San Carlos Agent John Clum

[Shotgun Steve]

Circa. December 1873 - November 1874.

[Mossyrock]

Is it fair to assume that this is the same John Clum who was mayor of Tombstone during the Earp/Cowboy fracas?

[Roscoe Coles]

  Yes.  He was a well respected Indian agent who, rare in his day, actually provided Apaches on the reservation with the goods they were promised.  Of course, with crazy ideas like "fair play" and "honesty" in dealing with Indians, he rubbed a number of people in the Grant administration the wrong way.  The common practice among Indian agents was to cheat the Indians out of their supplies and sell them at a discounted rate on the open market.  Tom Horn describes how this was done in his biography (according to Horn, the easiest way to do it was to simply claim that every Indian came in to get his rations every week, even when only a few came in).
   Clum was Agent at San Carlos for about four years (1873-1877) where he established the native police.  He was very highly thought of by the Apaches under his care and resigned in protest when the Army was sent to take over at San Carlos in 1877.  He then went to running newspapers in Tucson and later Tombstone (he had been a student at Rutgers, though I don't think he graduated).  Later in life he, like his friend Wyatt Earp, went north to Alaska following the Klondike rush.  Earp ran a saloon and prospected in Nome; Clum was postal inspector for Alaska (I have also read that he was the post master).

[Stillwater]

Is that a belt I see around John Clums waist?

Bill