In this year leading up to Arizona’s centennial, Feb. 14, 2012, we’ll reprint a story or excerpts each day from the Arizona Daily Star or Tucson Citizen archives.
July 11, 1912
YUMA — Word comes from Somerton that for the past five days Indians of all colors, sizes and kinds, from all over the southwest, have been in attendance at the big Indian Festival which concluded last night at high twelve.
The heavens were ablaze for miles around when the assembled Cocopahs and their visitors set fire to the chief's house as an atonement for their sins.
Weird songs lent enchantment to the scenes while the Indians danced and the pale-faced visitors in attendance gazed on in wonderment.
Five hundred buck Indians attended, some of them from Encenada on the Lower California coast. All were well supplied with money, and A.E. Baldwin, the Somerton storekeeper, had a small mint for five days, and says he is going to invest it in Yuma County real estate.
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According to Ed Crane, the Indians sent out invitations on fashionable stationery in languages highly grammatical, and as the Indians of the southwest are highly civiized, to refuse to attend in response to a formal invitation would be a very great breach of etiquette.
Nearly all Indians so invited were present at the grand march and at the burning of the Chief's house.
It is said that the highly civilized Yuma tribe will shortly issue invitations to a function very similar to that just given by the Cocopahs.
The Somerton affair practiclly cleared Yuma of its Indian population for five days and today many of them may be seen returning in rigs or on horseback, or afoot.
Said “Cocopah Jim” today: “We all had a splended time and were treated nicely by the Somerton people.”
— Arizona Daily Star
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