John Clum

John Philip Clum
John P. Clum c 1870
Born	September 1, 1851(1851-09-01) Claverack, New York
Died	May 2, 1932(1932-05-02) (aged 80) Los Angeles, California
Nationality	United States
Other names	Indian agent; first mayor of incorporated Tombstone, Arizona Territory; owner/editor, The Tombstone Epitaph
Known for	Only government agent to peacefully capture Geronimo
Religion	Dutch Reformed

John Philip Clum was an Indian agent for the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in the Arizona Territory. He implemented a limited form of self-government on the reservation that was so successful that other reservations were closed and their residents moved to San Carlos. Clum later became the first mayor of Tombstone, Arizona Territory, after its incorporation in 1881. He also founded the still-operating The Tombstone Epitaph on May 1, 1880. He later served in various postal service positions across the United States.

Early life

John Clum (center) with Indians Diablo and Eskiminzim on the San Carlos Agency in 1875

John Clum (September 1, 1851 - May 2, 1932) was born on a farm near Claverack, New York, USA. His parents were William Henry and Elizabeth van Deusen Clum; he had five brothers and three sisters.

In September, 1867, he entered the Hudson River Institute (later known as Claverack College), a military academy in Claverack, New York. He also attended religious services at the Dutch Reformed Church. In September, 1870, enrolled at Rutgers College. He obtained a classical education, studying among other subjects Latin, Greek, Mathematics (including algebra), Natural History (including physiology) and Rhetoric. He was a member of Rutgers' football team. Although Clum was on the team, he did not play on the first intercollegiate game between Rutgers and Princeton on November 6, 1869, but played on the second game in the fall of 1870. Clum’ strenuous activity and competitive athletics left him ill and in his second year of college he was unable to earn enough money to pay his tuition. He returned to his father’s farm in the summer of 1871. Clum read in a newspaper story that the federal War Department in Washington, D.C. was organizing a meteorological service. He applied for and was inducted into the US Army Signal Corps on September 14, 1871 with the rank of Observer Sergeant. Two weeks later he was dispatched to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he became a weather observer.

Indian Agent

John Clum (front right), Apache agent and Merejildo Grijalva, Apache captive, army scout and translator.

President U.S Grant established the San Carlos Apache Reservation on December 14, 1872. After an investigation of political abuses within the Office of Indian Affairs, the government gave Protestant religious groups the responsibility for managing the Indian reservations. The Dutch Reformed Church was given charge of the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation. They sought out a candidate to run the reservation at Rutgers and were connected with Clum. Clum knew that a number of Indian Agents had already come and gone. Some Indian agents sought the position only as a means to line their own pocket, selling government-supplied food and clothing and keeping the profits for themselves.

The office was very political, as the military commanders and civilian agents contested for control over the reservation and the money associated with the responsibility. The Apaches, who were supposed to be fed and housed by their caretakers, rarely saw the results of the federal money and suffered as a result. Soldiers and their commanding officers sometimes brutally tortured or killed the Indians them for sport. On February 26, 1874, under these difficult conditions, Clum accepted a commission as Indian Agent for the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in the Arizona Territory.

He arrived at the San Carlos Reservation on Tuesday, August 4, 1874. The very next day Apache scouts presented him with the severed head of Cochinay, a Tonto Apache renegade they had tracked down and killed. He inherited a legacy of violence and mayhem where the Indians had been abused by self-serving Indian Agents who took their position only to line their own pockets at the expense of the Indians, and a military presence which showed both animosity toward the Indians and disdain for the civilian Indian Agents.

To the distant politicians in Washington, D.C., all Indians were alike. They did not give consideration to the different tribes, cultures, customs and language. They also ignored prior political differences and military alliances. They tried to apply a “one-size-fits-all" strategy to deal with the “Indian problem”. As a result, friends and foes alike were forced to live in close proximity to one another.

Implements self-government

During Clum's tenure at San Carlos, he treated the Apaches as friends, established the first Indian Tribal Police and a Tribal Court, forming a system of Indian self-rule. The Apaches nicknamed him "Nantan Betunnikiyeh", “Nantan”, meaning boss or leader, “Betunnykahyeh” meaning high-forehead, or “Boss With The High Forehead”, referring to his baldness. Clum encouraged them to take up the peaceful pursuits of farming and raising cattle.

The Army disliked Clum's actions, as it prevented them from raking off part of the funds that passed through the reservation. Clum tired of the Army’s constant meddling in his management of the reservation and the lack of support from the Indian Bureau, the very people who a short time prior had sought him out specifically as a man who would make a good Agent.

Moves Chircahua tribe

In September, 1872, Cochise negotiated a reservation for his people in the Dragoon Mountains on the west to the Peloncillo Mountains on the east. It included the Chiricahua Mountains and ran south to the Mexican border. Some members of the tribe continued raids into the Mexican states Sonora and Chihuahua. Governor Pesqueira of Sonora complained bitterly about the raids, and General Crook tried to figure out how to force their relocation to the San Carlos Reservation. Thomas J. Jeffords, who was Indian Agent to the reservation, lost influence when Cochise died on June 8, 1874. In 1876 Jeffords was relieved of his responsibility and on May 3 the government ordered Chum to transfer the Chiricahuas to San Carlos. After waiting in vain for military reinforcements to help with the move, Clum began relocating the tribe in early June. Cochise's sons Taza and Naiche agreed to the move and killed several Chircahuas, including Eskinya, Cochise's trusted ally, when he insisted they go to war. The Nednhi Chirica led by Juh also requested transfer. Clum granted them three days to round up their kinsmen. They used that time to elude the cavalry and flee south. Of the more than 1,000 Chiricahuas enumerated in Jeffords's infrequent censuses, only 42 men and 280 women and children accompanied Clum north.

