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Title: On the Border with Crook
Author: Bourke, John Gregory
Language: English
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[Illustration: GENERAL GEORGE CROOK.]
ON THE BORDER WITH CROOK
BY
JOHN G. BOURKE
CAPTAIN THIRD CAVALRY, U. S. A.
_ILLUSTRATED_
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1891
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Press of J. J. Little & Co.
Astor Place, New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_TO FRANCIS PARKMAN,_
_whose learned and graceful pen has illustrated the History, Traditions,
Wonders and Resources of the Great West, this volume,—descriptive of the
trials and tribulations, hopes and fears of brave officers and enlisted
men of the regular Army, who did so much to conquer and develop the
empire beyond the Missouri,—is affectionately inscribed by his admirer
and friend,_
_JOHN G. BOURKE._
_Omaha, Nebraska,
August 12, 1891._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE.
There is an old saw in the army which teaches that you can never know a
man until after having made a scout with him in bad weather. All the
good qualities and bad in the human makeup force their way to the
surface under the stimulus of privation and danger, and it not
infrequently happens that the comrade who at the military post was most
popular, by reason of charm of manner and geniality, returns from this
trial sadly lowered in the estimation of his fellows, and that he who in
the garrison was most retiring, self-composed, and least anxious to make
a display of glittering uniform, has swept all before him by the
evidence he has given of fortitude, equanimity, courage, coolness, and
good judgment under circumstances of danger and distress. But, whether
the maxim be true or false, it is hardly too much for me to claim a
hearing while I recall all that I know of a man with whom for more than
fifteen years, it was my fortune to be intimately associated in all the
changing vicissitudes which constituted service on the “border” of
yesterday, which has vanished never to return.
It is not my purpose to write a biography of my late friend and
commander—such a task I leave for others to whom it may be more
congenial; speaking for myself, I am compelled to say that it is always
difficult for me to peruse biography of any kind, especially military,
and that which I do not care to read I do not care to ask others to
read. In the present volume, there will be found collected descriptions
of the regions in which the major portion of General Crook’s Indian work
was carried on; the people, both red and white, with whom he was brought
into contact; the difficulties with which he had to contend, and the
manner in which he overcame them; and a short sketch of the principles
guiding him in his justly famous intercourse with the various
tribes—from British America to Mexico, from the Missouri River to the
Pacific Ocean—subjugated by him and afterwards placed under his charge.
A military service of nearly forty consecutive years—all of which,
excepting the portion spent in the civil war, had been face to face with
the most difficult problems of the Indian question, and with the
fiercest and most astute of all the tribes of savages encountered by the
Caucasian in his conquering advance across the continent—made General
Crook in every way worthy of the eulogy pronounced upon him by the
grizzled old veteran, General William T. Sherman, upon hearing of his
death, that he was the greatest Indian-fighter and manager the army of
the United States ever had.
In all the campaigns which made the name of George Crook a beacon of
hope to the settler and a terror to the tribes in hostility, as well as
in all the efforts which he so successfully made for the elevation of
the red man in the path of civilization and which showed that Crook was
not a brutal soldier with no instincts save those for slaughter, but
possessed of wonderful tenderness and commiseration for the vanquished
as well as a most intelligent appreciation of the needs and capabilities
of the aborigines, I was by his side, a member of his military staff,
and thus obtained an insight into the charms and powers of a character
which equalled that of any of the noble sons of whom our country is so
justly proud.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
OLD CAMP GRANT ON THE RIO SAN PEDRO—DAILY ROUTINE OF 1
LIFE—ARCHITECTURE OF THE GILA—SOLDIERS AS LABORERS—THE
MESCAL AND ITS USES—DRINK AND GAMBLING—RATTLESNAKE BITES
AND THE GOLONDRINA WEED—SODA LAKE AND THE DEATH
VALLEY—FELMER AND HIS RANCH.
CHAPTER II.
STRANGE VISITORS—SOME APACHE CUSTOMS—MEXICAN CAPTIVES—SPEEDY 17
AND THE GHOST—THE ATTACK UPON KENNEDY AND ISRAEL’S
TRAIN—FINDING THE BODIES—THE DEAD APACHE—A FRONTIER
BURIAL—HOW LIEUTENANT YEATON RECEIVED HIS DEATH WOUND—ON
THE TRAIL WITH LIEUTENANT CUSHING—REVENGE IS SWEET.
CHAPTER III.
THE RETURN TO CAMP GRANT—LANCED TO DEATH BY APACHES—THE 34
KILLING OF MILLER AND TAPPAN—COMPANY QUARTERS—APACHE
CAPTIVES—THE CLOUD-BURST—APACHE CORN-FIELDS—MEETING
COLONEL SANFORD—ENTRAPPED IN AN APACHE AMBUSCADE—AN
OLD-TIMER’S REMINISCENCES OF TUCSON—FUNERAL CROSSES ON THE
ROADSIDE—PADRE EUSEBIO KINO—FIRST VIEW OF TUCSON—THE “SHOO
FLY” RESTAURANT.
CHAPTER IV.
SOME OF THE FRIENDS MET IN OLD TUCSON—JACK LONG—HIS 66
DIVORCE—MARSHAL DUFFIELD AND “WACO BILL”—“THEM ’ERE’S MEE
VISITIN’ KEE-YARD”—JUDGE TITUS AND CHARLES O. BROWN—HOW
DUFFIELD WAS KILLED—UNCLE BILLY N—— AND HIS THREE GLASS
EYES—AL. GARRETT—DOCTOR SEMIG AND LIEUTENANT SHERWOOD—DON
ESTEVAN OCHOA—BISHOP SALPOINTE—PETE KITCHEN AND HIS RANCH.
CHAPTER V.
THE DIVERSIONS OF TUCSON—THE GAMBLING SALOONS—BOB CRANDALL 80
AND HIS DIAMOND—“SLAP-JACK BILLY”—TIGHT-ROPE WALKERS—THE
THEATRE—THE DUEÑAS—BAILES—THE NEWSPAPERS—STAGE-DRIVERS.
CHAPTER VI.
TUCSON INCIDENTS—THE “FIESTAS”—THE RUINED MISSION CHURCH OF 96
SAN XAVIER DEL BAC—GOVERNOR SAFFORD—ARIZONA MINES—APACHE
RAIDS—CAMP GRANT MASSACRE—THE KILLING OF LIEUTENANT
CUSHING.
CHAPTER VII.
GENERAL CROOK AND THE APACHES—CROOK’S PERSONAL APPEARANCE 108
AND CHARACTERISTICS—POINTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE
APACHES—THEIR SKILL IN WAR—FOODS AND MODES OF
COOKING—MEDICINE MEN—THEIR POWER AND INFLUENCE.
CHAPTER VIII.
CROOK’S FIRST MOVEMENTS AGAINST THE APACHES—THE 136
SCOUTS—MIRAGES—THE FLORAL WEALTH OF ARIZONA—RUNNING IN
UPON THE HOSTILE APACHES—AN ADVENTURE WITH BEARS—CROOK’S
TALK WITH THE APACHES—THE GREAT MOGOLLON PLATEAU—THE TONTO
BASIN—MONTEZUMA’S WELL—CLIFF DWELLINGS—THE PACK TRAINS.
CHAPTER IX.
THE PICTURESQUE TOWN OF PRESCOTT—THE APACHES ACTIVE NEAR 158
PRESCOTT—“TOMMY” BYRNE AND THE HUALPAIS—THIEVING INDIAN
AGENTS—THE MOJAVES, PI-UTES AND AVA-SUPAIS—THE TRAVELS OF
FATHERS ESCALANTE AND GARCES—THE GODS OF THE HUALPAIS—THE
LORING MASSACRE—HOW PHIL DWYER DIED AND WAS BURIED—THE
INDIAN MURDERERS AT CAMP DATE CREEK PLAN TO KILL
CROOK—MASON JUMPS THE RENEGADES AT THE “MUCHOS
CAÑONES”—DELT-CHE AND CHA-LIPUN GIVE TROUBLE—THE KILLING
OF BOB WHITNEY.
CHAPTER X.
CROOK BEGINS HIS CAMPAIGN—THE WINTER MARCH ACROSS THE 176
MOGOLLON PLATEAU—THE GREAT PINE BELT—BOBBY-DOKLINNY, THE
MEDICINE MAN—COOLEY AND HIS APACHE WIFE—THE APACHE CHIEF
ESQUINOS-QUIZN—THE APACHE GUIDE NANAAJE—THE FEAST OF
DEAD-MULE MEAT—THE FIGHT IN THE CAVE IN THE SALT RIVER
CAÑON—THE DEATH-CHANT—THE CHARGE—THE DYING MEDICINE
MAN—THE SCENE IN THE CAVE.
CHAPTER XI.
THE CAMPAIGN RESUMED—EFFICIENCY OF APACHE SCOUTS—JACK LONG 202
BREAKS DOWN—A BAND OF APACHES SURRENDER IN THE
MOUNTAINS—THE EPIZOOTIC—THE TAYLOR MASSACRE AND ITS
AVENGING—THE ARIZONA ROLL OF HONOR, OFFICERS, MEN,
SURGEONS, SCOUTS, GUIDES, AND PACKERS—THE STRANGE RUIN IN
THE VERDE VALLEY—DEATH OF PRESILIANO MONJE—THE APACHES
SURRENDER UNCONDITIONALLY TO CROOK AT CAMP VERDE.
CHAPTER XII.
THE PROBLEM OF CIVILIZING THE APACHES—THE WORK PERFORMED BY 215
MASON, SCHUYLER, RANDALL, RICE, AND BABCOCK—TUCSON RING
INFLUENCE AT WASHINGTON—THE WOUNDING OF LIEUTENANT CHARLES
KING—THE KILLING OF LIEUTENANT JACOB ALMY—THE SEVEN APACHE
HEADS LAID ON THE SAN CARLOS PARADE GROUND—CROOK’S CASH
MARKET FOR THE FRUITS OF APACHE INDUSTRY—HIS METHOD OF
DEALING WITH INDIANS.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE CLOSING DAYS OF CROOK’S FIRST TOUR IN ARIZONA—VISIT TO 230
THE MOQUI VILLAGES—THE PAINTED DESERT—THE PETRIFIED
FORESTS—THE GRAND CAÑON—THE CATARACT CAÑON—BUILDING THE
TELEGRAPH LINE—THE APACHES USING THE TELEGRAPH
LINE—MAPPING ARIZONA—AN HONEST INDIAN AGENT—THE CHIRICAHUA
APACHE CHIEF, COCHEIS—THE “HANGING” IN TUCSON—A FRONTIER
DANIEL—CROOK’S DEPARTURE FROM ARIZONA—DEATH VALLEY—THE
FAIRY LAND OF LOS ANGELES—ARRIVAL AT OMAHA.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE DEPARTMENT OF THE PLATTE—THE BLACK HILLS DIFFICULTY—THE 241
ALLISON COMMISSION—CRAZY HORSE AND SITTING BULL—THE FIRST
WINTER CAMPAIGN—CLOTHING WORN BY THE TROOPS—THE START FOR
THE BIG HORN—FRANK GRUARD, LOUIS RICHAUD, BIG BAT, LOUIS
CHANGRAU, AND OTHER GUIDES.
CHAPTER XV.
MOVING INTO THE BIG HORN COUNTRY IN WINTER—THE HERD 256
STAMPEDED—A NIGHT ATTACK—“JEFF’S” OOZING COURAGE—THE
GRAVE-YARD AT OLD FORT RENO—IN A MONTANA BLIZZARD—THE
MERCURY FROZEN IN THE BULB—KILLING BUFFALO—INDIAN
GRAVES—HOW CROOK LOOKED WHILE ON THIS CAMPAIGN—FINDING A
DEAD INDIAN’S ARM—INDIAN PICTURES.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE ATTACK UPON CRAZY HORSE’S VILLAGE—THE BLEAK NIGHT MARCH 270
ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS—EGAN’S CHARGE THROUGH THE
VILLAGE—STANTON AND MILLS AND SIBLEY TO THE RESCUE—THE
BURNING LODGES—MEN FROZEN—THE WEALTH OF THE
VILLAGE—RETREATING TO LODGE POLE CREEK—CROOK REJOINS
US—CUTTING THE THROATS OF CAPTURED PONIES.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SUMMER CAMPAIGN OF 1876—THE SIOUX AND CHEYENNES GETTING 283
UGLY—RAIDING THE SETTLEMENTS—ATTEMPT TO AMBUSCADE
CROOK—KILLING THE MAIL-RIDER—THE STORY OF THE FETTERMAN
MASSACRE—LAKE DE SMET—OUR FIRST THUNDERSTORM—A SOLDIER’S
BURIAL—THE SIOUX ATTACK OUR
CAMP—TROUT-FISHING—BEAR-HUNTING—CALAMITY JANE—THE CROW AND
SHOSHONE ALLIES JOIN THE COMMAND—THE WAR DANCE AND
MEDICINE SONG.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE COLUMN IN MOTION—RUNNING INTO A GREAT HERD OF 307
BUFFALOES—THE SIGNAL CRY OF THE SCOUTS—THE FIGHT ON THE
ROSEBUD—HOW THE KILLED WERE BURIED—SCALP DANCE—BUTCHERING
A CHEYENNE—LIEUTENANT SCHUYLER ARRIVES—SENDING BACK THE
WOUNDED.
CHAPTER XIX.
KILLING DULL CARE IN CAMP—EXPLORING THE SNOW-CRESTED BIG 323
HORN MOUNTAINS—FINERTY KILLS HIS FIRST BUFFALO—THE
SWIMMING POOLS—A BIG TROUT—SIBLEY’S SCOUT—A NARROW
ESCAPE—NEWS OF THE CUSTER MASSACRE—THE SIOUX TRY TO BURN
US OUT—THE THREE MESSENGERS FROM TERRY—WASHAKIE DRILLS HIS
SHOSHONES—KELLY THE COURIER STARTS TO FIND TERRY—CROW
INDIANS BEARING DESPATCHES—THE SIGN-LANGUAGE—A PONY
RACE—INDIAN SERENADES—HOW THE SHOSHONES FISHED—A FIRE IN
CAMP—THE UTES JOIN US.
CHAPTER XX.
THE JUNCTION WITH MERRITT AND THE MARCH TO MEET TERRY—THE 344
COUNTRY ON FIRE—MERRITT AND HIS COMMAND—MR.
“GRAPHIC”—STANTON AND HIS “IRREGULARS”—“UTE JOHN”—THE SITE
OF THE HOSTILE CAMP—A SIOUX CEMETERY—MEETING TERRY’S
COMMAND—FINDING TWO SKELETONS—IN THE BAD LANDS—LANCING
RATTLESNAKES—BATHING IN THE YELLOWSTONE—MACKINAW BOATS AND
“BULL” BOATS—THE REES HAVE A PONY DANCE—SOME TERRIBLE
STORMS—LIEUTENANT WILLIAM P. CLARKE.
CHAPTER XXI.
CROOK AND TERRY SEPARATE—THE PICTURESQUE LITTLE MISSOURI—THE 362
“HORSE MEAT MARCH” FROM THE HEAD OF THE HEART RIVER TO
DEADWOOD—ON THE SIOUX TRAIL—MAKING COFFEE UNDER
DIFFICULTIES—SLAUGHTERING WORN-OUT CAVALRY HORSES FOR
FOOD—THE FIGHT AT SLIM BUTTES—LIEUTENANT VON LEUTTEWITZ
LOSES A LEG—THE DYING CHIEF, AMERICAN HORSE,
SURRENDERS—RELICS OF THE CUSTER MASSACRE—CRAZY HORSE
ATTACKS OUR LINES—SUNSHINE AND RATIONS.
CHAPTER XXII.
TO AND THROUGH THE BLACK HILLS—HOW DEADWOOD LOOKED IN 381
1876—THE DEADWOOD “ACADEMY OF MUSIC”—THE SECOND WINTER
CAMPAIGN—THE NAMES OF THE INDIAN SCOUTS—WIPING OUT THE
CHEYENNE VILLAGE—LIEUTENANT MCKINNEY KILLED—FOURTEEN
CHEYENNE BABIES FROZEN TO DEATH IN THEIR MOTHERS’ ARMS—THE
CUSTER MASSACRE AGAIN—THE TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE OF RANDALL
AND THE CROW SCOUTS.
CHAPTER XXIII.
STRANGE MESS-MATES—THE JOURNEY TO THE AGENCIES—GENERAL 397
SHERIDAN’S VISIT—SPOTTED TAIL—THE STORY OF HIS DEAD
DAUGHTER’S BONES—WHITE THUNDER—RED CLOUD—DULL KNIFE—BIG
WOLF—THE NECKLACE OF HUMAN FINGERS—THE MEDICINE MAN AND
THE ELECTRIC BATTERY—WASHINGTON—FRIDAY—INDIAN
BROTHERS—SORREL HORSE—THREE BEARS—YOUNG MAN AFRAID OF HIS
HORSES—ROCKY BEAR—RED CLOUD’S LETTER—INDIAN DANCES—THE BAD
LANDS—HOW THE CHEYENNES FIRST GOT HORSES.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE SURRENDER OF CRAZY HORSE—SELLING AMMUNITION TO HOSTILE 412
INDIANS—PLUNDERING UNARMED, PEACEABLE INDIANS—SUPPER WITH
CRAZY HORSE—CHARACTER OF THIS CHIEF—HIS BRAVERY AND
GENEROSITY—THE STORY OF THE CUSTER MASSACRE AS TOLD BY
HORNY HORSE—LIEUTENANT REILLY’S RING—THE DEATH OF CRAZY
HORSE—LITTLE BIG MAN.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE MANAGEMENT OF THE INDIAN AGENCIES—AGENT MACGILLICUDDY’S 424
WONDERFUL WORK—CROOK’S REMAINING DAYS IN THE DEPARTMENT OF
THE PLATTE—THE BANNOCK, UTE, NEZ PERCÉ, AND CHEYENNE
OUTBREAKS—THE KILLING OF MAJOR THORNBURGH AND CAPTAIN
WEIR—MERRITT’S FAMOUS MARCH AGAINST TIME—HOW THE DEAD CAME
TO LIFE AND WALKED—THE CASE OF THE PONCAS—CROOK’S HUNTS
AND EXPLORATIONS; NEARLY FROZEN TO DEATH IN A BLIZZARD—A
NARROW ESCAPE FROM AN ANGRY SHE-BEAR—CATCHING NEBRASKA
HORSE-THIEVES—“DOC” MIDDLETON’S GANG.
CHAPTER XXVI.
CROOK RE-ASSIGNED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ARIZONA—ALL THE 433
APACHES ON THE WAR-PATH—LIEUTENANTS MORGAN AND CONVERSE
WOUNDED—CAPTAIN HENTIG KILLED—CROOK GOES ALONE TO SEE THE
HOSTILES—CONFERENCES WITH THE APACHES—WHAT THE ARIZONA
GRAND JURY SAID OF AN INDIAN AGENT—CONDITION OF AFFAIRS AT
THE SAN CARLOS AGENCY—WHISKEY SOLD TO THE CHIRICAHUA
APACHES—APACHE TRIALS BY JURY—ARIZONA IN 1882—PHŒNIX,
PRESCOTT, AND TUCSON—INDIAN SCHOOLS.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE SIERRA MADRE CAMPAIGN AND THE CHIRICAHUAS—CHATO’S 452
RAID—CROOK’S EXPEDITION OF FORTY-SIX WHITE MEN AND ONE
HUNDRED AND NINETY-THREE INDIAN SCOUTS—THE SURPRISE OF THE
APACHE STRONGHOLD—THE “TOMBSTONE TOUGHS”—THE MANAGEMENT OF
THE CHIRICAHUAS—HOW INDIANS WILL WORK IF ENCOURAGED—GIVING
THE FRANCHISE TO INDIANS; CROOK’S VIEWS—THE CRAWFORD COURT
OF INQUIRY—KA-E-TEN-NA’S ARREST ORDERED BY MAJOR BARBER
—TROUBLE ARISES BETWEEN THE WAR AND INTERIOR
DEPARTMENTS—CROOK ASKS TO BE RELIEVED FROM THE
RESPONSIBILITY FOR INDIAN AFFAIRS—SOME OF THE CHIRICAHUAS
RETURN TO THE WAR-PATH.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST GERONIMO—THE CROPS RAISED BY THE 465
APACHES—THE PURSUIT OF THE HOSTILES—THE HARD WORK OF THE
TROOPS—EFFICIENT AND FAITHFUL SERVICE OF THE CHIRICAHUA
SCOUTS—WAR DANCES AND SPIRIT DANCES—CAPTAIN CRAWFORD
KILLED—A VISIT TO THE HOSTILE STRONGHOLD—A “NERVY”
PHOTOGRAPHER—A WHITE BOY CAPTIVE AMONG THE
APACHES—ALCHISE’S AND KA-E-TEN-NA’S GOOD WORK—GERONIMO
SURRENDERS TO CROOK.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE EFFECTS OF BAD WHISKEY UPON SAVAGE INDIANS—THE WRETCH 480
TRIBOLLET—SOME OF THE CHIRICAHUAS SLIP AWAY FROM MAUS
DURING A RAINY NIGHT—THE BURIAL OF CAPTAIN
CRAWFORD—CROOK’S TERMS DISAPPROVED IN WASHINGTON—CROOK
ASKS TO BE RELIEVED FROM COMMAND IN ARIZONA—GERONIMO
INDUCED TO COME IN BY THE CHIRICAHUA AMBASSADORS, KI-E-TA
AND MARTINEZ—TREACHERY SHOWN IN THE TREATMENT OF THE
WELL-BEHAVED MEMBERS OF THE CHIRICAHUA APACHE BAND.
CHAPTER XXX.
CROOK’S CLOSING YEARS—HE AVERTS A WAR WITH THE UTES—A MEMBER 486
OF THE COMMISSION WHICH SECURED A CESSION OF ELEVEN
MILLIONS OF ACRES FROM THE SIOUX—HIS INTEREST IN GAME
LAWS—HIS DEATH—WHAT THE APACHES DID—WHAT RED CLOUD
SAID—HIS FUNERAL IN CHICAGO—BURIAL IN OAKLAND,
MARYLAND—RE-INTERMENT IN ARLINGTON CEMETERY, VIRGINIA.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
GENERAL GEORGE CROOK _Frontispiece_
AN APACHE RANCHERIA _Face page_ 48
SPOTTED TAIL 96
SHARP NOSE 192
GENERAL CROOK AND THE FRIENDLY APACHE, ALCHISE 240
CHATO 304
CONFERENCE BETWEEN GENERAL CROOK AND GERONIMO 416
[Illustration: GRAVE OF CRAZY HORSE—“THE EBB-TIDE OF OUR INDIAN WARS.”]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ON THE BORDER WITH CROOK
CHAPTER I.
OLD CAMP GRANT ON THE RIO SAN PEDRO—DAILY ROUTINE OF LIFE—ARCHITECTURE
OF THE GILA—SOLDIERS AS LABORERS—THE MESCAL AND ITS USES—DRINK AND
GAMBLING—RATTLESNAKE BITES AND THE GOLONDRINA WEED—SODA LAKE AND THE
DEATH VALLEY—FELMER AND HIS RANCH.
Dante Alighieri, it has always seemed to me, made the mistake of his
life in dying when he did in the picturesque capital of the Exarchate
five hundred and fifty years ago. Had he held on to this mortal coil
until after Uncle Sam had perfected the “Gadsden Purchase,” he would
have found full scope for his genius in the description of a region in
which not only purgatory and hell, but heaven likewise, had combined to
produce a bewildering kaleidoscope of all that was wonderful, weird,
terrible, and awe-inspiring, with not a little that was beautiful and
romantic.
The vast region in the southwest corner of the United States, known on
the maps as the Territories of Arizona and New Mexico, may, with perfect
frankness, be claimed as the wonder-land of the northern part of
America, with the exception, perhaps, of the Republic of Mexico, of
which it was once a fragment, and to which, ethnographically, it has
never ceased to belong.
In no other section can there be found such extensive areas of desert
crossed in every direction by the most asperous mountains, whose
profound cañons are the wonder of the world, whose parched flanks are
matted with the thorny and leafless vegetation of the tropics, and whose
lofty summits are black with the foliage of pines whose graceful
branches bend in the welcome breezes from the temperate zone. Here one
stumbles at almost every step upon the traces of former populations, of
whom so little is known, or sees repeated from peak to peak the signal
smokes of the fierce Apaches, whose hostility to the white man dates
back to the time of Cortés.
I will begin my narrative by a brief reference to the condition of
affairs in Arizona prior to the arrival of General Crook, as by no other
means can the arduous nature of the work he accomplished be understood
and appreciated. It was a cold and cheerless day—March 10, 1870—when our
little troop, “F” of the Third Cavalry, than which a better never bore
guidon, marched down the vertical-walled cañon of the Santa Catalina,
crossed the insignificant sand-bed of the San Pedro, and came front into
line on the parade-ground of Old Camp Grant, at the mouth of the
Aravaypa. The sun was shining brightly, and where there was shelter to
be found in the foliage of mesquite or cottonwood, there was the merry
chatter of birds; but in the open spaces the fierce breath of the
norther, laden with dust and discomfort, made the new-comers imagine
that an old-fashioned home winter had pursued them into foreign
latitudes. A few military formalities hastily concluded, a few words of
kindly greeting between ourselves and the members of the First Cavalry
whom we met there, and ranks were broken, horses led to the stables, and
men filed off to quarters. We had become part and parcel of the garrison
of Old Camp Grant, the memory of which is still fragrant as that of the
most forlorn parody upon a military garrison in that most woe-begone of
military departments, Arizona.
Of our march over from the Rio Grande it is not worth while to speak; as
the reader advances in this book he will find references to other
military movements which may compensate for the omission, even when it
is admitted that our line of travel from Fort Craig lay through a region
but little known to people in the East, and but seldom described. For
those who may be sufficiently interested to follow our course, I will
say that we started from Craig, marched to the tumble-down village of
“Paraje de San Cristobal,” at the head of the “Jornada del Muerto” (The
Day’s Journey of the Dead Man), which is the Sahara of New Mexico, then
across to the long-since abandoned camp at what was called Fort MacRae,
where we forded the river to the west, and then kept along the eastern
rim of the timber-clad Mimbres Mountains, through Cow Springs to Fort
Cummings, and thence due west to Camp Bowie, situated in the “Apache
Pass” of the Chiricahua Mountains in Southeastern Arizona, a total
distance of some one hundred and seventy miles as we marched.
There were stretches of country picturesque to look upon and capable of
cultivation, especially with irrigation; and other expanses not a bit
more fertile than so many brick-yards, where all was desolation, the
home of the cactus and the coyote. Arizona was in those days separated
from “God’s country” by a space of more than fifteen hundred miles,
without a railroad, and the officer or soldier who once got out there
rarely returned for years.
Our battalion slowly crawled from camp to camp, with no incident to
break the dull monotony beyond the ever-recurring signal smokes of the
Apaches, to show that our progress was duly watched from the peaks on
each flank; or the occasional breaking down of some of the wagons and
the accompanying despair of the quartermaster, with whose afflictions I
sympathized sincerely, as that quartermaster was myself.
I used to think that there never had been such a wagon-train, and that
there never could again be assembled by the Government mules of whose
achievements more could be written—whose necks seemed to be ever
slipping through their collars, and whose heels never remained on _terra
firma_ while there was anything in sight at which to kick. Increasing
years and added experience have made me more conservative, and I am now
free to admit that there have been other mules as thoroughly saturated
with depravity as “Blinky Jim,” the lop-eared dun “wheeler” in the
water-wagon team; other artists whose attainments in profanity would put
the blush upon the expletives which waked the echoes of the
mirage-haunted San Simon, and other drivers who could get as quickly,
unmistakably, emphatically, and undeniably drunk as Mullan, who was down
on the official papers as the driver of the leading ambulance, but,
instead of driving, was generally driven.
There would be very little use in attempting to describe Old Fort Grant,
Arizona, partly because there was really no fort to describe, and partly
because few of my readers would be sufficiently interested in the matter
to follow me to the end. It was, as I have already said, recognized from
the tide-waters of the Hudson to those of the Columbia as the most
thoroughly Godforsaken post of all those supposed to be included in the
annual Congressional appropriations. Beauty of situation or of
construction it had none; its site was the supposed junction of the
sand-bed of the Aravaypa with the sand-bed of the San Pedro, which
complacently figured on the topographical charts of the time as creek
and river respectively, but generally were dry as a lime-burner’s hat
excepting during the “rainy season.” Let the reader figure to himself a
rectangle whose four sides were the row of officers’ “quarters,” the
adjutant’s office, post bakery, and guard house, the commissary and
quartermaster’s storehouses, and the men’s quarters and sutler’s store,
and the “plan,” if there was any “plan,” can be at once understood. Back
of the quartermaster’s and commissary storehouses, some little distance,
were the blacksmith’s forge, the butcher’s “corral,” and the cavalry
stables, while in the rear of the men’s quarters, on the banks of the
San Pedro, and not far from the traces of the ruins of a prehistoric
village or pueblo of stone, was the loose, sandy spot upon which the
bucking “bronco” horses were broken to the saddle. Such squealing and
struggling and biting and kicking, and rolling in the dust and getting
up again, only to introduce some entirely original combination of a hop,
skip, and jump, and a double back somersault, never could be seen
outside of a herd of California “broncos.” The animal was first thrown,
blindfolded, and then the bridle and saddle were put on, the latter
girthed so tightly that the horse’s eyes would start from their sockets.
Then, armed with a pair of spurs of the diameter of a soup-plate and a
mesquite club big enough to fell an ox, the Mexican “vaquero” would get
into the saddle, the blinds would be cast off, and the circus begin.
There would be one moment of sweet doubt as to what the “bronco” was
going to do, and now and then there would be aroused expectancy that a
really mild-mannered steed had been sent to the post by some mistake of
the quartermaster’s department. But this doubt never lasted very long;
the genuine “bronco” can always be known from the spurious one by the
fact that when he makes up his mind to “buck” he sets out upon his work
without delay, and with a vim that means business. If there were many
horses arriving in a “bunch,” there would be lots of fun and no little
danger and excitement. The men would mount, and amid the encouraging
comments of the on-lookers begin the task of subjugation. The bronco, as
I have said, or should have said, nearly always looked around and up at
his rider with an expression of countenance that was really benignant,
and then he would roach his back, get his four feet bunched together,
and await developments. These always came in a way productive of the
best results; if the rider foolishly listened to the suggestions of his
critics, he would almost always mistake this temporary paroxysm of
docility for fear or lack of spirit.
And then would come the counsel, inspired by the Evil One himself:
“Arrah, thin, shtick yer sphurs int’ him, Moriarty.”
This was just the kind of advice that best suited the “bronco’s”
feelings, because no sooner would the rowels strike his flanks than the
air would seem to be filled with a mass of mane and tail rapidly
revolving, and of hoofs flying out in defiance of all the laws of
gravity, while a descendant of the kings of Ireland, describing a
parabolic orbit through space, would shoot like a meteor into the sand,
and plough it up with his chin and the usual elocutionary effects to be
looked for under such circumstances.
Yes, those were happy, happy days—for the “broncos” and the by-standers.
There were three kinds of quarters at Old Camp Grant, and he who was
reckless enough to make a choice of one passed the rest of his existence
while at the post in growling at the better luck of the comrades who had
selected either one of the others.
There was the adobe house, built originally for the kitchens of the post
at the date of its first establishment, some time in 1857; there were
the “jacal” sheds, built of upright logs, chinked with mud and roofed
with smaller branches and more mud; and the tents, long since
“condemned” and forgotten by the quartermaster to whom they had
originally been invoiced. Each and all of these examples of the
Renaissance style of architecture, as it found expression in the valley
of the Gila, was provided with a “ramada” in front, which, at a small
expenditure of labor in erecting a few additional upright saplings and
cross-pieces, and a covering of cottonwood foliage, secured a modicum of
shelter from the fierce shafts of a sun which shone not to warm and
enlighten, but to enervate and kill.
The occupants of the ragged tentage found solace in the pure air which
merrily tossed the flaps and flies, even if it brought with it rather
more than a fair share of heat and alkali dust from the deserts of
Sonora. Furthermore, there were few insects to bother, a pleasing
contrast to the fate of those living in the houses, which were veritable
museums of entomology, with the choicest specimens of centipedes,
scorpions, “vinagrones,” and, occasionally, tarantulas, which the
Southwest could produce.
On the other hand, the denizens of the adobe and the “jacal outfits”
became inured to insect pests and felicitated themselves as best they
could upon being free from the merciless glare of the sun and wind,
which latter, with its hot breath, seemed to take delight in peeling
the skin from the necks and faces of all upon whom it could exert its
nefarious powers. My assignment was to one of the rooms in the adobe
house, an apartment some fourteen by nine feet in area, by seven and a
half or eight in height. There was not enough furniture to occasion
any anxiety in case of fire: nothing but a single cot, one
rocking-chair—visitors, when they came, generally sat on the side of
the cot—a trunk, a shelf of books, a small pine wash-stand, over which
hung a mirror of greenish hue, sold to me by the post trader with the
assurance that it was French plate. I found out afterward that the
trader could not always be relied upon, but I’ll speak of him at
another time. There were two window-curtains, both of chintz; one
concealed the dust and fly specks on the only window, and the other
covered the row of pegs upon which hung sabre, forage cap, and
uniform.
In that part of Arizona fires were needed only at intervals, and, as a
consequence, the fireplaces were of insignificant dimensions, although
they were placed, in the American fashion, on the side of the rooms, and
not, as among the Mexicans, in the corners. There was one important
article of furniture connected with the fireplace of which I must make
mention—the long iron poker with which, on occasion, I was wont to stir
up the embers, and also to stir up the Mexican boy Esperidion, to whom,
in the wilder freaks of my imagination, I was in the habit of alluding
as my “valet.”
The quartermaster had recently received permission to expend “a
reasonable amount” of paint upon the officers’ quarters, provided the
same could be done “by the labor of the troops.” This “labor of the
troops” was a great thing. It made the poor wretch who enlisted under
the vague notion that his admiring country needed his services to quell
hostile Indians, suddenly find himself a brevet architect, carrying a
hod and doing odd jobs of plastering and kalsomining. It was an idea
which never fully commended itself to my mind, and I have always thought
that the Government might have been better served had such work, and all
other not strictly military and necessary for the proper police and
cleanliness of the posts, been assigned to civilians just as soon as
representatives of the different trades could be attracted to the
frontier. It would have cost a little more in the beginning, but it
would have had the effect of helping to settle up our waste land on the
frontier, and that, I believe, was the principal reason why we had a
standing army at all.
The soldier felt discontented because no mention had been made in the
recruiting officer’s posters, or in the contract of enlistment, that he
was to do such work, and he not unusually solved the problem by
“skipping out” the first pay-day that found him with enough money ahead
to risk the venture. It goes without saying that the work was never any
too well done, and in the present case there seemed to be more paint
scattered round about my room than would have given it another coat. But
the floor was of rammed earth and not to be spoiled, and the general
effect was certainly in the line of improvement. Colonel Dubois, our
commanding officer, at least thought so, and warmly congratulated me
upon the snug look of everything, and added a very acceptable present of
a picture—one of Prang’s framed chromos, a view of the Hudson near the
mouth of Esopus Creek—which gave a luxurious finish to the whole
business. Later on, after I had added an Apache bow and quiver, with its
complement of arrows, one or two of the bright, cheery Navajo rugs, a
row of bottles filled with select specimens of tarantulas, spiders,
scorpions, rattlesnakes, and others of the fauna of the country, and
hung upon the walls a suit of armor which had belonged to some Spanish
foot-soldier of the sixteenth century, there was a sybaritic
suggestiveness which made all that has been related of the splendors of
Solomon and Sardanapalus seem commonplace.
Of that suit of armor I should like to say a word: it was found by
Surgeon Steyer, of the army, enclosing the bones of a man, in the arid
country between the waters of the Rio Grande and the Pecos, in the
extreme southwestern corner of the State of Texas, more than twenty
years ago. Various conjectures were advanced and all sorts of theories
advocated as to its exact age, some people thinking that it belonged
originally to Coronado’s expedition, which entered New Mexico in 1541.
My personal belief is that it belonged to the expedition of Don Antonio
Espejo, or that of Don Juan de Oñate, both of whom came into New Mexico
about the same date—1581-1592—and travelled down the Concho to its
confluence with the Rio Grande, which would have been just on the line
where the skeleton in armor was discovered. There is no authentic report
to show that Coronado swung so far to the south; his line of operations
took in the country farther to the north and east, and there are the
best of reasons for believing that he was the first white man to enter
the fertile valley of the Platte, not far from Plum Creek, Nebraska.
But, be that as it may, the suit of armor—breast and back plates, gorget
and helmet—nicely painted and varnished, and with every tiny brass
button duly cleaned and polished with acid and ashes, added not a little
to the looks of a den which without them would have been much more
dismal.
For such of my readers as may not be up in these matters, I may say that
iron armor was abandoned very soon after the Conquest, as the Spaniards
found the heat of these dry regions too great to admit of their wearing
anything so heavy; and they also found that the light cotton-batting
“escaupiles” of the Aztecs served every purpose as a protection against
the arrows of the naked savages by whom they were now surrounded.
There was not much to do in the post itself, although there was a
sufficiency of good, healthy exercise to be counted upon at all times
outside of it. I may be pardoned for dwelling upon trivial matters such
as were those entering into the sum total of our lives in the post, but,
under the hope that it and all in the remotest degree like it have
disappeared from the face of the earth never to return, I will say a few
words.
In the first place, Camp Grant was a hot-bed of the worst kind of fever
and ague, the disease which made many portions of Southern Arizona
almost uninhabitable during the summer and fall months of the year.
There was nothing whatever to do except scout after hostile Apaches, who
were very bold and kept the garrison fully occupied. What with sickness,
heat, bad water, flies, sand-storms, and utter isolation, life would
have been dreary and dismal were it not for the novelty which helped out
the determination to make the best of everything. First of all, there
was the vegetation, different from anything to be seen east of the
Missouri: the statuesque “pitahayas,” with luscious fruit; the massive
biznagas, whose juice is made into very palatable candy by the Mexicans;
the bear’s grass, or palmilla; the Spanish bayonet, the palo verde, the
various varieties of cactus, principal among them being the nopal, or
plate, and the cholla, or nodular, which possesses the decidedly
objectionable quality of separating upon the slightest provocation, and
sticking to whatever may be nearest; the mesquite, with palatable gum
and nourishing beans; the mescal, beautiful to look upon and grateful to
the Apaches, of whom it is the main food-supply; the scrub oak, the
juniper, cottonwood, ash, sycamore, and, lastly, the pine growing on the
higher points of the environing mountains, were all noted, examined, and
studied, so far as opportunity would admit.
And so with the animal life: the deer, of the strange variety called
“the mule”; the coyotes, badgers, pole-cats, rabbits, gophers—but not
the prairie-dog, which, for some reason never understood by me, does not
cross into Arizona; or, to be more accurate, does just cross over the
New Mexican boundary at Fort Bowie in the southeast, and at Tom Keam’s
ranch in the Moqui country in the extreme northeast.
Strangest of all was the uncouth, horrible “escorpion,” or “Gila
monster,” which here found its favorite habitat and attained its
greatest dimensions. We used to have them not less than three feet long,
black, venomous, and deadly, if half the stories told were true. The
Mexicans time and time again asserted that the escorpion would kill
chickens, and that it would eject a poisonous venom upon them, but, in
my own experience, I have to say that the old hen which we tied in front
of one for a whole day was not molested, and that no harm of any sort
came to her beyond being scared out of a year’s growth. Scientists were
wont to ridicule the idea of the Gila monster being venomous, upon what
ground I do not now remember, beyond the fact that it was a lizard, and
all lizards were harmless. But I believe it is now well established that
the monster is not to be handled with impunity although, like many other
animals, it may lie torpid and inoffensive for weeks, and even months,
at a time. It is a noteworthy fact that the Gila monster is the only
reptile on earth to-day that exactly fills the description of the
basilisk or cockatrice of mediæval fable, which, being familiar to the
first-comers among the Castilians, could hardly have added much to its
popularity among them.
It may not be amiss to say of the vegetation that the mescal was to the
aborigines of that region much what the palm is to the nomads of Syria.
Baked in ovens of hot stone covered with earth, it supplied a sweet,
delicious, and nutritive food; its juice could be fermented into an
alcoholic drink very acceptable to the palate, even if it threw into the
shade the best record ever made by “Jersey lightning” as a stimulant.
Tear out one of the thorns and the adhering filament, and you had a very
fair article of needle and thread; if a lance staff was needed, the
sapling mescal stood ready at hand to be so utilized; the stalk, cut
into sections of proper length, and provided with strings of sinew,
became the Apache fiddle—I do not care to be interrupted by questions as
to the quality of the music emitted by these fiddles, as I am now trying
to give my readers some notion of the economic value of the several
plants of the Territory, and am not ready to enter into a disquisition
upon melody and such matters, in which, perhaps, the poor little Apache
fiddle would cut but a slim figure—and in various other ways this
strange, thorny-leafed plant seemed anxious to show its friendship for
man. And I for one am not at all surprised that the Aztecs reverenced it
as one of their gods, under the name of Quetzalcoatl.[A]
-----
Footnote A:
Quetzalcoatl is identified with the maguey in Kingsborough, vol. vi.,
107.
-----
The “mesquite” is a member of the acacia family, and from its bark
annually, each October, exudes a gum equal to the best Arabic that ever
descended the Nile from Khartoum. There are three varieties of the
plant, two of them edible and one not. One of the edible kinds—the
“tornillo,” or screw—grows luxuriantly in the hot, sandy valley of the
Colorado, and forms the main vegetable food of the Mojave Indians; the
other, with pods shaped much like those of the string-bean of our own
markets, is equally good, and has a sweet and pleasantly acidulated
taste. The squaws take these beans, put them in mortars, and pound them
into meal, of which bread is made, in shape and size and weight not
unlike the elongated projectiles of the three-inch rifled cannon.
Alarcon, who ascended the Colorado River in 1541, describes such bread
as in use among the tribes along its banks; and Cabeza de Vaca and his
wretched companions, sole survivors of the doomed expedition of Panfilo
de Narvaez, which went to pieces near the mouth of the Suwanee River, in
Florida, found this bread in use among the natives along the western
part of their line of march, after they had succeeded in escaping from
the Indians who had made them slaves, and had, in the guise of
medicine-men, tramped across the continent until they struck the Spanish
settlements near Culiacan, on the Pacific coast, in 1536. But Vaca calls
it “mizquiquiz.” Castaneda relates that in his day (1541) the people of
Sonora (which then included Arizona) made a bread of the mesquite,
shaping it like a cheese; it had the property of keeping for a whole
year.
There was so little hunting in the immediate vicinity of the post, and
so much danger attending the visits of small parties to the higher hills
a few miles off, in which deer, and even bear, were to be encountered,
that nothing in that line was attempted except when on scout; all our
recreation had to be sought within the limits of the garrison, and
evolved from our own personal resources. The deficiency of hunting did
not imply that there was any lack of shooting about the post; all that
any one could desire could be had for the asking, and that, too, without
moving from under the “ramadas” back of the quarters. Many and many a
good line shot we used to make at the coyotes and skunks which with the
going down of the sun made their appearance in the garbage piles in the
ravines to the north of us.
There was considerable to be done in the ordinary troop duties, which
began at reveille with the “stables,” lasting half an hour, after which
the horses and mules not needed for the current tasks of the day were
sent out to seek such nibbles of pasturage as they might find under the
shade of the mesquite. A strong guard, mounted and fully armed,
accompanied the herd, and a number of horses, saddled but loosely
cinched, remained behind under the grooming-sheds, ready to be pushed
out after any raiding party of Apaches which might take a notion to
sneak up and stampede the herd at pasture.
Guard mounting took place either before or after breakfast, according to
season, and then followed the routine of the day: inspecting the men’s
mess at breakfast, dinner, and supper; a small amount of drill,
afternoon stables, dress or undress parade at retreat or sundown, and
such other occupation as might suggest itself in the usual visit to the
herd to see that the pasturage selected was good, and that the guards
were vigilant; some absorption in the recording of the proceedings of
garrison courts-martial and boards of survey, and then general _ennui_,
unless the individual possessed enough force to make work for himself.
This, however, was more often the case than many of my readers would
imagine, and I can certify to no inconsiderable amount of reading and
study of Spanish language and literature, of mineralogy, of botany, of
history, of constitutional or of international law, and of the
belles-lettres, by officers of the army with whom I became acquainted at
Old Camp Grant; Fort Craig, New Mexico, and other dismal holes—more than
I have ever known among gentlemen of leisure anywhere else. It was no
easy matter to study with ink drying into gum almost as soon as dipped
out by the pen, and paper cracking at the edges when folded or bent.
The newspapers of the day were eagerly perused—when they came; but those
from San Francisco were always from ten to fifteen days old, those from
New York about five to six weeks, and other cities any intermediate age
you please. The mail at first came every second Tuesday, but this was
increased soon to a weekly service, and on occasion, when chance
visitors reported some happening of importance, the commanding officer
would send a courier party to Tucson with instructions to the postmaster
there to deliver.
The temptations to drink and to gamble were indeed great, and those who
yielded and fell by the way-side numbered many of the most promising
youngsters in the army. Many a brilliant and noble fellow has succumbed
to the _ennui_ and gone down, wrecking a life full of promise for
himself and the service. It was hard for a man to study night and day
with the thermometer rarely under the nineties even in winter at noon,
and often climbing up to and over the 120 notch on the Fahrenheit scale
before the meridian of days between April 1st and October 15th; it was
hard to organize riding or hunting parties when all the horses had just
returned worn out by some rough scouting in the Pinal or Sierra Ancha.
There in the trader’s store was a pleasant, cool room, with a minimum of
flies, the latest papers, perfect quiet, genial companionship, cool
water in “ollas” swinging from the rafters, and covered by boards upon
which, in a thin layer of soil, grew a picturesque mantle of green
barley, and, on a table conveniently near, cans of lemon-sugar, tumblers
and spoons, and one or two packs of cards. My readers must not expect me
to mention ice or fruits. I am not describing Delmonico’s; I am writing
of Old Camp Grant, and I am painting the old hole in the most rosy
colors I can employ. Ice was unheard of, and no matter how high the
mercury climbed or how stifling might be the sirocco from Sonora, the
best we could do was to cool water by evaporation in “ollas” of
earthenware, manufactured by the Papago Indians living at the ruined
mission of San Xavier, above Tucson.
To revert to the matter of drinking and gambling. There is scarcely any
of either at the present day in the regular army. Many things have
combined to bring about such a desirable change, the principal, in my
opinion, being the railroads which have penetrated and transformed the
great American continent, placing comforts and luxuries within reach of
officers and men, and absorbing more of their pay as well as bringing
them within touch of civilization and its attendant restraints. Of the
two vices, drunkenness was by all odds the preferable one. For a
drunkard, one can have some pity, because he is his own worst enemy,
and, at the worst, there is hope for his regeneration, while there is
absolutely none for the gambler, who lives upon the misfortunes and lack
of shrewdness of his comrades. There are many who believe, or affect to
believe, in gaming for the excitement of the thing and not for the money
involved. There may be such a thing, but I do not credit its existence.
However, the greatest danger in gambling lay in the waste of time rather
than in the loss of money, which loss rarely amounted to very great
sums, although officers could not well afford to lose anything.
I well remember one great game, played by a party of my friends—but at
Fort Laramie, Wyoming, and not in Arizona—which illustrates this better
than I can describe. It was an all-night game—ten cents to come in and a
quarter limit—and there was no small amount of engineering skill shown
before the first call for reveille separated the party. “Fellows,” said
one of the quartette, in speaking of it some days afterward, “I tell you
it was a struggle of the giants, and when the smoke of battle cleared
away, I found I’d lost two dollars and seventy-five cents.”
As it presents itself to my recollection now, our life wasn’t so very
monotonous; there was always something going on to interest and
instruct, even if it didn’t amuse or enliven.
“Corporal Dile’s har-r-r-se’s bit by a ratthler ’n th’ aff hind leg”;
and, of course, everybody turns out and gets down to the stables as fast
as possible, each with his own prescription, which are one and all
discarded for the great Mexican panacea of a poultice of the
“golondrina” weed. Several times I have seen this used, successfully and
unsuccessfully, and I do not believe in its vaunted efficacy by any
means.
“Oscar Hutton’s bin kicked ’n th’ jaw by a mewel.” Hutton was one of the
post guides, a very good and brave man. His jaw was hopelessly crushed
by a blow from the lightning hoofs of a miserable “bronco” mule, and
poor Hutton never recovered from the shock. He died not long after, and,
in my opinion, quite as much from chagrin at being outwitted as from the
injury inflicted.
Hutton had had a wonderful experience in the meanest parts of our great
country—and be it known that Uncle Sam can hold his own with any prince
or potentate on God’s footstool in the matter of mean desert land. All
over the great interior basin west of the Rockies Hutton had wandered in
the employ of the United States with some of the Government surveying
parties. Now he was at the mouth of the Virgin, where there is a salt
mine with slabs two and three feet thick, as clear as crystal; next he
was a wanderer in the dreaded “Death Valley,” below the sea-level, where
there is no sign of animal life save the quickly darting lizard, or the
vagrant duck whose flesh is bitter from the water of “soda” lakes, which
offer to the wanderer all the comforts of a Chinese laundry, but not one
of those of a home. At that time I only knew of these dismal places from
the relation of Hutton, to which I listened open-mouthed, but since then
I have had some personal acquaintance, and can aver that in naught did
he overlap the truth. The ground is covered for miles with pure
baking-soda—I decline to specify what brand, as I am not writing this as
an advertisement, and my readers can consult individual preference if
they feel so disposed—which rises in a cloud of dry, irritating dust
above the horse’s houghs, and if agitated by the hot winds, excoriates
the eyes, throat, nostrils, and ears of the unfortunate who may find
himself there. Now and then one discerns in the dim distance such a
deceiving body of water as the “Soda Lake,” which tastes like soapsuds,
and nourishes no living thing save the worthless ducks spoken of, whose
flesh is uneatable except to save one from starvation.
Hutton had seen so much hardship that it was natural to expect him to be
meek and modest in his ideas and demeanor, but he was, on the contrary,
decidedly vain and conceited, and upon such a small matter that it ought
not really to count against him. He had six toes on each foot, a fact to
which he adverted with pride. “Bee gosh,” he would say, “there hain’t
ennuther man ’n th’ hull dog-goned outfit’s got ez menny toes’s me.”
Then there was the excitement at Felmer’s ranch, three miles above the
post. Felmer was the post blacksmith, and lived in a little ranch in the
fertile “bottom” of the San Pedro, where he raised a “patch” of barley
and garden-truck for sale to the garrison. He was a Russian or a
Polynesian or a Turk or a Theosophist or something—he had lived in so
many portions of the world’s surface that I never could keep track of
him. I distinctly remember that he was born in Germany, had lived in
Russia or in the German provinces close to Poland, and had thence
travelled everywhere. He had married an Apache squaw, and from her
learned the language of her people. She was now dead, but Joe was quite
proud of his ability to cope with all the Apaches in Arizona, and in
being a match for them in every wile. One hot day—all the days were
comfortably warm, but this was a “scorcher”—there was a sale of
condemned Government stock, and Joe bought a mule, which the auctioneer
facetiously suggested should be called “Lazarus,” he had so many sores
all over his body. But Joe bought him, perfectly indifferent to the
scoffs and sneers of the by-standers. “Don’t you think the Apaches may
get him?” I ventured to inquire. “That’s jest what I’m keeping him fur;
_bait_—unnerstan’? ’N Apache ’ll come down ’n my alfalfy field ’n git
thet mewel, ’n fust thing you know thar’ll be a joke on _somebody_.”
Felmer was a first-class shot, and we naturally supposed that the joke
would be on the deluded savage who might sneak down to ride away with
such a crow-bait, and would become the mark for an unerring rifle. But
it was not so to be. The wretched quadruped had his shoes pulled off,
and was then turned loose in alfalfa and young barley, to his evident
enjoyment and benefit. Some time had passed, and we had almost forgotten
to twit Felmer about his bargain. It’s a very thin joke that cannot be
made to last five or six weeks in such a secluded spot as Old Camp
Grant, and, for that reason, at least a month must have elapsed when,
one bright Sunday afternoon, Felmer was rudely aroused from his siesta
by the noise of guns and the voices of his Mexican herders crying:
“Apaches! Apaches!” And there they were, sure enough, and on top of that
sick, broken-down cast-off of the quartermaster’s department—three of
them, each as big as the side of a house, and poor Joe so dazed that for
several minutes he couldn’t fire a shot.
The two bucks in front were kicking their heels into the mule’s ribs,
and the man in rear had passed a hair lariat under the mule’s tail, and
was sawing away for dear life. And the mule? Well, the mule wasn’t idle
by any means, but putting in his best licks in getting over the ground,
jumping “arroyos” and rocks, charging into and over nopals and chollas
and mesquite, and fast leaving behind him the valley of the San Pedro,
and getting into the foot-hills of the Pinaleno Range.
CHAPTER II.
STRANGE VISITORS—SOME APACHE CUSTOMS—MEXICAN CAPTIVES—SPEEDY AND THE
GHOST—THE ATTACK UPON KENNEDY AND ISRAEL’S TRAIN—FINDING THE
BODIES—THE DEAD APACHE—A FRONTIER BURIAL—HOW LIEUTENANT YEATON
RECEIVED HIS DEATH WOUND—ON THE TRAIL WITH LIEUTENANT
CUSHING—REVENGE IS SWEET.
We had all sorts of visitors from the adjacent country. The first I
remember was a squaw whose nose had been cut off by a brutal and jealous
husband. The woman was not at all bad looking, and there was not a man
at the post who did not feel sorry for the unfortunate who, for some
dereliction, real or imagined, had been so savagely disfigured.
This shocking mode of punishment, in which, by the way, the Apache
resembled some of the nations of antiquity, prevailed in full vigor
until after General Crook had subjected this fierce tribe to law and
discipline, and the first, or, at least, among the very first,
regulations he laid down for their guidance was that the women of the
tribe must be treated just as kindly as the men, and each and every
infraction of the rule was threatened with the severest punishment the
whole military force could inflict. Since then the practice has wholly
died out among both the Apaches and the Hualpais.
Then there came an old withered crone, leading a woman somewhat younger,
but still shrivelled with the life of care and drudgery which falls to
the lot of the Apache matron, and a third member of this interesting
party, a boy ten or twelve years old, who was suffering from the bite of
a rattlesnake, which had caused his right leg to shrink and decay. The
medicine-men of their band had sung vigorously and applied such medicine
as they thought best suited to the case, but it proved to be beyond
their skill, and they had advised this journey to Camp Grant, to see
what the white man’s medicine could do for the sufferer.
Still another interesting picture framed in my memory is that of the
bent old dotard who wished to surrender on account of frankly confessed
impotency to remain longer on the war-path. Battles were for young men
only; as people grew older they got more sense, and all should live as
brothers. This world was large enough for everybody, and there should be
enough to eat for the Indians and the white men, too. There were men
whose hearts were hard and who would not listen to reason; they wished
to fight, but as for himself, his legs could not climb the mountains any
longer, and the thorns were bad when they scratched his skin. His heart
was good, and so long as this stone which he placed on the ground should
last he wanted to let the Great Father know that he meant to be his
friend. Had his brother, the post commander, any tobacco?
Many an hour did I sit by the side of our friend and brother, watching
him chip out arrow-heads from fragments of beer bottles, or admiring the
dexterity with which he rubbed two sticks together to produce flame.
Matches were his greatest treasure, and he was never tired begging for
them, and as soon as obtained, he would wrap them up carefully in a
piece of buckskin to screen from the weather. But we never gave him
reason to suspect that our generosity was running away with our
judgment. We were careful not to give him any after we found out that he
could make fire so speedily and in a manner so strange, and which we
were never tired of seeing.
These members of the tribe were all kept as prisoners, more to prevent
communication with the enemy than from any suspected intention of
attempting an escape. They were perfectly contented, were well fed, had
no more to do than was absolutely good for them in the way of exercise,
and except that they had to sleep under the eyes of the sentinels at
night, were as free as any one else in the garrison. Once or twice
Indian couriers came over from Camp Apache—or Thomas, as it was then
called—in the Sierra Blanca. Those whom I first saw were almost naked,
their only clothing being a muslin loin-cloth, a pair of pointed-toed
moccasins, and a hat of hawk feathers. They had no arms but lances and
bows and arrows. One of them bore a small round shield of raw-hide
decked with eagle plumage, another had a pretty fiddle made of a joint
of the bamboo-like stalk of the century plant, and a third had a pack of
monte cards, cut out of dried pony skin and painted to represent rudely
the figures in the four suits.
Their lank, long black hair, held back from the eyes by bands of red
flannel; their superb chests, expanded by constant exercise in the lofty
mountains, and their strongly muscled legs confirmed all that I had
already learned of their powers of endurance from the half-breed
Mexicans and the tame Apaches at the post—people like Manuel Duran,
Nicolas, and Francisco, who were what were then known as tame Apaches,
and who had never lived with the others in the hills, but belonged to a
section which had made peace with the whites many years previously and
had never broken it; or escaped captives like José Maria, José de Leon,
Victor Ruiz, or Antonio Besias, who had been torn away from their homes
in Sonora at an early age, and had lived so long with the savages that
they had become thoroughly conversant with all their ideas and customs
as well as their language. Nearly all that class of interpreters and
guides are now dead. Each had a wonderful history, well worthy of
recital, but I cannot allow myself to be tempted into a more extended
reference to any of them at this moment.
The fact that the post trader had just received a stock of _new_ goods
meant two things—it meant that he had made a mistake in his order and
received a consignment different from the _old_ goods which he had
hitherto taken so much pride in keeping upon his shelves, and it meant
that the paymaster was about to pay us a visit, and leave a share of
Uncle Sam’s money in the country.
There were two assistants in the store, Paul and Speedy.
Paul was getting along in years, but Speedy was young and bright. Paul
had at one period in his life possessed some intelligence and a fair
education, but whiskey, cards, and tobacco had long ago blunted what
faculties he could claim, and left him a poor hulk, working for his
board and drinks at such odd jobs as there were to do about the
premises. He had been taught the trade of cabinet-making in Strassburg,
and when in good humor, and not too drunk, would join and polish, carve
and inlay boxes, made of the wood of the mesquite, madroño, manzanita,
ash, and walnut, which would delight the eyes of the most critical.
Speedy was the most active man about the post. He was one of our best
runners, and by all odds the best swimmer in the cool, deep pools which
the San Pedro formed where it came up out of the sands a short distance
below the officers’ quarters, and where we often bathed in the early
evening hours, with some one of the party on guard, because the lurking
Apaches were always a standing menace in that part of Arizona.
I do not know what has become of Speedy. He was an exceptionally good
man in many ways, and if not well educated, made up in native
intelligence what others more fortunate get from books. From a Yankee
father he inherited the Maine shrewdness in money matters and a keenness
in seeing the best points in a bargain. A Spanish mother endowed him
with a fund of gentle politeness and good manners.
When he came to bid me good-by and tell me that he had opened a “Monte
Pio,” or pawnbroker’s shop, in Tucson, I ventured to give him a little
good advice.
“You must be careful of your money, Speedy. Pawnbroking is a risky
business. You’ll be likely to have a great deal of unsalable stuff left
on your hands, and it don’t look to me as if five per cent. was enough
interest to charge. The laws of New York, I believe, allow one to charge
twenty per cent. per annum.”
“Cap., what’s per annum?”
“Why, every year, of course.”
“Oh, but you see mine is five per cent. a week.”
Speedy was the only man I ever knew who had really seen a ghost. As he
described it to us, it had much the appearance of a “human,” and was
mounted on a pretty good specimen of a Sonora plug, and was arrayed in a
suit of white canvas, with white helmet, green veil, blue goggles, and
red side whiskers. It didn’t say a word to my friend, but gave him a
decidedly cold stare, which was all that Speedy cared to wait for before
he broke for the brush. A hundred yards or so in rear there was a train
of pack mules, laden with cot frames, bath-tubs, hat boxes, and other
trumpery, which may or may not have had something to do with the ghost
in advance. Speedy and his mule were too agitated to stop to ask
questions, and continued on into Hermosillo.
Information received about this time from Sonora reported that an
English “lud” was “roughing it” in and about the Yaqui country, and it
is just possible that he could have given much information about the
apparition had it been demanded; but Speedy persisted in his belief that
he had had a “call” from the other world, and was sorely depressed for
several weeks.
Speedy rendered valuable help in our self-imposed task of digging in the
“ruins” alongside of our quarters—vestiges of an occupancy by a
pre-historic race, allied to the Pueblos of the Rio Grande or to the
Pimas and Papagoes.
Broken pottery, painted and unpainted, a flint knife or two, some
arrow-heads, three or four stone hatchets, and more of the same sort,
were our sole reward for much hard work. The great question which
wrought us up to fever heat was, Who were these inhabitants? Felmer
promptly decided that they were Phœnicians—upon what grounds I do not
know, and it is very doubtful if Felmer knew either—but Oscar Hutton
“’lowed they mout ’a’ bin some o’ them Egyptian niggers as built the
pyramids in th’ Bible.”
The paymaster had come and gone; the soldiers had spent their last
dollar; the last “pay-day drunk” had been rounded up and was now on his
way to the guard-house, muttering a maudlin defiance to Erin’s foes; the
sun was shining with scorching heat down upon the bed of pebbles which
formed the parade-ground; the flag hung limp and listless from the pudgy
staff; the horses were out on herd; the scarlet-shouldered black-birds,
the cardinals, the sinsontes, and the jays had sought the deepest
shadows; there was no sound to drown the insistent buzz of the
aggravating flies or the voice of the Recorder of the Garrison Court
just assembled, which was trying Privates A. and B. and C. and D. and
others, names and rank now forgotten, for having “then and there,” “on
or about,” and “at or near” the post of Camp Grant, Arizona, committed
sundry and divers crimes against the law and regulations—when, straight
across the parade, with the swiftness of a frightened deer, there ran a
half or three-quarters naked Mexican, straight to the door of the
“comandante’s” quarters.
He was almost barefooted, the shoes he had on being in splinters. His
trousers had been scratched so by the thorns and briars that only rags
were now pendent from his waist. His hat had been dropped in his
terrified flight from some unexplained danger, which the wan face,
almost concealed by matted locks, and the shirt covered with blood still
flowing freely from a wound in the chest, conclusively showed to have
been an Apache ambuscade.
With faltering voice and in broken accents the sufferer explained that
he was one of a party of more than thirty Mexicans coming up from Tucson
to work on the ranch of Kennedy and Israel, who lived about a mile from
our post down the San Pedro. There were a number of women and several
children with the train, and not a soul had the slightest suspicion of
danger, when suddenly, on the head of the slope leading up to the long
“mesa” just this side of the Cañon del Oro, they had found themselves
surrounded on three sides by a party of Apaches, whose strength was
variously put at from thirty to fifty warriors.
The Americans and Mexicans made the best fight possible, and succeeded
in keeping back the savages until the women and children had reached a
place of comparative safety; but both Kennedy and Israel were killed,
and a number of others killed or wounded, our informant being one of the
latter, with a severe cut in the left breast, where a bullet had
ploughed round his ribs without doing very serious damage. The Apaches
fell to plundering the wagons, which were loaded with the general
supplies that ranchmen were in those days compelled to keep in stock,
for feeding the numbers of employees whom they had to retain to
cultivate their fields, as well as to guard them, and the Mexicans,
seeing this, made off as fast as their legs could carry them, under the
guidance of such of their party as were familiar with the trails leading
across the Santa Catalina range to the San Pedro and Camp Grant. One of
these trails ran by way of Apache Springs at the northern extremity of
the range, and was easy of travel, so that most of the people were safe,
but we were strongly urged to lose no time in getting round by the
longer road, along which the Apaches were believed to have pursued a few
men.
The Mexican, Domingo, had seen Sergeants Warfield and Mott, two old
veterans, on his way through the post, and they, without waiting for
orders, had the herd run in and saddles got out in anticipation of what
their experience taught them was sure to come. Every man who could be
put on horseback was mounted at once, without regard to his company or
regiment, and in less than twenty minutes the first detachment was
crossing the San Pedro and entering the long defile known as the Santa
Catalina Cañon—not very well equipped for a prolonged campaign, perhaps,
as some of the men had no water in canteens and others had only a
handful of crackers for rations, but that made no difference. Our
business was to rescue women and children surrounded by savages, and to
do it with the least delay possible. At least, that was the way Colonel
Dubois reasoned on the subject, and we had only our duty to do—obey
orders.
A second detachment would follow after us, with a wagon containing water
in kegs, rations for ten days, medical supplies, blankets, and every
other essential for making such a scout as might become necessary.
Forward! was the word, and every heel struck flank and every horse
pressed upon the bit. Do our best, we couldn’t make very rapid progress
through the cañon, which for its total length of twelve miles was heavy
with shifting sand.
Wherever there was a stretch of hard pan, no matter how short, we got
the best time out of it that was possible. The distance seemed
interminable, but we pressed on, passing the Four-mile Walnut, on past
the Cottonwood, slipping along without a word under the lofty walls
which screened us from the rays of the sun, although the afternoon was
still young. But in much less time than we had a right to expect we had
reached the end of the bad road, and halted for a minute to have all
loose cinches retightened and everything made ready for rapid travelling
on to the Cañon del Oro.
In front of us stretched a broken, hilly country, bounded on the east
and west by the Tortolita and the Sierra Santa Catalina respectively.
The summer was upon us, but the glories of the springtime had not yet
faded from the face of the desert, which still displayed the splendors
of millions of golden crocuses, with countless odorless verbenas of
varied tints, and acres upon acres of nutritious grasses, at which our
horses nibbled every time we halted for a moment. The cañon of the Santa
Catalina for more than four miles of its length is no wider than an
ordinary street in a city, and is enclosed by walls rising one thousand
feet above the trail. Wherever a foothold could be found, there the
thorny-branched giant cactus stood sentinel, or the prickly plates of
the nopal matted the face of the escarpment. High up on the wall of the
cañon, one of the most prominent of the pitahayas or giant cacti had
been transfixed by the true aim of an Apache arrow, buried up to the
feathers.
For the beauties or eccentricities of nature we had no eyes. All that we
cared to know was how long it would take to put us where the train had
been ambushed and destroyed. So, on we pushed, taking a very brisk gait,
and covering the ground with rapidity.
The sun was going down in a blaze of scarlet and gold behind the
Tortolita Range, the Cañon del Oro was yet several miles away, and still
no signs of the party of which we were in such anxious search. “They
must have been nearer the Cañon del Oro than the Mexican thought,” was
the general idea, for we had by this time gained the long mesa upon
which we had been led to believe we should see the ruins of the wagons.
We were now moving at a fast walk, in line, with carbines at an
“advance,” and everything ready for a fight to begin on either flank or
in front, as the case might be; but there was no enemy in sight. We
deployed as skirmishers, so as to cover as much ground as possible, and
pick up any dead body that might be lying behind the mesquite or the
palo verde which lined the road. A sense of gloom spread over the little
command, which had been hoping against hope to find the survivors alive
and the savages still at bay. But, though the coyote yelped to the moon,
and flocks of quail whirred through the air when raised from their
seclusion in the bushes, and funereal crows, perched upon the tops of
the pitahayas, croaked dismal salutations, there was no sound of the
human voices we longed to hear.
But don’t be too sure. Is that a coyote’s cry or the wail of a
fellow-creature in distress? A coyote, of course. Yes, it is, and no, it
isn’t. Every one had his own belief, and would tolerate no dissent.
“Hel-lup! Hel-lup! My God, hel-lup!” “This way, Mott! Keep the rest of
the men back there on the road.” In less than ten seconds we had reached
a small arroyo, not very deep, running parallel to the road and not
twenty yards from it, and there, weak and faint and covered with his own
blood, was our poor, unfortunate friend, Kennedy. He was in the full
possession of his faculties and able to recognize every one whom he knew
and to tell a coherent story. As to the first part of the attack, he
concurred with Domingo, but he furnished the additional information that
as soon as the Apaches saw that the greater number of the party had
withdrawn with the women and children, of whom there were more than
thirty all told, they made a bold charge to sweep down the little
rear-guard which had taken its stand behind the wagons. Kennedy was sure
that the Apaches had suffered severely, and told me where to look for
the body of the warrior who had killed his partner, Israel. Israel had
received a death-wound in the head which brought him to his knees, but
before he gave up the ghost his rifle, already in position at his
shoulder, was discharged and killed the tall, muscular young savage who
appeared to be leading the attack.
Kennedy kept up the unequal fight as long as he could, in spite of the
loss of the thumb of his left hand, shot off at the first volley; but
when the Mexicans at each side of him fell, he drew his knife, cut the
harness of the “wheeler” mule nearest him, sprang into the saddle, and
charged right through the Apaches advancing a second time. His boldness
disconcerted their aim, but they managed to plant an arrow in his breast
and another in the ribs of his mule, which needed no further urging to
break into a mad gallop over every rock and thorn in its front. Kennedy
could not hold the bridle with his left hand, and the pain in his lung
was excruciating—“Jes’ like ’s if I’d swallowed a coal o’ fire, boys,”
he managed to gasp, half inarticulately. But he had run the mule several
hundreds of yards, and was beginning to have a faint hope of escaping,
when a bullet from his pursuers struck its hind-quarters and pained and
frightened it so much that it bucked him over its head and plunged off
to one side among the cactus and mesquite, to be seen no more. Kennedy,
by great effort, reached the little arroyo in which we found him, and
where he had lain, dreading each sound and expecting each moment to hear
the Apaches coming to torture him to death. His fears were unfounded. As
it turned out, fortunately for all concerned, the Apaches could not
resist the temptation to plunder, and at once began the work of breaking
open and pilfering every box and bundle the wagons contained, forgetting
all about the Mexicans who had made their escape to the foot-hills, and
Kennedy, who lay so very, very near them.
Half a dozen good men were left under command of a sergeant to take care
of Kennedy, while the rest hurried forward to see what was to be seen
farther to the front.
It was a ghastly sight, one which in its details I should like to spare
my readers. There were the hot embers of the new wagons, the scattered
fragments of broken boxes, barrels, and packages of all sorts; copper
shells, arrows, bows, one or two broken rifles, torn and burned
clothing. There lay all that was mortal of poor Israel, stripped of
clothing, a small piece cut from the crown of the head, but thrown back
upon the corpse—the Apaches do not care much for scalping—his heart cut
out, but also thrown back near the corpse, which had been dragged to the
fire of the burning wagons and had been partly consumed; a lance wound
in the back, one or two arrow wounds—they may have been lance wounds,
too, but were more likely arrow wounds, the arrows which made them
having been burned out; there were plenty of arrows lying around—a
severe contusion under the left eye, where he had been hit perhaps with
the stock of a rifle or carbine, and the death wound from ear to ear,
through which the brain had oozed.
The face was as calm and resolute in death as Israel had been in life.
He belonged to a class of frontiersmen of which few representatives now
remain—the same class to which belonged men like Pete Kitchen, the
Duncans, of the San Pedro; Darrel Duppa and Jack Townsend, of the Agua
Fria; men whose lives were a romance of adventure and danger, unwritten
because they never frequented the towns, where the tenderfoot
correspondent would be more likely to fall in with some border
Munchausen, whose tales of privation and peril would be in the direct
ratio of the correspondent’s receptivity and credulity.
It was now too dark to do anything more, so we brought up Kennedy, who
seemed in such good spirits that we were certain he would pull through,
as we could not realize that he had been hit by an arrow at all, but
tried to console him with the notion that the small round hole in his
chest, from which little if any blood had flown, had been made by a
buck-shot or something like it. But Kennedy knew better. “No, boys,” he
said sadly, shaking his head, “it’s all up with me. I’m a goner. I know
it was an arrow, ’cause I broke the feather end off. I’m goin’ to die.”
Sentinels were posted behind the bushes, and the whole command sat down
to keep silent watch for the coming of the morrow. The Apaches might
double back—there was no knowing what they might do—and it was best to
be on our guard. The old rule of the frontier, as I learned it from men
like Joe Felmer, Oscar Hutton, and Manuel Duran, amounted to this: “When
you see Apache ‘sign,’ be _keerful_; ’n’ when you don’ see nary sign, be
_more_ keerful.”
The stars shone out in their grandest effulgence, and the feeble rays of
the moon were no added help to vision. There is only one region in the
whole world, Arizona, where the full majesty can be comprehended of that
text of Holy Writ which teaches: “The Heavens declare the glory of God,
and the firmament showeth His handiwork.” Midnight had almost come, when
the rumble of wheels, the rattle of harness, and the cracking of whips
heralded the approach of wagons and ambulance and the second detachment
of cavalry. They brought orders from Colonel Dubois to return to the
post as soon as the animals had had enough rest, and then as fast as
possible, to enable all to start in pursuit of the Apaches, whose trail
had been “cut” a mile or two above Felmer’s, showing that they had
crossed the Santa Catalina Range, and were making for the precipitous
country close to the head of the Aravaypa.
The coming day found our party astir and hard at work. First, we hunted
up the body of the Apache who had shot Israel. Lieutenant George Bacon,
First Cavalry, found it on a shelf of rock, in a ravine not a hundred
yards from where the white enemy lay, shot, as Israel was, through the
head. We did not disturb it, but as much cannot be averred of the hungry
and expectant coyotes and the raw-necked buzzards, which had already
begun to draw near.
The trail of the savages led straight toward the Santa Catalina, and a
hurried examination disclosed a very curious fact, which later on was of
great importance to the troops in pursuit. There had been a case of
patent medicine in the wagons, and the Apaches had drunk the contents of
the bottles, under the impression that they contained whiskey. The
result was that, as the signs showed, there were several of the Indians
seriously incapacitated from alcoholic stimulant of some kind, which had
served as the menstruum for the drugs of the nostrum. They had staggered
from cactus to cactus, falling into mesquite, in contempt of the thorns
on the branches, and had lain sprawled at full length in the sand,
oblivious of the danger incurred. It would have been a curious
experience for the raiders could we have arrived twenty-four hours
sooner.
Fully an hour was consumed in getting the horses and mules down to the
water in the Cañon del Oro, and in making a cup of coffee, for which
there was the water brought along in the kegs in the wagons. Everything
and everybody was all right, excepting Kennedy, who was beginning to act
and talk strangely; first exhilarated and then excited, petulant and
despondent. His sufferings were beginning to tell upon him, and he
manifested a strange aversion to being put in the same vehicle with a
dead man. We made the best arrangement possible for the comfort of our
wounded friend, for whom it seemed that the ambulance would be the
proper place. But the jolting and the upright position he was compelled
to take proved too much for him, and he begged to be allowed to recline
at full length in one of the wagons.
His request was granted at once; only, as it happened, he was lifted
into the wagon in which the stiff, stark corpse of Israel was glaring
stonily at the sky. A canvas ’paulin was stretched over the corpse, half
a dozen blankets spread out to make as soft a couch as could be
expected, and then Kennedy was lifted in, and the homeward march resumed
with rapid gait. Animals and men were equally anxious to leave far in
the rear a scene of such horror, and without whip or spur we rolled
rapidly over the gravelly “mesa,” until we got to the head of the Santa
Catalina Cañon, and even there we progressed satisfactorily, as,
notwithstanding the deep sand, it was all down grade into the post.
In crossing the San Pedro, the wagon in which Kennedy was riding gave a
lurch, throwing him to one side; to keep himself from being bumped
against the side, he grasped the first thing within reach, and this
happened to be the cold, clammy ankle of the corpse. One low moan, or,
rather, a groan, was all that showed Kennedy’s consciousness of the
undesirable companionship of his ride. The incident didn’t really make
very much difference, however, as his last hours were fast drawing near,
and Death had already summoned him. He breathed his last in the post
hospital before midnight. An autopsy revealed the presence of a piece of
headless arrow, four or five inches long, lodged in the left lung.
