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28-675: The Gila Expedition or Morehead War was an 1850 California militia attack on the Quechan , in retaliation for the Glanton Massacre , which had taken place near the confluence of the Gila River and Colorado River in Arizona . It was the beginning of the 1850 to 1853 Yuma War . Downriver from a ferry owned by A.L. Lincoln, the Quechan set up a ferry business to transport people, beasts and goods across

56-712: A police officer with his pistol in the American Theatre , but he was dismissed with little or no punishment, since no one was hurt. In early 1843, Glanton applied for a 320- acre grant of land in Jackson County, Arkansas. He improved the land but, receiving no certificate of purchase, he transferred his claim to his brother Benjamin in 1845 and returned to Louisiana. He was still receiving his mail in New Orleans in September 1846 but had apparently already left for Texas. By

84-771: A wealthy South Carolinian veteran of the War of 1812 , eventually bearing two children by him. In 1835, she followed him to Jackson County in the Arkansas Territory , where the family established Walnut Woods, a plantation with more than twenty slaves near what is now Augusta . Little is certain about Glanton's youth, but he developed a reputation for explosive violence. He appears in few records until his 1841 arrest in Louisiana but later authors state he fled Tennessee as an outlaw before settling in Gonzales, Texas and taking part in

112-520: A trade route amongst the tribes of the areas. At first, the Spanish used minor portions of the trail. It was not until San Diego and Monterey were established that they needed a more reliable and faster path. The path was first walked by Sebastian Taraval, a Cochimi indigenous who fled from San Gabriel. Sebastian was then followed by Captain Juan Bautista de Anza. Anza was only able to follow Sebastian to

140-405: Is a part of the Quechan's traditional lands. Established in 1884, the reservation, at 32°47′N 114°39′W  /  32.783°N 114.650°W  / 32.783; -114.650 , has a land area of 178.197 km (68.802 sq mi) in southeastern Imperial County, California , and western Yuma County, Arizona , near the city of Yuma, Arizona . Both the county and city are named for

168-740: The Arizona territory. In Arizona the Glanton organization became partners in a ferry at the Yuma Crossing of the Colorado River , a popular crossing for settlers and prospectors traveling to and from California during the California Gold Rush . According to claims from competing ferry operators, the Glantons sometimes killed Mexican and American passengers returning from the gold-fields to take their money and goods. Other accounts claim they destroyed

196-575: The Battle of San Jacinto , President Sam Houston supposedly banished Glanton from Texas, although this was never enforced and no record of such an order survives. He was later said to have wounded or killed the best men on both sides of the Regulator–Moderator War without supporting either side himself. Glanton was arrested in New Orleans on March 11, 1841 for assault , having tried to shoot

224-563: The Texas Revolution . He appears as a violent figure in the works of the prominent Western writers Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy . John Joel Glanton was born with his twin, Julian, in Edgefield County, South Carolina , in 1819. His father Charles William Glanton (1789–1826) died while he was young, and his mother, Margaret Hill Glanton, relocated her four sons to Louisiana . In 1832, she remarried to Major   John Roddy,

252-618: The first battle of the 1835 Texian Revolution against Mexico 's Centralist Republic . His fiancée was abducted , scalped , and killed by Lipan Apaches before or during his time with Stephen F. Austin at the siege of De Cos 's forces in San Antonio . He was said to have been a scout under Col.   James Fannin , commissioned as a captain of the Texas Rangers while still 16, and to have narrowly escaped De La Portilla 's March 27, 1836 massacre of Fannin's men at Goliad . After

280-603: The military police sent to arrest him but then enlisted in John Coffee Hays 's second regiment of the First Texas Mounted Rifles, also informally known as the Texan Rangers. He saw action as part of Gen. Winfield Scott   's Mexico City campaign , during which Private Glanton was noted by Gen.   Joseph Lane to have "attracted general notice for his extraordinary activity and daring throughout

308-513: The California state government recruited men for $ 6 a day to attack the Quechan. It was California's first military operation against indigenous Americans. On April 16, 1850, 142 men commenced the expedition against the Quechan. However, the military operation went badly, and the expedition members were besieged until September 16. Because of the inflated costs of goods and wages during the Gold Rush,

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336-458: The Colorado River on their way to the California Gold Rush . John Joel Glanton and his scalp-hunting gang destroyed the Quechan boat and beat the local Quechan chief. For a while they took over Lincoln's ferry operation, killing Mexican and American passengers for their goods and money. In revenge, the Quechan attacked, killed and scalped Glanton and most of the gang in 1850. Later that year,

364-518: The Imperial Valley Kamia village, where he lost Sebastian and was forced to reach the Quechan people on his own. Estimates for the pre-contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially (see population of Native California ). Alfred L. Kroeber (1925:883) put the 1770 population of the Quechan at 2,500. Jack D. Forbes (1965:341–343) compiled historical estimates and suggested that before they were first contacted,

392-475: The Quechan and Jaeger's Ferry and the Glanton Gang , after the Quechan had established a rival ferry service on the Colorado River. During which, the historic Fort Yuma was built across the Colorado River from the present day Yuma, Arizona . The Sierra de las Pintas was a mountain range that most Spanish expeditions would actively avoid. Spanish explorers were able to see the range, but avoided exploring due to

