LOUIS HOHSTADT
Recorded by Helen M. Smith, Field Reporter

I came into Yuma, Arizona, from San Luis Obispo, California, on my tenth birthday in 1875. We had been exactly a year on the way, driving our cattle. The adventures of that cattle drive would fill a book! We did not stay in Yuma, but went up the Gila, and on over toward what was afterward Tombstone. Crossing that valley, we went down into Sonora, Mexico, where we established a ranch. My father soon became interested in mining there. Indians and rustlers were quite troublesome and for that reason Father brought Mother and the younger children back to Arizona. They settled in Tombstone as it began to grow.

I made my home both in Mexico with Father and in Tombstone with Mother. During school I spent as much time as possible in Tombstone acquiring an education. During vacation I was in Mexico. When not in school I broke oxen or hauled ore from our Mexico mine to Charleston. At seventeen years of age I was driving eighteen head of oxen at the head of an ore wagon. I remember that there was a toll road between the site of Bisbee and Charleston, and that I had to pay fifty cents every time I drove my team of eighteen oxen over it.

It was quite a difficult feat to turn this long string of oxen, hitched two and two. I thought myself quite an expert, however, because I had had long practice in handling of these beasts. My brothers and I broke wild oxen when we were quite young. Father made us cottonwood yokes for them, and we hauled wood to the ranch when mere children. My hands are still covered with scars from shoeing oxen. At the Mexico ranch we had to rope and throw the animals before shoeing; but in other localities we had a contrivance which made this work much easier. The oxen were put into a wide belly band which was raised by a windlass, lifting the animal into the air. Four posts, one at each corner of a small square, held the feet out by …… of ropes. It was then easy to grasp the foot for shoeing. Each foot required two shoes, one on each division of the hoot.

At Tombstone our next door neighbor was the Swain family. There was a little girl, who is now the wife of Mr. Paul of the Paul Lime Plant near Douglas. She was not strong as a child, and Mother often expressed doubts of her growing up. She looked little like the strong, healthy woman she is today. We sold milk in Tombstone, and I have peddled milk to many of the Tombstone notables, the Earps, Clantons, and others. We became quite well acquainted with the Clantons, who often visited us at our Mexico ranch.

There were a few years about this time that were very eventful. I think I can say that more happened in that time of an exciting nature than most of the rest of my life put together. I was back and forth between Mexico and Tombstone, with time spent in Charleston also. In Charleston, I worked for Jack Swartz, who ran a livery stable there. Mr. Swartz had a Mexican wife who had a daughter, Teresa, by a former marriage. I spent most of one school term in Charleston at around fifteen years of age. One of the little girls who attended school there was the daughter of W.C. Greene, one of the owners of the Cananea Copper Company.

There is a tale told that Mr. Swartz buried his wife in the morning, shot a man at noon, and married again that night. There is no truth to this story except that his wife did die. However, she was not buried in the morning. Jack Swartz was an old friend of my father’s and I know practically everything that happened to them. Teresa was several years older than I; but she used to depend on me to take her places where she was not allowed to go alone. Once I took her to Howells, who had a ranch over behind Charleston. Mrs. Howell insisted that we both remain for diner and meet Mrs. Slaughter, her daughter. I thought Mrs. Slaughter very charming.

I was standing in the door of Swartz’ livery stable when the news came of Lilly Clanton’s death in the Clanton-Earp fight at Tombstone, The messenger wanted word taken to Finn Clanton immediately. He tried to get Swartz to go.

“Louie, you know all the Clanton boys—you go,” Swartz said.

At the Clanton ranch, Johnnie Barnes stood in the door with a Winchester in his hand. He was quite suspicious, but finally told me that Finn had left for Tombstone some time ago.

Billy Claibourne, sometimes called Billy the Kid, shot and killed Jim Hickey while I was there. At the time, Billy was driving a hack for Hayes who had built a smelter near what is now Hereford for a little mine he owned and operated in Bisbee. Hayes was a lawyer who was about Tombstone for several years. Billy had descended from the hack in the street at Charleston when Hickey called out some insulting words. Billy paid little attention to him at the time, but when Hickey followed him into a saloon and kept badgering him, Billy finally shot him through the middle of the forehead. “Doc” Peterson was called in; knelt beside the body and raised his hair to look at the small round hole in the forehead. “He’s dead,” he said. Billy came clear of the killing.
Charleston was a small town, but at all times very lively. You can’t see it now for the brush, but it was there while it lasted.

I knew a Mexican there who got in a fight with another Mexican. My acquaintance stuck a knife into his antagonist, and fled to Fort Huachuca. Jim Burnett, justice of the peace of Charleston, afterward found this Mexican at the fort. The man he had knifed was not seriously hurt, but Burnett convinced the other that he had been killed, and made the Mexican bring him five hundred cords of wood as a price for being allowed to go free. Burnett looked after himself pretty well; but he got what was coming to him when W.C. Greene killed him at the door of a livery stable in Tombstone; for the alleged murder of his daughter. Greene accused Burnett of blowing up a dam across the river and causing his little girl’s drowning. “Vengeance is mine,” said Greene as he shot.

Pete Spence was a would-be bad man who had a run-in with Swartz on one occasion. Spence had gone to California, leaving his horse at the stable. On his return he complained of the bill. After some words Swartz ordered him out of the stable in no uncertain terms, retaining the horse until the bill was paid in full. Spence went, muttering to himself.
Spence was afterward implicated in the murder of Morgan Earp at Tombstone, and fled into Mexico to escape the vengeance of the Earps.