The funeral ceremonies did not take much time. There was no lumber in
that section of country for making coffins. Packing boxes, cracker
boxes, anything that could be utilized, were made to serve the purpose,
and generally none were used. The whole garrison turned out. A few words
from the Book of Common Prayer—“Man that is born of woman,” etc.; a few
clods of earth rattling down; then a layer of heavy rocks and spiny
cactus, to keep the coyotes from digging up the bones; more earth; and
all was over, excepting the getting ready for the pursuit.
This was to be prosecuted by Lieutenant Howard B. Cushing, an officer of
wonderful experience in Indian warfare, who with his troop, “F” of the
Third Cavalry, had killed more savages of the Apache tribe than any
other officer or troop of the United States Army has done before or
since. During the latter days of the preceding fall, 1869, he had struck
a crushing blow at the courage of the Apaches infesting the country
close to the Guadalupe Range in southwestern Texas, and had killed and
wounded many of the adults, and captured a number of children and a herd
of ponies.
But Lieutenant Franklin Yeaton, a brave and exceedingly able officer,
just out of West Point, was fatally wounded on our side, and the more
Cushing brooded over the matter, the hotter flamed his anger, until he
could stand it no longer, but resolved to slip back across country and
try his luck over again. He had hauled Yeaton and the rest of the
wounded for four marches on rudely improvised “travois” across the snow,
which lay unusually deep that winter, until he found a sheltered
camping-place near the Peñasco, a branch of the Pecos, where he left his
impedimenta under a strong guard, and with the freshest horses and men
turned back, rightly surmising that the hostiles would have given up
following him, and would be gathered in their ruined camp, bewailing the
loss of kindred.
He had guessed rightly, and at the earliest sign of morning in the east
was once again leading his men to the attack upon the Apaches, who, not
knowing what to make of such an utterly unexpected onslaught, fled in
abject terror, leaving many dead on the ground behind them.
All this did not exactly compensate for the loss of Yeaton, but it
served to let out some of Cushing’s superfluous wrath, and keep him from
exploding.
Cushing belonged to a family which won deserved renown during the War of
the Rebellion. One brother blew up the ram _Albemarle_; another died
most heroically at his post of duty on the battle-field of Gettysburg;
there was still another in the navy who died in service, I do not
remember where; and the one of whom I am speaking, who was soon to die
at the hands of the Apaches, and deserves more than a passing word.
He was about five feet seven in height, spare, sinewy, active as a cat;
slightly stoop-shouldered, sandy complexioned, keen gray or bluish-gray
eyes, which looked you through when he spoke and gave a slight hint of
the determination, coolness, and energy which had made his name famous
all over the southwestern border. There is an alley named after him in
Tucson, and there is, or was, when last I saw it, a tumble-down,
worm-eaten board to mark his grave, and that was all to show where the
great American nation had deposited the remains of one of its bravest.
But I am anticipating altogether too much, and should be getting ready
to follow the trail of the marauders. Cushing didn’t seem to be in any
particular hurry about starting, and I soon learned that he intended
taking his ease about it, as he wanted to let the Indians be thrown off
their guard completely and imagine that the whites were not following
their trail. Let them once suspect that a party was in pursuit, and they
would surely break up their trail and scatter like quail, and no one
then could hope to do anything with them.
Every hoof was carefully looked at, and every shoe tacked on tight; a
few extra shoes for the fore-feet were taken along in the pack train,
with fifteen days’ rations of coffee, hard tack, and bacon, and one
hundred rounds of ammunition.
All that could be extracted from the Mexicans in the way of information
was pondered over, and submitted to the consideration of Felmer and
Manuel Duran, the guides who were to conduct the column. Some of the
Mexican men were composed and fully recovered from the effects of their
terrible experience, and those who were wounded were doing well; but the
women still trembled at the mere name of an Apache, and several of them
did nothing but tell their beads in gratitude to Heaven for the miracle
of their escape.
In Arizona, New Mexico, and southwestern Texas it has been remarked that
one has to ascend the bed of a stream in order to get water. This rule
is especially true of the Aravaypa. There is not a drop, as a usual
thing, at its mouth, but if you ascend the cañon five or six miles, the
current trickles above the sand, and a mile or two more will bring you
to a stream of very respectable dimensions, flowing over rocky boulders
of good size, between towering walls which screen from the sun, and amid
scenery which is picturesque, romantic, and awe-inspiring. The raiders
left the cañon of the Aravaypa at its most precipitous part, not far
from the gypsum out-crop, and made a straight shoot for the mouth of the
San Carlos. This, however, was only a blind, and inside of three miles
there was no trail left, certainly not going in the direction of Mount
Turnbull.
Manuel Duran was not at all worried; he was an Apache himself, and none
of the tricks of the trade had the slightest effect upon his equanimity.
He looked over the ground carefully. Ah! here is a stone which has been
overturned in its place, and here some one has cut that branch of
mesquite; and here—look! we have it, the shod-hoof track of one of
Israel’s mules! There is nothing the matter at all. The Apaches have
merely scattered and turned, and instead of going toward the junction of
the Gila and the San Carlos, have bent to the west and started straight
for the mouth of the San Pedro, going down by the head of Deer Creek,
and over to the Rock Creek, which rises in the “Dos Narices” Mountain,
not twelve miles from Grant itself. Patient search, watching every blade
of grass, every stone or bush, and marching constantly, took the command
to the mouth of the San Pedro, across the Gila, up to the head of the
Disappointment Creek, in the Mescal Mountains, and over into the
foot-hills of the Pinal—and not into the foot-hills merely, but right
across the range at its highest point.
The Apaches were evidently a trifle nervous, and wanted to make as big a
circuit as possible to bewilder pursuers; but all their dodges were
vain. From the top of the Pinal a smoke was detected rising in the
valley to the north and east, and shortly afterward the evidence that a
party of squaws and children, laden with steamed mescal, had joined the
raiders, and no doubt were to remain with them until they got home, if
they were not already home.
Cushing would hardly wait till the sun had hidden behind the
Superstition Mountains or the Matitzal before he gave the order to move
on. Manuel was more prudent, and not inclined to risk anything by undue
haste.
He would wait all night before he would risk disappointment in an attack
upon an enemy whom he had followed so far. Manuel wouldn’t allow any of
the Americans to come near while he made his preparations for peeping
over the crest of the “divide.” Tying a large wisp of palmilla or bear’s
grass about his head, he crawled or wriggled on hands and knees to the
position giving the best view down the valley, and made all the
observations desired.
The night was long and cold and dark, and the men had been at least an
hour in position overlooking the smouldering fires of the enemy, and
ready to begin the attack the moment that it should be light enough to
see one’s hand in front of him, when an accidental occurrence
precipitated an engagement.
One of the old men—one of the party of mescal gatherers who had joined
the returning war-party—felt cold and arose from his couch to stir the
embers into a blaze. The light played fitfully upon his sharp features
and gaunt form, disclosing every muscle.
To get some additional fuel, he advanced toward the spot where Cushing
crouched down awaiting the favorable moment for giving the signal to
fire. The savage suspects something, peers ahead a little, and is
satisfied that there is danger close by. He turns to escape, crying out
that the Americans have come, and awakening all in the camp.
The soldiers raised a terrific yell and poured in a volley which laid
low a number of the Apaches; the latter scarcely tried to fight in the
place where they stood, as the light of the fire made their presence
perfectly plain to the attacking party. So their first idea was to seek
a shelter in the rocks from which to pick off the advancing skirmishers.
In this they were unsuccessful, and death and ruin rained down upon
them. They made the best fight they could, but they could do nothing.
Manuel saw something curious rushing past him in the gloom. He brought
rifle to shoulder and fired, and, as it turned out, killed two at one
shot—a great strong warrior, and the little boy of five or six years old
whom he had seized, and was trying to hurry to a place of safety,
perched upon his shoulders.
It was a ghastly spectacle, a field of blood won with but slight loss to
ourselves. But I do not care to dilate upon the scene, as it is my
intention to give only a meagre outline description of what Arizona was
like prior to the assignment of General Crook to the command. The
captured women and boys stated they were a band of Pinals who had just
returned from a raid down into Sonora before making the attack upon the
wagons of Kennedy and Israel. Some of their bravest warriors were along,
and they would have made a determined fight had they not all been more
or less under the influence of the stuff they had swallowed out of the
bottles captured with the train. Many had been very drunk, and all had
been sickened, and were not in condition to look out for surprise as
they ordinarily did. They had thought that by doubling across the
country from point to point, any Americans who might try to follow would
surely be put off the scent; they did not know that there were Apaches
with the soldiers.
CHAPTER III.
THE RETURN TO CAMP GRANT—LANCED TO DEATH BY APACHES—THE KILLING OF
MILLER AND TAPPAN—COMPANY QUARTERS—APACHE CAPTIVES—THE
CLOUD-BURST—APACHE CORN-FIELDS—MEETING COLONEL SANFORD—ENTRAPPED IN
AN APACHE AMBUSCADE—AN OLD-TIMER’S REMINISCENCES OF TUCSON—FUNERAL
CROSSES ON THE ROADSIDE—PADRE EUSEBIO KINO—FIRST VIEW OF TUCSON—THE
“SHOO FLY” RESTAURANT.
Of the return march very little need be said. The story would become too
long, and there would be needless repetition if an attempt were to be
made to describe each scout in detail. There are others to come of much
more importance, and covering the same region, so that the reader will
lose nothing by the omission.
There was the usual amount of rough mountain climbing, wearing out shoes
and patience and nerve strength all at one and the same time; there was
the usual deprivation of water to be expected in the arid wastes of
southern Arizona, where springs are few and far between; there were the
usual tricks for getting along without much to drink, such as putting a
pebble or twig in the mouth to induce a more copious flow of saliva; and
when camp was made and the water was found to be not all that it might
be, there were other tricks for cleaning it, or, at least, causing a
deposition of the earthy matter held in suspension, by cutting up a few
plates of the nopal and letting them remain in the kettle for a short
time, until their mucilaginous juice had precipitated everything. But a
still better plan was to improve the good springs, which was a labor of
love with officers and men, and many a fine water hole in Arizona has
been the scene of much hard work in digging out, building up with
cracker boxes or something to hold the water and keep it from soaking
into the earth.
Camp Grant was reached at last, and the prisoners turned over to the
care of the guard, and Lieutenant Cushing, his first duty in the
Territory accomplished with so much credit to himself and his men, made
ready to start out on another and a longer trip just as soon as the
signal should be given by the post commander.
Our troop was peculiarly situated. It had a second mount of ponies,
captured from the Apaches against whom Cushing had done such good
service in southwestern Texas. Orders came down in due time from San
Francisco to turn them in and have them sold by the quartermaster; but
until these orders came—and owing to the slowness of mail communications
in those days, they did not come for several months—we had the advantage
of being able to do nearly twice as much work as troops less fortunately
placed.
The humdrum life of any post in Arizona in those days was enough to
drive one crazy. The heat in most of them became simply unendurable,
although here the great dryness of the atmosphere proved a benefit. Had
the air been humid, very few of our garrison would now be alive to tell
of temperatures of one hundred and twenty and over, and of days during
the whole twenty-four hours of which the thermometer did not register
below the one hundred notch.
There was a story current that the heat had one time become so excessive
that two thermometers had to be strapped together to let the mercury
have room to climb. That was before my arrival, and is something for
which I do not care to vouch. I give the story as it was given to me by
my friend, Jack Long, of whom I am soon to speak.
In every description of Arizona that I have ever seen, and I claim to be
familiar with most if not all that has appeared in print, there occurs
the story of the soldier who came back to Fort Yuma after his blankets,
finding the next world too cold to suit him. I make reference to the
story because many worthy people would find it hard to believe that a
man had been in Arizona who did not tell this story in his first
chapter, but it has grown to be such a mouldy military chestnut that I
may be pardoned for omitting it.
There were all kinds of methods of killing the hours. One that
interested everybody for a while was the battles which we stirred up
between the nests of red and black ants, which could be found in plenty
and of great size close to the post. I have seen the nests in question
three or four feet high, and not less than six feet long, crowded with
industrious population. The way to start the battle was to make a hole
in each nest and insert cans which had lately been emptied of peaches or
other sweets.
These would soon fill with the battalions of the two colors, and could
then be poured into a basin, where the combat _à outrance_ never failed
to begin at once. The red ants were much the braver, and one of that
color would tackle two, and even three, of the black. If the rumpus
lasted for any length of time, queens would appear, as if to superintend
what was going on. At least, that was our impression when we saw the
large-bodied, yellow-plush insects sallying from the depths of the
nests.
We had not been back in the post a week before we had something to talk
about. A Mexican who was doing some work for the Government came up to
confer with the commanding officer as to details. He left the adjutant’s
office before mid-day, and had not gone one thousand yards—less, indeed,
than rifle-shot—from the door, when an Apache, lurking in ambush behind
a clump of palmilla, pierced him through and through with a lance, and
left him dead, weltering in his own blood. To attempt pursuit was worse
than useless, and all we could do was to bury the victim.
It was this peculiarity of the Apaches that made them such a terror to
all who came in contact with them, and had compelled the King of Spain
to maintain a force of four thousand dragoons to keep in check a tribe
of naked savages, who scorned to wear any protection against the bullets
of the Castilians, who would not fight when pursued, but scattered like
their own crested mountain quail, and then hovered on the flanks of the
whites, and were far more formidable when dispersed than when they were
moving in compact bodies. This was simply the best military policy for
the Apaches to adopt—wear out the enemy by vexatious tactics, and by
having the pursuit degenerate into a will-o’-th’-wisp chase. The Apaches
could find food on every hillside, and the water-holes, springs, and
flowing streams far up in the mountains were perfectly well known to
them.
The Caucasian troops, of whatever nationality, would wander about,
half-crazed with thirst, and maddened by the heat of the day or chilled
by the cold winds of night in the mountains, and unable to tell which
plants were of value as food and which were not.
The Apache was in no sense a coward. He knew his business, and played
his cards to suit himself. He never lost a shot, and never lost a
warrior in a fight where a brisk run across the nearest ridge would save
his life and exhaust the heavily clad soldier who endeavored to catch
him. Apaches in groups of two and three, and even individual Apaches,
were wont to steal in close to the military posts and ranchos, and hide
behind some sheltering rock, or upon the summit of some conveniently
situated hill, and there remain for days, scanning the movements of the
Americans below, and waiting for a chance to stampede a herd, or kill a
herder or two, or “jump” a wagon-train.
They knew how to disguise themselves so thoroughly that one might almost
step upon a warrior thus occupied before he could detect his presence.
Stripped naked, with head and shoulders wrapped up in a bundle of yucca
shoots or “sacaton” grass, and with body rubbed over with the clay or
sand along which it wriggled as sinuously and as venomously as the
rattler itself, the Apache could and did approach to within ear-shot of
the whites, and even entered the enclosures of the military camps, as at
Grant and Crittenden, where we on several occasions discovered his
foot-prints alongside the “ollas,” or water-jars.
On such occasions he preferred to employ his lance or bow, because these
made no sound, and half or even a whole day might elapse before the
stiffened and bloody corpse of the herder or wagoner would be found, and
the presence of Indians in the vicinity become known. At least twenty
such examples could be given from my own knowledge, occurring at
Prescott, Tucson, Camp Grant, Camp Crittenden, Tres Alamos, Florence,
Williamson’s Valley, and elsewhere. They were regarded as the natural
features of the country, and every settler rather expected them as a
matter of course. Well did Torquemada, the Spanish writer (A.D. 1709),
deplore the inability of the Spaniards to make headway against this
tribe of naked savages.
Californians old enough to remember the days when San Francisco had a
Mining Stock Exchange, may recall the names of Lent and Harpending, who
were two of the most prominent of the members. An expedition, equipped
at the expense of these gentlemen, made its way into Arizona to examine
the mining “prospects” discovered in the vicinity of Fort Bowie. They
had to come overland, of course, as there were no railroads, and wagons
had to be taken from Los Angeles, the terminal point of steamer
navigation, unless people preferred to keep on down to San Diego, and
then cross the desert, via Fort Yuma, and on up the dusty valley of the
Gila River to Tucson or Florence. The party of which I am now speaking
was under the command of two gentlemen, one named Gatchell and the other
Curtis, from the Comstock Mines in Nevada, and had reached and passed
the picturesque little adobe town of Florence, on the Gila, and was
progressing finely on the road toward Tucson, when “Cocheis,” the bold
leader of the Chiricahuas, on his march up from Sonora to trade stolen
horses and have a talk with the Pinals, swooped down upon them. It was
the old, old Arizona story. No one suspected danger, because there had
been no signs of Indians on the trip since leaving the villages of the
peaceful Pimas, on the Gila, near Maricopa Wells.
It was a perfect duplication of the Kennedy-Israel affair, almost to the
slightest details. Mr. Curtis received a bad wound in the lungs. Mr.
Gatchell was also wounded, but how severely I cannot remember, for the
very good reason that there was so much of that kind of thing going on
during the period of my stay at Camp Grant that it is really impossible
to avoid mixing up some of the minor details of the different incidents
so closely resembling one another.
When this party reached the post of Camp Grant they could easily have
demanded the first prize at a tramp show; they were not clothed in
rags—they were not clothed in anything. When they escaped from the
wagon-train they were wearing nothing but underclothing, on account of
the excessive heat of the day; when they got into Camp Grant most of the
underwear had disappeared, torn off by the cactus, palo verde, mesquite,
mescal, and other thorny vegetation run against in their flight. Their
feet evidenced the rough, stony nature of the ground over which they had
tramped and bumped, and thorns stuck in their legs, feet, and arms.
There was not much done for these poor wretches, all of whom seemed to
be gentlemen of education and refinement. We shared the misery of the
post with them, which was about all we could pretend to do. Vacant rooms
were found for them in the Israel ranch, and there they stayed for a few
days, just long enough for every one to catch the fever.
Before we start out in pursuit of the attacking Apaches, let me relate
the story told all over southern Arizona about the spot where this
Gatchell-Curtis train had been surprised. It was known as the scene of
the ambuscade of the Miller-Tappan detail, and frontier tale-tellers
used to while away the sultry hours immediately after the setting of the
sun in relating how the soldiers under Carroll had been ambushed and
scattered by the onslaught of the Apaches, their commander, Lieutenant
Carroll, killed at the first fire. One of the survivors became separated
from his comrades in their headlong flight into Camp Grant. What became
of him was never fully known, but he had been seen to fall wounded in
the head or face, and the soldiers and Mexicans seemed to be of but one
opinion as to the direction in which he had strayed; so there was no
difficulty in getting a band of expert trailers to go out with the
troops from the camp, and after burying the dead, make search for the
missing man. His foot-prints were plainly discernible for quite a
distance in the hard sand and gravel, until they led to a spring or
“water-hole,” where one could plainly read the “sign” that the wounded
man had stopped, knelt down, drunk, washed his wound, torn off a small
piece of his blouse, perhaps as a bandage, and written his name on a
rock in his own blood.
So far, so good; the Mexicans who had been in the searching party did
not object to telling that much, but anything beyond was told by a shrug
of the shoulders and a “Quien sabe?”
One day it happened that José Maria was in a communicative mood, and I
induced him to relate what he knew. His story amounted to just this:
After leaving the “water-hole,” the wounded man had wandered aimlessly
in different directions, and soon began to stagger from bush to bush;
his strength was nearly gone, and with frequency he had taken a seat on
the hard gravel under such shade as the mesquites afforded.
After a while other tracks came in on the trail alongside of those of
the man—they were the tracks of an enormous mountain lion! The beast had
run up and down along the trail for a short distance, and then bounded
on in the direction taken by the wanderer. The last few bounds measured
twenty-two feet, and then there were signs of a struggle, and of
SOMETHING having been dragged off through the chapparal and over the
rocks, and that was all.
Our men were ready for the scout, and so were those of the detachment of
“K” Troop, First Cavalry, who were to form part of our expedition—a
gallant troop and a fine regiment.
The quarters were all in bustle and confusion, and even at their best
would have looked primitive and uncouth. They were made of unhewn logs
set upright into the ground and chinked with mud, and roofed in the same
early English style, with the addition of a ceiling of old pieces of
canvas to keep the centipedes from dropping down.
On the walls were a couple of banjos, and there were intimations that
the service of the troop had been of a decidedly active nature, in the
spoils of Apache villages clustered against the cottonwood saplings.
There were lances with tips of obsidian, and others armed with the
blades of old cavalry sabres; quivers of coyote and mountain lion skin
filled with arrows, said by the Mexican guides to be poisonous; and
other relics of aboriginal ownership in raw-hide playing-cards, shields,
and one or two of the century-plant fiddles.
The gloom of the long sleeping room was relieved by the bright colors of
a few Navajo blankets, and there hung from the rafters large earthenware
jars, called “ollas,” the manufacture of the peaceful Papagoes, in which
gallons of water cooled by rapid evaporation.
There were no tin wash-basins, but a good substitute was found in the
pretty Apache baskets, woven so tightly of grasses and roots that water
could no more leak through them than it could through the better sort of
the Navajo blankets. A half a dozen, maybe more, of the newspaper
illustrations and cartoons of the day were pasted in spots where they
would be most effective, and over in the coolest corner was the wicker
cage of a pet mocking-bird. There were other pets by this time in the
Apache children captured in the skirmishes already had with the natives.
The two oldest of the lot—“Sunday” and “Dandy Jim”—were never given any
dinner until they had each first shot an arrow into the neck of an
olive-bottle inserted into one of the adobe walls of the quartermaster’s
corral. The ease with which these youngsters not over nine or ten years
old did this used to surprise me, but it seemed to make them regard the
Americans as a very peculiar people for demanding such a slight task.
Out on the trail again, down the San Pedro and over the Gila, but
keeping well to the west until we neared the Mineral Creek country; then
up across the lofty Pinal Range, on whose summits the cool breezes were
fragrant with the balsamic odors of the tall, straight pines, over into
the beautiful little nook known as Mason’s Valley, in which there was
refreshing grass for the animals and a trickling stream of pure water to
slake their thirst. Then back to the eastward until we struck the waters
of the Pinal Creek, and had followed it down to the “Wheat Fields,” and
still no signs of Indians. The rainy season had set in, and every track
was obliterated almost as soon as made.
One night we bivouacked at a spot not far from where the mining town of
Globe now stands, and at a ledge of rocks which run across the valley of
Pinal Creek, but part for a few feet to permit the feeble current to
flow through. The sky was comparatively clear, a few clouds only
flitting across the zenith. Back of us, hanging like a shroud over the
tops of the Pinal, were heavy, black masses, from whose pendulous edges
flashed the lightning, and from whose cavernous depths roared and
growled the thunder.
“That looks very much like a cloud-burst coming,” said Cushing; “better
be on the safe side, anyhow.” So he gave orders to move all the bedding
and all the supplies of the pack-train higher up the side of the hill.
The latter part of the order was obeyed first, and almost if not quite
all the ammunition, bacon, coffee, and sugar had been carried out of
reach of possible danger, and most of the blankets and carbines had been
shifted—everything, in fact, but the hard tack—when we noticed that the
volume of water in the creek had unaccountably increased, and the next
moment came the warning cry: “Look out! Here she comes!” A solid wall of
water—I do not care to say how many feet high—was rushing down the
cañon, sweeping all before it, and crushing a path for itself over the
line along which our blankets had been spread so short a time
previously.
The water didn’t make very much noise. There was no sound but a SISH!
That meant more than my pen can say. All that we had carried to the
higher slopes of the cañon side was saved. All that we had not been able
to move was swept away, but there was nothing of value to any one
excepting a mule belonging to one of the guides, which was drowned, and
a lot of harness or rigging from the pack-train, which, with the hard
tack, found a watery grave.
Cushing, too, would have been swept off in the current had he not been
seized in the strong grasp of Sergeant Warfield and “Big Dan Miller,”
two of the most powerful men in the troop. The rain soaked through us
all night, and we had to make the best of it until dawn, when we
discovered to our great surprise and satisfaction that the stream, which
had been gorged between the rocks at our camp, widened below, and this
had allowed the current to expand and to slacken, dropping here and
there in the valley most of the plunder which was of consequence to us,
especially the hard bread.
All this meant an exasperating delay of twenty-four hours to dry our
blankets upon the rocks, and to spread out our sodden food, and save as
much of it as we could from mildew.
From there we made a detour over to Pinto Creek, where I may inform
those of my readers who take an interest in such things, there are one
or two exceptionally well-preserved cliff-dwellings, which we examined
with much curiosity.
Not far from there we came upon the corn-fields of a band of Apaches,
and destroyed them, eating as many of the roasting ears as we could, and
feeding the rest to our stock.
Such were the military instructions of twenty and twenty-five years ago.
As soldiers we had to obey, even if we could feel that these orders must
have been issued under a misconception of the Indian character. The more
the savage is attached to the soil by the ties of a remunerative
husbandry, the more is he weaned from the evil impulses which idleness
engenders. This proposition seems just as clear as that two and two make
four, but some people learn quickly, and others learn slowly, and
preachers, school-teachers, and military people most slowly of all.
Our presence was discovered by the Apache look-outs before we were able
to effect a surprise, or, to be candid, we stumbled in upon the nook, or
series of nooks, in which this planting was going on, and beyond
exchanging a few shots and wounding, as we learned afterward, a couple
of the young men, did not do much at that moment; but we did catch two
squaws, from whom some information was extracted.
They agreed to lead us to where there was another “rancheria” a few
miles off, in another cañon over toward Tonto Creek. We found the enemy,
sure enough, but in such an inaccessible position, up among lofty hills
covered with a dense jungle of scrub oak, that we could do nothing
beyond firing shots in reply to those directed against us, and were so
unfortunate as to lose our prisoners, who darted like jack-rabbits into
the brush, and were out of sight in a flash. Why did we not catch them
again? Oh, well, that is something that no one could do but the gentle
reader. The gentle reader generally is able to do more than the actors
on the ground, and he may as well be allowed a monopoly in the present
case.
We growled and grumbled a good deal at our hard luck, and made our way
to the Mesquite Springs, where the ranch of Archie MacIntosh has since
been erected, and there went into camp for the night. Early the next
morning we crossed the Salt River and ascended the Tonto Creek for a
short distance, passing through a fertile valley, once well settled by a
tribe whose stone houses now in ruins dotted the course of the stream,
and whose pottery, stone axes, and other vestiges, in a condition more
or less perfect, could be picked up in any quantity. We turned back,
recrossed the Salt or Salado, and made a long march into the higher
parts of the Sierra Apache, striking a fresh trail, and following it
energetically until we had run it into the camp of a scouting party of
the First Cavalry, from Camp MacDowell, under Colonel George B. Sanford,
who had had a fight with these same Indians the previous day, and killed
or captured most of them.
Sanford and his command treated us most kindly, and made us feel at home
with them. They did not have much to offer beyond bacon and beans; but a
generous, hospitable gentleman can offer these in a way that will make
them taste like canvas-back and terrapin. When we left Sanford, we kept
on in the direction of the Sombrero Butte and the mouth of Cherry Creek,
to the east, and then headed for the extreme sources of the San Carlos
River, a trifle to the south.
Here we had the good luck to come upon a village of Apaches, who
abandoned all they possessed and fled to the rocks as soon as our rapid
advance was announced in the shrill cries of their vedettes perched upon
the higher peaks.
In this place the “medicine-men” had been engaged in some of their
rites, and had drawn upon the ground half-completed figures of circles,
crosses, and other lines which we had no time to examine. We looked
through the village, whose “jacales” were of unusually large size, and
while interested in this work the enemy began to gather in the higher
hills, ready to pick off all who might become exposed to their aim. They
had soon crawled down within very close proximity, and showed great
daring in coming up to us. I may be pardoned for describing in something
of detail what happened to the little party which stood with me looking
down, or trying to look down, into a low valley or collection of swales
beneath us. Absolutely nothing could be seen but the red clay soil,
tufted here and there with the Spanish bayonet or the tremulous yucca.
So well satisfied were we all that no Apaches were in the valley that I
had already given the order to dismount and descend the steep flanks of
the hill to the lower ground, but had hardly done so before there was a
puff, a noise, and a tzit!—all at once, from the nearest clump of
sacaton or yucca, not more than a hundred yards in front. The bullet
whizzed ominously between our heads and struck my horse in the neck,
ploughing a deep but not dangerous wound.
Our horses, being fresh “broncos,” became disturbed, and it was all we
could do to keep them from breaking away. When we had quieted them a
little, we saw two of the Apaches—stark naked, their heads bound up with
yucca, and their bodies red with the clay along which they had crawled
in order to fire the shot—scampering for their lives down the valley.
We got down the hill, leading our horses, and then took after the
fugitives, all the time yelling to those of our comrades whom we could
see in advance to head the Indians off. One of the savages, who seemed
to be the younger of the two, doubled up a side ravine, but the other,
either because he was run down or because he thought he could inflict
some damage upon us and then escape, remained hidden behind a large
mesquite. Our men made the grievous mistake of supposing that the
Indian’s gun was not loaded. Only one gun had been seen in the
possession of the two whom we had pursued, and this having been
discharged, we were certain that the savage had not had time to reload
it.
It is quite likely that each of the pair had had a rifle, and that the
young boy, previous to running up the cañon to the left, had given his
weapon to his elder, who had probably left his own on the ground after
once firing it.
Be this as it may, we were greeted with another shot, which killed the
blacksmith of “K” Troop, First Cavalry, and right behind the shot came
the big Indian himself, using his rifle as a shillelah, beating Corporal
Costello over the head with it and knocking him senseless, and then
turning upon Sergeant Harrington and a soldier of the First Cavalry
named Wolf, dealing each a blow on the skull, which would have ended
them had not his strength begun to ebb away with his life-blood, now
flowing freely from the death-wound through the body which we had
succeeded in inflicting.
One horse laid up, three men knocked out, and another man killed was a
pretty steep price to pay for the killing of this one Indian, but we
consoled ourselves with the thought that the Apaches had met with a
great loss in the death of so valiant a warrior. We had had other losses
on that day, and the hostiles had left other dead; our pack-train was
beginning to show signs of wear and tear from the fatigue of climbing up
and down these stony, brush-covered, arid mountain-sides. One of the
mules had broken its neck or broken its back by slipping off a steep
trail, and all needed some rest and recuperation.
From every peak now curled the ominous signal smoke of the enemy, and no
further surprises would be possible. Not all of the smokes were to be
taken as signals; many of them might be signs of death, as the Apaches
at that time adhered to the old custom of abandoning a village and
setting it on fire the moment one of their number died, and as soon as
this smoke was seen the adjacent villages would send up answers of
sympathy.
Cushing thought that, under all the circumstances, it would be good
policy to move over to some eligible position where we could hold our
own against any concentration the enemy might be tempted to make against
us, and there stay until the excitement occasioned by our presence in
the country had abated.
The spring near the eastern base of the Pinal Mountains, where the
“killing” of the early spring had taken place, suggested itself, and
thither we marched as fast as our animals could make the trip. But we
had counted without our host; the waters were so polluted with dead
bodies, there were so many skulls in the spring itself, that no animal,
much less man, would imbibe of the fluid. The ground was strewn with
bones—ribs and arms and vertebræ—dragged about by the coyotes, and the
smell was so vile that, tired as all were, no one felt any emotion but
one of delight when Cushing gave the order to move on.
The Apaches had been there to bury their kinsfolk and bewail their loss,
and in token of grief and rage had set fire to all the grass for several
miles, and consequently it was to the direct benefit of all our command,
two-footed or four-footed, to keep moving until we might find a better
site for a bivouac.
We did not halt until we had struck the San Carlos, some thirty-five
miles to the east, and about twelve or fourteen miles above its junction
with the Gila. Here we made camp, intending to remain several days. A
rope was stretched from one to the other of two stout sycamores, and to
this each horse and mule was attached by its halter. Pickets were thrown
out upon the neighboring eminences, and a detail from the old guard was
promptly working at bringing in water and wood for the camp-fires. The
grooming began, and ended almost as soon as the welcome cry of “Supper!”
resounded. The coffee was boiling hot; the same could be said of the
bacon; the hard tack had mildewed a little during the wet weather to
which it had been exposed, but there was enough roasted mescal from the
Indian villages to eke out our supplies.
The hoofs and back of every animal had been examined and cared for, and
then blankets were spread out and all hands made ready to turn in. There
were no tents, as no shelter was needed, but each veteran was wise
enough to scratch a little semicircle in the ground around his head, to
turn the rain should any fall during the night, and to erect a
wind-brake to screen him from the chill breezes which sometimes blew
about midnight.
Although there was not much danger of a night-attack from the Apaches,
who almost invariably made their onset with the first twinkle of the
coming dawn in the east, yet a careful watch was always kept, to
frustrate their favorite game of crawling on hands and feet up to the
horses, and sending an arrow into the herd or the sentinel, as might
happen to be most convenient.
Not far from this camp I saw, for the first time, a fight between a
tarantula and a “tarantula hawk.” Manuel Duran had always insisted that
the gray tarantula could whip the black one, and that there was
something that flew about in the evening that could and would make the
quarrelsome gray tarantula seek safety in abject flight. It was what we
used to call in my school-boy days “the devil’s darning-needle” which
made its appearance, and seemed to worry the great spider very much. The
tarantula stood up on its hind legs, and did its best to ward off
impending fate, but it was no use. The “hawk” hit the tarantula in the
back and apparently paralyzed him, and then seemed to be pulling at one
of the hind legs. I have since been informed that there is some kind of
a fluid injected into the back of the tarantula which acts as a
stupefier, and at the same time the “hawk” deposits its eggs there,
which, hatching, feed upon the spider. For all this I cannot vouch, as I
did not care to venture too near those venomous reptiles and insects of
that region, at least not until after I had acquired more confidence
from greater familiarity with them.
We saw no more Indian “sign” on that trip, which had not been, however,
devoid of all incident.
And no sooner had we arrived at Camp Grant than we were out again, this
time guided by an Apache squaw, who had come into the post during our
absence, and given to the commanding officer a very consistent story of
ill-treatment at the hands of her people. She said that her husband was
dead, killed in a fight with the troops, and that she and her baby had
not been treated with the kindness which they had a right to expect. I
do not remember in what this ill-treatment consisted, but most likely
none of the brothers of the deceased had offered to marry the widow and
care for her and her little one, as is the general custom, in which the
Apaches resemble the Hebrews of ancient times. If the troops would
follow her, she would guide them into a very bad country, where there
was a “rancheria” which could be attacked and destroyed very readily.
So back we went, this time on foot, carrying our rations on our backs,
crossing the Piñaleno to the south of the Aravaypa, and ascending until
we reached the pine forest upon its summit; then down into the valley at
the extreme head of the Aravaypa, and over into the broken country on
the other side of the Gabilan, or Hawk Cañon.
Everything had happened exactly as the squaw had predicted it would, and
she showed that she was familiar with the slightest details of the
topography, and thus increased our confidence in what we had to expect
to such an extent that she was put in the lead, and we followed on
closely, obeying all her directions and instructions. Our men refrained
from whistling, from talking—almost, I might say, from breathing—because
she insisted upon such perfect silence while on the march. There were
few instructions given, and these were passed from mouth to mouth in
whispers. No one dared strike a match, lest the flash should alarm some
of the enemy’s pickets. We had no pack-train, and that great source of
noise—the shouting of packers to straying mules—was done away with. All
our rations were on our own backs, and with the exception of one led
mule, loaded with a couple of thousand rounds of extra ammunition, we
had absolutely nothing to impede the most rapid march. We walked slowly
over the high mountains, and down into deep ravines, passing through a
country which seemed well adapted for the home of Indians. There were
groves of acorn-bearing oaks, a considerable amount of mescal, Spanish
bayonet, some mesquite, and a plenty of grasses whose seeds could be
gathered by the squaws in their long, conical baskets, and then ground
between two oblong, half-round stones into a meal which would make a
pretty good mush.
It was very dark and quite chilly as dawn drew nigh, and every one was
shivering with cold and hunger and general nervous excitement. The squaw
whispered that we were close upon the site of the “rancheria,” which was
in a little grassy amphitheatre a short distance in front. Slowly we
drew nearer and nearer to the doomed village, and traversed the smooth,
open place whereon the young bucks had been playing their great game of
“mushka,” in which they roll a hoop and then throw lance staves to fall
to the ground as the hoop ceases to roll. Very near this was a
slippery-faced rock—either slate or basalt, the darkness did not permit
a close examination—down which the children had been sliding to the
grass, and, just within biscuit-throw, the “jacales” of saplings and
branches.
[Illustration: AN APACHE RANCHERIA.]
Two of our party crawled up to the village, which preserved an ominous
silence. There were no barking dogs, no signs of fire, no wail of babes
to testify to the presence of human or animal life—in one word, the
Apaches had taken the alarm and abandoned their habitation. But they did
not leave us shivering long in doubt as to where they had gone, but at
once opened from the peaks with rifles, and at the first fire wounded
two of our men. It was entirely too dark for them to do much harm, and
utterly beyond our power to do anything against them. Their position was
an impregnable one on the crest of the surrounding ridges, and protected
by a heavy natural _cheval de frise_ of the scrub oak and other thorny
vegetation of the region.
Cushing ordered the command to fall back on the trail and take up
position on the hill in the pass overlooking the site of the
“rancheria.” This we did without difficulty and without loss. The
Apaches continued their firing, and would have made us pay dear for our
rashness in coming into their home had not our withdrawal been covered
by a heavy fog, which screened the flanks of the mountains until quite a
late hour in the morning, something very unusual in Arizona, which is
remarkably free from mists at all seasons.
Indignation converged upon the wretched squaw who had induced us to come
into what had all the appearance of a set ambuscade. The men had bound
her securely, and a rope was now brought out—a lariat—and cries were
heard on all sides to “hang her, hang her!” It is easy to see now that
she may have been perfectly innocent in her intentions, and that it was
not through collusion with the people in the village, but rather on
account of her running away from them, that the Apaches had been on the
look-out for an advance from the nearest military post; but on that
cold, frosty morning, when all were cross and tired and vexed with
disappointment, it looked rather ominous for the woman for a few
minutes.
She was given the benefit of the doubt, and to do the men justice, they
were more desirous of scaring than of killing her for her supposed
treachery. She stuck to her story; she was dissatisfied with her people
on account of bad treatment, and wanted to lead us to a surprise of
their home. She did not pretend to say how it came about that they were
ready for us, but said that some of their young men out hunting, or
squaws out cutting and burning mescal, might have seen us coming up the
mountain, or “cut” our trail the night previous, and given the alarm.
She would stay with us as long as we chose to remain in those hills, but
her opinion was that nothing could now be done with the people of that
“rancheria,” because the whole country would be alarmed with signal
smokes, and every mountain would have a picket on the look-out for us.
Better return to the camp and wait until everything had quieted down,
and then slip out again.
There was still a good deal of growling going on, and not all of the men
were satisfied with her talk. They shot angry glances at her, and freely
expressed their desire to do her bodily harm, which threats she could
perfectly understand without needing the slightest knowledge of our
language. To keep her from slipping off as the two other squaws had done
a fortnight previously, she was wrapped from head to feet with rope, so
that it was all she could do to breathe, much less think of escaping.
Another rope fastened her to a palo verde close to the little fire at
which our coffee was made, and alongside whose flickering embers the
sentinel paced as night began to draw its curtains near. She lay like a
log, making not the slightest noise or movement, but to all appearances
perfectly reconciled to the situation, and, after a while, fell off into
a profound sleep.
We had what was known as “a running guard,” which means that every man
in the camp takes his turn at the duty of sentinel during the night.
This made the men on post have about half to three-quarters of an hour’s
duty each. Each of those posted near the prisoner gave a careful look at
her as he began to pace up and down near her, and each found that she
was sleeping calmly and soundly, until about eleven o’clock, or maybe a
few minutes nearer midnight, a recruit, who had just taken his turn on
post, felt his elbows pinioned fast behind him and his carbine almost
wrenched from his grasp. He was very muscular, and made a good fight to
retain his weapon and use it, but it fell to the ground, and the naked
woman plunged down the side of the hill straight through the chapparal
into the darkness profound.
Bang! bang! sounded his carbine just as soon as he could pick it up from
the ground where it lay, and bang! bang! sounded others, as men
half-asleep awakened to the belief that there was a night attack. This
firing promptly ceased upon Cushing’s orders. There was not the
slightest possible use in wasting ammunition, and in besides running the
risk of hitting some of our own people. The squaw had escaped, and that
was enough. There lay her clothing, and the cocoon-like bundle of rope
which had bound her. She had wriggled out of her fastenings, and sprung
upon the sentinel, who was no doubt the least vigilant of all whom she
had observed, and had tried to snatch his weapon from him and thus
prevent an alarm being given until she had reached the bottom of the
hill. All the clothing she had on at the moment when she made her rush
upon the sentinel was an old and threadbare cavalry cape which hardly
covered her shoulders.
Cold and damp and weary, we started on our homeward trip, feeling as
spiritless as a brood of half-drowned chickens. Even the Irish had
become glum, and could see nothing ridiculous in our mishap—a very bad
sign.
“Blessed are they that expect nothing.” We didn’t expect and we didn’t
receive any mercy from our comrades upon getting back to the mess, and
the sharp tongue of raillery lost none of its power when the squaw came
in close upon our heels, saying that she could not leave her baby, that
her breast cried for it. She had told the truth. If we did not believe
her story, we could kill her, but let her see her baby again. Her desire
was gratified, and no harm came to her. The ordinary stagnation of the
post had been interrupted during our absence by the advent of an
addition to the little circle of captives, and there was much curiosity
to get a good look at the little black-eyed mite which lay cuddled up in
the arms of its dusky mother.
I have purposely withheld mention of the only lady who shared the life
of Camp Grant with us—Mrs. Dodds, the wife of Doctor Dodds, our post
surgeon, or one of them, because we had two medical officers. She was of
a very sweet, gentle disposition, and never once murmured or complained,
but exerted herself to make the life of her husband as comfortable as
possible.
Their quarters had a very cosey look, and one would find it hard to
believe that those comfortable chairs were nothing but barrels sawed out
to shape and cushioned and covered with chintz. That lounge was merely a
few packing boxes concealed under blankets and mattresses. Everything
else in the apartment was on the same scale and made of corresponding
materials. There was a manifest determination to do much with little,
and much had been done.
Mrs. Dodds wore her honors as the belle of the garrison with becoming
graciousness and humility. She received in the kindest spirit the
efforts made by all of the rougher sex to render her stay among them
pleasant and, if possible, interesting. Not a day passed that did not
find her the recipient of some token of regard. It might not always be
the most appropriate sort of a thing, but that really made very little
difference. She accepted everything and tried to look as if each gift
had been the one for which she had been longing during her whole life.
She had a rattlesnake belt, made from one of the biggest and most
vicious reptiles ever seen in the vicinity. She had Apache baskets,
war-clubs, playing-cards, flutes, fiddles, and enough truck of the same
kind to load an army-wagon. The largest Gila monsters would have been
laid at her feet had she not distinctly and emphatically drawn the line
at Gila monsters. Tarantulas and centipedes, if properly bottled, were
not objectionable, but the Gila monster was more than she could stand,
and she so informed intending donors. She has been dead a number of
years, but it is hardly likely that she ever forgot until she drew her
last breath the days and weeks and months of her existence at Camp
Grant.
Our own stay at the delightful summer resort had come to an end. Orders
received from department headquarters transferred our troop to Tucson,
as being a more central location and nearer supplies. Lieutenant Cushing
was ordered to take the field and keep it until further orders, which
meant that he was to be free to roam as he pleased over any and all
sections of the territory infested by the Apaches, and to do the best he
could against them.
To a soldier of Cushing’s temperament this meant a great deal, and it is
needless to say that no better selection for such a duty could have been
made.
We were packed up and out of the post in such quick time that I do not
remember whether it was twelve hours or twenty-four. To be sure, we did
not have an immense amount of plunder to pack. None the less did we work
briskly to carry out orders and get away in the shortest time possible.
We had to leave one of our men in the hospital; he had accidentally shot
himself in the leg, and was now convalescing from the amputation. But
the rest were in the saddle and out on the road through the Santa
Catalina Cañon before you could say Jack Robinson.
And not altogether without regret. There was a bright side to the old
rookery, which shone all the more lustrously now that we were saying
farewell.
We had never felt lonesome by any means. There was always something
going on, always something to do, always something to see.
The sunrises were gorgeous to look upon at the hour for morning stables,
when a golden and rosy flush bathed the purple peaks of the Pinaleño,
and at eventide there were great banks of crimson and purple and golden
clouds in the western horizon which no painter would have dared depict
upon canvas.
There were opportunities for learning something about mineralogy in
the “wash” of the cañons, botany on the hill-sides, and insect life
and reptile life everywhere. Spanish could be picked up from Mexican
guides and packers, and much that was quaint and interesting in
savage life learned from an observation of the manners of the
captives—representatives of that race which the Americans have so
frequently fought, so generally mismanaged, and so completely failed
to understand.
There was much rough work under the hardest of conditions, and the best
school for learning how to care for men and animals in presence of a
sleepless enemy, which no amount of “book l’arnin’” could supply.
The distance from Old Camp Grant to Tucson, Arizona, over the
wagon-road, was fifty-five measured miles. The first half of the
journey, the first day’s march—as far as the Cañon del Oro—has already
been described. From the gloomy walls of the shady cañon, in which
tradition says gold was found in abundance in the earliest days of
occupation by the Caucasians, the wagons rolled rapidly over the
Eight-mile Mesa, over some slightly hilly and sandy country, until after
passing the Riito, when Tucson came in sight and the road became firmer.
All the way, on both sides of the road, and as far as eye could reach,
we had in sight the stately mescal, loaded with lovely velvety flowers;
the white-plumed Spanish bayonet, the sickly green palo verde, without a
leaf; the cholla, the nopal, the mesquite, whose “beans” were rapidly
ripening in the sultry sun, and the majestic “pitahaya,” or candelabrum
cactus, whose ruby fruit had long since been raided upon and carried off
by flocks of bright-winged humming-birds, than which no fairer or more
alert can be seen this side of Brazil. The “pitahaya” attains a great
height in the vicinity of Grant, Tucson, and MacDowell, and one which we
measured by its shadow was not far from fifty-five to sixty feet above
the ground.
On this march the curious rider could see much to be remembered all the
days of his life. Piles of loose stones heaped up by loving hands
proclaimed where the Apaches had murdered their white enemies. The
projection of a rude cross of mescal or Spanish bayonet stalks was
evidence that the victim was a Mexican, and a son of Holy Mother Church.
Its absence was no index of religious belief, but simply of the
nationality being American.
Of the weird, blood-chilling tales that were narrated as each of these
was passed I shall insert only one. It was the story, briefly told, of
two young men whose train had been attacked, whose comrades had been put
to flight, and who stood their ground resolutely until the arrows and
bullets of the foe had ended the struggle. When found, one of the bodies
was pierced with sixteen wounds, the other with fourteen.
On the left flank, or eastern side, the view was hemmed in for the whole
distance by the lofty, pine-clad Sierra Santa Catalina; but to the north
one could catch glimpses of the summit of the black Pinal; to the west
there was a view over the low-lying Tortolita clear to the dim, azure
outlines which, in the neighborhood of the Gila Bend, preserved in
commemorative mesa-top the grim features of Montezuma, as Mexican myth
fondly averred.
A little this side was the site of the “Casa Grande,” the old pile of
adobe, which has been quite as curious a ruin in the contemplation of
the irrepressible Yankee of modern days as it was to Coronado and his
followers when they approached it under the name of “Chichilticale” more
than three centuries and a half ago.
Still nearer was the “Picacho,” marking the line of the Great Southern
Mail road; at its base the ranch of Charlie Shibell, where the stages
changed teams and travellers stopped to take supper, the scene of as
many encounters with the Apaches as any other spot in the whole
Southwest. Follow along a little more to the left, and there comes the
Santa Teresa Range, just back of Tucson, and credited by rumors as
reliable as any ever brought by contraband during the war with being the
repository of fabulous wealth in the precious metals; but no one has yet
had the Aladdin’s lamp to rub and summon the obedient genii who would
disclose the secret of its location.
Far off to the south rises the glistening cone of the Baboquivari, the
sacred mountain in the centre of the country of the gentle Papagoes, and
on the east, as we get down nearer to the Riito, the more massive
outlines of the Santa Rita peak overshadowing the town of Tucson, and
the white, glaring roof of the beautiful mission ruin of San Xavier del
Bac.
Within this space marched the columns of the Coronado expedition, armed
to the teeth in all the panoply of grim war, and bent on destruction and
conquest; and here, too, plodded meek friar and learned priest, the sons
of Francis or of Loyola, armed with the irresistible weapons of the
Cross, the Rosary, and the Sacred Text, and likewise bent upon
destruction and conquest—the destruction of idols and the conquest of
souls.
These were no ordinary mortals, whom the imagination may depict as
droning over breviary or mumbling over beads. They were men who had, in
several cases at least, been eminent in civil pursuits before the
whispers of conscience bade them listen to the Divine command, “Give up
all and follow Me.” Eusebio Kino was professor of mathematics in the
University of Ingoldstadt, and had already made a reputation among the
scholars of Europe, when he relinquished his titles and position to
become a member of the order of Jesuits and seek a place in their
missionary ranks on the wildest of frontiers, where he, with his
companions, preached the word of God to tribes whose names even were
unknown in the Court of Madrid.
Of these men and their labors, if space allow, we may have something to
learn a chapter or two farther on. Just now I find that all my powers of
persuasion must be exerted to convince the readers who are still with me
that the sand “wash” in which we are floundering is in truth a river, or
rather a little river—the “Riito”—the largest confluent of the Santa
Cruz. Could you only arrange to be with me, you unbelieving Thomases,
when the deluging rains of the summer solstice rush madly down the
rugged face of the Santa Catalina and swell this dry sand-bed to the
dimensions of a young Missouri, all tales would be more easy for you to
swallow.
But here we are. That fringe of emerald green in the “bottom” is the
barley land surrounding Tucson; those gently waving cottonwoods outline
the shrivelled course of the Santa Cruz; those trees with the dark,
waxy-green foliage are the pomegranates behind Juan Fernandez’s corral.
There is the massive wall of the church of San Antonio now; we see
streets and houses, singly or in clusters, buried in shade or
unsheltered from the vertical glare of the most merciless of suns. Here
are pigs staked out to wallow in congenial mire—that is one of the
charming customs of the Spanish Southwest; and these—ah, yes, these are
dogs, unchained and running amuck after the heels of the horses, another
most charming custom of the country.
Here are “burros” browsing upon tin cans—still another institution of
the country—and here are the hens and chickens, and the houses of mud,
of one story, flat, cheerless, and monotonous were it not for the
crimson “rastras” of chile which, like mediæval banners, are flung to
the outer wall. And women, young and old, wrapped up in “rebosos” and
“tapalos,” which conceal all the countenance but the left eye; and men
enfolded in cheap poll-parrotty blankets of cotton, busy in leaning
against the door-posts and holding up the weight of “sombreros,” as
large in diameter as cart-wheels and surrounded by snakes of silver
bullion weighing almost as much as the wearers.
The horses are moving rapidly down the narrow street without prick of
spur. The wagons are creaking merrily, pulled by energetic mules, whose
efforts need not the urging of rifle-cracking whip in the hands of
skilful drivers. It is only because the drivers are glad to get to
Tucson that they explode the long, deadly black snakes, with which they
can cut a welt out of the flank or brush a fly from the belly of any
animal in their team. All the men are whistling or have broken out in
glad carol. Each heart is gay, for we have at last reached Tucson, the
commercial _entrepôt_ of Arizona and the remoter Southwest—Tucson, the
Mecca of the dragoon, the Naples of the desert, which one was to see and
die; Tucson, whose alkali pits yielded water sweeter than Well of
Zemzen, whose maidens were more charming, whose society was more
hospitable, merchants more progressive, magazines better stocked,
climate more dreamy, than any town from Santa Fé to Los Angeles; from
Hermosillo, in Sonora, to the gloomy chasm of the Grand Cañon—with one
exception only: its great rival, the thoroughly American town of
Prescott, in the bosom of the pine forests, amid the granite crags of
the foot-hills of the Mogollon.
Camp Lowell, as the military post was styled, was located on the eastern
edge of the town itself. In more recent years it has been moved seven or
eight miles out to where the Riito is a flowing stream. We took up
position close to the quartermaster’s corral, erected such tents as
could be obtained, and did much solid work in the construction of
“ramadas” and other conveniences of branches. As a matter of comfort,
all the unmarried officers boarded in the town, of which I shall
endeavor to give a succinct but perfectly fair description as it
impressed itself upon me during the months of our sojourn in the
intervals between scouts against the enemy, who kept our hands full.
My eyes and ears were open to the strange scenes and sounds which met
them on every side. Tucson was as foreign a town as if it were in Hayti
instead of within our own boundaries. The language, dress, funeral
processions, religious ceremonies, feasts, dances, games, joys, perils,
griefs, and tribulations of its population were something not to be
looked for in the region east of the Missouri River. I noted them all as
well as I knew how, kept my own counsel, and give now the _résumé_ of my
notes of the time.
The “Shoo Fly” restaurant, which offered the comforts of a home to the
weary wayfarer in Tucson, Arizona, circa 1869, was named on the
principle of “_lucus à non lucendo_”—the flies wouldn’t shoo worth a
cent. Like the poor, they remained always with us. But though they might
bedim the legend, “All meals payable in advance,” they could not destroy
the spirit of the legend, which was the principle upon which our most
charming of landladies, Mrs. Wallen, did business.
Mrs. Wallen deserves more than the hasty reference she is receiving in
these pages. She was a most attentive and well-meaning soul, understood
the mysteries, or some of the mysteries, of the culinary art, was
anxious to please, had never seen better days, and did not so much as
pretend to have seen any, not even through a telescope.
She was not a widow, as the proprieties demanded under the
circumstances—all landladies that I’ve ever read or heard of have been
widows—but the circumstance that there was a male attached to the name
of Wallen did not cut much of a figure in the case, as it was a
well-understood fact that Mrs. Wallen was a woman of nerve and bound to
have her own way in all things. Consequently, the bifurcated shadow
which flitted about in the corral feeding the chickens, or made its
appearance from time to time in the kitchen among the tomato peelings,
did not make a very lasting impression upon either the regulars or the
“mealers,” the two classes of patrons upon whose dollars our good
hostess depended for the support of her establishment.
One line only will be needed to lay before the reader the interior view
of the “Shoo Fly.” It was a long, narrow, low-ceiled room of adobe,
whose walls were washed in a neutral yellowish tint, whose floor was of
rammed earth and ceiling of white muslin. Place here and there, in
convenient positions, eight or ten tables of different sizes; cover them
with cheap cloths, cheap china and glass—I use the term “cheap” in
regard to quality only, and not in regard to the price, which had been
dear enough, as everything was in those days of freighting with mule and
“bull” teams from Leavenworth and Kit Carson. Place in the centre of
each table a lead castor with the obsolete yellow glass bottles; put one
large, cheap mirror on the wall facing the main entrance, and not far
from it a wooden clock, which probably served some mysterious purpose
other than time-keeping, because it was never wound up. Have pine
benches, and home-made chairs, with raw-hide bottoms fastened with
strings of the same material to the framework. Make the place look
decidedly neat and clean, notwithstanding the flies and the hot alkali
dust which penetrated upon the slightest excuse. Bring in two bright,
pleasant-mannered Mexican boys, whose dark complexions were well set off
by neat white cotton jackets and loose white cotton trousers, with
sometimes a colored sash about the waist. Give each of these young men a
fly-flapper as a badge of office, and the “Shoo Fly” is open for the
reception of guests.
Napkins designated the seats of the regular boarders. “Mealers” were not
entitled to such distinction and never seemed to expect it. There was no
bill of fare. None was needed. Boarders always knew what they were going
to get—same old thing. There never was any change during all the time of
my acquaintance with the establishment, which, after all is said and
done, certainly contrived to secure for its patrons all that the limited
market facilities of the day afforded. Beef was not always easy to
procure, but there was no lack of bacon, chicken, mutton, and kid meat.
Potatoes ranked as luxuries of the first class, and never sold for less
than ten cents a pound, and often could not be had for love or money.
The soil of Arizona south of the Gila did not seem to suit their growth,
but now that the Apaches have for nearly twenty years been docile in
northern Arizona, and left its people free from terror and anxiety, they
have succeeded in raising the finest “Murphies” in the world in the damp
lava soil of the swales upon the summit of the great Mogollon Plateau.
There was plenty of “jerked” beef, savory and palatable enough in stews
and hashes; eggs, and the sweet, toothsome black “frijoles” of Mexico;
tomatoes equal to those of any part of our country, and lettuce always
crisp, dainty, and delicious. For fresh fruit, our main reliance was
upon the “burro” trains coming up from the charming oasis of Hermosillo,
the capital of Sonora—a veritable garden of the Hesperides, in which
Nature was most lavish with her gifts of honey-juiced oranges, sweet
limes, lemons, edible quinces, and luscious apricots; but the apple, the
plum, and the cherry were unknown to us, and the strawberry only
occasionally seen.
Very frequently the presence of Apaches along the road would cause a
panic in trains coming up from the south, and then there would be a
fruit famine, during which our sole reliance would be upon the mainstay
of boarding-house prosperity—stewed peaches and prunes. There were two
other articles of food which could be relied upon with reasonable
certainty—the red beet, which in the “alkali” lands attains a great
size, and the black fig of Mexico, which, packed in ceroons of cow’s
hide, often was carried about for sale.
Chile Colorado entered into the composition of every dish, and great,
velvety-skinned, delicately flavored onions as large as dinner plates
ended the list—that is to say, the regular list. On some special
occasion there would be honey brought in from the Tia Juana Ranch in
Lower California, three or four hundred miles westward, and dried
shrimps from the harbor of Guaymas. In the harbor of Guaymas there are
oysters, too, and they are not bad, although small and a trifle coppery
to the taste of those who try them for the first time. Why we never had
any of them was, I suppose, on account of the difficulty of getting them
through in good condition without ice, so we had to be content with the
canned article, which was never any too good. From the Rio Grande in the
neighborhood of El Paso there came the “pasas,” or half-dried grape, in
whose praise too much could not be said.
The tables were of pine, of the simplest possible construction. All were
bad enough, but some were a trifle more rickety than others. The one
which wobbled the least was placed close to the north side of the
banqueting-hall, where the windows gave the best “view.”
Around this Belshazzarian board assembled people of such consideration
as Governor Safford, Lieutenant-Governor Bashford, Chief-Justice John
Titus, Attorney-General MacCaffrey, the genial Joe Wasson, Tom Ewing,
and several others. I was on a number of occasions honored with a seat
among them, and enjoyed at one and the same moment their conversation
and the “view” of which I have spoken.
There was a foreground of old tin tomato cans, and a middle distance of
chicken feathers and chile peppers, with a couple of “burros” in the dim
perspective, and the requisite flitting of lights and shadows in the
foliage of one stunted mesquite-bush, which sheltered from the vertical
rays of the sun the crouching form of old Juanita, who was energetically
pounding between smooth stones the week’s washing of the household, and
supplying in the gaudy stripes of her bright “serape” the amount of
color which old-school critics used to maintain was indispensable to
every landscape.
Juanita was old and discreet, but her thoughts were not altogether on
the world to come. Her face was ordinarily plastered with flour-paste,
the cosmetic of the Southwest. Why this attention to her toilet, the
wisest failed to tell; Often did I assure her that nothing could improve
her complexion—a statement not to be controverted—and never did she fail
to rebuke me with her most bewitching smile, and the words, “Ah! Don
Juan, you’re such a flatterer.”
The gentlemen whose names I have just given are nearly all dead or so
well advanced in years and dignity that what I have to say now will not
sound like flattery. They had each and all travelled over a great deal
of the earth’s surface, and several of them were scholars of ripe
learning. I was much younger then than I am now, and of course the
attainments of men so much older than myself made a deep impression upon
me, but even to this day I would place the names of Titus and Bashford
in the list of scholars of erudition whom I have known, and very high up
in the list, too.
The remainder of the patrons seemed to be about evenly divided between
the cynical grumblers who, having paid their score with regularity,
arrogated to themselves the right to asperse the viands; and the
eulogists who, owing to temporary financial embarrassments, were unable
to produce receipts, and sought to appease their not by any means too
hard-hearted landlady by the most fulsome adulation of the table and its
belongings.
Like the brokers of Wall Street who are bulls to-day and bears
to-morrow, it not infrequently happened among the “Shoo Fly’s” patrons
that the most obdurate growler of last week changed front and assumed
position as the Advocatus Diaboli of this.
But, take them for all in all, they were a good-hearted, whole-souled
lot of men, who had roughed it and smoothed it in all parts of the
world, who had basked in the smiles of Fortune and had not winced at her
frown; a trifle too quick on the trigger, perhaps, some of them, to be
perfectly well qualified to act as Sunday-school superintendents, yet
generous to the comrade in distress and polite to all who came near
them. The Western man—the Pacific Sloper especially—is much more urbane
and courteous under such circumstances than his neighbor who has grown
up on the banks of the Delaware or Hudson. There was bitter rivalry
between Mrs. Wallen and Mr. Neugass, the proprietor of the “Palace”—a
rivalry which diffused itself among their respective adherents.
I make the statement simply to preserve the record of the times, that
the patrons of the “Shoo Fly” never let go an opportunity to insinuate
that the people to be met at the “Palace” were, to a large extent,
composed of the “_nouveaux riches_.” There was not the slightest
foundation for this, as I can testify, because I afterward sat at
Neugass’s tables, when Mrs. Wallen had retired from business and gone
into California, and can recall no difference at all in the character of
the guests.
Tucson enjoyed the singular felicity of not possessing anything in the
shape of a hotel. Travellers coming to town, and not provided with
letters which would secure them the hospitality of private houses,
craved the privilege of “making down” their blankets in the most
convenient corral, and slept till early morn, undisturbed save by the
barking of dogs, which never ceased all through the night, or the
crowing of loud-voiced chanticleers, which began ere yet the dawn had
signalled with its first rosy flush from the peak of the Santa Rita. It
was the customary thing for wagon trains to halt and go into camp in the
middle of the plaza in front of the cathedral church of San Antonio, and
after the oxen or mules had been tied to the wheels, the drivers would
calmly proceed to stretch out tired limbs in the beautiful moonlight.
I never could see the advantage of such a state of affairs, and felt
that it belittled the importance of the town, which really did a very
large business with the surrounding country for hundreds of miles. There
are always two and even three different ways of looking at the same
proposition, and to Bob Crandall and Vet Mowry this manner of camping
“_à la belle étoile_” was the one thing “to which they pointed with
pride.” It was proof of the glorious climate enjoyed by Tucson. Where
else in the whole world, sir, could a man camp out night after night all
the year round? Was it in Senegambia? No, sir. In Nova Zembla? No, sir.
In Hong Kong? No, sir. In Ireland?—but by this time one could cut off
the button, if necessary, and break away.
So there were only three places in which people could get acquainted
with one another—in the “Shoo Fly” or “Palace” restaurants; in the
gambling resorts, which never closed, night or day, Sunday or Monday;
and at the post-office, in the long line of Mexicans and Americans
slowly approaching the little square window to ask for letters.
For the convenience of my readers and myself, I will take the liberty of
presenting some of my dead and gone friends in the “Shoo Fly,” where we
can have seats upon which to rest, and tables upon which to place our
elbows, if we so desire.
But first a word or two more about Tucson itself.
It was in those days the capital of the Territory of Arizona, and the
place of residence of most of the Federal officials. Its geographical
situation was on the right bank of the pretty little stream called the
Santa Cruz, a mile or more above where it ran into the sands. In round
figures, it was on the 32d degree of north latitude, and not far from
the 112th degree west from Greenwich. The valley of the Santa Cruz,
although not much over a mile and a half wide, is wonderfully fertile,
and will yield bountifully of all cereals, as well as of the fruits of
the south temperate or north tropical climes, and could easily have
supported a much larger population, but on account of the bitter and
unrelenting hostilities waged by the Apaches, not more than 3,200 souls
could be claimed, although enthusiasts often deluded themselves into a
belief in much higher figures, owing to the almost constant presence of
trains of wagons hauled by patient oxen or quick-moving mules, or
“carretas” drawn by the philosophical donkey or “burro” from Sonora. The
great prairie-schooners all the way from the Missouri River made a very
imposing appearance, as, linked two, and even three, together, they
rolled along with their heavy burdens, to unload at the warehouses of
the great merchants, Lord & Williams, Tully, Ochoa & De Long, the
Zeckendorfs, Fish & Collingwood, Leopoldo Carrillo, or other of the men
of those days whose transactions ran each year into the hundreds of
thousands of dollars.
Streets and pavements there were none; lamps were unheard of; drainage
was not deemed necessary, and water, when not bought from the old
Mexican who hauled it in barrels in a dilapidated cart from the cool
spring on the bishop’s farm, was obtained from wells, which were good
and sweet in the first months of their career, but generally became so
impregnated with “alkali” that they had to be abandoned; and as lumber
was worth twenty-five cents a foot, and therefore too costly to be used
in covering them, they were left to dry up of their own accord, and
remain a menace to the lives and limbs of belated pedestrians. There was
no hint in history or tradition of a sweeping of the streets, which were
every bit as filthy as those of New York.
The age of the garbage piles was distinctly defined by geological
strata. In the lowest portion of all one could often find arrowheads and
stone axes, indicative of a pre-Columbian origin; super-imposed
conformably over these, as the geologists used to say, were skins of
chile Colorado, great pieces of rusty spurs, and other reliquiæ of the
“Conquistadores,” while high above all, stray cards, tomato cans, beer
bottles, and similar evidences of a higher and nobler civilization told
just how long the Anglo-Saxon had called the territory his own.
This filthy condition of the streets gave rise to a weird system of
topographical designation. “You want to find the Governor’s? Wa’al,
podner, jest keep right down this yere street past the Palace s’loon,
till yer gets ter the second manure-pile on yer right; then keep to yer
left past the post-office, ’n’ yer’ll see a dead burro in th’ middle of
th’ road, ’n’ a mesquite tree ’n yer lef’, near a Mexican ‘tendajon’
(small store), ’n’ jes’ beyond that’s the Gov.’s outfit. Can’t miss it.
Look out fur th’ dawg down ter Muñoz’s corral; he’s a salviated son ov a
gun.”
It took some time for the ears of the “tenderfoot” just out from the
States to become habituated to the chronology of that portion of our
vast domain. One rarely heard months, days, or weeks mentioned. The
narrator of a story had a far more convenient method of referring back
to dates in which his auditory might be interested. “Jes’ about th’ time
Pete Kitchen’s ranch was jumped”—which wasn’t very satisfactory, as Pete
Kitchen’s ranch was always getting “jumped.” “Th’ night afore th’
Maricopa stage war tuck in.” “A week or two arter Winters made his last
’killin’’ in th’ Dragoons.” “Th’ last fight down to th’ Picach.” “Th’
year th’ Injuns run off Tully, Ochoa ’n’ DeLong bull teams.”
Or, under other aspects of the daily life of the place, there would be
such references as, “Th’ night after Duffield drawed his gun on Jedge
Titus”—a rather uncertain reference, since Duffield was always “drawin’
his gun” on somebody. “Th’ time of th’ feast (_i.e._, of Saint
Augustine, the patron saint of the town), when Bob Crandall broke th’
‘Chusas’ game fur six hundred dollars,” and other expressions of similar
tenor, which replaced the recollections of “mowing time,” and “harvest,”
and “sheep-shearing” of older communities.
Another strain upon the unduly excitable brain lay in the impossibility
of learning exactly how many miles it was to a given point. It wasn’t
“fifty miles,” or “sixty miles,” or “just a trifle beyond the Cienaga,
and that’s twenty-five miles,” but rather, “Jes’ on th’ rise of the mesa
as you git to th’ place whar Samaniego’s train stood off th’ Apaches;”
or, “A little yan way from whar they took in Colonel Stone’s stage;” or,
“Jes’ whar th’ big ‘killin’’ tuk place on th’ long mesa,” and much more
of the same sort.
There were watches and clocks in the town, and some Americans went
through the motions of consulting them at intervals. So far as influence
upon the community went, they might just as well have been in the bottom
of the Red Sea. The divisions of the day were regulated and determined
by the bells which periodically clanged in front of the cathedral
church. When they rang out their wild peal for early Mass, the little
world by the Santa Cruz rubbed its eyes, threw off the slight covering
of the night, and made ready for the labors of the day. The alarm clock
of the Gringo might have been sounding for two hours earlier, but not
one man, woman, or child would have paid the slightest attention to the
cursed invention of Satan. When the Angelus tolled at meridian, all made
ready for the noon-day meal and the post-prandial siesta; and when the
hour of vespers sounded, adobes dropped from the palsied hands of
listless workmen, and docile Papagoes, wrapping themselves in their
pieces of “manta” or old “rebosos,” turned their faces southward,
mindful of the curfew signal learned from the early missionaries.
They were a singular people, the Papagoes; honest, laborious, docile,
sober, and pure—not an improper character among them. Only one white man
had ever been allowed to marry into the tribe—Buckskin Aleck Stevens, of
Cambridge, Mass., and that had to be a marriage with bell, book, and
candle and every formality to protect the bride.
I do not know anything about the Papagoes of to-day, and am prepared to
hear that they have sadly degenerated. The Americans have had twenty
years in which to corrupt them, and the intimacy can hardly have been to
the advantage of the red man.
CHAPTER IV.
SOME OF THE FRIENDS MET IN OLD TUCSON—JACK LONG—HIS DIVORCE—MARSHAL
DUFFIELD AND “WACO BILL”—“THEM ’ERE’S MEE VISITIN’ KEE-YARD”—JUDGE
TITUS AND CHARLES O. BROWN—HOW DUFFIELD WAS KILLED—UNCLE BILLY N——
AND HIS THREE GLASS EYES—AL. GARRETT—DOCTOR SEMIG AND LIEUTENANT
SHERWOOD—DON ESTEVAN OCHOA—BISHOP SALPOINTE—PETE KITCHEN AND HIS
RANCH.
“See yar, muchacho, move roun’ lively now, ’n’ git me a Jinny Lin’
steak.” It was a strong, hearty voice which sounded in my ears from the
table just behind me in the “Shoo Fly,” and made me mechanically turn
about, almost as much perplexed as was the waiter-boy, Miguel, by the
strange request.
“Would you have any objection, sir, to letting me know what you mean by
a Jenny Lind steak?”
“A Jinny Lin’ steak, mee son, ’s a steak cut from off a hoss’s upper
lip. I makes it a rule allers to git what I orders; ’n’ ez far’s I kin
see, I’ll get a Jinny Lin’ steak anyhow in this yere outfit, so I’m
kinder takin’ time by the fetlock, ’n’ orderin’ jes’ what I want. My
name’s Jack Long; what mout your’n be?”
It was apparent, at half a glance, that Jack Long was not “in sassiety,”
unless it might be a “sassiety” decidedly addicted to tobacco, given to
the use of flannel instead of “b’iled” shirts, never without six-shooter
on hip, and indulging in profanity by the wholesale.
A better acquaintance with old Jack showed that, like the chestnut, his
roughest part was on the outside. Courage, tenderness, truth, and other
manly attributes peered out from under roughness of garb and speech. He
was one of Gray’s “gems of purest ray serene,” born in “the dark,
unfathomed caves” of frontier isolation.
Jack Long had not always been “Jack” Long. Once, way back in the early
fifties, he and his “podners” had struck it rich on some “placer”
diggings which they had preëmpted on the Yuba, and in less than no time
my friend was heralded to the mountain communities as “Jedge” Long. This
title had never been sought, and, in justice to the recipient, it should
be made known that he discarded it at once, and would none of it. The
title “Jedge” on the frontier does not always imply respect, and Jack
would tolerate nothing ambiguous.
He was bound to be a gentleman or nothing. Before the week was half over
he was arrayed, not exactly like Solomon, but much more conspicuously,
in the whitest of “b’iled” shirts, in the bosom of which glistened the
most brilliant diamond cluster pin that money could procure from
Sacramento. On the warty red fingers of his right hand sparkled its
mate, and pendent from his waist a liberal handful of the old-fashioned
seals and keys of the time attracted attention to the ponderous gold
chain encircling his neck, and securing the biggest specimen of a watch
known to fact or fiction since the days of Captain Cuttle.
Carelessly strolling up to the bar of the “Quartz Rock,” the “Hanging
Wall,” or the “Golden West,” he would say, in the cheeriest way:
“Gents, what’ll yer all hev? It’s mine this time, barkeep.” And,
spurning the change obsequiously tendered by the officiating genius of
the gilded slaughter-house of morality, Jack would push back the
twenty-dollar gold piece with which he usually began his evenings with
“the boys,” and ask, in a tone of injured pride: “Is there any use in
insultin’ a man when he wants to treat his friends?” And barkeeper and
all in the den would voice the sentiment that a “gent” who was as
liberal with his double eagles as Colonel Long was a gent indeed, and a
man anybody could afford to tie to.
It was the local paper which gave Jack his military title, and alluded
to the growing demand that the colonel should accept the nomination for
Congress. And to Congress he would have gone, too, had not fickle
Fortune turned her back upon her whilom favorite.
Jack had the bad luck to fall in love and to be married—not for the
first time, as he had had previous experience in the same direction, his
first wife being the youngest daughter of the great Indian chief
“Cut-Mouth John,” of the Rogue River tribe, who ran away from Jack and
took to the mountains when her people went on the war-path. The then
wife was a white woman from Missouri, and, from all I can learn, a very
good mate for Jack, excepting that prosperity turned her head and made
her very extravagant. So long as Jack’s mine was panning out freely Jack
didn’t mind much what she spent, but when it petered, and economy became
necessary, dissensions soon arose between them, and it was agreed that
they were not compatible.
“If you don’t like me,” said Mrs. Long one day, “give me a divorce and
one-half of what you have, and I’ll leave you.”
“’Nuff sed,” was Jack’s reply, “’n’ here goes.”
The sum total in the Long exchequer was not quite $200. Of this, Jack
laid to one side a double eagle, for a purpose soon to be explained. The
remainder was divided into two even piles, one of which was handed over
to his spouse. The doors of the wardrobe stood open, disclosing all of
Jack’s regal raiment. He seized a pair of trousers, tore them leg from
leg, and then served in much the same way every coat, waistcoat, or
undergarment he owned. One pile of remnants was assigned to the
stupefied woman, who ten minutes previously had been demanding a
separation.
Before another ten had passed her own choicest treasures had shared the
same fate, and her ex-liege lord was devoting his attention to breaking
the cooking stove, with its superstructure of pots and pans and kettles,
into two little hillocks of battered fragments; and no sooner through
with that than at work sawing the tables and chairs in half and knocking
the solitary mirror into smithereens.
“Thar yer are,” said Jack. “Ye ’v’ got half th’ money, ’n’ yer kin now
tek yer pick o’ what’s left.”
The stage had come along on its way down to Sacramento, and Jack hailed
the driver. “Mrs. Long’s goin’ down th’ road a bit ter see some o’ her
kin, ’n’ ter get a breath o’ fresh air. Tek her ez fur ez this ’ll pay
fur, ’n’ then _she_’ll tell whar else she wants ter go.”
And that was Jack Long’s divorce and the reason why he left the mining
regions of California and wandered far and near, beginning the battle of
life anew as packer and prospector, and drifting down into the drainage
of the Gila and into the “Shoo Fly” restaurant, where we have just met
him.
