Camel Corps
On a spring morning in 1883, a homesteader near Eagle Creek in southeast Arizona left her adobe house to fetch water. Suddenly, the woman screamed. From inside the house, a second woman had looked out to behold a huge, strange red animal with a rider on its back. The second homesteader barricaded the door and began to pray. At nightfall, menfolk returned from hunting sheep stolen by Apaches to find the would-be water carrier trampled to death and surrounded by huge cloven footprints. A few nights later, several miles northeast, two prospectors awoke terrified as a beast stove in their canvas shelter. Clambering to their feet, the pair watched a large, ungainly animal gallop off, leaving a trail of cloven prints and, snagged on brush, tufts of red hair, inspiring legends of the “Red Ghost.”
The mystery beast’s presence in the Southwest of the 1880s dated back four decades, to a time when westbound pioneers confronted the Rockies, the Sierras, and vast deserts between as they trekked toward the rich valleys of coastal California and Oregon. Pioneers crossed the continent using three main routes: the northerly Oregon and Humboldt trails, each originating in Missouri; and the southerly Gila Trail, starting from El Paso, Texas and traversing New Mexico and Arizona to Southern California through frypan hot Indian territory.
Migrants depended on draft and pack animals. Horses were suitable for short stretches but required grain to supplement local forage. Oxen were sturdier, cheaper, and more dependable, but maddeningly slow. Mules, though stubborn, seemed the best bet: stronger, hardier, less picky about food and slower to thirst. Their flinty hooves easily negotiated mountain and prairie terrain; and their tough hides withstood saddle and harness abrasions. To protect western pioneers from Indians, America’s fledgling Army established cavalry outposts along the main trails. Provisioning these isolated garrisons challenged military logisticians, particularly in the “most irksome
