An Apache Campaign in the Sierra Madre An Account of the Expedition in Pursuit of the Hostile Chiricahua Apaches in the Spring of 1883 — Text and Context

rms and corselet of steel he was unable to push back this fierce, astute aborigine, provided simply with lance and bow. The past fifty years have seen the Apache provided with arms of precision, and, especially since the introduction of magazine breech-loaders, the Mexican has not only ceased to be an intruder upon the Apache, but has trembled for the security of life and property in the squalid hamlets of the States of Chihuahua and Sonora.

In 1871 the War Department confided to General George Crook the task of whipping into submission all the bands of the Apache nation living in Arizona. How thoroughly that duty was accomplished is now a matter of history. But at the last moment one band--the Chiricahuas--was especially exempted from Crook’s jurisdiction. They were not attacked by troops, and for years led a Jack-in-the-box sort of an existence, now popping into an agency and now popping out, anxious, if their own story is to be credited, to live at peace with the whites, but unable to do so from lack of nourishment.

When they went upon the reservation, rations in abundance were promised for themselves and families. A difference of opinion soon arose with the agent as to what constituted a ration, the wicked Indians laboring under the delusion that it was enough food to keep the recipient from starving to death, and objecting to an issue of supplies based upon the principle according to which grumbling Jack-tars used to say that prize-money was formerly apportioned,--that is, by being thrown through the rungs of a ladder--what stuck being the share of the Indian, and what fell to the ground being the share of the agent. To the credit of the agent it must be said that he made a praiseworthy but ineffectual effort to alleviate the pangs of hunger by a liberal distribution of hymn-books among his wards. The perverse Chiricahuas, not being able to digest works of that nature, and unwilling to acknowledge the correctness of the agent’s arithmetic, made up their minds to sally out from San Carlos and take refuge in the more hospitable wilderness of the Sierra Madre. Their discontent was not allayed by rumors whispered about of the intention of the agent to have the whole tribe removed bodily to the Indian Territory. Coal had been discovered on the reservation, and speculators clamored that the land involved be thrown open for development, regardless of the rights of the Indians. But, so the story goes, matters suddenly reached a focus when the agent one day sent his chief of police to arrest a Chiricahua charged with some offense deemed worthy of punishment in the guard-house. The offender started to run through the Indian camp, and the chief of police fired at him, but missed his aim and killed a luckless old squaw, who happened in range. This wretched marksmanship was resented by the Chiricahuas, who refused to be comforted by the profuse apologies tendered for the accident. They silently made their preparations, waiting long enough to catch the chief of police, kill him, cut off his head, and play a game of foot-ball with it; and then, like a flock of quail, the whole band, men, women, and children--710 in all--started on the dead run for the Mexican boundary, one hundred and fifty miles to the south.

Hotly pursued by the troops, they fought their way across Southern Arizona and New Mexico, their route marked by blood and devastation. The valleys of the Santa Cruz and San Pedro witnessed a repetition of the once familiar scenes of farmers tilling their fields with rifles and shot-guns strapped to the plow-handle. While engaged in fighting off the American forces, which pressed too closely upon their rear, the Apaches were attacked in front by the Mexican column under Colonel Garcia, who, in a savagely contested fight, achieved a “substantial victory,” killing eighty-five and capturing thirty, eleven of which total of one hundred and fifteen were men, and the rest women and children. The Chiricahuas claim that when the main body of their warriors reached the scene of the engagement the Mexicans evinced no anxiety to come out from the rifle-pits they hastily dug. To this fact no allusion can be found in the Mexican commander’s published dispatches.