There shall be many other opportunities of meeting and conversing with
old Jack before the campaigning against the Apaches is half through, so
we need not urge him to remain now that he has finished his meal and is
ready to sally forth. We return heartily the very cheery greeting
tendered by the gentleman who enters the dining-room in his place. It is
ex-Marshal Duffield, a very peculiar sort of a man, who stands credited
in public opinion with having killed thirteen persons. How much of this
is truth and how much is pure gossip, as meaningless as the chatter of
the “pechotas” which gather along the walls of the corral every evening
the moment the grain of the horses is dealt out to them, I cannot say;
but if the reader desire to learn of a unique character in our frontier
history he will kindly permit me to tell something of the only man in
the Territory of Arizona, and I may say of New Mexico and western Texas
as well, who dared wear a plug hat. There was nothing so obnoxious in
the sight of people living along the border as the black silk tile. The
ordinary man assuming such an addition to his attire would have done so
at the risk of his life, but Duffield was no ordinary individual. He
wore clothes to suit himself, and woe to the man who might fancy
otherwise.
Who Duffield was before coming out to Arizona I never could learn to my
own satisfaction. Indeed, I do not remember ever having any but the most
languid interest in that part of his career, because he kept us so fully
occupied in keeping track of his escapades in Arizona that there was
very little time left for investigations into his earlier movements. Yet
I do recall the whispered story that he had been one of President
Lincoln’s discoveries, and that the reason for his appointment lay in
the courage Duffield had displayed in the New York riots during the war.
It seems—and I tell the tale with many misgivings, as my memory does not
retain all the circumstances—that Duffield was passing along one of the
streets in which the rioters were having things their own way, and there
he saw a poor devil of a colored man fleeing from some drunken pursuers,
who were bent on hanging him to the nearest lamp-post. Duffield allowed
the black man to pass him, and then, as the mob approached on a hot
scent, he levelled his pistol—his constant companion—and blew out the
brains of the one in advance, and, as the story goes, hit two others, as
fast as he could draw bead on them, for I must take care to let my
readers know that my friend was one of the crack shots of America, and
was wont while he lived in Tucson to drive a ten-penny nail into an
adobe wall every day before he would go into the house to eat his
evening meal. At the present moment he was living at the “Shoo Fly,” and
was one of the most highly respected members of the mess that gathered
there. He stood not less than six feet three in his stockings, was
extremely broad-shouldered, powerful, muscular, and finely knit; dark
complexion, black hair, eyes keen as briars and black as jet, fists as
big as any two fists to be seen in the course of a day; disputatious,
somewhat quarrelsome, but not without very amiable qualities. His
bravery, at least, was never called in question. He was no longer United
States marshal, but was holding the position of Mail Inspector, and the
manner in which he discharged his delicate and dangerous duties was
always commendable and very often amusing.
“You see, it ’s jest like this,” he once remarked to the postmaster of
one of the smallest stations in his jurisdiction, and in speaking the
inspector’s voice did not show the slightest sign of anger or
excitement—“you see, the postmaster-general is growling at me because
there is so much thieving going on along this line, so that I’m gittin’
kind o’ tired ’n’ must git th’ whole bizz off mee mind; ’n’ ez I’ve
looked into the whole thing and feel satisfied that you’re the thief, I
think you’d better be pilin’ out o’ here without any more nonsense.”
The postmaster was gone inside of twelve hours, and there was no more
stealing on that line while Duffield held his position. Either the rest
of the twelve dollars per annum postmasters were an extremely honest
set, or else they were scared by the mere presence of Duffield. He used
to be very fond of showing his powerful muscle, and would often seize
one of the heavy oak chairs in the “Congress Hall” bar-room in one hand,
and lift it out at arm’s length; or take some of the people who stood
near him and lift them up, catching hold of the feet only.
How well I remember the excitement which arose in Tucson the day that
“Waco Bill” arrived in town with a wagon train on its way to Los
Angeles. Mr. “Waco Bill” was a “tough” in the truest sense of the term,
and being from half to three-quarters full of the worst liquor to be
found in Tucson—and I hope I am violating no confidence when I say that
some of the vilest coffin varnish on the mundane sphere was to be found
there by those who tried diligently—was anxious to meet and subdue this
Duffield, of whom such exaggerated praise was sounding in his ears.
“Whar’s Duffer?” he cried, or hiccoughed, as he approached the little
group of which Duffield was the central figure. “I want Duffer (_hic_);
he ’s my meat. Whoop!”
The words had hardly left his mouth before something shot out from
Duffield’s right shoulder. It was that awful fist, which could, upon
emergency, have felled an ox, and down went our Texan sprawling upon the
ground. No sooner had he touched Mother Earth than, true to his Texan
instincts, his hand sought his revolver, and partly drew it out of
holster. Duffield retained his preternatural calmness, and did not raise
his voice above a whisper the whole time that his drunken opponent was
hurling all kinds of anathemas at him; but now he saw that something
must be done. In Arizona it was not customary to pull a pistol upon a
man; that was regarded as an act both unchristian-like and wasteful of
time—Arizonanas nearly always shot out of the pocket without drawing
their weapons at all, and into Mr. “Waco Bill’s” groin went the sure
bullet of the man who, local wits used to say, wore crape upon his hat
in memory of his departed virtues.
The bullet struck, and Duffield bent over with a most Chesterfieldian
bow and wave of the hand: “My name’s Duffield, sir,” he said, “and them
’ere ’s mee visitin’ card.”
If there was one man in the world who despised another it was
Chief-Justice John Titus in his scorn for the ex-marshal, which found
open expression on every occasion. Titus was a gentleman of the old
school, educated in the City of Brotherly Love, and anxious to put down
the least semblance of lawlessness and disorder; yet here was an officer
of the Government whose quarrels were notorious and of every-day
occurrence.
Persuasion, kindly remonstrance, earnest warning were alike ineffectual,
and in time the relations between the two men became of the most formal,
not to say rancorous, character. Judge Titus at last made up his mind
that the very first excuse for so doing he would have Duffield hauled up
for carrying deadly weapons, and an occasion arose much sooner than he
imagined.
There was a “baile” given that same week, and Duffield was present with
many others. People usually went on a peace footing to these
assemblies—that is to say, all the heavy armament was left at home, and
nothing taken along but a few Derringers, which would come handy in case
of accident.
There were some five or six of us—all friends of Duffield—sitting in a
little back room away from the long saloon in which the dance was going
on, and we had Duffield in such good humor that he consented to produce
some if not all of the weapons with which he was loaded. He drew them
from the arm-holes of his waistcoat, from his boot-legs, from his
hip-pockets, from the back of his neck, and there they all were—eleven
lethal weapons, mostly small Derringers, with one knife. Comment was
useless; for my own part, I did not feel called upon to criticise my
friend’s eccentricities or amiable weaknesses, whatever they might be,
so I kept my mouth shut, and the others followed my example. I suppose
that on a war-footing nothing less than a couple of Gatling guns would
have served to round out the armament to be brought into play.
Whether it was a true alarm or a false one I couldn’t tell, but the next
day Judge Titus imagined that a movement of Duffield’s hand was intended
to bring to bear upon himself a portion of the Duffield ordnance, and he
had the old man arrested and brought before him on the charge of
carrying concealed deadly weapons.
The court-room was packed with a very orderly crowd, listening
attentively to a long exordium from the lips of the judge upon the
enormity and the uselessness of carrying concealed deadly weapons. The
judge forgot that men would carry arms so long as danger real or
imaginary encompassed them, and that the opinions prevailing upon that
subject in older communities could not be expected to obtain in the
wilder regions.
In Arizona, the reader should know, all the officers of the law were
Americans. In New Mexico, on the contrary, they were almost without
exception Mexicans, and the legal practice was entirely different from
our own, as were the usages and customs of various kinds. For example,
one could go before one of those Rio Grande alcaldes in Socorro, San
Antonio, or Sabinal, and wear just what clothes he pleased, or not wear
any if he didn’t please; it would be all right. He might wear a hat, or
go in his shirt sleeves, or go barefoot, or roll himself a cigarrito,
and it would be all right. But let him dare enter with spurs, and the
ushers would throw him out, and it was a matter of great good luck if he
did not find himself in the calaboose to boot, for contempt of court.
“Call the first witness; call Charles O. Brown.”
Mr. Charles O. Brown, under oath, stated his name, residence, and
occupation, and was then directed to show to the judge and jury how the
prisoner—Duffield—had drawn his revolver the day previous.
“Well, jedge, the way he drawed her was jest this.” And suiting the
action to the word, Mr. Charles O. Brown, the main witness for the
prosecution, drew a six-shooter, fully cocked, from the holster on his
hip. There was a ripple of laughter in the courtroom, as every one saw
at once the absurdity of trying to hold one man responsible for the
misdemeanor of which a whole community was guilty, and in a few minutes
the matter was _nolle prossed_.
I will end up the career of the marshal in this chapter, as we shall
have no further cause to introduce him in these pages. His courage was
soon put to the severest sort of a test when a party of desperadoes from
Sonora, who had been plundering in their own country until driven across
the line, began their operations in Arizona. At the dead of night they
entered Duffield’s house, and made a most desperate assault upon him
while asleep in his bed. By some sort of luck the blow aimed with a
hatchet failed to hit him on head or neck—probably his assailants were
too drunk to see what they were doing—and chopped out a frightful gash
in the shoulder, which would have killed the general run of men.
Duffield, as has been shown, was a giant in strength, and awakened by
the pain, and at once realizing what had happened, he sprang from his
couch and grappled with the nearest of the gang of burglars, choked him,
and proceeded to use him as a weapon with which to sweep out of the
premises the rest of the party, who, seeing that the household had been
alarmed, made good their escape.
Duffield was too much exhausted from loss of blood to retain his hold
upon the rascal whom he had first seized, so that Justice did not
succeed in laying her hands upon any of the band. When Duffield
recovered sufficiently to be able to reappear on the streets, he did not
seem to be the same man. He no longer took pleasure in rows, but acted
like one who had had enough of battles, and was willing to live at peace
with his fellow-men. Unfortunately, if one acquire the reputation of
being “a bad man” on the frontier, it will stick to him for a generation
after he has sown his wild oats, and is trying to bring about a rotation
of crops.
Duffield was killed at Tombstone ten years since, not far from the
Contention Mine, by a young man named Holmes, who had taken up a claim
in which Duffield asserted an interest. The moment he saw Duffield
approaching he levelled a shot-gun upon him, and warned him not to move
a foot, and upon Duffield’s still advancing a few paces he filled him
full of buckshot, and the coroner’s jury, without leaving their seats,
returned a verdict of justifiable homicide, because the old, old
Duffield, who was “on the shoot,” was still remembered, and the new man,
who had turned over a new leaf and was trying to lead a new life, was
still a stranger in the land.
Peace to his ashes!
There were military as well as non-military men in Tucson, and although
the following incident did not occur under my personal observation, and
was one of those stories that “leak out,” I tell it as filling in a gap
in the description of life as it was in Arizona twenty and twenty-five
years ago. All the persons concerned were boarders at the “Shoo Fly,”
and all are now dead, or out of service years and years ago.
The first was the old field officer whom, for want of a better name,
every one called “Old Uncle Billy N——.” He had met with a grievous
misfortune, and lost one of his eyes, but bore his trouble with stoicism
and without complaint. During a brief visit to Boston, he had arranged
with an oculist and optician to have made for him three glass eyes. “But
I don’t clearly understand what you want with so many,” said the Boston
man.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” replied the son of Mars. “You see, I want one for
use when I’m sober, one when I’m drunk, and one when I’m p—— d—— drunk.”
The glass eyes were soon ready to meet the varying conditions of the
colonel’s life, and gave the old man the liveliest satisfaction. Not
long after his return to the bracing climate of Tucson he made the round
of the gaming-tables at the Feast of Saint Augustine, which was then in
full blast, and happened to “copper” the ace, when he should have bet
“straight,” and bet on the queen when that fickle lady was refusing the
smile of her countenance to all her admirers. It was a gloomy day for
the colonel when he awaked to find himself almost without a dollar, and
no paymaster to be expected from San Francisco for a couple of months. A
brilliant thought struck him; he would economize by sending back to
Boston two of his stock of glass eyes, which he did not really need, as
the “sober” and “tolerably drunk” ones had never been used, and ought to
fetch something of a price at second-hand.
The Boston dealer, however, curtly refused to negotiate a sale, saying
that he did not do business in that way, and, as if to add insult to
injury, enclosed the two eyes in a loose sheet of paper, which was
inscribed with a pathetic story about “The Drunkard Saved.” It took at
least a dozen rounds of drinks before the colonel could drown his wrath,
and satisfy the inquiries of condoling friends who had learned of the
brutal treatment to which he had been subjected.
A great friend of the colonel’s was Al. Garrett, who in stature was his
elder’s antithesis, being as short and wiry as the colonel was large and
heavy. Garrett was an extremely good-hearted youngster, and one of the
best horsemen in the whole army. His admirers used to claim that he
could ride anything with four legs to it, from a tarantula to a
megatherium. Semig, the third of the trio, was a Viennese, a very
cultivated man, a graduate in medicine, an excellent musician, a
graceful dancer, well versed in modern languages, and well educated in
every respect. He was the post surgeon at Camp Crittenden, sixty miles
to the south of Tucson, but was temporarily at the latter place.
He and Garrett and Uncle Billy were making the best of their way home
from supper at the “Shoo Fly” late one evening, and had started to cut
across lots after passing the “Plaza.”
There were no fences, no covers—nothing at all to prevent pedestrians
from falling into some one of the innumerable abandoned wells which were
to be met with in every block, and it need surprise no one to be told
that in the heat of argument about some trivial matter the worthy
medical officer, who was walking in the middle, fell down plump some
fifteen or twenty feet, landing in a more or less bruised condition upon
a pile of adobes and pieces of rock at the bottom.
Garrett and his elderly companion lurched against each other and
continued the discussion, oblivious of the withdrawal of their
companion, who from his station at the bottom of the pit, like another
Joseph, was bawling for his heartless brothers to return and take him
out. After his voice failed he bethought him of his revolver, which he
drew from hip, and with which he blazed away, attracting the attention
of a party of Mexicans returning from a dance, who too hastily concluded
that Semig was a “Gringo” spoiling for a fight, whereupon they gave him
their best services in rolling down upon him great pieces of adobe,
which imparted renewed vigor to Semig’s vocalization and finally
awakened the Mexicans to a suspicion of the true state of the case.
The poor doctor never heard the last of his mishap, and very likely was
glad to receive the order which transferred him to the Modoc War,
wherein he received the wounds of which he afterward died. He showed
wonderful coolness in the Lava Beds, and even after the Indians had
wounded him in the shoulder and he had been ordered off the field, he
refused to leave the wounded under fire until a second shot broke his
leg and knocked him senseless.
Associated with Semig in my recollection is the name of young Sherwood,
a First Lieutenant in the Twenty-first Infantry, who met his death in
the same campaign. He was a man of the best impulses, bright, brave, and
generous, and a general favorite.
This rather undersized gentleman coming down the street is a man with a
history—perhaps it might be perfectly correct to say with two or three
histories. He is Don Estevan Ochoa, one of the most enterprising
merchants, as he is admitted to be one of the coolest and bravest men,
in all the southwestern country. He has a handsome face, a keen black
eye, a quick, business-like air, with very polished and courteous
manners.
During the war the Southern leaders thought they would establish a chain
of posts across the continent from Texas to California, and one of their
first movements was to send a brigade of Texans to occupy Tucson. The
commanding general—Turner by name—sent for Don Estevan and told him that
he had been informed that he was an outspoken sympathizer with the cause
of the Union, but he hoped that Ochoa would see that the Union was a
thing of the past, and reconcile himself to the new state of affairs,
and take the oath to the Confederacy, and thus relieve the new commander
from the disagreeable responsibility of confiscating his property and
setting him adrift outside his lines.
Don Estevan never hesitated a moment. He was not that kind of a man. His
reply was perfectly courteous, as I am told all the talk on the part of
the Confederate officer had been. Ochoa owed all he had in the world to
the Government of the United States, and it would be impossible for him
to take an oath of fidelity to any hostile power or party. When would
General Turner wish him to leave?
He was allowed to select one of his many horses, and to take a pair of
saddle-bags filled with such clothing and food as he could get together
on short notice, and then, with a rifle and twenty rounds of ammunition,
was led outside the lines and started for the Rio Grande. How he ever
made his way across those two hundred and fifty miles of desert and
mountains which intervened between the town of Tucson and the Union
outposts nearer to the Rio Grande, I do not know—nobody knows. The
country was infested by the Apaches, and no one of those upon whom he
turned his back expected to hear of his getting through alive. But he
did succeed, and here he is, a proof of devotion to the cause of the
nation for which it would be hard to find a parallel. When the Union
troops reoccupied Tucson Don Estevan resumed business and was soon
wealthy again, in spite of the tribute levied by the raiding Apaches,
who once ran off every head of draught oxen the firm of Tully, Ochoa &
De Long possessed, and never stopped until they had crossed the Rio
Salado, or Salt River, where they killed and “jerked” the meat on the
slope of that high mesa which to this day bears the name of “Jerked Beef
Butte.”
Another important factor in the formative period of Arizona’s growth is
this figure walking briskly by, clad in the cassock of an ecclesiastic.
It is Bishop Salpointe, a man of learning, great administrative
capacity, and devoted to the interests of his people. He preaches
little, but practises much. In many ways unknown to his flock he is busy
with plans for their spiritual and worldly advancement, and the work he
accomplishes in establishing schools, both in Tucson and in the Papago
village of San Xavier, is something which should not soon be forgotten
by the people benefited. He is very poor. All that one can see in his
house is a crucifix and a volume of precious manuscript notes upon the
Apaches and Papagoes. He seems to be always cheerful. His poverty he
freely shares with his flock, and I have often thought that if he ever
had any wealth he would share that too.
This one whom we meet upon the street as we leave to visit one of the
gambling saloons is Pete Kitchen. We shall be in luck if he invite us to
visit him at his “ranch,” which has all the airs of a feudal castle in
the days of chivalry. Peter Kitchen has probably had more contests with
Indians than any other settler in America. He comes from the same stock
which sent out from the lovely vales and swales in the Tennessee
Mountains the contingent of riflemen who were to cut such a conspicuous
figure at the battle of New Orleans, and Peter finds just as steady
employment for his trusty rifle as ever was essential in the Delta.
Approaching Pete Kitchen’s ranch, one finds himself in a fertile valley,
with a small hillock near one extremity. Upon the summit of this has
been built the house from which no effort of the Apaches has ever
succeeded in driving our friend. There is a sentinel posted on the roof,
there is another out in the “cienaga” with the stock, and the men
ploughing in the bottom are obliged to carry rifles, cocked and loaded,
swung to the plough handle. Every man and boy is armed with one or two
revolvers on hip. There are revolvers and rifles and shotguns along the
walls and in every corner. Everything speaks of a land of warfare and
bloodshed. The title of “Dark and Bloody Ground” never fairly belonged
to Kentucky. Kentucky never was anything except a Sunday-school
convention in comparison with Arizona, every mile of whose surface could
tell its tale of horror were the stones and gravel, the sage-brush and
mescal, the mesquite and the yucca, only endowed with speech for one
brief hour.
Within the hospitable walls of the Kitchen home the traveller was made
to feel perfectly at ease. If food were not already on the fire, some of
the women set about the preparation of the savory and spicy stews for
which the Mexicans are deservedly famous, and others kneaded the dough
and patted into shape the paper-like tortillas with which to eat the
juicy frijoles or dip up the tempting chile colorado. There were women
carding, spinning, sewing—doing the thousand and one duties of domestic
life in a great ranch, which had its own blacksmith, saddler, and
wagonmaker, and all other officials needed to keep the machinery running
smoothly.
Between Pete Kitchen and the Apaches a ceaseless war was waged, with the
advantages not all on the side of Kitchen. His employees were killed and
wounded, his stock driven away, his pigs filled with arrows, making the
suffering quadrupeds look like perambulating pin-cushions—everything
that could be thought of to drive him away; but there he stayed,
unconquered and unconquerable.
Men like Estevan Ochoa and Pete Kitchen merit a volume by themselves.
Arizona and New Mexico were full of such people, not all as determined
and resolute as Pete; not all, nor nearly all, so patriotic and
self-denying as Don Estevan, but all with histories full of romance and
excitement. Few of them yet remain, and their deeds of heroism will soon
be forgotten, or, worse luck yet, some of the people who never dreamed
of going down there until they could do so in a Pullman car will be
setting themselves up as heroes, and having their puny biographies
written for the benefit of the coming generations.
Strangest recollection of all that I have of those persons is the
quietness of their manner and the low tone in which they usually spoke
to their neighbors. They were quiet in dress, in speech, and in
conduct—a marked difference from the more thoroughly dramatized border
characters of later days.
CHAPTER V.
THE DIVERSIONS OF TUCSON—THE GAMBLING SALOONS—BOB CRANDALL AND HIS
DIAMOND—“SLAP-JACK BILLY”—TIGHT-ROPE WALKERS—THE THEATRE—THE
DUEÑAS—BAILES—THE NEWSPAPERS—STAGE-DRIVERS.
It has been shown that Tucson had no hotels. She did not need any at the
time of which I am writing, as her floating population found all the
ease and comfort it desired in the flare and glare of the gambling
hells, which were bright with the lustre of smoking oil lamps and gay
with the varicolored raiment of moving crowds, and the music of harp and
Pan’s pipes. In them could be found nearly every man in the town at some
hour of the day or night, and many used them as the Romans did their
“Thermæ”—as a place of residence.
All nationalities, all races were represented, and nearly all conditions
of life. There were cadaverous-faced Americans, and Americans whose
faces were plump; men in shirt sleeves, and men who wore their coats as
they would have done in other places; there were Mexicans wrapped in the
red, yellow, and black striped cheap “serapes,” smoking the inevitable
cigarrito, made on the spot by rolling a pinch of tobacco in a piece of
corn shuck; and there were other Mexicans more thoroughly Americanized,
who were clad in the garb of the people of the North. Of Chinese and
negroes there were only a few—they had not yet made acquaintance to any
extent with that section of our country; but their place was occupied by
civilized Indians, Opatas, Yaquis, and others, who had come up with
“bull” teams and pack trains from Sonora. The best of order prevailed,
there being no noise save the hum of conversation or the click of the
chips on the different tables. Tobacco smoke ascended from cigarritos,
pipes, and the vilest of cigars, filling all the rooms with the foulest
of odors. The bright light from the lamps did not equal the steely glint
in the eyes of the “bankers,” who ceaselessly and imperturbably dealt
out the cards from faro boxes, or set in motion the balls in roulette.
There used to be in great favor among the Mexicans, and the Americans,
too, for that matter, a modification of roulette called “chusas,” which
never failed to draw a cluster of earnest players, who would remain by
the tables until the first suggestion of daylight. High above the squeak
of Pan’s pipes or the plinkety-plink-plunk of the harps sounded the
voice of the “banker:” “Make yer little bets, gents; make yer little
bets; all’s set, the game’s made, ’n’ th’ ball’s a-rollin’.” Blue chips,
red chips, white chips would be stacked high upon cards or numbers, as
the case might be, but all eventually seemed to gravitate into the maw
of the bank, and when, for any reason, the “game” flagged in energy,
there would be a tap upon the bell by the dealer’s side, and “drinks all
round” be ordered at the expense of the house.
It was a curious exhibit of one of the saddest passions of human nature,
and a curious jumble of types which would never press against each other
elsewhere. Over by the faro bank, in the corner, stood Bob Crandall, a
faithful wooer of the fickle goddess Chance. He was one of the
handsomest men in the Southwest, and really endowed with many fine
qualities; he had drifted away from the restraints of home life years
ago, and was then in Tucson making such a livelihood as he could pick up
as a gambler, wasting brain and attainments which, if better applied,
would have been a credit to himself and his country.
The beautiful diamond glistening upon Bob Crandall’s breast had a
romantic history. I give it as I remember it:
During the months that Maximilian remained in Mexico there was a French
brigade stationed at the two towns of Hermosillo and Magdalena, in
Sonora. Desertions were not rare, and, naturally enough, the fugitives
made their way when they could across the boundary into the United
States, which maintained a by no means dubious attitude in regard to the
foreign occupation.
One of these deserters approached Crandall on the street, and asked him
for assistance to enable him to get to San Francisco. He had a stone
which he believed was of great value, which was part of the plunder
coming to him when he and some comrades had looted the hacienda of an
affluent Mexican planter. He would sell this for four hundred
francs—eighty dollars.
Crandall was no judge of gems, but there was something so brilliant
about the bauble offered to him that he closed the bargain and paid over
the sum demanded by the stranger, who took his departure and was seen no
more. Four or five years afterward Crandall was making some purchases in
a jewellery store in San Francisco, when the owner, happening to see the
diamond he was wearing, inquired whether he would be willing to sell it,
and offered fifteen hundred dollars cash for the gem which had been so
lightly regarded. Nothing further was ever learned of its early
ownership, and it is likely enough that its seizure was only one
incident among scores that might be related of the French occupation—not
seizures by the foreigners altogether, but those made also by the
bandits with whom the western side of the republic swarmed for a time.
There was one poor wretch who could always be seen about the tables; he
never played, never talked to any one, and seemed to take no particular
interest in anything or anybody. What his name was no one knew or cared;
all treated him kindly, and anything he wished for was supplied by the
charity or the generosity of the frequenters of the gaming-tables. He
was a trifle “off,” but perfectly harmless; he had lost all the brain he
ever had through fright in an Apache ambuscade, and had never recovered
his right mind. The party to which he belonged had been attacked not far
from Davidson’s Springs, but he was one of those who had escaped, or at
least he thought he had until he heard the “swish” and felt the pull of
the noose of a lariat which a young Apache hiding behind a sage-brush
had dexterously thrown across his shoulders. The Mexican drew his
ever-ready knife, slashed the raw-hide rope in two, and away he flew on
the road to Tucson, never ceasing to spur his mule until both of them
arrived, trembling, covered with dust and lather, and scared out of
their wits, and half-dead, within sight of the green cottonwoods on the
banks of the Santa Cruz.
Then one was always sure to meet men like old Jack Dunn, who had
wandered about in all parts of the world, and has since done such
excellent work as a scout against the Chiricahua Apaches. I think that
Jack is living yet, but am not certain. If he is, it will pay some
enterprising journalist to hunt him up and get a few of his stories out
of him; they’ll make the best kind of reading for people who care to
hear of the wildest days on the wildest of frontiers. And there were
others—men who have passed away, men like James Toole, one of the first
mayors of Tucson, who dropped in, much as I myself did, to see what was
to be seen. Opposed as I am to gambling, no matter what protean guise it
may assume, I should do the gamblers of Tucson the justice to say that
they were as progressive an element as the town had. They always had
plank floors, where every other place was content with the bare earth
rammed hard, or with the curious mixture of river sand, bullock’s blood,
and cactus juice which hardened like cement and was used by some of the
more opulent. But with the exception of the large wholesale firms, and
there were not over half a dozen of them all told, the house of the
governor, and a few—a very few—private residences of people like the
Carillos, Sam Hughes, Hiram Stevens, and Aldrich, who desired comfort,
there were no wooden floors to be seen in that country.
The gaming establishments were also well supplied with the latest
newspapers from San Francisco, Sacramento, and New York, and to these
all who entered, whether they played or not, were heartily welcome.
Sometimes, but not very often, there would be served up about midnight a
very acceptable lunch of “frijoles,” coffee, or chocolate, “chile con
carne,” “enchiladas,” and other dishes, all hot and savory, and all
thoroughly Mexican. The flare of the lamps was undimmed, the
plinkety-plunk of the harps was unchecked, and the voice of the dealer
was abroad in the land from the setting of the sun until the rising of
the same, and until that tired luminary had again sunk to rest behind
the purple caps of the Santa Teresa, and had again risen rejuvenated to
gladden a reawakened earth with his brightest beams. Sunday or Monday,
night or day, it made no difference—the game went on; one dealer taking
the place of another with the regularity, the precision, and the
stolidity of a sentinel.
“Isn’t it ra-a-a-ther late for you to be open?” asked the tenderfoot
arrival from the East, as he descended from the El Paso stage about four
o’clock one morning, and dragged himself to the bar to get something to
wash the dust out of his throat.
“Wa-a-al, it _is_ kinder late fur th’ night afore last,” genially
replied the bartender; “but ’s jest ’n th’ shank o’ th’ evenin’ fur
t’-night.”
It was often a matter of astonishment to me that there were so few
troubles and rows in the gambling establishments of Tucson. They did
occur from time to time, just as they might happen anywhere else, but
not with sufficient frequency to make a feature of the life of the
place.
Once what threatened to open up as a most serious affair had a very
ridiculous termination. A wild-eyed youth, thoroughly saturated with
“sheep-herder’s delight” and other choice vintages of the country, made
his appearance in the bar of “Congress Hall,” and announcing himself as
“Slap-jack Billy, the Pride of the Pan-handle,” went on to inform a
doubting world that he could whip his weight in “b’ar-meat”—
“Fur ber-lud’s mee color,
I kerries mee corfin on mee back,
’N’ th’ hummin’ o’ pistol-balls, bee jingo,
Is me-e-e-u-u-sic in mee ears.” (Blank, blank, blank.)
Thump! sounded the brawny fist of “Shorty” Henderson, and down went Ajax
struck by the offended lightning. When he came to, the “Pride of the
Pan-handle” had something of a job in rubbing down the lump about as big
as a goose-egg which had suddenly and spontaneously grown under his left
jaw; but he bore no malice and so expressed himself.
“Podners (blank, blank, blank), this ’ere’s the most sociablest crowd I
ever struck; let’s all hev a drink.”
If the reader do not care for such scenes, he can find others perhaps
more to his liking in the various amusements which, under one pretext or
another, extracted all the loose change of the town. The first, in
popular estimation, were the “maromas,” or tight-rope walkers and
general acrobats, who performed many feats well deserving of the praise
lavished upon them by the audience. Ever since the days of Cortés the
Mexicans have been noted for gymnastic dexterity; it is a matter of
history that Cortés, upon returning to Europe, took with him several of
the artists in this line, whose agility and cunning surprised those who
saw them perform in Spain and Italy.
There were trained dogs and men who knew how to make a barrel roll up or
down an inclined plane. All these received a due share of the homage of
their fellow-citizens, but nothing to compare to the enthusiasm which
greeted the advent of the genuine “teatro.” That was _the_ time when all
Tucson turned out to do honor to the wearers of the buskin. If there was
a man, woman, or child in the old pueblo who wasn’t seated on one of the
cottonwood saplings which, braced upon other saplings, did duty as
benches in the corral near the quartermaster’s, it was because that man,
woman, or child was sick, or in jail. It is astonishing how much
enjoyment can be gotten out of life when people set about the task in
dead earnest.
There were gross violations of all the possibilities, of all the
congruities, of all the unities in the play, “Elena y Jorge,” presented
to an appreciative public the first evening I saw the Mexican strolling
heavy-tragedy company in its glory. But what cared we? The scene was
lighted by bon-fires, by great torches of wood, and by the row of
smoking foot-lights running along the front of the little stage.
The admission was regulated according to a peculiar plan: for Mexicans
it was fifty cents, but for Americans, one dollar, because the Americans
had more money. Another unique feature was the concentration of all the
small boys in the first row, closest to the actors, and the clowns who
were constantly running about, falling head over heels over the
youngsters, and in other ways managing to keep the audience in the best
of humor during the rather long intervals between the acts.
The old ladies who sat bunched up on the seats a little farther in rear
seemed to be more deeply moved by the trials of the heroine than the men
or boys, who continued placidly to puff cigarettes or munch sweet
quinces, as their ages and tastes dictated. It was a most harrowing,
sanguinary play. The plot needs very few words. Elena, young, beautiful,
rich, patriotic; old uncle, miser, traitor, mercenary, anxious to sell
lovely heiress to French officer for gold; French officer, coward, liar,
poltroon, steeped in every crime known to man, anxious to wed lovely
heiress for her money alone; Jorge, young, beautiful, brave,
conscientious, an expert in the art of war, in love with heiress for her
own sweet sake, but kept from her side by the wicked uncle and his own
desire to drive the last cursed despot from the fair land of his
fathers.
(Dirge, by the orchestra; cries of “Muere!” (_i.e._, May he die! or, Let
him die!) from the semi-circle of boys, who ceased work upon their
quinces “for this occasion only.”)
I despised that French officer, and couldn’t for the life of me
understand how any nation, no matter how depraved, could afford to keep
such a creature upon its military rolls. I don’t think I ever heard any
one utter in the same space of time more thoroughly villainous
sentiments than did that man, and I was compelled, as a matter of
principle, to join with the “muchachos” in their chorus of “Muere!”
As for Doña Elena, the way she let that miserable old uncle see that his
schemes were understood, and that never, never, would she consent to
become the bride of a traitor and an invader, was enough to make Sarah
Bernhardt turn green with envy.
And Jorge—well, Jorge was not idle. There he was all the time, concealed
behind a barrel or some other very inadequate cover, listening to every
word uttered by the wicked old uncle, the mercenary French officer, and
the dauntless Helen. He was continually on the go, jumping out from his
concealment, taking the hand of his adored one, telling her his love,
but always interrupted by the sudden return of the avuncular villain or
the foe of his bleeding country. It is all over at last; the curtain
rings down, and the baffled Gaul has been put to flight; the guards are
dragging the wretched uncle off to the calaboose, and Jorge and his best
girl entwine themselves in each other’s arms amid thunders of applause.
Then the payazo, or clown, comes to the front, waving the red, white,
and green colors of the Mexican republic, and chanting a song in which
the doings of the invaders are held up to obloquy and derision.
Everybody would be very hungry by this time, and the old crones who made
a living by selling hot suppers to theatre-goers reaped their harvest.
The wrinkled dames whose faces had been all tears only a moment ago over
the woes of Elena were calm, happy, and voracious. Plate after plate of
steaming hot “enchiladas” would disappear down their throats, washed
down by cups of boiling coffee or chocolate; or perhaps appetite
demanded “tamales” and “tortillas,” with plates of “frijoles” and “chile
con carne.”
“Enchiladas” and “tamales” are dishes of Aztec origin, much in vogue on
the south side of the Rio Grande and Gila. The former may be described
as corn batter cakes, dipped in a stew of red chile, with tomato,
cheese, and onions chopped fine.
“Tamales” are chopped meat—beef, pork, or chicken, or a mixture of all
three—combined with corn-meal and rolled up in husks and boiled or
baked. Practically, they are croquettes. These dishes are delicious, and
merit an introduction to American tables. No one can deny that when a
Mexican agrees to furnish a hot supper, the hot supper will be
forthcoming. What caloric cannot be supplied by fuel is derived from
chile, red pepper, with white pepper, green, and a trifle of black,
merely to show that the cook has no prejudices on account of color.
The banquet may not have been any too grand, out in the open air, but
the gratitude of the bright-eyed, sweet-voiced young señoritas who
shared it made it taste delicious. Tucson etiquette in some things was
ridiculously strict, and the occasions when young ladies could go, even
in parties, with representatives of the opposite sex were few and far
between—and all the more appreciated when they did come.
If ever there was created a disagreeable feature upon the fair face of
nature, it was the Spanish dueña. All that were to be met in those days
in southern Arizona seemed to be possessed of an unaccountable aversion
to the mounted service. No flattery would put them in good humor, no
cajolery would blind them, intimidation was thrown away. There they
would sit, keeping strict, dragon-like watch over the dear little
creatures who responded to the names of Anita, Victoria, Concepcion,
Guadalupe, or Mercedes, and preventing conversation upon any subject
excepting the weather, in which we became so expert that it is a wonder
the science of meteorology hasn’t made greater advances than it has
during the past two decades.
The bull fight did not get farther west than El Paso. Tucson never had
one that I have heard of, and very little in the way of out-door “sport”
beyond chicken fights, which were often savage and bloody. The rapture
with which the feminine heart welcomed the news that a “baile” was to be
given in Tucson equalled the pleasure of the ladies of Murray Hill or
Beacon Street upon the corresponding occasions in their localities. To
be sure, the ceremony of the Tucson affairs was of the meagrest. The
rooms were wanting in splendor, perhaps in comfort—but the music was on
hand, and so were the ladies, young and old, and their cavaliers, and
all hands would manage to have the best sort of a time. The ball-room
was one long apartment, with earthen floor, having around its sides low
benches, and upon its walls a few cheap mirrors and half a dozen candles
stuck to the adobe by melted tallow, a bit of moist clay, or else held
in tin sconces, from which they emitted the sickliest light upon the
heads and forms of the highly colored saints whose pictures were to be
seen in the most eligible places. If the weather happened to be chilly
enough in the winter season, a petty fire would be allowed to blaze in
one of the corners, but, as a general thing, this was not essential.
The summer climate of Tucson is sultry, and the heat will often run up
as high as 120° Fahr.; the fall months are dangerous from malaria, and
the springs disagreeable from sand storms, but the winters are
incomparable. Neither Italy nor Spain can compare with southern Arizona
in balminess of winter climate, and I know of no place in the whole
world superior to Tucson as a sanitarium for nervous and pulmonary
diseases, from November to March, when the patient can avoid the
malaria-breeding fall months and the disagreeable sand storms of the
early spring.
The nights in Tucson during the greater part of the year are so cool
that blankets are agreeable covering for sleepers. There are times in
Tucson, as during the summer of 1870, when for more than a week the
thermometer never indicates lower than 98° by day or night. And there
are localities, like forts or camps—as they were then styled—Grant,
MacDowell, Mojave, Yuma, Beale’s Springs, Verde, and Date Creek, where
this rule of excessive and prolonged heat never seemed to break. The
winter nights of Tucson are cold and bracing, but it is a dry cold,
without the slightest suggestion of humidity, and rarely does the
temperature fall much below the freezing-point.
The moment you passed the threshold of the ball-room in Tucson you had
broken over your head an egg-shell filled either with cologne of the
most dubious reputation or else with finely cut gold and silver paper.
This custom, preserved in this out-of-the-way place, dates back to the
“Carnestolends” or Shrove-Tuesday pranks of Spain and Portugal, when the
egg was really broken over the head of the unfortunate wight and the
pasty mass covered over with flour.
Once within the ball-room there was no need of being presented to any
one. The etiquette of the Spaniards is very elastic, and is based upon
common sense. Every man who is good enough to be invited to enter the
house of a Mexican gentleman is good enough to enter into conversation
with all the company he may meet there.
Our American etiquette is based upon the etiquette of the English. Ever
since King James, the mild-mannered lunatic, sold his orders of nobility
to any cad who possessed the necessary six thousand pounds to pay for an
entrance into good society, the aristocracy of England has been going
down-hill, and what passes with it for manners is the code of the
promoted plutocrat, whose ideas would find no place with the Spaniards,
who believe in “_sangre azul_” or nothing. There was very little
conversation between the ladies and the gentlemen, because the ladies
preferred to cluster together and discuss the neighbors who hadn’t been
able to come, or explain the details of dresses just made or to be made.
Gentlemen invited whom they pleased to dance, and in the intervals
between the figures there might be some very weak attempt at
conversation, but that was all, except the marching of the gentle female
up to the counter and buying her a handkerchief full of raisins or
candies, which she carefully wrapped up and carried home with her, in
accordance with a custom which obtained among the Aztecs and also among
their Spanish conquerors, and really had a strong foothold in good old
England itself, from which latter island it did not disappear until A.D.
1765.
While the language of conversation was entirely Spanish, the figures
were called off in English, or what passed for English in those days in
Arizona: “Ally man let ’n’ all shassay;” “Bal’nce t’ yer podners ’n’ all
han’s roun’;” “Dozydozy-chaat ’n’ swing.”
What lovely times we used to have! What enchanting music from the Pan’s
pipes, the flute, the harp, the bass-drum, and the bull-fiddle all going
at once! How lovely the young ladies were! How bright the rooms were
with their greasy lamps or their candles flickering from the walls! It
can hardly be possible that twenty years and more have passed away, yet
there are the figures in the almanac which cannot lie.
After the “baile” was over, the rule was for the younger participants to
take the music and march along the streets to the houses of the young
ladies who had been prevented from attending, and there, under the
window, or, rather, in front of the window—because all the houses were
of one story, and a man could not get under the windows unless he
crawled on hands and knees—pour forth their souls in a serenade.
The Spanish serenader, to judge him by his songs, is a curious blending
of woe and despair, paying court to a damsel whose heart is colder than
the crystalline ice that forms in the mountains. The worst of it all is,
the young woman, whose charms of person are equalled by the charms of
her mind, does not seem to care a rush what becomes of the despairing
songster, who threatens to go away forever, to sail on unknown seas, to
face the nameless perils of the desert, if his suit be not at once
recognized by at least one frosty smile. But at the first indication of
relenting on the part of the adored one, the suitor suddenly recollects
that he cannot possibly stand the fervor of her glance, which rivals the
splendor of the sun, and, accordingly, he begs her not to look upon him
with those beautiful orbs, as he has concluded to depart forever and
sing his woes in distant lands. Having discharged this sad duty at the
windows of Doña Anita Fulana, the serenaders solemnly progress to the
lattice of Doña Mercedes de Zutana, and there repeat the same
heart-rending tale of disappointed affection.
It was always the same round of music, taken in the same series—“La
Paloma,” “Golondrina,” and the rest. I made a collection of some twenty
of these ditties or madrigals, and was impressed with the poetic fervor
and the absolute lack of common sense shown in them all, which is the
best evidence that as love songs they will bear comparison with any that
have ever been written. The music in many cases was excellent, although
the execution was with very primitive instruments. I do not remember a
single instance where the fair one made the least sign of approval or
pleasure on account of such serenades, and I suppose that the Mexican
idea is that she should not, because if there is a polite creature in
the world it is the Mexican woman, no matter of what degree.
The most tender strains evoked no response, and the young man, or men,
as the case might be, could have held on until morning and sung himself
or themselves into pneumonia for all the young lady seemed to care.
“No me mires con esos tus ojos,
(Fluke-fluky-fluke; plink, planky-plink.)
“Mas hermosos que el sol en el cielo,
(Plinky-plink; plinky-plink.)
“Que me mires de dicha y consuelo,
(Fluky-fluky-fluke; plink-plink.)
“Que me mata! que me mata! tu mirar.”
(Plinky-plink, fluky-fluke; plinky-plink; fluke-fluke.)
But it is morning now, and the bells are clanging for first mass, and we
had better home and to bed. Did we so desire we could enter the church,
but as there is much to be said in regard to the different feasts, which
occurred at different seasons and most acceptably divided the year, we
can leave that duty unfulfilled for the present and give a few brief
sentences to the christenings and funerals, which were celebrated under
our observation.
The Mexicans used to attach a great deal of importance to the naming of
their children, and when the day for the christening had arrived,
invitations scattered far and near brought together all the relatives
and friends of the family, who most lavishly eulogized the youngster,
and then partook of a hearty collation, which was the main feature of
the entertainment.
Funerals, especially of children, were generally without coffins, owing
to the great scarcity of lumber, and nearly always with music at the
head of the procession, which slowly wended its way to the church to the
measure of plaintive melody.
Birthdays were not observed, but in their stead were kept the days of
the saints of the same name. For example, all the young girls named
Anita would observe Saint Ann’s day, without regard to the date of their
own birth, and so with the Guadalupes and Francescas and others.
I should not omit to state that there were whole blocks of houses in
Tucson which did not have a single nail in them, but had been
constructed entirely of adobes, with all parts of the wooden framework
held together by strips of raw-hide.
Yet in these comfortless abodes, which did not possess ten dollars’
worth of furniture, one met with charming courtesy from old and young.
“Ah! happy the eyes that gaze upon thee,” was the form of salutation to
friends who had been absent for a space—“Dichosos los ojos que ven a V.”
“Go thou with God,” was the gentle mode of saying farewell, to which the
American guest would respond, as he shifted the revolvers on his hip and
adjusted the quid of tobacco in his mouth: “Wa-al, I reckon I’ll git.”
But the Mexican would arrange the folds of his serape, bow most
politely, and say: “Ladies, I throw myself at your feet”—“À los pies de
VV., señoritas.”
Thus far there has been no mention of that great lever of public
opinion—the newspaper. There was one of which I will now say a word, and
a few months later, in the spring of 1870, the town saw a second
established, of which a word shall be said in its turn. The _Weekly
Arizonian_ was a great public journal, an organ of public opinion,
managed by Mr. P. W. Dooner, a very able editor.
It was the custom in those days to order the acts and resolutions of
Congress to be published in the press of the remoter Territories, thus
enabling the settlers on the frontier to keep abreast of legislation,
especially such as more immediately affected their interests. Ordinarily
the management of the paper went no farther than the supervision of the
publication of such acts, bills, etc.; and the amount of outside
information finding an outlet in the scattered settlements of Arizona
and New Mexico was extremely small, and by no means recent. With a few
exceptions, all the journals of those days were printed either in
Spanish alone, or half in Spanish and half in English, the exceptions
being sheets like the _Miner_, of Prescott, Arizona, which from the
outset maintained the principle that our southwestern territories should
be thoroughly Americanized, and that by no surer method could this be
effected than by a thoroughly American press. Mr. John H. Marion was the
enunciator of this seemingly simple and common-sense proposition, and
although the _Miner_ has long since passed into other hands, he has, in
the columns of the _Courier_, owned and edited by him, advocated and
championed it to the present day.
There may have been other matter in the _Weekly Arizonian_ besides the
copies of legislative and executive documents referred to, but if so I
never was fortunate enough to see it, excepting possibly once, on the
occasion of my first visit to the town, when I saw announced in bold
black and white that “Colonel” Bourke was paying a brief visit to his
friend, Señor So-and-so. If there is one weak spot in the armor of a
recently-graduated lieutenant, it is the desire to be called colonel
before he dies, and here was the ambition of my youth gratified almost
before the first lustre had faded from my shoulder-straps. It would
serve no good purpose to tell how many hundred copies of that week’s
issue found their way into the earliest outgoing mail, addressed to
friends back in the States. I may be pardoned for alluding to the
reckless profanity of the stage-driver upon observing the great bulk of
the load his poor horses were to carry. The stage-drivers were an
exceptionally profane set, and this one, Frank Francis, was an adept in
the business. He has long since gone to his reward in the skies, killed,
if I have not made a great mistake, by the Apaches in Sonora, in 1881.
He was a good, “square” man, as I can aver from an acquaintance and
friendship cemented in later days, when I had to take many and many a
lonesome and dangerous ride with him in various sections and on various
routes in that then savage-infested region. It was Frank’s boast that no
“Injuns” should ever get either him or the mail under his care. “All
you’ve got to do with ’n Injun ’s to be smarter nor he is. Now, f’r
instance, ’n Injun ’ll allers lie in wait ’longside the road, tryin’ to
ketch th’ mail. Wa’al, I never don’ go ’long no derned road, savey? I
jest cut right ’cross lots, ’n’ dern my skin ef all th’ Injuns this side
o’ Bitter Creek kin tell whar to lay fur _me_.” This and similar bits of
wisdom often served to soothe the frightened fancy of the weary
“tenderfoot” making his first trip into that wild region, especially if
the trip was to be by night, as it generally was.
Whipping up his team, Frank would take a shoot off to one side or the
other of the road, and never return to it until the faint tinge of light
in the east, or the gladsome crow of chanticleer announced that the dawn
was at hand and Tucson in sight. How long they had both been in coming!
How the chilling air of night had depressed the spirits and lengthened
the hours into eternities! How grand the sky was with its masses of
worlds peeping out from depths of blue, unsounded by the telescopes of
less favored climes! How often, as the stars rose behind some distant
hill-top, did they appear to the fancy as the signal lights of distant
Apache raiding parties, and freeze the blood, already coagulated, by
suddenly coming upon the gaunt, blackened frame of some dead giant
cactus stretching out its warning arms behind a sharp turn in the line
of travel!
To this feeling of disquietude the yelping of the coyote added no new
horrors; the nervous system was already strained to its utmost tension,
and any and all sounds not immediately along the trail were a pleasant
relief. They gave something of which to think and a little of which to
talk besides the ever-present topic of “Injuns, Injuns.” But far
different was the sensation as the morning drew near, and fluttering
coveys of quail rose with a whirr from their concealment under the
mesquite, or pink-eared jack-rabbits scurried from under the horses’
feet. Then it was that driver and passenger alike, scared from a fretful
doze, would nervously grasp the ever-ready rifle or revolver, and look
in vain for the flight of arrows or await the lance-thrust of skulking
foes.
Through it all, however, Frank remained the same kind, entertaining
host; he always seemed to consider it part of his duties to entertain
each one who travelled with him, and there was no lack of conversation,
such as it was. “Never knowed Six-toed Petey Donaldson? Wa’al, I sw’ar!
Look like enough to be Petey’s own brother. Thought mebbe you mout ’a’
bin comin’ out ter administer on th’ estate. Not thet Petey hed enny t’
leave, but then it’s kind o’ consolin’ t’ a feller to know thet his
relatives hev come out ter see about him. How did Petey die? Injuns. Th’
Apaches got him jest this side o’ the Senneky (Cienaga); we’ll see it
jest’s soon ’s we rise th’ hill yander.” By the time that the buckboard
drew up in front of the post-office, what with cold and hunger and
thirst and terror, and bumping over rocks and against giant cactus, and
every other kind of cactus, and having had one or two runaways when the
animals had struck against the adhering thorns of the pestiferous
“cholla,” the traveller was always in a suitable frame of mind to invite
Frank to “take suthin’,” and Frank was too much of a gentleman to think
of refusing.
“Now, lemme give yer good advice, podner,” Frank would say in his most
gracious way, “’n’ doan’t drink none o’ this yere ’Merican whiskey; it’s
no good. Jes’ stick to mescal; _that’s_ the stuff. Yer see, the alkali
water ’n’ sand hereabouts ’ll combine with mescal, but they p’isens a
man when he tries to mix ’em with whiskey, ’specially this yere Kansas
whiskey” (the “tenderfoot” had most likely just come over from Kansas);
“’n’ ef he doan’ get killed deader nor a door-nail, why, his system’s
all chock full o’ p’isen, ’n’ there you are.”
The establishment of the rival paper, the _Citizen_, was the signal for
a war of words, waxing in bitterness from week to week, and ceasing only
with the death of the _Arizonian_, which took place not long after. One
of the editors of the _Citizen_ was Joe Wasson, a very capable
journalist, with whom I was afterward associated intimately in the Black
Hills and Yellowstone country during the troubles with the Sioux and
Cheyennes. He was a well-informed man, who had travelled much and seen
life in many phases. He was conscientious in his ideas of duty, and full
of the energy and “snap” supposed to be typically American. He
approached every duty with the alertness and earnestness of a Scotch
terrier. The telegraph was still unknown to Arizona, and for that reason
the _Citizen_ contained an unusually large amount of editorial matter
upon affairs purely local. Almost the very first columns of the paper
demanded the sweeping away of garbage-piles, the lighting of the streets
by night, the establishment of schools, and the imposition of a tax upon
the gin-mills and gambling-saloons.
Devout Mexicans crossed themselves as they passed this fanatic, whom
nothing would seem to satisfy but the subversion of every ancient
institution. Even the more progressive among the Americans realized that
Joe was going a trifle too far, and felt that it was time to put the
brakes upon a visionary theorist whose war-cry was “Reform!” But no
remonstrance availed, and editorial succeeded editorial, each more
pungent and aggressive than its predecessors. What was that dead burro
doing on the main street? Why did not the town authorities remove it?
“Valgame! What is the matter with the man? and why does he make such a
fuss over Pablo Martinez’s dead burro, which has been there for more
than two months and nobody bothering about it? Why, it was only last
week that Ramon Romualdo and I were talking about it, and we both agreed
that it ought to be removed some time very soon. Bah! I will light
another cigarette. These Americans make me sick—always in a hurry, as if
the devil were after them.”
In the face of such antagonism as this the feeble light of the
_Arizonian_ flickered out, and that great luminary was, after the lapse
of a few years, succeeded by the _Star_, whose editor and owner arrived
in the Territory in the latter part of the year 1873, after the Apaches
had been subdued and placed upon reservations.
CHAPTER VI.
TUCSON INCIDENTS—THE “FIESTAS”—THE RUINED MISSION CHURCH OF SAN XAVIER
DEL BAC—GOVERNOR SAFFORD—ARIZONA MINES—APACHE RAIDS—CAMP GRANT
MASSACRE—THE KILLING OF LIEUTENANT CUSHING.
The Feast of San Juan brought out some very curious customs. The Mexican
gallants, mounted on the fieriest steeds they could procure, would call
at the homes of their “dulcineas,” place the ladies on the saddle in
front, and ride up and down the streets, while disappointed rivals threw
fire-crackers under the horses’ feet. There would be not a little superb
equestrianism displayed; the secret of the whole performance seeming to
consist in the nearness one could attain to breaking his neck without
doing so.
There is another sport of the Mexicans which has almost if not quite
died out in the vicinity of Tucson, but is still maintained in full
vigor on the Rio Grande: running the chicken—“correr el gallo.” In this
fascinating sport, as it looked to be for the horsemen, there is or was
an old hen buried to the neck in the sand, and made the target for each
rushing rider as he swoops down and endeavors to seize the crouching
fowl. If he succeed, he has to ride off at the fastest kind of a run to
avoid the pursuit of his comrades, who follow and endeavor to wrest the
prize from his hands, and the result, of course, is that the poor hen is
pulled to pieces.
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to describe for the benefit
of my readers the scenes presenting themselves during the “Funccion of
San Agostin” in Tucson, or that of San Francisco in the Mexican town of
Madalena, a hundred and twenty-five miles, more or less, to the south;
the music, the dancing, the gambling, the raffles, the drinking of all
sorts of beverages strange to the palate of the American of the North;
the dishes, hot and cold, of the Mexican cuisine, the trading going on
in all kinds of truck brought from remote parts of the country, the
religious ceremonial brilliant with lights and sweet with music and
redolent with incense.
[Illustration: SPOTTED TAIL.]
For one solid week these “funcciones lasted,” and during the whole time,
from early morn till dewy eve, the thump, thump of the drum, the plinky,
plink, plink of the harp, and the fluky-fluke of the flute accented the
shuffling feet of the unwearied dancers. These and events like them
deserve a volume by themselves. I hope that what has already been
written may be taken as a series of views, but not the complete series
of those upon which we looked from day to day. No perfect picture of
early times in Arizona and New Mexico could be delineated upon my narrow
canvas; the sight was distracted by strange scenes, the ears by strange
sounds, many of each horrible beyond the wildest dreams. There was the
ever-dreadful Apache on the one hand to terrify and torment, and the
beautiful ruin of San Xavier on the other to bewilder and amaze.
Of all the mission churches within the present limits of the United
States, stretching in the long line from San Antonio, Texas, to the
presidio of San Francisco, and embracing such examples as San Gabriel,
outside of Los Angeles, and the mission of San Diego, there is not one
superior, and there are few equal, to San Xavier del Bac, the church of
the Papago Indians, nine miles above Tucson, on the Santa Cruz. It needs
to be seen to be appreciated, as no literal description, certainly none
of which I am capable, can do justice to its merits and beauty. What I
have written here is an epitome of the experience and knowledge acquired
during years of service there and of familiarity with its people and the
conditions in which they lived.
My readers should bear in mind that during the whole period of our stay
in or near Tucson we were on the go constantly, moving from point to
point, scouting after an enemy who had no rival on the continent in
coolness, daring, and subtlety. To save repetition, I will say that the
country covered by our movements comprehended the region between the Rio
Azul in New Mexico, on the east, to Camp MacDowell, on the west; and
from Camp Apache, on the north, to the Mexican pueblos of Santa Cruz and
Madalena, far to the south. Of all this I wish to say the least
possible, my intention being to give a clear picture of Arizona as it
was before the arrival of General Crook, and not to enter into
unnecessary details, in which undue reference must necessarily be had to
my own experiences.
But I do wish to say that we were for a number of weeks accompanied by
Governor Safford, at the head of a contingent of Mexican volunteers, who
did very good service in the mountains on the international boundary,
the Huachuca, and others. We made camp one night within rifle-shot of
what has since been the flourishing, and is now the decayed, mining town
of Tombstone. On still another evening, one of our Mexican guides—old
Victor Ruiz, one of the best men that ever lived on the border—said that
he was anxious to ascertain whether or not his grandfather’s memory was
at fault in the description given of an abandoned silver mine, which
Ruiz was certain could not be very far from where we were sitting.
Naturally enough, we all volunteered to go with him in his search, and
in less than ten minutes we had reached the spot where, under a mass of
earth and stone, was hidden the shaft of which our guide had spoken.
The stories that have always circulated in Arizona about the fabulous
wealth of her mineral leads as known to the Spaniards have been of such
a character as to turn the brain of the most conservative. The Plancha
de la Plata, where a lump of virgin silver weighing over two thousand
pounds was exhumed; the “Thorn Mine,” or the “Lost Cabin Mine,” in the
Tonto Basin; the “Salero,” where the padre in charge, wishing to
entertain his bishop in proper style, and finding that he had no
salt-cellars ready, ordered certain of the Indians to dig out enough ore
to make a solid silver basin, which was placed in all its crudity before
the superior—all these were ringing in our ears, and made our task of
moving the rocks and débris a very light one.
Disappointment attended our discovery; the assays of the ore forwarded
to San Francisco were not such as to stimulate the work of development;
the rock was not worth more than seventeen dollars a ton, which in those
years would not half pay the cost of reduction of silver.
We were among the very first to come upon the rich ledges of copper
which have since furnished the mainstay to the prosperity of the town of
Clifton, on the border of New Mexico, and we knocked off pieces of pure
metal, and brought them back to Tucson to show to the people there, on
returning from our scouts in the upper Gila.
On one occasion the Apaches ran off the herd of sheep belonging to
Tully, Ochoa & DeLong, which were grazing in the foot-hills of the Santa
Teresa not two miles from town. The young Mexican who was on duty as
“pastor” kept his ears open for the tinkle of the bell, and every now
and then would rouse himself from his doze to look around the mesquite
under which he sat, to ascertain that his flock was all right.
Gradually, the heat of the day became more and more oppressive, and the
poor boy, still hearing the tintinnabulation, was in a delightful
day-dream, thinking of his supper, perhaps, when he half-opened his
eyes, and saw leering at him a full-grown Apache, who had all the while
been gently shaking the bell taken an hour or two before from the neck
of the wether which, with the rest of the flock, was a good long
distance out of sight behind the hills, near the “Punta del Agua.” The
boy, frightened out of his wits, screamed lustily, and the Apache,
delighted by his terror, flung the bell at his head, and then set off at
a run to gain the hills where his comrades were. The alarm soon reached
town, and the sheep were recovered before midnight, and by dawn the next
day were back on their old pasturage, excepting the foot-sore and the
weary, too weak to travel.
Our scouting had its share of incidents grave, gay, melancholy,
ludicrous; men killed and wounded; Apaches ditto; and the usual amount
of hard climbing by day, or marching by night upon trails which
sometimes led us upon the enemy, and very often did not.
There was one very good man, Moore, if I remember his name correctly,
who died of the “fever”—malaria—and was carried from the “Grassy Plain”
into old Camp Goodwin, on the Gila, near the Warm Spring. No sooner had
we arrived at Goodwin than one of the men—soldier or civilian employee,
I do not know now—attempted to commit suicide, driven to despair by the
utter isolation of his position; and two of our own company—Sergeant
John Mott and one other, both excellent men—dropped down, broken up with
the “fever,” which would yield to nothing but the most heroic treatment
with quinine.
In a skirmish with the Apaches near the head of Deer Creek, one of our
men, named Shire, was struck by a rifle ball in the knee-cap, the ball
ranging downward, and lodging in the lower leg near the ankle bone. We
were sore distressed. There was no doctor with the little command, a
criminal neglect for which Cushing was not responsible, and there was no
guide, as Manuel Duran, who generally went out with us, was lying in
Tucson seriously ill. No one was hurt badly enough to excite
apprehension excepting Shire, whose wound was not bleeding at all, the
hemorrhage being on the inside.
Sergeant Warfield, Cushing, and I stayed up all night talking over the
situation, and doing so in a low tone, lest Shire should suspect that we
had not been telling the truth when we persuaded him to believe that he
had been hit by a glancing bullet, which had benumbed the whole leg but
had not inflicted a very serious wound.
Our Mexican packers were called into consultation, and the result was
that by four in the morning, as soon as a cup of coffee could be made, I
was on my way over to the Aravaypa Cañon at the head of a small
detachment in charge of the wounded man, who was firmly strapped to his
saddle. We got along very well so long as we were on the high hills and
mountains, where the horse of the sufferer could be led, and he himself
supported by friendly hands on each side. To get down into the chasm of
the Aravaypa was a horse of altogether a different color. The trail was
extremely steep, stony, and slippery, and the soldier, heroic as he was,
could not repress a groan as his horse jarred him by slipping under his
weight on the wretched path. At the foot of the descent it was evident
that something else in the way of transportation would have to be
provided, as the man’s strength was failing rapidly and he could no
longer sit up.
Lieutenant Cushing’s orders were for me to leave the party just as soon
as I thought I could do so safely, and then ride as fast as the trail
would permit to Camp Grant, and there get all the aid possible. It
seemed to me that there could be no better time for hurrying to the post
than the present, which found the detachment at a point where it could
defend itself from the attack of any roving party of the enemy, and
supplied with grass for the animals and fuel and water for the men.
Shire had fainted as I mounted and started with one of the men, Corporal
Harrington, for the post, some twelve miles away. We did not have much
more of the cañon to bother us, and made good speed all the way down the
Aravaypa and into the post, where I hurriedly explained the situation
and had an ambulance start up the cañon with blankets and other
comforts, while in the post itself everything was made ready for the
amputation in the hospital, which all knew to be a foregone conclusion,
and a mounted party was sent to Tucson to summon Dr. Durant to assist in
the operation.
Having done all this, I started back up the cañon and came upon my own
detachment slowly making its way down. In another hour the ambulance had
rolled up to the door of the hospital, and the wounded man was on a cot
under the influence of anæsthetics. The amputation was made at the upper
third of the thigh, and resulted happily, and the patient in due time
recovered, although he had a close call for his life.
The winter of 1870 and the spring of 1871 saw no let up in the amount of
scouting which was conducted against the Apaches. The enemy resorted to
a system of tactics which had often been tried in the past and always
with success. A number of simultaneous attacks were made at points
widely separated, thus confusing both troops and settlers, spreading a
vague sense of fear over all the territory infested, and imposing upon
the soldiery an exceptional amount of work of the hardest conceivable
kind.
Attacks were made in southern Arizona upon the stage stations at the San
Pedro, and the Cienaga, as well as the one near the Picacho, and upon
the ranchos in the Barbacomori valley, and in the San Pedro, near Tres
Alamos. Then came the news of a fight at Pete Kitchen’s, and finally,
growing bolder, the enemy drove off a herd of cattle from Tucson itself,
some of them beeves, and others work-oxen belonging to a wagon-train
from Texas. Lastly came the killing of the stage mail-rider, between the
town and the Mission church of San Xavier, and the massacre of the party
of Mexicans going down to Sonora, which occurred not far from the
Sonoita.
One of the members of this last party was a beautiful young Mexican
lady—Doña Trinidad Aguirre—who belonged to a very respectable family in
the Mexican Republic, and was on her way back from a visit to relatives
in Tucson.
That one so young, so beautiful and bright, should have been snatched
away by a most cruel death at the hands of savages, aroused the people
of all the country south of the Gila, and nothing was talked of, nothing
was thought of, but vengeance upon the Apaches.
Cushing all this time had kept our troop moving without respite. There
were fights, and ambuscades, and attacks upon “rancherias,” and
night-marches without number, several resulting in the greatest success.
I am not going to waste any space upon these, because there is much of
the same sort to come, and I am afraid of tiring out the patience of my
readers before reaching portions of this book where there are to be
found descriptions of very spirited engagements.
The trail of the raiders upon the ranch at the “Cienaga” (now called
“Pantano” by the Southern Pacific Railroad people) took down into the
“Mestinez,” or Mustang Mountains, so called from the fact that a herd of
wild ponies were to be found there or not far off. They did not number
more than sixty all told when I last saw them in 1870, and were in all
probability the last herd of wild horses within the limits of the United
States. In this range, called also the “Whetstone” Mountains, because
there exists a deposit or ledge of the rock known as “novaculite” or
whetstone of the finest quality, we came upon the half calcined bones of
two men burned to death by the Apaches; and after marching out into the
open valley of the San Pedro, and crossing a broad expanse covered with
yucca and sage-brush, we came to a secluded spot close to the San José
range, where the savages had been tearing up the letters contained in
one of Uncle Sam’s mail-bags, parts of which lay scattered about.
When the work-oxen of the Texans were run off, the Apaches took them
over the steepest, highest and rockiest part of the Sierra Santa
Catalina, where one would not believe that a bird would dare to fly. We
followed closely, guided by Manuel Duran and others, but progress was
difficult and slow, on account of the nature of the trail. As we picked
our way, foot by foot, we could discern the faintest sort of a mark,
showing that a trail had run across there and had lately been used by
the Apaches. But all the good done by that hard march was the getting
back of the meat of the stock which the Apaches killed just the moment
they reached the cañons under the Trumbull Peak. Two or three of the
oxen were still alive, but so nearly run to death that we killed them as
an act of mercy.
Three of our party were hurt in the mêlée, and we scored three hits, one
a beautiful shot by Manuel, who killed his man the moment he exposed
himself to his aim, and two wounded, how seriously we could not tell, as
by the time we had made our way to the top of the rocks the enemy had
gone with their wounded, leaving only two pools of blood to show where
the bullets had taken effect.
The trail leading to the place where the Apaches had taken refuge was so
narrow that one of our pack-mules lost his footing and fell down the
precipice, landing upon the top of a tree below and staying there for a
full minute, when the branches broke under him and let him have another
fall, breaking his back and making it necessary to blow his brains out
as soon as the action was over and we could take time to breathe.
Then followed the fearful scene of bloodshed known as the “Camp Grant
Massacre,” which can only be referred to—a full description would
require a volume of its own. A small party of Apaches had presented
themselves at Camp Grant, and made known to the commanding officer that
they and their friends up in the Aravaypa Cañon were willing and anxious
to make peace and to stay near the post, provided they could get food
and clothing. They were told to return with their whole tribe, which
they soon did, and there is no good reason for supposing that the
greater portion of them were not honest in their professions and
purposes. The blame of what was to follow could not be laid at the doors
of the local military authorities, who exerted themselves in every way
to convey information of what had happened to the Department
headquarters, then at Los Angeles. As previously stated, there was no
mode of communication in Arizona save the stage, which took five days to
make the trip from Tucson to Los Angeles, and as many more for a return
trip, there being no telegraph in existence.
Weeks and weeks were frittered away in making reports which should have
reached headquarters at once and should have been acted upon without the
delay of a second. The story was circulated and generally believed, that
the first report was returned to the officer sending it, with
instructions to return it to Department headquarters “properly briefed,”
that is, with a synopsis of its contents properly written on the outer
flap of the communication when folded. There was no effort made, as
there should have been made, to separate the peaceably disposed Indians
from those who still preferred to remain out on the warpath, and as a
direct consequence of this neglect ensued one of the worst blots in the
history of American civilization, the “Camp Grant Massacre.”
A party of more than one hundred Papago Indians, from the village of San
Xavier, led by a small detachment of whites and half-breed Mexicans from
Tucson, took up the trail of one of the parties of raiders which had
lately attacked the settlers and the peaceable Indians in the valley of
the Santa Cruz. What followed is matter of history. The pursuing party
claimed that the trails led straight to the place occupied by the
Apaches who had surrendered at Camp Grant, and it is likely that this is
so, since one of the main trails leading to the country of the Aravaypa
and Gila bands passed under the Sierra Pinaleno, near the point in
question. It was claimed further that a horse belonging to Don Leopoldo
Carrillo was found in the possession of one of the young boys coming out
of the village, and that some of the clothing of Doña Trinidad Aguirre
was also found.
These stories may be true, and they may be after-thoughts to cover up
and extenuate the ferocity of the massacre which spared neither age nor
sex in its wrath, but filled the valley of the Aravaypa with dead and
dying. The incident, one of the saddest and most terrible in our annals,
is one over which I would gladly draw a veil. To my mind it indicated
the weak spot in all our dealings with the aborigines, a defective point
never repaired and never likely to be. According to our system of
settling up the public lands, there are no such things as colonies
properly so called. Each settler is free to go where he pleases, to take
up such area as the law permits, and to protect himself as best he can.
The army has always been too small to afford all the protection the
frontier needed, and affairs have been permitted to drift along in a
happy-go-lucky sort of a way indicative rather of a sublime faith in
divine providence than of common sense and good judgment.
The settlers, in all sections of the West, have been representative of
the best elements of the older States from which they set forth, but it
is a well-known fact that among them have been a fair, possibly more
than a fair, share of the reckless, the idle and the dissolute. On the
other hand, among the savages, there have been as many young bloods
anxious to win renown in battle as there have been old wise-heads
desirous of preserving the best feeling with the new neighbors. The
worst members of the two races are brought into contact, and the usual
results follow; trouble springs up, and it is not the bad who suffer,
but the peaceably disposed on each side.
On the 5th day of May, 1871, Lieutenant Howard B. Cushing, Third
Cavalry, with several civilians and three soldiers, was killed by the
Chiricahua Apaches, under their famous chief “Cocheis,” at the Bear
Springs, in the Whetstone Mountains, about thirty-five miles from Tucson
and about the same distance to the east of old Camp Crittenden.
Cushing’s whole force numbered twenty-two men, the larger part of whom
were led into an ambuscade in the cañon containing the spring. The fight
was a desperate one, and fought with courage and great skill on both
sides. Our forces were surrounded before a shot had been fired; and it
was while Cushing was endeavoring to lead his men back that he received
the wounds which killed him. Had it not been for the courage and good
judgment displayed by Sergeant John Mott, who had seen a great amount of
service against the Apaches, not one of the command would have escaped
alive out of the cañon.
Mott was in command of the rear-guard, and, in coming up to the
assistance of Lieutenant Cushing, detected the Apaches moving behind a
low range of hills to gain Cushing’s rear. He sent word ahead, and that
induced Lieutenant Cushing to fall back.
After Cushing dropped, the Apaches made a determined charge and came
upon our men hand to hand. The little detachment could save only those
horses and mules which were ridden at the moment the enemy made the
attack, because the men who had dismounted to fight on foot were unable
to remount, such was the impetuosity of the rush made by the
Chiricahuas. There were enough animals to “ride and tie,” and Mott, by
keeping up on the backbone of the hills running along the Barbacomori
Valley, was enabled to reach Camp Crittenden without being surrounded or
ambuscaded.
Inside of forty-eight hours there were three troops of cavalry _en
route_ to Crittenden, and in pursuit of the Apaches, but no good could
be effected. Major William J. Ross, at that time in command of Camp
Crittenden, was most energetic in getting word to the various military
commands in the southern part of the country, as well as in extending
every aid and kindness to the wounded brought in by Mott.
When the combined force had arrived at Bear Spring, there was to be seen
every evidence of a most bloody struggle. The bodies of Lieutenant
Cushing and comrades lay where they had fallen, stripped of clothing,
which the Apaches always carried off from their victims. In all parts of
the narrow little cañon were the carcasses of ponies and horses
half-eaten by the coyotes and buzzards; broken saddles, saddle-bags,
canteens with bullet-holes in them, pieces of harness and shreds of
clothing scattered about, charred to a crisp in the flames which the
savages had ignited in the grass to conceal their line of retreat.
Of how many Apaches had been killed, there was not the remotest
suggestion to be obtained. That there had been a heavy loss among the
Indians could be suspected from the signs of bodies having been dragged
to certain points, and there, apparently, put on pony-back.
The Chiricahuas seemed to have ascended the cañon until they had
attained the crest of the range in a fringe of pine timber; but no
sooner did they pass over into the northern foot-hills than they broke
in every direction, and did not re-unite until near our boundary line
with Mexico, where their trail was struck and followed for several days
by Major Gerald Russell of the Third Cavalry. They never halted until
they had regained the depths of the Sierra Madre, their chosen haunt,
and towards which Russell followed them so long as his broken-down
animals could travel.
Of the distinguished services rendered to Arizona by Lieutenant Cushing,
a book might well be written. It is not intended to disparage anybody
when I say that he had performed herculean and more notable work,
perhaps, than had been performed by any other officer of corresponding
rank either before or since. Southern Arizona owed much to the gallant
officers who wore out strength and freely risked life and limb in her
defence—men of the stamp of Devin, C. C. Carr, Sanford, Gerald Russell,
Winters, Harris, Almy, Carroll, McCleave, Kelly, and many others. They
were all good men and true; but if there were any choice among them I am
sure that the verdict, if left to those soldiers themselves, would be in
favor of Cushing.
Standing on the summit of the Whetstone Range, which has no great
height, one can see the places, or the hills overlooking them, where
several other officers met their death at the hands of the same foe. To
the west is Davidson’s Cañon, where the Apaches ambushed and killed
Lieutenant Reid T. Stewart and Corporal Black; on the north, the cone of
Trumbull overlooks the San Carlos Agency, where the brave Almy fell; to
the northwest are the Tortolita hills, near which Miller and Tappan were
killed in ambuscade, as already narrated; and to the east are the
Chiricahua Mountains, in whose bosom rests Fort Bowie with its grewsome
graveyard filled with such inscriptions as “Killed by the Apaches,” “Met
his death at the hands of the Apaches,” “Died of wounds inflicted by
Apache Indians,” and at times “Tortured and killed by Apaches.” One
visit to that cemetery was warranted to furnish the most callous with
nightmares for a month.
CHAPTER VII.
GENERAL CROOK AND THE APACHES—CROOK’S PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND
CHARACTERISTICS—POINTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE APACHES—THEIR SKILL IN
WAR—FOODS AND MODES OF COOKING—MEDICINE MEN—THEIR POWER AND
INFLUENCE.
When General Crook received orders to go out to Arizona and assume
command of that savage-infested Department, he at once obeyed the order,
and reached his new post of duty without baggage and without fuss.
All the baggage he had would not make as much compass as a Remington
type-writer. The only thing with him which could in any sense be classed
as superfluous was a shotgun, but without this or a rifle he never
travelled anywhere.
He came, as I say, without the slightest pomp or parade, and without any
one in San Francisco, except his immediate superiors, knowing of his
departure, and without a soul in Tucson, not even the driver of the
stage which had carried him and his baggage, knowing of his arrival.
There were no railroads, there were no telegraphs in Arizona, and Crook
was the last man in the world to seek notoriety had they existed. His
whole idea of life was to do each duty well, and to let his work speak
for itself.
He arrived in the morning, went up to the residence of his old friend,
Governor Safford, with whom he lunched, and before sundown every officer
within the limits of what was then called the southern district of
Arizona was under summons to report to him; that is, if the orders had
not reached them they were on the way.
From each he soon extracted all he knew about the country, the lines of
travel, the trails across the various mountains, the fords where any
were required for the streams, the nature of the soil, especially its
products, such as grasses, character of the climate, the condition of
the pack-mules, and all pertaining to them, and every other item of
interest a commander could possibly want to have determined. But in
reply not one word, not one glance, not one hint, as to what he was
going to do or what he would like to do.
This was the point in Crook’s character which made the strongest
impression upon every one coming in contact with him—his ability to
learn all that his informant had to supply, without yielding in return
the slightest suggestion of his own plans and purposes. He refused
himself to no one, no matter how humble, but was possessed of a certain
dignity which repressed any approach to undue familiarity. He was
singularly averse to the least semblance of notoriety, and was as
retiring as a girl. He never consulted with any one; made his own plans
after the most studious deliberation, and kept them to himself with a
taciturnity which at times must have been exasperating to his
subordinates. Although taciturn, reticent, and secretive, moroseness
formed no part of his nature, which was genial and sunny. He took great
delight in conversation, especially in that wherein he did not have to
join if indisposed.