The firing of Jeffords and the abolition of the reservation in southeastern Arizona drove the Chiricahuas deeper into Mexico or over to the Ojo Caliente Reservation in the New Mexico Territory. In April 1877 the Interior Department ordered Clum to remove the bands at Ojo Caliente to San Carlos as well. Victorio and the Chihenne Chiricahuas acquiesced at first.

Captures Geronimo

Geronimo, on the other hand, was defiant. Clum hid 100 of his Apache police in the commissary building at Ojo Caliente and on April 21, 1877, they surprised Geronimo, seizing his rifle and throwing him in shackles. His success gave the US Army a black-eye. It was the only time Geronimo was captured at gunpoint without a shot fired on either side. A total of 453 Chiricahuas, 100 from Geronimo's band and the rest under Victorio, reached San Carlos in late May. From the very beginning they quarreled with the other Apaches confined there.

Clum resigns

Clum's feuds with the military escalated. Faced with superior officers who strongly disagreed with his methods, dogged by an uncaring Indian Bureau administration and under constant harassment by the Army, Clum was frustrated. He left his post as Indian Agent at noon on July 1, 1877, nearly three years after he had arrived. His successor freed Geronimo and his men, leading to fifteen years of bloodshed and Indian wars until Geronimo was re-captured by General Miles on September 4, 1886, finally ending the Indian Wars. Throughout his life, Clum believed that his work among the Apache was the finest and noblest work he had ever done.

He was replaced by a series of agents who were renowned for their corruption. Two months later, Victorio, Loco, and 308 other Chiricahuas bolted for New Mexico, killing twelve ranchers before surrendering at Fort Wingate in early October.

Journalist

Clum and his wife moved to Florence, Arizona Territory and bought a weekly newspaper, the Arizona Citizen then operating in Tucson but moving it to Florence. Eventually he moved the paper back to Tucson. For more than two years he published editorials criticizing "the Army of Arizona and the political double-crossers in Washington".

Following the great silver strike in Tombstone, in 1877, Clum moved to Tombstone and began publication, on Saturday, May 1, 1880 of the The Tombstone Epitaph. He helped organize a “Vigilance Committee” to end lawlessness in Tombstone, and his association with that group helped get him elected as Tombstone's first mayor under the new city charter of 1881. Wile mayor he became lifelong friends with Wyatt Earp and one of his greatest supporters. His friendship with Earp made him a target for the outlaw Cowboys. On December 14, he was leaving Tombstone to travel to Washington, D.C. to spend Christmas with his parents and son. The stage in which Clum was riding was held-up, and Clum managed to escape harm by heading out into the desert on foot. He and others were convinced the hold-up was cover for an attempt to assassinate hiim.

After the OK Corral shoot out, the political tables turned and the Earps, and everyone associated with them (including Clum) were labeled as miscreants, responsible for much unwanted violence and mayhem that scared-away much-needed eastern capital. Clum and the Earps were finished in Tombstone. Clum sold The Tombstone Epitaph and moved on. The newspaper is still published today as a nationally distributed chronicle of the old west.

Later Years and Death

U.S. Post Office inspector John Philip Clum in 1898 on mule back visiting Alaskan post office facilities.

In 1898, Clum was appointed Postal Inspector for the Alaska Territory. During a five-month period he traversed 8,000 miles in the Alaskan territory, equipping existing post offices and establishing seven new post offices.

While in Nome, Alaska in the summer of 1900, Clum met his old friends, Wyatt Earp and George W. Parsons. Wyatt was operating the Dexter Saloon at the time. Clum was later named postmaster for Fairbanks, Alaska, and served in that position until 1909.

After his tenure as the Fairbanks postmaster, Clum spent several years working for the Southern Pacific Railroad, giving hundreds of lectures all over the country to promote tourism and passenger-use of the railroad. In 1928 he moved to Los Angeles, where he lived until his death, in 1932 at age 80. He was survived by his third wife, Florence, son Woodworth, and daughter Caro Kingsland Clum Vachon.

His descendants still reside in the Los Angeles area and in Carmel and Rancho Mirage, California.

In film

• Frontier Marshal (1934) Russell Simpson played the part of “Editor Pickett” based on Clum in the first of two movies of the same name based on Stuart Lake’s book Wyatt Earp Frontier Marshal.
• Frontier Marshal (1939) Harry Hayden played the part of Mayor in the second movie based on Stuart Lake’s book on Wyatt Earp.
• Tombstone, the Town Too Tough to Die (1942) Clum's role as mayor and newspaper editor was split, with Charles Halton playing “Mayor Dan Crane” and actor Emmett Vogan playing the part of “Editor John Clum”.
• My Darling Clementine (1946) Roy Roberts played the part of the Tombstone Mayor.
• Walk the Proud Land (1956) Audie Murphy played Clum in the movie based on the 1936 biography Apache Agent written by Woodworth Clum.
• Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) Whit Bissell played Clum.
• The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, a TV series. (1960-1961) Actor Stacy Harris played Clum.
• Hour of the Gun (1967) Larry Gates played Clum.
• Doc (1971) Dan Greenberg as Clum.
• Tombstone (1993) Terry O'Quinn played Clum.
• Wyatt Earp (1994) Randal Mell played Clum.

Additional reading

• John P. Clum, Tombstone Epitaph - 1950 Arizona Newspapers Association Hall of Fame
• John P. Clum, Indian Agent by Martha Glauthier, San Dimas Historical Society
• John Clum at the Internet Movie Database
• Nantan: The Life and Times of John P. Clum Volume 1 Claverack to Tombstone (2007) by Gary Ledoux / Trafford Publishing]
• Nantan: The Life and Times of John P. Clum Volume 2 Tombstone to Los Angeles (2008) by Gary Ledoux / Trafford Publishing