"On the morning of March 16, 1860, five warriors watched a camp in what would one day become Arizona.
"On the morning of March 16, 1860, five warriors watched a camp in what would one day become Arizona. Inside a tent, a 23-year-old woman named Larcena was trying to sleep off a fever. By nightfall, she would be left for dead — bleeding, stripped of her clothes, and thrown down a ravine. What happened next, no one could have predicted. Larcena Pennington had already survived more than most people twice her age. Born in Nashville in 1837, she lost her mother young and spent her childhood helping raise ten younger siblings while her father kept moving the family west — Texas first, then toward California. In 1857, they joined a wagon train headed for the goldfields. They made it as far as southern New Mexico Territory — land that would one day become Arizona — before Larcena collapsed with mountain fever, too ill to travel another mile. The family stopped. And then, slowly, they put down roots. The Penningtons became the first American family to settle in what is now Arizona, farming...