In January 1863 members of mountain man Joseph Walker's party of gold seekers lured the chief into the deserted mining camp of Pinos Altos to talk peace. Instead, they seized him and delivered him to General Joseph R. West. According to Daniel Ellis Conner, a member of the Walker party, the soldiers had burned his feet and legs by heating up their bayonets, and, after Coloradas protested, they shot and killed him with their navy six-shooters. The tales of Apache cruelty spread on the frontier, and a series of Chircahua war chiefs swore revenge for the next twenty-three years.
Throughout the 1850s, hostilities between Apaches and Americans were sporadic rather than sustained. The U.S. government established only two military posts in southern Arizona before the Civil War: Fort Buchanan at the headwaters of Sonoita Creek in 1856 and Fort Beckinridge along the San Pedro River in 1860. Civilians often had to defend themselves in Arizona during the Mexican period, and they continued during the first decade of American rule.
During the 1850s, the vast western half of the territory of New Mexico remained largely in Indian hands. A few merchants and artisans like Sam Hughes and Solomon Warner drifted into Tucson, engineers under the direction of a former bookseller named John Russel Barlett surveyed the U.S.-Mexican border, and military expeditions led by Captain Lorenzo Sitgreaves, Lieutenant Amiel Whipple, and Lieutenant Joseph Ives mapped out wagon roads and railroad routes across the Colorado Plateau. The only areas where Americans attempted to create new settlements were a few mining communities in southern Arizona and a string of ports along the Colorado River. The rest of the region belonged to the Apaches, Upland Yumans, the O'odham, and the Najavos.
The lower Colorado Valley became the first region settled by non-Indians in the 18th century and the first part of Arizona penetrated by the Industrial Revolution. During the early territorial period, water linked the deserts of Arizona to Sonora, California, and the rest of the world. Although rugged terrain to the east could only be transversed only by horseback or mule train, steamboats piled the shifting channels of the Colorado.
The Yuman-speaking Quechan and Mohave Indians had dominated the lower Colorado River Valley for centuries, carrying raids and pitched battles against their Indian enemies and the Spanish who had settled there in 1781. War created a class of professional warriors known as kwanami. Their culture hero, Kumastamxo, ordained who were friends and who were foes. When thousands of Americans began entering their territory in 1849, they acted with antagonism as well as enterprise. They prospered by swimming gold seekers and their livestock across the Colorado, but resented the Americans, whose numbers threatened their way of life.
Early in 1850 a group of scalp hunters led by John Joel Glanton tried to monopolize the ferry business by assaulting a Quechan chief and threatening to kill an Indian for every Mexican carried across the river, and the Quechans retaliated. Throughout the height of the Gold Rush, they maintained control over one of the most strategic river crossings in North America. The American occupation of the lower Colorado Valley did not begin until February 1852, when Major Samuel Heintzelman reestablished Fort Yuma on the California side of the river. Like many officers, Heintzelman spent as much time pursuing his business interests as his military duties, and he became a major investor in the Colorado Ferry Company, which took control of the crossing from the Quechans entirely.
As more and more Americans settled into the area, founding the community of Colorado City (modern Yuma), Quechan autonomy began to diminish and disappear. One of the last spasms of independence occurred on September 1, 1857, when several hundred Quechan, Mohave, and Yavapai warriors crossed more than 160 miles (260 km) of desert on foot to attack the Maricopas, who were living in two villages east of the Estrella Mountains near modern Phoenix. The Maricopas and Pimas counterattacked on horseback, killing more than 100 of the Yuman invaders. It was the last major battle the River Yumans fought.
The most important development in the conquest of the lower Colorado was the arrival of steam-powered ships. In December 1852, a sixty-five foot-long paddlewheeler named the Uncle Sam went up the river as far as the Gila-Colorado confluence. It ran aground and sank the following spring, but the General Jesup took its place in 1854, pioneering stream transportation as far north as Mohave territory. By the 1870s, six streamers and five barges were calling upon ports as far north as Rioville near the mouth of the Virgin River. Shifting sandbars, scarce timber for fuel, fluctuating water levels, and the heat hindered their journeys, which progressed at 15 miles (24 km) a day. Until Chinese laborers completed the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1881, most goods entering Arizona came by boat.
During the Civil War, America was left open to Apache attack when federal troops left Arizona to repel the Confederate invasion of New Mexico. On January 27, 1861, Apaches raided the ranch of John Ward 11 miles (18 km) south of Fort Buchanan and stole a young Mexican boy named Félix Ward. First Lieutenant George Bascom marched to Apache Pass. There he met Cochise, the chief of the central band of the Chiricahuas, who called themselves Chokokens. Because Cochise had not led the raid, he agreed to enter Basco's camp, bringing along members of his family. Cochise told Bascom that the White Mountain Apaches had taken the boy and that he would get him back within ten days. Bascom replied that Cochise and his family would be held hostage until the boy was returned.
Cochise whipped out a knife and slashed a hole in the tent where he and Bascom were talking. He ran outside, pushed his way through the soldiers, and escaped even though they fired at least 50 shots at him and wounded his leg. Cochise demanded the release of his relatives, and Bascom refused. The Apaches seized a relative of the Butterfield stage station. Cochise offered to exchange the prisoner for the Chircahuas, and again Bascom turned him down.
Two days later, Cochise burned a wagon train, killing nine Mexicans and taking three Anglos prisoner. Then he attacked Bascom's command. When Bascom repulsed the assault, Cochise executed the four Anglo prisoners and mutilated their bodies. The soldiers hung six Apache men in retaliation, including Cochise's brother and two nephews. According to historian Dan Thrapp, 150 whites were killed within 60 days.