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Published: January 31st 2017
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AMBUSH SITE
The present road has been built up from where it was in 1889. The boulder that stopped the wagons would have been in the wash at the base of the gully in the center of the picture. Corporal Mays returned fire from the pocket towards the right of the picture. He was outflanked in that position, wounded and driven back from there. BLOODY RUN A fellow named Newman Haines Clanton was one of the first white settlers on the Gila River in Arizona Territory. He had come with his family from Port Hueneme in California, where he had attempted to settle in a model planned community being built there. Newman had an unruly son named Isaac that caused so much trouble in Port Hueneme that the Clantons were evicted from their property and forced to leave. Newman liked the idea of a planned farming community and attempted to build one of his own to be called Clantonville, situated in a desolate area along the Gila River, in what would eventually become Graham County. To attract settlers to the area Newman placed advertisements in several newspapers. The opportunity soon came to the attention of Brigham Young who responded by sending a merry band of Mormons down from Utah to settle the area. By the time the Mormons arrived Clantonville had been abandoned to the dust and mosquitoes due to an outbreak of malaria. The Mormons decided to call their new home Eden and they put in some gardens. Clanton moved his outfit down on to the San Pedro River a short distance south
SHELTER
Sergeant Brown had been gut shot and shot through both arms but was able to help another wounded man to shelter in dry wash. From there he was able to return a spirited fire, but the other wounded man needed to reload the rifle. of Charleston and started up a cattle operation. To stock his range Isaac, or Ike as he became known, began stealing cattle in Mexico. It was a lucrative business. There was a great need for cattle to feed the Army, the Indian Reservations, and the hungry miners and mill hands. Ike and his friends made it cheap for everyone. Nobody much cared that the cattle they were eating had been stolen. Not even Wyatt Earp.
The Mormons up on the Gila were led by their bishop, Gilbert Webb, who was a particular favorite of Brigham Young and may have been one of his so-called avenging angels. The Mormons were capable farmers and stockmen and ought to have prospered better than they did. Most of what they produced was sold to the army, but the army was famously slow to pay its debts. The result was that the Mormons quickly became a cash poor community resentful of the army. They were particularly resentful of the black soldiers with whom they were surrounded at Fort Thomas and at Fort Grant. Mormons held religious convictions that placed black people, as descendants of Ham, on a social level somewhere below that of pig
RETREAT
Major Wham scampered off into the brush with the civilian teamster and an unarmed soldier when the firing began and he would occasionally offer advice or criticism to the men fighting. As Corporal Mays brought in more wounded men to that position of safety they all could watch robbers break into the strongbox. shit. The Mormons hated the black soldiers worse than they hated the army, and worse even than they hated the government that had begun prosecuting them for polygamy. They were in desperate need of money and did not understand how God could allow black soldiers to have money for whoring, and gambling and drinking while good Mormon farmers were destitute. Gilbert Webb saw a simple solution; rob the army payroll when it came through. He rounded up some henchmen that owed him money and planned a robbery. Proceeds from the robbery could pay their debts to Webb. The ambush site he selected was a place called Bloody Run, so named because it was a place that the Apache enjoyed attacking army freight caravans from. It was situated at the military road crossing near the head of Cottonwood Wash, and was a dandy place for an ambush.
Major John Washington Wham (pronounced like bomb) was a dandy of another sort. He survived the entire Civil War without a scratch through 16 engagements against the surly confederate. He was a staff lackey with General Grant. After the war President Grant assigned him to the Nez Perce Agency at Lapwai, ID and
MONUMENT SIGN
The sign is located on the east side of Klondyke Road a quarter mile or so north of the ambush site. it is across from the ranch access road. then to the Red Cloud Agency in Nebraska. Just before leaving office Grant assigned him to the Paymaster Corps which was always in need of martinets who could not actually lead troops in a fight. On the morning on May 11, 1889 Major Wham left Fort Grant on a routine pay run up to Fort Thomas. He also carried funds to meet the payroll at San Carlos and Fort Apache. With him in two wagons pulled lustily along by six sturdy mules rode an escort of ten soldiers from the all black 24
th Regiment of Infantry. Two more soldiers from the all black 10 Cavalry went along to attend to the mules. One of them drove a wagon. The lead wagon carried the major and his strongbox and was driven by a civilian teamster. Accompanying the happy group in an absolutely unofficial capacity was a woman named Frankie Campbell. Frankie was a black woman perhaps married to, or not, a Fort Grant bugler who was presently being held in the guardhouse on charges of murdering another soldier who probably owed him money. Frankie’s husband or perhaps not her husband after all, was a lively musician down in the hog ranch, sometimes a pimp and sporting man, and a sort of money broker who several soldiers at Fort Thomas owed money to. Frankie was on her way with the payroll to collect that money from those soldiers at Fort Thomas before they could spend it foolishly. When the payroll reached Bloody Run they were surprised to see that a boulder half the size of a blimp hangar was obstructing the roadway. The soldiers got out to see about pushing the boulder aside. They were unarmed and in a tight group when the Mormons opened fire from several fortified firing positions on a ledge. The soldiers fought bravely but they were outnumbered and outgunned and poorly led. When the smoke cleared 90 minutes later the soldiers had been driven back into the wash away from the wagons. Eight of them had been wounded by gunfire. Major Wham, of course, escaped injury by leading his men from the rear. He was dismayed that two of the men, Sergeant Benjamin Brown and Corporal Isiah Mays were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for their steadfast and gallant conduct during that fight. Frankie Campbell hunkered down under some brush and witnessed the whole thing. She would be an important prosecution witness during later court proceedings. The Mormons busted open the strongbox and made off with booty in the amount of $28, 345.10.
The next day US Marshall William Kidder leapt into action and organized a massive manhunt for the culprits. The federal magistrate, however, was a political adversary and did all he could think of to hamstring the law enforcement effort. A new administration swept into power all across the land and that further complicated the prosecution. Eventually seven of the miscreants out of perhaps 18 who participated in the robbery and shootings, were indicted and came to trial. There was so much political bickering, and so much racial and religious hatred that all seven were acquitted. The Wham Robbery trial became a national embarrassment. Even though Frankie Campbell and the Buffalo Soldiers identified their attackers in court, the all-white jury refused to believe testimony given by black witnesses. In the end the lawyers made off with most of the stolen loot.
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