By Al Bates

Anyone who has studied Arizona Territorial history will recognize the names of Jack Swilling and Joseph R. Walker and will remember something of their contributions to those early days. But what most people do not know is the early connection between them.

Jack Swilling's best-known contribution to Territorial Arizona was his formation of a company that brought irrigation to the Salt River Valley of Arizona in 1867 and led to the founding of modern metropolitan Phoenix. Walker, on the other hand, is remembered for leading an exploratory party of gold seekers that opened the Central Arizona highlands and the Prescott Tri-City area to Euro-American civilization in 1863. 

What is not generally known is why it was that the Walker party came to arrive at a destination near the headwaters of an uncharted river known only to some Indian tribes and by one member of the party: John W. (Jack) Swilling. 

The Walker party was a combination of two groups that left California at different times and from different starting points in search of gold and adventure. There were seven men in the Miller party (John Miller and his sons, Sam and Jake, and four others) and nine in the Walker party (including two Walker nephews, John and Joseph R. Walker Jr.) when they joined together at Grapevine Springs, California in May of 1861. 

Their route took them across northern Arizona and into Colorado. Some 18 unsuccessful months later they turned south and west with the intent of exploring Arizona's Verde River. 

There was suspicion that some of the party might be looking for ways to aid the Confederate cause, thus they were required by General Carleton to sign a loyalty oath to the Union on their arrival at Santa Fe in late November 1862. 

Members came and went: 27 men were in the group that signed the loyalty oath; just 18 of them were among the 25 listed as "Original Prospectors" when they ended their journey less than a year later. 

Daniel Ellis Conner, who years later provided a detailed account of the expedition in the book, "Joseph Reddeford [sic] Walker and the Arizona Adventure", joined the party as they traveled from Colorado into New Mexico in the fall of 1862. Jack Swilling joined up several months later. 

According to Sam Miller, the youngest member of the party, "In September 1862 we started with 36 men [from Colorado] into Arizona and in May 1863 we arrived on the [headwaters of the] Hassayampa River." It wasn't quite that simple. Much happened during those eight months, including the capture and death of the infamous Apache Chief Mangus Coloradas. 

By January 1863, the Walker party reached the ruins of Fort McClane near the Pinos Altos mining region in southwest New Mexico. Their path from Santa Fe first followed the Rio Grande to Fort Craig. From there, their route can best be described as an elongated fishhook that wound up at the abandoned Fort McClane, after being followed and harassed by warriors they believed to be part of Mangus' band. 

The Indian problem going westward towards Arizona would undoubtedly get worse because Apaches controlled the route from Mesilla to Tucson and chances of attack would increase. Thus (according to Conner) it was at Fort McClane that Walker conceived a plan to capture the old warrior and use him as a hostage to ensure protection from attack; and it was there that Jack Swilling makes his first appearance in Conner's account. 

Swilling had been prospecting and working for stage companies in the Gadsden Purchase area since 1857, and in January, 1860, he led a militia group into unexplored territory north of the Gila River in pursuit of Tonto Apaches, who had been raiding stock from miners and the stage line. 

"The result of this expedition has been the discovery of a stream nearly as large as the San Pedro, an abundance of fine timber, and a country for grazing and agricultural purposes, unsurpassed by any this side of the Missouri. Some of the men state that this new region has the finest indications of gold of any they have ever seen." (Weekly Arizonian, January 26, 1860) 

The river that Swilling and his band discovered we now know as the Hassayampa, and the area they described so glowingly is the Prescott Basin. The time was not ripe for a follow-up and Swilling was quickly drawn to new gold diggings at Pinos Altos near the headwaters of the Gila, and subsequently into the Civil War. 

Swilling became an officer in the Confederate States Army as second in command of a unit known as the Arizona Guards, a group formed primarily for the defense of Mexican and Anglo settlers from Apache attack. Following the collapse of the Confederate incursion from Texas into New Mexico and Arizona, Jack went to work for the United States Army as a part-time express rider and scout. 

By late 1862, General James H. Carleton, the Union Army's Arizona and New Mexico military commander, had embarked on a harsh campaign against the Apaches in New Mexico and Mangus Coloradas was a prime target. 

Carleton's subordinate, Colonel (soon to be General) James R. West, held Chief Mangus as primarily responsible for the many Apache depredations during the Civil War period, while the Army had no strong presence in Arizona or southwest New Mexico. He called Mangus "doubtless the worst Indian in our boundaries, and one who has been the cause of more murders and of more torturing and of burning at the stake in this country than all others together." 

Meanwhile, Mangus, who had been wounded seriously during the Battle of Apache Pass, was making sounds that, at age 70, he wanted to live out his days in peace. West, for one, did not believe him. 

Hearing that Mangus had returned to the Pinos Altos area and that Swilling was mining in that vicinity (long before the Walker party arrival), Colonel West wrote, "Jack Swilling is at the mines and is available for service." 

Swilling's arrival at Fort McClane coincided with the arrival of Captain E. D, Shirland and 20 Army troopers, and there he encountered the Walker Party for the first time. Specifics of the plan to capture Mangus were then worked out, including the involvement of civilians from the Walker party to conceal the Army presence. 

Jack was the logical leader because of previous acquaintance with Mangus at Pinos Altos and his experience leading small mounted groups. An early morning ruse was used to bring Mangus away from his followers and he was captured without a shot being fired. 

By the time Swilling's group returned with their captive to the Fort McClane ruins, General West and the rest of his force had arrived. At that point, the Army took over custody of the huge Indian chief, and it was while under their control that Mangus was killed "attempting to escape," on the night of January 17-18, 1863. 

In the period immediately following Mangus' death, most of the Walker party and some of the soldiers made a five-week expedition as far west as the Verde River. It seems odd today that a group of soldiers would go gold hunting while in the midst of both the national Civil War and a local Indian war, but it made sense then, given the need for gold by the Federal Government. Thus, General Carleton allowed his volunteer troops to combine soldiering with prospecting. 

Following that unsuccessful exploration, the Walker party spent most of a month camped near the newly established Fort West, and did not leave until after the close of Swilling's time of Army employment at the fort. That one-month "time out" probably was taken because Swilling had convinced Walker that he could lead them to gold in the unexplored Central Arizona Highlands. 

Conner wrote that during the "time out" he complained to Captain Walker that he wanted "above all things to leave that place." Walker's response was, "some other foolish hair-brained adventure would spring into crazy brains in due time and offer employment to those who liked it." Not all of the party liked what was proposed, and several men stayed behind either at Fort West or elsewhere along the way to the new diggings. 

When the Walker party finally left the Fort West vicinity and headed into Arizona in early April 1863, Swilling was showing the way. They were heading into an area that only he knew, the unexplored area he had entered with his Indian-fighting militia just over three years before, and where he and other experienced miners in the group had encountered "the finest indications of gold of any they have ever seen." 

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(po0874p)
Reuse only by permission.
Captain Jack Swilling and Apache Indian boy, c. 1880. Swilling led the famed Walker party into the unknown territory of central Arizona in search of gold. 


Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(Conner list, Walker party) Reuse only by permission.
A list of Walker party members, written by Daniel Ellis Conner