He was always interested in the career and progress of the young
officers under him, and glad to listen to their plans and learn their
aspirations. No man can say that in him the subaltern did not have the
brightest of exemplars, since Crook was a man who never indulged in
stimulant of any kind—not so much as tea or coffee—never used tobacco,
was never heard to employ a profane or obscene word, and was ever and
always an officer to do, and do without pomp or ceremony, all that was
required of him, and much more.
No officer could claim that he was ever ordered to do a duty when the
Department commander was present, which the latter would not in person
lead. No officer of the same rank, at least in our service, issued so
few orders. According to his creed, officers did not need to be devilled
with orders and instructions and memoranda; all that they required was
to obtain an insight into what was desired of them, and there was no
better way to inculcate this than by personal example.
Therefore, whenever there was a trouble of any magnitude under Crook’s
jurisdiction he started at once to the point nearest the skirmish line,
and stayed there so long as the danger existed; but he did it all so
quietly, and with so little parade, that half the time no one would
suspect that there was any hostility threatened until after the whole
matter had blown over or been stamped out, and the General back at his
headquarters.
This aversion to display was carried to an extreme; he never liked to
put on uniform when it could be avoided; never allowed an orderly to
follow him about a post, and in every manner possible manifested a
nature of unusual modesty, and totally devoid of affectation. He had one
great passion—hunting, or better say, hunting and fishing. Often he
would stray away for days with no companion but his dog and the horse or
mule he rode, and remain absent until a full load of game—deer, wild
turkey, quail, or whatever it might happen to be—rewarded his energy and
patience. From this practice he diverged slightly as he grew older,
yielding to the expostulations of his staff, who impressed upon him that
it was nothing but the merest prudence to be accompanied by an Indian
guide, who could in case of necessity break back for the command or the
post according to circumstances.
In personal appearance General Crook was manly and strong; he was a
little over six feet in height, straight as a lance, broad and
square-shouldered, full-chested, and with an elasticity and sinewiness
of limb which betrayed the latent muscular power gained by years of
constant exercise in the hills and mountains of the remoter West.
In his more youthful days, soon after being graduated from the Military
Academy, he was assigned to duty with one of the companies of the Fourth
Infantry, then serving in the Oregon Territory. It was the period of the
gold-mining craze on the Pacific coast, and prices were simply
prohibitory for all the comforts of life. Crook took a mule, a
frying-pan, a bag of salt and one of flour, a rifle and shotgun, and
sallied out into the wilderness. By his energy and skill he kept the
mess fully supplied with every kind of wild meat—venison, quail, duck,
and others—and at the end of the first month, after paying all the
expenses on account of ammunition, was enabled from the funds realized
by selling the surplus meat to miners and others, to declare a dividend
of respectable proportions, to the great delight of his messmates.
His love for hunting and fishing, which received its greatest impetus in
those days of his service in Oregon and Northern California, increased
rather than diminished as the years passed by. He became not only an
exceptionally good shot, but acquired a familiarity with the habits of
wild animals possessed by but few naturalists. Little by little he was
induced to read upon the subject, until the views of the most eminent
ornithologists and naturalists were known to him, and from this followed
in due sequence a development of his taste for taxidermy, which enabled
him to pass many a lonesome hour in the congenial task of preserving and
mounting his constantly increasing collection of birds and pelts.
There were few, if any, of the birds or beasts of the Rocky Mountains
and the country west of them to the waters of the Pacific, which had not
at some time furnished tribute to General Crook’s collection. In the
pursuit of the wilder animals he cared nothing for fatigue, hunger, or
the perils of the cliffs, or those of being seized in the jaws of an
angry bear or mountain lion.
He used to take great, and, in my opinion, reprehensible risks in his
encounters with grizzlies and brown bears, many of whose pelts decorated
his quarters. Many times I can recall in Arizona, Wyoming, and Montana,
where he had left the command, taking with him only one Indian guide as
a companion, and had struck out to one flank or the other, following
some “sign,” until an hour or two later a slender signal smoke warned
the pack-train that he had a prize of bear-meat or venison waiting for
the arrival of the animals which were to carry it back to camp.
Such constant exercise toughened muscle and sinew to the rigidity of
steel and the elasticity of rubber, while association with the natives
enabled him constantly to learn their habits and ideas, and in time to
become almost one of themselves.
If night overtook him at a distance from camp, he would picket his
animal to a bush convenient to the best grass, take out his heavy
hunting-knife and cut down a pile of the smaller branches of the pine,
cedar, or sage-brush, as the case might be, and with them make a couch
upon which, wrapped in his overcoat and saddle-blanket, he would sleep
composedly till the rise of the morning star, when he would light his
fire, broil a slice of venison, give his horse some water, saddle up and
be off to look for the trail of his people.
His senses became highly educated; his keen, blue-gray eyes would detect
in a second and at a wonderful distance the slightest movement across
the horizon; the slightest sound aroused his curiosity, the faintest
odor awakened his suspicions. He noted the smallest depression in the
sand, the least deflection in the twigs or branches; no stone could be
moved from its position in the trail without appealing at once to his
perceptions. He became skilled in the language of “signs” and trails,
and so perfectly conversant with all that is concealed in the great book
of Nature that, in the mountains at least, he might readily take rank as
being fully as much an Indian as the Indian himself.
There never was an officer in our military service so completely in
accord with all the ideas, views, and opinions of the savages whom he
had to fight or control as was General Crook. In time of campaign this
knowledge placed him, as it were, in the secret councils of the enemy;
in time of peace it enabled him all the more completely to appreciate
the doubts and misgivings of the Indians at the outset of a new life,
and to devise plans by which they could all the more readily be brought
to see that civilization was something which all could embrace without
danger of extinction.
But while General Crook was admitted, even by the Indians, to be more of
an Indian than the Indian himself, it must in no wise be understood that
he ever occupied any other relation than that of the older and more
experienced brother who was always ready to hold out a helping hand to
the younger just learning to walk and to climb. Crook never ceased to be
a gentleman. Much as he might live among savages, he never lost the
right to claim for himself the best that civilization and enlightenment
had to bestow. He kept up with the current of thought on the more
important questions of the day, although never a student in the stricter
meaning of the term. His manners were always extremely courteous, and
without a trace of the austerity with which small minds seek to hedge
themselves in from the approach of inferiors or strangers. His voice was
always low, his conversation easy, and his general bearing one of quiet
dignity.
He reminded me more of Daniel Boone than any other character, with this
difference, that Crook, as might be expected, had the advantages of the
better education of his day and generation. But he certainly recalled
Boone in many particulars; there was the same perfect indifference to
peril of any kind, the same coolness, an equal fertility of resources,
the same inner knowledge of the wiles and tricks of the enemy, the same
modesty and disinclination to parade as a hero or a great military
genius, or to obtrude upon public notice the deeds performed in
obedience to the promptings of duty.
Such was Arizona, and such was General George Crook when he was assigned
to the task of freeing her from the yoke of the shrewdest and most
ferocious of all the tribes encountered by the white man within the
present limits of the United States.
A condensed account of the Apaches themselves would seem not to be out
of place at this point, since it will enable the reader all the more
readily to comprehend the exact nature of the operations undertaken
against them, and what difficulties, if any, were to be encountered in
their subjugation and in their elevation to a higher plane of
civilization.
With a stupidity strictly consistent with the whole history of our
contact with the aborigines, the people of the United States have
maintained a bitter and an unrelenting warfare against a people whose
name was unknown to them. The Apache is not the Apache; the name
“Apache” does not occur in the language of the “Tinneh,” by which name,
or some of its variants as “Inde,” “Dinde,” or something similar, our
Indian prefers to designate himself “The Man;” he knows nothing, or did
not know anything until after being put upon the Reservations, of the
new-fangled title “Apache,” which has come down to us from the Mexicans,
who borrowed it from the Maricopas and others, in whose language it
occurs with the signification of “enemy.”
It was through the country of the tribes to the south that the Spaniards
first were brought face to face with the “Tinneh” of Arizona, and it was
from these Maricopas and others that the name was learned of the
desperate fighters who lived in the higher ranges with the deer, the
elk, the bear, and the coyote.
And as the Spaniards have always insisted upon the use of a name which
the Apaches have as persistently repudiated; and as the Americans have
followed blindly in the footsteps of the Castilian, we must accept the
inevitable and describe this tribe under the name of the Apaches of
Arizona, although it is much like invading England by way of Ireland,
and writing of the Anglo-Saxons under the Celtic designation of the
“Sassenach.”
The Apache is the southernmost member of the great Tinneh family, which
stretches across the circumpolar portion of the American Continent, from
the shores of the Pacific to the western line of Hudson’s Bay. In the
frozen habitat of their hyperborean ancestors, the Tinneh, as all
accounts agree, are perfectly good-natured, lively, and not at all hard
to get along with.
But once forced out from the northern limits of the lake region of
British America—the Great Slave, the Great Bear, and others—whether by
over-population, failure of food, or other cause, the Tinneh appears
upon the stage as a conqueror, and as a diplomatist of the first class;
he shows an unusual astuteness even for an Indian, and a daring which
secures for him at once and forever an ascendency over all the tribes
within reach of him. This remark will apply with equal force to the
Rogue Rivers of Oregon, the Umpquas of northern California, the Hoopas
of the same State, and the Navajoes and Apaches of New Mexico, Chihuahua
and Sonora, all of whom are members of this great Tinneh family.
In the Apache the Spaniard, whether as soldier or priest, found a foe
whom no artifice could terrify into submission, whom no eloquence could
wean from the superstitions of his ancestors. Indifferent to the bullets
of the arquebuses in the hands of soldiers in armor clad, serenely
insensible to the arguments of the friars and priests who claimed
spiritual dominion over all other tribes, the naked Apache, with no
weapons save his bow and arrows, lance, war-club, knife and shield,
roamed over a vast empire, the lord of the soil—fiercer than the
fiercest of tigers, wilder than the wild coyote he called his brother.
For years I have collected the data and have contemplated the project of
writing the history of this people, based not only upon the accounts
transmitted to us from the Spaniards and their descendants, the
Mexicans, but upon the Apache’s own story as conserved in his myths and
traditions; but I have lacked both the leisure and the inclination to
put the project into execution. It would require a man with the
even-handed sense of justice possessed by a Guizot, and the keen,
critical, analytical powers of a Gibbon, to deal fairly with a question
in which the ferocity of the savage Red-man has been more than equalled
by the ferocity of the Christian Caucasian; in which the occasional
treachery of the aborigines has found its best excuse in the unvarying
Punic faith of the Caucasian invader; in which promises on each side
have been made only to deceive and to be broken; in which the red hand
of war has rested most heavily upon shrieking mother and wailing babe.
If from this history the Caucasian can extract any cause of
self-laudation I am glad of it: speaking as a censor who has read the
evidence with as much impartiality as could be expected from one who
started in with the sincere conviction that the only good Indian was a
dead Indian, and that the only use to make of him was that of a
fertilizer, and who, from studying the documents in the case, and
listening little by little to the savage’s own story, has arrived at the
conclusion that perhaps Pope Paul III. was right when he solemnly
declared that the natives of the New World had souls and must be treated
as human beings, and admitted to the sacraments when found ready to
receive them, I feel it to be my duty to say that the Apache has found
himself in the very best of company when he committed any atrocity, it
matters not how vile, and that his complete history, if it could be
written by himself, would not be any special cause of self-complacency
to such white men as believe in a just God, who will visit the sins of
parents upon their children even to the third and the fourth generation.
We have become so thoroughly Pecksniffian in our self-laudation, in our
exaltation of our own virtues, that we have become grounded in the error
of imagining that the American savage is more cruel in his war customs
than other nations of the earth have been; this, as I have already
intimated, is a misconception, and statistics, for such as care to dig
them out, will prove that I am right. The Assyrians cut their conquered
foes limb from limb; the Israelites spared neither parent nor child; the
Romans crucified head downward the gladiators who revolted under
Spartacus; even in the civilized England of the past century, the wretch
convicted of treason was executed under circumstances of cruelty which
would have been too much for the nerves of the fiercest of the Apaches
or Sioux. Instances in support of what I here assert crop up all over
the page of history; the trouble is not to discover them, but to keep
them from blinding the memory to matters more pleasant to remember.
Certainly, the American aborigine is not indebted to his pale-faced
brother, no matter of what nation or race he may be, for lessons in
tenderness and humanity.
Premising the few remarks which I will allow myself to make upon this
subject, by stating that the territory over which the Apache roamed a
conqueror, or a bold and scarcely resisted raider, comprehended the
whole of the present Territories of Arizona and New Mexico, one half of
the State of Texas—the half west of San Antonio—and the Mexican states
of Sonora and Chihuahua, with frequent raids which extended as far as
Durango, Jalisco, and even on occasion the environs of Zacatecas, I can
readily make the reader understand that an area greater than that of the
whole German Empire and France combined was laid prostrate under the
heel of a foe as subtle, as swift, as deadly, and as uncertain as the
rattle-snake or the mountain lion whose homes he shared.
From the moment the Castilian landed on the coast of the present Mexican
Republic, there was no such thing thought of as justice for the American
Indian until the authorities of the Church took the matter in hand, and
compelled an outward regard for the rights which even animals have
conceded to them.
Christopher Columbus, whom some very worthy people are thinking of
having elevated to the dignity of a saint, made use of bloodhounds for
running down the inhabitants of Hispaniola.
The expedition of D’Ayllon to the coast of Chicora, now known as South
Carolina, repaid the kind reception accorded by the natives by the
basest treachery; two ship-loads of the unfortunates enticed on board
were carried off to work in the mines of the invaders.
Girolamo Benzoni, one of the earliest authors, describes the very
delightful way the Spaniards had of making slaves of all the savages
they could capture, and branding them with a red-hot iron on the hip or
cheek, so that their new owners could recognize them the more readily.
Cabeza de Vaca and his wretched companions carried no arms, but met with
nothing but an ovation from the simple-minded and grateful natives,
whose ailments they endeavored to cure by prayer and the sign of the
cross.
Yet, Vaca tells us, that as they drew near the settlements of their own
countrymen they found the whole country in a tumult, due to the efforts
the Castilians were making to enslave the populace, and drive them by
fire and sword to the plantations newly established. Humboldt is
authority for the statement that the Apaches resolved upon a war of
extermination upon the Spaniards, when they learned that all their
people taken captive by the king’s forces had been driven off, to die a
lingering death upon the sugar plantations of Cuba or in the mines of
Guanaxuato.
Drawing nearer to our own days, we read the fact set down in the
clearest and coldest black and white, that the state governments of
Sonora and Chihuahua had offered and paid rewards of three hundred
dollars for each scalp of an Apache that should be presented at certain
designated headquarters, and we read without a tremor of horror that
individuals, clad in the human form—men like the Englishman Johnson, or
the Irishman Glanton—entered into contracts with the governor of
Chihuahua to do such bloody work.
Johnson was “a man of honor.” He kept his word faithfully, and invited a
large band of the Apaches in to see him and have a feast at the old
Santa Rita mine in New Mexico—I have been on the spot and seen the exact
site—and while they were eating bread and meat, suddenly opened upon
them with a light fieldpiece loaded to the muzzle with nails, bullets,
and scrap-iron, and filled the court-yard with dead.
Johnson, I say, was “a gentleman,” and abided by the terms of his
contract; but Glanton was a blackguard, and set out to kill anything and
everything in human form, whether Indian or Mexican. His first “victory”
was gained over a band of Apaches with whom he set about arranging a
peace in northern Chihuahua, not far from El Paso. The bleeding scalps
were torn from the heads of the slain, and carried in triumph to the
city of Chihuahua, outside of whose limits the “conquerors” were met by
a procession of the governor, all the leading state dignitaries and the
clergy, and escorted back to the city limits, where—as we are told by
Ruxton, the English officer who travelled across Chihuahua on horse-back
in 1835-1837—the scalps were nailed with frantic joy to the portals of
the grand cathedral, for whose erection the silver mines had been taxed
so outrageously.
Glanton, having had his appetite for blood excited, passed westward
across Arizona until he reached the Colorado River, near where Fort Yuma
now stands. There he attempted to cross to the California or western
bank, but the Yuma Indians, who had learned of his pleasant
eccentricities of killing every one, without distinction of age, sex, or
race, who happened to be out on the trail alone, let Glanton and his
comrades get a few yards into the river, and then opened on them from an
ambush in the reeds and killed the last one.
And then there have been “Pinole Treaties,” in which the Apaches have
been invited to sit down and eat repasts seasoned with the exhilarating
strychnine. So that, take it for all in all, the honors have been easy
so far as treachery, brutality, cruelty, and lust have been concerned.
The one great difference has been that the Apache could not read or
write and hand down to posterity the story of his wrongs as he, and he
alone, knew them.
When the Americans entered the territory occupied or infested by the
Apaches, all accounts agree that the Apaches were friendly. The
statements of Bartlett, the commissioner appointed to run the new
boundary line between the United States and Mexico, are explicit upon
this point. Indeed, one of the principal chiefs of the Apaches was
anxious to aid the new-comers in advancing farther to the south, and in
occupying more of the territory of the Mexicans than was ceded by the
Gadsden purchase. One of Bartlett’s teamsters—a Mexican teamster named
Jesus Vasquez—causelessly and in the coldest blood drew bead upon a
prominent Apache warrior and shot him through the head. The Apaches did
nothing beyond laying the whole matter before the new commissioner,
whose decision they awaited hopefully. Bartlett thought that the sum of
thirty dollars, deducted from the teamster’s pay in monthly instalments,
was about all that the young man’s life was worth. The Apaches failed to
concur in this estimate, and took to the war-path; and, to quote the
words of Bartlett, in less than forty-eight hours had the whole country
for hundreds of miles in every direction on fire, and all the settlers
that were not killed fleeing for their lives to the towns on the Rio
Grande. A better understanding was reached a few years after, through
the exertions of officers of the stamp of Ewell, who were bold in war
but tender in peace, and who obtained great influence over a simple race
which could respect men whose word was not written in sand.
At the outbreak of the war of the Rebellion, affairs in Arizona and New
Mexico became greatly tangled. The troops were withdrawn, and the
Apaches got the notion into their heads that the country was to be left
to them and their long-time enemies, the Mexicans, to fight for the
mastery.
Rafael Pumpelly, who at that time was living in Arizona, gives a vivid
but horrifying description of the chaotic condition in which affairs
were left by the sudden withdrawal of the troops, leaving the mines,
which, in each case, were provided with stores or warehouses filled with
goods, a prey to the Apaches who swarmed down from the mountains and the
Mexican bandits who poured in from Sonora.
There was scarcely any choice between them, and occasionally it
happened, when the mining superintendent had an unusual streak of good
luck, that he would have them both to fight at once, as in Pumpelly’s
own case.
Not very long previous to this, Arizona had received a most liberal
contingent of the toughs and scalawags banished from San Francisco by
the efforts of its Vigilance Committee, and until these last had shot
each other to death, or until they had been poisoned by Tucson whiskey
or been killed by the Apaches, Arizona’s chalice was filled to the brim,
and the most mendacious real-estate boomer would have been unable to
recommend her as a suitable place for an investment of capital.
It is among the possibilities that the Apaches could have been kept in a
state of friendliness toward the Americans during these troublous days,
had it not been for one of those accidents which will occur to disturb
the most harmonious relations, and destroy the effect of years of good
work. The Chiricahua Apaches, living close to what is now Fort Bowie,
were especially well behaved, and old-timers have often told me that the
great chief, Cocheis, had the wood contract for supplying the “station”
of the Southern Overland Mail Company at that point with fuel. The
Pinals and the other bands still raided upon the villages of northern
Mexico; in fact, some of the Apaches have made their home in the Sierra
Madre, in Mexico; and until General Crook in person led a small
expedition down there, and pulled the last one of them out, it was
always understood that there was the habitat and the abiding place of a
very respectable contingent—so far as numbers were concerned—of the
tribe.
A party of the Pinal Apaches had engaged in trade with a party of
Mexicans close to Fort Bowie—and it should be understood that there was
both trade and war with the Castilian, and, worst of all, what was
stolen from one Mexican found ready sale to another, the plunder from
Sonora finding its way into the hands of the settlers in Chihuahua, or,
if taken up into our country, selling without trouble to the Mexicans
living along the Rio Grande—and during the trade had drunk more whiskey,
or mescal, than was good for them; that is to say, they had drunk more
than one drop, and had then stolen or led away with them a little boy,
the child of an Irish father and a Mexican mother, whom the Mexicans
demanded back.
The commanding officer, a lieutenant of no great experience, sent for
the brother of Cocheis, and demanded the return of the babe; the reply
was made, and, in the light of years elapsed, the reply is known to have
been truthful, that the Chiricahuas knew nothing of the kidnapped
youngster and therefore could not restore him. The upshot of the affair
was that Cocheis’s brother was killed “while resisting arrest.” In
Broadway, if a man “resist arrest,” he is in danger of having his head
cracked by a policeman’s club; but in the remoter West, he is in great
good luck, sometimes, if he don’t find himself riddled with bullets.
It is an excellent method of impressing an Indian with the dignity of
being arrested; but the cost of the treatment is generally too great to
make it one that can fairly be recommended for continuous use. In the
present instance, Cocheis, who had also been arrested, but had cut his
way out of the back of the tent in which he was confined, went on the
war-path, and for the next ten years made Arizona and New Mexico—at
least the southern half of them—and the northern portions of Sonora and
Chihuahua, about the liveliest places on God’s footstool.
The account, if put down by a Treasury expert, would read something like
this:
DR.
“The United States to Cocheis,
“For one brother, killed ‘while resisting arrest.’”
CR.
“By ten thousand (10,000) men, women, and children killed, wounded, or
tortured to death, scared out of their senses or driven out of the
country, their wagon and pack-trains run off and destroyed, ranchos
ruined, and all industrial development stopped.”
If any man thinks that I am drawing a fancy sketch, let him write to
John H. Marion, Pete Kitchen, or any other old pioneer whose residence
in either Arizona or New Mexico has been sufficiently long to include
the major portion of the time that the whole force of the Apache nation
was in hostilities.
I have said that the exertions of the missionaries of the Roman Catholic
Church, ordinarily so successful with the aborigines of our Continent,
were nugatory with the Apaches of Arizona; I repeat this, at the same
time taking care to say that unremitting effort was maintained to open
up communication with the various bands nearest to the pueblos which,
from the year 1580, or thereabout, had been brought more or less
completely under the sway of the Franciscans.
With some of these pueblos, as at Picuris, the Apaches had intermarried,
and with others still, as at Pecos, they carried on constant trade, and
thus afforded the necessary loop-hole for the entrance of zealous
missionaries. The word of God was preached to them, and in several
instances bands were coaxed to abandon their nomadic and predatory life,
and settle down in permanent villages. The pages of writers, like John
Gilmary Shea, fairly glow with the recital of the deeds of heroism
performed in this work; and it must be admitted that perceptible traces
of it are still to be found among the Navajo branch of the Apache
family, which had acquired the peach and the apricot, the sheep and the
goat, the cow, the donkey and the horse, either from the Franciscans
direct, or else from the pueblo refugees who took shelter with them in
1680 at the time of the Great Rebellion, in which the pueblos of New
Mexico arose _en masse_ and threw off the yoke of Spain and the Church,
all for twelve years of freedom, and the Moquis threw it off forever.
Arizona—the Apache portion of it—remained a sealed book to the friars,
and even the Jesuits, in the full tide of their career as successful
winners of souls, were held at arm’s length.
There is one point in the mental make-up of the Apache especially worthy
of attention, and that is the quickness with which he seizes upon the
salient features of a strategetical combination, and derives from them
all that can possibly be made to inure to his own advantage. For
generations before the invasion by the Castilians—that is to say, by the
handful of Spaniards, and the colony of Tlascaltec natives and
mulattoes, whom Espejo and Onate led into the valley of the Rio Grande
between 1580 and 1590—the Apache had been the unrelenting foe of the
Pueblo tribes; but the moment that the latter determined to throw off
the galling yoke which had been placed upon their necks, the Apache
became their warm friend, and received the fugitives in the recesses of
the mountains, where he could bid defiance to the world. Therefore, we
can always depend upon finding in the records of the settlements in the
Rio Grande valley, and in Sonora and Chihuahua, that every revolt or
attempted revolt, of the Pueblos or sedentary tribes meant a
corresponding increase in the intensity of the hostilities prosecuted by
the Apache nomads.
In the revolts of 1680, as well as those of 1745 and 1750, the Apache
swept the country far to the south. The great revolt of the Pueblos was
the one of 1680, during which they succeeded in driving the governor and
the surviving Spanish colonists from Santa Fé down to the present town
of Juarez (formerly El Paso del Norte), several hundred miles nearer
Mexico. At that place Otermin made a stand, but it was fully twelve
years before the Spanish power was re-established through the efforts of
Vargas and Cruzate. The other two attempts at insurrection failed
miserably, the second being merely a local one among the Papagoes of
Arizona. It may be stated, in round terms, that from the year 1700 until
they were expelled from the territory of Mexico, the exertions of the
representatives of the Spanish power in “New Spain” were mainly in the
direction of reducing the naked Apache, who drove them into a frenzy of
rage and despair by his uniform success.
The Tarahumaris, living in the Sierra Madre south of the present
international boundary, were also for a time a thorn in the side of the
European; but they submitted finally to the instructions of the
missionaries who penetrated into their country, and who, on one occasion
at least, brought them in from the war-path before they had fired a
shot.
The first reference to the Apaches by name is in the account of Espejo’s
expedition—1581—where they will be found described as the “Apichi,” and
from that time down the Spaniards vie with each other in enumerating the
crimes and the atrocities of which these fierce Tinneh have been guilty.
Torquemada grows eloquent and styles them the Pharaohs (“Faraones”) who
have persecuted the chosen people of Israel (meaning the settlers on the
Rio Grande).
Yet all the while that this black cloud hung over the fair face of
nature—raiding, killing, robbing, carrying women and children into
captivity—Jesuit and Franciscan vied with each other in schemes for
getting these savages under their control.
Father Eusebio Kino, of whom I have already spoken, formulated a plan in
or about 1710 for establishing, or re-establishing, a mission in the
villages of the Moquis, from which the Franciscans had been driven in
the great revolt and to which they had never permanently returned.
Questions of ecclesiastical jurisdiction seem to have had something to
do with delaying the execution of the plan, which was really one for the
spiritual and temporal conquest of the Apache, by moving out against him
from all sides, and which would doubtless have met with good results had
not Kino died at the mission of Madalena a few months after. Father
Sotomayor, another Jesuit, one of Kino’s companions, advanced from the
“Pimeria,” or country of the Pimas, in which Tucson has since grown up,
to and across the Salt River on the north, in an unsuccessful attempt to
begin negotiations with the Apaches.
The overthrow of the Spanish power afforded another opportunity to the
Apache to play his cards for all they were worth; and for fully fifty
years he was undisputed master of Northwestern Mexico—the disturbed
condition of public affairs south of the Rio Grande, the war between the
United States and the Mexican Republic, and our own Civil War, being
additional factors in the equation from which the Apache reaped the
fullest possible benefit.
It is difficult to give a fair description of the personal appearance of
the Apaches, because there is no uniform type to which reference can be
made; both in physique and in facial lineaments there seem to be two
distinct classes among them. Many of the tribes are scarcely above
medium size, although they look to be still smaller from their great
girth of chest and width of shoulders. Many others are tall, well-made,
and straight as arrows. There are long-headed men, with fine brows,
aquiline noses, well-chiselled lips and chins, and flashing eyes; and
there are others with the flat occiput, flat nose, open nostrils, thin,
everted lips, and projecting chins.
One general rule may be laid down: the Apache, to whichever type he may
belong, is strongly built, straight, sinewy, well-muscled, extremely
strong in the lower limbs, provided with a round barrel chest, showing
good lung power, keen, intelligent-looking eyes, good head, and a mouth
showing determination, decision, and cruelty. He can be made a firm
friend, but no mercy need be expected from him as an enemy.
He is a good talker, can argue well from his own standpoint, cannot be
hoodwinked by sophistry or plausible stories, keeps his word very
faithfully, and is extremely honest in protecting property or anything
placed under his care. No instance can be adduced of an Apache sentinel
having stolen any of the government or other property he was appointed
to guard. The Chiricahua and other Apache scouts, who were enlisted to
carry on General Crook’s campaign against “Geronimo,” remained for
nearly one week at Fort Bowie, and during that time made numbers of
purchases from the post-trader, Mr. Sydney R. De Long. These were all on
credit, as the scouts were about leaving with the gallant and lamented
Crawford on the expedition which led to his death. Some months after, as
I wished to learn something definite in regard to the honesty of this
much-maligned people, I went to Mr. De Long and asked him to tell me
what percentage of bad debts he had found among the Apaches. He examined
his books, and said slowly: “They have bought seventeen hundred and
eighty dollars’ worth, and they have paid me back every single cent.”
“And what percentage of bad debts do you find among your white
customers?”
A cynical smile and a pitying glance were all the reply vouchsafed.
Around his own camp-fire the Apache is talkative, witty, fond of telling
stories, and indulging in much harmless raillery. He is kind to
children, and I have yet to see the first Indian child struck for any
cause by either parent or relative. The children are well provided with
games of different kinds, and the buckskin doll-babies for the little
girls are often very artistic in make-up. The boys have fiddles, flutes,
and many sorts of diversion. but at a very early age are given bows and
arrows, and amuse themselves as best they can with hunting for birds and
small animals. They have sham-fights, wrestling matches, footraces,
games of shinny and “muskha,” the last really a series of lance-throws
along the ground, teaching the youngster steadiness of aim and keeping
every muscle fully exercised. They learn at a very early age the names
and attributes of all the animals and plants about them; the whole
natural kingdom, in fact, is understood as far as their range of
knowledge in such matters extends. They are inured to great fatigue and
suffering, to deprivation of water, and to going without food for long
periods.
Unlike the Indians of the Plains, east of the Rocky Mountains, they
rarely become good horsemen, trusting rather to their own muscles for
advancing upon or escaping from an enemy in the mountainous and desert
country with which they, the Apaches, are so perfectly familiar. Horses,
mules, and donkeys, when captured, were rarely held longer than the time
when they were needed to be eaten; the Apache preferred the meat of
these animals to that of the cow, sheep, or goat, although all the
last-named were eaten. Pork and fish were objects of the deepest
repugnance to both men and women; within the past twenty years—since the
Apaches have been enrolled as scouts and police at the agencies—this
aversion to bacon at least has been to a great extent overcome; but no
Apache would touch fish until Geronimo and the men with him were
incarcerated at Fort Pickens. Florida, when they were persuaded to eat
the pompano and other delicious fishes to be found in Pensacola Bay.
When we first became apprised of this peculiarity of the Apache
appetite, we derived all the benefit from it that we could in driving
away the small boys who used to hang around our mess-canvas in the hope
of getting a handful of sugar, or a piece of cracker, of which all
hands, young and old, were passionately fond. All we had to do was to
set a can of salmon or lobster in the middle of the canvas, and the
sight of that alone would drive away the bravest Apache boy that ever
lived; he would regard as uncanny the mortals who would eat such vile
stuff. They could not understand what was the meaning of the
red-garmented Mephistophelian figure on the can of devilled ham, and
called that dish “Chidin-bitzi” (ghost meat), because they fancied a
resemblance to their delineations of their gods or spirits or ghosts.
The expertness of the Apache in all that relates to tracking either man
or beast over the rocky heights, or across the interminable sandy wastes
of the region in which he makes his home, has been an occasion of
astonishment to all Caucasians who have had the slightest acquaintance
with him. He will follow through grass, over sand or rock, or through
the chapparal of scrub oak, up and down the flanks of the steepest
ridges, traces so faint that to the keenest-eyed American they do not
appear at all.
Conversely, he is fiendishly dexterous in the skill with which he
conceals his own line of march when a pursuing enemy is to be thrown off
the track. No serpent can surpass him in cunning; he will dodge and
twist and bend in all directions, boxing the compass, doubling like a
fox, scattering his party the moment a piece of rocky ground is reached
over which it would, under the best circumstances, be difficult to
follow. Instead of moving in file, his party will here break into
skirmishing order, covering a broad space and diverging at the most
unexpected moment from the primitive direction, and not perhaps
reuniting for miles. Pursuit is retarded and very frequently baffled.
The pursuers must hold on to the trail, or all is lost. There must be no
guesswork. Following a trail is like being on a ship: so long as one is
on shipboard, he is all right; but if he once go overboard, he is all
wrong. So with a trail: to be a mile away from it is fully as bad as
being fifty, if it be not found again. In the meantime the Apache
raiders, who know full well that the pursuit must slacken for a while,
have reunited at some designated hill, or near some spring or water
“tank,” and are pushing across the high mountains as fast as legs harder
than leather can carry them. If there be squaws with the party, they
carry all plunder on their backs in long, conical baskets of their own
make, unless they have made a haul of ponies, in which case they
sometimes ride, and at all times use the animals to pack.
At the summit of each ridge, concealed behind rocks or trees, a few
picked men, generally not more than two or three, will remain waiting
for the approach of pursuit; when the tired cavalry draw near, and
begin, dismounted, the ascent of the mountain, there are always good
chances for the Apaches to let them have half a dozen well-aimed
shots—just enough to check the onward movement, and compel them to halt
and close up, and, while all this is going on, the Apache rear-guard,
whether in the saddle or on foot, is up and away, as hard to catch as
the timid quail huddling in the mesquite.
Or it may so happen the Apache prefers, for reasons best known to
himself, to await the coming of night, when he will sneak in upon the
herd and stampede it, and set the soldiery on foot, or drive a few
arrows against the sentinels, if he can discern where they may be moving
in the gloom.
All sorts of signals are made for the information of other parties of
Apaches. At times, it is an inscription or pictograph incised in the
smooth bark of a sycamore; at others, a tracing upon a smooth-faced rock
under a ledge which will protect it from the elements; or it may be a
knot tied in the tall sacaton or in the filaments of the yucca; or one
or more stones placed in the crotch of a limb, or a sapling laid against
another tree, or a piece of buckskin carelessly laid over a branch. All
these, placed as agreed upon, afford signals to members of their own
band, and only Apaches or savages with perceptions as keen would detect
their presence.
When information of some important happening is to be communicated to a
distance and at once, and the party is situated upon the summit of a
mountain chain or in other secure position, a fire is lighted of the
cones of the resinous pine, and the smoke is instantaneously making its
way far above the tracery of the foliage. A similar method is employed
when they desire to apprise kinsfolk of the death of relatives; in the
latter case the brush “jacal” of the deceased—the whole village, in
fact—is set on fire and reduced to ashes.
The Apache was a hard foe to subdue, not because he was full of wiles
and tricks and experienced in all that pertains to the art of war, but
because he had so few artificial wants and depended almost absolutely
upon what his great mother—Nature—stood ready to supply. Starting out
upon the war-path, he wore scarcely any clothing save a pair of buckskin
moccasins reaching to mid-thigh and held to the waist by a string of the
same material; a piece of muslin encircling the loins and dangling down
behind about to the calves of the legs, a war-hat of buckskin surmounted
by hawk and eagle plumage, a rifle (the necessary ammunition in belt) or
a bow, with the quiver filled with arrows reputed to be poisonous, a
blanket thrown over the shoulders, a watertight wicker jug to serve as a
canteen, and perhaps a small amount of “jerked” meat, or else of
“pinole” or parched corn-meal.
That is all, excepting his sacred relics and “medicine,” for now is the
time when the Apache is going to risk no failure by neglecting the
precaution needed to get all his ghosts and gods on his side. He will
have sacred cords of buckskin and shells, sacred sashes ornamented with
the figures of the powers invoked to secure him success; possibly, if he
be very opulent, he may have bought from a “medicine man” a sacred
shirt, which differs from the sash merely in being bigger and in having
more figures; and a perfect menagerie of amulets and talismans and
relics of all kinds, medicine arrows, pieces of crystal, petrified wood,
little bags of the sacred meal called “hoddentin,” fragments of wood
which has been struck by lightning, and any and all kinds of trash which
his fancy or his fears have taught him are endowed with power over the
future and the supernatural. Like the Roman he is not content with
paying respect to his own gods; he adopts those of all the enemies who
yield to his power. In many and many an instance I have seen dangling
from the neck, belt or wrist of an Apache warrior the cross, the medals,
the _Agnus Dei_ or the rosary of the Mexican victims whom his rifle or
arrow had deprived of life.
To his captives the Apache was cruel, brutal, merciless; if of full age,
he wasted no time with them, unless on those rare occasions when he
wanted to extract some information about what his pursuers were doing or
contemplated doing, in which case death might be deferred for a few
brief hours. Where the captive was of tender years, unable to get along
without a mother’s care, it was promptly put out of its misery by having
its brains dashed against a convenient rock or tree; but where it
happened that the raiders had secured boys or girls sufficiently old to
withstand the hardships of the new life, they were accepted into the
band and treated as kindly as if Apache to the manner-born.
It was often a matter of interest to me to note the great amount of
real, earnest, affectionate good-will that had grown up between the
Mexican captives and the other members of the tribe; there were not a
few of these captives who, upon finding a chance, made their escape back
to their own people, but in nearly all cases they have admitted to me
that their life among the savages was one of great kindness, after they
had learned enough of the language to understand and be understood.
Many of these captives have risen to positions of influence among the
Apaches. There are men and women like “Severiano,” “Concepcion,”
“Antonio,” “Jesus Maria,” “Victor,” “Francesca,” “Maria,” and others I
could name, who have amassed property and gained influence among the
people who led them into slavery.
A brief account of the more prominent of foods entering into the dietary
of the Apache may not be out of place, as it will serve to emphasize my
remarks concerning his ability to practically snap his fingers at any
attempts to reduce him to starvation by the ordinary methods. The same
remarks, in a minor degree, apply to all our wilder tribes. Our
Government had never been able to starve any of them until it had them
placed on a reservation. The Apache was not so well provided with meat
as he might have been, because the general area of Arizona was so arid
and barren that it could not be classed as a game country; nevertheless,
in the higher elevations of the Sierra Mogollon and the San Francisco,
there were to be found plenty of deer, some elk, and, in places like the
Grand Cañon of the Colorado, the Cañon of the Rio Salado, and others,
there were some Rocky Mountain sheep; down on the plains or deserts,
called in the Spanish idiom “playas” or “beaches,” there were quite
large herds of antelope, and bears were encountered in all the high and
rocky places.
Wild turkeys flock in the timbered ranges, while on the lower levels, in
the thickets of sage-brush and mesquite, quail are numerous enough to
feed Moses and all the Israelites were they to come back to life again.
The jack-rabbit is caught by being “rounded up,” and the field-rat adds
something to the meat supply. The latter used to be caught in a very
peculiar way. The rat burrowed under a mesquite or other bush, and cast
up in a mound all the earth excavated from the spot selected for its
dwelling; and down through this cut or bored five or six entrances, so
that any intruder, such as a snake, would be unable to bar the retreat
of the inmates, who could seek safety through some channel other than
the one seized upon by the invader.
The Apache was perfectly well acquainted with all this, and laid his
plans accordingly. Three or four boys would surround each habitation,
and, while one took station at the main entrance and laid the curved end
of his “rat-stick” across its mouth, the others devoted themselves to
prodding down with their sticks into the other channels. The rats, of
course, seeing one hole undisturbed, would dart up that, and, when each
had reached the opening, he would rest for a moment, with his body just
half out, while he scanned the horizon to see where the enemy was. That
was the supreme moment for both rat and Apache, and, with scarcely any
percentage of errors worth mentioning, the Apache was nearly always
successful. He would quickly and powerfully draw the stick towards him
and break the back of the poor rodent, and in another second have it
dangling from his belt. One gash of the knife would eviscerate the
little animal, and then it was thrown upon a bed of hot coals, which
speedily burned off all the hair and cooked it as well.
The above completed the list of meats of which use was made, unless we
include the horses, cows, oxen, donkeys, sheep, and mules driven off
from Mexicans and Americans, which were all eaten as great delicacies.
Some few of the meats prepared by the Apache cooks are palatable, and I
especially remember their method of baking a deer’s head surrounded and
covered by hot embers. They roast a side of venison to perfection over a
bed of embers, and broil liver and steak in a savory manner; but their
_bonne bouche_, when they can get it, is an unborn fawn, which they
believe to be far more delicious than mule meat.
The mainstay of the Apache larder was always the mescal, or agave—the
American aloe—a species of the so-called century plant. This was cut
down by the squaws and baked in “mescal-pits,” made for all the world
like a clam-bake. There would be first laid down a course of stones,
then one of wet grass, if procurable, then the mescal, then another
covering of grass, and lastly one of earth. All over Arizona old
“mescal-pits” are to be found, as the plant was always cooked as close
as possible to the spot where it was cut, thus saving the women
unnecessary labor.
Three days are required to bake mescal properly, and, when done, it has
a taste very much like that of old-fashioned molasses candy, although
its first effects are those of all the aloe family. The central stalk is
the best portion, as the broad, thorny leaves, although yielding a sweet
mass, are so filled with filament that it is impossible to chew them,
and they must be sucked.
The fruit of the Spanish bayonet, when dried, has a very pleasant taste,
not unlike that of a fig. It can also be eaten in the raw or pulpy
state, but will then, so the Apaches tell me, often bring on fever.
Of the bread made from mesquite beans, as of the use made of the fruit
of the giant cactus, mention has already been made in the beginning of
this work. Sweet acorns are also used freely.
The “nopal,” or Indian fig, supplies a fruit which is very good, and is
much liked by the squaws and children, but it is so covered with a beard
of spines, that until I had seen some of the squaws gathering it, I
could not see how it could be so generally employed as an article of
food. They would take in one hand a small wooden fork made for the
purpose, and with that seize the fruit of the plant; with the other
hand, a brush made of the stiff filaments of the sacaton was passed
rapidly over the spines, knocking them all off much sooner than it has
taken to write this paragraph on the typewriter. It requires no time at
all to fill a basket with them, and either fresh or dried they are good
food.
The seeds of the sunflower are parched and ground up with corn-meal or
mesquite beans to make a rich cake.
There are several varieties of seed-bearing grasses of importance to the
Apache. The squaws show considerable dexterity in collecting these; they
place their conical baskets under the tops of the stalks, draw these
down until they incline over the baskets, and then hit them a rap with a
small stick, which causes all the seed to fall into the receptacle
provided.
In damp, elevated swales the wild potatoes grow plentifully. These are
eaten by both Apaches and Navajoes, who use with them a pinch of clay to
correct acridity. A small black walnut is eaten, and so is a wild
cherry. The wild strawberry is too rare to be noticed in this treatise,
but is known to the Apaches. Corn was planted in small areas by the
Sierra Blanca band whenever undisturbed by the scouting parties of their
enemies. After General Crook had conquered the whole nation and placed
the various bands upon reservations, he insisted upon careful attention
being paid to the planting of either corn or barley, and immense
quantities of each were raised and sold to the United States Government
for the use of its horses and mules. Of this a full description will
follow in due time.
The Apaches have a very strict code of etiquette, as well as morals,
viewed from their own standpoint. It is considered very impolite for a
stranger to ask an Apache his name, and an Apache will never give it,
but will allow the friend at his side to reply for him; the names of the
dead are never referred to, and it is an insult to speak of them by
name. Yet, after a good long while has elapsed, the name of a warrior
killed in battle or distinguished in any way may be conferred upon his
grandchild or some other relative.
No Apache, no matter what his standing may be in society, will speak to
or of his mother-in-law—a courtesy which the old lady reciprocates. One
of the funniest incidents I can remember was seeing a very desperate
Chiricahua Apache, named “Ka-e-tennay,” who was regarded as one of the
boldest and bravest men in the whole nation, trying to avoid running
face to face against his mother-in-law; he hung on to stones, from which
had he fallen he would have been dashed to pieces or certainly broken
several of his limbs. There are times at the Agencies when Indians have
to be counted for rations—even then the rule is not relaxed. The
mother-in-law will take a seat with her son-in-law and the rest of the
family; but a few paces removed, and with her back turned to them all;
references to her are by signs only—she is never mentioned otherwise.
When an Apache young man begins to feel the first promptings of love for
any particular young damsel, he makes known the depth and sincerity of
his affection by presenting the young woman with a calico skirt, cut and
sewed by his own fair fingers. The Apache men are good sewers, and the
Navajo men do all the knitting for their tribe, and the same may be said
of the men of the Zunis.
Only ill-bred Americans or Europeans, who have never had any “raising,”
would think of speaking of the Bear, the Snake, the Lightning or the
Mule, without employing the reverential prefix “Ostin,” meaning “Old
Man,” and equivalent to the Roman title “Senator.” But you can’t teach
politeness to Americans, and the Apache knows it and wastes no time or
vain regrets on the defects of their training.
“You must stop talking about bear,” said a chief to me one night at the
camp-fire, “or we’ll not have a good hunt.”
In the same manner no good will come from talking about owls, whose
hooting, especially if on top of a “jacal,” or in the branches of a tree
under which people are seated or sleeping, means certain death. I have
known of one case where our bravest scouts ran away from a place where
an owl had perched and begun its lugubrious ditty, and at another time
the scouts, as we were about entering the main range of the Sierra
Madre, made a great fuss and would not be pacified until one of the
whites of our command had released a little owl which he had captured.
This same superstition obtained with equal force among the Romans, and,
indeed, there are few if any spots in the world, where the owl has not
been regarded as the messenger of death or misfortune.
When an Apache starts out on the war-path for the first four times, he
will refrain from letting water touch his lips; he will suck it through
a small reed or cane which he carries for the purpose. Similarly, he
will not scratch his head with the naked fingers, but resorts to a small
wooden scratcher carried with the drinking-tube. Traces of these two
superstitions can also be found in other parts of the globe. There are
all kinds of superstitions upon every conceivable kind of subject, but
there are too many of them to be told _in extenso_ in a book treating of
military campaigning.
As might be inferred, the “medicine men” wield an amount of influence
which cannot be understood by civilized people who have not been brought
into intimate relations with the aborigines in a wild state. The study
of the religious life and thought of our savage tribes has always been
to me of the greatest interest and of supreme importance; nothing has
been so neglected by the Americans as an examination into the mental
processes by which an Indian arrives at his conclusions, the omens,
auguries, hopes and fears by which he is controlled and led to one
extreme or the other in all he does, or a study of the leaders who keep
him under control from the cradle to the grave. Certainly, if we are in
earnest in our protestations of a desire to elevate and enlighten the
aborigine—which I for one most sincerely doubt—then we cannot begin too
soon to investigate all that pertains to him mentally as well as
physically. Looking at the subject in the strictest and most completely
practical light, we should save millions of dollars in expenditure, and
many valuable lives, and not be making ourselves a holy show and a
laughing-stock for the rest of the world by massing troops and munitions
of war from the four corners of the country every time an Indian
medicine man or spirit doctor announces that he can raise the dead.
Until we provide something better, the savage will rely upon his own
religious practices to help him through all difficulties, and his
medicine man will be called upon to furnish the singing, drumming and
dancing that may be requisite to cure the sick or avert disease of any
kind.
The “cures” of the medicine men are effected generally by incantations,
the sprinkling of hoddentin or sacred powder, sweat-baths, and at times
by suction of the arm, back or shoulder in which pain may have taken up
its abode. If they fail, as they very often do, then they cast about and
pretty soon have indicated some poor old crone as the maleficent
obstacle to the success of their ministrations, and the miserable bag is
very soon burnt or stoned to death.
The influence quietly exerted upon tribal councils by the women of the
Apache and Navajo tribes has been noted by many observers.
I will curtail my remarks upon the manners and customs of the Apaches at
this point, as there will necessarily be many other allusions to them
before this narrative shall be completed. One thing more is all I care
to say. The endurance of their warriors while on raids was something
which extorted expressions of wonder from all white men who ever had
anything to do with their subjugation. Seventy-five miles a day was
nothing at all unusual for them to march when pursued, their tactics
being to make three or four such marches, in the certainty of being able
to wear out or throw off the track the most energetic and the most
intelligent opponents.
Their vision is so keen that they can discern movements of troops or the
approach of wagon-trains for a distance of thirty miles, and so inured
are they to the torrid heats of the burning sands of Arizona south of
the Gila and Northern Mexico, that they seem to care nothing for
temperatures under which the American soldier droops and dies. The
Apache, as a matter of fact, would strip himself of everything and
travel naked, which the civilized man would not do; but the amount of
clothing retained by the soldiers was too small to be considered a very
important factor.
If necessary, the Apache will go without water for as long a time almost
as a camel. A small stone or a twig inserted in the mouth will cause a
more abundant flow of saliva and assuage his thirst. He travels with
fewer “impedimenta” than any other tribe of men in the world, not even
excepting the Australians, but sometimes he allows himself the luxury or
comfort of a pack of cards, imitated from those of the Mexicans, and
made out of horse-hide, or a set of the small painted sticks with which
to play the game of “Tze-chis,” or, on occasions when an unusually large
number of Apaches happen to be travelling together, some one of the
party will be loaded with the hoops and poles of the “mushka;” for, be
it known, that the Apache, like savages everywhere, and not a few
civilized men, too, for that matter, is so addicted to gambling that he
will play away the little he owns of clothing and all else he possesses
in the world.
Perhaps no instance could afford a better idea of the degree of
ruggedness the Apaches attain than the one coming under my personal
observation in the post hospital of Fort Bowie, in 1886, where one of
our Apache scouts was under treatment for a gunshot wound in the thigh.
The moment Mr. Charles Lummis and myself approached the bedside of the
young man, he asked for a “tobacco-shmoke,” which he received in the
form of a bunch of cigarettes. One of these he placed in his mouth, and,
drawing a match, coolly proceeded to strike a light on his foot, which,
in its horny, callous appearance, closely resembled the back of a mud
tortoise.
CHAPTER VIII.
CROOK’S FIRST MOVEMENTS AGAINST THE APACHES—THE SCOUTS—MIRAGES—THE
FLORAL WEALTH OF ARIZONA—RUNNING IN UPON THE HOSTILE APACHES—AN
ADVENTURE WITH BEARS—CROOK’S TALK WITH THE APACHES—THE GREAT
MOGOLLON PLATEAU—THE TONTO BASIN—MONTEZUMA’S WELL—CLIFF
DWELLINGS—THE PACK TRAINS.
How it all came about I never knew; no one ever knew. There were no
railroads and no telegraphs in those days, and there were no messages
flashed across the country telling just what was going to be done and
when and how. But be all that as it may, before any officer or man knew
what had happened, and while the good people in Tucson were still asking
each other whether the new commander had a “policy” or not—he had not,
but that’s neither here nor there—we were out on the road, five full
companies of cavalry, and a command of scouts and trailers gathered
together from the best available sources, and the campaign had begun.
Rumors had reached Tucson—from what source no one could tell—that the
Government would not permit Crook to carry on offensive operations
against the Apaches, and there were officers in the Department, some
even in our own command, who were inclined to lend an ear to them. They
were enthusiasts, however, who based their views upon the fact that
“Loco” and “Victorio,” prominent chiefs of the Warm Springs band over in
New Mexico, had been ever since September of the year 1869, a period of
not quite two years, encamped within sight of old Fort Craig, New
Mexico, on the Rio Grande, waiting to hear from the Great Father in
regard to having a Reservation established for them where they and their
children could live at peace.
The more conservative sadly shook their heads. They _knew_ that there
had not been time for the various documents and reports in the case to
make the round of the various bureaus in Washington, and lead to the
formulation of any scheme in the premises. It used to take from four to
six months for such a simple thing as a requisition for rations or
clothing to produce any effect, and, of course, it would seem that the
caring for a large body would consume still longer time for
deliberation. But, no matter what Washington officialism might do or not
do, General Crook was not the man to delay at his end of the line. We
were on our way to Fort Bowie, in the eastern section of Arizona,
leaving Tucson at six o’clock in the morning of July 11, 1871, and
filing out on the mail road where the heat before ten o’clock attained
110° Fahrenheit in the shade, as we learned from the party left behind
in Tucson to bring up the mail.
As it happened, Crook’s first movement was stopped; but not until it had
almost ended and been, what it was intended to be, a “practice march” of
the best kind, in which officers and men could get acquainted with each
other and with the country in which at a later moment they should have
to work in earnest. Our line of travel lay due east one hundred and ten
miles to old Fort Bowie, thence north through the mountains to Camp
Apache, thence across an unmapped region over and at the base of the
great Mogollon range to Camp Verde and Prescott on the west. In all,
some six hundred and seventy-five miles were travelled, and most of it
being in the presence of a tireless enemy, made it the best kind of a
school of instruction. The first man up in the morning, the first to be
saddled, the first ready for the road, was our indefatigable commander,
who, in a suit of canvas, and seated upon a good strong mule, with his
rifle carried across the pommel of his saddle, led the way.
With the exception of Colonel Guy V. Henry, Captain W. W. Robinson of
the Seventh Cavalry, and myself, none of the officers of that scout are
left in the army. Major Ross, our capable quartermaster, is still alive
and is now a citizen of Tucson. Crook, Stanwood, Smith, Meinhold,
Mullan, and Brent are dead, and Henry has had such a close call for his
life (at the Rosebud, June 17, 1876) that I am almost tempted to include
him in the list.
The detachment of scouts made a curious ethnographical collection. There
were Navajoes, Apaches, Opatas, Yaquis, Pueblos, Mexicans, Americans,
and half-breeds of any tribe one could name. It was an _omnium
gatherum_—the best that could be summoned together at the time; some
were good, and others were good for nothing. They were a fair sample of
the social driftwood of the Southwest, and several of them had been
concerned in every revolution or counter-revolution in northwestern
Mexico since the day that Maximilian landed. Manuel Duran, the old
Apache, whom by this time I knew very intimately, couldn’t quite make it
all out. He had never seen so many troops together before without
something being in the wind, and what it meant he set about unravelling.
He approached, the morning we arrived at Sulphur Springs, and in the
most confidential manner asked me to ride off to one side of the road
with him, which I, of course, did.
“You are a friend of the new Comandante,” he said, “and I am a friend of
yours. You must tell me _all_.”
“But, Manuel, I do not fully understand what you are driving at.”
“Ah, mi teniente, you cannot fool me. I am too old; I know all about
such things.”
“But, tell me, Manuel, what is this great mystery you wish to know?”
Manuel’s right eyelid dropped just a trifle, just enough to be called a
wink, and he pointed with his thumb at General Crook in advance. His
voice sank to a whisper, but it was still perfectly clear and plain, as
he asked: “When is the new Comandante going to pronounce?”
I didn’t explode nor roll out of the saddle, although it was with the
greatest difficulty I kept from doing either; but the idea of General
Crook, with five companies of cavalry and one of scouts, revolting
against the general Government and issuing a “pronunciamiento,” was too
much for my gravity, and I yelled. Often in succeeding years I have
thought of that talk with poor Manuel, and never without a chuckle.
We learned to know each other, we learned to know Crook, we learned to
know the scouts and guides, and tell which of them were to be relied
upon, and which were not worth their salt; we learned to know a great
deal about packers, pack-mules and packing, which to my great surprise I
found to be a science and such a science that as great a soldier as
General Crook had not thought it beneath his genius to study it; and,
applying the principles of military discipline to the organization of
trains, make them as nearly perfect as they ever have been or can be in
our army history. Last, but not least, we learned the country—the
general direction of the rivers, mountains, passes, where was to be
found the best grazing, where the most fuel, where the securest shelter.
Some of the command had had a little experience of the same kind
previously, but now we were all in attendance at a perambulating
academy, and had to answer such questions as the general commanding
might wish to propound on the spot.
Side scouts were kept out constantly, and each officer, upon his return,
was made to tell all he had learned of the topography and of Indian
“sign.” There was a great plenty of the latter, but none of it very
fresh; in the dim distance, on the blue mountain-tops, we could discern
at frequent intervals the smoke sent up in signals by the Apaches;
often, we were at a loss to tell whether it was smoke or the
swift-whirling “trebillon” of dust, carrying off in its uncanny embrace
the spirit of some mighty chief. While we slowly marched over “playas”
of sand, without one drop of water for miles, we were tantalized by the
sight of cool, pellucid lakelets from which issued water whose gurgle
and ripple could almost be heard, but the illusion dissipated as we drew
nearer and saw that the mirage-fiend had been mocking our thirst with
spectral waters.
Our commanding general showed himself to be a man who took the deepest
interest in everything we had to tell, whether it was of peccaries
chased off on one side of the road, of quail flushed in great numbers,
of the swift-walking, long-tailed road-runner—the “paisano” or
“chapparal cock,” of which the Mexicans relate that it will imprison the
deadly rattler by constructing around its sleeping coils a fence of
cactus spines; of tarantulas and centipedes and snakes—possibly, some of
the snake-stories of Arizona may have been a trifle exaggerated, but
then we had no fish, and a man must have something upon which to let his
imagination have full swing; of badgers run to their holes; of coyotes
raced to death; of jackass-rabbits surrounded and captured; and all the
lore of plant and animal life in which the Mexican border is so rich.
Nothing was too insignificant to be noted, nothing too trivial to be
treasured up in our memories; such was the lesson taught during our
moments of conversation with General Crook. The guides and trailers soon
found that although they who had been born and brought up in that vast
region could tell Crook much, they could never tell him anything twice,
while as for reading signs on the trail there was none of them his
superior.
At times we would march for miles through a country in which grew only
the white-plumed yucca with trembling, serrated leaves; again, mescal
would fill the hillsides so thickly that one could almost imagine that
it had been planted purposely; or we passed along between masses of the
dust-laden, ghostly sage-brush, or close to the foul-smelling joints of
the “hediondilla.” The floral wealth of Arizona astonished us the moment
we had gained the higher elevations of the Mogollon and the other
ranges. Arizona will hold a high place in any list that may be prepared
in this connection; there are as many as twenty and thirty different
varieties of very lovely flowers and blossoms to be plucked within a
stone’s-throw of one’s saddle after reaching camp of an
evening,—phloxes, marguerites, chrysanthemums, verbenas, golden-rod,
sumach, columbines, delicate ferns, forget-me-nots, and many others for
which my very limited knowledge of botany furnishes no name. The flowers
of Arizona are delightful in color, but they yield no perfume, probably
on account of the great dryness of the atmosphere.
As for grasses one has only to say what kind he wants, and lo! it is at
his feet—from the coarse sacaton which is deadly to animals except when
it is very green and tender; the dainty mesquite, the bunch, and the
white and black grama, succulent and nutritious. But I am speaking of
the situations where we would make camp, because, as already stated,
there are miles and miles of land purely desert, and clothed only with
thorny cacti and others of that ilk. I must say, too, that the wild
grasses of Arizona always seemed to me to have but slight root in the
soil, and my observation is that the presence of herds of cattle soon
tears them up and leaves the land bare.
If the marching over the deserts had its unpleasant features, certainly
the compensation offered by the camping places in the cañons, by limpid
streams of rippling water, close to the grateful foliage of cottonwood,
sycamore, ash, or walnut; or, in the mountains, the pine and juniper,
and sheltered from the sun by walls of solid granite, porphyry or
basalt, was a most delightful antithesis, and one well worthy of the
sacrifices undergone to attain it. Strong pickets were invariably
posted, as no risks could be run in that region; we were fortunate to
have just enough evidence of the close proximity of the Apaches to
stimulate all to keep both eyes open.
“F” troop of the Third Cavalry, to which I belonged, had the misfortune
to give the alarm to a large band of Chiricahua Apaches coming down the
Sulphur Springs Valley from Sonora, with a herd of ponies or cattle; we
did not have the remotest idea that there were Indians in the country,
not having seen the faintest sign, when all of a sudden at the close of
a night march, very near where the new post of Camp Grant has since been
erected on the flank of the noble Sierra Bonita or Mount Graham, we came
upon their fires with the freshly slaughtered beeves undivided, and the
blood still warm; but our advance had alarmed the enemy, and they had
moved off, scattering as they departed.
Similarly, Robinson I think it was, came so close upon the heels of a
party of raiders that they dropped a herd of fifteen or twenty “burros”
with which they had just come up from the Mexican border. Our
pack-trains ran in upon a band of seven bears in the Aravaypa cañon
which scared the mules almost out of their senses, but the packers soon
laid five of the ursines low and wounded the other two which, however,
escaped over the rough, dangerous rocks.
There were sections of country passed over which fairly reeked with the
baleful malaria, like the junction of the San Carlos and the Gila. There
were others along which for miles and miles could be seen nothing but
lava, either in solid waves, or worse yet, in “nigger-head” lumps of all
sizes. There were mountain ranges with flanks hidden under a solid
matting of the scrub-oak, and others upon whose summits grew dense
forests of graceful pines, whose branches, redolent with balsamic odors,
screened from the too fierce glow of the noonday sun. There were broad
stretches of desert, where the slightest movement raised clouds of dust
which would almost stifle both men and beasts; and gloomy ravines and
startling cañons, in whose depths flowed waters as swift and clear and
cool as any that have ever rippled along the pages of poetry.
Camp Apache was reached after a march and scout of all the intermediate
country and a complete familiarization with the course of all the
streams passed over _en route_. Nature had been more than liberal in her
apportionment of attractions at this point, and there are truly few
fairer scenes in the length and breadth of our territory. The post,
still in the rawest possible state and not half-constructed, was
situated upon a gently sloping mesa, surrounded by higher hills running
back to the plateaux which formed the first line of the Mogollon range.
Grass was to be had in plenty, while, as for timber, the flanks of every
elevation, as well as the summits of the mountains themselves, were
covered with lofty pine, cedar, and oak, with a sprinkling of the
“madroño,” or mountain mahogany.
Two branches of the Sierra Blanca River unite almost in front of the
camp, and supply all the water needed for any purpose, besides being
stocked fairly well with trout, a fish which is rare in other sections
of the Territory. Hunting was very good, and the sportsman could find,
with very slight trouble, deer, bear, elk, and other varieties of
four-footed animals, with wild turkey and quail in abundance. In the
vicinity of this lovely site lived a large number of the Apaches, under
chiefs who were peaceably disposed towards the whites—men like the old
Miguel, Eskitistsla, Pedro, Pitone, Alchise, and others, who expressed
themselves as friendly, and showed by their actions the sincerity of
their avowals. They planted small farms with corn, gathered the wild
seeds, hunted, and were happy as savages are when unmolested. Colonel
John Green, of the First Cavalry, was in command, with two troops of his
own regiment and two companies of the Twenty-third Infantry. Good
feeling existed between the military and the Indians, and the latter
seemed anxious to put themselves in “the white man’s road.”
General Crook had several interviews with Miguel and the others who came
in to see him, and to them he explained his views. To my surprise he
didn’t have any “policy,” in which respect he differed from every other
man I have met, as all seem to have “policies” about the management of
Indians, and the less they know the more “policy” they seem to keep in
stock. Crook’s talk was very plain; a child could have understood every
word he said. He told the circle of listening Indians that he had not
come to make war, but to avoid it if possible. Peace was the best
condition in which to live, and he hoped that those who were around him
would see that peace was not only preferable, but essential, and not for
themselves alone, but for the rest of their people as well. The white
people were crowding in all over the Western country, and soon it would
be impossible for any one to live upon game; it would be driven away or
killed off. Far better for every one to make up his mind to plant and to
raise horses, cows, and sheep, and make his living in that way; his
animals would thrive and increase while he slept, and in less than no
time the Apache would be wealthier than the Mexican. So long as the
Apache behaved himself he should receive the fullest protection from the
troops, and no white man should be allowed to do him harm; but so long
as any fragment of the tribe kept out on the war-path, it would be
impossible to afford all the protection to the well-disposed that they
were entitled to receive, as bad men could say that it was not easy to
discriminate between those who were good and those who were bad.
Therefore, he wished to ascertain for himself just who were disposed to
remain at peace permanently and who preferred to continue in hostility.
He had no desire to punish any man or woman for any acts of the past. He
would blot them all out and begin over again. It was no use to try to
explain how the war with the whites had begun. All that he cared to say
was, that it must end, and end at once. He would send out to all the
bands still in the mountains, and tell them just the same thing. He did
not intend to tell one story to one band and another to another; but to
all the same words, and it would be well for all to listen with both
ears. If every one came in without necessitating a resort to bloodshed
he should be very glad; but, if any refused, then he should expect the
good men to aid him in running down the bad ones. That was the way the
white people did; if there were bad men in a certain neighborhood, all
the law-abiding citizens turned out to assist the officers of the law in
arresting and punishing those who would not behave themselves. He hoped
that the Apaches would see that it was their duty to do the same. He
hoped to be able to find work for them all. It was by work, and by work
only, that they could hope to advance and become rich.
He wanted them always to tell him the exact truth, as he should never
say anything to them which was not true; and he hoped that as they
became better acquainted, they would always feel that his word could be
relied on. He would do all in his power for them, but would never make
them a promise he could not carry out. There was no good in such a
manner of doing, and bad feeling often grew up between good friends
through misunderstandings in regard to promises not kept. He would make
no such promises; and as the way in which they might remember a thing
might happen to be different from the way in which he remembered it, he
would do all he could to prevent misunderstandings, by having every word
he said to them put down in black and white on paper, of which, if they
so desired, they could keep a copy. When men were afraid to put their
words on paper, it looked as if they did not mean half what they said.
He wanted to treat the Apache just the same as he would treat any other
man—as a man. He did not believe in one kind of treatment for the white
and another for the Indian. All should fare alike; but so long as the
Indian remained ignorant of our laws and language it was for his own
good that the troops remained with him, and he must keep within the
limits of the Reservations set apart for him. He hoped the time would
soon come when the children of the Apaches would be going to school,
learning all the white men had to teach to their own children, and all
of them, young or old, free to travel as they pleased all over the
country, able to work anywhere, and not in fear of the white men or the
white men of them. Finally, he repeated his urgent request that every
effort should be made to spread these views among all the others who
might still be out in the mountains, and to convince them that the
safest and best course for all to adopt was that of peace with all
mankind. After a reasonable time had been given for all to come in, he
intended to start out in person and see to it that the last man returned
to the Reservations or died in the mountains.
To all this the Apaches listened with deep attention, at intervals
expressing approbation after their manner by heavy grunts and the
utterance of the monosyllable “Inju” (good).
The Apaches living in the vicinity of Camp Apache are of purer Tinneh
blood than those bands which occupied the western crest of the long
Mogollon plateau, or the summits of the lofty Matitzal. The latter have
very appreciably intermixed with the conquered people of the same stock
as the Mojaves and Yumas of the Colorado valley, and the consequence is
that the two languages are, in many cases, spoken interchangeably, and
not a few of the chiefs and head men possess two names—one in the
Apache, the other in the Mojave tongue.
After leaving Camp Apache, the command was greatly reduced by the
departure of three of the companies in as many directions; one of
these—Guy V. Henry’s—ran in on a party of hostile Apaches and exchanged
shots, killing one warrior whose body fell into our hands. The course of
those who were to accompany General Crook was nearly due west, along the
rim of what is called the Mogollon Mountain or plateau, a range of very
large size and great elevation, covered on its summits with a forest of
large pine-trees. It is a strange upheaval, a strange freak of nature, a
mountain canted up on one side; one rides along the edge and looks down
two and three thousand feet into what is termed the “Tonto Basin,” a
weird scene of grandeur and rugged beauty. The “Basin” is a basin only
in the sense that it is all lower than the ranges enclosing it—the
Mogollon, the Matitzal and the Sierra Ancha—but its whole triangular
area is so cut up by ravines, arroyos, small stream beds and hills of
very good height, that it may safely be pronounced one of the roughest
spots on the globe. It is plentifully watered by the affluents of the
Rio Verde and its East Fork, and by the Tonto and the Little Tonto;
since the subjugation of the Apaches it has produced abundantly of
peaches and strawberries, and potatoes have done wonderfully on the
summit of the Mogollon itself in the sheltered swales in the pine
forest. At the date of our march all this section of Arizona was still
unmapped, and we had to depend upon Apache guides to conduct us until
within sight of the Matitzal range, four or five days out from Camp
Apache.
The most singular thing to note about the Mogollon was the fact that the
streams which flowed upon its surface in almost every case made their
way to the north and east into Shevlon’s Fork, even where they had their
origin in springs almost upon the crest itself. One exception is the
spring named after General Crook (General’s Springs), which he
discovered, and near which he had such a narrow escape from being killed
by Apaches—that makes into the East Fork of the Verde. It is an
awe-inspiring sensation to be able to sit or stand upon the edge of such
a precipice and look down upon a broad expanse mantled with juicy
grasses, the paradise of live stock. There is no finer grazing section
anywhere than the Tonto Basin, and cattle, sheep, and horses all now do
well in it. It is from its ruggedness eminently suited for the purpose,
and in this respect differs from the Sulphur Springs valley which has
been occupied by cattlemen to the exclusion of the farmer, despite the
fact that all along its length one can find water by digging a few feet
beneath the surface. Such land as the Sulphur Springs valley would be
more profitably employed in the cultivation of the grape and cereals
than as a range for a few thousand head of cattle as is now the case.
The Tonto Basin was well supplied with deer and other wild animals, as
well as with mescal, Spanish bayonet, acorn-bearing oak, walnuts, and
other favorite foods of the Apaches, while the higher levels of the
Mogollon and the other ranges were at one and the same time pleasant
abiding-places during the heats of summer, and ramparts of protection
against the sudden incursion of an enemy. I have already spoken of the
wealth of flowers to be seen in these high places; I can only add that
throughout our march across the Mogollon range—some eleven days in
time—we saw spread out before us a carpet of colors which would rival
the best examples of the looms of Turkey or Persia.
Approaching the western edge of the plateau, we entered the country
occupied by the Tonto Apaches, the fiercest band of this wild and
apparently incorrigible family. We were riding along in a very lovely
stretch of pine forest one sunny afternoon, admiring the wealth of
timber which would one day be made tributary to the world’s commerce,
looking down upon the ever-varying colors of the wild flowers which
spangled the ground for leagues (because in these forests upon the
summits of all of Arizona’s great mountain ranges there is never any
underbrush, as is the case in countries where there is a greater amount
of humidity in the atmosphere), and ever and anon exchanging expressions
of pleasure and wonder at the vista spread out beneath us in the immense
Basin to the left and front, bounded by the lofty ridges of the Sierra
Ancha and the Matitzal; each one was talking pleasantly to his neighbor,
and as it happened the road we were pursuing—to call it road where human
being had never before passed—was so even and clear that we were riding
five and six abreast, General Crook, Lieutenant Ross, Captain Brent, Mr.
Thomas Moore, and myself a short distance in advance of the cavalry, and
the pack-train whose tinkling bells sounded lazily among the trees—and
were all delighted to be able to go into camp in such a romantic
spot—when “whiz! whiz!” sounded the arrows of a small party of Tontos
who had been watching our advance and determined to try the effects of a
brisk attack, not knowing that we were merely the advance of a larger
command.
The Apaches could not, in so dense a forest, see any distance ahead; but
did not hesitate to do the best they could to stampede us, and
consequently attacked boldly with arrows which made no noise to arouse
the suspicions of the white men in rear. The arrows were discharged with
such force that one of them entered a pine-tree as far as the feathers,
and another not quite so far, but still too far to allow of its
extraction. There was a trifle of excitement until we could get our
bearings and see just what was the matter, and in the mean time every
man had found his tree without waiting for any command. The Apaches—of
the Tonto band—did not number more than fifteen or twenty at most and
were already in retreat, as they saw the companies coming up at a brisk
trot, the commanders having noticed the confusion in the advance. Two of
the Apaches were cut off from their comrades, and as we supposed were
certain to fall into our hands as prisoners. This would have been
exactly what General Crook desired, because he could then have the means
of opening communication with the band in question, which had refused to
respond to any and all overtures for the cessation of hostilities.
There they stood; almost entirely concealed behind great boulders on the
very edge of the precipice, their bows drawn to a semi-circle, eyes
gleaming with a snaky black fire, long unkempt hair flowing down over
their shoulders, bodies almost completely naked, faces streaked with the
juice of the baked mescal and the blood of the deer or antelope—a most
repulsive picture and yet one in which there was not the slightest
suggestion of cowardice. They seemed to know their doom, but not to fear
it in the slightest degree. The tinkling of the pack-train bells showed
that all our command had arrived, and then the Apaches, realizing that
it was useless to delay further, fired their arrows more in bravado than
with the hope of inflicting injury, as our men were all well covered by
the trees, and then over the precipice they went, as we supposed, to
certain death and destruction. We were all so horrified at the sight,
that for a moment or more it did not occur to any one to look over the
crest, but when we did it was seen that the two savages were rapidly
following down the merest thread of a trail outlined in the vertical
face of the basalt, and jumping from rock to rock like mountain sheep.
General Crook drew bead, aimed quickly and fired; the arm of one of the
fugitives hung limp by his side, and the red stream gushing out showed
that he had been badly hurt; but he did not relax his speed a particle,
but kept up with his comrade in a headlong dash down the precipice, and
escaped into the scrub-oak on the lower flanks although the evening air
resounded with the noise of carbines reverberating from peak to peak. It
was so hard to believe that any human beings could escape down such a
terrible place, that every one was rather in expectation of seeing the
Apaches dashed to pieces, and for that reason no one could do his best
shooting.
At this time we had neither the detachment of scouts with which we had
left Tucson—they had been discharged at Camp Apache the moment that
General Crook received word that the authorities in Washington were
about to make the trial of sending commissioners to treat with the
Apaches—nor the small party of five Apaches who had conducted us out
from Camp Apache until we had reached the centre of the Mogollon; and,
as the country was unmapped and unknown, we had to depend upon ourselves
for reaching Camp Verde, which no one in the party had ever visited.
We had reached the eastern extremity of the plateau, and could see the
Bradshaw and other ranges to the west and south, and the sky-piercing
cone of the San Francisco to the northwest, but were afraid to trust
ourselves in the dark and forbidding mass of brakes and cañons of great
depth which filled the country immediately in our front. It was the
vicinity of the Fossil Creek cañon, some fifteen hundred to two thousand
feet deep, which we deemed it best to avoid, although had we known it we
might have crossed in safety by an excellent, although precipitous,
trail. Our only guide was Archie Macintosh, who belonged up in the
Hudson’s Bay Company’s territory, and was totally unacquainted with
Arizona, but a wonderful man in any country. He and General Crook and
Tom Moore conferred together, and concluded it was best to strike due
north and head all the cañons spoken of. This we did, but the result was
no improvement, as we got into the Clear Creek cañon, which is one of
the deepest and most beautiful to look upon in all the Southwest, but
one very hard upon all who must descend and ascend. When we descended we
found plenty of cold, clear water, and the banks of the stream lined
with the wild hop, which loaded the atmosphere with a heavy perfume of
lupulin.
Still heading due north, we struck the cañon of Beaver Creek, and were
compelled to march along its vertical walls of basalt, unable to reach
the water in the tiny, entrancing rivulet below, but at last ran in upon
the wagon-road from the Little Colorado to Camp Verde. We were getting
rapidly down from the summit of the Mogollon, and entering a country
exactly similar to that of the major portion of Southern Arizona. There
was the same vegetation of yucca, mescal, nopal, Spanish bayonet, giant
cactus, palo verde, hediondilla, mesquite, and sage-brush, laden with
the dust of summer, but there was also a considerable sprinkling of the
cedar, scrub-pine, scrub-oak, madroño, or mountain mahogany, and some
little mulberry.
Near this trail there are to be seen several archæological curiosities
worthy of a visit from the students of any part of the world. There is
the wonderful “Montezuma’s Well,” a lakelet of eighty or ninety feet in
depth, situated in the centre of a subsidence of rock, in which is a
cave once inhabited by a prehistoric people, while around the
circumference of the pool itself are the cliff-dwellings, of which so
many examples are to be encountered in the vicinity. One of these
cliff-dwellings, in excellent preservation when I last visited it, is
the six-story house of stone on the Beaver Creek, which issues from the
cave at Montezuma’s Wells, and flows into the Verde River, near the post
of the same name. We came upon the trails of scouting parties descending
the Mogollon, and learned soon after that they had been made by the
commands of Lieutenants Crawford and Morton, both of whom had been doing
excellent and arduous work against the hostile bands during the previous
summer.
