Altos, a Confederate victory and a battle which killed his commander, Captain Thomas J. Mastin (1839–1861). After a time spent defending against Apaches and acting as the de facto police force for the area around Pinos Altos, Swilling led a portion of the Arizona Guards that reinforced the garrison of Tucson in 1862. He is believed to have commanded a party of rebels who burned Stanwix Station and skirmished with the Union Army's California Column there in March. He was also involved in the noted incident at White's Mill at Casa Blanca, Arizona when Union Captain James McCleave was captured. Following the Union's capture of Tucson in May 1862, Swilling's company retreated and he became a civilian employee of the United States Army, first as a dispatch rider between General James Carleton's California Column and Union forces up the Rio Grande, and later as a scout in an anti-Apache campaign. He was involved in the campaign to take Mesilla which ended with a Union takeover of Confederate Arizona's capital. Near the end of that employment, he encountered the Joseph R. Walker exploratory party near Pinos Altos when Swilling led the capture of the famous Apache chief Mangas Coloradas. Further prospecting and marriage Swilling's war ended there and he convinced Joseph Walker and his group that there was gold in the central highlands of the new Arizona Territory. He then guided them to where the first Yavapai County mining district was formed, just a few miles south of present-day Prescott, on May 10, 1863. The expedition called it the Pioneer Mining District, and the rules they adopted were the area's first recorded laws. Swilling left the Walker party shortly after the formation of the Pioneer Mining District and joined up with the exploratory party of Pauline Weaver and Abraham Harlow Peeples (1842–1892), which arrived in the area shortly after the Walker group. He made a small fortune from the unusual surface gold mine at Rich Hill between Wickenburg and Prescott. News of his successes spread eastward when two gold samples from Swilling's claim sent to General James Henry Carleton were forwarded for presentation to President Abraham Lincoln. Next, Swilling was briefly part owner of a flour mill in Tucson, apparently in partnership with his neighbor Charles T. Hayden. Quickly tiring of Tucson, he returned to Yavapai County where he prospected, owned gold mines and gold milling operations, and farmed. In addition