AZ: The History of Arizona podcast · David Rookhuyzen

Episode 225: The Cantonese Paymaster

·31 min·1 clip

Sam Key allegedly paid Fort Huachuca soldiers out of his own pocket for three months.

1. AZ: The History of Arizona episode 225, “The Cantonese Paymaster,” focuses on Fort Huachuca and the many Arizona stories that pass through it. 2. Host David Rickhausen returns as the sole narrator and episode guide, using earlier episodes on the Apache Wars, the earthquake of 1887, and the Buffalo Soldiers to frame the fort's history. 3. The episode asks what Fort Huachuca was for: a post that watched southern Arizona, supported campaigns, and absorbed wider border history. 4. Rickhausen reviews the Apache Wars, including Geronimo, Nelson A. Miles, Captain Henry Ware Lawton, and Leonard Wood. 5. He says Lawton left Fort Huachuca on May 5, 1886 with 35 men from B Troop, 20 soldiers from the 8th Infantry, and 20 Indian scouts. 6. He also notes that Fort Huachuca became Station 7 in the Army's heliograph network with 27 stations. 7. The heliograph crew trained at the fort and placed the signal device on a hill overlooking the officers' row. 8. The narrative then turns to the May 3, 1887 earthquake that shook Mexico and southern Arizona and produced two aftershocks about 40 minutes apart. 9. Cornelius C. Smith Jr.'s Fort Huachuca, The Story of a Frontier Post is cited for the aftershocks, and Colonel George Forsyth's logs are used to describe smoke over the San Jose Mountains and the Whetstones. 10. Rickhausen says Forsyth thought the fire meant volcanic activity, while the episode explains that the quake sparked rocks and ignited dry grass. 11. The fort's soldiers were later used in the manhunt for Apache Kid, whose fate remains unknown. 12. The 1890s brought more raids and border trouble, including Yaqui reports near Nogales and Tubac. 13. The episode also revisits the Cananea Consolidated Copper Company incident, where Major Charles Henry Watts sent a squadron of the 5th Cavalry to the border while Arizona Rangers crossed into Mexico. 14. Fort Huachuca survived Army cutbacks because it sat close to Mexico, while Fort Verde, Fort Mojave, Fort Lowell, Fort Thomas, and Fort Grant were closed. 15. Rickhausen mentions a 1909 idea to move the fort between Bisbee and Douglas and another abandoned idea for an aviatory on Huachuca Peak with 10 Wright Brother biplanes. 16. Achille Luigi Carlo LaGuardia arrives as 11th Infantry bandmaster in 1890, and his son Fiorello later said Arizona shaped his dislike of corruption. 17. Sam Key, from Canton in southern China, opened a Tombstone laundry and gambling parlor, then ran the Moose Cafe at Fort Huachuca beginning in 1882. 18. The episode says Key expanded into the trader store, dairy, and photoshopped business, then allegedly paid soldiers' salaries from his own pocket during a funding crisis. 19. The tone is conversational and referential, with Rickhausen repeatedly pointing listeners back to earlier episodes and historical side paths. 20. Listeners who like borderlands history, Buffalo Soldiers, and Arizona military posts will get the most from it, while listeners wanting a tight single-story narrative may skip it.

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