I have already remarked that during this practice march all the members
of our command learned General Crook, but of far greater consequence
than that was the fact that he learned his officers and men. He was the
most untiring and indefatigable man I ever met; and, whether climbing up
or down the rugged face of some rocky cañon, facing sun or rain, never
appeared to be in the slightest degree distressed or annoyed. No matter
what happened in the camp, or on the march, he knew it; he was always
awake and on his feet the moment the cook of the pack-train was aroused
to prepare the morning meal, which was frequently as early as two
o’clock, and remained on his feet during the remainder of the day. I am
unable to explain exactly how he did it, but I can assure my readers
that Crook learned, while on that march, the name of every plant,
animal, and mineral passed near the trail, as well as the uses to which
the natives put them, each and all; likewise the habits of the birds,
reptiles, and animals, and the course and general character of all the
streams, little or big. The Indians evinced an awe for him from the
first moment of their meeting; they did not seem to understand how it
was that a white man could so quickly absorb all that they had to teach.
In the character of General Crook there appeared a very remarkable
tenderness for all those for whose care he in any manner became
responsible; this tenderness manifested itself in a way peculiar to
himself, and, as usual with him, was never made the occasion or excuse
for parade. He was at all times anxious to secure for his men while on
campaign all the necessaries of life, and to do that he knew from his
very wide experience that there was nothing to compare to a thoroughly
organized and well-equipped pack-train, which could follow a command by
night or by day, and into every locality, no matter how rocky, how
thickly wooded, or how hopelessly desert. He made the study of
pack-trains the great study of his life, and had always the satisfaction
of knowing that the trains in the department under his control were in
such admirable condition, that the moment trouble was threatened in
other sections, his pack-trains were selected as being best suited for
the most arduous work. He found the nucleus ready to hand in the system
of pack-transportation which the exigencies of the mining communities on
the Pacific coast had caused to be brought up from Chili, Peru, and the
western States of the Mexican Republic.
The fault with these trains was that they were run as money-making
concerns, and the men, as well as the animals belonging to them, were in
nearly every case employed as temporary makeshifts, and as soon as the
emergency had ended were discharged. The idea upon which Crook worked,
and which he successfully carried out, was to select trains under the
pack-masters who had enjoyed the widest experience, and were by nature
best adapted to the important duties they would be called upon to
perform. Those who were too much addicted to alcoholic stimulants, or
were for other cause unsuited, were as opportunity presented replaced by
better material. As with the men, so with the animals; the ill-assorted
collections of bony giants and undersized Sonora “rats,” whose withers
were always a mass of sores and whose hoofs were always broken and out
of sorts, were as speedily as possible sold off or transferred to other
uses, and in their places we saw trains of animals which in weight, size
and build, were of the type which experience had shown to be most
appropriate.
The “aparejos,” or pack-cushions, formerly issued by the quartermaster’s
department, had been burlesques, and killed more mules than they helped
in carrying their loads. Crook insisted upon having each mule provided
with an “aparejo” made especially for him, saying that it was just as
ridiculous to expect a mule to carry a burden with an ill-fitting
“aparejo” as it would be to expect a soldier to march comfortably with a
knapsack which did not fit squarely to his back and shoulders. Every
article used in these pack-trains had to be of the best materials, for
the very excellent reason that while out on scout, it was impossible to
replace anything broken, and a column might be embarrassed by the
failure of a train to arrive with ammunition or rations—therefore, on
the score of economy, it was better to have all the very best make in
the first place.
According to the nomenclature then in vogue in pack-trains, there were
to be placed upon each mule in due order of sequence a small cloth
extending from the withers to the loins, and called from the office it
was intended to perform, the “suadera,” or sweat-cloth. Then came,
according to the needs of the case, two or three saddle blankets, then
the “aparejo” itself—a large mattress, we may say, stuffed with hay or
straw—weighing between fifty-five and sixty-five pounds, and of such
dimensions as to receive and distribute to best advantage all over the
mule’s back the burden to be carried which was known by the Spanish term
of “cargo.” Over the “aparego,” the “corona,” and over that the
“suvrinhammer,” and then the load or “cargo” evenly divided so as to
balance on the two sides. In practice, the “corona” is not now used,
except to cover the “aparejo” after reaching camp, but there was a time
way back in Andalusia and in the Chilean Andes when the heart of the
“arriero” or muleteer, or “packer,” as he is called in the dreadfully
prosy language of the quartermaster’s department, took the greatest
delight in devising the pattern, quaint or horrible, but always gaudy
and in the gayest of colors, which should decorate and protect his
favorite mules. I do not know how true it is, but “Chileno John” and
others told me that the main service expected of the “corona” was to
enable the “arriero” who couldn’t read or write to tell just where his
own “aparejos” were, but of this I am unable to say anything positively.
The philological outrage which I have written phonetically as
“suvrin-hammer” would set devout Mohammedans crazy were they to know of
its existence; it is a base corruption of the old Hispano-Moresque term
“sobre-en-jalma,”—over the jalma,—the Arabic word for pack-saddle, which
has wandered far away, far from the date-palms of the Sahara, and the
rippling fountains of Granada, to gladden the hearts and break the
tongues of Cape Cod Yankees in the Gila Valley. In the same boat with it
is the Zuni word “Tinka” for the flux to be used in working silver; it
is a travelled word, and first saw the light in the gloomy mountain
ranges of far-off Thibet, where it was pronounced “Tincal” or “Atincal,”
and meant borax; thence, it made its way with caravans to and through
Arabia and Spain to the Spanish settlements in the land of the West.
Everything about a pack-train was Spanish or Arabic in origin, as I have
taken care to apprise my readers in another work, but it may be proper
to repeat here that the first, as it was the largest organized
pack-train in history, was that of fifteen thousand mules which Isabella
the Catholic called into the service of the Crown of Castile and Leon at
the time she established the city of Santa Fé in the “Vega,” and began
in good earnest the siege of Granada.
One could pick up not a little good Spanish in a pack-train in the times
of which I speak—twenty-one years ago—and there were many expressions in
general use which preserved all the flavor of other lands and other
ideas. Thus the train itself was generally known as the “atajo;” the
pack-master was called the “patron;” his principal assistant, whose
functions were to attend to everything pertaining to the loads, was
styled “cargador;” the cook was designated the “cencero,” from the fact
that he rode the bell-mare, usually a white animal, from the
superstition prevailing among Spanish packers that mules liked the color
white better than any other.
Packers were always careful not to let any stray colts in among the
mules, because they would set the mules crazy. This idea is not an
absurd one, as I can testify from my personal observation. The mules are
so anxious to play with young colts that they will do nothing else; and,
being stronger than the youngster, will often injure it by crowding up
against it. The old mules of a train know their business perfectly well.
They need no one to show them where their place is when the evening’s
“feed” is to be apportioned on the canvas, and in every way deport
themselves as sedate, prim, well-behaved members of society, from whom
all vestiges of the frivolities of youth have been eradicated. They
never wander far from the sound of the bell, and give no trouble to the
packers “on herd.”
But a far different story must be told of the inexperienced, skittish
young mule, fresh from the blue grass of Missouri or Nebraska. He is the
source of more profanity than he is worth, and were it not that the
Recording Angel understands the aggravation in the case, he would have
his hands full in entering all the “cuss words” to which the green
pack-mule has given rise. He will not mind the bell, will wander away
from his comrades on herd, and in sundry and divers ways demonstrates
the perversity of his nature. To contravene his maliciousness, it is
necessary to mark him in such a manner that every packer will see at a
glance that he is a new arrival, and thereupon set to work to drive him
back to his proper place in his own herd. The most certain, as it is the
most convenient way to effect this, is by neatly roaching his mane and
shaving his tail so that nothing is left but a pencil or tassel of hair
at the extreme end. He is now known as a “shave-tail,” and everybody can
recognize him at first sight. His sedate and well-trained comrade is
called a “bell-sharp.”
These terms, in frontier sarcasm, have been transferred to officers of
the army, who, in the parlance of the packers, are known as
“bell-sharps” and “shave-tails” respectively; the former being the old
captain or field-officer of many “fogies,” who knows too much to be
wasting his energies in needless excursions about the country, and the
latter, the youngster fresh from his studies on the Hudson, who fondly
imagines he knows it all, and is not above having people know that he
does. He is a “shave-tail”—all elegance of uniform, spick-span new, well
groomed, and without sense enough to come in for “feed” when the bell
rings. On the plains these two classes of very excellent gentlemen used
to be termed “coffee-coolers” and “goslings.”
There are few more animated sights than a pack-train at the moment of
feeding and grooming the mules. The care shown equals almost that given
to the average baby, and the dumb animals seem to respond to all
attentions. General Crook kept himself posted as to what was done to
every mule, and, as a result, had the satisfaction of seeing his trains
carrying a net average of three hundred and twenty pounds to the mule,
while a pamphlet issued by the Government had explicitly stated that the
highest average should not exceed one hundred and seventy-five. So that,
viewed in the most sordid light, the care which General Crook bestowed
upon his trains yielded wonderful results. Not a day passed that General
Crook did not pass from one to two hours in personal inspection of the
workings of his trains, and he has often since told me that he felt then
the great responsibility of having his transportation in the most
perfect order, because so much was to be demanded of it.
The packers themselves were an interesting study, drawn as they were
from the four corners of the earth, although the major portion, as was
to be expected, was of Spanish-American origin. Not an evening passed on
this trip across the mountains of the Mogollon Range that Crook did not
quietly take a seat close to the camp-fire of some of the packers, and
listen intently to their “reminiscences” of early mining days in
California or “up on the Frazer in British Columbia.” “Hank ’n Yank,”
Tom Moore, Jim O’Neill, Charlie Hopkins, Jack Long, Long Jim Cook, and
others, were “forty-niners,” and well able to discuss the most exciting
times known to the new Pactolus, with its accompanying trying days of
the vigilance committee and other episodes of equal interest. These were
“men” in the truest sense of the term; they had faced all perils,
endured all privations, and conquered in a manly way, which is the one
unfailing test of greatness in human nature. Some of the narratives were
mirth-provoking beyond my powers of repetition, and for General Crook
they formed an unfailing source of quiet amusement whenever a chance
offered to listen to them as told by the packers.
One of our men—I have forgotten to mention him sooner—was Johnnie Hart,
a very quiet and reserved person, with a great amount of force, to be
shown when needed. There was little of either the United States or
Mexico over which he had not wandered as a mining “prospector,” delving
for metals, precious or non-precious. Bad luck overtook him in Sonora
just about when that country was the scene of the liveliest kind of a
time between the French and the native Mexicans, and while the hostile
factions of the Gandaras and the Pesquieras were doing their best to
destroy what little the rapacity of the Gallic invaders left intact.
Johnnie was rudely awakened one night by a loud rapping at the door of
the hut in which he had taken shelter, and learned, to his great
surprise, that he was needed as a “voluntario,” which meant, as nearly
as he could understand, that he was to put on handcuffs and march with
the squad to division headquarters, and there be assigned to a company.
In vain he explained, or thought he was explaining, that he was an
American citizen and not subject to conscription. All the satisfaction
he got was to be told that every morning and evening he was to cheer
“for our noble Constitution and for General Pesquiera.”
After all, it was not such a very hard life. The marches were short, and
the country well filled with chickens, eggs, and goats. What more could
a soldier want? So, our friend did not complain, and went about his few
duties with cheerfulness, and was making rapid progress in the
shibboleth of “Long live our noble Constitution and General
Pesquiera,”—when, one evening, the first sergeant of his company hit him
a violent slap on the side of the head, and said: “You idiot, do you not
know enough to cheer for General Gandara?” And then it was that poor
Johnnie learned for the first time—he had been absent for several days
on a foraging expedition and had just returned—that the general
commanding had sold out the whole division to General Gandara the
previous day for a dollar and six bits a head.
This was the last straw. Johnnie Hart was willing to fight, and it made
very little difference to him on which side; but he could not put up
with such a sudden swinging of the pendulum, and as he expressed it,
“made up his mind to skip the hull outfit ’n punch the breeze fur
Maz’tlan.”
All the packers were sociable, and inclined to be friendly to every one.
The Spaniards, like “Chileno John,” José de Leon, Lauriano Gomez, and
others, were never more happy—work completed—than in explaining their
language to such Americans as evinced a desire to learn it. Gomez was
well posted in Spanish literature, especially poetry, and would often
recite for us with much animation and expression the verses of his
native tongue. He preferred the madrigals and love ditties of all kinds;
and was never more pleased than when he had organized a quartette and
had begun to awaken the echoes of the grand old cañons or forests with
the deliciously plaintive notes of “La Golondrina,” “Adios de Guaymas,”
or other songs in minor key, decidedly nasalized. I may say that at a
later date I have listened to a recitation by a packer named Hale, of
Espronceda’s lines—“The Bandit Chief”—in a very creditable style in the
balsam-breathing forests of the Sierra Madre.
The experiences of old Sam Wisser, in the more remote portions of Sonora
and Sinaloa, never failed to “bring down the house,” when related in his
homely Pennsylvania-German brogue. I will condense the story for the
benefit of those who may care to listen. Sam’s previous business had
been “prospecting” for mines, and, in pursuit of his calling, he had
travelled far and near, generally so intent upon the search for wealth
at a distance that he failed to secure any of that which often lay at
his feet. Equipped with the traditional pack-mule, pick, spade,
frying-pan, and blankets, he started out on his mission having as a
companion a man who did not pretend to be much of a “prospector,” but
was travelling for his health, or what was left of it. They had not
reached the Eldorado of their hopes; but were far down in Sinaloa when
the comrade died, and it became Sam’s sad duty to administer upon the
“estate.” The mule wasn’t worth much and was indeed almost as badly worn
out as its defunct master. The dead man’s clothing was buried with him,
and his revolver went a good ways in paying the expenses of interment.
There remained nothing but a very modest-looking valise nearly filled
with bottles, pillboxes, and pots of various medicinal preparations
warranted to cure all the ills that flesh is heir to. An ordinary man
would have thrown all this away as so much rubbish, but our friend was a
genius—he carefully examined each and every package, and learned exactly
what they were all worth according to the advertisements. Nothing
escaped his scrutiny, from the picture of the wretch “before taking,” to
that of the rubicund, aldermanic, smiling athlete “after taking six
bottles.” All the testimonials from shining lights of pulpit and bar
were read through from date to signature, and the result of it all was
that Sam came to the very logical conclusion that if he had in his
possession panaceas for all ailments, why should he not practise the
healing art? The next morning dawned upon a new Esculapius, and lighted
up the legend “Medico” tacked upon the frame of the door of Sam’s hovel.
It made no difference to the budding practitioner what the disorder was;
he had the appropriate remedy at hand, and was most liberal in the
amount of dosing to be given to his patients, which went far to increase
their confidence in a man who seemed so willing to give them the full
worth of their money. The only trouble was that Sam never gave the same
dose twice to the same patient; this was because he had no memorandum
books, and could not keep in mind all the circumstances of each case.
The man who had Croton-oil pills in the morning received a tablespoonful
of somebody’s “Siberian Solvent” at night, and there was such a crowd
that poor Sam was kept much more busy than he at first supposed he
should be, because the people were not disposed to let go by an
opportunity of ridding themselves of all infirmities, when the same
could be eradicated by a physician who accepted in payment anything from
a two-bit-piece to a string of chile colorado. Sam’s practice was not
confined to any one locality. It reached from the southern end of the
Mexican State of Sinaloa to the international boundary. Sam, in other
words, had become a travelling doctor—he kept travelling—but as his mule
had had a good rest and some feed in the beginning of its master’s new
career, the pursuers were never able to quite catch up with the Gringo
quack whose nostrums were depopulating the country.
From the valley of the Verde to the town of Prescott, according to the
steep roads and trails connecting them in 1871, was something over
fifty-five miles, the first part of the journey extremely rough and
precipitous, the latter half within sight of hills clad with graceful
pines and cooled by the breezes from the higher ranges. The country was
well grassed; there was a very pleasing absence of the cactus vegetation
to be seen farther to the south, adobe houses were replaced by
comfortable-looking dwellings and barns of plank or stone; the water in
the wells was cold and pure, and the lofty peaks, the San Francisco and
the Black Range and the Bradshaw, were for months in the year buried in
snow.
CHAPTER IX.
THE PICTURESQUE TOWN OF PRESCOTT—THE APACHES ACTIVE NEAR
PRESCOTT—“TOMMY” BYRNE AND THE HUALPAIS—THIEVING INDIAN AGENTS—THE
MOJAVES, PI-UTES AND AVA-SUPAIS—THE TRAVELS OF FATHERS ESCALANTE AND
GARCES—THE GODS OF THE HUALPAIS—THE LORING MASSACRE—HOW PHIL DWYER
DIED AND WAS BURIED—THE INDIAN MURDERERS AT CAMP DATE CREEK PLAN TO
KILL CROOK—MASON JUMPS THE RENEGADES AT THE “MUCHOS
CAÑONES”—DELT-CHE AND CHA-LIPUN GIVE TROUBLE—THE KILLING OF BOB
WHITNEY.
A few words should be spoken in praise of a community which of all those
on the southwestern frontier preserved the distinction of being
thoroughly American. Prescott was not merely picturesque in location and
dainty in appearance, with all its houses neatly painted and surrounded
with paling fences and supplied with windows after the American style—it
was a village transplanted bodily from the centre of the Delaware, the
Mohawk, or the Connecticut valley. Its inhabitants were Americans;
American men had brought American wives out with them from their old
homes in the far East, and these American wives had not forgotten the
lessons of elegance and thrift learned in childhood. Everything about
the houses recalled the scenes familiar to the dweller in the country
near Pittsburgh or other busy community. The houses were built in
American style; the doors were American doors and fastened with American
bolts and locks, opened by American knobs, and not closed by letting a
heavy cottonwood log fall against them.
The furniture was the neat cottage furniture with which all must be
familiar who have ever had the privilege of entering an American country
home; there were carpets, mirrors, rocking-chairs, tables, lamps, and
all other appurtenances, just as one might expect to find them in any
part of our country excepting Arizona and New Mexico. There were
American books, American newspapers, American magazines—the last
intelligently read. The language was American, and nothing else—the man
who hoped to acquire a correct knowledge of Castilian in Prescott would
surely be disappointed. Not even so much as a Spanish advertisement
could be found in the columns of _The Miner_, in which, week after week,
John H. Marion fought out the battle of “America for the Americans.” The
stores were American stores, selling nothing but American goods. In one
word, the transition from Tucson to Prescott was as sudden and as
radical as that between Madrid and Manchester.
In one respect only was there the slightest resemblance: in Prescott, as
in Tucson, the gambling saloons were never closed. Sunday or Monday,
night or morning, the “game” went, and the voice of the “dealer” was
heard in the land. Prescott was essentially a mining town deriving its
business from the wants of the various “claims” on the Agua Fria, the
Big Bug and Lynx Creek on the east, and others in the west as far as
Cerbat and Mineral Park. There was an air of comfort about it which
indicated intelligence and refinement rather than wealth which its
people did not as yet enjoy.
At this time, in obedience to orders received from the Secretary of War,
I was assigned to duty as aide-de-camp, and in that position had the
best possible opportunity for becoming acquainted with the country, the
Indians and white people in it, and to absorb a knowledge of all that
was to be done and that was done. General Crook’s first move was to
bring the department headquarters to Prescott; they had been for a long
while at Los Angeles, California, some five hundred miles across the
desert, to the west, and in the complete absence of railroad and
telegraph facilities they might just as well have been in Alaska. His
next duty was to perfect the knowledge already gained of the enormous
area placed under his charge, and this necessitated an incredible amount
of travelling on mule-back, in ambulance and buckboard, over roads, or
rather trails, which eclipsed any of the horrors portrayed by the pencil
of Doré. There was great danger in all this, but Crook travelled without
escort, except on very special occasions, as he did not wish to break
down his men by overwork.
The Apaches had been fully as active in the neighborhood of Prescott as
they had been in that of Tucson, and to this day such names as “The
Burnt Ranch”—a point four miles to the northwest of the town—commemorate
attacks and massacres by the aborigines. The mail-rider had several
times been “corraled” at the Point of Rocks, very close to the town, and
all of this portion of Arizona had groaned under the depredations not of
the Apaches alone but of the Navajos, Hualpais, and Apache-Mojaves, and
now and then of the Sevinches, a small band of thieves of Pi-Ute stock,
living in the Grand Cañon of the Colorado on the northern boundary of
the territory. I have still preserved as relics of those days copies of
_The Miner_ of Prescott and of _The Citizen_ of Tucson, in every column
of which are to be found references to Indian depredations.
There should still be in Washington a copy of the petition forwarded by
the inhabitants pleading for more adequate protection, in which are
given the names of over four hundred American citizens killed in
encounters with the savages within an extremely limited period—two or
three years—and the dates and localities of the occurrences.
Fort Whipple, the name of the military post within one mile of the town,
was a ramshackle, tumble-down palisade of unbarked pine logs hewn from
the adjacent slopes; it was supposed to “command” something, exactly
what, I do not remember, as it was so dilapidated that every time the
wind rose we were afraid that the palisade was doomed. The quarters for
both officers and men were also log houses, with the exception of one
single-room shanty on the apex of the hill nearest to town, which was
constructed of unseasoned, unpainted pine planks, and which served as
General Crook’s “Headquarters,” and, at night, as the place wherein he
stretched his limbs in slumber. He foresaw that the negotiations which
Mr. Vincent Collyer had been commissioned to carry on with the roving
bands of the Apaches would result in naught, because the distrust of the
savages for the white man, and all he said and did, had become so
confirmed that it would take more than one or two pleasant talks full of
glowing promises to eradicate it. Therefore, General Crook felt that it
would be prudent for him to keep himself in the best physical trim, to
be the better able to undergo the fatigues of the campaigns which were
sure to come, and come very soon.
The Apaches are not the only tribe in Arizona; there are several others,
which have in the past been a source of trouble to the settlers and of
expense to the authorities. One of these was the Hualpais, whose place
of abode was in the Grand Cañon, and who were both brave and crafty in
war; they were then at Camp Beale Springs in northwestern Arizona,
forty-five miles from the Colorado River, and under the care of an
officer long since dead—Captain Thomas Byrne, Twelfth Infantry, who was
a genius in his way. “Old Tommy,” as he was affectionately called by
every one in the service or out of it, had a “deludherin’ tongue,” which
he used freely in the cause of peace, knowing as he did that if this
small tribe of resolute people should ever return to the war-path, it
would take half a dozen regiments to dislodge them from the dizzy cliffs
of the “Music,” the “Sunup,” the “Wickyty-wizz,” and the “Diamond.”
So Tommy relied solely upon his native eloquence, seconded by the
scantiest allowance of rations from the subsistence stores of the camp.
He acquired an ascendancy over the minds of the chiefs and head
men—“Sharum,” “Levy-Levy,” “Sequonya,” “Enyacue-yusa,” “Ahcula-watta,”
“Colorow,” and “Hualpai Charlie”—which was little short of miraculous.
He was an old bachelor, but seemed to have a warm spot in his heart for
all the little naked and half-naked youngsters in and around his camp,
to whom he gave most liberally of the indigestible candy and sweet cakes
of the trader’s store.
The squaws were allowed all the hard-tack they could eat, but only on
the most solemn occasions could they gratify their taste for castor
oil—the condition of the medical supplies would not warrant the issue of
all they demanded. I have read that certain of the tribes of Africa use
castor oil in cooking, but I know of no other tribe of American Indians
so greedy for this medicine. But taste is at best something which cannot
be explained or accounted for; I recall that the trader at the San
Carlos Agency once made a bad investment of money in buying cheap
candies; they were nearly all hoarhound and peppermint, which the
Apaches would not buy or accept as a gift.
Tommy had succeeded in impressing upon the minds of his savage wards the
importance of letting him know the moment anything like an outbreak, no
matter how slight it might be, should be threatened. There was to be no
fighting, no firing of guns and pistols, and no seeking redress for
injuries excepting through the commanding officer, who was the court of
last appeal. One day “Hualpai Charlie” came running in like an antelope,
all out of breath, his eyes blazing with excitement: “Cappy Byrne—get
yo’ sogy—heap quick. White man over da Min’nul Pa’k, all bloke out.” An
investigation was made, and developed the cause of “Charlie’s”
apprehensions: the recently established mining town of “Mineral Park” in
the Cerbat range had “struck it rich,” and was celebrating the event in
appropriate style; bands of miners, more or less sober, were staggering
about in the one street, painting the town red. There was the usual
amount of shooting at themselves and at the few lamps in the two
saloons, and “Charlie,” who had not yet learned that one of the
inalienable rights of the Caucasian is to make a fool of himself now and
then, took fright, and ran in the whole fourteen miles to communicate
the first advices of the “outbreak” to his commanding officer and
friend.
Captain Byrne was most conscientious in all his dealings with these
wild, suspicious people, and gained their affection to an extent not to
be credited in these days, when there seems to be a recurrence to the
ante-bellum theory that the only good Indian—be it buck, squaw, or
puling babe—is the dead one. I have seen the old man coax sulking
warriors back into good humor, and persuade them that the best thing in
the world for them all was the good-will of the Great Father. “Come now,
Sharum,” I have heard him say, “shure phat is de matther wid yiz? Have
yiz ivir axed me for anythin’ that oi didn’t _promise_ it to yiz?”
Poor Tommy was cut off too soon in life to redeem all his pledges, and I
fear that there is still a balance of unpaid promises, comprehending
mouth organs, hoop skirts, velocipedes, anything that struck the fancy
of a chief and for which he made instant demand upon his military
patron. To carry matters forward a little, I wish to say that Tommy
remained the “frind,” as he pronounced the term, of the Hualpais to the
very last, and even after he had been superseded by the civil agent, or
acting agent, he remained at the post respected and regarded by all the
tribe as their brother and adviser.
Like a flash of lightning out of a clear sky, the Hualpais went on the
war-path, and fired into the agency buildings before leaving for their
old strongholds in the Cañon of the Colorado. No one knew why they had
so suddenly shown this treacherous nature, and the territorial press
(there was a telegraph line in operation by this time) was filled with
gloomy forebodings on account of the “well-known treachery of the Indian
character.” Tommy Byrne realized full well how much it would cost Uncle
Sam in blood and treasure if this outbreak were not stopped in its
incipiency, and without waiting for his spirited little horse to be
saddled—he was a superb rider—threw himself across its back and took out
into the hills after the fugitives. When the Hualpais saw the cloud of
dust coming out on the road, they blazed into it, but the kind
Providence, which is said to look out for the Irish under all
circumstances, took pity on the brave old man, and spared him even after
he had dashed up—his horse white with foam—to the knot of chiefs who
stood on the brow of a lava mesa.
At first the Hualpais were sullen, but soon they melted enough to tell
the story of their grievances, and especially the grievance they had
against Captain Byrne himself. The new agent had been robbing them in
the most bare-faced manner, and in their ignorance they imagined that it
was Tommy Byrne’s duty to regulate all affairs at his camp. They did not
want to hurt him, and would let him go safely back, but for them there
was nothing but the war-path and plenty of it.
Tommy said gently, “Come back with me, and I’ll see that you are
righted.” Back they went, following after the one, unarmed man. Straight
to the beef scales went the now thoroughly aroused officer, and in less
time than it takes to relate, he had detected the manner in which false
weights had been secured by a tampering with the poise. A two-year-old
Texas steer, which, horns and all, would not weigh eight hundred pounds,
would mark seventeen hundred, and other things in the same ratio. Nearly
the whole amount of the salt and flour supply had been sold to the
miners in the Cerbat range, and the poor Hualpais, who had been such
valiant and efficient allies, had been swindled out of everything but
their breath, and but a small part of that was left.
Tommy seized upon the agency and took charge; the Hualpais were
perfectly satisfied, but the agent left that night for California and
never came back. A great hubbub was raised about the matter, but nothing
came of it, and a bitter war was averted by the prompt, decisive action
of a plain, unlettered officer, who had no ideas about managing savages
beyond treating them with kindness and justice.
General Crook not only saw to the condition of the Hualpais, but of
their relatives, the Mojaves, on the river, and kept them both in good
temper towards the whites; not only this, but more than this—he sent up
among the Pi-Utes of Nevada and Southern Utah and explained the
situation to them and secured the promise of a contingent of one hundred
of their warriors for service against the Apaches, should the latter
decline to listen to the propositions of the commissioner sent to treat
with them. When hostilities did break out, the Pi-Utes sent down the
promised auxiliaries, under their chief, “Captain Tom,” and, like the
Hualpais, they rendered faithful service.
What has become of the Pi-Utes I cannot say, but of the Hualpais I am
sorry to have to relate that the moment hostilities ended, the Great
Father began to ignore and neglect them, until finally their condition
became so deplorable that certain fashionable ladies of New York, who
were doing a great deal of good unknown to the world at large, sent
money to General Crook to be used in keeping them from starving to
death.
Liquor is freely given to the women, who have become fearfully
demoralized, and I can assert of my own knowledge that five years since
several photographers made large sales along the Atlantic and Pacific
railroad of the pictures of nude women of this once dreaded band, which
had committed no other offence than that of trusting in the faith of the
Government of the United States.
In the desolate, romantic country of the Hualpais and their brothers,
the Ava-Supais, amid the Cyclopean monoliths which line the cañons of
Cataract Creek, the Little Colorado, the Grand Cañon or the Diamond, one
may sit and listen, as I have often listened, to the simple tales and
myths of a wild, untutored race. There are stories to be heard of the
prowess of “Mustamho” and “Matyavela,” of “Pathrax-sapa” and
“Pathrax-carrawee,” of the goddess “Cuathenya,” and a multiplicity of
deities—animal and human—which have served to beguile the time after the
day’s march had ended and night was at hand. All the elements of nature
are actual, visible entities for these simple children—the stars are
possessed of the same powers as man, all the chief animals have the
faculty of speech, and the coyote is the one who is man’s good friend
and has brought him the great boon of fire. The gods of the Hualpais are
different in name though not in functions or peculiarities from those of
the Apaches and Navajos, but are almost identical with those of the
Mojaves.
As with the Apaches, so with the Hualpais, the “medicine men” wield an
unknown and an immeasurable influence, and claim power over the forces
of nature, which is from time to time renewed by rubbing the body
against certain sacred stones not far from Beale Springs. The Hualpai
medicine men also indulge in a sacred intoxication by breaking up the
leaves, twigs, and root of the stramonium or “jimson weed,” and making a
beverage which, when drunk, induces an exhilaration, in the course of
which the drunkard utters prophecies.
While the colonies along the Atlantic coast were formulating their
grievances against the English crown and preparing to throw off all
allegiance to the throne of Great Britain, two priests of the Roman
Catholic Church were engaged in exploring these desolate wilds, and in
making an effort to win the Hualpais and their brothers to Christianity.
Father Escalante started out from Santa Fé, New Mexico, in the year
1776, and travelling northwest through Utah finally reached the Great
Salt Lake, which he designated as the Lake of the Timpanagos. This name
is perfectly intelligible to those who happen to know of the existence
down to the present day of the band of Utes called the Timpanoags, who
inhabit the cañons close to the present city of Salt Lake. Travelling on
foot southward, Escalante passed down through Utah and crossed the Grand
Cañon of the Colorado, either at what is now known as Lee’s Ferry, or
the mouth of the Kanab Wash, or the mouth of the Diamond; thence east
through the Moqui and the Zuni villages back to Santa Fé. Escalante
expected to be joined near the Grand Cañon by Father Garces, who had
travelled from the mission of San Gabriel, near Los Angeles, and crossed
the Colorado in the country inhabited by the Mojaves; but, although each
performed the part assigned to him, the proposed meeting did not take
place.
It is impossible to avoid reference to these matters, which will obtrude
themselves upon the mind of any one travelling through Arizona. There is
an ever-present suggestion of the past and unknown, that has a
fascination all its own for those who yield to it. Thus, at Bowers’
Ranch on the Agua Fria, eighteen miles northeast from Prescott, one sits
down to his supper in a room which once formed part of a prehistoric
dwelling; and the same thing may be said of Wales Arnold’s, over near
Montezuma’s Wells, where many of the stones used in the masonry came
from the pueblo ruins close at hand.
Having visited the northern line of his department, General Crook gave
all his attention to the question of supplies; everything consumed in
the department, at that date, had to be freighted at great expense from
San Francisco, first by steamship around Cape San Lucas to the mouth of
the Rio Colorado, then up the river in small steamers as far as
Ehrenburg and Fort Mojave, and the remainder of the distance—two hundred
miles—by heavy teams. To a very considerable extent, these supplies were
distributed from post to post by pack-trains, a proceeding which evoked
the liveliest remonstrances from the contractors interested in the
business of hauling freight, but their complaints availed them nothing.
Crook foresaw the demands that the near future would surely make upon
his pack-trains, which he could by no surer method keep in the highest
discipline and efficiency than by having them constantly on the move
from post to post carrying supplies. The mules became hardened, the
packers made more skilful in the use of all the “hitches”—the “Diamond”
and others—constituting the mysteries of their calling, and the
detachments sent along as escorts were constantly learning something new
about the country as well as how to care for themselves and animals.
Sixty-two miles from Prescott to the southwest lay the sickly and dismal
post of Camp Date creek, on the creek of the same name. Here were
congregated about one thousand of the band known as the Apache-Yumas,
with a sprinkling of Apache-Mojaves, tribes allied to the Mojaves on the
Colorado, and to the Hualpais, but differing from them in disposition,
as the Date Creek people were not all anxious for peace, but would now
and then send small parties of their young men to raid and steal from
the puny settlements like Wickenburg. The culmination of the series was
the “Loring” or “Wickenburg” massacre, so-called from the talented young
scientist, Loring, a member of the Wheeler surveying expedition, who,
with his companions—a stage-load—was brutally murdered not far from
Wickenburg; of the party only two escaped, one a woman named Shephard,
and the other a man named Kruger, both badly wounded.
General Crook was soon satisfied that this terrible outrage had been
committed by a portion of the irreconcilable element at the Date Creek
Agency, but how to single them out as individuals and inflict the
punishment their crime deserved, without entailing disaster upon
well-meaning men, women, and babies who had not been implicated, was for
a long while a most serious problem. There were many of the tribe
satisfied to cultivate peaceful relations with the whites, but none so
favorably disposed as to impart the smallest particle of information in
regard to the murder, as it was no part of their purpose to surrender
any of their relatives for punishment.
It would take too much time to narrate in detail the “patient search and
vigil long” attending the ferreting out of the individuals concerned in
the Loring massacre; it was a matter of days and weeks and months, but
Crook knew that he had the right clew, and, although many times baffled,
he returned to the scent with renewed energy and determination. The
culprits, who included in their ranks, or at least among their
sympathizers, some very influential men of the tribe, had also begun, on
their side, to suspect that all was not right; one of them, I
understood, escaped to Southern California, and there found work in some
of the Mexican settlements, which he could do readily as he spoke
Spanish fluently, and once having donned the raiment of civilization,
there would be nothing whatever to distinguish him from the average of
people about him.
Word reached General Crook, through the Hualpais, that when next he
visited Camp Date Creek, he was to be murdered with all those who might
accompany him. He was warned to be on the look-out, and told that the
plan of the conspirators was this: They would appear in front of the
house in which he should take up his quarters, and say that they had
come for a talk upon some tribal matter of importance; when the General
made his appearance, the Indians were to sit down in a semicircle in
front of the door, each with his carbine hidden under his blanket, or
carelessly exposed on his lap. The conversation was to be decidedly
harmonious, and there was to be nothing said that was not perfectly
agreeable to the whites. After the “talk” had progressed a few minutes,
the leading conspirator would remark that they would all be the better
for a little smoke, and as soon as the tobacco was handed out to them,
the chief conspirator was to take some and begin rolling a cigarette.
(The Indians of the southwest do not ordinarily use the pipe.) When the
first puff was taken from the cigarette, the man next to the chief was
to suddenly level his weapon and kill General Crook, the others at the
very same moment taking the lives of the whites closest to them. The
whole tribe would then be made to break away from the reserve and take
to the inaccessible cliffs and cañons at the head of the Santa Maria
fork of the Bill Williams. The plan would have succeeded perfectly, had
it not been for the warning received, and also for the fact that the
expected visit had to be made much sooner than was anticipated, and thus
prevented all the gang from getting together.
Captain Philip Dwyer, Fifth Cavalry, the officer in command of the camp,
suddenly died, and this took me down post-haste to assume command. Dwyer
was a very brave, handsome, and intelligent soldier, much beloved by all
his comrades. He was the only officer left at Date Creek—all the others
and most of the garrison were absent on detached service of one kind and
another—and there was no one to look after the dead man but Mr. Wilbur
Hugus, the post trader, and myself. The surroundings were most dismal
and squalid; all the furniture in the room in which the corpse lay was
two or three plain wooden chairs, the bed occupied as described, and a
pine table upon which stood a candlestick, with the candle melted and
burned in the socket. Dwyer had been “ailing” for several days, but no
one could tell exactly what was the matter with him; and, of course, no
one suspected that one so strong and athletic could be in danger of
death.
One of the enlisted men of his company, a bright young trumpeter, was
sitting up with him, and about the hour of midnight, Dwyer became a
trifle uneasy and asked: “Can you sing that new song, ‘Put me under the
daisies’?”
“Oh, yes, Captain,” replied the trumpeter; “I have often sung it, and
will gladly sing it now.”
So he began to sing, very sweetly, the ditty, which seemed to calm the
nervousness of his superior officer. But the candle had burned down in
the socket, and when the young soldier went to replace it, he could find
neither candle nor match, and he saw in the flickering light and shadow
that the face of the Captain was strangely set, and of a ghastly
purplish hue. The trumpeter ran swiftly to the nearest house to get
another light, and to call for help, but upon returning found the
Captain dead.
Many strange sights have I seen, but none that produced a stranger or
more pathetic appeal to my emotions than the funeral of Phil Dwyer; we
got together just as good an apology for a coffin as that timberless
country would furnish, and then wrapped our dead friend in his
regimentals, and all hands were then ready to start for the cemetery.
At the head marched Mr. Hugus, Doctor Williams (the Indian agent),
myself, and Lieutenant Hay, of the Twenty-third Infantry, who arrived at
the post early in the morning; then came the troop of cavalry,
dismounted, and all the civilians living in and around the camp; and
lastly every Indian—man, woman, or child—able to walk or toddle, for all
of them, young or old, good or bad, loved Phil Dwyer. The soldiers and
civilians formed in one line at the head of the grave, and the
Apache-Yumas in two long lines at right angles to them, and on each
side. The few short, expressive, and tender sentences of the burial
service were read, then the bugles sang taps, and three volleys were
fired across the hills, the clods rattled down on the breast of the
dead, and the ceremony was over.
As soon as General Crook learned of the death of Dwyer, he hurried to
Date Creek, now left without any officer of its proper garrison, and
informed the Indians that he intended having a talk with them on the
morrow, at a place designated by himself. The conspirators thought that
their scheme could be carried out without trouble, especially since they
saw no signs of suspicion on the part of the whites. General Crook came
to the place appointed, without any escort of troops, but carelessly
strolling forward were a dozen or more of the packers, who had been
engaged in all kinds of mêlées since the days of early California
mining. Each of these was armed to the teeth, and every revolver was on
the full cock, and every knife ready for instant use. The talk was very
agreeable, and not an unpleasant word had been uttered on either side,
when all of a sudden the Indian in the centre asked for a little
tobacco, and, when it was handed to him, began rolling a cigarette;
before the first puff of smoke had rolled away from his lips one of the
warriors alongside of him levelled his carbine full at General Crook,
and fired. Lieutenant Ross, aide-de-camp to the General, was waiting for
the movement, and struck the arm of the murderer so that the bullet was
deflected upwards, and the life of the General was saved. The scrimmage
became a perfect Kilkenny fight in another second or two, and every man
made for the man nearest to him, the Indian who had given the signal
being grasped in the vise-like grip of Hank Hewitt, with whom he
struggled vainly. Hewitt was a man of great power and able to master
most men other than professional athletes or prize-fighters; the Indian
was not going to submit so long as life lasted, and struggled, bit, and
kicked to free himself, but all in vain, as Hank had caught him from the
back of the head, and the red man was at a total disadvantage. Hewitt
started to drag his captive to the guard-house, but changed his mind,
and seizing the Apache-Mojave by both ears pulled his head down
violently against the rocks, and either broke his skull or brought on
concussion of the brain, as the Indian died that night in the
guard-house.
Others of the party were killed and wounded, and still others, with the
ferocity of tigers, fought their way out through our feeble lines, and
made their way to the point of rendezvous at the head of the Santa
Maria. Word was at once sent to them by members of their own tribe that
they must come in and surrender at once, or else the whole party must
expect to be punished for what was originally the crime of a few. No
answer was received, and their punishment was arranged for; they were
led to suppose that the advance was to be made from Date Creek, but,
after letting them alone for several weeks—just long enough to allay to
some extent their suspicions—Crook pushed out a column of the Fifth
Cavalry under command of Colonel Julius W. Mason, and by forced marches
under the guidance of a strong detachment of Hualpai scouts, the
encampment of the hostiles was located just where the Hualpais said it
would be, at the “Muchos Cañones,” a point where five cañons united to
form the Santa Maria; and there the troops and the scouts attacked
suddenly and with spirit, and in less than no time everything was in our
hands, and the enemy had to record a loss of more than forty. It was a
terrible blow, struck at the beginning of winter and upon a band which
had causelessly slaughtered a stageful of our best people, not as an act
of war, which would have been excusable, but as an act of highway
robbery, by sneaking off the reservation where the Government was
allowing them rations and clothing in quantity sufficient to eke out
their own supplies of wild food. This action of the “Muchos Cañones” had
a very beneficial effect upon the campaign which began against the
Apaches in the Tonto Basin a few weeks later. It humbled the pride of
those of the Apache-Yumas who had never been in earnest in their
professions of peace, and strengthened the hands of the chiefs like
“Jam-aspi,” “Ochacama,” “Hoch-a-chi-waca,” “Quaca-thew-ya,” and “Tom,”
who were sincerely anxious to accept the new condition of things. There
was a third element in this tribe, led by a chief of ability,
“Chimahuevi-Sal,” which did not want to fight, if fighting could be
avoided, but did not care much for the new white neighbors whom they saw
crowding in upon them. “Chimahuevi-Sal” made his escape from the
reservation with about one hundred and fifty of his followers, intending
to go down on the south side of the Mexican line and find an asylum
among the Cocopahs. They were pursued and brought back without bloodshed
by Captain James Burns, a brave and humane officer of the Fifth Cavalry,
who died sixteen years ago worn out by the hard work demanded in
Arizona.
It does not seem just, at first sight, to deny to Indians the right to
domicile themselves in another country if they so desire, and if a
peaceful life can be assured them; but, in the end, it will be found
that constant visiting will spring up between the people living in the
old home and the new, and all sorts of complications are sure to result.
The Apache-Mojaves and the Apache-Tontos, living in the Tonto Basin,
misapprehending the reasons for the cessation of scouting against them,
had become emboldened to make a series of annoying and destructive
attacks upon the ranchos in the Agua Fria Valley, upon those near
Wickenburg, and those near what is now the prosperous town of Phœnix, in
the Salt River Valley. Their chiefs “Delt-che” (The Red Ant) and
“Cha-lipun” (The Buckskin-colored Hat) were brave, bold, able, and
enterprising, and rightfully regarded as among the worst enemies the
white men ever had. The owners of two of the ranchos attacked were very
peculiar persons. One of them, Townsend, of the Dripping Springs in the
Middle Agua Fria, was supposed to be a half-breed Cherokee from the
Indian Nation; he certainly had all the looks—the snapping black eyes,
the coal-black, long, lank hair, and the swarthy skin—of the
full-blooded aborigine, with all the cunning, shrewdness, contempt for
privation and danger, and ability to read “sign,” that distinguish the
red men. It was his wont at the appearance of the new moon, when raiding
parties of Apaches might be expected, to leave his house, make a wide
circuit in the mountains and return, hoping to be able to “cut” the
trail of some prowlers; if he did, he would carefully secrete himself in
the rocks on the high hills overlooking his home, and wait until the
Apaches would make some movement to let him discover where they were and
what they intended doing.
He was a dead shot, cunning as a snake, wily and brave, and modest at
the same time, and the general belief was that he had sent twenty-seven
Apaches to the Happy Hunting Grounds. Townsend and Boggs, his next-door
neighbor who lived a mile or two from him, had made up their minds that
they would “farm” in the fertile bottom lands of the Agua Fria; the
Apaches had made up their minds that they should not; hence it goes
without saying that neither Townsend nor Boggs, nor any of their hired
men, ever felt really lonesome in the seclusion of their lovely valley.
The sequel to this story is the sequel to all such stories about early
Arizona: the Apaches “got him” at last, and my friend Townsend has long
been sleeping his last sleep under the shadow of a huge bowlder within a
hundred yards of his home at the “Dripping Springs.”
The antipodes of Townsend’s rancho, as its proprietor was the antipodes
of Townsend himself, was the “station” of Darrel Duppa at the “sink” of
the same Agua Fria, some fifty miles below. Darrel Duppa was one of the
queerest specimens of humanity, as his ranch was one of the queerest
examples to be found in Arizona, and I might add in New Mexico and
Sonora as well. There was nothing superfluous about Duppa in the way of
flesh, neither was there anything about the “station” that could be
regarded as superfluous, either in furniture or ornament. Duppa was
credited with being the wild, harum-scarum son of an English family of
respectability, his father having occupied a position in the diplomatic
or consular service of Great Britain, and the son having been born in
Marseilles. Rumor had it that Duppa spoke several languages—French,
Spanish, Italian, German—that he understood the classics, and that, when
sober, he used faultless English. I can certify to his employment of
excellent French and Spanish, and what had to my ears the sound of
pretty good Italian, and I know too that he was hospitable to a fault,
and not afraid of man or devil. Three bullet wounds, received in three
different fights with the Apaches, attested his grit, although they
might not be accepted as equally conclusive evidence of good judgment.
The site of his “location” was in the midst of the most uncompromising
piece of desert in a region which boasts of possessing more desert land
than any other territory in the Union. The surrounding hills and mesas
yielded a perennial crop of cactus, and little of anything else.
The dwelling itself was nothing but a “ramada,” a term which has already
been defined as a roof of branches; the walls were of rough, unplastered
wattle work, of the thorny branches of the ironwood, no thicker than a
man’s finger, which were lashed by thongs of raw-hide to horizontal
slats of cottonwood; the floor of the bare earth, of course—that almost
went without saying in those days—and the furniture rather too simple
and meagre even for Carthusians. As I recall the place to mind, there
appears the long, unpainted table of pine, which served for meals or
gambling, or the rare occasions when any one took into his head the
notion to write a letter. This room constituted the ranch in its
entirety. Along the sides were scattered piles of blankets, which about
midnight were spread out as couches for tired laborers or travellers. At
one extremity, a meagre array of Dutch ovens, flat-irons, and
frying-pans revealed the “kitchen,” presided over by a hirsute,
husky-voiced gnome, half Vulcan, half Centaur, who, immersed for most of
the day in the mysteries of the larder, at stated intervals broke the
stillness with the hoarse command: “Hash pile! Come a’ runnin’!” There
is hardly any use to describe the rifles, pistols, belts of ammunition,
saddles, spurs, and whips, which lined the walls, and covered the joists
and cross-beams; they were just as much part and parcel of the
establishment as the dogs and ponies were. To keep out the sand-laden
wind, which blew fiercely down from the north when it wasn’t blowing
down with equal fierceness from the south, or the west, or the east,
strips of canvas or gunny-sacking were tacked on the inner side of the
cactus branches.
My first visit to this Elysium was made about midnight, and I remember
that the meal served up was unique if not absolutely paralyzing on the
score of originality. There was a great plenty of Mexican figs in
raw-hide sacks, fairly good tea, which had the one great merit of
hotness, and lots and lots of whiskey; but there was no bread, as the
supply of flour had run short, and, on account of the appearance of
Apaches during the past few days, it had not been considered wise to
send a party over to Phœnix for a replenishment. A wounded Mexican,
lying down in one corner, was proof that the story was well founded. All
the light in the ranch was afforded by a single stable lantern, by the
flickering flames from the cook’s fire, and the glinting stars. In our
saddle-bags we had several slices of bacon and some biscuits, so we did
not fare half so badly as we might have done. What caused me most wonder
was why Duppa had ever concluded to live in such a forlorn spot; the
best answer I could get to my queries was that the Apaches had attacked
him at the moment he was approaching the banks of the Agua Fria at this
point, and after he had repulsed them he thought he would stay there
merely to let them know he could do it. This explanation was
satisfactory to every one else, and I had to accept it.
We should, before going farther, cast a retrospective glance upon the
southern part of the territory, where the Apaches were doing some
energetic work in be-devilling the settlers; there were raids upon
Montgomery’s at “Tres Alamos,” the “Cienaga,” and other places not very
remote from Tucson, and the Chiricahuas apparently had come up from
Sonora bent upon a mission of destruction. They paid particular
attention to the country about Fort Bowie and the San Simon, and had
several brushes with Captain Gerald Russell’s Troop “K” of the Third
Cavalry. While watering his horses in the narrow, high, rock-walled
defile in the Dragoon Mountains, known on the frontier at that time as
“Cocheis’s Stronghold,” Russell was unexpectedly assailed by Cocheis and
his band, the first intimation of the presence of the Chiricahuas being
the firing of the shot, which, striking the guide, Bob Whitney, in the
head, splashed his brains out upon Russell’s face. Poor Bob Whitney was
an unusually handsome fellow, of great courage and extended service
against the Apaches; he had been wounded scores of times, I came near
saying, but to be exact, he had been wounded at least half a dozen times
by both bullets and arrows. He and Maria Jilda Grijalva, an escaped
Mexican prisoner, who knew every foot of the southern Apache country,
had been guides for the commands of Winters and Russell, and had seen
about as much hard work as men care to see in a whole generation.
So far as the army was concerned, the most distressing of all these
skirmishes and ambuscades was that in which Lieutenant Reid T. Steward
lost his life in company with Corporal Black, of his regiment, the Fifth
Cavalry. They were ambushed near the spring in the Davidson Cañon,
twenty-five or thirty miles from Tucson, and both were killed at the
same moment.
CHAPTER X.
CROOK BEGINS HIS CAMPAIGN—THE WINTER MARCH ACROSS THE MOGOLLON
PLATEAU—THE GREAT PINE BELT—BOBBY-DOKLINNY, THE MEDICINE MAN—COOLEY
AND HIS APACHE WIFE—THE APACHE CHIEF ESQUINOSQUIZN—THE APACHE GUIDE
NANAAJE—THE FEAST OF DEAD-MULE MEAT—THE FIGHT IN THE CAVE IN THE
SALT RIVER CAÑON—THE DEATH-CHANT—THE CHARGE—THE DYING MEDICINE
MAN—THE SCENE IN THE CAVE.
So long as the representative of the Government, Mr. Vincent Collyer,
remained in Arizona; so long as there flickered the feeblest ray of
light and hope that hostilities might be averted and peace secured,
Crook persisted in keeping his troops ready to defend the exposed
ranchos and settlements as fully as possible, but no offensive movements
were permitted, lest the Apaches should have reason to believe that our
people meant treachery, and were cloaking military operations under the
mask of peace negotiations. These conferences, or attempts at
conferences, came to naught, and at last, about the date of the attack
made upon General Crook and his party at Camp Date Creek, orders were
received to drive the Apaches upon the reservations assigned them and to
keep them there.
The time fixed by General Crook for the beginning of his campaign
against the Apaches had been the 15th of November, 1872—a date which
would have marked the beginning of winter and made the retreat of the
different bands to the higher elevations of the mountain ranges a source
of great discomfort, not to say of suffering to them, as their almost
total want of clothing would cause them to feel the fullest effects of
the colder temperature, and also there would be increased danger of
detection by the troops, to whose eyes, or those of the Indian scouts
accompanying them, all smokes from camp-fires would be visible.
The incident just related as happening at Camp Date Creek precipitated
matters somewhat, but not to a very appreciable extent, since Mason’s
attack upon the bands of Apache-Mojaves and Apache-Yumas in the “Muchos
Cañones” did not take place until the last days of the month of
September, and those bands having but slender relations with the other
portions of the Apache family over in the Tonto Basin, the latter would
not be too much on their guard. Crook started out from his headquarters
at Fort Whipple on the day set, and marched as fast as his animals would
carry him by way of Camp Verde and the Colorado Chiquito to Camp Apache,
a distance, as the roads and trails then measured, of about two hundred
and fifty miles. Upon the summit of the Colorado plateau, which in
places attains an elevation of more than ten thousand feet, the cold was
intense, and we found every spring and creek frozen solid, thus making
the task of watering our stock one of great difficulty.
Our line of march led through the immense pine forests, and to the right
of the lofty snow-mantled peak of San Francisco, one of the most
beautiful mountains in America. It seems to have been, at some period
not very remote, a focus of volcanic disturbance, pouring out lava in
inconceivable quantities, covering the earth for one hundred miles
square, and to a depth in places of five hundred feet. This depth can be
ascertained by any geologist who will take the trail out from the
station of Ash Fork, on the present Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, and
go north-northeast, to the Cataract Cañon, to the village of the
Ava-Supais. In beginning the descent towards the Cataract Cañon, at the
“Black Tanks,” the enormous depth of the “flow” can be seen at a glance.
What was the “forest primeval” at that time on the Mogollon has since
been raided by the rapacious forces of commerce, and at one
point—Flagstaff, favorably located in the timber belt—has since been
established the great Ayers-Riordan saw and planing mill, equipped with
every modern appliance for the destruction of the old giants whose heads
had nodded in the breezes of centuries. Man’s inhumanity to man is an
awful thing. His inhumanity to God’s beautiful trees is scarcely
inferior to it. Trees are nearly human; they used to console man with
their oracles, and I must confess my regret that the Christian
dispensation has so changed the opinions of the world that the soughing
of the evening wind through their branches is no longer a message of
hope or a solace to sorrow. Reflection tells me that without the use of
this great belt of timber the construction of the railroad from El Paso
to the City of Mexico would have been attended with increased expense
and enhanced difficulty—perhaps postponed for a generation—but, for all
that, I cannot repress a sentiment of regret that the demands of
civilization have caused the denudation of so many square miles of our
forests in all parts of the timbered West.
Our camp was aroused every morning at two o’clock, and we were out on
the road by four, making long marches and not halting until late in the
afternoon. Camp Apache was reached by the time expected, and the work of
getting together a force of scouts begun at once. One of the first young
men to respond to the call for scouts to enlist in the work of ferreting
out and subjugating the hostiles was “Na-kay-do-klunni,” called
afterwards by the soldiers “Bobby Doklinny.” I have still in my
possession, among other papers, the scrap of manuscript upon which is
traced in lead pencil the name of this Apache, whom I enrolled among the
very first at Camp Apache on this occasion. The work of enlistment was
afterwards turned over to Lieutenant Alexander O. Brodie, of the First
Cavalry, as I was obliged to leave with General Crook for the south.
“Bobby,” to adopt the soldiers’ name, became in his maturity a great
“medicine man” among his people, and began a dance in which he used to
raise the spirits of his ancestors. Of course, he scared the people of
the United States out of their senses, and instead of offering him a
bonus for all the ghosts he could bring back to life, the troops were
hurried hither and thither, and there was an “outbreak,” as is always
bound to be the case under such circumstances. “Bobby Doklinny” was
killed, and with him a number of his tribe, while on our side there was
grief for the death of brave officers and gallant men.
One of the white men met at Camp Apache was Corydon E. Cooley, who had
married a woman of the Sierra Blanca band, and had acquired a very
decided influence over them. Cooley’s efforts were consistently in the
direction of bringing about a better understanding between the two
races, and so far as “Pedro’s” and “Miguel’s” people were concerned, his
exertions bore good fruit. But it is of Mrs. Cooley I wish to speak at
this moment. She was, and I hope still is, because I trust that she is
still alive, a woman of extraordinary character, anxious to advance and
to have her children receive all the benefits of education. She tried
hard to learn, and was ever on the alert to imitate the housekeeping of
the few ladies who followed their husbands down to Camp Apache, all of
whom took a great and womanly interest in the advancement of their
swarthy sister. On my way back from the snake dance of the Moquis I once
dined at Cooley’s ranch in company with Mr. Peter Moran, the artist, and
can assure my readers that the little home we entered was as clean as
homes generally are, and that the dinner served was as good as any to be
obtained in Delmonico’s.
For those readers who care to learn of such things I insert a brief
description of “Cooley’s Ranch” as we found it in that year, 1881, of
course many years after the Apaches had been subdued. The ranch was on
the summit of the Mogollon plateau, at its eastern extremity, near the
head of Show Low Creek, one of the affluents of the Shevlons Fork of the
Colorado Chiquito. The contour of the plateau is here a charming series
of gentle hills and dales, the hills carpeted with juicy black “grama,”
and spangled with flowers growing at the feet of graceful pines and
majestic oaks; and the dales, watered by babbling brooks flowing through
fields of ripening corn and potatoes. In the centre of a small but
exquisitely beautiful park, studded with pine trees without undergrowth,
stood the frame house and the outbuildings of the ranch we were seeking.
Cooley was well provided with every creature comfort to be looked for in
the most prosperous farming community in the older States. His fields
and garden patches were yielding bountifully of corn, pumpkins,
cucumbers, wheat, peas, beans, cabbage, potatoes, barley, oats,
strawberries, gooseberries, horse-radish, and musk-melons. He had set
out an orchard of apple, crab, dwarf pear, peach, apricot, quince, plum,
and cherry trees, and could supply any reasonable demand for butter,
cream, milk, eggs, or fresh meat from his poultry yard or herd of cows
and drove of sheep. There was an ice-house well filled, two deep wells,
and several springs of pure water. The house was comfortably furnished,
lumber being plenty and at hand from the saw-mill running on the
property.
Four decidedly pretty gipsy-like little girls assisted their mother in
gracefully doing the honors to the strangers, and conducted us to a
table upon which smoked a perfectly cooked meal of Irish stew of mutton,
home-made bread, boiled and stewed mushrooms—plucked since our
arrival—fresh home-made butter, buttermilk, peas and beans from the
garden, and aromatic coffee. The table itself was neatly spread, and
everything was well served. If one Apache woman can teach herself all
this, it does not seem to be hoping for too much when I express the
belief that in a few years others may be encouraged to imitate her
example. I have inherited from General Crook a strong belief in this
phase of the Indian problem. Let the main work be done with the young
women, in teaching them how to cook, and what to cook, and how to become
good housekeepers, and the work will be more than half finished. In all
tribes the influence of the women, although silent, is most potent. Upon
the squaws falls the most grievous part of the burden of war, and if
they can be made to taste the luxuries of civilized life, and to regard
them as necessaries, the idea of resuming hostilities will year by year
be combated with more vigor. It was upon this principle that the work of
missionary effort was carried on among the Canadian tribes, and we see
how, after one or two generations of women had been educated, all
trouble disappeared, and the best of feeling between the two races was
developed and maintained for all time.
From Camp Apache to old Camp Grant was by the trail a trifle over one
hundred miles, but over a country so cut up with cañons, and so rocky,
that the distance seemed very much greater. The cañon of the Prieto or
Black River, the passage of the Apache range, the descent of the
Aravaypa, were all considered and with justice to be specially severe
upon the muscles and nerves of travellers, not only because of depth and
steepness, but also because the trail was filled with loose stones which
rolled from under the careless tread, and wrenched the feet and ankles
of the unwary.
Of the general character of the approaches to old Camp Grant, enough has
already been written in the earlier chapters. I wish to add that the
marches were still exceptionally long and severe, as General Crook was
determined to arrive on time, as promised to the chiefs who were
expecting him. On account of getting entangled in the cañons back of the
Picacho San Carlos, it took us more than twenty-four hours to pass over
the distance between the Black River and the mouth of the San Carlos,
the start being made at six o’clock one day, and ending at eight o’clock
the next morning, a total of twenty-six hours of marching and climbing.
Every one in the command was pretty well tired out, and glad to throw
himself down with head on saddle, just as soon as horses and mules could
be lariated on grass and pickets established, but General Crook took his
shot-gun and followed up the Gila a mile or two, and got a fine mess of
reed birds for our breakfast. It was this insensibility to fatigue,
coupled with a contempt for danger, or rather with a skill in evading
all traps that might be set for him, which won for Crook the admiration
of all who served with him; there was no private soldier, no packer, no
teamster, who could “down the ole man” in any work, or outlast him on a
march or a climb over the rugged peaks of Arizona; they knew that, and
they also knew that in the hour of danger Crook would be found on the
skirmish line, and not in the telegraph office.
At old Camp Grant, the operations of the campaign began in earnest; in
two or three days the troops at that post were ready to move out under
command of Major Brown, of the Fifth Cavalry, and the general plan of
the campaign unfolded itself. It was to make a clean sweep of the Tonto
Basin, the region in which the hostiles had always been so successful in
eluding and defying the troops, and this sweep was to be made by a
number of converging columns, each able to look out for itself, each
provided with a force of Indian scouts, each followed by a pack-train
with all needful supplies, and each led by officers physically able to
go almost anywhere. After the centre of the Basin had been reached, if
there should be no decisive action in the meantime, these commands were
to turn back and break out in different directions, scouring the
country, so that no nook or corner should be left unexamined. The posts
were stripped of the last available officer and man, the expectation
being that, by closely pursuing the enemy, but little leisure would be
left him for making raids upon our settlements, either military or
civil, and that the constant movements of the various detachments would
always bring some within helping distance of beleaguered stations.
General Crook kept at the front, moving from point to point, along the
whole periphery, and exercising complete personal supervision of the
details, but leaving the movements from each post under the control of
the officers selected for the work. Major George M. Randall,
Twenty-third Infantry, managed affairs at Camp Apache, having under him
as chief of scouts, Mr. C. E. Cooley, of whom mention has just been
made. Major George F. Price, Fifth Cavalry, commanded from Date Creek.
Major Alexander MacGregor, First Cavalry, had the superintendence of the
troops to move out from Fort Whipple; Colonel Julius W. Mason, Fifth
Cavalry, of those to work down from Camp Hualpai, while those of the
post of Camp MacDowell were commanded by Captain James Burns, Fifth
Cavalry. Colonel C. C. C. Carr, First Cavalry, led those from Verde. All
these officers were experienced, and of great discretion and good
judgment. Each and all did excellent work and struck blow after blow
upon the savages.
Before starting out, General Crook’s instructions were communicated to
both Indian scouts and soldiers at Camp Grant; as they were of the same
tenor as those already given at other posts, I have not thought it
necessary to repeat them for each post. Briefly, they directed that the
Indians should be induced to surrender in all cases where possible;
where they preferred to fight, they were to get all the fighting they
wanted, and in one good dose instead of in a number of petty
engagements, but in either case were to be hunted down until the last
one in hostility had been killed or captured. Every effort should be
made to avoid the killing of women and children. Prisoners of either sex
should be guarded from ill-treatment of any kind. When prisoners could
be induced to enlist as scouts, they should be so enlisted, because the
wilder the Apache was, the more he was likely to know of the wiles and
stratagems of those still out in the mountains, their hiding-places and
intentions. No excuse was to be accepted for leaving a trail; if horses
played out, the enemy must be followed on foot, and no sacrifice should
be left untried to make the campaign short, sharp, and decisive.
Lieutenant and Brevet Major William J. Ross, Twenty-first Infantry, and
myself were attached to the command of Major Brown, to operate from Camp
Grant, through the Mescal, Pinal, Superstition, and Matitzal ranges,
over to Camp MacDowell and there receive further instructions. Before
leaving the post, I had to record a very singular affair which goes to
show how thoroughly self-satisfied and stupid officialism can always
become if properly encouraged. There was a Roman Catholic priest dining
at our mess—Father Antonio Jouvenceau—who had been sent out from Tucson
to try and establish a mission among the bands living in the vicinity of
Camp Apache. There wasn’t anything in the shape of supplies in the
country outside of the army stores, and of these the missionary desired
permission to buy enough to keep himself alive until he could make other
arrangements, or become accustomed to the wild food of such friends as
he might make among the savages. Every request he made was refused on
the ground that there was no precedent. I know that there was “no
precedent” for doing anything to bring savages to a condition of peace,
but I have never ceased to regret that there was not, because I feel
sure that had the slightest encouragement been given to Father Antonio
or to a handful of men like him, the wildest of the Apaches might have
been induced to listen to reason, and there would have been no such
expensive wars. A missionary could not well be expected to load himself
down with supplies and carry them on his own back while he was hunting
favorable specimens of the Indians upon whom to make an impression.
There were numbers of Mexican prisoners among the Apaches who retained
enough respect for the religion of their childhood to be from first
acquaintance the firm and devoted friends of the new-comer, and once set
on a good basis in the Apache villages, the rest would have been easy.
This, however, is merely conjecture on my part.
The new recruits from among the Apaches were under the command of a
chief responding to the name of “Esquinosquizn,” meaning “Bocon” or Big
Mouth. He was crafty, cruel, daring, and ambitious; he indulged whenever
he could in the intoxicant “Tizwin,” made of fermented corn and really
nothing but a sour beer which will not intoxicate unless the drinker
subject himself, as the Apache does, to a preliminary fast of from two
to four days. This indulgence led to his death at San Carlos some months
later. The _personnel_ of Brown’s command was excellent; it represented
soldiers of considerable experience and inured to all the climatic
variations to be expected in Arizona, and nowhere else in greater
degree. There were two companies of the Fifth Cavalry, and a detachment
of thirty Apache scouts, that being as many as could be apportioned to
each command in the initial stages of the campaign. Captain Alfred B.
Taylor, Lieutenant Jacob Almy, Lieutenant William J. Ross, and myself
constituted the commissioned list, until, at a point in the Superstition
Mountains, we were joined by Captain James Burns and First Lieutenant
Earl D. Thomas, Fifth Cavalry, with Company G of that regiment, and a
large body—not quite one hundred—of Pima Indians. In addition to the
above we had Archie Macintosh, Joe Felmer, and Antonio Besias as guides
and interpreters to take charge of the scouts. Mr. James Dailey, a
civilian volunteer, was also with the command. The pack train carried
along rations for thirty days, and there was no lack of flour, bacon,
beans, coffee, with a little chile colorado for the packers, and a small
quantity of dried peaches and chocolate, of which many persons in that
country made use in preference to coffee. We were all cut down to the
lowest notch in the matter of clothing, a deprivation of which no one
complained, since the loss was not severely felt amid such surroundings.
It was now that the great amount of information which General Crook had
personally absorbed in regard to Arizona came of the best service. He
had been in constant conference with the Apache scouts and interpreters
concerning all that was to be done and all that was positively known of
the whereabouts of the hostiles; especially did he desire to find the
“rancheria” of the chief “Chuntz,” who had recently murdered in cold
blood, at Camp Grant, a Mexican boy too young to have been a cause of
rancor to any one. It may be said in one word that the smallest details
of this expedition were arranged by General Crook in person before we
started down the San Pedro. He had learned from “Esquinosquizn” of the
site of the rancheria supposed to be occupied by “Deltchay” in the lofty
range called the “Four Peaks” or the “Matitzal,” the latter by the
Indians and the former by the Americans, on account of there being the
distinctive feature of four peaks of great elevation overlooking the
country for hundreds of miles in all directions. One of the most
important duties confided to our force was the destruction of this
rancheria if we could find it. These points were not generally known at
the time we left Grant, neither was it known that one of our Apache
guides, “Nantaje,” christened “Joe” by the soldiers, had been raised in
that very stronghold, and deputed to conduct us to it. First, we were to
look up “Chuntz,” if we could, and wipe him out, and then do our best to
clean up the stronghold of “Deltchay.”
I will avoid details of this march because it followed quite closely the
line of the first and second scouts made by Lieutenant Cushing, the
preceding year, which have been already outlined. We followed down the
dusty bottom of the San Pedro, through a jungle of mesquite and sage
brush, which always seem to grow on land which with irrigation will
yield bountifully of wheat, and crossed over to the feeble streamlet
marked on the maps as Deer Creek. We crossed the Gila at a point where
the Mescal and Pinal ranges seemed to come together, but the country was
so broken that it was hard to tell to which range the hills belonged.
The trails were rough, and the rocks were largely granites, porphyry,
and pudding stones, often of rare beauty. There was an abundance of
mescal, cholla cactus, manzanita, Spanish bayonet, pitahaya, and scrub
oak so long as we remained in the foothills, but upon gaining the higher
levels of the Pinal range, we found first juniper, and then pine of good
dimensions and in great quantity. The scenery upon the summit of the
Pinal was exhilarating and picturesque, but the winds were bitter and
the ground deep with snow, so that we made no complaint when the line of
march led us to a camp on the northwest extremity, where we found water
trickling down the flanks of the range into a beautiful narrow cañon,
whose steep walls hid us from the prying gaze of the enemy’s spies, and
also protected from the wind; the slopes were green with juicy grama
grass, and dotted with oaks which gracefully arranged themselves in
clusters of twos and threes, giving grateful shade to men and animals.
Far above us waved the branches of tall pines and cedars, and at their
feet could be seen the banks of snow, but in our own position the
weather was rather that of the south temperate or the northern part of
the torrid zone.
This rapid change of climate made scouting in Arizona very trying.
During this campaign we were often obliged to leave the warm valleys in
the morning and climb to the higher altitudes and go into bivouac upon
summits where the snow was hip deep, as on the Matitzal, the Mogollon
plateau, and the Sierra Ancha. To add to the discomfort, the pine was so
thoroughly soaked through with snow and rain that it would not burn, and
unless cedar could be found, the command was in bad luck. Our Apache
scouts, under Macintosh, Felmer, and Besias, were kept from twelve to
twenty-four hours in advance of the main body, but always in
communication, the intention being to make use of them to determine the
whereabouts of the hostiles, but to let the soldiers do the work of
cleaning them out. It was difficult to restrain the scouts, who were too
fond of war to let slip any good excuse for a fight, and consequently
Macintosh had two or three skirmishes of no great consequence, but which
showed that his scouts could be depended upon both as trailers and as a
fighting force. In one of these, the village or “rancheria” of “Chuntz,”
consisting of twelve “jacales,” was destroyed with a very full winter
stock of food, but only one of the party was wounded, and all escaped,
going in the direction of the Cañon of the Rio Salado or Salt River. The
advance of the scouts had been discovered by a squaw, who gave the alarm
and enabled the whole party to escape.
A day or two after this, the scouts again struck the trail of the enemy,
and had a sharp brush with them, killing several and capturing three.
The Apaches had been making ready to plant during the coming spring, had
dug irrigating ditches, and had also accumulated a great store of all
kinds of provisions suited to their needs, among others a full supply of
baked mescal, as well as of the various seeds of grass, sunflower, and
the beans of mesquite which form so important a part of their food. As
well as could be determined, this was on or near the head of the little
stream marked on the maps as Raccoon Creek, on the south slope of the
Sierra Ancha. Close by was a prehistoric ruin, whose wall of rubble
stone was still three feet high. On the other (the south) side of the
Salt River we passed under a well-preserved cliff-dwelling in the cañon
of Pinto Creek, a place which I have since examined carefully, digging
out sandals of the “palmilla” fibre, dried mescal, corn husks and other
foods, and some small pieces of textile fabrics, with one or two axes
and hammers of stone, arrows, and the usual débris to be expected in
such cases. We worked our way over into the edge of the Superstition
Mountains. There was very little to do, and it was evident that whether
through fear of our own and the other commands which must have been
seen, or from a desire to concentrate during the cold weather, the
Apaches had nearly all abandoned that section of country, and sought
refuge somewhere else.
The Apache scouts, however, insisted that we were to find a “heap” of
Indians “poco tiempo” (very soon). By their advice, most of our officers
and men had provided themselves with moccasins which would make no noise
in clambering over the rocks or down the slippery trails where rolling
stones might arouse the sleeping enemy. The Apaches, I noticed, stuffed
their moccasins with dry hay, and it was also apparent that they knew
all the minute points about making themselves comfortable with small
means. Just as soon as they reached camp, those who were not posted as
pickets or detailed to go off on side scouts in small parties of five
and six, would devote their attention to getting their bed ready for the
night; the grass in the vicinity would be plucked in handfuls, and
spread out over the smoothed surface upon which two or three of the
scouts purposed sleeping together; a semicircle of good-sized pieces of
rock made a wind break, and then one or two blankets would be spread
out, and upon that the three would recline, huddling close together,
each wrapped up in his own blanket. Whenever fires were allowed, the
Apaches would kindle small ones, and lie down close to them with feet
towards the flame. According to the theory of the Indian, the white man
makes so great a conflagration that, besides alarming the whole country,
he makes it so hot that no one can draw near, whereas the Apache, with
better sense, contents himself with a small collection of embers, over
which he can if necessary crouch and keep warm.
The fine condition of our pack-trains awakened continued interest, and
evoked constant praise; the mules had followed us over some of the worst
trails in Arizona, and were still as fresh as when they left Grant, and
all in condition for the most arduous service with the exception of two,
one of which ate, or was supposed to have eaten, of the insect known as
the “Compra mucho” or the “Niña de la Tierra,” which is extremely
poisonous to those animals which swallow it in the grass to which it
clings. This mule died. Another was bitten on the lip by a rattlesnake,
and though by the prompt application of a poultice of the weed called
the “golondrina” we managed to save its life for a few days, it too
died. On Christmas Day we were joined by Captain James Burns, Fifth
Cavalry, with Lieutenant Earl D. Thomas, of the same regiment, and a
command consisting of forty enlisted men of Company G, and a body of not
quite one hundred Pima Indians. They had been out from MacDowell for six
days, and had crossed over the highest point of the Matitzal range, and
had destroyed a “rancheria,” killing six and capturing two; one, a
squaw, sent in to MacDowell, and the other, a small but very bright and
active boy, whom the men had promptly adopted, and upon whom had been
bestowed the name “Mike” Burns, which he has retained to this day. This
boy, then not more than six or seven years old, was already an expert in
the use of the bow and arrow, and, what suited Captain Burns much
better, he could knock down quail with stones, and add much to the
pleasures of a very meagre mess, as no shooting was allowed. During the
past twenty years, Mike Burns has, through the interposition of General
Crook, been sent to Carlisle, and there received the rudiments of an
education; we have met at the San Carlos Agency, and talked over old
times, and I have learned what was not then known, that in Burns’s fight
with the band on the summit of the Four Peaks, seven of the latter were
killed, and the men and women who escaped, under the leadership of
Mike’s own father, hurried to the stronghold in the cañon of the Salt
River, where they were all killed by our command a few days later. On
the evening of the 27th of December, 1872, we were bivouacked in a
narrow cañon called the Cottonwood Creek, flowing into the Salado at the
eastern base of the Matitzal, when Major Brown announced to his officers
that the object for which General Crook had sent out this particular
detachment was almost attained; that he had been in conference with
“Nantaje,” one of our Apache scouts, who had been brought up in the cave
in the cañon of the Salt River, and that he had expressed a desire to
lead us there, provided we made up our minds to make the journey before
day-dawn, as the position of the enemy was such that if we should be
discovered on the trail, not one of our party would return alive. The
Apaches are familiar with the stars, and “Nantaje” had said that if we
were to go, he wanted to start out with the first appearance above the
eastern horizon of a certain star with which he was acquainted.
