STEALING ARIZONA - TEN

 

I doubt anyone in the county courthouse (above) on Monday, 10 June, 1895 was surprise at the first words James Reavis-Peralta, spoke. 

When he rose, the self proclaimed Baron of Arizona, asked for a delay, while he sought a new attorney. When Mathew Reynolds, lawyer for the government, objected, Reavis was granted a one day continuance. Encouraged by that small success, Reavis made a motion to have the case dismissed entirely. This motion was just as quickly dismissed.  This Federal Judge was not going to be lead down any rabbit holes.

And when the trial reconvened on Tuesday, 11 June ,  the Baron announced that he was going to be doing a single: lawyer, plaintiff and witness all in one. He spent most of his direct testimony by describing his dealings with Huntington, Crocker, and various Senators and cabinet members. None would testify in his defense. Reavis did not ask to subpoena any of them. None would admit to even knowing him.  If the jury was impressed by his name dropping, they had little time to be, because Reynolds began his cross examination that very afternoon. 

No matter what question Reynolds asked,  Reavis' answers were endless and rambling. Did he not notice that the documents he claimed to have discovered in the San Xavier record books, were on a different paper than the other pages in the book, and at right angles to the standard pages? (above) 

What about the questionable testimony regarding Sophia's noble birth?  Did he pay anyone to lie in  their testimony?  But no matter how long Reavis talked, no matter how many twist and turns he made in responding, Reynolds just kept attacking. 

By Wednesday, 12 June, Reavis had been forced to admit that even he had doubts about some of his documents. His explanation was that he just filed them, he wasn't vouching for them.

On Monday, 17 June, the Baroness Sophia Reavis Peralta took the stand. She admitted she had no knowledge about any of the documents filed supporting her noble birth. Perhaps it was the paternalistic Victorian machismo at play, but the courtroom was convinced the lady was telling the truth, as she believed the truth to be.  

Presented with convincing evidence that she was in fact the daughter of John A. Treadway and an Indian squaw named Kate Loreta, she broke down in tears, but still insisted, through her sobs, that she was the wife and granddaughter of the Baron of Arizona.

Having put his wife through this emotional torture, on Tuesday 18 June,  1897,  Reavis introduced a portrait he claimed was of Don Miguel Nemecio de Peralta de la Cordoba (above), and noted the facial resemblance to his own two sons. 

After that he just ran out of gas, and was reduced to rants about grand conspiracies and lunatic explanations and justifications. During his closing Reavis did not even bother arguing his case, but rather entered a list of 52 objections to rulings the court had made. They would all be denied.

The government did not even bother to present a final argument. Ten days later, the Court of Private Land Claims, created by political allies to defend the Peralta Grant case, found “the claim is wholly fictitious and fraudulent”, and dismissed it entirely. That was, of course, not the end. James Reavis (above) had gone too far for that to be the end of the affair.

Reavis was arrested as he left the courtroom, and charged with 42 counts of forgery, presenting false documents to the Land Court and conspiracy to defraud the United States Government. Bail was set at a lowly $500. And although the court allowed him to telegraph his connections in California and Washington, D.C., nobody stepped up with the cash. James Reavis-Peralta  spent the next year in jail, awaiting the criminal trial. It finally began on Saturday, 27 June,  1896 and ended on Tuesday 30 June,  with a verdict of guilty. Two weeks later, on Friday 17 July, James Reavis-Peralta was sentenced to two years in jail – one year of which he had already served – and a $5,000 fine –about $130,000 today.

To pay the fine, the mansion in San Francisco was sold. Arizola, the home and fortress which was supposed to represent the reality of the Peralta grant, was seized by the U.S. government. It was later converted into a barn. 

When James Reavis was released from prison in April of 1898, he followed Sophia and his children to their new home in Denver,  where he tried for many years to find investors for his various schemes and plans. Few were even interested in buying his book, “The Confessions of the Baron of Arizona”. It had already been serialized in his old newspaper, "The San Francisco Call".  He probably did not even write it himself.

But whoever the actual author, it was presented as a classic Victorian morality tale. “The plan to secure the Peralta Grant and defraud the Government," wrote the author, "was not conceived in a day. It was the result of a series of crimes extending over nearly a score of years. At first the stake was small, but it grew and grew in magnitude until even I sometimes was appalled at the thought of the possibilities. 

"I was playing a game which to win meant greater wealth than that of a Vanderbilt. My hand constantly gained strength, noted men pleaded my cause, and unlimited capital was at my command. My opponent was the Government, and I baffled its agents at every turn. Gradually I became absolutely sure of success.”

