‘Mexican Labour’ in a ‘White Man’s Town’: Racialism, Imperialism and Industrialization in the Making of Arizona, 1840–1905

Abstract

Early in the evening of 1 October 1904 a train climbed through Arizona’s Peloncillo Mountains and made its regular stop at the Clifton depot just as the sun was starting to set. The neighbouring towns of Clifton, Morenci and Metcalf formed one of the United States’ largest industrial copper mining districts and were a major population and commercial centre for eastern Arizona. That evening the train pulled a special car which carried several nuns, an orphanage agent and forty children from the New York Foundling Hospital. Sister Anna Michella peered outside; seeing a large crowd of people gathered on the platform she locked the door to protect her charges.¹ Father Constant Mandlin, the local priest in Clifton-Morenci, had arranged for some of his parishioners to adopt Catholic orphans. The Father had chosen the families who regularly attended church; to him, this seemed a good measure of character. His views, however, were not representative of the larger white community. The French priest, having recently arrived in the district, was apparently unfamiliar with southwestern race relations.²