Brown gave orders that every officer and man who was not in the best
condition for making a severe march and climb over rugged mountains,
should stay with the pack-trains and be on the watch for any prowling
band of the enemy. First, there was made a pile of the _aparejos_ and
supplies which could serve in emergency as a breastwork for those to
remain behind; then a picket line was stretched, to which the mules and
horses could be tied, and kept under shelter from fire; and lastly,
every officer and man looked carefully to his weapons and ammunition,
for we were to start out on foot and climb through the rough promontory
of the Matitzal into the Salt River Cañon, and on to the place in which
we were to come upon the cave inhabited by the hostiles of whom we were
in search. Every belt was filled with cartridges, and twenty extra were
laid away in the blanket which each wore slung across his shoulders, and
in which were placed the meagre allowance of bread, bacon, and coffee
taken as provision, with the canteen of water. The Apache scouts had
asked the privilege of cooking and eating the mule which had died during
the morning, and as the sky had clouded and the light of small fires
could not well be seen, Major Brown consented, and they stuffed
themselves to their hearts’ content, in a meal which had not a few
points of resemblance to the “Festins à manger tout,” mentioned by
Father Lafitau, Parkman, and other writers. Before eight o’clock, we
were on our way, “Nantaje” in the van, and all marching briskly towards
the summit of the high mesas which enclosed the cañon.
The night became extremely cold, and we were only too glad of the
opportunity of pushing ahead with vigor, and regretted very much to hear
the whispered command to halt and lie down until the last of the
rear-guard could be heard from. The Apache scouts in front had detected
lights in advance, and assured Major Brown that they must be from the
fires of the Indians of whom we were in quest. While they went ahead to
search and determine exactly what was the matter, the rest of us were
compelled to lie prone to the ground, so as to afford the least chance
to the enemy to detect any signs of life among us; no one spoke beyond a
whisper, and even when the cold compelled any of the party to cough, it
was done with the head wrapped up closely in a blanket or cape.
“Nantaje,” “Bocon,” and others were occupied with the examination of the
track into which the first-named had stepped, as he and Brown were
walking ahead; it seemed to the Indian to be the footprint of a man, but
when all had nestled down close to the earth, covered heads over with
blankets, and struck a match, it proved to be the track of a great bear,
which closely resembles that of a human being. Within a few moments,
Felmer, Archie, and the others, sent on to discover the cause of the
fires seen ahead, returned with the intelligence that the Apaches had
just been raiding upon the white and Pima Indian settlements in the
valley of the Gila, and had driven off fifteen horses and mules, which,
being barefoot and sore from climbing the rocky trail up the face of the
mountain, had been abandoned in a little nook where there was a slight
amount of grass and a little water. Worst news of all, there had been
four large “wickyups” in the same place which had just been vacated, and
whether on account of discovering our approach or not it was hard to
say.
We were becoming rather nervous by this time, as we still had in mind
what “Nantaje” had said the previous evening about killing the last of
the enemy, or being compelled to fight our own way back. “Nantaje” was
thoroughly composed, and smiled when some of the party insinuated a
doubt about the existence of any large “rancheria” in the neighborhood.
“Wait and see,” was all the reply he would vouchsafe.
By advice of “Nantaje,” Major Brown ordered Lieutenant William J. Ross
to proceed forward on the trail with twelve or fifteen of the best shots
among the soldiers, and such of the packers as had obtained permission
to accompany the command. “Nantaje” led them down the slippery, rocky,
dangerous trail in the wall of the gloomy cañon, which in the cold gray
light of the slowly creeping dawn, and under the gloom of our
surroundings, made us think of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. “They
ought to be very near here,” said Major Brown. “Good Heavens! what is
all that?” It was a noise equal to that of a full battery of
six-pounders going off at once. Brown knew that something of the
greatest consequence had happened, and he wasn’t the man to wait for the
arrival of messengers; he ordered me to take command of the first forty
men in the advance, without waiting to see whether they were white or
red, soldiers or packers, and go down the side of the cañon on the run,
until I had joined Ross, and taken up a position as close to the enemy
as it was possible for me to get without bringing on a fight; meantime,
he would gather up all the rest of the command, and follow me as fast as
he could, and relieve me. There was no trouble at all in getting down
that cañon; the difficulty was to hold on to the trail; had any man lost
his footing, he would not have stopped until he had struck the current
of the Salado, hundreds of feet below. In spite of everything, we
clambered down, and by great good luck broke no necks. As we turned a
sudden angle in the wall, we saw the condition of affairs most
completely. The precipice forming that side of the cañon was hundreds of
feet in height, but at a point some four or five hundred feet below the
crest had fallen back in a shelf upon which was a cave of no great
depth. In front of the cave great blocks of stone furnished a natural
rampart behind which the garrison could bid defiance to the assaults of
almost any enemy; in this eyrie, the band of “Nanni-chaddi” felt a
security such as only the eagle or the vulture can feel in the seclusion
of the ice-covered dizzy pinnacles of the Andes; from the shelf upon
which they lived these savages, who seem to me to have been the last of
the cliff-dwellers within our borders, had on several occasions watched
the commands of Sanford and Carr struggling to make their way up the
stream in the cañon below. The existence of one, or perhaps two,
rancherias somewhere within this gloomy cañon had long been suspected,
but never demonstrated until the present moment. When we joined Ross we
heard his story told in few words: he and his small band of twelve had
followed Felmer and Macintosh down the face of the cliff until they had
reached the small open space in front of the cave; there they saw within
a very few yards of them the party of raiders just returned from the
Gila settlements, who had left at pasture the band of fifteen ponies
which we had seen. These warriors were dancing, either to keep
themselves warm or as a portion of some religious ceremonial, as is
generally the case with the tribes in the southwest. Close by them
crouched half a dozen squaws, aroused from slumber to prepare food for
the hungry braves. The flames of the fire, small as it was, reflected
back from the high walls, gave a weird illumination to the features of
the circle, and enabled the whites to take better aim upon their
unsuspecting victims. Ross and “Nantaje” consulted in whispers, and
immediately it was decided that each man should with the least noise
possible cock his piece and aim at one of the group without reference to
what his next-door neighbor might be doing. Had not the Apaches been
interested in their own singing, they might surely have heard the low
whisper: ready! aim! fire! but it would have been too late; the die was
cast, and their hour had come.
The fearful noise which we had heard, reverberating from peak to peak
and from crag to crag, was the volley poured in by Ross and his
comrades, which had sent six souls to their last account, and sounded
the death-knell of a powerful band. The surprise and terror of the
savages were so complete that they thought only of the safety which the
interior of the cave afforded, and as a consequence, when my party
arrived on the scene, although there were a number of arrows thrown at
us as we descended the path and rounded the angle, yet no attempt was
made at a counter-assault, and before the Apaches could recover from
their astonishment the two parties united, numbering more than fifty,
nearer sixty, men, had secured position within thirty yards of one flank
of the cave, and within forty yards of the other, and each man posted
behind rocks in such a manner that he might just as well be in a rifle
pit. My instructions were not to make any fight, but to keep the Apaches
occupied, in case they tried to break out of the trap, and to order all
men to shelter themselves to the utmost. Major Brown was down with the
remainder of the command almost before a shot could be exchanged with
the enemy, although there were two more killed either a moment before
his arrival or very soon after. One of these was a Pima, one of our own
allies, who persisted in disregarding orders, and exposed himself to the
enemy’s fire, and was shot through the body and died before he ever knew
what had struck him. The other was one of the Apaches who had sneaked
down along our right flank, and was making his way out to try to open up
communication with another village and get its people to attack us in
rear. He counted without his host, and died a victim to his own
carelessness; he had climbed to the top of a high rock some distance
down the cañon, and there fancied himself safe from our shots, and
turned to give a yell of defiance. His figure outlined against the sky
was an excellent mark, and there was an excellent shot among us to take
full advantage of it. Blacksmith John Cahill had his rifle in position
like a flash, and shot the Indian through the body. At the time of the
fight, we did not know that the savage had been killed, although Cahill
insisted that he had shot him as described, and as those nearest him
believed. The corpse could not be found in the rocks before we left, and
therefore was not counted, but the squaws at San Carlos have long since
told me that their relative was killed there, and that his remains were
found after we had left the neighborhood.
[Illustration: SHARP NOSE.]
Brown’s first work was to see that the whole line was impregnable to
assault from the beleaguered garrison of the cave, and then he directed
his interpreters to summon all to an unconditional surrender. The only
answer was a shriek of hatred and defiance, threats of what we had to
expect, yells of exultation at the thought that not one of us should
ever see the light of another day, but should furnish a banquet for the
crows and buzzards, and some scattering shots fired in pure bravado.
Brown again summoned all to surrender, and when jeers were once more his
sole response, he called upon the Apaches to allow their women and
children to come out, and assured them kind treatment. To this the
answer was the same as before, the jeers and taunts of the garrison
assuring our people that they were in dead earnest in saying that they
intended to fight till they died. For some moments the Apaches resorted
to the old tactics of enticing some of our unwary soldiers to expose
themselves above the wall of rocks behind which Major Brown ordered all
to crouch; a hat or a war bonnet would be set up on the end of a bow,
and held in such a way as to make-believe that there was a warrior
behind it, and induce some one proud of his marksmanship to “lay” for
the red man and brother, who would, in his turn, be “laying” for the
white man in some coign of vantage close to where his squaw was holding
the head-gear. But such tricks were entirely too transparent to deceive
many, and after a short time the Apaches themselves grew tired of them,
and began to try new methods. They seemed to be abundantly provided with
arrows and lances, and of the former they made no saving, but would send
them flying high in air in the hope that upon coming back to earth they
might hit those of our rearguard who were not taking such good care of
themselves as were their brothers at the front on the skirmish line.
There was a lull of a few minutes; each side was measuring its own
strength and that of its opponent. It was apparent that any attempt to
escalade without ladders would result in the loss of more than half our
command; the great rock wall in front of the cave was not an inch less
than ten feet in height at its lowest point, and smooth as the palm of
the hand; it would be madness to attempt to climb it, because the moment
the assailants reached the top, the lances of the invested force could
push them back to the ground wounded to death. Three or four of our
picked shots were posted in eligible positions overlooking the places
where the Apaches had been seen to expose themselves; this, in the hope
that any recurrence of such fool-hardiness would afford an opportunity
for the sharpshooters to show their skill. Of the main body, one-half
was in reserve fifty yards behind the skirmish line—to call it such
where the whole business was a skirmish line—with carbines loaded and
cocked, and a handful of cartridges on the clean rocks in front, and
every man on the lookout to prevent the escape of a single warrior,
should any be fortunate enough to sneak or break through the first line.
The men on the first line had orders to fire as rapidly as they chose,
directing aim against the roof of the cave, with the view to having the
bullets glance down among the Apache men, who had massed immediately
back of the rock rampart.
This plan worked admirably, and, so far as we could judge, our shots
were telling upon the Apaches, and irritating them to that degree that
they no longer sought shelter, but boldly faced our fire and returned it
with energy, the weapons of the men being reloaded by the women, who
shared their dangers. A wail from a squaw, and the feeble cry of a
little babe, were proof that the missiles of death were not seeking men
alone. Brown ordered our fire to cease, and for the last time summoned
the Apaches to surrender, or to let their women and children come out
unmolested. On their side, the Apaches also ceased all hostile
demonstration, and it seemed to some of us Americans that they must be
making ready to yield, and were discussing the matter among themselves.
Our Indian guides and interpreters raised the cry, “Look out! There goes
the death song; they are going to charge!” It was a weird chant, one not
at all easy to describe; half wail and half exultation—the frenzy of
despair and the wild cry for revenge. Now the petulant, querulous treble
of the squaws kept time with the shuffling feet, and again the deeper
growl of the savage bull-dogs, who represented manhood in that cave, was
flung back from the cold pitiless brown of the cliffs.
“Look out! Here they come!” Over the rampart, guided by one impulse,
moving as if they were all part of the one body, jumped and ran twenty
of the warriors—superb-looking fellows all of them; each carried upon
his back a quiver filled with the long reed arrows of the tribe, each
held in his hand a bow and a rifle, the latter at full cock. Half of the
party stood upon the rampart, which gave them some chance to sight our
men behind the smaller rocks in front, and blazed away for all they were
worth—they were trying to make a demonstration to engage our attention,
while the other part suddenly slipped down and around our right flank,
and out through the rocks which had so effectively sheltered the retreat
of the one who had so nearly succeeded in getting away earlier in the
morning. Their motives were divined, and the move was frustrated; our
men rushed to the attack like furies, each seeming to be anxious to
engage the enemy at close quarters. Six or seven of the enemy were
killed in a space not twenty-five feet square, and the rest driven back
within the cave, more or less wounded.
Although there was a fearful din from the yells, groans, wails of the
squaws within the fortress, and the re-echoing of volleys from the walls
of the cañon, our command behaved admirably, and obeyed its orders to
the letter. The second line never budged from its place, and well it was
that it had stayed just there. One of the charging party, seeing that so
much attention was converged upon our right, had slipped down unnoticed
from the rampart, and made his way to the space between our two lines,
and had sprung to the top of a huge boulder, and there had begun his
war-whoop, as a token of encouragement to those still behind. I imagine
that he was not aware of our second line, and thought that once in our
rear, ensconced in a convenient nook in the rocks, he could keep us busy
by picking us off at his leisure. His chant was never finished; it was
at once his song of glory and his death song; he had broken through our
line of fire only to meet a far more cruel death. Twenty carbines were
gleaming in the sunlight just flushing the cliffs; forty eyes were
sighting along the barrels. The Apache looked into the eyes of his
enemies, and in not one did he see the slightest sign of mercy; he tried
to say something; what it was we never could tell. “No! No! soldados!”
in broken Spanish, was all we could make out before the resounding
volley had released another soul from its earthly casket, and let the
bleeding corpse fall to the ground as limp as a wet moccasin. He was
really a handsome warrior; tall, well-proportioned, finely muscled, and
with a bold, manly countenance; “shot to death” was the verdict of all
who paused to look upon him, but that didn’t half express the state of
the case; I have never seen a man more thoroughly shot to pieces than
was this one; every bullet seemed to have struck, and not less than
eight or ten had inflicted mortal wounds.
The savages in the cave, with death now staring them in the face, did
not seem to lose their courage—or, shall we say despair? They resumed
their chant, and sang with vigor and boldness, until Brown determined
that the battle or siege must end. Our two lines were now massed in one,
and every officer and man told to get ready a package of cartridges;
then as fast as the breech-block of the carbine could be opened and
lowered, we were to fire into the mouth of the cave, hoping to inflict
the greatest damage by glancing bullets, and then charge in by the
entrance on our right flank, back of the rock rampart which had served
as the means of exit for the hostiles when they made their attack. The
din and tumult increased twenty-fold beyond the last time; lead poured
in by the bucketful, but, strangely enough, there was a lull for a
moment or two, and without orders. A little Apache boy, not over four
years old, if so old, ran out from within the cave, and stood, with
thumb in mouth, looking in speechless wonder and indignation at the
belching barrels. He was not in much danger, because all the carbines
were aiming upwards at the roof, nevertheless a bullet—whether from our
lines direct, or hurled down from the rocky ceiling—struck the youngster
on the skull, and ploughed a path for itself around to the back of his
neck, leaving a welt as big as one’s finger. The youngster was knocked
off his feet, and added the tribute of his howls to the roars and echoes
of the conflict. “Nantaje” sprang like a deer to where the boy lay, and
grasped him by one arm, and ran with him behind a great stone. Our men
spontaneously ceased firing for one minute to cheer “Nantaje” and the
“kid;” the fight was then resumed with greater vigor. The Apaches did
not relax their fire, but, from the increasing groans of the women, we
knew that our shots were telling either upon the women in the cave, or
upon their relatives among the men for whom they were sorrowing.
It was exactly like fighting with wild animals in a trap: the Apaches
had made up their minds to die if relief did not reach them from some of
the other “rancherias” supposed to be close by. Ever since early morning
nothing had been seen of Burns and Thomas, and the men of Company G.
With a detachment of Pima guides, they had been sent off to follow the
trail of the fifteen ponies found at day-dawn; Brown was under the
impression that the raiding party belonging to the cave might have split
into two or three parties, and that some of the latter ones might be
trapped and ambuscaded while ascending the mountain. This was before
Ross and “Nantaje” and Felmer had discovered the cave and forced the
fight. This part of our forces had marched a long distance down the
mountain, and was returning to rejoin us, when the roar of the carbines
apprised them that the worst kind of a fight was going on, and that
their help would be needed badly; they came back on the double, and as
soon as they reached the summit of the precipice were halted to let the
men get their breath. It was a most fortunate thing that they did so,
and at that particular spot. Burns and several others went to the crest
and leaned over to see what all the frightful hubbub was about. They saw
the conflict going on beneath them, and in spite of the smoke could make
out that the Apaches were nestling up close to the rock rampart, so as
to avoid as much as possible the projectiles which were raining down
from the roof of their eyrie home.
It didn’t take Burns five seconds to decide what should be done; he had
two of his men harnessed with the suspenders of their comrades, and made
them lean well over the precipice, while the harness was used to hold
them in place; these men were to fire with their revolvers at the enemy
beneath, and for a volley or so they did very effective work, but their
Irish blood got the better of their reason, and in their excitement they
began to throw their revolvers at the enemy; this kind of ammunition was
rather too costly, but it suggested a novel method of annihilating the
enemy. Burns ordered his men to get together and roll several of the
huge boulders, which covered the surface of the mountain, and drop them
over on the unsuspecting foe. The noise was frightful; the destruction
sickening. Our volleys were still directed against the inner faces of
the cave and the roof, and the Apaches seemed to realize that their only
safety lay in crouching close to the great stone heap in front; but even
this precarious shelter was now taken away; the air was filled with the
bounding, plunging fragments of stone, breaking into thousands of
pieces, with other thousands behind, crashing down with the momentum
gained in a descent of hundreds of feet. No human voice could be heard
in such a cyclone of wrath; the volume of dust was so dense that no eye
could pierce it, but over on our left it seemed that for some reason we
could still discern several figures guarding that extremity of the
enemy’s line—the old “Medicine Man,” who, decked in all the panoply of
his office, with feathers on head, decorated shirt on back, and all the
sacred insignia known to his people, had defied the approach of death,
and kept his place, firing coolly at everything that moved on our side
that he could see, his rifle reloaded and handed back by his
assistants—either squaws or young men—it was impossible to tell which,
as only the arms could be noted in the air. Major Brown signalled up to
Burns to stop pouring down his boulders, and at the same time our men
were directed to cease firing, and to make ready to charge; the fire of
the Apaches had ceased, and their chant of defiance was hushed. There
was a feeling in the command as if we were about to rush through the
gates of a cemetery, and that we should find a ghastly spectacle within,
but, at the same time, it might be that the Apaches had retreated to
some recesses in the innermost depths of the cavern, unknown to us, and
be prepared to assail all who ventured to cross the wall in front.
Precisely at noon we advanced, Corporal Hanlon, of Company G, Fifth
Cavalry, being the first man to surmount the parapet. I hope that my
readers will be satisfied with the meagrest description of the awful
sight that met our eyes: there were men and women dead or withing in the
agonies of death, and with them several babies, killed by our glancing
bullets, or by the storm of rocks and stones that had descended from
above. While one portion of the command worked at extricating the bodies
from beneath the pile of débris, another stood guard with cocked
revolvers or carbines, ready to blow out the brains of the first wounded
savage who might in his desperation attempt to kill one of our people.
But this precaution was entirely useless. All idea of resistance had
been completely knocked out of the heads of the survivors, of whom, to
our astonishment, there were over thirty.
How any of the garrison had ever escaped such a storm of missiles was at
first a mystery to us, as the cave was scarcely a cave at all, but
rather a cliff dwelling, and of no extended depth. However, there were
many large slabs of flat thin stone within the enclosure, either left
there by Nature or carried in by the squaws, to be employed in various
domestic purposes. Behind and under these many of the squaws had crept,
and others had piled up the dead to screen themselves and their children
from the fury of our assault. Thirty-five, if I remember aright, were
still living, but in the number are included all who were still
breathing; many were already dying, and nearly one-half were dead before
we started out of that dreadful place. None of the warriors were
conscious except one old man, who serenely awaited the last summons; he
had received five or six wounds, and was practically dead when we sprang
over the entrance wall. There was a general sentiment of sorrow for the
old “Medicine Man” who had stood up so fiercely on the left of the
Apache line; we found his still warm corpse, crushed out of all
semblance to humanity, beneath a huge mass of rock, which had also
extinguished at one fell stroke the light of the life of the squaw and
the young man who had remained by his side. The amount of plunder and
supplies of all kinds was extremely great, and the band inhabiting these
cliffs must have lived with some comfort. There was a great amount of
food—roasted mescal, seeds of all kinds, jerked mule or pony meat, and
all else that these savages were wont to store for the winter; bows and
arrows in any quantity, lances, war clubs, guns of various kinds, with
ammunition fixed and loose; a perfect stronghold well supplied. So much
of the mescal and other food as our scouts wished to pack off on their
own backs was allowed them, and everything else was given to the flames.
No attempt was made to bury the dead, who, with the exception of our own
Pima, were left where they fell.
Brown was anxious to get back out of the cañon, as the captive squaws
told him that there was another “rancheria” in the Superstition
Mountains on the south side of the cañon, and it was probable that the
Indians belonging to it would come up just as soon as they heard the
news of the fight, and attack our column in rear as it tried to make its
way back to the top of the precipice. The men who were found dancing by
Ross had, just that moment, returned from a raid upon the Pima villages
and the outskirts of Florence, in the Gila valley, where they had been
successful in getting the ponies we recovered, as well as in killing
some of the whites and friendly Indians living there. We had not wiped
out all the band belonging to the cave; there were six or seven of the
young women who had escaped and made their way down to the foot of the
precipice, and on into the current of the Salado; they would be sure to
push on to the other “rancheria,” of which we had been told. How they
came to escape was this: at the very first streak of light, or perhaps a
short time before, they had been sent—six young girls and an old
woman—to examine a great “mescal pit” down in the cañon, and determine
whether the food was yet ready for use. The Apaches always preferred to
let their mescal cook for three days, and at the end of that time would
pull out a plug made of the stalk of the plant, which should always be
put into the “pit” or oven, and if the end of that plug is cooked, the
whole mass is cooked. We had smelt the savory odors arising from the
“pit” as we climbed down the face of the cliff, early in the day. John
de Laet describes a mescal heap, or a furnace of earth covered with hot
rocks, upon which the Chichimecs (the name by which the Spaniards in
early times designated all the wild tribes in the northern part of their
dominions in North America) placed their corn-paste or venison, then
other hot rocks, and finally earth again. This mode of cooking, he says,
was imitated by the Spaniards in New Mexico. (_Lib. 7, cap. 3._) The
Apache-Mojave squaws at the San Carlos Agency still periodically mourn
for the death of seventy-six of their people in this cave, and when I
was last among them, they told a strange story of how one man escaped
from our scrutiny, after we had gained possession of the stronghold.
He had been badly wounded by a bullet in the calf of the left leg, in
the very beginning of the fight, and had lain down behind one of the
great slabs of stone which were resting against the walls; as the fight
grew hotter and hotter, other wounded Indians sought shelter close to
the same spot, and after a while the corpses of the slain were piled up
there as a sort of a breastwork. When we removed the dead, it never
occurred to any of us to look behind the stone slabs, and to this fact
the Indian owed his salvation. He could hear the scouts talking, and he
knew that we were going to make a rapid march to reunite with our
pack-train and with other scouting parties. He waited until after we had
started out on the trail, and then made for himself a support for his
injured limb out of a broken lance-staff, and a pair of crutches out of
two others. He crawled or climbed up the wall of the cañon, and then
made his way along the trail to the Tonto Creek, to meet and to turn
back a large band of his tribe who were coming down to join
“Nanni-chaddi.” He saved them from Major Brown, but it was a case of
jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire. They took refuge on the
summit of “Turret Butte,” a place deemed second only to the Salt River
cave in impregnability, and supposed to be endowed with peculiar
“medicine” qualities, which would prevent an enemy from gaining
possession of it. But here they were surprised by the command of Major
George M. Randall, Twenty-third Infantry, and completely wiped out, as
will be told on another page.
We got away from the cañon with eighteen captives, women and children,
some of them badly wounded; we might have saved a larger percentage of
the whole number found, living in the cave at the moment of assault, but
we were not provided with medical supplies, bandages, or anything for
the care of the sick and wounded. This one item will show how thoroughly
out of the world the Department of Arizona was at that time; it was
difficult to get medical officers out there, and the resulting condition
of affairs was such an injustice to both officers and men that General
Crook left no stone unturned until he had rectified it. The captives
were seated upon the Pima ponies left back upon the top of the mountain;
these animals were almost played out; their feet had been knocked to
pieces coming up the rocky pathway, during the darkness of night; and
the cholla cactus still sticking in their legs, showed that they had
been driven with such speed, and in such darkness, that they had been
unable to pick their way. But they wore better than nothing, and were
kept in use for the rest of that day. Runners were despatched across the
hills to the pack-train, and were told to conduct it to a small spring,
well known to our guides, high up on the nose of the Matitzal, where we
were all to unite and go into camp.
It was a rest and refreshment sorely needed, after the scrambling,
slipping, and sliding over and down loose rocks which had been dignified
with the name of marching, during the preceding two days. Our captives
were the recipients of every attention that we could give, and appeared
to be improving rapidly, and to have regained the good spirits which are
normally theirs. Mounted couriers were sent in advance to Camp
MacDowell, to let it be known that we were coming in with wounded, and
the next morning, early, we set out for that post, following down the
course of what was known as Sycamore Creek to the Verde River, which
latter we crossed in front of the post.
CHAPTER XI.
THE CAMPAIGN RESUMED—EFFICIENCY OF APACHE SCOUTS—JACK LONG BREAKS DOWN—A
BAND OF APACHES SURRENDER IN THE MOUNTAINS—THE EPIZOOTIC—THE TAYLOR
MASSACRE AND ITS AVENGING—THE ARIZONA ROLL OF HONOR, OFFICERS, MEN,
SURGEONS, SCOUTS, GUIDES, AND PACKERS—THE STRANGE RUIN IN THE VERDE
VALLEY—DEATH OF PRESILIANO MONJE—THE APACHES SURRENDER
UNCONDITIONALLY TO CROOK AT CAMP VERDE.
The wounded squaws were forwarded to old Camp Grant, just as soon as
able to travel, and our command remained for several days in the camp,
until joined by other detachments, when we returned to the Superstition
range, this time in considerable strength, the whole force consisting of
the companies of Adams, Montgomery, Hamilton, Taylor, Burns, and
Almy—all of the Fifth Cavalry, with the following additional officers:
Lieutenants Rockwell, Schuyler, and Keyes, of the Fifth; Ross, of the
Twenty-third Infantry; Bourke, of the Third Cavalry; and Mr. James
Daily, General Crook’s brother-in-law, as volunteer. The guides, as
before, were Macintosh, Felmer, and Besias, with thirty Apache scouts,
under the leadership of “Esquinosquizn.” This march was simply a
repetition of the former; there was the same careful attention to
details—no fires allowed except when the light could not be discerned by
the lynx-eyed enemy; no shouting, singing, whistling, lighting of
matches, or anything else which might attract attention. There was the
same amount of night-marching, side scouting to either flank or in
advance, the same careful scrutiny of the minutest sign on the trail.
The presence of the Indian scouts saved the white soldiers a great deal
of extra fatigue, for the performance of which the Apaches were better
qualified. It was one of the fundamental principles upon which General
Crook conducted all his operations, to enlist as many of the Indians as
could be induced to serve as scouts, because by this means he not only
subtracted a considerable element from those in hostility and received
hostages, as it were, for the better behavior of his scouts’ kinsmen,
but he removed from the shoulders of his men an immense amount of
arduous and disagreeable work, and kept them fresh for any emergency
that might arise. The Apaches were kept constantly out on the flanks,
under the white guides, and swept the country of all hostile bands. The
white troops followed upon the heels of the Indians, but at a short
distance in the rear, as the native scouts were better acquainted with
all the tricks of their calling, and familiar with every square acre of
the territory. The longer we knew the Apache scouts, the better we liked
them. They were wilder and more suspicious than the Pimas and Maricopas,
but far more reliable, and endowed with a greater amount of courage and
daring. I have never known an officer whose experience entitled his
opinion to the slightest consideration, who did not believe as I do on
this subject. On this scout Captain Hamilton was compelled to send back
his Maricopas as worthless; this was before he joined Brown at
MacDowell.
All savages have to undergo certain ceremonies of lustration after
returning from the war-path where any of the enemy have been killed.
With the Apaches these are baths in the sweat-lodge, accompanied with
singing and other rites. With the Pimas and Maricopas these ceremonies
are more elaborate, and necessitate a seclusion from the rest of the
tribe for many days, fasting, bathing, and singing. The Apache “bunches”
all his religious duties at these times, and defers his bathing until he
gets home, but the Pima and Maricopa are more punctilious, and resort to
the rites of religion the moment a single one, either of their own
numbers or of the enemy, has been laid low. For this reason Brown
started out from MacDowell with Apaches only.
It was noticed with some concern by all his friends that old Jack Long
was beginning to break; the fatigue and exertion which the more juvenile
members of the expedition looked upon as normal to the occasion, the
night marches, the exposure to the cold and wind and rain and snow, the
climbing up and down steep precipices, the excitement, the going without
food or water for long periods, were telling visibly upon the
representative of an older generation. Hank ’n Yank, Chenoweth, Frank
Monach, and Joe Felmer “’lowed th’ ole man was off his feed,” but it
was, in truth, only the summons sent him by Dame Nature that he had
overdrawn his account, and was to be in the future bankrupt in health
and strength. There was an unaccountable irritability about Jack, a
fretfulness at the end of each day’s climbing, which spoke more than
words could of enfeebled strength and nervous prostration. He found
fault with his cook, formerly his pride and boast. “Be-gosh,” he
remarked one evening, “seems t’ me yer a-burnin’ everything; next I
know, ye’ll be a-burnin’ water.” There were sarcastic references to the
lack of “horse sense” shown by certain unnamed “shave-tail leftenants”
in the command—shafts which rebounded unnoticed from the armor of
Schuyler and myself, but which did not make us feel any too comfortable
while the old veteran was around. Day by day, meal after meal, his cook
grew worse, or poor Jack grew no better. Nothing spread upon the canvas
would tempt Jack’s appetite; he blamed it all on the culinary artist,
never dreaming that he alone was at fault, and that his digestion was a
thing of the past, and beyond the skill of cook or condiment to revive.
“He ain’t a pastry cook,” growled Jack, “nor yet a hasty cook, nor a
tasty cook, but fur a dog-goned nasty cook, I’ll back ’m agin th’ hull
Pacific Slope.” When he heard some of the packers inveighing against
Tucson whiskey, Jack’s rage rose beyond bounds. “Many a time ’n oft,” he
said, “Arizona whiskey ’s bin plenty good enough fur th’ likes o’ me; it
’s good ’s a hoss liniment, ’n it ’s good ’s a beverage, ’n I’ve tried
it both ways, ’n I know; ’n thet’s more ’n kin be said for this yere
dude whiskey they gits in Dilmonico’s.” There wasn’t a drop of stimulant
as such, with the whole command, that I knew of, but in my own blankets
there was a pint flask filled with rather better stuff than was
ordinarily to be obtained, which I had been keeping in case of snake
bites or other accidents. It occurred to me to present a good drink of
this to Jack, but as I did not like to do this with so many standing
around the fire, I approached the blankets upon which Jack was
reclining, and asked: “See here, Jack, I want you to try this water;
there’s something very peculiar about it.”
“Thet ’s allers th’ way with these yere shave-tail leftenants they ’s
gittin’ in th’ army now-a-days; allers complainin’ about su’thin; water!
Lor’! yer orter bin with me when I was minin’ up on th’ Frazer. Then
ye’d a’ known what water was * * * Water, be-gosh! why, Major, I’ll
never forget yer’s long’s I live”—and in the exuberance of his
gratitude, the old man brevetted me two or three grades.
From that on Jack and I were sworn friends; he never levelled the shafts
of his sarcasm either at me or my faithful mule, “Malaria.” “Malaria”
had been born a first-class mule, but a fairy godmother, or some other
mysterious cause, had carried the good mule away, and left in its place
a lop-eared, mangy specimen, which enjoyed the proud distinction of
being considered, without dissent, the meanest mule in the whole
Department of Arizona. Not many weeks after that poor old Jack died; he
was in camp with one of the commands on the San Carlos, and broke down
entirely; in his delirium he saw the beautiful green pastures of the
Other Side, shaded by branching oaks; he heard the rippling of pellucid
waters, and listened to the gladsome song of merry birds. “Fellers,” he
said, “it is beautiful over thar; the grass is so green, and the water
so cool; I am tired of marchin’, ’n I reckon I’ll cross over ’n go in
camp ”—so poor old Jack crossed over to come back no more.
All through the Superstition Mountains, we worked as carefully as we had
worked in the more northern portion on our trip to MacDowell, but we met
with less success than we had anticipated; on the morning of the 15th of
January, after a toilsome night-climb over rough mesas and mountains, we
succeeded in crawling upon a small rancheria ere the first rays of the
sun had surmounted the eastern horizon; but the occupants were too smart
for us and escaped, leaving three dead in our hands and thirteen
captives—women and children; we also captured the old chief of the band,
who, like his people, seemed to be extremely poor. Three days later we
heard loud shouting from a high mountain to the left of the trail we
were following. Thinking at first that it was from some hostile parties,
Major Brown sent out a detachment of the scouts to run them off. In
about half an hour or less a young boy not more than eight years old
came down to see the commanding officer, who had halted the column until
he could learn what was wanted. The youngster was very much agitated,
and trembled violently; he said that he had been sent down to say that
his people did not want any more war, but were desirous of making peace.
He was given something to eat and tobacco to smoke, and afterwards one
of the pack-mules was led up and its “cargo” unloaded so that the cook
might give the ambassador a good stomachful of beans always kept cooked
in a train. The Apache was very grateful, and after talking with the
scouts was much more at his ease. He was presented with an old blouse by
one of the officers, and then Major Brown told him that he was too young
to represent anybody, but not too young to see for himself that we did
not want to harm any people who were willing to behave themselves. He
could return in safety to his own people up on the hill, and tell them
that they need not be afraid to send in any one they wished to talk for
them, but to send in some grown persons. The boy darted up the flanks of
the mountain with the agility of a jack rabbit, and was soon lost to
view in the undergrowth of scrub oak; by the time we had ascended the
next steep grade there was more shouting, and this time the boy returned
with a wrinkled squaw, who was at once ordered back—after the usual
feed—one of our people going with her to tell the men of the band that
we were not women or babies, and that we could talk business with men
only.
This summons brought back a very decrepit antique, who supported his
palsied limbs upon one of the long walking-canes so much in use among
the Apaches. He too was the recipient of every kindness, but was told
firmly that the time for fooling had long since gone by, and that to-day
was a much better time for surrendering than to-morrow; our command
would not harm them if they wanted to make peace, but the country was
full of scouting parties and at any moment one of these was likely to
run in upon them and kill a great many; the best thing, the safest
thing, for them to do was to surrender at once and come with us into
Camp Grant. The old chief replied that it was not possible for him to
surrender just then and there, because his band had scattered upon
learning of our approach, but if we would march straight for Grant he
would send out for all his people, gather them together, and catch up
with us at the junction of the Gila and San Pedro, and then accompany us
to Camp Grant or other point to be agreed upon.
We moved slowly across the mountains, getting to the place of meeting on
the day assigned, but there were no Indians, and we all felt that we had
been outwitted. The scouts however said, “Wait and see!” and sure
enough, that evening, the old chief and a small party of his men arrived
and had another talk and smoke with Major Brown, who told them that the
only thing to do was to see General Crook whose word would determine all
questions. Every man in the column was anxious to get back, and long
before reveille most of them were up and ready for the word for
breakfast and for boots and saddles. There was a feeling that so far as
the country south of the Salt River was concerned, the campaign was
over; and though we saw no men, women, or children other than those
captured by us on the way, all felt that the surrender would surely take
place as agreed upon.
When we started up the dusty valley of the San Pedro not one of the
strangers had arrived, but as we drew nigh to the site of the post, it
seemed as if from behind clusters of sage brush, giant cactus, palo
verde or mesquite, along the trail, first one, then another, then a
third Apache would silently join the column with at most the greeting of
“Siquisn” (My brother). When we reported to Crook again at the post,
whither he had returned from MacDowell, there were one hundred and ten
people with us, and the whole business done so quietly that not one-half
the command ever knew whether any Apaches had joined us or not. With
these Indians General Crook had a long and satisfactory talk, and
twenty-six of them enlisted as scouts. From this point I was sent by
General Crook to accompany Major Brown in a visit to the celebrated
chief of the Chiricahua Apaches, “Cocheis,” of which visit I will speak
at length later on.
We rejoined the command at the foot of Mount Graham, where General Crook
had established the new post of Camp Grant. It offered many inducements
which could not well be disregarded in that arid section; the Graham
Mountain, or Sierra Bonita as known to the Mexicans, is well timbered
with pine and cedar; has an abundance of pure and cold water, and
succulent pasturage; there is excellent building-stone and adobe clay
within reach, and nothing that could reasonably be expected is lacking.
There were twelve or thirteen companies of cavalry concentrated at the
new camp, and all or nearly all these were, within a few days, on the
march for the Tonto Basin, to give it another overhauling.
I do not wish to describe the remainder of the campaign in detail; it
offered few features not already presented to my readers; it was rather
more unpleasant than the first part, on account of being to a greater
extent amid the higher elevations of the Sierra Ancha and the Matitzal
and Mogollon, to which the hostiles had retreated for safety. There was
deeper snow and much more of it, more climbing and greater heights to
attain, severer cold and more discomfort from being unable to find dry
fuel. There was still another source of discomfort which should not be
overlooked. At that time the peculiar disease known as the epizoötic
made its appearance in the United States, and reached Arizona, crippling
the resources of the Department in horses and mules; we had to abandon
our animals, and take our rations and blankets upon our own backs, and
do the best we could. In a very few weeks the good results became
manifest, and the enemy showed signs of weakening. The best element in
this campaign was the fact that on so many different occasions the
Apaches were caught in the very act of raiding, plundering, and killing,
and followed up with such fearful retribution. Crook had his forces so
disposed that no matter what the Apaches might do or not do, the troops
were after them at once, and, guided as we were by scouts from among
their own people, escape was impossible. For example, a large band
struck the settlements near the town of Wickenburg, and there surprised
a small party of young men, named Taylor, recently arrived from England
or Wales. All in the party fell victims to the merciless aim of the
assailants, who tied two of them to cactus, and proceeded deliberately
to fill them with arrows. One of the poor wretches rolled and writhed in
agony, breaking off the feathered ends of the arrows, but each time he
turned his body, exposing a space not yet wounded, the Apaches shot in
another barb. The Indians then robbed the ranchos, stole or killed all
the cattle and horses, and struck out across the ragged edge of the
great Bradshaw Mountain, then over into the Tonto Basin. Having
twenty-four hours the start of the troops, they felt safe in their
expedition, but they were followed by Wesendorf, of the First Cavalry;
by Rice, of the Twenty-third Infantry; by Almy, Watts, and myself; by
Woodson, of the Fifth; and lastly by Randall, of the Twenty-third, who
was successful in running them to earth in the stronghold on the summit
of Turret Butte, where they fancied that no enemy would dare follow.
Randall made his men crawl up the face of the mountain on hands and
feet, to avoid all danger of making noise by the rattling of stones, and
shortly after midnight had the satisfaction of seeing the glimmer of
fires amid the rocks scattered about on the summit. He waited patiently
until dawn, and then led the charge, the Apaches being so panic-stricken
that numbers of the warriors jumped down the precipice and were dashed
to death. This and the action in the cave in the Salt River Cañon were
the two affairs which broke the spirit of the Apache nation; they
resembled each other in catching raiders just in from attacks upon the
white settlements or those of friendly tribes, in surprising bands in
strongholds which for generations had been invested with the attribute
of impregnability, and in inflicting great loss with comparatively small
waste of blood to ourselves.
In singling out these two incidents I, of course, do not wish in the
slightest degree to seem to disparage the gallant work performed by the
other officers engaged, each and all of whom are entitled to as much
credit as either Randall or Brown for earnest, intelligent service,
gallantry in trying situations, and cheerful acceptance of the most
annoying discomforts. No army in the world ever accomplished more with
the same resources than did the little brigade which solved the Apache
problem under Crook in the early seventies. There were no supplies of
food beyond the simplest components of the ration and an occasional can
of some such luxury as tomatoes or peaches; no Pullman cars to transport
officers in ease and comfort to the scene of hostilities; no telegraph
to herald to the world the achievements of each day. There was the
satisfaction of duty well performed, and of knowing that a fierce,
indomitable people who had been a scourge in the history of two great
nations had been humbled, made to sue for peace, and adopt to a very
considerable extent the ways of civilization.
The old settlers in both northern and southern Arizona still speak in
terms of cordial appreciation of the services of officers like Hall,
Taylor, Burns, Almy, Thomas, Rockwell, Price, Parkhurst, Michler, Adam,
Woodson, Hamilton, Babcock, Schuyler, and Watts, all of the Fifth
Cavalry; Ross, Reilley, Sherwood, Theller and Major Miles, of the
Twenty-first Infantry; Garvey, Bomus, Carr, Grant, Bernard, Brodie,
Vail, Wessendorf, McGregor, Hein, Winters, Harris, Sanford, and others,
of the First Cavalry; Randall, Manning, Rice, and others, of the
Twenty-third Infantry; Gerald Russell, Morton, Crawford, Cushing,
Cradlebaugh, of the Third Cavalry; Byrne, of the Twelfth Infantry, and
many others who during this campaign, or immediately preceding it, had
rendered themselves conspicuous by most efficient service. The army of
the United States has no reason to be ashamed of the men who wore its
uniform during the dark and troubled period of Arizona’s history; they
were grand men; they had their faults as many other people have, but
they never flinched from danger or privation. I do not mean to say that
I have given a complete list; it is probable that many very
distinguished names have been omitted, for which I apologise now by
saying that I am not writing a history, but rather a series of
reminiscences of those old border days. I would not intentionally fail
in paying tribute to any brave and deserving comrade, but find it beyond
my power to enumerate all.
There was one class of officers who were entitled to all the praise they
received and much more besides, and that class was the surgeons, who
never flagged in their attentions to sick and wounded, whether soldier
or officer, American, Mexican, or Apache captive, by night or by day.
Among these the names of Stirling, Porter, Matthews, Girard, O’Brien,
Warren E. Day, Steiger, Charles Smart, and Calvin Dewitt will naturally
present themselves to the mind of any one familiar with the work then
going on, and with them should be associated those of the guides, both
red and white, to whose fidelity, courage, and skill we owed so much.
The names of Mason McCoy, Edward Clark, Archie MacIntosh, Al Spears, C.
E. Cooley, Joe Felmer, Al Seiber, Dan O’Leary, Lew Elliott, Antonio
Besias, Jose De Leon, Maria Jilda Grijalba, Victor Ruiz, Manuel Duran,
Frank Cahill, Willard Rice, Oscar Hutton, Bob Whitney, John B. Townsend,
Tom Moore, Jim O’Neal, Jack Long, Hank ’n Yank (Hewitt and Bartlett),
Frank Monach, Harry Hawes, Charlie Hopkins, and many other scouts,
guides, and packers of that onerous, dangerous, and crushing campaign,
should be inscribed on the brightest page in the annals of Arizona, and
locked up in her archives that future generations might do them honor.
The great value of the services rendered by the Apache scouts
“Alchesay,” “Jim,” “Elsatsoosn,” “Machol,” “Blanquet,” “Chiquito,”
“Kelsay,” “Kasoha,” “Nantaje,” “Nannasaddi,” was fittingly acknowledged
by General Crook in the orders issued at the time of the surrender of
the Apaches, which took place soon after.
Many enlisted men rendered service of a most important and efficient
character, which was also acknowledged at the same time and by the same
medium; but, on account of lack of space, it is impossible for me to
mention them all; conspicuous in the list are the names of Buford,
Turpin, Von Medern, Allen, Barrett, Heineman, Stanley, Orr, Lanahan,
Stauffer, Hyde, and Hooker.
In the first week of April, a deputation from the hostile bands reached
Camp Verde, and expressed a desire to make peace; they were told to
return for the head chiefs, with whom General Crook would talk at that
point. Signal fires were at once set on all the hills, scouts sent to
all places where they would be likely to meet with any of the
detachments in the Tonto Basin or the Mogollon, and all possible
measures taken to prevent any further hostilities, until it should be
seen whether or not the enemy were in earnest in professions of peace.
Lieutenant Jacob Almy, Fifth Cavalry, with whose command I was on duty,
scoured the northwest portion of the Tonto Basin, and met with about the
same experiences as the other detachments; but I wish to tell that at
one of our camping-places, on the upper Verde, we found a ruined
building of limestone, laid in adobe, which had once been of two or
three stories in height, the corner still standing being not less than
twenty-five feet above the ground, with portions of rafters of
cottonwood, badly decayed, still in place. It was the opinion of both
Almy and myself, after a careful examination, that it was of Spanish and
not of Indian origin, and that it had served as a depot for some of the
early expeditions entering this country; it would have been in the line
of advance of Coronado upon Cibola, and I then thought and still think
that it was most probably connected with his great expedition which
passed across Arizona in 1541. All this is conjecture, but not a very
violent one; Coronado is known to have gone to “Chichilticale,” supposed
to have been the “Casa Grande” on the Gila; if so, his safest, easiest,
best supplied, and most natural line of march would have been up the
valley of the Verde near the head of which this ruin stands.
Another incident was the death of one of our packers, Presiliano Monje,
a very amiable man, who had made friends of all our party. He had caught
a bad cold in the deep snows on the summit of the Matitzal Range, and
this developed into an attack of pneumonia; there was no medical officer
with our small command, and all we could do was based upon ignorance and
inexperience, no matter how much we might desire to help him. Almy hoped
that upon descending from the high lands into the warm valley of the
Verde, the change would be beneficial to our patient; but he was either
too far gone or too weak to respond, and the only thing left for us to
do was to go into bivouac and try the effect of rest and quiet. For two
days we had carried Monje in a chair made of mescal stalks strapped to
the saddle, but he was by this time entirely too weak to sit up, and we
were all apprehensive of the worst. It was a trifle after midnight, on
the morning of the 23d of March, 1873, that “the change” came, and we
saw that it was a matter of minutes only until we should have a death in
our camp; he died before dawn and was buried immediately after sunrise,
under the shadow of a graceful cottonwood, alongside of two pretty
springs whose babbling waters flowed in unison with the music of the
birds. In Monje’s honor we named the cañon “Dead Man’s Cañon,” and as
such it is known to this day.
At Camp Verde we found assembled nearly all of Crook’s command, and a
dirtier, greasier, more uncouth-looking set of officers and men it would
be hard to encounter anywhere. Dust, soot, rain, and grime had made
their impress upon the canvas suits which each had donned, and with hair
uncut for months and beards growing with straggling growth all over the
face, there was not one of the party who would venture to pose as an
Adonis; but all were happy, because the campaign had resulted in the
unconditional surrender of the Apaches and we were now to see the reward
of our hard work. On the 6th of April, 1873, the Apache-Mojave chief
“Cha-lipun” (called “Charley Pan” by the Americans), with over three
hundred of his followers, made his unconditional submission to General
Crook; they represented twenty-three hundred of the hostiles.
General Crook sat on the porch of Colonel Coppinger’s quarters and told
the interpreters that he was ready to hear what the Indians had to say,
but he did not wish too much talk. “Cha-lipun” said that he had come in,
as the representative of all the Apaches, to say that they wanted to
surrender because General Crook had “too many cartridges of copper”
(“demasiadas cartuchos de cobre”). They had never been afraid of the
Americans alone, but now that their own people were fighting against
them they did not know what to do; they could not go to sleep at night,
because they feared to be surrounded before daybreak; they could not
hunt—the noise of their guns would attract the troops; they could not
cook mescal or anything else, because the flame and smoke would draw
down the soldiers; they could not live in the valleys—there were too
many soldiers; they had retreated to the mountain tops, thinking to hide
in the snow until the soldiers went home, but the scouts found them out
and the soldiers followed them. They wanted to make peace, and to be at
terms of good-will with the whites.
Crook took “Cha-lipun” by the hand, and told him that, if he would
promise to live at peace and stop killing people, he would be the best
friend he ever had. Not one of the Apaches had been killed except
through his own folly; they had refused to listen to the messengers sent
out asking them to come in; and consequently there had been nothing else
to do but to go out and kill them until they changed their minds. It was
of no use to talk about who began this war; there were bad men among all
peoples; there were bad Mexicans, as there were bad Americans and bad
Apaches; our duty was to end wars and establish peace, and not to talk
about what was past and gone. The Apaches must make this peace not for a
day or a week, but for all time; not with the Americans alone, but with
the Mexicans as well; and not alone with the Americans and Mexicans, but
with all the other Indian tribes. They must not take upon themselves the
redress of grievances, but report to the military officer upon their
reservation, who would see that their wrongs were righted. They should
remain upon the reservation, and not leave without written passes;
whenever the commanding officer wished to ascertain the presence of
themselves or any of the bands upon the reservation, they should appear
at the place appointed to be counted. So long as any bad Indians
remained out in the mountains, the reservation Indians should wear tags
attached to the neck, or in some other conspicuous place, upon which
tags should be inscribed their number, letter of band, and other means
of identification. They should not cut off the noses of their wives when
they became jealous of them. They should not be told anything that was
not exactly true. They should be fully protected in all respects while
on the reservation. They should be treated exactly as white men were
treated; there should be no unjust punishments. They must work like
white men; a market would be found for all they could raise, and the
money should be paid to themselves and not to middlemen. They should
begin work immediately; idleness was the source of all evils, and work
was the only cure. They should preserve order among themselves; for this
purpose a number would be enlisted as scouts, and made to do duty in
keeping the peace; they should arrest and confine all drunkards,
thieves, and other offenders.
CHAPTER XII.
THE PROBLEM OF CIVILIZING THE APACHES—THE WORK PERFORMED BY MASON,
SCHUYLER, RANDALL, RICE, AND BABCOCK—TUCSON RING INFLUENCE AT
WASHINGTON—THE WOUNDING OF LIEUTENANT CHARLES KING—THE KILLING OF
LIEUTENANT JACOB ALMY—THE SEVEN APACHE HEADS LAID ON THE SAN CARLOS
PARADE GROUND—CROOK’S CASH MARKET FOR THE FRUITS OF APACHE
INDUSTRY—HIS METHOD OF DEALING WITH INDIANS.
There was no time lost in putting the Apaches to work. As soon as the
rest of the band had come in, which was in less than a week, the Apaches
were compelled to begin getting out an irrigating ditch, under the
superintendence of Colonel Julius W. Mason, Fifth Cavalry, an officer of
much previous experience in engineering. Their reservation was
established some miles above the post, and the immediate charge of the
savages was intrusted to Lieutenant Walter S. Schuyler, Fifth Cavalry,
who manifested a wonderful aptitude for the delicate duties of his
extra-military position. There were absolutely no tools on hand
belonging to the Indian Bureau, and for that matter no medicines, and
only the scantiest supplies, but Crook was determined that work should
be begun without the delay of a day. He wanted to get the savages
interested in something else besides tales of the war-path, and to make
them feel as soon as possible the pride of ownership, in which he was a
firm believer.
According to his idea, the moment an Indian began to see the fruits of
his industry rising above the ground, and knew that there was a ready
cash market awaiting him for all he had to sell, he would see that
“peace hath her victories no less renowned than war.” He had been going
on the war-path, killing and robbing the whites, not so much because his
forefathers had been doing it before him, but because it was the road to
wealth, to fame, to prominence and distinction in the tribe. Make the
Apache or any other Indian see that the moment he went on the war-path
two white men would go out also; and make him see that patient industry
produces wealth, fame, and distinction of a much more permanent and a
securer kind than those derived from a state of war, and the Indian
would acquiesce gladly in the change. But neither red man nor white
would submit peaceably to any change in his mode of life which was not
apparently to his advantage.
The way the great irrigating ditch at Camp Verde was dug was this. All
the Apaches were made to camp along the line of the proposed canal, each
band under its own chiefs. Everything in the shape of a tool which could
be found at the military post of Camp Verde or in those of Whipple and
Hualpai was sent down to Mason. There were quantities of old and
worn-out spades, shovels, picks, hatchets, axes, hammers, files, rasps,
and camp kettles awaiting the action of an inspector prior to being
thrown away and dropped from the returns as “worn out in service.” With
these and with sticks hardened in the fire, the Apaches dug a ditch five
miles long, and of an average cross-section of four feet wide by three
deep, although there were places where the width of the upper line was
more than five feet, and that of the bottom four, with a depth of more
than five. The men did the excavating; the women carried off the earth
in the conical baskets which they make of wicker-work. As soon as the
ditch was ready, General Crook took some of the chiefs up to his
headquarters at Fort Whipple, and there had them meet deputations from
all the other tribes living within the territory of Arizona, with whom
they had been at war—the Pimas, Papagoes, Maricopas, Yumas, Cocopahs,
Hualpais, Mojaves, Chimahuevis—and with them peace was also formally
made.
Mason and Schuyler labored assiduously with the Apaches, and soon had
not less than fifty-seven acres of land planted with melons and other
garden truck, of which the Indians are fond, and every preparation made
for planting corn and barley on a large scale. A large water-wheel was
constructed out of packing-boxes, and at a cost to the Government,
including all labor and material, of not quite thirty-six dollars. The
prospects of the Apaches looked especially bright, and there was hope
that they might soon be self-sustaining; but it was not to be. A “ring”
of Federal officials, contractors, and others was formed in Tucson,
which exerted great influence in the national capital, and succeeded in
securing the issue of peremptory orders that the Apaches should leave at
once for the mouth of the sickly San Carlos, there to be herded with the
other tribes. It was an outrageous proceeding, one for which I should
still blush had I not long since gotten over blushing for anything that
the United States Government did in Indian matters. The Apaches had been
very happy at the Verde, and seemed perfectly satisfied with their new
surroundings. There had been some sickness, occasioned by their using
too freely the highly concentrated foods of civilization, to which they
had never been accustomed; but, aside from that, they themselves said
that their general condition had never been so good.
The move did not take place until the winter following, when the Indians
flatly refused to follow the special agent sent out by the Indian
Bureau, not being acquainted with him, but did consent to go with
Lieutenant George O. Eaton, Fifth Cavalry, who has long since resigned
from the army, and is now, I think, Surveyor-General of Montana. At Fort
Apache the Indians were placed under the charge of Major George M.
Randall, Twenty-third Infantry, assisted by Lieutenant Rice, of the same
regiment. This portion of the Apache tribe is of unusual intelligence,
and the progress made was exceptionally rapid. Another large body had
been congregated at the mouth of the San Carlos, representing those
formerly at old Camp Grant, to which, as we have seen, were added the
Apache-Mojaves from the Verde. The Apache-Mojave and the Apache-Yuma
belonged to one stock, and the Apache or Tinneh to another. They speak
different languages, and although their habits of life are almost
identical, there is sufficient divergence to admit of the entrance of
the usual jealousies and bickerings bound to arise when two strange,
illiterate tribes are brought in enforced contact.
The strong hand and patient will of Major J. B. Babcock ruled the
situation at this point; he was the man for the place, and performed his
duties in a manner remarkable for its delicate appreciation of the
nature of the Indians, tact in allaying their suspicions, gentle
firmness in bringing them to see that the new way was the better, the
only way. The path of the military officers was not strewn with roses;
the Apaches showed a willingness to conform to the new order of things,
but at times failed to apprehend all that was required of them, at
others showed an inclination to backslide.
Crook’s plan was laid down in one line in his instructions to officers
in charge of reservations: “Treat them as children in _ignorance_, not
in _innocence_.” His great principle of life was, “The greatest of these
is charity.” He did not believe, and he did not teach, that an Indian
could slough off the old skin in a week or a month; he knew and he
indicated that there might be expected a return of the desire for the
old wild life, with its absolute freedom from all restraint, its old
familiar food, and all its attendant joys, such as they were. To conquer
this as much as possible, he wanted to let the Indians at times cut and
roast mescal, gather grass seeds and other diet of that kind, and, where
it could be done without risk, go out on hunts after antelope and deer.
It could not be expected that all the tribe should wish to accept the
manner of life of the whites; there would surely be many who would
prefer the old order of things, and who would work covertly for its
restitution. Such men were to be singled out, watched, and their schemes
nipped in the bud.
There were outbreaks, attempted outbreaks, and rumors of outbreaks at
Verde, Apache, and at the San Carlos, with all the attendant excitement
and worry. At or near the Verde, in the “Red Rock country,” and in the
difficult brakes of the “Hell” and “Rattlesnake” cañons issuing out of
the San Francisco Peak, some of the Apache-Mojaves who had slipped back
from the party so peremptorily ordered to the San Carlos had secreted
themselves and begun to give trouble. They were taken in hand by
Schuyler, Seiber, and, at a later date, by Captain Charles King, the
last-named being dangerously wounded by them at the “Sunset Pass.” At
the San Carlos Agency there were disputes of various kinds springing up
among the tribes, and worse than that a very acrimonious condition of
feeling between the two men who claimed to represent the Interior
Department. As a sequel to this, my dear friend and former commanding
officer, Lieutenant Jacob Almy, lost his life.
Notwithstanding the chastisement inflicted upon the Apaches, some of the
minor chiefs, who had still a record to make, preferred to seclude
themselves in the cañons and cliffs, and defy the powers of the general
government. It was a source of pride to know that they were talked about
by the squaws and children upon the reserve, as men whom the whites had
not been able to capture or reduce. Towards these men, Crook was patient
to a wonderful degree, thinking that reason would assert itself after a
time, and that, either of their own motion, or through the persuasion of
friends, they would find their way into the agencies.
The ostensible reason for the absence of these men was their objection
to the system of “tagging” in use at the agencies, which General Crook
had introduced for the better protection of the Indians, as well as to
enable the commanding officers to tell at a moment’s notice just where
each and every one of the males capable of bearing arms was to be found.
These tags were of various shapes, but all small and convenient in size;
there were crosses, crescents, circles, diamonds, squares, triangles,
etc., each specifying a particular band, and each with the number of its
owner punched upon it. If a scouting party found Apaches away from the
vicinity of the agencies, they would make them give an account of
themselves, and if the pass shown did not correspond with the tags worn,
then there was room for suspicion that the tags had been obtained from
some of the Agency Indians in gambling—in the games of “Con Quien,”
“Tze-chis,” “Mush-ka”—to which the Apaches were passionately addicted,
and in which they would play away the clothes on their backs when they
had any. Word was sent to the Indians of whom I am writing to come in
and avoid trouble, and influences of all kinds were brought to bear upon
the squaws with them—there were only a few—to leave the mountains, and
return to their relatives at the San Carlos. The principal chiefs were
gradually made to see that they were responsible for this condition of
affairs, and that they should compel these outlaws to obey the orders
which had been issued for the control of the whole tribe. So long as
they killed no one the troops and Apache scouts would not be sent out
against them; they should be given ample opportunity for deciding; but
it might be well for them to decide quickly, as in case of trouble
arising at San Carlos, the whole tribe would be held responsible for the
acts of these few. One of them was named “Chuntz,” another “Chaundezi,”
and another “Clibicli;” there were more in the party, but the other
names have temporarily escaped my memory. The meaning of the first word
I do not know; the second means “Long Ear,” and is the Apache term for
mule; the third I do not know, but it has something to do with horse,
the first syllable meaning horse, and the whole word, I believe, means
“the horse that is tied.” They lived in the cañon of the Gila, and would
often slip in by night to see their relatives at the agency.
One night there was an awful time at San Carlos; a train of wagons laden
with supplies for Camp Apache had halted there, and some of the
teamsters let the Apaches, among whom were the bad lot under Chuntz,
have a great deal of vile whiskey. All hands got gloriously drunk, and
when the teamsters refused to let their red-skinned friends have any
more of the poisonous stuff the Apaches killed them. If it could only
happen so that every man who sold whiskey to an Indian should be killed
before sundown, it would be one of the most glorious things for the far
western country. In the present case, innocent people were hurt, as they
always are; and General Crook informed the chiefs that he looked to them
to put a prompt termination to such excesses, and that if they did not
he would take a hand himself. With that he returned to headquarters. The
chiefs sent out spies, definitely placed the outlaws, who had been in
the habit of changing their lodging or hiding spots with great
frequency, and then arranged for their capture and delivery to the
military authorities. They were surprised, summoned to surrender,
refused, and attempted to fight, but were all killed; and as the Apaches
knew no other mode of proving that they had killed them, and as they
could not carry in the whole body of each one, they cut off the heads
and brought them to San Carlos, in a sack, and dumped them out on the
little parade in front of the commanding officer’s tent.
The Apaches of Arizona were now a conquered tribe, and, as Crook well
expressed the situation in a General Order, his troops had terminated a
campaign which had lasted from the days of Cortés. The view entertained
of the work performed in Arizona by those in authority may be summed up
in the orders issued by General Schofield, at that date in command of
the Military Division of the Pacific:
[_General Orders No. 7._]
HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION OF THE PACIFIC,
SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., April 28, 1873.
To Brevet Major-General George Crook, commanding the Department of
Arizona, and to his gallant troops, for the extraordinary service they
have rendered in the late campaign against the Apache Indians, the
Division Commander extends his thanks and his congratulations upon
their brilliant successes. They have merited the gratitude of the
nation.
By order of MAJOR-GENERAL SCHOFIELD.
(Signed) J. C. KELTON,
_Assistant Adjutant-General_.
Randall and Babcock persevered in their work, and soon a change had
appeared in the demeanor of the wild Apaches; at San Carlos there grew
up a village of neatly made brush huts, arranged in rectilinear streets,
carefully swept each morning, while the huts themselves were clean as
pie-crust, the men and women no longer sleeping on the bare ground, but
in bunks made of saplings, and elevated a foot or more above the floor;
on these, blankets were neatly piled. The scouts retained in service as
a police force were quietly given to understand that they must be models
of cleanliness and good order as well as of obedience to law. The squaws
were encouraged to pay attention to dress, and especially to keep their
hair clean and brushed. No abuse of a squaw was allowed, no matter what
the excuse might be. One of the most prominent men of the Hualpai
tribe—“Qui-ua-than-yeva”—was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment because
he persisted in cutting off the nose of one of his wives. This fearful
custom finally yielded, and there are now many people in the Apache
tribe itself who have never seen a poor woman thus disfigured and
humiliated.
Crook’s promise to provide a ready cash market for everything the
Apaches could raise was nobly kept. To begin with, the enlistment of a
force of scouts who were paid the same salary as white soldiers, and at
the same periods with them, introduced among the Apaches a small, but
efficient, working capital. Unaccustomed to money, the men, after
receiving their first pay, spent much of it foolishly for candy and
other trivial things. Nothing was said about that; they were to be made
to understand that the money paid them was their own to spend or to save
as they pleased, and to supply as much enjoyment as they could extract
from it. But, immediately after pay-day, General Crook went among the
Apaches on the several reservations and made inquiries of each one of
the principal chiefs what results had come to their wives and families
from this new source of wealth. He explained that money could be made to
grow just as an acorn would grow into the oak; that by spending it
foolishly, the Apaches treated it just as they did the acorn which they
trod under foot; but by investing their money in California horses and
sheep, they would be gaining more money all the time they slept, and by
the time their children had attained maturity the hills would be dotted
with herds of horses and flocks of sheep. Then they would be rich like
the white men; then they could travel about and see the world; then they
would not be dependent upon the Great Father for supplies, but would
have for themselves and their families all the food they could eat, and
would have much to sell.
The Apaches did send into Southern California and bought horses and
sheep as suggested, and they would now be self-supporting had the good
management of General Crook not been ruthlessly sacrificed and
destroyed. Why it is that the Apache, living as he does on a reservation
offering all proper facilities for the purpose, is not raising his own
meat, is one of the conundrums which cannot be answered by any one of
common sense. The influences against it are too strong: once let the
Indian be made self-supporting, and what will become of the gentle
contractor?
Some slight advance has been made in this direction during the past
twenty years, but it has been ridiculously slight in comparison with
what it should have been. In an examination which General Crook made
into the matter in 1884 it was found that there were several herds of
cattle among the Indians, one herd that I saw numbering 384 head. It was
cared for and herded in proper manner; and surely if the Apaches can do
that much in one, or two, or a dozen cases, they can do it in all with
anything like proper encouragement. The proper encouragement of which I
speak is “the ready cash market” promised by General Crook, and by means
of which he effected so much.
In every band of aborigines, as in every community of whites, or of
blacks, or of Chinese, there are to be found men and women who are
desirous of improving the condition of themselves and families; and
alongside of them are others who care for nothing but their daily bread,
and are not particularly careful how they get that so that they get it.
There should be a weeding out of the progressive from the
non-progressive element, and by no manner of means can it be done so
effectually as by buying from the industrious all that they can sell to
the Government for the support of their own people. There should be
inserted in every appropriation bill for the support of the army or of
the Indians the provision that anything and everything called for under
a contract for supplies, which the Indians on a reservation or in the
vicinity of a military post can supply, for the use of the troops or for
the consumption of the tribe, under treaty stipulations, shall be bought
of the individual Indians raising it and at a cash price not less than
the price at which the contract has been awarded. For example, because
it is necessary to elucidate the simplest propositions in regard to the
Indians, if the chief “A” has, by industry and thrift, gathered together
a herd of one hundred cattle, all of the increase that he may wish to
sell should be bought from him; he will at once comprehend that work has
its own reward, and a very prompt and satisfactory one. He has his
original numbers, and he has a snug sum of money too; he buys more
cattle, he sees that he is becoming a person of increased importance,
not only in the eyes of his own people but in that of the white men too;
he encourages his sons and all his relatives to do the same as he has
done, confident that their toil will not go unrewarded.
Our method has been somewhat different from that. Just as soon as a few
of the more progressive people begin to accumulate a trifle of property,
to raise sheep, to cultivate patches of soil and raise scanty crops, the
agent sends in the usual glowing report of the occurrence, and to the
mind of the average man and woman in the East it looks as if all the
tribe were on the highway to prosperity, and the first thing that
Congress does is to curtail the appropriations. Next, we hear of
“disaffection,” the tribe is reported as “surly and threatening,” and we
are told that the “Indians are killing their cattle.” But, whether they
go to war or quietly starve on the reservation effects no change in the
system; all supplies are bought of a contractor as before, and the red
man is no better off, or scarcely any better off, after twenty years of
peace, than he was when he surrendered. The amount of beef contracted
for during the present year—1891—for the Apaches at Camp Apache and San
Carlos, according to the _Southwestern Stockman_ (Wilcox, Arizona), was
not quite two million pounds, divided as follows: eight hundred thousand
pounds for the Indians at San Carlos, on the contract of John H. Norton,
and an additional five hundred thousand pounds for the same people on
the contract of the Chiricahua Cattle Company; and five hundred thousand
pounds for the Indians at Fort Apache, on the contract of John H.
Norton. Both of the above contracting parties are known to me as
reliable and trustworthy; I am not finding fault with them for getting a
good, fat contract; but I do find fault with a system which keeps the
Indian a savage, and does not stimulate him to work for his own support.
At one time an epidemic of scarlet fever broke out among the children on
the Apache reservation, and numbers were carried off. Indians are prone
to sacrifice property at the time of death of relations, and, under the
advice of their “Medicine Men,” slaughtered altogether nearly two
thousand sheep, which they had purchased with their own money or which
represented the increase from the original flock. Crook bought from the
Apaches all the hay they would cut, and had the Quartermaster pay cash
for it; every pound of hay, every stick of wood, and no small portion of
the corn used by the military at Camp Apache and San Carlos were
purchased from the Apaches as individuals, and not from contractors or
from tribes. The contractors had been in the habit of employing the
Apaches to do this work for them, paying a reduced scale of remuneration
and often in store goods, so that by the Crook method the Indian
received from two to three times as much as under the former system, and
this to the great advantage of Arizona, because the Indian belongs to
the Territory of Arizona, and will stay there and buy what he needs from
her people, but the contractor has gone out to make money, remains until
he accomplishes his object, and then returns to some congenial spot
where his money will do most good for himself. Of the contractors who
made money in Arizona twenty years ago not one remained there: all went
into San Francisco or some other large city, there to enjoy their
accumulations. I am introducing this subject now because it will save
repetition, and will explain to the average reader why it was that the
man who did so much to reduce to submission the worst tribes this
country has ever known, and who thought of nothing but the performance
of duty and the establishment of a permanent and honorable peace,
based—to quote his own language—“upon an exact and even-handed justice
to red men and to white alike,” should have been made the target for the
malevolence and the rancor of every man in the slightest degree
interested in the perpetuation of the contract system and in keeping the
aborigine in bondage.
To sum up in one paragraph, General Crook believed that the American
Indian was a human being, gifted with the same god-like apprehension as
the white man, and like him inspired by noble impulses, ambition for
progress and advancement, but subject to the same infirmities, beset
with the same or even greater temptations, struggling under the
disadvantages of an inherited ignorance, which had the double effect of
making him doubt his own powers in the struggle for the new life and
suspicious of the truthfulness and honesty of the advocates of all
innovations. The American savage has grown up as a member of a tribe, or
rather of a clan within a tribe; all his actions have been made to
conform to the opinions of his fellows as enunciated in the clan
councils or in those of the tribe.
It is idle to talk of de-tribalizing the Indian until we are ready to
assure him that his new life is the better one. By the Crook method of
dealing with the savage he was, at the outset, de-tribalized without
knowing it; he was individualized and made the better able to enter into
the civilization of the Caucasian, which is an individualized
civilization. As a scout, the Apache was enlisted as an individual; he
was made responsible individually for all that he did or did not. He was
paid as an individual. If he cut grass, he, and not his tribe or clan,
got the money; if he split fuel, the same rule obtained; and so with
every grain of corn or barley which he planted. If he did wrong, he was
hunted down as an individual until the scouts got him and put him in the
guard-house. If his friends did wrong, the troops did not rush down upon
him and his family and chastise them for the wrongs of others; he was
asked to aid in the work of ferreting out and apprehending the
delinquent; and after he had been brought in a jury of the Apaches
themselves deliberated upon the case and never failed in judgment,
except on the side of severity.
There were two cases of chance-medley coming under my own observation,
in both of which the punishment awarded by the Apache juries was much
more severe than would have been given by a white jury. In the first
case, the man supposed to have done the killing was sentenced to ten
years’ hard labor; in the other, to three. A white culprit was at the
same time sentenced in Tucson for almost the same offence to one year’s
confinement in jail. Indians take to trials by jury as naturally as
ducks take to water. Trial by jury is not a system of civilized people;
it is the survival of the old trial by clan, the rudimentary justice
known to all tribes in the most savage state.
General Crook believed that the Indian should be made self-supporting,
not by preaching at him the merits of labor and the grandeur of toiling
in the sun, but by making him see that every drop of honest sweat meant
a penny in his pocket. It was idle to expect that the Indian should
understand how to work intelligently in the very beginning; he
represented centuries of one kind of life, and the Caucasian the slow
evolution of centuries under different conditions and in directions
diametrically opposite. The two races could not, naturally, understand
each other perfectly, and therefore to prevent mistakes and the doing of
very grievous injustice to the inferior, it was the duty and to the
interest of the superior race to examine into and understand the mental
workings of the inferior.
The American Indian, born free as the eagle, would not tolerate
restraint, would not brook injustice; therefore, the restraint imposed
must be manifestly for his benefit, and the government to which he was
subjected must be eminently one of kindness, mercy, and absolute
justice, without necessarily degenerating into weakness. The American
Indian despises a liar. The American Indian is the most generous of
mortals: at all his dances and feasts the widow and the orphan are the
first to be remembered. Therefore, when he meets with an agent who is
“on the make,” that agent’s influence goes below zero at once; and when
he enters the trader’s store and finds that he is charged three dollars
and a half for a miserable wool hat, which, during his last trip to
Washington, Albuquerque, Omaha, or Santa Fé, as the case may be, he has
seen offered for a quarter, he feels that there is something wrong, and
he does not like it any too well. For that reason Crook believed that
the Indians should be encouraged to do their own trading and to set up
their own stores. He was not shaken in this conviction when he found
agents interested in the stores on the reservations, a fact well
understood by the Apaches as well as by himself. It was a very touching
matter at the San Carlos, a few years ago, to see the then agent
counting the proceeds of the weekly sales made by his son-in-law—the
Indian trader.
At the date of the reduction of the Apaches, the success of the
Government schools was not clearly established, so that the subject of
Indian instruction was not then discussed except theoretically. General
Crook was always a firm believer in the education of the American
Indian; not in the education of a handful of boys and girls sent to
remote localities, and there inoculated with new ideas and deprived of
the old ones upon which they would have to depend for getting a
livelihood; but in the education of the younger generation as a
generation. Had the people of the United States taken the young
generation of Sioux and Cheyennes in 1866, and educated them in
accordance with the terms of the treaty, there would not have been any
trouble since. The children should not be torn away from the parents to
whom they are a joy and a consolation, just as truly as they are to
white parents; they should be educated within the limits of the
reservation so that the old folks from time to time could get to see
them and note their progress. As they advanced in years, the better
qualified could be sent on to Carlisle and Hampton, and places of that
grade. The training of the Indian boy or girl should be largely
industrial, but as much as possible in the line of previous acquirement
and future application. Thus, the Navajos, who have made such advances
as weavers and knitters, might well be instructed in that line of
progress, as might the Zunis, Moquis, and other Pueblos.
After the Indian had returned to his reservation, it was the duty of the
Government to provide him with work in his trade, whatever it might be,
to the exclusion of the agency hanger-on. Why should boys be trained as
carpenters and painters, and then see such work done by white men at the
agency, while they were forced to remain idle? This complaint was made
by one of the boys at San Carlos. Why should Apache, Sioux, or Cheyenne
children who have exerted themselves to learn our language, be left
unemployed, while the work of interpretation is done, and never done any
too well, at the agencies by white men? Does it not seem a matter of
justice and common sense to fill all such positions, as fast as the same
can be done without injustice to faithful incumbents under the present
system, by young men trained in our ideas and affiliated to our ways?
Let all watchmen and guardians of public stores—all the policemen on the
reserves—be natives; let all hauling of supplies be done by the Indians
themselves, and let them be paid the full contract rate if they are able
to haul no more than a portion of the supplies intended for their use.
Some of these ideas have already been adopted, in part, by the Indian
Bureau, and with such success that there is more than a reasonable
expectancy that the full series might be considered and adopted with the
best results. Instruct the young women in the rudiments of housekeeping,
as already outlined. Provide the reservations with saw-mills and
grist-mills, and let the Indians saw their own planks and grind their
own meal and flour. This plan has been urged by the Apaches so
persistently during recent years that it would seem not unreasonable to
make the experiment on some of the reservations. Encourage them to raise
chickens and to sell eggs; it is an industry for which they are well
fitted, and the profits though small would still be profits, and one
drop more in the rivulet of gain to wean them from idleness, ignorance,
and the war-path. Let any man who desires to leave his reservation and
hunt for work, do so; give him a pass; if he abuses the privilege by
getting drunk or begging, do not give him another. I have known many
Indians who have worked away from their own people and always with the
most decided benefit. They did not always return, but when they did they
did not believe in the prophecies of the “Medicine Men,” or listen to
the boasts of those who still long for the war-path.
The notion that the American Indian will not work is a fallacious one;
he will work just as the white man will—when it is to his advantage to
do so. The adobes in the military post of Fort Wingate, New Mexico, were
all made by Navajo Indians, the brothers of the Apaches. The same tribe
did no small amount of work on the grading of the Atlantic and Pacific
Railroad where it passes across their country. The American Indian is a
slave to drink where he can get it, and he is rarely without a supply
from white sources; he is a slave to the passion of gaming; and he is a
slave to his superstitions, which make the “Medicine Men” the power they
are in tribal affairs as well as in those relating more strictly to the
clan and family. These are the three stumbling-blocks in the pathway of
the Indian’s advancement; how to remove them is a most serious problem.