"As I neared the verge of triumph”, wrote Reavis, “I was exultant and sure. Until the very moment of my downfall I gave no thought to failure. But my sins found me out, and as in the twinkling of an eye I saw the millions which had seemed already in my grasp fade away and I heard the courts doom me to a prison cell. Now I am growing old and the thing hangs upon me like a nightmare until I am driven to make a clean breast of it all, that I may end my days in peace.” 

No where in his “clean breast” account did James Reavis mention Mr. Huntington, or Charles Crocker or any of the other wealthy and powerful men who had financed and backed his scam in hopes of increasing their wealth. It seemed that Reavis had learned something from the affair, after all. 

Sophia (above) had also gained in knowledge. In 1902, she filed for divorce on the grounds of “non-support”. And the old forger,  who began his career at 18, faking passes for his army buddies, died alone, at the age of 71 on 20 November, 1914, in Denver Colorado. Cause of death was listed as bronchitis, but I suspect he just ran out of ideas. He was buried in a paupers unmarked grave. 

Sophia, once the child of royalty and then a single mother supporting herself and her children, lived the last years of her life under the name Lola Reavis.  The poor soul died on 4 April, 1934. Her obituary in the Rocky Mountain News failed to even mention the Peralta Grant. That was probably not an accident.

In 1963 the National Park Service decided that it was not financially feasible to save the the fortress south of Casa Grande. The ten room mansion of Arizola was allowed to slowly decay and collapse into the desert. The next year they erected a maker on Arizona route 84 at milepost 181, to explain the significance of the spot to any passersby.  

It reads (inaccurately), “James Addison Peralta Reavis was a brazen forger who claimed over 12 million acres of Central Arizona and Western New Mexico as an Old Spanish Land grant. He and his family lived here in royal style until his fraud was exposed. From the barony he went to federal prison in 1895". 

And that is all most people will ever know about this story. But now,  you know more.

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STEALING ARIZONA - NINE

 

I am always surprised by people who despise politics, because that is like despising vaccination needles; try living without them.  Or as that fascist jackass Plato put it, "“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” Men like James Reavis-Peralta.  

The way in which James Reavis responded to Royal Johnson's report is a perfect example.  Publically, he sued the United States, claiming the government was stealing a million and a half acres from his “Arizona Development Corporation”, and demanded compensation of $11 million ($2.5 billion today). That got a lot of headlines. But more practically, he called on his backer's allies in Washington. 

The railroad's man in the President's Cabinet (and therefore Collis Huntington's man), was Secretary of the Interior John W. Noble (above). In turn, he put pressure on the Federal Commissioner for the Land Office, Lewis Augustus Groff,  who was technically Johnson's boss.  

On 20 February, 1890, Commissioner Groff (above)  fired off a critical letter to the Arizona Surveyor General -  Royal Johnson. The letter said Johnson's report was biased and instructed Johnson to “strike the case from your docket and notify Mr. Reavis of the action, allowing the usual time for an appeal to the Hon. Secretary of the Interior.” In other words, John W. Noble. Problem solved – except for the lawsuit.

Lawyers for Reavis-Peralta and the Development Corporation were Harvey Brown, Robert Ingersall and James Broadhead, who had already publicly endorsed the Peralta claim. All three men were also attorneys for Huntington's Southern Pacific Railroad. Mr. Huntington must have been a little annoyed he'd been forced out of the shadows on this point. 

Never-the-less the lawyers began a delaying action while Senator Roscoe Conkling (another Huntington ally) came to the rescue, pushing for the creation in March of 1891, of the U.S. Court of Private Land Claims, which was given jurisdiction over all old Mexican and Spanish land claims, i.e. the Peralta grant.

While all of this was going in Washington, D.C.,  back in California James Reavis-Peralta's personal attorneys managed to find just the right people who were willing to swear under oath they had known the little orphan girl Sophia Peralta at various stages in her life. One man even claimed to have been a employee of John Treadway, who had supposedly provided for the child after her father left California for Spain. 

And in February 1893, an express wagon pulled up in front of the Land Office in Sante Fe, New Mexico (above) and unloaded “an array of boxes and packages, all...marked 'Peralta Grant.'  This was the evidence attacking the Surveyor General's report.  

Along with this mass of documents, old and newly discovered, was a large oil portrait of the Marquis de Peralta, to put a face on the fraud.  James Reavis-Peralta and Sophia , Baron and Baroness of Arizona, now moved back into their desert fortress of Arizola, where...