420-497: The Quechan had numbered 4,000 or a few more. Kroeber estimated the population of the Quechan in 1910 as 750. By 1950, there were reported to be just under 1,000 Quechan living on the reservation and more than 1,100 off it (Forbes 1965:343). The 2000 census reported a resident population of 2,376 persons on the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation. As of 2023, there are about 4,000 active members of the tribe living on or near

448-527: The Quechan informing them that it was uninhabitable and had no drinkable water sources. When the Spanish had the Yumans guide them through the Sierra de las Pintas, they would take the Spanish to an area with little to no water in order to discourage further exploration. The Spanish later on attempted to explore the mountain range, searching for water in creative ways. Explorers would follow herds of Bighorn Sheep up

476-569: The Spanish retaliated with military action against the tribe. After 1840, the Quechan people near La Frontera returned to their original ways of religious practice as soon as the mission priests left and no one replaced them. After the United States annexed the territories after winning the Mexican–American War , it engaged in the Yuma War from 1850 to 1853 in response to a conflict between

504-567: The actions both of the 23d and 24th" Nov. 1847 at Galaxara Pass in Puebla . After the summer of 1849, Glanton and his employees were hired by Mexican authorities to eliminate Apaches in northern Mexico and what is now part of the Southwestern United States . For increased income, their organization scalped Native war tribes who had been attacking settlers in America and Mexico to claim

532-529: The bounty for scalps. The soldier and memoirist Samuel Chamberlain claimed he worked as a member of the organization. According to Chamberlain, Glanton's second-in-command was a Texian known as Judge Holden . Reneging on their contracts, the state of Chihuahua put a bounty on the heads of the organization, declaring them outlaws in December 1849. Chihuahuan authorities drove them out to Sonora . Eventually they wore out their Sonoran welcome and moved north into

560-555: The construction of the missions. When the Spanish’s first gifts arrived in 1780, they would be more of a bad omen than a sign of friendship as the livestock being herded to them would go and trample most of if not all the Quechan’s crops. That year there was severe lack of rain thus forcing the Quechan to raid another nearby tribe known as the Maricopa . The following year, two high members of

588-588: The cost of the operation reached $ 113,000 and nearly bankrupted the state. Quechan The historic Yuman-speaking people in this region were skilled warriors and active traders, maintaining exchange networks with the Pima in southern Arizona, New Mexico, and with peoples of the Pacific coast. The first significant contact of the Quechan with Europeans was with the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza and his party in

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616-481: The initial contact had been made, The Quechan people seemed inviting toward Juan Bautista de Anza . He promised them to set up a mission where all people would live together instead of in a hierarchy. Alongside the promise, de Anza gave Palma’s people horses, steel weapons, clothes, and iron as a token of allegiance. This allegiance would soon sour as the bureaucracy of the Spanish Empire would cause major delays to

644-465: The mountain or by chance would find small patches of vegetation pointing toward a hidden water source. The Yuma route was a trail that ran from Southern New Mexico and reached Chihuahua and Sonora . The trail branched out even further to reach the Los Angeles Basin , San Diego , Colorado River and the Gila River . This route was well established before the arrival of the Spanish, and used as

672-504: The reservation. The Quechan language is part of the Yuman language family . The Quechan tribe, in partnership with linguists, have created a fully detailed language guide. This guide includes sections about their alphabet along with the different words for actions, animals, the body, colors, directions, family and friends, house, money, nature and the environment, numbers, place names, plants, time, and shapes. The Fort Yuma Indian Reservation

700-520: The time of the Mexican–American War , he was part of Walter P. Lane 's San Antonio company of Texas Rangers . Contemporary sources charged him with killing a Mexican civilian in Magdalena , New Mexico , while serving as a perimeter sentry in 1847. Glanton defended himself, saying the civilian had ignored his commands to halt. This event brought Walter P. Lane—then a major in the army—into conflict with his general Zachary Taylor . Glanton evaded

728-526: The tribe were arrested for allegedly plotting to assassinate a high-ranking officer. One of the natives was placed in stocks to humiliate them and this caused Palma to finally turn his back on the Spanish. Spanish settlement among the Quechan did not go smoothly; the tribe rebelled from July 17–19, 1781 and killed four priests and thirty soldiers. They also attacked and damaged the Spanish mission settlements of San Pedro y San Pablo de Bicuñer and Puerto de Purísima Concepción , killing many. The following year,

756-496: The tribe. Glanton Gang John Joel Glanton (c. 1819 – April 23, 1850) was an early settler of Arkansas Territory . He was also a Texas Ranger and a soldier in the Mexican–American War and the leader of a notorious gang of scalp-hunters in Northern Mexico and the Southwestern United States during the mid-19th century . Contemporary sources also describe him as a murderous outlaw and prominent participant in

784-538: The winter of 1774. Relations were friendly. On Anza's return from his second trip to Alta California in 1776, the chief of the tribe and three of his men journeyed to Mexico City to petition the Viceroy of New Spain for the establishment of a mission . The chief Palma and his three companions were baptized in Mexico City on February 13, 1777. Palma was given the Spanish baptismal name Salvador Carlos Antonio . Once

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