Arizona's Dark and Bloody Ground

The Pleasant Valley vendetta that swept through the Tonto Basin country in central Arizona during the latter 1880's was one of the most sanguinary and bitter range feuds the old West ever knew. Its ferocity and hatreds were rivaled only by the bloody battles and assassinations of the Lincoln County war in New Mexico ten years before, but it is doubtful, even with all its terrorism, if the number killed there equaled the casualties of Pleasant Valley. Both were born of blood feuds, and bother were fought in defiance of the law of the land until they burned themselves out after most of the participants has either been killed or had grown weary of strife. Even the well-know Hatfield-McCoy feud that held the West Virginia and Kentucky mountains under a reign of terror for almost twenty years did not surpass the lifelong hatred born of the Pleasant Valley war. It is a singular fact that in all three of these vendettas, in such widely separated localities, officers of the law were unable to stop bloodshed. Echoes of the fighting in Lincoln County reached President Hayes at Washington, but, in spite of the fact that he appointed General Lew Wallace Governor of New Mexico for the special purpose of restoring order, the law was powerless. Authentic information has been very difficult to obtain, for the dreaded hand of the feud still reaches down across nearly half a century and seals the lips of most of those who might tell its bitter, sanguinary story. To this day it is an unpardonable sin in central Arizona to "talk too much," even more so than a quarter of a century ago; and many persons who took no part but are acquainted with the facts and gave me valuable information requested that their names be withheld, for personal and business reasons.