In Mexico, events were moving just as rapidly for our family. Indian fights were frequent, since the Apaches were quite troublesome. In ’82, John Hohstadt, my brother was killed by Apaches. He had gone to a neighboring ranch in company with a Mexican hand of ours and a man named Foley. They had heard that Indians were harassing the occupants of this ranch, and they had gone to see if they could aid. But they never reached the place, having been waylaid and killed by Indians. I was in Tombstone with Mother and the smaller children at the time. But neither me or the others ever forgot it.

The next year the Indians raided our place. There was no one at the house. My older brother was working the mine with most of the hands; the cook had gone to the creek for water; Father had taken his pet mare, a fine animal, to the creek also, for water. The Indians sacked the house, taking all the provisions and whatever else took their eye. Father and the cook hoped to remain undiscovered. The cook did so, but they finally saw Father, who leaped upon the mare and rode for the mine at a rate which soon out-distanced the savages. They did not attack the mine. I was not present at this time either, and my heart burned because I was missing the excitement, although there was plenty of that sort of thing in Arizona where I was.

But there was one time I had my chance. I was at the Mexico place in ’86. We kept a Mexican on watch on a hill right behind the house. At this time he rushed in to say that Indians were sneaking up the canyon. Our stable was built with its back to the creek and there was a brush fence all around the stable yard, which ran right along the bank of the creek at the back. We made for the stable to fight the savages. As they rounded the corner of the fence, we fired. One Indian fell and the others fled pell-mell. There was a track of blood in the direction of their flight so we knew we had touched another. This other died of his wounds at San Bernardino ranch afterward, as we subsequently learned. There were eighteen in the band, two of which we killed. The others gave themselves up at San Bernardino. There were four of us at the ranch.

Our Mexican hand took the dead Indian which we had killed at the time, and hung him to a tree, doubtless in revenge for the killing of my brother.

I was at the Mexico ranch when Lieutenant Gatewood came to Mexico for the purpose of inducing Geronimo to surrender to General Miles. Father sent me to guide them for a short distance.

Geronimo had a sort of an espionage system by which he learned many things about which he could otherwise have known nothing. However, when many of his men surrendered and were sent to Florida, Geronimo somehow did not learn of it. That may have been because he was busy fighting and fleeing from the troops who were constantly on his track at the time. There was a Captain Crawford who was killed while attacking the Apache camp; and there were several other attacks about that time.
The troops were becoming worn out with their constant pursuit of the Indians; for that reason; and because it seemed impossible to conquer them by force, General Miles sent Lieutenant Gatewood with a message to Geronimo, insisting on their surrender, and promising that they should be provided with a home somewhere in the east. Lieutenant Gatewood was personally acquainted with Geronimo and nearly every member of his band, and was highly respected by them. No better man could have been chosen for the purpose.

General Miles ordered Gatewood to take an escort of at least twenty-five soldiers with him, but Gatewood was unable to secure the escort, so that there were only five or six in his party when at last he succeeded in locating Geronimo’s camp. This camp was near the town of Fronteras, and Gatewood located it by following two squaws who had come to Fronteras to buy supplies and liquor.

Geronimo refused to speak to anyone by Gatewood alone. Gatewood bravely entered the camp several miles away from the rest of his party, in compliance with the demand of the Indians. There Gatewood delivered General Miles’ message. At first Geronimo refused to consider the proposition, but on receipt of the news that most of his tribe had already gone east, he consented to meet General Miles at Skeleton Canyon in Arizona and talk the matter over with him. Geronimo and his men then set out for the rendezvous with Gatewood and his party.

After some misadventure and difficulty, Gatewood succeeded in bringing Geronimo to the meeting place, but as they had to wait several days for Miles, the Indians became quite suspicious. It required all Gatewood’s tact and knowledge of Indian nature to hold them there. But with the arrival of Miles the affair was soon brought to a satisfactory settlement, and Geronimo and his men set out for Fort Bowie as captives of the troops. From there they were sent to Florida. I know enough of the events of this surrender to know that Lieutenant Gatewood deserves all the credit, although little has been given to him for this accomplishment.

On one of my trips to Charleston with a wagon of ore, I found the empty cash box thrown from the stage after a robbery. I picked it up and went on my way, but I soon met two officers from Charleston looking for it.

I was in Tombstone when Frank Leslie shot Billy Claibourne. Billy had come back purposely to kill Leslie, whom Billy accused of the murder of John Ringo. But Billy was nothing like the gunman Leslie, and so he lost his life.

I was also in Tombstone when John Slaughter, then sheriff, killed a man whom he believed to be Chacon, the outlaw. Slaughter sent for me to identify the man, but I had to assure him that it was not Chacon, as he was to discover later.

All these experiences are mixed in my mind so that I find it difficult to give them in their sequence. For a few years I was back and forth from Mexico, Tombstone, and Charleston, and wherever I went there was plenty going on. There was humor, too. I remember the Tombstone fire station, nothing but a cart with a long piece of hose wrapped around it. I remember a ride I took to Tombstone once at the insistence of Jack Swartz. Two fat Mexican women were going to Tombstone, and Swartz insisted that I take them in a hack. I had to sit in the middle of the seat, and was nearly squeezed to death by the time of our arrival at our destination.

In later years, in company with a Frenchman newly arrived from his own country, I caught a glimpse of Burt Alvord in Mexico.
“There,” I remarked to my companion, “is a man who robbed the United State mail not long ago, in Arizona.”
The Frenchman was quite shocked when I convinced him that this was a true statement, saying that in his country such things would not be allowed.