Background
A number of outlaw Cowboys had on numerous occasions crossed the border into Mexico where they stole cattle and re-sold them to the booming mining camps. The Mexican government at the time placed high tariffs on goods transported across the border, making smuggling a profitable enterprise.
In July 1881, several Mexican smugglers headed for Tucson or Tombstone carrying silver were ambushed and killed in an area called Skeleton Canyon. The killers were never positively identified, but Mexicans just across the border always suspected that those murders were committed by outlaw Cowboys. A ranch owned by "Old Man" Clanton was used at times by the smugglers as a way station for selling the stolen cattle. Old Man Clanton was suspected of directly participating in the smuggling. Although his ranch did not own a brand, required for cattle operations, it was one of the most profitable cattle ranches in that part of the country.
Read more about this topic: Guadalupe Canyon Massacre
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)