The Indian is not the only one in our country who stumbles from the same
cause; we must learn to be patient with him, but merciless toward all
malefactors caught selling intoxicating liquors to red men living in the
tribal relation. Gambling and superstition will be eradicated in time by
the same modifying influences which have wrought changes among the
Caucasian nations; education will afford additional modes of killing
time, and be the means of exposing the puerility of the pretensions of
the prophets.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE CLOSING DAYS OF CROOK’S FIRST TOUR IN ARIZONA—VISIT TO THE MOQUI
VILLAGES—THE PAINTED DESERT—THE PETRIFIED FORESTS—THE GRAND
CAÑON—THE CATARACT CAÑON—BUILDING THE TELEGRAPH LINE—THE APACHES
USING THE TELEGRAPH LINE—MAPPING ARIZONA—AN HONEST INDIAN AGENT—THE
CHIRICAHUA APACHE CHIEF, COCHEIS—THE “HANGING” IN TUCSON—A FRONTIER
DANIEL—CROOK’S DEPARTURE FROM ARIZONA—DEATH VALLEY—THE FAIRY LAND OF
LOS ANGELES—ARRIVAL AT OMAHA.
In the fall and winter of 1874, General Crook made a final tour of
examination of his department and the Indian tribes therein. He found a
most satisfactory condition of affairs on the Apache reservation, with
the Indians working and in the best of spirits. On this trip he included
the villages of the Moquis living in houses of rock on perpendicular
mesas of sandstone, surrounded by dunes or “medanos” of sand, on the
northern side of the Colorado Chiquito. The Apaches who had come in from
the war-path had admitted that a great part of the arms and ammunition
coming into their hands had been obtained in trade with the Moquis, who
in turn had purchased from the Mormons or Utes. Crook passed some eight
or ten days among the Moquis during the season when the peaches were
lusciously ripe and being gathered by the squaws and children. These
peach orchards, with their flocks of sheep and goats, are evidences of
the earnest work among these Moquis of the Franciscan friars during the
last years of the sixteenth and the earlier ones of the seventeenth
centuries. Crook let the Moquis know that he did not intend to punish
them for what might have been the fault of their ignorance, but he
wished to impress upon them that in future they must in no manner aid or
abet tribes in hostility to the Government of the United States. This
advice the chiefs accepted in very good part, and I do not believe that
they have since been guilty of any misdemeanor of the same nature.
Of this trip among the Moquis, and of the Moquis themselves, volumes
might be written. There is no tribe of aborigines on the face of the
earth, there is no region in the world, better deserving of examination
and description than the Moquis and the country they inhabit. It is
unaccountable to me that so many of our own countrymen seem desirous of
taking a flying trip to Europe when at their feet, as it were, lies a
land as full of wonders as any depicted in the fairy tales of childhood.
Here, at the village of Hualpi, on the middle mesa, is where I saw the
repulsive rite of the Snake Dance, in which the chief “Medicine Men”
prance about among women and children, holding live and venomous
rattlesnakes in their mouths. Here, one sees the “Painted Desert,” with
its fantastic coloring of all varieties of marls and ochreous earths,
equalling the tints so lavishly scattered about in the Cañon of the
Yellowstone. Here, one begins his journey through the petrified forests,
wherein are to be seen the trunks of giant trees, over one hundred feet
long, turned into precious jasper, carnelian, and banded agate. Here,
one is within stone’s throw of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado and the
equally deep lateral cañons of the Cataract and the Colorado Chiquito,
on whose edge he may stand in perfect security and gaze upon the rushing
torrent of the mighty Colorado, over a mile beneath. Here is the great
Cohonino Forest, through which one may ride for five days without
finding a drop of water except during the rainy season. Truly, it is a
wonderland, and in the Grand Cañon one can think of nothing but the
Abomination of Desolation.
There is a trail descending the Cataract Cañon so narrow and dangerous
that pack trains rarely get to the bottom without accidents. When I went
down there with General Crook, we could hear the tinkling of the
pack-train bell far up in the cliffs above us, while the mules looked
like mice, then like rats, then like jack-rabbits, and finally like dogs
in size. One of our mules was pushed off the trail by another mule
crowding up against it, and was hurled over the precipice and dashed
into a pulp on the rocks a thousand feet below. There is no place in the
world at present so accessible, and at the same time so full of the most
romantic interest, as are the territories of Arizona and New Mexico: the
railroad companies have been derelict in presenting their attractions to
the travelling public, else I am sure that numbers of tourists would
long since have made explorations and written narratives of the wonders
to be seen.
General Crook did not limit his attentions to the improvement of the
Indians alone. There was a wide field of usefulness open to him in other
directions, and he occupied it and made it his own. He broke up every
one of the old sickly posts, which had been hotbeds of fever and
pestilence, and transferred the garrisons to elevated situations like
Camp Grant, whose beautiful situation has been alluded to in a previous
chapter. He connected every post in the department with every other post
by first-class roads over which wagons and ambulances of all kinds could
journey without being dashed to pieces. In several cases, roads were
already in existence, but he devoted so much care to reducing the length
and to perfecting the carriage-way that they became entirely new
pathways, as in the case of the new road between Camps Whipple and
Verde. The quarters occupied by officers and men were made habitable by
repairs or replaced by new and convenient houses. The best possible
attention was given to the important matter of providing good, pure,
cool water at every camp. The military telegraph line was built from San
Diego, California, to Fort Yuma, California, thence to Maricopa Wells,
Arizona, where it bifurcated, one line going on to Prescott and Fort
Whipple, the other continuing eastward to Tucson, and thence to San
Carlos and Camp Apache, or rather to the crossing of the Gila River,
fifteen miles from San Carlos.
For this work, the most important ever undertaken in Arizona up to that
time, Congress appropriated something like the sum of fifty-seven
thousand dollars, upon motion of Hon. Richard C. McCormick, then
Delegate; the work of construction was superintended by General James J.
Dana, Chief Quartermaster of the Department of Arizona, who managed the
matter with such care and economy that the cost was some ten or eleven
thousand dollars less than the appropriation. The citizens of Arizona
living nearest the line supplied all the poles required at the lowest
possible charge. When it is understood that the total length of wire
stretched was over seven hundred miles, the price paid (less than
forty-seven thousand dollars) will show that there was very little room
for excessive profit for anybody in a country where all transportation
was by wagon or on the backs of mules across burning deserts and over
lofty mountains. The great task of building this line was carried out
successfully by Major George F. Price, Fifth Cavalry, since dead, and by
Lieutenant John F. Trout, Twenty-third Infantry.
One of the first messages transmitted over the wire from Prescott to
Camp Apache was sent by an Apache Indian, to apprise his family that he
and the rest of the detachment with him would reach home on a certain
day. To use a Hibernicism, the wire to Apache did not go to Apache, but
stopped at Grant, at the time of which I am writing. General Crook sent
a message to the commanding officer at Camp Grant, directing him to use
every endeavor to have the message sent by the Apache reach its
destination, carrying it with the official dispatches forwarded by
courier to Camp Apache. The family and friends of the scout were
surprised and bewildered at receiving a communication sent over the
white man’s talking wire (Pesh-bi-yalti), of which they had lately been
hearing so much; but on the day appointed they all put on their thickest
coats of face paint, and donned their best bibs and tuckers, and sallied
out on foot and horseback to meet the incoming party, who were soon
descried descending the flank of an adjacent steep mountain. That was a
great day for Arizona; it impressed upon the minds of the savages the
fact that the white man’s arts were superior to those which their own
“Medicine Men” pretended to possess, and made them see that it would be
a good thing for their own interests to remain our friends.
The Apaches made frequent use of the wire. A most amusing thing occurred
at Crook’s headquarters, when the Apache chief “Pitone,” who had just
come up from a mission of peace to the Yumas, on the Colorado, and who
had a grievance against “Pascual,” the chief of the latter tribe, had
the operator, Mr. Strauchon, inform “Pascual” that if he did not do a
certain thing which he had promised to do, the Apaches would go on the
war-path, and fairly wipe the ground with the Yumas. There couldn’t have
been a quainter antithesis of the elements of savagery and enlightenment
than the presence of that chief in the telegraph office on such a
mission. The Apaches learned after a while how to stop the communication
by telegraph, which they did very adroitly by pulling down the wire,
cutting it in two, and tying the ends together with a rubber band,
completely breaking the circuit. The linemen would have to keep their
eyes open to detect just where such breaks existed.
General Crook held that it was the height of folly for the troops of the
United States to attempt to carry on an offensive campaign against an
enemy whose habits and usages were a mystery to them, and whose
territory was a sealed book. Therefore, he directed that each scouting
party should map out its own trail, and send the result on to the
headquarters, to be incorporated in the general map of the territory
which was to be made by the engineer officers in San Francisco. Arizona
was previously unknown, and much of its area had never been mapped. He
encouraged his officers by every means in his power to acquire a
knowledge of the rites and ceremonies, the ideas and feelings, of the
Indians under their charge; he believed, as did the late General P. H.
Sheridan, that the greater part of our troubles with the aborigines
arose from our ignorance of their character and wants, their
aspirations, doubts, and fears. It was much easier and very much cheaper
to stifle and prevent an outbreak than it was to suppress one which had
gained complete headway. These opinions would not be worthy of note had
not Crook and his friend and superior, Sheridan, been officers of the
American army; the English—in Canada, in New Zealand, in Australia, in
India—have found out the truth of this statement; the French have been
led to perceive it in their relations with the nomadic tribes of
Algeria; and the Spaniards, to a less extent perhaps, have practised the
same thing in America. But to Americans generally, the aborigine is a
nonentity except when he is upon the war-path. The moment he concludes
to live at peace with the whites, that moment all his troubles begin.
Never was there a truer remark than that made by Crook: “The American
Indian commands respect for his rights only so long as he inspires
terror for his rifle.” Finally Crook was anxious to obtain for Arizona,
and set out in the different military posts, such fruits and vines as
might be best adapted to the climate. This project was never carried
out, as the orders transferring the General to another department
arrived, and prevented, but it is worth while to know that several of
the springs in northern Arizona were planted with watercress by Mrs.
Crook, the General’s wife, who had followed him to Arizona, and remained
there until his transfer to another field.
Only two clouds, neither bigger than a man’s hand, but each fraught with
mischief to the territory and the whole country, appeared above
Arizona’s horizon—the Indian ring and the Chiricahuas. The Indian ring
was getting in its work, and had already been remarkably successful in
some of its manipulations of contracts. The Indian Agent, Dr. Williams,
in charge of the Apache-Yumas and Apache-Mojaves, had refused to receive
certain sugar on account of the presence of great boulders in each sack.
Peremptory orders for the immediate receipt of the sugar were received
in due time from Washington. Williams placed one of these immense lumps
of stone on a table in his office, labelled “Sample of sugar received at
this agency under contract of ——.” Williams was a very honest,
high-minded gentleman, and deserved something better than to be hounded
into an insane asylum, which fate he suffered. I will concede, to save
argument, that an official who really desires to treat Indians fairly
and honestly must be out of his head, but this form of lunacy is
harmless, and does not call for such rigorous measures.
The case of the Chiricahua Apaches was a peculiar one: they had been
specially exempted from General Crook’s jurisdiction, and in his plans
for the reduction of the other bands in hostility they had not been
considered. General O. O. Howard had gone out on a special mission to
see the great chief “Cocheis,” and, at great personal discomfort and no
little personal risk, had effected his purpose. They were congregated at
the “Stronghold,” in the Dragoon Mountains, at the same spot where they
had had a fight with Gerald Russell a few months previously. Their
chief, “Cocheis,” was no doubt sincere in his determination to leave the
war-path for good, and to eat the bread of peace. Such, at least, was
the opinion I formed when I went in to see him, as a member of Major
Brown’s party, in the month of February, 1873.
“Cocheis” was a tall, stately, finely built Indian, who seemed to be
rather past middle life, but still full of power and vigor, both
physical and mental. He received us urbanely, and showed us every
attention possible. I remember, and it shows what a deep impression
trivial circumstances will sometimes make, that his right hand was badly
burned in two circular holes, and that he explained to me that they had
been made by his younger wife, who was jealous of the older and had
bitten him, and that the wounds had been burned out with a kind of
“moxa” with which the savages of this continent are familiar. Trouble
arose on account of this treaty from a combination of causes of no
consequence when taken singly, but of great importance in the aggregate.
The separation of the tribe into two sections, and giving one kind of
treatment to one and another to another, had a very bad effect: some of
the Chiricahuas called their brethren at the San Carlos “squaws,”
because they had to work; on their side, a great many of the Apaches at
the San Carlos and Camp Apache, feeling that the Chiricahuas deserved a
whipping fully as much as they did, were extremely rancorous towards
them, and never tired of inventing stories to the disparagement of their
rivals or an exaggeration of what was truth. There were no troops
stationed on the Chiricahua reservation to keep the unruly young bucks
in order, or protect the honest and well-meaning savages from the
rapacity of the white vultures who flocked around them, selling vile
whiskey in open day. All the troubles of the Chiricahuas can be traced
to this sale of intoxicating fluids to them by worthless white men.
Complaints came up without cease from the people of Sonora, of raids
alleged to have been made upon their exposed hamlets nearest the Sierra
Madre; Governor Pesquiera and General Crook were in correspondence upon
this subject, but nothing could be done by the latter because the
Chiricahuas were not under his jurisdiction. How much of this raiding
was fairly attributable to the Chiricahuas who had come in upon the
reservation assigned them in the Dragoon Mountains, and how much was
chargeable to the account of small parties which still clung to the old
fastnesses in the main range of the Sierra Madre will never be known;
but the fact that the Chiricahuas were not under military surveillance
while all the other bands were, gave point to the insinuations and
emphasis to the stories circulated to their disparagement.
Shortly after the Apaches had been put upon the various reservations
assigned them, it occurred to the people of Tucson that they were
spending a great deal of money for the trials, re-trials, and
maintenance of murderers who killed whom they pleased, passed their days
pleasantly enough in jail, were defended by shrewd “Jack lawyers,” as
they were called, and under one pretest or another escaped scot free.
There had never been a judicial execution in the territory, and, under
the technicalities of law, there did not appear much chance of any being
recorded for at least a generation. It needed no argument to make plain
to the dullest comprehension that that sort of thing would do good to no
one; that it would end in perpetuating a bad name for the town; and
destroy all hope of its becoming prosperous and populous with the advent
of the railroads of which mention was now frequently made. The more the
matter was talked over, the more did it seem that something must be done
to free Tucson from the stigma of being the refuge of murderers of every
degree.
One of the best citizens of the place, a Mexican gentleman named
Fernandez, I think, who kept a _monte pio_, or pawnbroker’s shop, in the
centre of the town not a block from the post-office, was found dead in
his bed one morning, and alongside of him his wife and baby, all three
with skulls crushed by the blow of bludgeons or some heavy instrument.
All persons—Mexicans and Americans—joined in the hunt for the assassins,
who were at last run to the ground, and proved to be three Mexicans,
members of a gang of bandits who had terrorized the northern portions of
Sonora for many years. They were tracked by a most curious chain of
circumstances, the clue being given by a very intelligent Mexican, and
after being run down one of their number confessed the whole affair, and
showed where the stolen jewellery had been buried under a mesquite bush,
in plain sight of, and close to, the house of the Governor. I have
already written a description of this incident, and do not care to
reproduce it here, on account of lack of space, but may say that the
determination to lynch them was at once formed and carried into effect,
under the superintendence of the most prominent citizens, on the “Plaza”
in front of the cathedral. There was another murderer confined in the
jail for killing a Mexican “to see him wriggle.” This wretch, an
American tramp, was led out to his death along with the others, and in
less than ten minutes four human forms were writhing on the hastily
constructed gallows. Whatever censure might be levelled against this
high-handed proceeding on the score of illegality was rebutted by the
citizens on the ground of necessity and the evident improvement of the
public morals which followed, apparently as a sequence of these drastic
methods.
Greater authority was conferred upon the worthy Teutonic apothecary who
had been acting as probate judge, or rather much of the authority which
he had been exercising was confirmed, and the day of evil-doers began to
be a hard and dismal one. The old judge was ordinarily a pharmacist, and
did not pretend to know anything of law, but his character for probity
and honesty was so well established that the people, who were tired of
lawyers, voted to put in place a man who would deal out justice,
regardless of personal consequences. The blind goddess had no worthier
representative than this frontier Hippocrates, in whose august presence
the most hardened delinquents trembled. Blackstone and Coke and
Littleton and Kent were not often quoted in the dingy halls of justice
where the “Jedge” sat, flanked and backed by shelves of bottles bearing
the cabalistic legends, “Syr. Zarzæ Comp.,” “Tinc. Op. Camphor,” “Syr.
Simpl.,”and others equally inspiring, and faced by the small row of
books, frequently consulted in the knottier and more important cases,
which bore the titles “Materia Medica,” “Household Medicine,” and others
of the same tenor. Testimony was never required unless it would serve to
convict, and then only a small quantity was needed, because the man who
entered within the portals of this abode of Esculapius and of Justice
left all hope behind. Every criminal arraigned before this tribunal was
already convicted; there remained only the formality of passing
sentence, and of determining just how many weeks to affix as the
punishment in the “shane gang.” An adjustment of his spectacles, an
examination of the “Materia Medica,” and the Judge was ready for
business. Pointing his long finger at the criminal, he would thunder:
“Tu eres vagabundo” (thou art a tramp), and then proceed to sentence the
delinquent on his face to the chain-gang for one week, or two, or three,
as the conditions of his physiognomy demanded.
“Jedge, isn’t thet a r-a-a-ther tough dose to give t’ a poor fellow what
knowed your grandfadder?” asked one American prisoner who had received
an especially gratifying assurance of the Judge’s opinion of his moral
turpitude.
“Ha! you knowed my grandfaddy; vere abouts, mine frient, you know him?”
queried the legal functionary.
“Wa’al, Jedge, it’s jest like this. Th’ las’ time I seed the ole gent
was on th’ Isthmus o’ Panama; he war a-swingin’ by his tail from th’
limbs of a cocoanut tree, a-gatherin’ o’ cocoanuts, ’n——”
“Dare; dat vill do, mine frient, dat vill do. I gifs you anodder two
viks mit der shane-gang fur gontembt ov goort; how you like dat?”
Many sly jokes were cracked at the old judge’s expense, and many
side-splitting stories narrated of his eccentricities and curious legal
interpretations; but it was noticed that the supply of tramps was
steadily diminishing, and the town improving in every essential. If the
Judge ever made a mistake on the side of mercy I never happened to hear
of it, although I do not attempt to say that he may not, at some time in
his legal career, have shown tenderness unrecorded. He certainly did
heroic work for the advancement of the best interests of Tucson and a
good part of southern Arizona.
The orders of the War Department transferring General Crook to the
command of the Department of the Platte arrived in the middle of March,
and by the 25th of that month, 1875, he, with his personal staff, had
started for the new post of duty. A banquet and reception were tendered
by the citizens of Prescott and northern Arizona, which were attended by
the best people of that section. The names of the Butlers, Bashfords,
Marions, Heads, Brooks, Marks, Bowers, Buffums, Hendersons, Bigelows,
Richards, and others having charge of the ceremonies, showed how
thoroughly Americanized that part of Arizona had become. Hundreds walked
or rode out to the “Burnt Ranch” to say the last farewell, or listen to
the few heartfelt words of kindness with which General Kautz, the new
commander, wished Crook godspeed and good luck in his new field of
labor. Crook bade farewell to the people for whom he had done so much,
and whom he always held so warmly in his heart; he looked for the last
time, it might be, upon the snowy peak of the San Francisco, and then
headed westward, leaving behind him the Wonderland of the Southwest,
with its fathomless cañons, its dizzy crags, its snow-mantled sierras,
its vast deserts, its blooming oases—its vast array of all the
contradictions possible in topography. The self-lacerating Mexican
_penitente_, and the self-asserting American prospector, were to fade
from the sight, perhaps from the memory; but the acts of kindness
received and exchanged between man and man of whatever rank and whatever
condition of life were to last until memory itself should depart.
The journey from Whipple or Prescott to Los Angeles was in those days
over five hundred miles in length, and took at least eleven days under
the most favorable conditions; it obliged one to pass through the
territory of the Hualpais and the Mojaves, to cross the Colorado River
at the fort of the same name, and drive across the extreme southern
point of Nevada, and then into California in the country of the
Chimahuevis; to drag along over the weary expanse of the “Soda Lake,”
where for seven miles the wheels of the wagons cut their way into the
purest baking soda, and the eyes grew weak with gazing out upon a snowy
area of dazzling whiteness, the extreme end of the celebrated “Death
Valley.” After reaching San Bernardino, the aspect changed completely:
the country became a fairyland, filled with grapes and figs and oranges,
merry with the music of birds, bright with the bloom of flowers. Lowing
herds and buzzing bees attested that this was indeed a land of milk and
honey, beautiful to the eye, gladsome to every sense. The railroad had
not yet reached Los Angeles, so that to get to San Francisco, travellers
who did not care to wait for the weekly steamer were obliged to secure
seats in the “Telegraph” stage line. This ran to Bakersfield in the San
Joaquin Valley, the then terminus of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and
through some of the country where the Franciscans had wrought such
wonderful results among the savages whom they had induced to live in the
“Missions.” In due course of time Crook arrived at Omaha, Nebraska, his
new headquarters, where the citizens tendered him a banquet and
reception, as had those of the California metropolis—San Francisco.
[Illustration: GENERAL CROOK AND THE FRIENDLY APACHE, ALCHISAY.]
CHAPTER XIV.
THE DEPARTMENT OF THE PLATTE—THE BLACK HILLS DIFFICULTY—THE ALLISON
COMMISSION—CRAZY HORSE AND SITTING BULL—THE FIRST WINTER
CAMPAIGN—CLOTHING WORN BY THE TROOPS—THE START FOR THE BIG
HORN—FRANK GRUARD, LOUIS RICHAUD, BIG BAT, LOUIS CHANGRAU, AND OTHER
GUIDES.
The new command stretched from the Missouri River to the western shores
of the Great Salt Lake, and included the growing State of Nebraska and
the promising territories of Wyoming, Utah, and part of Idaho. The
Indian tribes with which more or less trouble was to be expected were:
the Bannocks and Shoshones, in Idaho and western Wyoming; the Utes, in
Utah and western Wyoming; the Sioux, Cheyennes, and Arapahoes, in Dakota
and Nebraska; the Otoes, Poncas, Omahas, Winnebagoes, and Pawnees, in
various sections of Nebraska. The last five bands were perfectly
peaceful, and the only trouble they would occasion would be on account
of the raids made upon them by the hostiles and their counter-raids to
steal ponies. The Pawnees had formerly been the active and daring foe of
the white men, but were now disposed to go out, whenever needed, to
attack the Sioux or Dakotas. The Utes, Bannocks, and Shoshones claimed
to be friendly, as did the Arapahoes, but the hostile feelings of the
Cheyennes and Sioux were scarcely concealed, and on several occasions
manifested in no equivocal manner. The Utes, Bannocks, and Shoshones
were “mountain” Indians, but were well supplied with stock; they often
made incursions into the territory of the “plains” tribes, their
enemies, of whom the most powerful were the Sioux and Cheyennes, whose
numbers ran into the thousands.
There was much smouldering discontent among the Sioux and Cheyennes,
based upon our failure to observe the stipulations of the treaty made in
1867, which guaranteed to them an immense strip of country, extending,
either as a reservation or a hunting ground, clear to the Big Horn
Mountains. By that treaty they had been promised one school for every
thirty children, but no schools had yet been established under it.
Reports of the fabulous richness of the gold mines in the Black Hills
had excited the cupidity of the whites and the distrust of the red men.
The latter knew only too well, that the moment any mineral should be
found, no matter of what character, their reservation would be cut down;
and they were resolved to prevent this, unless a most liberal price
should be paid for the property. The Sioux had insisted upon the
abandonment of the chain of posts situated along the line of the Big
Horn, and had carried their point; but, in 1874, after the murder of
Lieutenant Robertson, or Robinson, of the Fourteenth Infantry, while in
charge of a wood-chopping party on Laramie Peak, and their subsequent
refusal to let their agent fly the American flag over the agency,
General John E. Smith, Fourteenth Infantry, at the head of a strong
force, marched over to the White Earth country and established what have
since been designated as Camps Sheridan and Robinson at the agencies of
the great chiefs “Spotted Tail” and “Red Cloud” respectively. In 1874,
General Custer made an examination of the Black Hills, and reported
finding gold “from the grass roots down.” In the winter of that year a
large party of miners, without waiting for the consent of the Indians to
be obtained, settled on the waters of Frenchman, or French, Creek, built
a stockade, and began to work with rockers. These miners were driven
about from point to point by detachments of troops, but succeeded in
maintaining a foothold until the next year. One of the commands sent to
look them up and drive them out was the company of the Third Cavalry
commanded by Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Guy V. Henry, which was caught in
a blizzard and nearly destroyed. In the early months of 1875, a large
expedition, well equipped, was sent to explore and map the Black Hills
and the adjacent country. The main object was the determination of the
auriferous character of the ledges and the value of the country as a
mining district; the duty of examination into these features devolved
upon the geologists and engineers sent out by the Department of the
Interior, namely, Messrs. Janney, McGillicuddy, Newton, Brown, and
Tuttle. The military escort, consisting of six full companies of the
Second and Third Cavalry, two pieces of artillery, and several companies
of the Ninth and Fourteenth Infantry to guard supply trains, was
employed in furnishing the requisite protection to the geologists, and
in obtaining such additional information in regard to the topography of
the country, the best lines for wagon roads, and sites for such posts as
might be necessary in the future. This was under the command of Colonel
R. I. Dodge, of the Twenty-third Infantry, and made a very complete
search over the whole of the hills, mapping the streams and the trend of
the ranges, and opening up one of the most picturesque regions on the
face of the globe.
It was never a matter of surprise to me that the Cheyennes, whose
corn-fields were once upon the Belle Fourche, the stream which runs
around the hills on the north side, should have become frenzied by the
report that these lovely valleys were to be taken from them whether they
would or no. In the summer of 1876 the Government sent a commission, of
which Senator William B. Allison, of Iowa, was chairman, and the late
Major-General Alfred H. Terry, a member, to negotiate with the Sioux for
the cession of the Black Hills, but neither Sioux nor Cheyennes were in
the humor to negotiate. There appeared to be a very large element among
the Indians which would sooner have war than peace; all sorts of
failures to observe previous agreements were brought up, and the
advocates of peace were outnumbered. One day it looked very much as if a
general _mêlée_ was about to be precipitated. The hostile element, led
by “Little Big Man,” shrieked for war, and “Little Big Man” himself was
haranguing his followers that that was as good a moment as any to begin
shooting. The courage and coolness of two excellent officers, Egan and
Crawford, the former of the Second, the latter of the Third Cavalry,
kept the savages from getting too near the Commissioners: their commands
formed line, and with carbines at an “advance” remained perfectly
motionless, ready to charge in upon the Indians should the latter begin
an attack. Egan has often told me that he was apprehensive lest the
accidental discharge of a carbine or a rifle on one side or the other
should precipitate a conflict in which much blood would surely be shed.
Egan has been many years dead—worn out in service—and poor Crawford was
killed by Mexican irregular troops at the moment that he had surprised
and destroyed the village of the Chiricahua Apache chief “Geronimo,” in
the depths of the Sierra Madre, Mexico. Much of our trouble with these
tribes could have been averted, had we shown what would appear to them
as a spirit of justice and fair dealing in this negotiation. It is hard
to make the average savage comprehend why it is that as soon as his
reservation is found to amount to anything he must leave and give up to
the white man. Why should not Indians be permitted to hold mining or any
other kind of land? The whites could mine on shares or on a royalty, and
the Indians would soon become workers in the bowels of the earth. The
right to own and work mines was conceded to the Indians by the Crown of
Spain, and the result was beneficial to both races. In 1551, the Spanish
Crown directed that “Nadie los impidiese que pudiesem tomar minas de
Oro, i Plata i beneficiarlas como hacian los Castellanos.”—_Herrera,
Decade, VIII., lib. 8, cap. 12, p. 159._ The policy of the American
people has been to vagabondize the Indian, and throttle every ambition
he may have for his own elevation; and we need not hug the delusion that
the savage has been any too anxious for work, unless stimulated,
encouraged, and made to see that it meant his immediate benefit and
advancement.
During the closing hours of the year 1875 the miners kept going into the
Black Hills, and the Indians kept annoying all wagon-trains and small
parties found on the roads. There were some killed and others wounded
and a number of wagons destroyed, but hostilities did not reach a
dangerous state, and were confined almost entirely to the country
claimed by the Indians as their own. It was evident, however, to the
most obtuse that a very serious state of affairs would develop with the
coming of grass in the spring. The Indians were buying all the arms,
ammunition, knives, and other munitions of war from the traders and
every one else who would sell to them. On our side the posts were filled
with supplies, garrisons changed to admit of the concentration of the
largest possible numbers on most threatened localities, and the
efficient pack-trains which had rendered so valuable a service during
the campaign in Arizona were brought up from the south and congregated
at Cheyenne, Wyoming. The policy of the Government must have seemed to
the Indians extremely vacillating. During the summer of 1876
instructions of a positive character were sent to General Crook,
directing the expulsion from the Black Hills of all unauthorized persons
there assembled. General Crook went across country to the stockade
erected on French Creek, Dakota, and there had an interview with the
miners, who promised to leave the country, first having properly
recorded their claims, and await the action of Congress in regard to the
opening of that region to settlement. As winter approached another tone
was assumed in our dealings with the Sioux and Cheyennes: word was sent
to the different bands living at a distance from the agencies that they
must come in to be enrolled or inspected; some obeyed the summons, some
quietly disregarded it, and one band—a small one, under “Sitting
Bull”—flatly refused compliance. The Indians did not seem to understand
that any one had a right to control their movements so long as they
remained within the metes and bounds assigned them by treaty.
Neither “Crazy Horse” nor “Sitting Bull” paid any attention to the
summons; and when early in the summer (1875) a message reached them,
directing them to come in to Red Cloud Agency to confer with the Black
Hills Commission, this is the reply which Louis Richaud, the half-breed
messenger, received: “Are you the Great God that made me, or was it the
Great God that made me who sent you? If He asks me to come see him, I
will go, but the Big Chief of the white men must come see me. I will not
go to the reservation. I have no land to sell. There is plenty of game
here for us. We have enough ammunition. We don’t want any white men
here.” “Sitting Bull” delivered the above in his haughtiest manner, but
“Crazy Horse” had nothing to say. “Crazy Horse” was the general, the
fighter; “Sitting Bull” was a “Medicine Man” and a fine talker, and
rarely let pass an opportunity for saying something. He was, in that one
respect, very much like old “Shunca luta,” at Red Cloud, who was always
on his feet in council or conference.
Upon the recommendation of Inspector Watkins of the Indian Bureau, made
in the winter of 1875, the War Department was instructed to take in hand
the small band of five hundred Sioux supposed to be lurking in the
country bounded by the Big Horn Mountains, the Tongue and the
Yellowstone rivers. The inspector expressed the opinion that a regiment
of cavalry was all that was needed to make a quick winter campaign and
strike a heavy and decisive blow. This opinion was not, however, borne
out by the facts. The number of Indians out in that country was
absolutely unknown to our people, and all guesses as to their strength
were wildly conjectural. The country in which the coming operations were
to be carried on was as different as different could be from the rugged
ranges, the broken mesas, and the arid deserts of Arizona.
Topographically, it might be styled a great undulating plain, rolling
like the waves of ocean—a sea of grass, over which still roamed great
herds of buffalo, and antelope by the hundred. It is far better watered
than either New Mexico or Arizona, and has a vegetation of an entirely
different type. There is considerable cactus of the plate variety in
certain places, but the general rule is that the face of nature is
covered with bunch and buffalo grass, with a straggling growth of timber
along the water courses—cottonwood, ash, willow, and now and then a
little oak. On the summits of the buttes there is pine timber in some
quantity, and upon the higher elevations of the ranges like the Big Horn
the pine, fir, and other coniferæ grow very dense; but at the height of
eleven thousand feet all timber ceases and the peaks project perfectly
bald and tower upwards toward the sky, enveloped in clouds and nearly
all the year round wrapped in snow. Coal is to be found in wonderful
abundance and of excellent quality, and it is now asserted that the
State of Wyoming is better supplied with carbon than is the State of
Pennsylvania. Coal oil is also found in the Rattlesnake basin, but has
not yet been made commercially profitable.
Montana, situated to the north of Wyoming, is perhaps a trifle colder in
winter, but both are cold enough; although, strange to say, few if any
of the settlers suffer from the effects of the severe reduction of
temperature—at least few of those whose business does not compel them to
face the blizzards. Stage-drivers, stockmen, settlers living on isolated
ranchos, were the principal sufferers. Both Wyoming and Montana were
fortunate in securing a fine class of population at the outset, men and
women who would stand by the new country until after all the
scapegraces, scoundrels, and cutthroats who had flocked in with the
advent of the railroads had died off, most of them with their boots on.
The Union Pacific Railroad crossed the Territory from east to west,
making the transportation of supplies a matter of comparative ease, and
keeping the various posts within touch of civilization. South of the
North Platte River the country was held by the troops of the United
States, and was pretty well understood and fairly well mapped; north of
that stream was a _terra incognita_, of which no accurate charts
existed, and of which extremely little information could be obtained.
Every half-breed at Red Cloud or Spotted Tail Agency who could be
secured was employed as a scout, and placed under the command of Colonel
Thaddeus H. Stanton, of the Pay Department, who was announced as Chief
of Scouts.
The Sioux and Cheyennes whom we were soon to face were “horse” Indians,
who marched and fought on horseback; they kept together in large bodies,
and attacked by charging and attempting to stampede the herds of the
troops. They were well armed with the newest patterns of magazine arms,
and were reported to be possessed of an abundance of metallic
cartridges. Their formidable numbers, estimated by many authorities at
as many as fifty thousand for the entire nation, had given them an
overweening confidence in themselves and a contempt for the small bodies
of troops that could be thrown out against them, and it was generally
believed by those pretending to know that we should have all the
fighting we wanted. These were the points upon which the pessimists most
strongly insisted. The cloud certainly looked black enough to satisfy
any one, but there was a silver lining to it which was not perceptible
at first inspection. If a single one of these large villages could be
surprised and destroyed in the depth of winter, the resulting loss of
property would be so great that the enemy would suffer for years; their
exposure to the bitter cold of the blizzards would break down any
spirit, no matter how brave; their ponies would be so weak that they
could not escape from an energetic pursuit, and the advantages would
seem to be on the side of the troops.
Crook took up his quarters in Cheyenne for a few days to push forward
the preparations for the departure of the column of cavalry which was to
compose the major part of the contemplated expedition. Cheyenne was then
wild with excitement concerning the Indian war, which all the old
frontiersmen felt was approaching, and the settlement of the Black
Hills, in which gold in unheard-of sums was alleged to be hidden. No
story was too wild, too absurd, to be swallowed with eagerness and
published as a fact in the papers of the town. Along the streets were
camped long trains of wagons loading for the Black Hills; every store
advertised a supply of goods suited to the Black Hills’ trade; the
hotels were crowded with men on their way to the new El Dorado; even the
stage-drivers, boot-blacks, and bellboys could talk nothing but Black
Hills—Black Hills. So great was the demand for teams to haul goods to
the Black Hills that it was difficult to obtain the necessary number to
carry the rations and ammunition needed for Crook’s column. Due north of
Cheyenne, and ninety miles from it, lay old Fort Laramie, since
abandoned; ninety-five miles to the northwest of Laramie lay Fort
Fetterman, the point of departure for the expedition. To reach Fort
Laramie we had to cross several small but useful streamlets—the Lodge
Pole, Horse, and Chug—which course down from the higher elevations and
are lost in the current of the North Platte and Laramie rivers.
The country was well adapted for the grazing of cattle, and several good
ranchos were already established; at “Portuguese” Phillip’s, at the head
of the Chug, and at F. M. Phillips’s, at the mouth of the same
picturesque stream, the traveller was always sure of hospitable, kind
treatment. The march of improvement has caused these ranchos to
disappear, and their owners, for all I know to the contrary, have been
dead for many years, but their memory will be cherished by numbers of
belated wayfarers, in the army and out of it, who were the recipients of
their kind attentions. The road leading out of Cheyenne through Fort
Laramie to the Black Hills was thronged with pedestrians and mounted
men, with wagons and without—all _en route_ to the hills which their
fancy pictured as stuffed with the precious metals. Not all were intent
upon mining or other hard work: there was more than a fair contingent of
gamblers and people of that kind, who relieved Cheyenne and Denver and
Omaha of much uneasiness by their departure from those older cities to
grow up with the newer settlements in the Indian Pactolus. There were
other roads leading to the Black Hills from points on the Missouri
River, and from Sidney and North Platte, Nebraska, but they offered no
such inducements as the one from Cheyenne, because it crossed the North
Platte River by a free Government bridge, constructed under the
superintendence of Captain William S. Stanton, of the Corps of
Engineers. By taking this route all dangers and delays by ferry were
eliminated.
Much might be written about old Fort Laramie. It would require a volume
of itself to describe all that could be learned regarding it from the
days when the hardy French traders from Saint Louis, under Jules La
Ramie, began trading with the Sioux and Cheyennes and Arapahoes, until
the Government of the United States determined to establish one of its
most important garrisons to protect the overland travel to the
gold-fields of California. Many an old and decrepit officer, now on the
retired list, will revert in fancy to the days when he was young and
athletic, and Fort Laramie was the centre of all the business, and
fashion, and gossip, and mentality of the North Platte country; the
cynic may say that there wasn’t much, and he may be right, but it
represented the best that there was to be had.
Beyond Fort Laramie, separated by ninety-five miles of most unpromising
country, lies the post of Fort Fetterman, on the right bank of the North
Platte. Boulders of gneiss, greenstone, porphyry, and other rocks from
the Laramie Peak lined the bottoms and sides of the different dry
arroyos passed on the march. Not all the ravines were dry; in a few
there was a good supply of water, and the whole distance out from Fort
Laramie presented no serious objections on that score. In the “Twin
Springs,” “Horse-shoe” Creek, “Cave” Springs, “Elk Horn” Creek, “Lake
Bonté,” “Wagon Hound,” “Bed-tick,” and “Whiskey Gulch” a supply, greater
or less in quantity, dependent upon season, could generally be found.
Much of the soil was a gypsiferous red clay; in all the gulches and
ravines were to be seen stunted pine and cedar. The scenery was
extremely monotonous, destitute of herbage, except buffalo grass and
sage brush. An occasional buffalo head, bleaching in the sun, gave a
still more ghastly tone to the landscape. Every few minutes a prairie
dog projected his head above the entrance of his domicile and barked at
our cortege passing by. Among the officers and soldiers of the garrison
at Fort Fetterman, as well as among those who were reporting for duty
with the expedition, the topics of conversation were invariably the
probable strength and position of the enemy, the ability of horses and
men to bear the extreme cold to which they were sure to be subjected,
and other matters of a kindred nature which were certain to suggest
themselves.
There, for example, was the story, accepted without question, that the
Sioux had originally shown a very friendly spirit toward the Americans
passing across their country to California, until on one occasion a man
offered grievous wrong to one of the young squaws, and that same evening
the wagon-train with which he was travelling was surrounded by a band of
determined warriors, who quietly expressed a desire to have an interview
with the criminal. The Americans gave him up, and the Sioux skinned him
alive; hence the name of “Raw Hide Creek,” the place where this incident
occurred.
Another interesting story was that of the escape of one of the corporals
of Teddy Egan’s company of the Second Cavalry from the hands of a party
of Sioux raiders on Laramie Peak; several of the corporal’s comrades
were killed in their blankets, as the attack was made in the early hours
of morning, but the corporal sprang out in his bare feet and escaped
down to the ranchos on the La Bonté, but his feet were so filled with
fine cactus thorns and cut up with sharp stones that he was for months
unable to walk.
“Black Coal,” one of the chiefs of the Arapahoes, came in to see General
Crook while at Fetterman, and told him that his tribe had information
that the hostiles were encamped on the lower Powder, below old Fort
Reno, some one hundred and fifty miles from Fetterman. Telegraphic
advices were received from Fort Laramie to the effect that three hundred
lodges of northern Sioux had just come in at Red Cloud Agency; and the
additional information that the supplies of the Indian Bureau at that
agency were running short, and that no replenishment was possible until
Congress should make another appropriation.
This news was both good and bad, bitter and sweet; we should have a
smaller number of Sioux to drive back to the reservation; but, on the
other hand, if supplies were not soon provided, all the Indians would
surely take to the Black Hills and Big Horn country, where an abundance
of game of all kinds was still to be found. The mercury still remained
down in the bottom of the bulb, and the ground was covered deep with
snow. In Wyoming the air is so dry that a thermometer marking zero, or
even ten degrees below that point on the Fahrenheit scale, does not
indicate any serious discomfort; the air is bracing, and the cold
winters seem to have a beneficial effect upon the general health of the
inhabitants. We have no sturdier, healthier people in our country than
the settlers in Wyoming and Montana.
Winter campaigning was an entirely different matter; even the savages
hibernated during the cold months, and sought the shelter of friendly
cliffs and buttes, at whose feet they could pitch their tepees of
buffalo or elk skin, and watch their ponies grazing upon the pasturage.
The ponies of the Indians, the mares and foals especially, fare poorly
during this season; they have no protection from the keen northern
blasts, but must huddle together in ravines and “draws,” or “coulées,”
as the French half-breeds call them, until the worst is over. They
become very thin and weak, and can hardly haul the “travois” upon which
the family supplies must be packed. Then is assuredly the time to
strike, provided always that the soldiers be not caught and frozen to
death by some furious storm while on the march, or after being wounded.
Crook wanted to have our animals kept in the best condition, at least in
a condition somewhat better than that of the Indian ponies. He knew that
the amount of grass to be depended upon would be very limited: much of
the country would be burned over by the Indians to prepare for the new
growth; much would lie under deep snow, and not be accessible to our
horses; much would be deadened by wind and storm; so that the most
prudent course would be to move out from Fetterman with a wagon-train
loaded with grain, which could be fed in small quantities to supplement
the pasturage that might be found, and would keep our mules and horses
in strength and health. A depot would be established at some convenient
point, and from that scouts and explorations into all sections of the
surrounding country could be made by light, swift-moving columns.
Officers and men were informed that so long as with the wagon-train they
would be allowed plenty of warm bedding and a minimum supply of “A” and
“dog” tents, but upon starting out for any movement across country they
would have to do without anything but the clothing upon their backs.
Particular attention was bestowed upon this subject of clothing; and
when I say that the mercury frequently congeals in the bulb, and that
the spirit thermometers at Fort Fred Steele, Wyoming, that winter
registered as low as 61° below, Fahrenheit, the necessity of precaution
will be apparent. The most elastic interpretation was given to the word
“uniform,” so as to permit individual taste and experience to have full
play in the selection of the garments which were to protect from bitter
cold and fierce wind.
Thinking that such particulars may be of interest to a portion of my
readers, I will say a few words in regard to the clothing worn by
different members of the expedition. For cavalry, great care was
demanded to protect feet, knees, wrists, and ears; the foot soldier can
stamp his feet or slap his hands and ears, but the mounted man must hold
his reins and sit up straight in the saddle. Commencing with the feet,
first a pair of close-fitting lamb’s-wool socks was put on, then one of
the same size as those worn by women, so as to come over the knees.
Indian moccasins of buckskin, reaching well up the leg, were generally
preferred to boots, being warmer and lighter; cork soles were used with
them, and an overboot of buffalo hide, made with the hairy side inward
and extending up nearly the whole length of the leg, and opening down
the side and fastened by buckles something after the style of the
breeches worn by Mexican “vaqueros.” These overboots were soled, heeled,
and boxed with leather, well tanned. Some officers preferred to wear the
leggings separate, and to use the overshoe supplied by the
Quartermaster’s Department. By this method, one could disrobe more
readily after reaching camp and be free to move about in the performance
of duty while the sun might be shining; but it was open to the objection
that, on account of the clumsy make of the shoes, it was almost
impossible to get into the stirrups with them.
All people of experience concurred in denouncing as pernicious the
practice of wearing tight shoes, or the use of any article of raiment
which would induce too copious a flow of perspiration, the great danger
being that there would be more likelihood of having the feet, or any
other part of the body in which the circulation might be impeded, frozen
during spells of intense cold; or of having the same sad experience
where there would be a sudden checking of the perspiration, which would
almost certainly result in acute pneumonia. For underwear, individual
preferences were consulted, the general idea being to have at least two
kinds of material used, principally merino and perforated buckskin; over
these was placed a heavy blue flannel shirt, made double-breasted, and
then a blouse, made also double-breasted, of Mission or Minnesota
blanket, with large buttons, or a coat of Norway kid lined with heavy
flannel. When the blizzards blew nothing in the world would keep out the
cold but an overcoat of buffalo or bearskin or beaver, although for many
the overcoats made in Saint Paul of canvas, lined with the heaviest
blanket, and strapped and belted tight about the waist, were pronounced
sufficient. The head was protected by a cap of cloth, with fur border to
pull down over the ears; a fur collar enclosed the neck and screened the
mouth and nose from the keen blasts; and the hands were covered by
woollen gloves and over-gauntlets of beaver or musk-rat fur. For rainy
or snowy weather most of the command had two india-rubber ponchos sewed
together, which covered both rider and horse. This was found very
cumbersome and was generally discarded, but at night it was decidedly
valuable for the exclusion of dampness from either ground or sky. Our
bedding while with the wagon-trains was ample, and there was no
complaint from either officers or men. Everybody adhered to the one
style; buffalo robes were conceded to be the most suitable covering.
First, there would be spread down upon the ground the strip of canvas in
which the blankets or robes were to be rolled for the march; then the
india-rubber ponchos spoken of; then, for those who had them, a mattress
made of chopped cork, of a total thickness of one inch, sewed in
transverse layers so as to admit of being rolled more compactly; lastly,
the buffalo robes and the blankets or cotton comforters, according to
preference. The old wise-heads provided themselves with bags of buffalo
robe, in which to insert the feet, and with small canvas cylinders,
extending across the bed and not more than eight inches in diameter,
which became a safe receptacle for extra underwear, socks,
handkerchiefs, and any papers that it might be necessary to carry along.
In all cases, where a man has the choice of making a winter campaign or
staying at home, I would advise him to remember _Punch’s_ advice to
those who were thinking of getting married.
General Crook had had much previous experience in his campaign against
the Pi-Utes and Snakes of Idaho and northern Nevada in 1866-7, during
which time his pack-trains had been obliged to break their way through
snow girth deep, and his whole command had been able to make but
thirty-three miles in twelve days—a campaign of which little has been
written, but which deserves a glorious page in American history as
resulting in the complete subjugation of a fierce and crafty tribe, and
in being the means of securing safety to the miners of Nevada while they
developed ledges which soon afterwards poured into the national treasury
four hundred millions of dollars in dividends and wages.
On the 1st of March, 1876, after a heavy fall of snow the previous
night, and in the face of a cold wind, but with the sun shining brightly
down upon us, we left Fetterman for the Powder River and Big Horn.
Officers and men were in the best of spirits, and horses champed eagerly
upon the bit as if pleased with the idea of a journey. We had ten full
companies of cavalry, equally divided between the Second and Third
Regiments, and two companies of the Fourth Infantry. The troops were
under the immediate command of Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds, of the Third
Cavalry, Brevet Major-General. His staff officers were Lieutenants
Morton and Drew, both of the Third Cavalry, acting as adjutant and
quartermaster, respectively.
General Reynolds divided his forces into battalions of two companies
each, one pack-train being attached to each of the mounted battalions,
the infantry remaining with the wagons.
These battalions were composed as follows: “M” and “E,” Third Cavalry,
under Captain Anson Mills; “A” and “D,” Third Cavalry, under Captain
William Hawley; “I” and “K,” Second Cavalry, under Major H. E. Noyes;
“A” and “B,” Second, under Major T. B. Dewees; “F,” Third Cavalry, and
“E,” Second, under Colonel Alex. Moore, of the Third Cavalry; “C” and
“I,” Fourth Infantry, under Major E. M. Coates, of the same regiment.
Assistant Surgeon C. E. Munn was medical officer, assisted by A. A.
Surgeon Ridgeley and by Hospital Steward Bryan. The subordinate officers
in command of companies, or attached to them, were Captains Egan and
Peale, of the Second Cavalry, and Ferris, of the Fourth Infantry;
Lieutenants Robinson, Rawolle, Pearson, Sibley, Hall, of the Second
Cavalry, and Paul, J. B. Johnson, Lawson, Robinson, and Reynolds, of the
Third Cavalry; Mason, of the Fourth Infantry.
There were eighty-six mule-wagons loaded with forage, and three or four
ambulances carrying as much as they safely could of the same. The
pack-train, in five divisions of eighty mules each, was under the
supervision of Mr. Thomas Moore, Chief of Transportation, and was
assigned as follows: MacAuliffe, to the 1st Battalion; Closter, to the
2d; Foster, to the 3d; Young, to the 4th; De Laney, to the 5th.
The advance of the column was led by Colonel Thaddeus H. Stanton and the
band of half-breed scouts recruited at the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail
agencies. General Crook marched with these nearly all the time, and I
was so much interested in learning all that was possible about the
northwest country, and the Indians and the half-breeds inhabiting it,
that I devoted all the time I could to conversing with them. Frank
Gruard, a native of the Sandwich Islands, was for some years a
mail-rider in northern Montana, and was there captured by the forces of
“Crazy Horse”; his dark skin and general appearance gave his captors the
impression that Frank was a native Indian whom they had recaptured from
the whites; consequently, they did not kill him, but kept him a prisoner
until he could recover what they believed to be his native language—the
Sioux. Frank remained several years in the household of the great chief
“Crazy Horse,” whom he knew very well, as well as his medicine man—the
since renowned “Sitting Bull.” Gruard was one of the most remarkable
woodsmen I have ever met; no Indian could surpass him in his intimate
acquaintance with all that pertained to the topography, animal life, and
other particulars of the great region between the head of the Piney, the
first affluent of the Powder on the west, up to and beyond the
Yellowstone on the north; no question could be asked him that he could
not answer at once and correctly. His bravery and fidelity were never
questioned; he never flinched under fire, and never growled at
privation. Louis Richaud, Baptiste Pourrier (“Big Bat”), Baptiste Gamier
(“Little Bat”), Louis Changrau, Speed Stagner, Ben Clarke, and others
were men of excellent record as scouts, and all rendered efficient
service during the entire expedition. There was one representative of
the public press—Mr. Robert E. Strahorn, of the _Rocky Mountain News_,
who remained throughout the entire campaign, winter and summer, until
the last of the hostiles had surrendered.
CHAPTER XV.
MOVING INTO THE BIG HORN COUNTRY IN WINTER—THE HERD STAMPEDED—A NIGHT
ATTACK—“JEFF’S” OOZING COURAGE—THE GRAVE-YARD AT OLD FORT RENO—IN A
MONTANA BLIZZARD—THE MERCURY FROZEN IN THE BULB—KILLING
BUFFALO—INDIAN GRAVES—HOW CROOK LOOKED WHILE ON THIS
CAMPAIGN—FINDING A DEAD INDIAN’S ARM—INDIAN PICTURES.
The march from Fort Fetterman to old Fort Reno, a distance of ninety
miles, led us through a country of which the less said the better; it is
suited for grazing and may appeal to the eyes of a cow-boy, but for the
ordinary observer, especially during the winter season, it presents
nothing to charm any sense; the landscape is monotonous and uninviting,
and the vision is bounded by swell after swell of rolling prairie,
yellow with a thick growth of winter-killed buffalo or bunch grass, with
a liberal sprinkling of that most uninteresting of all vegetation—the
sage-brush. The water is uniformly and consistently bad—being both
brackish and alkaline, and when it freezes into ice the ice is nearly
always rotten and dangerous, for a passage at least by mounted troops or
wagons. Wood is not to be had for the first fifty miles, and has to be
carried along in wagons for commands of any size. Across this charming
expanse the wind howled and did its best to freeze us all to death, but
we were too well prepared.
The first night out from Fetterman the presence of hostile Indians was
indicated by the wounding of our herder, shot in the lungs, and by the
stampeding of our herd of cattle—forty-five head—which were not,
however, run off by the attacking party, but headed for the post and
could not be turned and brought back. There was very little to record of
this part of the march: a night attack or two, the firing by our pickets
at anything and everything which looked like a man, the killing of
several buffaloes by the guides in front—old bulls which would pull all
the teeth out of one’s head were they to be chewed; better success with
antelope, whose meat was tender and palatable; the sight of a column of
dust in the remote distance, occasioned, probably, by the movement of an
Indian village, and the flashing of looking-glass signals by hostiles on
our right flank, made the sum total of events worthy of insertion in the
journals kept at the time. Lodge-pole trails and pony tracks increased
in numbers, and a signal smoke curled upwards from one of the distant
buttes in our front. On our left, the snow-clad masses of the “Big Horn”
range rose slowly above the horizon, and on the right the sullen,
inhospitable outline of the “Pumpkin Buttes.” General Crook ordered that
the greatest care should be taken in the manner of posting sentinels,
and in enjoining vigilance upon them; he directed that no attempt should
be made to catch any of the small parties of the enemy’s videttes, which
began to show themselves and to retreat when followed; he explained that
all they wanted was to entice us into a pursuit which could have no
effect beyond breaking down twenty or thirty of our horses each time.
We were out of camp, and following the old Montana road by daylight of
the 5th of March, 1876, going down the “Dry Fork” of the Powder. There
was no delay on any account, and affairs began to move like clock-work.
The scenery was dreary; the weather bitter cold; the bluffs on either
side bare and sombre prominences of yellow clay, slate, and sandstone.
The leaden sky overhead promised no respite from the storm of cold snow
and wind beating into our faces from the northwest. A stranger would not
have suspected at first glance that the command passing along the defile
of this miserable little sand-bed had any connection with the military
organization of the United States; shrouded from head to foot in huge
wrappings of wool and fur, what small amount of uniform officers or men
wore was almost entirely concealed from sight; but a keener inspection
would have convinced the observer that it was an expedition of soldiers,
and good ones at that. The promptness, ease, and lack of noise with
which all evolutions were performed, the compactness of the columns, the
good condition of arms and horses, and the care displayed in looking
after the trains, betokened the discipline of veteran soldiery.
That evening a party of picked scouts, under Frank Gruard, was sent to
scour the country in our front and on our right flank; there was no need
of examining the country on the left, as the Big Horn range was so
close, and there was no likelihood of the savages going up on its cold
flanks to live during winter while such better and more comfortable
localities were at hand in the river and creek bottoms. The sun was just
descending behind the summits of the Big Horn, having emerged from
behind a bank of leaden clouds long enough to assure us that he was
still in existence, and Major Coates was putting his pickets in position
and giving them their final instructions, when a bold attack was made by
a small detachment of the Sioux; their advance was detected as they were
creeping upon us through a grove of cottonwoods close to camp, and
although there was a brisk interchange of leaden compliments, no damage
was done to our people beyond the wounding slightly of Corporal Slavey,
of Coates’s company. Crook ordered a large force to march promptly to
the other side of camp, thinking that the enemy was merely making a
“bluff” on one extremity, but would select a few bold warriors to rush
through at the other end, and, by waving blankets, shrieking, firing
guns, and all other tricks of that sort, stampede our stock and set us
afoot. The entire command kept under arms for half an hour and was then
withdrawn. From this on we had the companies formed each morning at
daybreak, ready for the attack which might come at any moment. The early
hour set for breaking camp no doubt operated to frustrate plans of doing
damage to the column entertained by wandering bodies of the Sioux and
Cheyennes.
Colonel Stanton was accompanied by a colored cook, Mr. Jefferson Clark,
a faithful henchman who had followed the fortunes of his chief for many
years. Jeff wasn’t a bad cook, and he was, according to his own story,
one of the most bloodthirsty enemies the Sioux ever had; it was a matter
of difficulty to restrain him from leaving the command and wandering out
alone in quest of aboriginal blood. This night-attack seemed to freeze
all the fight out of Jeff, and he never again expressed the remotest
desire to shoot anything, not even a jack-rabbit. But the soldiers had
no end of fun with him, and many and many a trick was played, and many
and many a lie told, to make his hair stiffen, and his eyes to glaze in
terror.
When we reached the “Crazy Woman’s Fork” of the Powder River, camp was
established, with an abundance of excellent water and any amount of dry
cottonwood fuel; but grass was not very plentiful, although there had
been a steady improvement in that respect ever since leaving the South
Cheyenne. We had that day passed through the ruins of old Fort Reno, one
of the military cantonments abandoned by the Government at the demand of
the Sioux in 1867. Nothing remained except a few chimneys, a part of the
bake-house, and some fragments of the adobe walls of the quarters or
offices. The grave-yard had a half dozen or a dozen of broken,
dilapidated head-boards to mark the last resting-places of brave
soldiers who had fallen in desperate wars with savage tribes that
civilization might extend her boundaries. Our wagon-train was sent back
under escort of the infantry to Fort Reno, there to await our return.
All the officers were summoned to hear from General Crook’s own lips
what he wanted them to do. He said that we should now leave our wagons
behind and strike out with the pack-trains; all superfluous baggage must
be left in camp; every officer and every soldier should be allowed the
clothes on his back and no more; for bedding each soldier could carry
along one buffalo robe or two blankets; to economize transportation,
company officers should mess with their men, and staff officers or those
“unattached” with the pack-trains; officers to have the same amount of
bedding as the men; each man could take one piece of shelter tent, and
each officer one piece of canvas, or every two officers one tent fly. We
were to start out on a trip to last fifteen days unless the enemy should
be sooner found, and were to take along half rations of bacon, hard
tack, coffee, and sugar.
About seven o’clock on the night of March 7, 1876, the light of a
three-quarters moon, we began our march to the north and west, and made
thirty-five miles. At first the country had the undulating contour of
that near old Fort Reno, but the prairie “swells” were soon superseded
by bluffs of bolder and bolder outline until, as we approached the
summit of the “divide” where “Clear Fork” heads, we found ourselves in a
region deserving the title mountainous. In the bright light of the moon
and stars, our column of cavalry wound up the steep hill-sides like an
enormous snake, whose scales were glittering revolvers and carbines. The
view was certainly very exhilarating, backed as it was by the majestic
landscape of moonlight on the Big Horn Mountains. Cynthia’s silvery
beams never lit up a mass of mountain crests more worthy of delineation
upon an artist’s canvas. Above the frozen apex of “Cloud Peak” the
evening star cast its declining rays. Other prominences rivalling this
one in altitude thrust themselves out against the midnight sky.
Exclamations of admiration and surprise were extorted from the most
stolid as the horses rapidly passed from bluff to bluff, pausing at
times to give every one an opportunity to study some of Nature’s noble
handiwork.
But at last even the gorgeous vista failed to alleviate the cold and
pain in benumbed limbs, or to dispel the drowsiness which Morpheus was
placing upon exhausted eyelids. With no small degree of satisfaction we
noticed the signal which at five o’clock in the morning of March 8th
bade us make camp on the Clear Fork of the Powder. The site was dreary
enough; scarcely any timber in sight, plenty of water, but frozen solid,
and only a bare picking of grass for our tired animals. However, what we
most needed was sleep, and that we sought as soon as horses had been
unsaddled and mules unpacked. Wrapped up in our heavy overcoats and furs
we threw ourselves on the bleak and frozen ground, and were soon deep in
slumber. After lying down in the bright, calm, and cheerful moonlight,
we were awakened about eight o’clock by a bitter, pelting storm of snow
which blew in our teeth whichever way we turned, and almost extinguished
the petty fires near which the cooks were trying to arrange breakfast,
if we may dignify by such a lofty title the frozen bacon, frozen beans,
and frozen coffee which constituted the repast. It is no part of a
soldier’s business to repine, but if there are circumstances to justify
complaint they are the absence of warmth and good food after a wearisome
night march and during the prevalence of a cold winter storm. After
coffee had been swallowed General Crook moved the command down the
“Clear Fork” five miles, to a pleasant cove where we remained all the
rest of that day. Our situation was not enviable. It is true we
experienced nothing we could call privation or hardship, but we had to
endure much positive discomfort. The storm continued all day, the wind
blowing with keenness and at intervals with much power. Being without
tents, there was nothing to do but grin and bear it. Some of our people
stretched blankets to the branches of trees, others found a questionable
shelter under the bluffs, one or two constructed nondescript habitations
of twigs and grass, while General Crook and Colonel Stanton seized upon
the abandoned den of a family of beavers which a sudden change in the
bed of the stream had deprived of their home. To obtain water for men
and animals holes were cut in the ice, which was by actual measurement
eighteen inches thick, clear in color and vitreous in texture. We hugged
the fires as closely as we dared, ashes and cinders being cast into our
faces with every turn in the hurricane. The narrow thread of the stream,
with its opaque and glassy surface of ice, covered with snow, here
drifted into petty hillocks, here again carried away before the gale,
looked the picture of all that could be imagined cheerless and drear. We
tried hard to find pleasure in watching the trouble of our
fellow-soldiers obliged for any reason to attempt a crossing of the
treacherous surface. Commencing with an air of boldness and
confidence—with some, even of indifference—a few steps forward would
serve to intimidate the unfortunate wight, doubly timid now that he saw
himself the butt of all gibes and jeers. Now one foot slips, now
another, but still he struggles manfully on, and has almost gained the
opposite bank, when—slap! bang! both feet go from under him, and a dint
in the solid ice commemorates his inglorious fall. In watching such
episodes we tried to dispel the wearisomeness of the day. Every one
welcomed the advent of night, which enabled us to seek such rest as
could be found, and, clad as we were last night, in the garments of the
day, officers and men huddled close together to keep from freezing to
death. Each officer and man had placed one of his blankets upon his
horse, and, seeing that there was a grave necessity of doing something
to prevent loss of life, General Crook ordered that as many blankets as
could be spared from the pack-trains should be spread over the sleepers.
It snowed fiercely all night, and was still snowing and blustering
savagely when we were aroused in the morning; but we pushed out over a
high ridge which we took to be part of the chain laid down on the map as
the “Wolf” or “Panther” mountains. The storm continued all day, and the
fierce north wind still blew in our teeth, making us imagine old Boreas
to be in league with the Indians to prevent our occupancy of the
country. Mustaches and beards coated with pendent icicles several inches
long and bodies swathed in raiment of furs and hides made this
expedition of cavalry resemble a long column of Santa Clauses on their
way to the polar regions to lay in a new supply of Christmas gifts. We
saw some very fresh buffalo manure and also some new Indian sign. Scouts
were pushed ahead to scour the country while the command went into
bivouac in a secluded ravine which afforded a sufficiency of water,
cottonwood fuel, and good grass, and sheltered us from the observation
of roving Indians, although the prevailing inclement weather rendered it
highly improbable that many hunters or spies would be far away from
their villages. The temperature became lower and lower, and the regular
indications upon our thermometer after sundown were -6° and -10° of the
Fahrenheit scale. Men and animals had not yet suffered owing to the good
fortune in always finding ravines in which to bivouac, and where the
vertical clay banks screened from the howling winds. The snow continued
all through the night of the 9th and the day of the 10th of March, but
we succeeded in making pretty good marches, following down the course of
Prairie Dog Creek for twenty-two miles in the teeth of a blast which was
laden with minute crystals of snow frozen to the sharpness of razors and
cutting the skin wherever it touched. Prairie Dog Creek at first flows
through a narrow gorge, but this widens into a flat valley filled with
the burrows of the dainty little animals which give the stream its name
and which could be seen in numbers during every lull in the storm
running around in the snow to and from their holes and making tracks in
every direction. Before seeing this I had been under the impression that
the prairie dog hibernated.
While the severity of the weather had had but slight effect upon the
command directly, the slippery trail, frozen like glass, imposed an
unusual amount of hard labor upon both human and equine members, and it
was only by the greatest exertion that serious accidents were averted in
the crossing of the little ravines which intersected the trail every two
or three hundred yards. One of the corporals of “D” Company, Third
Cavalry, was internally injured, to what extent could not be told at the
moment, by his horse falling upon him while walking by his side. A
“travois” was made of two long saplings and a blanket, in which the
sufferer was dragged along behind a mule. The detachment of guides, sent
out several nights previously, returned this evening, reporting having
found a recently abandoned village of sixty “tepis,” and every
indication of long habitancy. The Indians belonging thereto had plenty
of meat—buffalo, deer, and elk—some of which was left behind upon
departure. A young puppy, strangled to death, was found hanging to a
tree. This is one of the greatest delicacies of every well-regulated
Sioux feast—choked pup. It also figures in their sacrifices, especially
all those in any manner connected with war. The guides had brought back
with them a supply of venison, which was roasted on the embers and
pronounced delicious by hungry palates. The storm abated during the
night, and there were glimpses of the moon behind fleeting clouds, but
the cold became much more intense, and we began to suffer. The next
morning our thermometer failed to register. It did not mark below -22°
Fahrenheit, and the mercury had passed down into the bulb and congealed
into a solid button, showing that at least -39° had been reached. The
wind, however, had gone down, for which we were all thankful. The sun
shone out bright and clear, the frost on the grass glistened like
diamonds, and our poor horses were coated with ice and snow.
We marched north eight or nine miles down the Tongue River, which had to
be crossed six times on the ice. This was a fine stream, between thirty
and forty yards wide, its banks thickly fringed with box-elder,
cottonwood, and willow. Grama grass was abundant in the foot-hills close
by, and in all respects except cold this was the finest camp yet made.
The main command halted and bivouacked at this point, to enable the
guides to explore to the west, to the Rosebud, and beyond. On the night
of March 11th we had a lovely moonlight, but the cold was still hard to
bear, and the mercury was again congealed. Fortunately no one was
frozen, for which fact some credit is due to the precautions taken in
the matter of clothing, and to the great care manifested by our medical
officer, Surgeon Munn. The exemption of the command from frost-bite was
not more remarkable than the total absence of all ailments of a
pneumonitic type; thus far, there had not been a single instance of
pneumonia, influenza, or even simple cold. I have no hesitancy in saying
that the climate of Wyoming or Montana is better suited for invalids
suffering from lung disorders, not of an aggravated nature, than is that
of Florida; I have some personal acquaintance with the two sections, and
the above is my deliberate conviction.
Despite the hyperborean temperature, the genial good-humor and
cheerfulness of the whole command was remarkable and deserving of
honorable mention. Nothing tries the spirit and temper of the old
veteran, not to mention the young recruit, as does campaigning under
unusual climatic vicissitudes, at a time when no trace of the enemy is
to be seen. To march into battle with banners flying, drums beating, and
the pulse throbbing high with the promptings of honorable ambition and
enthusiasm, in unison with the roar of artillery, does not call for half
the nerve and determination that must be daily exercised to pursue mile
after mile in such terrible weather, over rugged mountains and through
unknown cañons, a foe whose habits of warfare are repugnant to every
principle of humanity, and whose presence can be determined solely by
the flash of the rifle which lays some poor sentry low, or the whoop and
yell which stampede our stock from the grazing-grounds. The life of a
soldier, in time of war, has scarcely a compensating feature; but he
ordinarily expects palatable food whenever obtainable, and good warm
quarters during the winter season. In campaigning against Indians, if
anxious to gain success, he must lay aside every idea of good food and
comfortable lodgings, and make up his mind to undergo with cheerfulness
privations from which other soldiers would shrink back dismayed. His
sole object should be to strike the enemy and to strike him hard, and
this accomplished should be full compensation for all privations
undergone. With all its disadvantages this system of Indian warfare is a
grand school for the cavalrymen of the future, teaching them fortitude,
vigilance, self-reliance, and dexterity, besides that instruction in
handling, marching, feeding, and fighting troops which no school can
impart in text-books.
This manner of theorizing upon the subject answered excellently well,
except at breakfast, when it strained the nervous system immensely to
admit that soldiers should under any circumstances be sent out on winter
campaigns in this latitude. Our cook had first to chop with an axe the
bacon which over night had frozen hard as marble; frequently the hatchet
or axe was broken in the contest. Then if he had made any “soft bread,”
that is, bread made of flour and baked in a frying-pan, he had to place
that before a strong fire for several minutes to thaw it so it could be
eaten, and all the forks, spoons, and knives had to be run through hot
water or hot ashes to prevent them from taking the skin off the tongue.
The same rule had to be observed with the bits when our horses were
bridled. I have seen loaves of bread divided into two zones—the one
nearer the blazing fire soft and eatable, the other still frozen hard as
flint and cold as charity. The same thing was to be noticed in the pans
of beans and other food served up for consumption.
For several days we had similar experiences which need not be repeated.
Our line of march still continued northward, going down the Tongue
River, whose valley for a long distance narrowed to a little gorge
bordered by bluffs of red and yellow sandstone, between one hundred and
fifty and two hundred feet high—in some places much higher—well fringed
with scrub pine and juniper. Coal measures of a quality not definitely
determined cropped out in all parts of the country. By this time we were
pretty far advanced across the borders of the Territory of Montana, and
in a region well grassed with grama and the “black sage,” a plant almost
as nutritious as oats. The land in the stream bottoms seemed to be
adapted for cultivation. Again the scouts crossed over to the Rosebud,
finding no signs of the hostiles, but bringing back the meat of two
buffalo bulls which they had killed. This was a welcome addition to the
food of men without fresh meat of any kind; our efforts to coax some of
the fish in the stream to bite did not meet with success; the weather
was too cold for them to come out of the deep pools in which they were
passing the winter. The ice was not far from two feet in thickness, and
the trout were torpid. The scouts could not explain why they had not
been able to place the villages of the hostiles, and some of our people
were beginning to believe that there were none out from the
reservations, and that all had gone in upon hearing that the troops had
moved out after them; in this view neither Frank Gruard, “Big Bat,” nor
the others of the older heads concurred.
“We’ll find them pretty soon” was all that Frank would say. As we
approached the Yellowstone we came upon abandoned villages, with the
frame-work of branches upon which the squaws had been drying meat; one
or two, or it may have been three, of these villages had been palisaded
as a protection against the incursions of the Absaroka or Crows of
Montana, who raided upon the villages of the Sioux when the latter were
not raiding upon theirs. Cottonwood by the hundreds of cords lay
scattered about the villages, felled by the Sioux as a food for their
ponies, which derive a small amount of nourishment from the inner bark.
There were Indian graves in numbers: the corpse, wrapped in its best
blankets and buffalo robes, was placed upon a scaffold in the branches
of trees, and there allowed to dry and to decay. The cottonwood trees
here attained a great size: four, five, and six feet in diameter; and
all the conditions for making good camps were satisfied: the water was
excellent, after the ice had been broken; a great sufficiency of
succulent grass was to be found in the nooks sheltered from the wind;
and as for wood, there was more than we could properly use in a
generation. One of the cooks, by mistake, made a fire at the foot of a
great hollow cottonwood stump; in a few moments the combustible interior
was a mass of flame, which hissed and roared through that strange
chimney until it had reached an apparent height of a hundred feet above
the astonished packers seated at its base. Buffalo could be seen every
day, and the meat appeared at every meal to the satisfaction of all,
notwithstanding its stringiness and exceeding toughness, because we
could hit nothing but the old bulls. A party of scouts was sent on in
front to examine the country as far as the valley of the Yellowstone,
the bluffs on whose northern bank were in plain sight.
There was a great and unexpected mildness of temperature for one or two
days, and the thermometer indicated for several hours as high as 20°
above zero, very warm in comparison with what we had had. General Crook
and the half-breeds adopted a plan of making themselves comfortable
which was generally imitated by their comrades. As soon as possible
after coming into camp, they would sweep clear of snow the piece of
ground upon which they intended making down their blankets for the
night; a fire would next be built and allowed to burn fiercely for an
hour, or as much longer as possible. When the embers had been brushed
away and the canvas and blankets spread out, the warmth under the
sleeper was astonishingly comfortable. Our pack-mules, too, showed an
amazing amount of intelligence. I have alluded to the great trouble and
danger experienced in getting them and our horses across the different
“draws” or “coulées” impeding the march. The pack-mules, of their own
motion, decided that they would get down without being a source of
solicitude to those in charge of them; nothing was more amusing than to
see some old patriarch of the train approach the glassy ramp leading to
the bottom of the ravine, adjust his hind feet close together and slide
in triumph with his load secure on his back. This came near raising a
terrible row among the packers, who, in the absence of other topics of
conversation, began to dispute concerning the amount of sense or “savey”
exhibited by their respective pets. One cold afternoon it looked as if
the enthusiastic champions of the respective claims of “Pinto Jim” and
“Keno” would draw their knives on each other, but the affair quieted
down without bloodshed. Only one mule had been injured during this kind
of marching and sliding—one broke its back while descending an icy
ravine leading to the “Clear Fork” of the Powder.
Not many moments were lost after getting into bivouac before all would
be in what sailors call “ship shape.” Companies would take the positions
assigned them, mounted vedettes would be at once thrown out on the
nearest commanding hills, horses unsaddled and led to the
grazing-grounds, mules unpacked and driven after, and wood and water
collected in quantities for the cooks, whose enormous pots of beans and
coffee would exhale a most tempting aroma. After eating dinner or
supper, as you please, soldiers, packers, and officers would gather
around the fires, and in groups discuss the happenings of the day and
the probabilities of the future. The Spaniards have a proverb which may
be translated—“A man with a good dinner inside of him looks upon the
world through rosy spectacles”:
“Barriga llena,
Corazon contento.”
There was less doubt expressed of our catching Indians; the evidences of
their presence were too tangible to admit of any ambiguity, and all felt
now that we should run in upon a party of considerable size unless they
had all withdrawn to the north of the Yellowstone. These opinions were
confirmed by the return of Frank Gruard with a fine young mule which had
been left behind by the Sioux in one of the many villages occupied by
them along this stream-bed; the animal was in fine condition, and its
abandonment was very good proof of the abundance of stock with which the
savages must be blessed.
This is how General Crook appeared on this occasion, as I find recorded
in my notes: boots, of Government pattern, number 7; trousers, of brown
corduroy, badly burned at the ends; shirt, of brown, heavy woollen;
blouse, of the old army style; hat, a brown Kossuth of felt, ventilated
at top. An old army overcoat, lined with red flannel, and provided with
a high collar made of the skin of a wolf shot by the general himself,
completed his costume, excepting a leather belt with forty or fifty
copper cartridges, held to the shoulders by two leather straps. His
horse and saddle were alike good, and with his rifle were well cared
for.
The General in height was about six feet—even, perhaps, a trifle taller;
weight, one hundred and seventy pounds; build, spare and straight;
limbs, long and sinewy; complexion, nervo-sanguine; hair, light-brown;
cheeks, ruddy, without being florid; features, delicately and firmly
chiselled; eyes, blue-gray; nose, a pronounced Roman and quite large;
mouth, mild but firm, and showing with the chin much resolution and
tenacity of purpose.
As we halted for the night, a small covey of pin-tailed grouse flew
across the trail. Crook, with seven shots of his rifle, laid six of them
low, all but one hit in neck or head. This shooting was very good,
considering the rapidity with which it had to be done, and also the fact
that the shooter’s hands were numb from a long march in the saddle and
in the cold. These birds figured in an appetizing stew at our next
breakfast. We remained in bivouac for a day at the mouth of a little
stream which we took to be Pumpkin Creek, but were not certain, the maps
being unreliable; here was another abandoned village of the Sioux in
which we came across a ghastly token of human habitancy, in the
half-decomposed arm of an Indian, amputated at the elbow-joint, two
fingers missing, and five buckshot fired into it. The guides conjectured
that it was part of the anatomy of a Crow warrior who had been caught by
the Sioux in some raid upon their herds and cut limb from limb.
