I was also importuned to purchase Miguel Peralta's title from the King
of Spain for the Salt River Valley; but my experience with Spanish
grants in Texas, California and Arizona, did not incline me to invest,
even if the grant had been made by the Pope of Rome, and guaranteed by
the Continental Congress.

The only members of the Woolsey Expedition remaining in Arizona that I
know of are Peeples of Phoenix, Chase of Antelope, and Blair at
Florence.

The government of the United States can never recompense the people of
Arizona for the atrocities committed by the Apaches. It will never do to
make the plea that a government so vain-glorious and boastful could not
have conquered this tribe of savages, if the will to do so had existed.
Now, after forty years of devastation, the government pays the Apaches
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year in goods to maintain a
quasi peace. The settlers are not at any time secure against an Apache
outbreak, and there are at the present time some Apaches on the
war-path, which the government acknowledges its impotency to capture. "A
Century of Dishonor" was a well written book, and contains many
unpleasant truths.

In the meantime, while I was delivering the Indian goods, my colleagues
in the territorial government had crossed the plains, and established
the capital at a remote place in the northern mountains, which they
called "Prescott," in honor of the Mexican historian. Just as was
supposed, they quarreled all the way across the plains about who should
be the first delegate to Congress from a Territory they had never seen.