ARIZONA'S YESTERDAY
BEING
THE NARRATIVE OF
JOHN H. CADY
PIONEER
Rewritten and Revised by
Basil Dillon Woon
1915
Copyright, 1916,
By John H. Cady.
TO
THE PIONEERS WHO ARE LIVING
AND TO
THE MEMORIES OF
THOSE WHO ARE DEAD
this book,
is dedicated.
John H. Cady
Basil D. Woon
Patagonia,
Arizona,
Nineteen-Fifteen.
PREFACE
When I first broached the matter of writing his autobiography to John H.Cady, two things had struck me particularly. One was that of all theliterature about Arizona there was little that attempted to give astraight, chronological and intimate description of events thatoccurred during the early life of the Territory, and, second, that ofall the men I knew, Cady was best fitted, by reason of his extraordinaryexperiences, remarkable memory for names and dates, and seniority inpioneership, to supply the work that I felt lacking.
Some years ago, when I first came West, I happened to be sitting on theobservation platform of a train bound for the orange groves of SouthernCalifornia. A lady with whom I had held some slight conversation on thejourney turned to me after we had left Tucson and had started on thelong and somewhat dreary journey across the desert that stretches fromthe "Old Pueblo" to "San Berdoo," and said:
"Do you know, I actually used to believe all those stories about the'wildness of the West.' I see how badly I was mistaken."
She had taken a half-hour stroll about Tucson while the train changedcrews and had been impressed by the—to the casual observer—sleepiness[Pg 6]of the ancient town. She told me that never again would she look on a"wild West" moving picture without wanting to laugh. She would notbelieve that there had ever been a "wild West"—at least,