at the Newton ranch, which had
been burned and abandoned. Two cowboys, John Paine and
Hamilton Blevins, had been killed at the Newton ranch,
while William Graham had been ambushed and killed on the
Payson Trail. George Newton, formerly a Globe jeweler,
was drowned in Salt River, while on his way to his ranch
and it was thought at the time he had been shot from his
horse, though this is not now believed. His body never
was found, though his widow offered a reward of $10,000
for its recovery. Sheriff O'Neill of Yavapai County led
a posse into the valley but most of the damage had then
Resident in the vicinity was J.W. Ellison, one of the
leading citizens of the basin. He states that at first
the Grahams had the sympathy of the settlers, all of whom
owned cattle and appreciated the danger to their range from
the incursion of locust-like wandering sheep bands. But the
fighting soon became too warm for any save those immediately
interested, for the factions hunted each other as wild beasts
might have been hunted. Mr. Ellison frankly states that he
saw as little of the trouble as he could and is pleased that
he managed to avoid being drawn into the controversy.
In the end the Tewksburys were victorious, with a death list
of only four. One of the fleeing grahams was Charlie Duchet,
a fighter from the plains. He had celebrity from an affray in
which he and an enemy were provided with Bowie knives and were
locked together in a dark room. It was Duchet who emerged but
permanently crippled by awful slashes on his hands and arms.
The end of the war was the killing of Tom Graham. His clan
about all gone, in 1892 he had fled from Tonto Basin and had
established himself and his young wife on a farm southwest of
Tempe. He had harvested his first crop of grain and was
hauling a load of barley to town. When about opposite the
Double Butte school house he was shot from ambush and his
body fell backward upon the grain. The deep was witnessed
by two young women, named Gregg and Cummings, who positively
identified Ed Tewksbury as one of the murderers. A.J.
Steneel, a Winslow cowboy, later declared that he had met
Tewksbury, riding hard on the Reno Road on his way back to
Pleasant Valley, 120 miles, whence a strong alibi later was
produced. Tewksbury and one of his henchmen, John Rhodes,
were arrested and charged with the crime. Rhodes was
discharged at a preliminary hearing before a Phoenix
Justice of the Peace, after a dramatic attempt on his
life by Graham's widow. She tried to draw from her
reticule her husband's heavy revolver, but the hammer
of the weapon caught, giving time for her disarmament.
Tewksbury was found guilty of murder in the first degree,
although well defended. His attorneys, however, found
that his plea of "not guilty" had not been entered on
the record of the District Court and so the verdict was
set aside. There was a second trial, at Tucson, on
change of venue at an expense probably of $20,000 to
Maricopa County, resulting in a hung jury. Over 100
witnesses had been called. Then the case was dismissed.
Tewksbury died in Globe in 1904 where for a while, he had
served as a peace officer.
Soon after the Graham murder, a lad named Yost was
assassinated while traveling through Reno Pass, on the
Tonto Basin road. There was general belief at the time
that the murder had been committed by the Apache Kid,
but it was considered significant that Yost had been
connected with the Graham faction.
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