Crabb Massacre

Crabb Massacre
Part of the Reform War
Date April 1-8, 1857 Location Caborca, Sonora, Mexico Result Mexican/O'odham victory in battle, Americans massacred.
Belligerents
Crabb Expedition	Mexico Tohono O'odham
Commanders and leaders
Henry A. Crabb †	Ygnacio Pesquiera Hilario Gabilonda
Strength
~85	1,500
Casualties and losses
84 killed[1]	~200 killed or wounded[1]

The Crabb Massacre was the culmination of the eight day Battle of Caborca, fought between Mexico and their O'odham allies against American forces in April of 1857. Due to the outbreak of the Reform War in Mexico, the rebel Ygnacio Pesquiera invited the American politician General Henry A. Crabb to colonize the northern frontier region in the state of Sonora, on the basis that the colonists would help Pesquiera fight in the civil war and against the Apache. However, when Crabb arrived in Mexico, his command was attacked and ultimately defeated. Some fifty survivors of the battle, out of about eighty-five men, were executed by the Mexicans.^[2]

Massacre

The Reform War was a religious civil war, one of many between Mexico's rival conservative and liberal factions. Ygnacio Pesquiera fought for the liberals in Sonora, against the state soldiers of the conservative Governor Manuel María Gándara. General Crabb was former state senator from California, as well as a former United States Army officer, but his journey to Mexico in 1857, known as the Crabb Expedition, was of a private nature and did not involve the American government or the military. It was in the fall of 1856, after Crabb lost an election to decide the next senator of California, when he came into contact with Pesquiera through his Mexican wife. Crabb accepted Pesquiera's offer who authorized the general to bring 1,000 colonists. But by the time the expedition left for Mexico, the general had only recruited less than 100 men. There were other volunteers organized to follow Crabb into Sonora but they either abandoned the march or were attacked by the Mexicans. Starting out from San Diego in January of 1857, the expedition went to the Lower Colorado River and then entered New Mexico Territory, now the present day Arizona, and headed directly for the Gila River where they gathered livestock for several weeks. The location of the camp is now known as the Fillibusters Camp. In March they went south for the Tucson area to recruit more men. From Tucson the expedition continued further south to Altar, where they would meet with Pesquiera and his rebels. Though by the time Crabb made it to Sonora, the rebels had already defeated Gándara's troops and forced him into exile. Governor Gándara later sought refuge in Tucson. The Crabb expedition first made contact with the rebels at Caborca, having diverged a bit from Altar, their original destination. Now that Pesquiera nolonger needed the American colonists, he was criticised by his followers for accepting to use Americans in the war. Because of this, the rebels decided to destroy the expedition. Crabb sent the prefect of Altar a message saying that he had come in peace but the message was either ignored or failed to arrive in time to influence the situation.^[3]

At Caborca the Americans became involved in a skirmish which took eight days to finish according to George N. Cardwell who wrote an account of the affair in a letter to his brother Captain^{[disambiguation needed ]} J. W. Cardwell. George Cardwell was an associate of some of the expedition's members and he wrote that at the conclusion of the battle, in which twenty-five Americans were killed, the remaining fifty-eight were separated into groups of ten and executed by firing squad. Crabbs men took up positions inside an adobe building but it was later set on fire by an O'odham warrior which forced their surrender. Cardwell's letter says eighty-four Americans were killed in total, including General Crabb. Some accounts say only forty-one Americans were killed in the massacre itself, not including the men that died during the fighting. In Cardwell's letter, he includes a list of fifty-five of the Americans who were killed and says that many of them were some of California's respectable citizens. Cardwell wrote that the Mexicans lost 200 men out of about 1,500. This number included dozens of O'odham. The Mexican commander, Hilario Gabilonda, who had received instructions from Pesquiera to shoot the prisoners, refused to carry out his orders so he took a fourteen year old American boy, named Evans, with him and he left. Evans was raised by Gabilonda, and he later became a Mexican customs inspector at the international border with the United States. General Crabb was allowed to write a letter to his wife before being executed by a firing squad of 100 men, then his head was cut off and preserved in a jar. The letter was given to one of two men who left the expedition before it crossed the international border between Arizona and Sonora. At the time the Crabb Expedition was regarded by many Mexicans and Americans as being an outfit of filibusters, organized to conquer Mexican territory, but it was sanctioned by the rebel government in Mexico which would eventually win the Reform War in 1861. Cardwell himself wrote that "Mr. Crabb left here about January last, ostensibly for the purpose of mining in the Gadsden purchase, and settling there; but really intending to conquer Sonora, and in process of time add it to the slave states."^[4][5]

The conflict was not over though, Cardwell writes that "some days" after the Caborca affair, a group of twenty Mexicans crossed the border, from San Juan, into Arizona and captured four men of Crabb's party who were resting in a general store due to illness, these four were executed. Shortly thereafter, twenty of Crabb's volunteers launched a rescue mission to relieve the expedition, led by Major R. N. Wood and Captain Granville Henderson Oury from Tucson, the rescue party was on the Mexican side of the border when about 200 Mexicans attacked them near where the four sickly men were captured. After "severe fighting", these twenty recruits successfully made it back across the border. A squad of sixteen other recruits was not so fortunate though and after crossing the border they were intercepted by same 200 men who encountered Major Wood and Captain Oury. These men^[6] surrendered without a fight but were executed like the others. Of the Americans who participated in the Battle of Caborca, only one or two men survived, included the fourteen year old Evans, accounts differ as to the existence of a second survivor. In California and New Mexico Territory, news of the massacre created a clamor for revenge against the Mexicans but the incident was eventually put aside and forgotten about. Sometime after the massacre, Gabilonda, who refused to kill the American colonists, was nearly lynched in Tucson by an angry mob but he survived the ordeal, apparently because of his innocence.^[7][8][9]

See Also

• Goliad Massacre
• Dawson Massacre
• Battle of Mier
• Republic of Sonora
• William Walker (filibuster)
• Capture of Tucson (1846)
• Crawford Affair
• Parker H. French

References

1. ^ ^{a b} United States Deptartment of State, pg. 69-72
2. ^ Chapter Xx. The Crabb Massacre
3. ^ United States Department of State, pg. 69-70
4. ^ United States Department of State, pg. 71
5. ^ Henry A. Crabb, Filibuster, and the San Diego Herald | San Diego History Center
6. ^ Among whom was Freeman McKinney, the San Jose law partner of the notorious Parker H. French.
7. ^ United States Department of State, pg. 72
8. ^ Guide to the Filibuster Expeditions Collection MS 161
9. ^ War-Time in Arizona

• United States Deptartment of State (1857-1861). Execution of Colonel Crabb and associates: Message from the President of the United States communicating official information and correspondence in relation to the execution of Colonel Crabb and his associates. James B. Steedman.