December 2018 22 Early Pioneer continued from page 20 who had better not be crossed when drunk, grew considerably one day in 1867. It was in May that a man described only as a “Chileno” and variously labeled a saloon keeper, desperado and robber let it be known around town that he was going to kill Jack Swilling on sight. Apparently, the man was trying to intimidate the Mexican population of Wickenburg with such talk, as the Mexicans knew well Swilling was a man who would kill if crossed or challenged. Jack had never laid eyes on this man threatening to kill him. Swilling was on a drinking spree at the time, according to his friend Fred Henry. As Swilling staggered around town enjoying himself the Chileno got a double-barreled shotgun and followed him in the shadows. Henry and others in town intervened and the Chileno gave up his plot. The Chileno was gone from Wickenburg throughout the summer, reportedly spending the hot months up at Weaver below Rich Hill, and then he showed up again in September. Swilling just happened to be on another drinking spree and was nearly as drunk as when the Chileno left months earlier. Jack was a little surprised when a Portuguese friend came up to him in a saloon and told him to be on his guard as the Chileno was saying he would kill Swilling before the day was out. Jack started out to hunt down and kill the Chileno right then but some of his friends disarmed him. Next morning Jack was in town again, drinking heavily with some friends and discussing this Chileno who wanted to kill him. His friends loaned him a shotgun and Jack went out into the street. He hailed the Chileno who came into the street with his shotgun. He didn’t get a chance to use it. Jack opened up on him with both barrels, killing the man instantly, and then jumped astraddle his body and scalped him. Henry reported to the Miner in Wickenburg that the Mexicans in Wickenburg at the time did not seem to have much sympathy for the fate of the Chileno, pretty much taking the attitude that they had told him this would be his fate. While riding the express mail in these years, Jack had noticed two old canals of a long lost civilization while passing through the Salt River valley. He decided to round up some stockholders form a company, and restore one of those ancient canals to bring water from the Salt River onto neighboring flat lands for farming. Founding & Naming Phoenix Swilling was not a man to sit on his ideas very long. In November of 1867 Swilling and other stockholders, he had recruited filed for water rights on the Salt. On November 16 in Wickenburg, the Swilling Irrigation and Canal Company was organized. By December the stockholders had arrived along the Salt to begin the canal work. There were sixteen of them in addition to Swilling. The first digging was started across from where Tempe is now located. Another followed a 500-year-old canal now known as the Montezuma Acequia. Working with hand tools and horse- drawn drags, the party managed to finish the first portion of the canal by March of 1868 and have sufficient water flowing to irrigate 600 acres, which were planted mostly with barley, wheat, and corn. Within a few months of Swilling’s success, several other ditch companies were getting in on the action, organizing and filing water rights. Phoenix had been born, but not yet named. By the end of 1868, some 100 people were living along the Swilling ditch and in the settlement that had grown up between what is now 32nd Ave. and Thomas and 7th Ave. and Van Buren. During the next 10 years, legendary pioneers like Charles B. Genung and William Kirkland bought into the now irrigated Salt River area. Kirkland started his own ditch company. Adobe houses were built, a townsite surveyed around the original settlement on Van Buren between 7th Ave. and 7th Street. Through all of this, Swilling as a driven and haunted man, a man carrying a bullet in his side and a fractured skull received in battles he was in before coming to the Arizona Territory. The pain from both wounds haunted him constantly. Two painkillers made it possible for him to function and he was fast becoming addicted to both. The mix of whiskey and morphine explains much of Jack Swilling’s erratic, eccentric behavior and his mixed reputation. Black Canyon & Trinidad Swilling knew the Bradshaw Mountains well and knew the Black Canyon and Agua Fria that ran through it. He had a mine that he worked off and on in the late 60’s known later as the Old Jack Swilling Mine that was located above where Black Canyon City is today. He reportedly worked that mine between 1865 and 1870 and planned a settlement he wanted to name Jamestown near the mine site. Jamestown never developed but miners who entered these diggings in 1895, long after Swilling’s death, reported the ore ranged as high as $500 a ton. The original location notice filed by Swilling in 1865 stated: “I claim 300 feet on either side of this vein and as far north and south as my Winchester will shoot.” It is on record in Maricopa County. Swilling was later involved in the Tip Top Mine and lived in the mining camp of Gillett. Sometime in 1868 Swilling built a stone cabin on the banks of the Agua Fria River in what is now Black Canyon City. That cabin still stands and is the only known cabin of any member of the Walker Party still in existence in Arizona. The cabin is described by his wife, Trinidad, as her first house. It was also, outside of the jail in Prescott and the Territorial Prison in Yuma, Jack Swilling’s last. Trinidad was born in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico. She is the only child of Ignatius Escalante and Petra Mejia who were from Cadiz, Spain. Escalante was a sea captain. Shipwrecked, he and his wife were brought into a Mexican port, where they joined travelers heading into Sonora. At Hermosillo, Trinidad was born and her father died shortly after her birth. At age 13, Trinidad’s mother joined a Mexican caravan going to the Tucson Pueblo. How or where Trinidad met Jack Swilling is not known, but they were married at St. Augustine’s Cathedral on April 11, 1864. Trinidad’s mother lived with the newlyweds for a year until she died in 1865. She is buried at Camelback Mountain. Trinidad was light-haired, blue-eyed and weighed about 115 pounds according to descriptions of her after her marriage to Swilling. One myth that grew up about Jack Swilling was that he stole Trinidad from her wealthy parents in Hermosillo and escaped with her across the border in a hail of gunfire from aroused Mexican citizens and Yaqui Indians. Not true.  Part 2 Continued in our January Issue  Swilling and Trinidad's cabin, built in 1868, still stands in Black Canyon City. One myth that grew up about Jack Swilling was that he stole Trinidad from her wealthy parents in Hermosillo and escaped with her across the border in a hail of gunfire from aroused Mexican citizens and Yaqui Indians. Not true.