By Arizona Historian Jim Turner and Pioneer Newsman George H. Smalley

Several years ago I had the good fortune to interview Mrs. Yndia Smalley Moore, born in Tucson in 1902, and former Director of the Arizona Historical Society. She told me many stories about her father, George H. Smalley, who was District Clerk in Globe from 1905 through 1912.

A typical prospector is shown here in "camp." Circa late 1800's about the same time period as George Smalley's article. Photo courtesy of Gila County Historical Museum

Lung problems forced Smalley to move to Arizona in 1896. Like many other authors exiled to the Southwest for their health, Smalley got a job as a reporter. He covered the mining beat for the Phoenix Republican, but wrote stories for St. Louis, Los Angeles, and San Francisco newspapers. Mark Twain and Bret Harte made Wild West stories popular, and Smalley kept up the tradition with down-to-earth stories of cowboys, prospectors, and even outlaws he met in his travels across Arizona and Mexico.

Interstate 17 from Phoenix to Flagstaff is full of interesting signs denoting our Old West prospecting past, with colorful names such as Bumblebee, Bloody Basin, and Big Bug Creek. Smalley’s holiday tale takes place in a silver mining camp about 20 miles southwest of Prescott in the Bradshaw Mountains. No need to change a word of it, this is how he wrote it more than a century ago, typed verbatim from yellowed newspaper columns pasted on faded construction paper at the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson.

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Santa Claus Arrived There Two Days Ahead of Time

By George H. Smalley

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Big Bug, Arizona, Dec. 23, 1898  –  Santa Claus arranged his dates so as to arrive at Big Bug Creek two days ahead of time. He did this purposely to accommodate the schoolteacher of the camp, Miss Clay Henshaw, a Phoenix young lady. Miss Henshaw had previously won the hearts of all the miners in the camp, and it is not strange that Santa Claus succumbed to her charms and slid down off the Bradshaws a couple of days early.

There was excitement the entire length of the creek as I rode into camp last night. Miners were bringing their families down the trails from their homes perched on the mountainside. The lanterns they carried threw gigantic shadows across the gulch and my horse was in a constant state of terror. It was with difficulty that I ever reached the camp at all. The miners were coming down from their homes to attend the Christmas festivities, and the gulch rang out joyous echoes as the young rushed toward the schoolhouse yelling their ovation to Santa Claus. On the road, a procession of miners dressed in their best togs moved toward the schoolhouse. Everywhere were figures moving in the dark and my bronco tried to recognize each shadow with a toss of his body that would be called bucking in some countries.

“Hurrah for Santa Claus!” yelled the kids, and each one tried to make as much noise as he could so that Santa Claus would have no trouble in locating Big Bug Creek. The little fellows ran up and down the narrow camp street, scaring the horses and making the dogs bark. The kids were determined that he should not escape, and the echoes of the gulches repeated the sounds and sent them over the hills and snow banks as if they, too, were lending their power to attract the white whiskered man and his fleet-footed four-in-hand reindeers.

The snow on the mountains, the whistling of the wind in the pines, and the cold made it seem like Christmas Eve. All that was needed was the presence of Santa Claus. As I rode into camp, the kids thought I was he. I am not surprised that my horse was mistaken for a reindeer, for he pranced excitedly as the band of boys approached.  At the one restaurant in the camp I was informed that I could not get supper because the cook and waiter were making preparations to attend the “doings” at the schoolhouse. I tried to bribe the cook, but she was true to her Santa Claus. The corral man kindly directed me to a store where I might get a lunch of sardines and crackers. The storekeeper’s wife made a pot of tea to go with the meal and take away the chill.

As I sat down to eat there was a renewal of the ovation to Santa Claus outside, and presently Deputy Sheriff Johns rode into camp. His great mustache was white with frost, and snow clung to his spurs and boots. I asked the deputy sheriff where he was going to sleep and he said he knew where there was a stack of hay. There was not an empty bed in the camp, so I made up my mind to follow Deputy Sheriff Johns to the haystack.

The big schoolhouse was filled with miners and their families, and the wooden benches were crowded soon after the doors of the house were thrown open to the visitors. The little ones who were to take part in the entertainment were seated on the front benches. Sometimes the room broke out in loud whispers as some little fellow discovered a drum hidden in the branches of the big Christmas tree, which took up a large portion of the room. Some precocious youth set the alarm on the wall clock to ring at 8 o’clock, and this started the crowd laughing. A little dog that was resting near the big box stove jumped to his feet and turned to look at the clock, and Santa Claus entered amid the disturbance. The young folk jumped to their feet and greeted him, and old Santa danced down the aisle with the most approved rag-time step.

Before the presents were distributed the school children performed under the direction of Miss Henshaw.  Mrs. Carpenter, who was well known in Phoenix as Miss Maggie Williscroft, assisted the teacher and took part in a pantomime performance, which was interesting. After the tree was unloaded, the house was cleared for dancing. This pleasure was enjoyed by a large number until after midnight. The Christmas festivities in Big Bug will long be remembered.

“You have to ask me questions, or I can’t remember things.” That’s what Yndia Roca Smalley Moore told me after one of our first taping sessions. She was born in Tucson in 1902, but lived in Globe in its heyday, from 1905 until 1912. We began our Thursday afternoon oral history chats when she was 93, and for an Arizona historian like me it was a dream come true, like taking a Sunday drive into the past with your favorite grandmother, listening to Yndia’s eyewitness accounts of Arizona history in the making.

You could tell by the way her eyes twinkled when she talked that her years in Globe were some of the best parts of Yndia’s very full life. Tucson was still a frontier town back then, and it still had much of its Old World Spanish culture. But Globe City, the rough-edged mining camp, was a much more exciting place for a kid to grow up. Yndia had her favorite memories, and was a delightful story teller. You could tell she enjoyed telling the stories as much as we listeners loved hearing them.

