COVE

In 1848, Glanton left the front line as a well known fighter. He would join a new regiment that fought Native American tribes on the Texan frontier. Eventually, after moving around multiple units, and into more trouble with the law, he left the army in mid-1849, leaving for California. He was traveling with around 30 armed men seeking gold. He and his group traveled through the Chihuahua route in Mexico. Along the route they ran out of supplies, so the expedition stopped in Chihuahua City, in the city, to make money, they collected bounty contracts against native American tribes, due to them raiding local Mexican settlements. For the rest of 1849 the gang raided, killed, and scalped hostile Native Americans throughout the area. by the next year in 1850 however, there were now fewer Native Americans in the area who were hostile to the Mexican settlements, so the gang switched to targeting peaceful Native American tribes as well. Then, once there became a lack of peaceful Native Americans in the area, the gang decided that their bounty contracts would not know the difference between Native American and Mexican scalps, so they began killing Mexican settlers for their scalps. Then once the Mexican government found out about the gang’s exploits, the Chihuahua government would place a bounty on the Glanton Gang militia to chase the gang out of the area. they would then stop by another Mexican settlement, Sonora, and repeat the whole process until they were again chased out of Mexico by Mexican authorities. The Glanton Gang would wind up in Yuma Crossing in Arizona. At this location there was a ferry that would cross gold prospectors across the Colorado River, transporting all their goods and gold with them. So the Glanton Gang would ambush and kill those returning from their gold fields and taking their goods. Among those they killed during these robberies were Americans, Mexicans, and Quechan (or Yuma) Native Americans. In retaliation, on April 23^rd, 1850, a band of Quechan ambushed, massacred, and scalped many of the Glanton Gang, with few survivors escaping. When Californian authorities heard about this massacre of the Glanton Gang, they began the Gila Expedition, where the California militia went and killed Quechan Native Americans. This event would begin the Yuma War from 1850 to 1853. Even after their demise, the Glanton Gang’s notorious legacy is cemented in the history books as a time of chaos, debauchery, racism, and perpetuated extreme violence.