The Ordeal of Larcena Pennington

Southeastern Arizona was contested ground. The few Americans who dared its dangers called the region the “Purchase,” after the 1854 Gadsden Purchase from Mexico that had added the Mesilla Valley and the land south of Arizona’s Gila River down to the 31st degree of latitude to New Mexico Territory. The Spanish and the Mexicans had called it Apacheria, after the Indian tribe that frustrated their efforts to settle the land. Charles Poston, the self-styled “Father of Arizona,” had reach