When talking about Globe, she usually started off with the story about her father George reading a letter from his father back in Minnesota. In the days before radio and TV, singing around the piano and reading letters at the dinner table were popular forms of entertainment.

A hanging crowd-Globe Az courtesty of Gila Historical Museum

“It says here Aunt Susie died,” George read one evening when Yndia was about four or five years old. “Oh, who shot her?” she asked. It seemed like no one ever died any other way in Globe in those days.

George Smalley’s father was a newspaperman, and he was in the business for many years himself. He met Yndia’s mother, Lydia Roca, when he was an investigating mining reporter for the Phoenix Republican. Lydia came from a prominent Chilean-Mexican merchant family who opened their first store in Tucson in 1864.  The Smalleys were one of thousands of multicultural families that helped settle the West. George came to Phoenix for his health in 1896 and became a reporter, editor, and eventually publisher of the Tucson Post.

After serving as secretary to territorial governor and former Rough Rider Alexander Brodie, Smalley When President Theodore Roosevelt selected Rough Rider Alexander Brodie to be Arizona’s territorial governor, Smalley was appointed clerk of the newly-created Fifth Judicial District.

“Of course, no one ever died a natural death in Globe,” Yndia said. “There was always a shooting. I remember my father coming home and telling about these things, you know.”

She said that most of her best stories begin, “one time when my parents were out of town . . .” One of those trips, Yndia’s nursemaid (Mattie) told her that if she was a good girl, instead of her afternoon nap she would take her to a hanging that took place behind the courthouse, next to St. John’s Episcopal Church.

“Well, I couldn’t wait,” Yndia said. “I was so excited, because Mattie made it sound exciting.  And so she dressed me all up and down we went to the hanging.  And, oh, there was a lot of singing and everything and I thought it was wonderful.”

“It wasn’t depressing; it was sort of fun because all these Negroes were there singing, and shouting hallelujah.  Of course they were mourning, probably, but I thought they were having a great time; at least I was having a good time.  I wasn’t afraid at all,” Yndia said. Yndia said that as a reward for being well-behaved she got to carry home a swatch of the hanging victim’s hair!

Lydia Smalley was devastated when she found out her little girl had witnessed such a gruesome event, and asked Yndia if she was scared. “Why would I be frightened?” Yndia said. “There was that figure dangling at the end of a rope, but I didn’t connect it at all.”

Not long ago, I walked around behind the courthouse. When it comes to historic atmosphere, Globe ranks right up there with Florence, Bisbee, and even Tombstone. I bet no little girl has seen a hanging in Globe for more than a century; I’m sure lucky to have talked to one that did.

By Jim Turner, Arizona Historian

Whatever happened to Globe? From prehistoric times to the 1960s, the mining towns of Globe, Miami, and Superior played an important part in Arizona’s history. In the months to come we will tap the history books, as well as diaries, memoirs, and even legends, to unearth these buried treasures from an area that used to be much more well known.

Getting down to basics, Arizona history is about water, minerals, and Apaches. In prehistoric times the most important of that trio was water. Anthropologists, like realtors, believe that there are three important items that make for a perfect home: location, location, location. Since much of Arizona is semi-desert, water supply is a key item in settlement patterns. The largest native populations in the state lived near water and it is no accident that the Hohokam and later the Salado cultures thrived in the Globe-Miami area. It would be hundreds of years before Europeans started to search the Southwest for something more valuable to them than water.

The California Gold Rush of 1849 had more impact on mass migration, the world economy, and society than any other single event before or since the discovery at Sutter’s Mill. Not only did it foster the first big joint-stock corporations and fund the Industrial Revolution, it also shifted the minds and souls of the common man from a rural-agrarian homespun religious base to a get-rich quick materialistic focus.

When the gold “panned out” in California, a large backwash of prospectors headed east to strike it rich in Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona. Gila County’s silver and copper deposits figured largely in the state’s mining history.

But metallic riches brought Anglos into an area already populated and as renowned historian Robert Utley said, there was bound to be a “conflict of cultures.” The struggles of the people we know as Apache make Arizona’s history different than any other state; the Globe-Miami area was right in the middle of the earliest action just after the Civil War. A few years later ranchers prospered in relative safety after General Crook enlisted Apache scouts to track down the resisters and put them on reservations.

Globe is so much a part of the legendary Wild West that Ed Schieffelin – whose fame began when he found his Tombstone silver mine – and even Billy the Kid walked its dirt streets in the 1870s. There were the usual robbers, posses, and lynchings, but also things the movies usually ignore, such as Chinese, Cornish, and Welsh immigrants. But by the turn of the century the frontier era was just about over and people began to arrive for still other reasons.

Copper was king and cattle ran a not-so-close second. But once the railroads and automobiles arrived another of Arizona’s “Five C’s” – Climate – drew people to Globe and Miami. The Fred Harvey Company offered “Indian Detours” along the Apache Trail, the fresh air attracted Healthseekers, and the lake created by the Theodore Roosevelt Dam brought fisherman, boaters, and campers.

In the weeks that come, this column will feature stories about the importance of the Globe-Miami area to Arizona history from the earliest residents, through statehood, to “the future of our history.” We’ll talk about the famous personalities that made the area unique, from Indian scouts Al Sieber and Corydon Cooley to the salt of the earth ranchers and lawmen that left their legacy in memoirs and letters to their loved ones Back East. Whether you’re a pioneer descendent or relative newcomer, we think you’ll find these stories educating and entertaining.