...on 8 March, 1893, Sophia argued her own case by giving birth to twin boys (above), thus proving, said James, that she had been born a twin herself. Also that spring, another group of investors were lined up to supply another $2,500 (today's equivalent of $60,000) a month,  for operating expenses for the Arizona Development Corporation, and the Revis-Peralta household.

At the same time the prosecution was also getting ready. The newly formed Court of Private Land Claims had hired Mathew Reynolds to defend the government, “"a lawyer of splendid ability”, and he fought to hire William Tipton as  an expert on document analysis, Sevaro Mallet-Prevost, a Mexican-American,  who was an expert in Mexican and American land laws, and Henry Flipper, an expert surveyor. 

All these men and their staffs were a major investment by the government. But with his lawsuit Reavis had changed the economics of the case, making it reasonable to invest the time and money needed to prove Reavis was a fraud. It was James Reavis' first really big mistake. He had overplayed his hand.

In January of 1894 Mallet-Prevost and Tipton went to Tucson to examine the original claim files. Once that task was completed, Mallet-Provist went on to Mexico City and Guadalajara. There he found that the Royal Cedula naming Don Miguel Peralta as the Baron of Arizona was real, but it had been altered. Originally it had been a Credula advising the City of Guadalajara that the Count of Fuenclara was the new Viceroy of New Spain.

In June Mallet-Prevost moved on to old Spain. While in Seville he discovered that the Spanish authorities had actually caught Reavis trying to slip a doctored document into a library, and had issued a warrant for his arrest.  But Reavis had used his connections with Spanish royalty to discourage the police from pursuing their case.

Meanwhile, Mathew Reynolds had gone to California, where he was contacted by the lawyer for Mrs Elena Campbell de Nore, who had a signed contract between her husband and James Reavis, in which Miguel Nore (the husband) had been promised $50,000.00 if he lied for Reavis. Hell, it seems, hath no fury like a widow cut out of a payoff.  

Reynolds also had made a side trip to the grave of John Treadway, the friend of Don Peralta who had supposedly cared for the infant Sophia. According to the dates on his tombstone, Treadway had died six months before Sophia was supposedly born.  

As details of the evidence being collected in Mexico, Spain and California began to leak out, Reavis' investors began to quietly drop away. As the money dried up, Reavis' lawyers quit, one after the other. By the time his case came to trial, James Reavis-Peralta was left flat broke, and representing himself in court..

The trial was supposed to begin in Santa Fe, at 10:00 Monday morning, 2 June, 1895, but nobody from the Reavis-side showed up. The court adjourned until 1:00 that afternoon, when the only business was a motion from  J.T. Kenney,  a lawyer representing 106 Peralta family members from Arizona. They had filed a companion suit, hoping to catch some dribbles from Reavis' bounty, but Kenney told the court, “from a cursory examination... it (the Peralta Grant) is a fabrication...We wash our hands from all of it.” First thing Tuesday morning the court began taking testimony from government witnesses, even though Baron James Reavis-Peralta was still no where to be seen.

The Government case was laid out in full. There never was any one named Don Miguel Nemecio Silva de Peralta de la Corboda. There had never been a grant of land issued to the nonexistent Baron. 

The nonexistent grant had not been approved by the Inquisition, and had not been confirmed by the Viceroy, who had died a few days after he did not sign the nonexistent grant. 

The nonexistent Don Miguel Peralta had never married, and he and his imaginary wife had never had children, who, of course had not had children, who had not have children, one of whom, needless to say, had not delivered sickly twins in an isolated California mission, where the nonexistent mother had not died along with her nonexistent male child...

...and there had been no Sophia Peralta who survived, because her mother had never existed. The friend of the nonresistant Baron Parlata had existed - John A. Treadway. He was real. But he had died six months before the nonexistent Sophia Peralta had not been born.

Documents supporting the Peralta claim had been forged, usually badly, and inserted into existing files and books. Legitimate entries in diaries and record books had been erased to make room for forged names and titles. 

The entire Peralta case was a tale of lies, cheats and broken promises, and had survived in the courts as long as it did only because of the support by rich and powerful Collis Huntington and Charles Crocker and their ilk, who had become rich and powerful because they had no scruples about lying and cheating to make money.

Finally, on 10 June, 1895, the Baron of Arizona, James Reavis-Peralta showed up in the flesh in court in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to answer the Government's charges. He should have stayed in bed.

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