The forest of cottonwoods at this place was very dense, and the trees of
enormous size. Upon the inner bark of a number, the Sioux had delineated
in colors many scenes which were not comprehensible to us. There were
acres of fuel lying around us, and we made liberal use of the cottonwood
ashes to boil a pot of hominy with corn from the pack train. Half a
dozen old buffaloes were seen close to camp during the day, one of which
animals was shot by General Crook. When our guides returned from the
Yellowstone, they brought with them the carcasses of six deer, five
white-tailed and one black-tailed, which were most acceptable to the
soldiers. All the trails seen by this reconnoitring party had led over
towards the Powder River, none being found in the open valley of the
Yellowstone. The Sioux and Cheyennes would naturally prefer to make
their winter habitations in the deeper and therefore warmer cañons of
the Rosebud, Tongue, and Powder, where the winds could not reach them
and their stock. The country hereabouts was extremely rough, and the
bluffs were in many places not less than seven hundred and fifty feet in
height above the surface of the stream. It had again become cold and
stormy, and snow was falling, with gusts of wind from the north. The
mercury during the night indicated 10° below zero, but the sky with the
coquetry of a witch had resumed its toilet of blue pinned with golden
stars. Our course led north and east to look for some of the trails of
recent date; the valleys of the creeks seemed to be adapted for
agriculture, and our horses did very well on the rich herbage of the
lower foothills. The mountains between the Tongue and the Powder, and
those between the Tongue and the Rosebud as well, are covered with
forests of pine and juniper, and the country resembles in not a little
the beautiful Black Hills of Dakota.
This was the 16th of March, and we had not proceeded many miles before
our advance, under Colonel Stanton, had sighted and pursued two young
bucks who had been out hunting for game, and, seeing our column
advancing, had stationed themselves upon the summit of a ridge, and were
watching our movements. Crook ordered the command to halt and bivouac at
that point on the creek which we had reached. Coffee was made for all
hands, and then the purposes of the general commanding made themselves
known. He wanted the young Indians to think that we were a column making
its way down towards the Yellowstone with no intention of following
their trail; then, with the setting of the sun, or a trifle sooner, we
were to start out and march all night in the hope of striking the band
to which the young men belonged, and which must be over on the Powder as
there was no water nearer in quantity sufficient for ponies and
families. The day had been very blustering and chilly, with snow clouds
lowering over us.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE ATTACK UPON CRAZY HORSE’S VILLAGE—THE BLEAK NIGHT MARCH ACROSS THE
MOUNTAINS—EGAN’S CHARGE THROUGH THE VILLAGE—STANTON AND MILLS AND
SIBLEY TO THE RESCUE—THE BURNING LODGES—MEN FROZEN—THE WEALTH OF THE
VILLAGE—RETREATING TO LODGE POLE CREEK—CROOK REJOINS US—CUTTING THE
THROATS OF CAPTURED PONIES.
General Crook directed General J. J. Reynolds, Third Cavalry, to take
six companies of cavalry, and, with the half-breed scouts, make a forced
march along the trail of the hunters, and see just what he could find.
If the trail led to a village, Reynolds should attack; if not, the two
portions of the command were to unite on the Powder at or near a point
designated. Crook was very kindly disposed towards General Reynolds, and
wanted to give him every chance to make a brilliant reputation for
himself and retrieve the past. Reynolds had been in some kind of trouble
in the Department of Texas, of which he had been the commander, and as a
consequence of this trouble, whatever it was, had been relieved of the
command and ordered to rejoin his regiment. We were out on the trail by
half-past five in the afternoon, and marched rapidly up a steep ravine,
which must have been either Otter or Pumpkin Creek, and about half-past
two in the morning of March 17, 1876, were able to discern through the
darkness the bluffs on the eastern side of the Big Powder; the night was
very cold, the wind blew keenly and without intermission, and there were
flurries of snow which searched out the tender spots left in our faces.
It was of course impossible to learn much of the configuration and
character of the country in such darkness and under such circumstances,
but we could see that it was largely of the kind called in Arizona
“rolling mesa,” and that the northern exposure of the hills was
plentifully covered with pine and juniper, while grass was in ample
quantity, and generally of the best quality of grama. Stanton led the
advance, having Frank Gruard and one or two assistants trailing in the
front. The work was excellently well done, quite as good as the best I
had ever seen done by the Apaches. Stanton, Mr. Robert E. Strahorn,
Hospital Steward Bryan, and myself made a small party and kept together;
we were the only white men along not connected with the reservations.
This march bore grievously upon the horses; there were so many little
ravines and gullies, dozens of them not more than three or four feet in
depth, which gashed the face of nature and intersected the course we
were pursuing in so many and such unexpected places, that we were
constantly halting to allow of an examination being made to determine
the most suitable places for crossing, without running the risk of
breaking our own or our horses’ necks. The ground was just as slippery
as glass, and so uneven that when on foot we were continually falling,
and when on horseback were in dread of being thrown and of having our
horses fall upon us, as had already happened in one case on the trip. To
stagger and slip, wrenching fetlocks and pasterns, was a strain to which
no animals could be subjected for much time without receiving grave
injuries. Our horses seemed to enter into the spirit of the occasion,
and when the trail was at all decent would press forward on the bit
without touch of spur. When Frank Gruard had sighted the bluffs of the
Powder, the command halted in a deep ravine, while Frank and a picked
detail went out in front some distance to reconnoitre. The intense cold
had made the horses impatient, and they were champing on the bits and
pawing the ground with their hoofs in a manner calculated to arouse the
attention of an enemy, should one happen to be in the vicinity. They
were suffering greatly for water; the ice king had set his seal upon all
the streams during the past week, and the thickness of the covering seen
was from two and a half to three feet. This thirst made them all the
more restless and nervous. While we halted in this ravine, many of the
men lay down to sleep, much to the alarm of the officers, who, in fear
that they would not awaken again, began to shake and kick them back to
wakefulness.
By looking up at the “Dipper” we could see that we were travelling
almost due east, and when our scouts returned they brought the important
information that the two Indians whom we had been following had been
members of a hunting party of forty, mounted, whose trail we were now
upon. Frank led off at a smart pace, and we moved as fast as we could in
rear; the mists and clouds of night were breaking, and a faint sign in
the east told the glad news that dawn was coming. Directly in front of
us and at a very short distance away, a dense column of smoke betrayed
the existence of a village of considerable size, and we were making all
due preparations to attack it when, for the second time, Frank returned
with the information that the smoke came from one of the burning
coal-measures of which Montana and Wyoming were full. Our disappointment
was merely temporary; we had not begun fairly to growl at our luck
before Frank returned in a most gleeful mood, announcing that the
village had been sighted, and that it was a big one at the base of the
high cliffs upon which we were standing.
The plan of battle was after this manner: Reynolds had three battalions,
commanded respectively by Moore, Mills, and Noyes. Noyes’s battalion was
to make the first move, Egan’s company, with its revolvers, charging in
upon the village, and Noyes cutting out and driving off the enemy’s herd
of ponies. Mills was to move in rear of Noyes, and, after the village
had been charged, move into and take possession of it, occupy the plum
thicket surrounding it, and destroy all the “tepis” and plunder of all
kinds. These battalions were to descend into the valley of the Powder
through a ravine on our right flank, while Moore with his two companies
was to move to the left and take up a position upon the hills
overlooking the village, and receive the flying Indians with a shower of
lead when they started to flee from their lodges, and attempted to get
positions in the brakes or bluffs to annoy Egan.
Noyes led off with his own and Egan’s companies, and Frank Gruard, “Big
Bat,” and others of the scouts showing the path down the ravine; the
descent was a work of herculean difficulty for some of the party, as the
horses slipped and stumbled over the icy ground, or pressed through the
underbrush and fallen rocks and timber. At length we reached the narrow
valley of the Powder, and all hands were impatient to begin the charge
at once. This, Major Noyes would not allow; he sent Gruard, “Big Bat,”
and “Little Bat” to the front to look at the ground and report whether
or not it was gashed by any ravines which would render the advance of
cavalry difficult. Their report was favorable, nothing being seen to
occasion fear that a mounted force could not approach quite close to the
lodges. It was a critical moment, as Frank indicated where the Indian
boys were getting ready to drive the herds of ponies down to water,
which meant that the village would soon be fully aroused. At last we
were off, a small band of forty-seven all told, including the brave
“Teddy” Egan himself, Mr. Strahorn, the representative of the _Rocky
Mountain News_, a man who displayed plenty of pluck during the entire
campaign, Hospital Steward Bryan, and myself. We moved out from the
gulch in column of twos, Egan at the head; but upon entering the main
valley the command “Left front into line” was given, and the little
company formed a beautiful line in less time than it takes to narrate
it. We moved at a fast walk, and as soon as the command “Charge” should
be given, we were to quicken the gait to a trot, but not move faster on
account of the weak condition of our stock. When the end of the village
was reached we were to charge at full gallop down through the lines of
“tepis,” firing our revolvers at everything in sight; but if unable to
storm the village, we were to wheel about and charge back. Just as we
approached the edge of the village we came upon a ravine some ten feet
in depth and of a varying width, the average being not less than fifty.
We got down this deliberately, and at the bottom and behind a stump saw
a young boy about fifteen years old driving his ponies. He was not ten
feet off. The youngster wrapped his blanket about him and stood like a
statue of bronze, waiting for the fatal bullet; his features were as
immobile as if cut in stone. The American Indian knows how to die with
as much stoicism as the East Indian. I levelled my pistol. “Don’t
shoot,” said Egan, “we must make no noise.” We were up on the bench upon
which the village stood, and the war-whoop of the youngster was ringing
wildly in the winter air, awakening the echoes of the bald-faced bluffs.
The lodges were not arranged in any order, but placed where each could
secure the greatest amount of protection from the configuration of the
coves and nooks amid the rocks. The ponies close to the village trotted
off slowly to the right and left as we drew near; the dogs barked and
howled and scurried out of sight; a squaw raised the door of her lodge,
and seeing the enemy yelled with all her strength, but as yet there had
been not one shot fired. We had emerged from the clump of cottonwoods
and the thick undergrowth of plum bushes immediately alongside of the
nearest “tepis,” when the report of the first Winchester and the zipp of
the first bullet notified us that the fun had begun.
The enemy started out from their lodges, running for the rocky bluffs
overlooking the valley, there to take position, but turning to let us
have the benefit of a shot every moment or so. We could not see much at
which to fire, the “tepis” intervening, but we kept on our way through
the village, satisfied that the flight of the hostiles would be
intercepted by Moore from his place upon the hills. The Indians did not
shoot at our men, they knew a trick worth two of that: they fired
deliberately at our horses, with the intention of wounding some of them
and rendering the whole line unmanageable. The first shot struck the
horse of the troop blacksmith in the intestines, and made him rear and
plunge and fall over backwards. That meant that both horse and man were
_hors du combat_ until the latter could extricate himself, or be
extricated from under the dying, terrified animal. The second bullet
struck the horse of Steward Bryan in the head, and knocked out both his
eyes; as his steed stiffened in death, Bryan, who was riding next to me,
called out, “There is something the matter with my horse!” The third
missile was aimed at “Teddy” Egan, but missed him and cut the bridle of
my old plug as clean as if it had been a piece of tissue paper. From
that on the fire became a volley, although the people of the village
were retreating to a place of safety for their women and children.
The herd of ponies had been “cut out,” and they were now afoot unless
they could manage to recapture them. Two or three boys made an attempt
to sneak around on our right flank and run the herd back up among the
high bluffs, where they would be practically safe from our hands. This
was frustrated by Egan, who covered the line of approach with his fire,
and had the herd driven slightly to our rear. The advantages, however,
were altogether on the side of the Sioux and Cheyennes, as our promised
support did not arrive as soon as expected, and the fire had begun to
tell upon us; we had had three men wounded, one in the lower part of the
lungs, one in the elbow-joint, and one in the collar-bone or upper part
of the chest; six horses had been killed and three wounded, one of the
latter being Egan’s own, which had been hit in the neck. The men wounded
were not the men on the wounded horses, so that at this early stage of
the skirmish we had one-fourth of our strength disabled. We held on to
the village as far as the centre, but the Indians, seeing how feeble was
our force, rallied, and made a bold attempt to surround and cut us off.
At this moment private Schneider was killed. Egan was obliged to
dismount the company and take shelter in the plum copse along the border
of the ice-locked channel of the Powder, and there defend himself to the
best of his ability until the arrival of the promised reënforcements.
Noyes had moved up promptly in our rear and driven off the herd of
ponies, which was afterwards found to number over seven hundred; had he
charged in echelon on our left, he would have swept the village, and
affairs would have had a very different ending, but he complied with his
instructions, and did his part as directed by his commander. In the work
of securing the herd of ponies, he was assisted by the half-breed
scouts.
Colonel Stanton and Lieutenant Sibley, hearing the constant and heavy
firing in front, moved up without orders, leading a small party of the
scouts, and opened an effective fire on our left. Half an hour had
passed, and Moore had not been heard from; the Indians under the fire
from Stanton and Sibley on our left, and Egan’s own fire, had retired to
the rocks on the other side of the “tepis,” whence they kept plugging
away at any one who made himself visible. They were in the very place
where it was expected that Moore was to catch them, but not a shot was
heard for many minutes; and when they were it was no help to us, but a
detriment and a danger, as the battalion upon which we relied so much
had occupied an entirely different place—one from which the fight could
not be seen at all, and from which the bullets dropped into Egan’s
lines.
Mills advanced on foot, passing by Egan’s left, but not joining him,
pushed out from among the lodges the scattering parties still lurking
there, and held the undergrowth on the far side; after posting his men
advantageously, he detailed a strong party to burn and destroy the
village. Egan established his men on the right, and sent a party to aid
in the work of demolition and destruction. It was then found that a
great many of our people had been severely hurt by the intense cold. In
order to make the charge as effective as possible, we had disrobed and
thrown to one side, upon entering the village, all the heavy or cumbrous
wraps with which we could dispense. The disagreeable consequence was
that many men had feet and fingers, ears and noses frozen, among them
being Lieutenant Hall and myself. Hall had had much previous experience
in the polar climate of these northwestern mountains, and showed me how
to treat myself to prevent permanent disability.
He found an air-hole in the ice, into which we thrust feet and hands,
after which we rubbed them with an old piece of gunny-sack, the roughest
thing we could find, to restore circulation. Steward Bryan, who seemed
to be full of resources and forethought, had carried along with him a
bottle of tincture of iodine for just such emergencies; this he applied
liberally to our feet and to all the other frozen limbs, and thus
averted several cases of amputation. While Steward Bryan was engaged in
his work of mercy, attending to the wounded and the frozen, Mills’s and
Egan’s detachments were busy setting fire to the lodges, of elk and
buffalo hide and canvas, which numbered over one hundred.
For the information of readers who may never have seen such lodges or
“tepis,” as they are called in the language of the frontier, I will say
that they are large tents, supported upon a conical frame-work of fir or
ash poles about twenty feet long, spread out at the bottom so as to give
an interior space with a diameter of from eighteen to twenty-five feet.
This is the average size, but in each large village, like the present
one, was to be found one or more very commodious lodges intended for the
use of the “council” or for the ceremonies of the “medicine” bands;
there were likewise smaller ones appropriated to the use of the sick or
of women living in seclusion. In the present case, the lodges would not
burn, or, to speak more explicitly, they exploded as soon as the flames
and heat had a chance to act upon the great quantities of powder in kegs
and canisters with which they were all supplied. When these loose kegs
exploded the lodge-poles, as thick as a man’s wrist and not less than
eighteen feet long, would go sailing like sky-rockets up into the air
and descend to smash all obstacles in their way. It was a great wonder
to me that some of our party did not receive serious injuries from this
cause.
In one of the lodges was found a wounded squaw, who stated that she had
been struck in the thigh in the very beginning of the fight as her
husband was firing out from the entrance to the lodge. She stated that
this was the band of “Crazy Horse,” who had with him a force of the
Minneconjou Sioux, but that the forty new canvas lodges clustered
together at the extremity by which we had entered belonged to some
Cheyennes who had recently arrived from the “Red Cloud” Agency. Two
lodges of Sioux had arrived from the same agency two days previously
with the intention of trading with the Minneconjoux.
What with the cold threatening to freeze us, the explosions of the
lodges sending the poles whirling through the air, and the leaden
attentions which the enemy was once more sending in with deadly aim, our
situation was by no means agreeable, and I may claim that the notes
jotted down in my journal from which this narrative is condensed were
taken under peculiar embarrassments. “Crazy Horse’s” village was
bountifully provided with all that a savage could desire, and much
besides that a white man would not disdain to class among the comforts
of life.
There was no great quantity of baled furs, which, no doubt, had been
sent in to some of the posts or agencies to be traded off for the
ammunition on hand, but there were many loose robes of buffalo, elk,
bear, and beaver; many of these skins were of extra fine quality. Some
of the buffalo robes were wondrously embroidered with porcupine quills
and elaborately decorated with painted symbolism. One immense elk skin
was found as large as two and a half army blankets; it was nicely tanned
and elaborately ornamented. The couches in all the lodges were made of
these valuable furs and peltries. Every squaw and every buck was
provided with a good-sized valise of tanned buffalo, deer, elk, or pony
hide, gaudily painted, and filled with fine clothes, those of the squaws
being heavily embroidered with bead-work. Each family had similar trunks
for carrying kitchen utensils and the various kinds of herbs that the
plains’ tribes prized so highly. There were war-bonnets, strikingly
beautiful in appearance, formed of a head-band of red cloth or of beaver
fur, from which depended another piece of red cloth which reached to the
ground when the wearer was mounted, and covered him and the pony he
rode. There was a crown of eagle feathers, and similar plumage was
affixed to the tail-piece. Bells, ribbons, and other gew-gaws were also
attached and occasionally I have noticed a pair of buffalo horns, shaved
down fine, surmounting the head. Altogether, these feather head-dresses
of the tribes in the Missouri drainage were the most impressive and
elegant thing to be seen on the border. They represented an investment
of considerable money, and were highly treasured by the proud
possessors. They were not only the _indicia_ of wealth, but from the
manner in which the feathers were placed and nicked, the style of the
ornamentation, and other minute points readily recognizable by the other
members of the tribe, all the achievements of the wearer were recorded.
One could tell at a glance whether he had ever stolen ponies, killed
men, women, or children, been wounded, counted “coup,” or in any other
manner demonstrated that his deeds of heroism were worthy of being
chanted in the dances and around the camp-fires. In each lodge there
were knives and forks, spoons, tin cups, platters, mess-pans,
frying-pans, pots and kettles of divers shapes, axes, hatchets,
hunting-knives, water-kegs, blankets, pillows, and every conceivable
kind of truck in great profusion. Of the weight of dried and fresh
buffalo meat and venison no adequate idea can be given; in three or four
lodges I estimated that there were not less than one thousand pounds. As
for ammunition, there was enough for a regiment; besides powder, there
was pig-lead with the moulds for casting, metallic cartridges, and
percussion caps. One hundred and fifty saddles were given to the flames.
Mills and Egan were doing excellent work in the village itself; the herd
of ponies was in Noyes’s hands, and why we should not have held our
place there, and if necessary fortified and sent word to Crook to come
across the trail and join us, is one of those things that no man can
explain. We had lost three killed, and had another man wounded mortally.
General Reynolds concluded suddenly to withdraw from the village, and
the movement was carried out so precipitately that we practically
abandoned the victory to the savages. There were over seven hundred
ponies, over one hundred and fifty saddles, tons upon tons of meat,
hundreds of blankets and robes, and a very appreciable addition to our
own stock of ammunition in our hands, and the enemy driven into the
hills, while we had Crook and his four companies to depend upon as a
reserve, and yet we fell back at such a rate that our dead were left in
the hands of the Indians, and, as was whispered among the men, one of
our poor soldiers fell alive into the enemy’s hands and was cut limb
from limb. I do not state this fact of my own knowledge, and I can only
say that I believe it to be true. We pushed up the Powder as fast as our
weary horses could be made to move, and never halted until after we had
reached the mouth of Lodge Pole Creek, where we awaited the arrival of
General Crook.
The bivouac at the mouth of the Lodge Pole was especially dreary and
forlorn; the men nicknamed it “Camp Inhospitality”: there was a
sufficiency of water—or ice—enough wood, but very little grass for the
animals. There was nothing to eat; not even for the wounded men, of whom
we had six, who received from Surgeon Munn and his valuable assistant,
Steward Bryan, and Doctor Ridgeley all the care which it was possible to
give. Here and there would be found a soldier, or officer, or scout who
had carried a handful of cracker-crumbs in his saddle-bags, another who
had had the good sense to pick up a piece of buffalo meat in the
village, or a third who could produce a spoonful of coffee. With these a
miserable apology was made for supper, which was not ready until very
late; because the rear-guard of scouts and a handful of soldiers—which,
under Colonel Stanton, Frank Gruard, “Big Bat,” and others, had rounded
up and driven off the herd of ponies—did not join until some time after
sundown. A small slice of buffalo meat, roasted in the ashes, went
around among five or six; and a cup of coffee would be sipped like the
pipe of peace at an Indian council.
The men, being very tired with the long marching, climbing, and fighting
of the past two days, were put on a “running guard” to give each the
smallest amount possible of work and the greatest of sleep. No guard was
set over the herd, and no attempt was made to protect it, and in
consequence of this great neglect the Indians, who followed us during
the night, had not the slightest trouble in recovering nearly all that
originally belonged to them. Even when the loss was discovered and the
fact reported that the raiders were still in sight, going over a low
bluff down the valley, no attention was paid, and no attempt made to
pursue and regain the mainstay of Indian hostility. The cold and
exposure had begun to wear out both horses and men, and Doctor Munn had
now all he could do in looking after the numerous cases of frost-bite
reported in the command; my recollection is that there were sixty-six
men whose noses, feet, or fingers were more or less imperilled by the
effects of the cold. Added to these were two cases of inflammatory
rheumatism, which were almost as serious as those of the wounded men.
Crook reached camp about noon of the 18th of March, and it goes without
saying that his presence was equal to that of a thousand men. He
expressed his gratification upon hearing of our successful finding of
“Crazy Horse’s” village, as that chief was justly regarded as the
boldest, bravest, and most skilful warrior in the whole Sioux nation;
but he could not conceal his disappointment and chagrin when he learned
that our dead and wounded had been needlessly abandoned to the enemy,
and that with such ample supplies of meat and furs at hand our men had
been made to suffer from hunger and cold, with the additional fatigue of
a long march which could have been avoided by sending word to him.
Crook, with a detachment from the four companies left with him, had come
on a short distance in advance of Hawley’s and Dewees’s battalions, and
run in upon the rear-guard of the Cheyennes and Sioux who had stampeded
so many of the ponies from Reynolds’s bivouac; the General took sight at
one of the Indians wearing a war-bonnet and dropped him out of the
saddle; the Indian’s comrades seized him and took off through the broken
country, but the pony, saddle, buffalo robe, blanket, and bonnet of the
dead man fell into our hands, together with nearly a hundred of the
ponies; which were driven along to our forlorn camp at the confluence of
the Lodge Pole and the Powder.
There was nothing for Crook to do but abandon the expedition, and return
to the forts, and reorganize for a summer campaign. We had no beef, as
our herd had been run off on account of the failure to guard it; we were
out of supplies, although we had destroyed enough to last a regiment for
a couple of months; we were encumbered with sick, wounded, and cripples
with frozen limbs, because we had not had sense enough to save the furs
and robes in the village; and the enemy was thoroughly aroused, and
would be on the _qui vive_ for all that we did. To old Fort Reno, by way
of the valley of the Powder, was not quite ninety miles. The march was
uneventful, and there was nothing to note beyond the storms of snow and
wind, which lasted, with some spasmodic intermissions, throughout the
journey. The wind blew from the south, and there was a softening of the
ground, which aggravated the disagreeable features by adding mud to our
other troubles.
The Indians hung round our camps every night, occasionally firing a shot
at our fires, but more anxious to steal back their ponies than to fight.
To remove all excuse for their presence Crook ordered that the throats
of the captured ponies be cut, and this was done on two different
nights: first, some fifty being knocked in the head with axes, or having
their throats cut with the sharp knives of the scouts, and again,
another “bunch” of fifty being shot before sun-down. The throat-cutting
was determined upon when the enemy began firing in upon camp, and was
the only means of killing the ponies without danger to our own people.
It was pathetic to hear the dismal trumpeting (I can find no other word
to express my meaning) of the dying creatures, as the breath of life
rushed through severed windpipes. The Indians in the bluffs recognized
the cry, and were aware of what we were doing, because with one yell of
defiance and a parting volley, they left us alone for the rest of the
night.
Steaks were cut from the slaughtered ponies and broiled in the ashes by
the scouts; many of the officers and soldiers imitated their example.
Prejudice to one side, the meat is sweet and nourishing, not inferior to
much of the stringy beef that used to find its way to our markets.
Doctor Munn, Doctor Ridgeley, and Steward Bryan were kept fully occupied
in tending to the patients under their charge, and were more than
pleased when the wagon-train was reached, and “travois” and saddles
could be exchanged for ambulances and wagons.
Our reception by our comrades back at the wagon-train—Coates, Ferris,
and Mason—was most cordial and soldier-like. The most gratifying proof
of their joy at our return was found in the good warm supper of coffee,
bacon, and beans prepared for every one of our columns, commissioned and
enlisted. The ice in the Powder proved very treacherous, as all “alkali”
ice will; it was not half so thick as it had been found on the Tongue,
where it had ranged from two to three feet. General Crook distributed
the troops to the various military posts, and returned to his
headquarters in Omaha. The conduct of certain officers was the subject
of an investigation by a general court-martial, but it is not my purpose
to overcrowd my pages with such matters, which can be readily looked up
by readers interested in them. On our way down to Cheyenne, we
encountered squads upon squads of adventurers, trudging on foot or
riding in wagons to the Black Hills. At “Portuguese Phillip’s” ranche,
sixty-eight of these travellers had sat down to supper in one day; while
at Fagan’s, nearer Cheyenne, during the snow-storm of March 26th and
27th, two hundred and fifty had slept in the kitchens, stables, and
out-houses.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SUMMER CAMPAIGN OF 1876—THE SIOUX AND CHEYENNES GETTING UGLY—RAIDING
THE SETTLEMENTS—ATTEMPT TO AMBUSCADE CROOK—KILLING THE
MAIL-RIDER—THE STORY OF THE FETTERMAN MASSACRE—LAKE DE SMET—OUR
FIRST THUNDER STORM—A SOLDIER’S BURIAL—THE SIOUX ATTACK OUR
CAMP—TROUT-FISHING—BEAR-HUNTING—CALAMITY JANE—THE CROW AND SHOSHONE
ALLIES JOIN THE COMMAND—THE WAR DANCE AND MEDICINE SONG.
The lack of coöperation by the troops in the Department of Dakota had
been severely felt; such coöperation had been promised and confidently
expected. It needed no profoundly technical military mind to see that
with two or three strong columns in the field seeking out the hostiles,
each column able to hold its own against the enemy, the chances of
escape for the Sioux and Cheyennes would be materially lessened, and
those of success for the operations of either column, or both,
perceptibly increased. But, with the exception of a telegram from
General Custer, then at Fort Lincoln, dated February 27th, making
inquiry as to the time fixed for the departure of the column under
Reynolds—which question was answered by wire the same day—nothing had
been heard of any column from the Missouri River camps going out after
the Indians whom the authorities wished to have driven into the
reservations.
With the opening of spring the phases of the problem presented greater
complexity. The recalcitrant Indians were satisfied of their ability not
only to elude pursuit but to present a bold front to the troops, and to
whip them on the field of their choice. They had whipped us—so at least
it seemed to them—on the 17th of March; why could they not do the same
on any other day—the 17th of May, or the 17th of August? Crook
determined to wait for the new grass, without which it would be
impossible to campaign far away from the line of supplies, and to let
the ground become thoroughly dry from the early thaws, before he resumed
the offensive. This would give to such columns as might be designated in
the north as coöperating forces opportunity to get into the field; as it
would also afford the restless young element on the several reservations
chance to deliberate between the policy of peace and war, between
remaining quiet at the agencies, or starting out on a career of
depredation and bloodshed.
Each day came news, stoutly denied by the agents, that there were
parties slipping away to recruit the forces of the hostiles; it was only
prudent to know in advance exactly how many there would be in our front,
and have them in our front instead of imperilling our rear by starting
out with a leaven of discontent which might do grievous harm to the
ranchos and settlements near the Union Pacific Railroad. That the main
body of the Sioux and Cheyennes was “ugly” no longer admitted of doubt.
Hostilities were not limited to grumbling and growling, to surly looks
and ungracious acts, to mere threats against the agents or some isolated
ranchos; they became active and venomous, especially along the lines of
travel leading to the disputed territory—the “Black Hills.” Attacks upon
trains were a daily—an hourly—occurrence. In one of these the son-in-law
of “Red Cloud” was killed. To defend these travellers there was no
better method than by carrying the war into Africa, and, by means of
swift-moving columns, come upon the villages of the hostiles and destroy
them, giving no time to the young men for amusements.
Three of the infantry companies from Fort Omaha and Fort Bridger were
detailed to guard the road between Fort Laramie and Custer City; each
company went into an entrenched camp with rifle-pits dug, and all
preparations made for withstanding a siege until help should arrive.
Trains could make their way from one to the other of these fortified
camps with much less danger than before their establishment, while there
were two companies of cavalry, under officers of great experience, to
patrol from Buffalo Gap, at the entrance to the hills, and the North
Platte. These officers were Captain Russell, who had seen much service
in Arizona and New Mexico against the Apaches, and “Teddy” Egan, of the
Second Cavalry, who had led the charge into the village of “Crazy Horse”
on St. Patrick’s Day. Both of these officers and their troops did all
that Crook expected of them, and that was a great deal. The same praise
belongs to the little detachments of infantry, who rendered yeoman
service. Egan was fortunate enough to come up just in the nick of time,
as a train was surrounded and fired upon by six hundred warriors; he led
the charge, and the Indians took to flight.
There were attacks all along the line: eastward in Nebraska, the Sioux
became very bold, and raided the horse and cattle ranchos in the Loup
Valley; they were pursued by Lieutenant Charles Heyl, Twenty-third
Infantry, with a small detail of men mounted upon mules from the
quartermaster’s corral, and compelled to stand and fight, dropping their
plunder, having one of their number killed, but killing one of our best
men—Corporal Dougherty. In Wyoming, they raided the Chug, and there
killed one of the old settlers—Huntoon—and ran off thirty-two horses.
Lieutenant Allison, Second Cavalry, took the trail, and would have run
his prey down had it not been for a blinding snow-storm which suddenly
arose and obliterated the tracks of the marauders; sufficient was
learned, however, to satisfy Allison that the raiders were straight from
the Red Cloud Agency. When the body of Huntoon was found, it had eleven
wounds—three from arrows. The same or similar tales came in from all
points of the compass—from the villages of the friendly Shoshones and
Bannocks in the Wind River Mountains to the scattered homes on the Lodge
Pole and the Frenchman.
A large number of the enlisted men belonging to the companies at Fort D.
A. Russell (near Cheyenne, Wyoming) deserted, alleging as a reason that
they did not care to serve under officers who would abandon their dead
and dying to the foe. Every available man of the mounted service in the
Department of the Platte was called into requisition for this campaign;
the posts which had been garrisoned by them were occupied by infantry
companies sent from Omaha, Salt Lake, and elsewhere. The point of
concentration was Fort Fetterman, and the date set as early as
practicable after the first day of May. Two other strong columns were
also to take the field—one under General John Gibbon, consisting of the
troops from the Montana camps; the other, under General Alfred H. Terry,
to start from Fort Lincoln, and to comprise every man available from the
posts in the eastern portion of the Department of Dakota. While the
different detachments were marching to the point of rendezvous, Crook
hurried to Fort Laramie, and thence eastward to the Red Cloud Agency to
hold a conference with the chiefs.
It was during trips like this—while rolling over the endless plains of
Wyoming, now rivalling the emerald in their vernal splendors—that
General Crook was at his best: a clear-headed thinker, a fluent
conversationalist, and a most pleasant companion. He expressed himself
freely in regard to the coming campaign, but said that while the Sioux
and Cheyennes were a brave and bold people, from the very nature of the
case they would never stand punishment as the Apaches had done. The
tribes of the plains had accumulated much property in ponies and other
things, and the loss of that would be felt most deeply. Crook hoped to
sound the chiefs at the Red Cloud Agency, and learn about where each
stood on the question of peace or hostility; he also hoped to be able to
enlist a small contingent of scouts for service with the troops. General
Crook was unable to find the agent who was absent, but in his place he
explained to the agency clerk what he wanted. The latter did all he
could to prevent any of the chiefs from coming to see General Crook;
nevertheless, “Sitting Bull of the South,” “Rocky Bear,” and “Three
Bears,” prominent in the tribe, came over to the office of the military
commander, Major Jordan, of the Ninth Infantry, and there met Crook, who
had with him Colonel Stanton, Colonel Jordan, Frank Gruard, and myself.
These men spoke in most favorable terms of the propositions laid down by
General Crook, and old “Sitting Bull” (who, although bearing the same
name, was as good as _the_ “Sitting Bull” was bad) assured General Crook
that even if no other chief in the tribe assisted, he would gather
together thirty-five or forty of his young men and go with the soldiers
to help drive the hostiles back to their reservations.
Although frustrated by the machinations of underlings of the Indian
Bureau at that particular time, all these men kept the word then given,
and appeared in the campaign undertaken later on in the fall. “Sitting
Bull” was too feeble to go out in person, but sent some of his best
young men; and “Three Bears” and “Rocky Bear” went as they promised they
would, and were among the bravest and most active of all the command,
red or white. When Agent Hastings returned there seemed to be a great
change in the feelings of the Indians, and it was evident that he had
done his best to set them against the idea of helping in the campaign.
He expressed himself to the effect that while he would not forbid any
Indian from going, he would not recommend any such movement. General
Crook said that at the council where General Grant had decided that the
northern Sioux should go upon their reservations or be whipped, there
were present, Secretary Chandler, Assistant Secretary Cowan,
Commissioner Smith, and Secretary Belknap. The chiefs were, “Red Cloud,”
“Old Man afraid of his Horses,” “Blue Horse,” “American Horse,” “Little
Wound,” “Sitting Bull of the South,” and “Rocky Bear.” With Agent
Hastings were, Inspector Vandever, and one of the contractors for Indian
supplies, and Mr. R. E. Strahorn. The contractor to whom reference is
here made was afterwards—in the month of November, 1878—convicted by a
Wyoming court, for frauds at this time, at this Red Cloud Agency, and
sent to the penitentiary for two years. Nothing came of this part of the
conference; the Indians, acting under bad advice, as we learned
afterwards, declined to entertain any proposition of enlisting their
people as scouts, and were then told by General Crook that if they were
not willing to do their part in maintaining order among their own people
and in their own country, he would telegraph for the Crows, and
Bannocks, and Shoshones to send down the bands they had asked permission
to send.
The Sioux appeared very much better off than any of the tribes I had
seen until that time. All of the men wore loose trousers of dark blue
cloth; moccasins of buck or buffalo skin covered with bead work; and
were wrapped in Mackinaw blankets, dark blue or black in color, closely
enveloping the frame; some of these blankets were variegated by a
transverse band of bright red cloth worked over with beads, while
underneath appeared dark woollen shirts. Strings of beads, shells, and
brass rings encircled each neck. The hair was worn long but plain, the
median line painted with vermilion or red ochre. Their faces were not
marked with paint of any kind, an unusual thing with Indians in those
days.
Smoking was done with beautiful pipes of the reddish ochreous stone
called “Catlinite,” brought from the quarries on the Missouri. The bowls
were prolonged to allow the nicotine to flow downwards, and were
decorated with inlaid silver, speaking highly of the industrial
capabilities of our aborigines. The stem was a long reed or handle of
ash, perforated and beautifully ornamented with feathers and porcupine
quills. Each smoker would take three or four whiffs, and then pass the
pipe to the neighbor on his left.
General Crook was grievously disappointed at the turn affairs had taken,
but he said nothing and kept his own counsel. Had he obtained three or
four hundred warriors from Red Cloud and Spotted Tail the hostile
element would have been reduced to that extent, and the danger to the
feeble and poorly protected settlements along the Union Pacific lessened
in the same ratio, leaving out of consideration any possible value these
young men might be as scouts and trailers, familiar with all the haunts
and devices of the hostiles. Be it remembered that while these efforts
were going on, the hay scales at the Red Cloud Agency had been burned,
and the government herds run off from both Red Cloud and Spotted Tail
Agencies.
We left the Red Cloud Agency at four o’clock in the morning, and began
the ascent of the Valley of the “White Earth” creek. After going several
miles, on looking back we saw a great cloud of signal smoke puff up from
the bluffs back of the Indian villages, but just what sort of a signal
it was no one in our party knew. As it happened, we had a strong force,
and instead of the usual escort of ten men or less, with which General
Crook travelled from one post or agency to another, we had no less than
sixty-five men all told, made up of Crook’s own escort, the escort of
Paymaster Stanton, returning from the pay trip. Colonel Ludington,
Inspector General of the Department of the Platte, was also present with
his escort, returning from a tour of inspection of the troops and camps
along the northern border. A dozen or more of the ranchers and others
living in the country had improved the opportunity to get to the
railroad with perfect safety, and thus we were a formidable body. At the
head of the White Earth we halted alongside of a pretty spring to eat
some lunch, and there were passed by the mail-rider, a man named Clark,
who exchanged the compliments of the day, and then drove on toward the
post which he was never to reach. He was ambuscaded and killed by the
band of Sioux who had planned to assassinate Crook but were deterred by
our unexpectedly large force, and, rather than go without killing
something, slaughtered the poor mail-rider, and drove off his horses.
That was the meaning of the smoke puff at Red Cloud; it was, as we
learned long afterwards, the signal to the conspirators that Crook and
his party were leaving the post.
We passed through Laramie and on to Fetterman as fast as horses and
mules could draw us. Not all the troops had yet reached Fetterman, the
condition of the road from Medicine Bow being fearfully bad. Crook,
after some difficulty, had a cable ferry established, in working order.
The first day sixty thousand pounds of stores were carried across the
river; the second, one hundred thousand pounds, besides soldiers by
solid companies. Every wagon and nearly every mule and horse had to be
carried over in the same manner, because the animals would not approach
the swift current of the swollen Platte; here they showed more sense
than the men in charge of them, and seemed to know instinctively that
the current of the river was too strong to be breasted by man or horse.
One of the teamsters, Dill, fell into the river, and was swept down
before the eyes of scores of terrified spectators and drowned. The
current had the velocity of a mill-race, and the depth was found to vary
from ten to twelve feet close to the shore. Frank Gruard was sent across
the North Platte with a small party of scouts and soldiers to examine
into the condition of the road, and while out on this duty came very
near being cut off by a reconnoitring band of the enemy.
General Crook assumed command in General Orders, No. 1, May 28, 1876.
Colonel William B. Royall, Third Cavalry, was assigned to the command of
the fifteen companies of cavalry forming part of the expedition, having
under him Colonel Alexander W. Evans, commanding the ten companies of
the Third Cavalry, and Major H. E. Noyes, commanding the five of the
Second Cavalry.
Five companies of the Ninth and Fourth Infantry were placed under the
command of Colonel Alexander Chambers, of the Fourth Infantry; Captain
Nickerson and Lieutenant Bourke were announced as Aides-de-Camp; Captain
George M. Randall, Twenty-third Infantry, as Chief of Scouts; Captain
William Stanton as Chief Engineer Officer; Captain John V. Furey as
Chief Quartermaster; First Lieutenant John W. Bubb as Commissary of
Subsistence; Assistant Surgeon Albert Hartsuff as Medical Director. The
companies starting out on this expedition and the officers connected
with them were as follows: Company “A,” Third Cavalry, Lieutenant
Charles Morton; Company “B,” Third Cavalry, Captain Meinhold, Lieutenant
Simpson; Company “C,” Third Cavalry, Captain Van Vliet, Lieutenant Von
Leuttewitz; Company “D,” Third Cavalry, Captain Guy V. Henry, Lieutenant
W. W. Robinson; Company “E,” Third Cavalry, Captain Sutorius; Company
“F,” Third Cavalry, Lieutenant B. Reynolds; Company “G,” Third Cavalry,
Lieutenant Emmet Crawford; Company “I,” Third Cavalry, Captain Andrews,
Lieutenants A. D. King and Foster; Company “L,” Third Cavalry, Captain
P. D. Vroom, Lieutenant Chase; Company “M,” Third Cavalry, Captain Anson
Mills and Lieutenants A. C. Paul and Schwatka; Company “A,” Second
Cavalry, Captain Dewees, Lieutenant Peirson; Company “B,” Second
Cavalry, Lieutenant Rawolle; Company “E,” Second Cavalry, Captain Wells,
Lieutenant Sibley; Company “I,” Second Cavalry, Captain H. E. Noyes;
Company “G,” Second Cavalry, Lieutenants Swigert and Huntington; Company
“C,” Ninth Infantry, Captain Sam Munson, Lieutenant T. H. Capron;
Company “H,” Ninth Infantry, Captain A. S. Burt, Lieutenant E. B.
Robertson; Company “G,” Ninth Infantry, Captain T. B. Burroughs,
Lieutenant W. L. Carpenter; Company “D,” Fourth Infantry, Captain A. B.
Cain, Lieutenant H. Seton; Company “F,” Fourth Infantry, Captain Gerard
Luhn.
Assistant surgeons: Patzki, Stevens, and Powell.
Chief of pack trains: Mr. Thomas Moore.
Chief of wagon trains: Mr. Charles Russell.
Guides: Frank Gruard, Louis Richaud, Baptiste Pourrier (“Big Bat”).
The press of the country was represented by Joseph Wasson, of the
_Press_, Philadelphia, _Tribune_, New York, and _Alta California_, of
San Francisco, California; Robert E. Strahorn, of the _Tribune_,
Chicago, _Rocky Mountain News_, Denver, Colorado, _Sun_, Cheyenne,
Wyoming, and _Republican_, Omaha, Nebraska; John F. Finerty, _Times_,
Chicago; T. B. MacMillan, _Inter-Ocean_, Chicago; R. B. Davenport,
_Herald_, New York.
Our camp on the north side of the North Platte presented a picturesque
appearance, with its long rows of shelter tents arranged symmetrically
in a meadow bounded on three sides by the stream; the herds of animals
grazing or running about; the trains of wagons and mules passing from
point to point, united to form a picture of animation and spirit. We had
a train of one hundred and three six-mule wagons, besides one of
hundreds of pack-mules; and the work of ferriage became too great for
mortal strength, and the ferrymen were almost exhausted both by their
legitimate duties and by those of mending and splicing the boat and the
cable which were leaking or snapping several times a day.
May 29, 1876, saw the column moving out from its camp in front of Fort
Fetterman; the long black line of mounted men stretched for more than a
mile with nothing to break the sombreness of color save the flashing of
the sun’s rays back from carbines and bridles. An undulating streak of
white told where the wagons were already under way, and a puff of dust
just in front indicated the line of march of the infantry battalion. As
we were moving along the same road described in the campaign of the
winter, no further mention is necessary until after passing old Fort
Reno. Meinhold, with two companies, was sent on in advance to
reconnoitre the country, and report the state of the road as well as any
signs of the proximity of large bands of the enemy. Van Vliet was
instructed to push ahead, and keep a look-out for the Crow and Shoshone
scouts who had promised to join the command at or near Reno. In spite of
the fact that summer was already with us, a heavy snow-storm attacked
the column on June 1st, at the time of our coming in sight of the Big
Horn Mountains. The day was miserably cold, water froze in the
camp-kettles, and there was much discomfort owing to the keen wind
blowing down from the frozen crests of the Big Horn. From Reno, Gruard,
Richaud, and “Big Bat” were sent to see what had become of the Crows,
and lead them back to our command on the line of march.
Before he left Frank gave an account, from the story told him by the
Sioux who had participated in it, of the massacre near this place of the
force of officers and men enticed out from old Fort Kearney. In this sad
affair we lost three officers—Fetterman, Brown, and Grummond—and
seventy-five enlisted, with three civilians, names unknown. The Sioux
admitted to Frank that they had suffered to the extent of one hundred
and eighty-five, killed and wounded. I mention this story here at the
place where we heard it from Frank’s lips, although we afterwards
marched over the very spot where the massacre occurred.
We broke camp at a very early hour, the infantry being out on the road
by four o’clock each morning, the cavalry remaining for some time later
to let the animals have the benefit of the grass freshened by the frost
of the night previous. We were getting quite close to Cloud Peak, the
loftiest point in the Big Horn range; its massy dome towered high in the
sky, white with a mantle of snow; here and there a streak of darkness
betrayed the attempts of the tall pine trees on the summit to penetrate
to the open air above them. Heavy belts of forest covered the sides of
the range below the snow line, and extended along the skirts of the
foot-hills well out into the plains below. The singing of meadow-larks,
and the chirping of thousands of grasshoppers, enlivened the morning
air; and save these no sound broke the stillness, except the rumbling of
wagons slowly creeping along the road. The dismal snow-storm of which so
much complaint had been made was rapidly superseded by most charming
weather: a serene atmosphere, balmy breeze, and cloudless sky were the
assurances that summer had come at last, and, as if anxious to repair
past negligence, was about to favor us with all its charms. The country
in which we now were was a great grassy plain covered with herbage just
heading into seed. There was no timber except upon the spurs of the Big
Horn, which loomed up on our left covered with heavy masses of pine,
fir, oak, and juniper. From the innumerable seams and gashes in the
flanks of this noble range issue the feeders of the Tongue and Powder,
each insignificant in itself, but so well distributed that the country
is as well adapted for pasturage as any in the world. The bluffs are
full of coal of varying qualities, from lignite to a good commercial
article; one of the men of the command brought in a curious specimen of
this lignite, which at one end was coal and at the other was silicified.
Buffalo tracks and Indian signs were becoming frequent.
Clear Creek, upon which we made camp, was a beautiful stream—fifty feet
wide, two feet deep; current rapid and as much as eight miles an hour;
water icy-cold from the melting of the snow-banks on the Big Horn;
bottom of gravel; banks gently sloping; approaches good. Grass was
excellent, but fuel rather scarce in the immediate vicinity of the road.
Birds, antelope, and fish began to figure on the mess canvas; the fish,
a variety of sucker, very palatable, were secured by shooting a bullet
under them and stunning them, so that they rose to the surface, and were
then seized. Trout were not yet found; they appear in the greatest
quantity in the waters of Tongue River, the next stream beyond to the
west. There is a variety of tortoise in the waters of these mountains
which is most toothsome, and to my uncultivated taste fully as good as
the Maryland terrapin.
Here we were visited by messengers from a party of Montana miners who
were travelling across country from the Black Hills back to the
Yellowstone; the party numbered sixty-five, and had to use every
precaution to prevent stampede and surprise; every night they dug
rifle-pits, and surrounded themselves with rocks, palisades, or anything
else that could be made to resist a charge from the Sioux, whose trails
were becoming very thick and plenty. There were many pony, but few
lodge-pole, tracks, a sure indication that the men were slipping out
from Red Cloud and Spotted Tail agencies and uniting with the hostiles,
but leaving their families at home, under the protection of the
reservations. It always seemed to me that that little party of Montana
miners displayed more true grit, more common sense, and more
intelligence in their desperate march through a scarcely known country
filled with hostile Indians than almost any similar party which I can
now recall; they were prepared for every emergency, and did excellent
service under Crook at the Rosebud; but before reaching their objective
point, I am sorry to say, many of their number fell victims to a
relentless and wily foe.
To prevent any stampede of our stock which might be attempted, our
method of establishing pickets became especially rigid: in addition to
the mounted vedettes encircling bivouac, and occupying commanding buttes
and bluffs, solid companies were thrown out a mile or two in advance and
kept mounted, with the purpose of holding in check all parties of the
enemy which might attempt to rush down upon the herds and frighten them
off by waving blankets, yelling, firing guns, or other tricks in which
the savages were adepts. One platoon kept saddled ready for instant
work; the others were allowed to loosen the cinches, but not to
unsaddle. Eight miles from the ruins of old Fort Kearney, to the east,
we passed Lake De Smet, named after the zealous missionary, Father De
Smet, whose noble life was devoted to the advancement of the Sioux,
Pawnees, Arapahoes, Crows, Blackfeet, Cheyennes, Cœurs d’Alenes, and Nez
Percés, and whose silent ministrations refute the calumny that the
American Indian is not responsive to efforts for his improvement. The
view of this body of water, from the roadside, is very beautiful; in
length, it is nearly three miles; in width, not quite a mile. The water
is clear and cold, but alkaline and disagreeable to the taste. Game and
ducks in great numbers resort to this lake, probably on account of the
mineral contained in its waters, and a variety of pickerel is said to be
abundant. Buffalo were seen near this bivouac—at old Fort Kearney—and
elk meat was brought into camp with beaver, antelope, pin-tailed grouse,
and sickle-billed curlew.
Our camp on Prairie Dog Creek, at its junction with the Tongue River,
was memorable from being the scene of the killing of the first buffalo
found within shooting distance of the column. Mosquitoes became
troublesome near the water courses. Prairie-dog villages lined the trail
in all places where the sandy soil admitted of easy digging. The last
hour or two of this march was very unpleasant. The heat of the sun
became almost unbearable. Dense masses of clouds moved sluggishly up
from the west and north, while light flaky feathers of vapor flitted
across the sky, coquetting with the breeze, now obscuring the sun, now
revealing his rays. Low, rumbling thunder sullenly boomed across the
horizon, and with the first flash of lightning changed into an almost
continuous roar. The nearest peaks of the Big Horn were hid from our
gaze. The heavy arch of clouds supported itself upon the crests of the
bluffs enclosing the valley of our camp. It was a pretty picture; the
parks of wagons and pack-mules, the bright rows of tentage, and the
moving animals and men gave enough animation to relieve the otherwise
too sombre view of the elements at war. Six buffaloes were killed this
day.
On the 7th of June we buried the soldier of Meinhold’s company who had
accidentally wounded himself with his own revolver while chopping wood.
Besides the escort prescribed by the regulations, the funeral cortege
was swollen by additions from all the companies of the expedition, the
pack-train, wagoners, officers, and others, reaching an aggregate of
over six hundred. Colonel Guy V. Henry, Third Cavalry, read in a very
feeling manner the burial service from the “Book of Common Prayer,” the
cavalry trumpets sounded “taps,” a handful of earth was thrown down upon
the remains, the grave was rapidly filled up, and the companies at quick
step returned to their tents. There was no labored panegyric delivered
over the body of Tiernan, but the kind reminiscences of his comrades
were equivalent to an eulogy of which an archbishop might have been
proud. Soldiers are the freest from care of any set of men on earth; the
grave had not closed on their comrade before they were discussing other
incidents of the day, and had forgotten the sad rites of sepulture in
which they had just participated. To be more charitable, we were seeing
so much that was novel and interesting that it was impossible to chain
the mind down to one train of thought. Captain Noyes had wandered off
during the storm of the night previous, and remained out of camp all
night hunting for good trout pools. A herd of buffaloes had trotted down
close to our bivouac, and many of our command had been unable to resist
the temptation to go out and have a shot; we knocked over half a dozen
or more of the old bulls, and brought the meat back for the use of the
messes.
The conversation ran upon the difficulty experienced by the pioneer
party under Captain Andrews, Third Cavalry, in smoothing and
straightening the road during the marches of the past two or three days.
General Crook had been successful in finding the nests and the eggs of
some rare birds, the white-ringed blackbird, the Missouri skylark, and
the crow of this region. He had all his life been an enthusiastic
collector of specimens in natural history, especially in all that
relates to nests and eggs, and had been an appreciative observer of the
valuable work done on the frontier in that direction by Captain Charles
Bendire, of the First Cavalry.
During the 8th of June there was some excitement among us, owing to the
interchange of conversation between our pickets and a party of Indians
late the previous night. It could not be determined at the moment
whether the language used was Sioux or Crow, or both, but there was a
series of calls and questions which our men did not fully understand;
one query was to the effect that ours might be a Crow camp. A pony was
found outside our lines, evidently left by the visitors. Despatches were
received by General Crook notifying him that all able-bodied male
Indians had left the Red Cloud Agency, and that the Fifth Cavalry had
been ordered up from Kansas to take post in our rear; also that the
Shoshones had sent one hundred and twenty of their warriors to help him,
and that we should look for their arrival almost any day. They were
marching across the mountains from their reservation in the Wind River
range, in the heart of the Rockies.
June 9, 1876, the monotony of camp life was agreeably broken by an
attack upon our lines made in a most energetic manner by the Sioux and
Cheyennes. We had reached a most picturesque and charming camp on the
beautiful Tongue River, and had thrown out our pickets upon the hill
tops, when suddenly the pickets began to show signs of uneasiness, and
to first walk and then trot their horses around in a circle, a warning
that they had seen something dangerous. The Indians did not wait for a
moment, but moved up in good style, driving in our pickets and taking
position in the rocks, from which they rained down a severe fire which
did no great damage but was extremely annoying while it lasted. We had
only two men wounded, one in the leg, another in the arm, both by
glancing bullets, and neither wound dangerous, and three horses and two
mules wounded, most of which died. The attacking party had made the
mistake of aiming at the tents, which at the moment were unoccupied; but
bullets ripped through the canvas, split the ridge poles, smashed the
pipes of the Sibley stoves, and imbedded themselves in the tail-boards
of the wagons. Burt, Munson, and Burroughs were ordered out with their
rifles, and Mills was ordered to take his own company of the Third
Cavalry and those of Sutorius, Andrews, and Lawson, from Royall’s
command, and go across the Tongue and drive the enemy, which they did.
The infantry held the buttes on our right until after sundown.
This attack was only a bluff on the part of “Crazy Horse” to keep his
word to Crook that he would begin to fight the latter just as soon as he
touched the waters of the Tongue River; we had scoffed at the message at
first, believing it to have been an invention of some of the agency
half-breeds, but there were many who now believed in its authenticity.
Every one was glad the attack had been made; if it did nothing else, it
proved that we were not going to have our marching for nothing; it kept
vedettes and guards on the alert and camp in condition for fight at a
moment’s notice. Grass becoming scarce on Tongue River Crook moved his
command to the confluence of the two forks of Goose Creek, which is the
largest affluent of the Tongue; the distance was a trifle over seventeen
miles, and during the march a hail-storm of great severity visited us
and continued its pestiferous attentions for some time after tents had
been erected. The situation at the new camp had many advantages:
excellent pasturage was secured from the slopes of the hills; water
flowed in the greatest profusion—clear, sweet, and icy cold, murmuring
gently in the channels on each side; fire-wood in sufficiency could be
gathered along the banks; the view of the mountains was beautiful and
exhilarating, and the climate serene and bracing. Goose Creek was
twenty-five yards wide, with a uniform depth of three feet, but greatly
swollen by recent rains and the melting of the snow-banks up in the
mountains.
We had to settle down and await the return of Frank Gruard, Louis
Richaud, and “Big Bat,” concerning whose safety not a few of the command
began to express misgivings, notwithstanding they were all experienced
frontiersmen, able to look out for their own safety under almost any
contingencies. The more sanguine held to the view that the Crows had
retired farther into their own country on account of the assembling of
great bands of their enemies—the Sioux and Cheyennes—and that our
emissaries had to travel much farther than they had first contemplated.
But they had been separated from us for ten or twelve days, and it was
becoming a matter of grave concern what to do about them.
In a bivouac of that kind the great object of life is to kill time.
Drilling and guard duty occupy very few minutes, reading and writing
become irksome, and conversation narrowly escapes the imputation of rank
stupidity. We had enjoyed several pony races, but the best plugs for
that sort of work—Major Burt’s white and Lieutenant Robertson’s bay—had
both been shot during the skirmish of the 9th of the month, the former
fatally, and we no longer enjoyed the pleasure of seeing races in which
the stakes were nothing but a can of corn or a haunch of venison on each
side, but which attracted as large and as deeply interested crowds as
many more pretentious affairs within the limits of civilization. The
sending in of the mail every week or ten days excited a ripple of
concern, and the packages of letters made up to be forwarded showed that
our soldiers were men of intelligence and not absolutely severed from
home ties. The packages were wrapped very tightly, first in waxed cloth
and then in oiled muslin, the official communications of most importance
being tied to the courier’s person, the others packed on a led mule. At
sundown the courier, Harrison, who had undertaken this dangerous
business, set out on his return to Fort Fetterman, accompanied by a
non-commissioned officer whose time had expired. They were to ride only
by night, and never follow the road too closely; by hiding in little
coves high up in the hills during the day they could most easily escape
detection by prowling bands of Indians coming out from the agencies, but
at best it was taking their lives in their hands.
The packers organized a foot-race, and bets as high as five and ten
thousand dollars were freely waged. These were of the class known in
Arizona as “jawbone,” and in Wyoming as “wind”; the largest amount of
cash that I saw change hands was twenty-five cents. Rattlesnakes began
to emerge from their winter seclusion, and to appear again in society;
Lieutenant Lemly found an immense one coiled up in his blankets, and
waked the echoes with his yells for help. The weather had assumed a most
charming phase; the gently undulating prairie upon whose bosom camp
reposed was decked with the greenest and most nutritive grasses; our
animals lazily nibbled along the hill skirts or slept in the genial
light of the sun. In the shade of the box-elder and willows along the
stream beds the song of the sweet-voiced meadow lark was heard all day.
At rare moments the chirping of grasshoppers might be distinguished in
the herbage; in front of our line of tents a cook was burning or
browning coffee—it was just as often one as the other—an idle recruit
watching the process with a semi-attentive stupefaction. The report of a
carbine, aimed and fired by one exasperated teamster at another
attracted general notice; the assailant was at once put in confinement
and a languid discussion of the merits or supposed merits of the case
undulated from tent to tent. Parties of whist-players devoted themselves
to their favorite game; other players eked out a share of diversion with
home-made checker-boards. Those who felt disposed to test their skill as
anglers were fairly rewarded; the trout began to bite languidly at first
and with exasperating deliberation, but making up for it all later on,
when a good mess could be hooked in a few minutes. Noyes and Wells and
Randall were the trout maniacs, but they had many followers in their
gentle lunacy, which, before the hot weather had ended, spread
throughout the whole command. Mills and his men were more inclined to go
up in the higher altitudes and hunt for bear; they brought in a
good-sized “cinnamon,” which was some time afterwards followed by other
specimens of the bruin family; elk and deer and buffaloes, the last
chiefly the meat of old bulls driven out of the herds to the northwest,
gave relish and variety to the ordinary rations and additional topics
for conversation.
General Crook was an enthusiastic hunter and fisher, and never failed to
return with some tribute exacted from the beasts of the hills or the
swimmers of the pools; but he frequently joined Burt and Carpenter in
their search for rare birds and butterflies, with which the rolling
plains at the base of the Big Horn were filled. We caught one very fine
specimen of the prairie owl, which seemed wonderfully tame, and
comported itself with rare dignity; the name of “Sitting Bull” was
conferred unanimously, and borne so long as the bird honored camp with
its presence. Lieutenant Foster made numbers of interesting sketches of
the scenery of the Big Horn and the hills nearest the Goose Creek; one
of the packers, a man with decided artistic abilities, named Stanley,
was busy at every spare moment sketching groups of teamsters, scouts,
animals, and wagons, with delicacy of execution and excellent effect.
Captain Stanton, our engineer officer, took his altitudes daily and
noted the positions of the stars. Newspapers were read to pieces, and
such books as had found their way with the command were passed from hand
to hand and read eagerly. Mr. Wasson and I made an arrangement to peruse
each day either one of Shakespeare’s plays or an essay by Macaulay, and
to discuss them together. The discovery of the first mess of luscious
strawberries occasioned more excitement than any of the news received in
the journals of the time, and an alarm on the picket line from the
accidental discharge of a carbine or rifle would bring out all the
conversational strength of young and old.
It was whispered that one of our teamsters was a woman, and no other
than “Calamity Jane,” a character famed in border story; she had donned
the raiment of the alleged rougher sex, and was skinning mules with the
best of them. She was eccentric and wayward rather than bad, and had
adopted male attire more to aid her in getting a living than for any
improper purpose. “Jane” was as rough and burly as any of her messmates,
and it is doubtful if her sex would ever have been discovered had not
the wagon-master noted that she didn’t cuss her mules with the
enthusiasm to be expected from a graduate of Patrick & Saulsbury’s Black
Hills Stage Line, as she had represented herself to be. The Montana
miners whom we had found near old Fort Reno began to “prospect” the
gulches, but met with slight success.
During the afternoon of June 14th Frank Gruard and Louis Richaud
returned, bringing with them an old Crow chief; they reported having
been obliged to travel as far as old Fort Smith, on the Big Horn, and
that they had there seen a large village of Crows, numbering more than
two hundred lodges. While preparing a cup of coffee the smoke from their
little fire was discovered by the Crow scouts, and all the young
warriors of the village, mistaking them for a small band of Sioux
raiders, charged across the river and attacked them, nearly killing both
Frank and Bat before mutual recognition was made and satisfactory
greetings exchanged. The Crows were at first reluctant to send any of
their men to aid in the war against the Sioux, alleging that they were
compelled to get meat for their women and children, and the buffaloes
were now close to them in great herds; we might stay out too long; the
enemy was so close to the Crows that reprisals might be attempted, and
many of the Crow women, children, and old men would fall beneath the
bullet and the lance. But at last they consented to send a detachment of
one hundred and seventy-five of their best men to see Crook and talk the
matter over. Frank led them to our deserted camp on the Tongue River,
upon seeing which they became alarmed, and supposed that we must have
had a defeat from the Sioux and been compelled to abandon the country;
only sixteen followed further; of these Frank and Louis took the old
chief and rode as rapidly as possible to our camp on the Goose, leaving
Bat to jog along with fifteen others and join at leisure.
General Crook ordered a hot meal of coffee, sugar, biscuits, butter,
venison, and stewed dried apples to be set before the guest and guides,
and then had a long talk with the former through the “sign language,”
the curious medium of correspondence between all the tribes east of the
Rocky Mountains, from the Saskatchewan to the Pecos. This language is
ideagraphic and not literal in its elements, and has strong resemblance
to the figure speech of deaf mutes. Every word, every idea to be
conveyed, has its characteristic symbol; the rapidity of transmission is
almost telegraphic; and, as will be demonstrated later on, every
possible topic finds adequate expression. The old chief explained to
Frank that the troops from Montana (Gibbon’s command) were encamped on
the left bank of the Yellowstone, opposite the mouth of the Rosebud,
unable to cross; the hostile Sioux were watching the troops from the
other side. An attempt made by Gibbon to throw his troops across had
resulted in the drowning of one company’s horses in the flood; the Sioux
had also, in some unexplained way, succeeded in running off the ponies
belonging to the thirty Crow scouts attached to Gibbon’s command.
The main body of the hostile Sioux and Cheyennes was encamped on the
Tongue, near the mouth of Otter Creek, and between that and the
Yellowstone. The Crows had heard that a large band of Shoshones had
started out to join Crook, and should soon be with him at his present
camp. It was a small detachment of Crow scouts that had alarmed our
pickets by yelling some ten nights previously. As soon as the meal and
the conversation were ended Crook sent the old chief back with Louis
Richaud and Major Burt, who from previous service among the Crows was
well acquainted with many of them, to halt the main body and induce them
to enter our camp. Burt was entirely successful in his mission, and
before dusk he was with us again, this time riding at the head of a long
retinue of savage retainers, whose grotesque head-dresses, variegated
garments, wild little ponies, and war-like accoutrements made a quaint
and curious spectacle.
While the main column halted just inside our camp, the three chiefs—“Old
Crow,” “Medicine Crow,” and “Good Heart”—were presented to General
Crook, and made the recipients of some little attentions in the way of
food. Our newly-arrived allies bivouacked in our midst, sending their
herd of ponies out to graze alongside of our own horses. The entire band
numbered one hundred and seventy-six, as near as we could ascertain;
each had two ponies. The first thing they did was to erect the
war-lodges of saplings, covered over with blankets or pieces of canvas;
fires were next built, and a feast prepared of the supplies of coffee,
sugar, and hard-tack dealt out by the commissary; these are the prime
luxuries of an Indian’s life. A curious crowd of lookers-on—officers,
soldiers, teamsters, and packers—congregated around the little squads of
Crows, watching with eager attention their every movement. The Indians
seemed proud of the distinguished position they occupied in popular
estimation, and were soon on terms of easy familiarity with the
soldiers, some of whom could talk a sentence or two of Crow, and others
were expert to a slight extent in the sign language.
In stature, complexion, dress, and general demeanor a marked contrast
was observable between our friends and the Sioux Indians, a contrast
decidedly to the advantage of the former. The Absaroka or Crow Indians,
perhaps as a consequence of their residence among the elevated banks and
cool, fresh mountain ranges between the Big Horn River and the
Yellowstone, are somewhat fairer than the other tribes about them; they
are all above medium height, not a few being quite tall, and many have a
noble expression of countenance. Their dress consisted of a shirt of
flannel, cotton, or buckskin; breech-clout; leggings of blanket;
moccasins of deer, elk, or buffalo hide; coat of bright-colored blanket,
made with loose sleeves and hood; and a head-dress fashioned in divers
shapes, but most frequently formed from an old black army hat, with the
top cut out and sides bound round with feathers, fur, and scarlet cloth.
Their arms were all breechloaders, throwing cartridges of calibre .50
with an occasional .45. Lances, medicine-poles, and tomahawks figured in
the procession. The tomahawks, made of long knives inserted in shafts or
handles of wood and horn, were murderous weapons. Accompanying these
Indians were a few little boys, whose business was to hold horses and
other unimportant work while their elders conducted the dangerous
operations of the campaign.
At “retreat” all the battalion commanders and staff officers assembled
in front of the tent of the commanding general, and listened to his
terse instructions regarding the approaching march. We were to cut loose
from our wagons, each officer and soldier carrying four days’ rations of
hard bread, coffee, and bacon in saddle-pockets, and one hundred rounds
of ammunition in belts or pouches; one blanket to each person. The
wagons were to be parked and left behind in a defensible position on the
Tongue or Goose, and under the protection of the men unable for any
reason to join in the forward movement; all the infantrymen who could
ride and who so desired were to be mounted on mules from the pack-trains
with saddles from the wagons or from the cavalry companies which could
spare them. If successful in attacking a village, the supplies of dried
meat and other food were to be saved, and we should then, in place of
returning immediately to our train, push on to make a combination with
either Terry or Gibbon, as the case might be.
Scarcely had this brief conference been ended when a long line of
glittering lances and brightly polished weapons of fire announced the
anxiously expected advent of our other allies, the Shoshones or Snakes,
who, to the number of eighty-six, galloped rapidly up to headquarters
and came left front into line in splendid style. No trained warriors of
civilized armies ever executed the movement more prettily. Exclamations
of wonder and praise greeted the barbaric array of these fierce
warriors, warmly welcomed by their former enemies but at present strong
friends—the Crows. General Crook moved out to review their line of
battle, resplendent in all the fantastic adornment of feathers, beads,
brass buttons, bells, scarlet cloth, and flashing lances. The Shoshones
were not slow to perceive the favorable impression made, and when the
order came for them to file off by the right moved with the precision of
clock-work and the pride of veterans.
A grand council was the next feature of the evening’s entertainment.
Around a huge fire of crackling boughs the officers of the command
arranged themselves in two rows, the interest and curiosity depicted
upon their countenances acting as a foil to the stolidity and
imperturbable calmness of the Indians squatted upon the ground on the
other side. The breezes blowing the smoke aside would occasionally
enable the flames to bring out in bold and sudden relief the intense
blackness of the night, the sepulchral whiteness of the tents and
wagon-sheets, the blue coats of officers and soldiers (who thronged
among the wagons behind their superiors), the red, white, yellow, and
black beaded blankets of the savages, whose aquiline features and
glittering eyes had become still more aquiline and still more
glittering, and the small group in the centre of the circle composed of
General Crook and his staff, the interpreters—Frank Gruard and “Big Bat”
and Louis—and the Indian chiefs. One quadrant was reserved for the
Shoshones, another for the Crows. Each tribe selected one spokesman, who
repeated to his people the words of the General as they were made known
by the interpreters. Ejaculations of “Ugh! ugh!” were the only signs of
approval, but it was easy enough to see that nothing was lost that was
addressed to them. Pipes of the same kind as those the Sioux have were
kept in industrious circulation. The remarks made by General Crook were
almost identical with those addressed to the Crows alone earlier in the
evening; the Indians asked the privilege of scouting in their own way,
which was conceded.
An adjournment was ordered at between ten and eleven o’clock to allow
such of our allies as so desired to seek much-needed rest. The Shoshones
had ridden sixty miles, and night was far advanced. The erroneousness of
this assumption was disclosed very speedily. A long series of monotonous
howls, shrieks, groans, and nasal yells, emphasized by a perfectly
ear-piercing succession of thumps upon drums improvised from “parfleche”
(tanned buffalo skin), attracted nearly all the soldiers and many of the
officers not on duty to the allied camp. Peeping into the different
lodges was very much like peeping through the key-hole of Hades.
Crouched around little fires not affording as much light as an ordinary
tallow candle, the swarthy figures of the naked and half-naked Indians
were visible, moving and chanting in unison with some leader. No words
were distinguishable; the ceremony partook of the nature of an
abominable incantation, and as far as I could judge had a semi-religious
character. One of the Indians, mounted on a pony and stripped almost
naked, passed along from lodge to lodge, stopping in front of each and
calling upon the Great Spirit (so our interpreter said) to send them
plenty of scalps, a big Sioux village, and lots of ponies. The inmates
would respond with, if possible, increased vehemence, and the old saying
about making night hideous was emphatically suggested. With this wild
requiem ringing in his ears one of our soldiers, a patient in hospital,
Private William Nelson, Company “L,” Third Cavalry, breathed his last.
The herd of beef cattle, now reduced to six, became scared by the din
and broke madly for the hills. All night the rain pattered down.
[Illustration: CHATO.]
Among our Crows were said to be some very distinguished warriors; one of
these pointed out to me had performed during the preceding winter the
daring feat of stealing in alone upon a Sioux village and getting a fine
pony, which he tied loosely to a stake outside; then he crept back,
lifted up the flap of one of the lodges, and called gently to the
sleepers, who, unsuspecting, answered the grunt, which awakened them,
and thus betrayed just where the men were lying; the Crow took aim
coolly and blew the head off of one of the Sioux, slipped down through
the village, untied and mounted his pony, and was away like the wind
before the astonished enemy could tell from the screaming and jabbering
squaws what was the matter.
All through the next day, June 15, 1876, camp was a beehive of busy
preparation. Colonel Chambers had succeeded in finding one hundred and
seventy-five infantrymen who could ride, or were anxious to try, so as
to see the whole trip through in proper shape. These were mounted upon
mules from the wagon and pack trains, and the first hour’s experience
with the reluctant Rosinantes equalled the best exhibition ever given by
Barnum. Tom Moore organized a small detachment of packers who had had
any amount of experience; two of them—Young and Delaney—had been with
the English in India, in the wars with the Sikhs and Rohillas, and knew
as much as most people do about campaigning and all its hardships and
dangers. The medical staff was kept busy examining men unfit to go to
the front, but it was remarkable that the men ordered to remain behind
did so under protest. The wagons were parked in a great corral, itself a
sort of fortification against which the Sioux would not heedlessly rush.
Within this corral racks made of willow branches supported loads of wild
meat, drying in the sun: deer and antelope venison, buffalo, elk, and
grizzly-bear meat, the last two killed by a hunting party from the
pack-train the previous day.
The preparations which our savage allies were making were no less
noticeable: in both Snake and Crow camps could be seen squads of young
warriors looking after their rifles, which, by the way, among the
Shoshones, I forgot to mention, were of the latest model—calibre .45—and
kept with scrupulous care in regular gun-racks. Some were sharpening
lances or adorning them with feathers and paint; others were making
“coup” sticks, which are long willow branches about twelve feet from end
to end, stripped of leaves and bark, and having each some distinctive
mark, in the way of feathers, bells, fur, paint, or bright-colored cloth
or flannel. These serve a singular purpose: the great object of the
Shoshones, Crows, Cheyennes, and Dakotas in making war is to set the
enemy afoot. This done, his destruction is rendered more easy if not
more certain. Ponies are also the wealth of the conquerors; hence, in
dividing the spoil, each man claims the animals first struck by his
“coup” stick.
With the Snakes were three white men—Cosgrove, Yarnell, and Eckles—all
Texans; and one French-Canadian half-breed, named Luisant. Cosgrove, the
leading spirit, was, during the Rebellion, a captain in the 32d Texas
Cavalry, C. S. A., and showed he had not forgotten the lessons of the
war by the appearance of discipline and good order evinced by his
command, who, in this respect, were somewhat ahead of the Crows. We were
informed that on the march over from Wind River, the Snakes, during one
afternoon, killed one hundred and seventy-five buffaloes on the eastern
slope of the Owl Creek Mountains. In the early hours of the afternoon
the Crows had a foot-race, for twenty cartridges a side; the running was
quite good for the distance of one hundred and fifty yards.
At sunset we buried Private Nelson, who had died the previous night. The
funeral cortege was decidedly imposing, because, as on all former
occasions of the same nature, all officers and men not engaged on other
duty made it a point to be present at the grave of every dead comrade;
the noise of the parting volleys brought our savages up on a gallop,
persuaded that the Sioux were making a demonstration against some part
of our lines; they dashed up to the side of the grave, and there they
sat motionless upon their ponies, feathers nodding in the breeze, and
lances gleaming in the sun. Some of them wore as many as four rings in
each ear, the entire cartilage being perforated from apex to base.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE COLUMN IN MOTION—RUNNING INTO A GREAT HERD OF BUFFALOES—THE SIGNAL
CRY OF THE SCOUTS—THE FIGHT ON THE ROSEBUD—HOW THE KILLED WERE
BURIED—SCALP DANCE—BUTCHERING A CHEYENNE—LIEUTENANT SCHUYLER
ARRIVES—SENDING BACK THE WOUNDED.
On the 16th of June, by five o’clock in the morning, our whole command
had broken camp and was on its way westward; we crossed Tongue River,
finding a swift stream, rather muddy from recent rains, with a current
twenty-five yards wide, and four feet deep; the bottom of hard-pan, but
the banks on one side muddy and slippery.
The valley, as we saw it from the bluffs amid which we marched,
presented a most beautiful appearance—green with juicy grasses, and dark
with the foliage of cottonwood and willow. Its sinuosities encircled
many park-like areas of meadow, bounded on the land side by bluffs of
drift. The Indians at first marched on the flank, but soon passed the
column and took the lead, the “medicine men” in front; one of the head
“medicine men” of the Crows kept up a piteous chant, reciting the
cruelties of their enemies and stimulating the young men to deeds of
martial valor. In every possible way these savages reminded me of the
descriptions I had read of the Bedouins.
Our course turned gradually to the northwest, and led us across several
of the tributaries of the Tongue, or “Deje-ajie” as the Crows called it,
each of these of good dimensions, and carrying the unusual flow due to
the rapid melting of snow in the higher elevations. The fine grass seen
close to the Tongue disappeared, and the country was rather more barren,
with many prairie-dog villages. The soil was made up of sandstones, with
a great amount of both clay and lime, shales and lignite, the latter
burnt out. Some of the sandstone had been filled with pyrites, which had
decomposed and left it in a vesicular state. There were a great many
scrub pines in the recesses of the bluffs. The cause for the sudden
disappearance of the grass was soon apparent: the scouts ran in upon a
herd of buffaloes whose cast-off bulls had been the principal factor in
our meat supply for more than a week; the trails ran in every direction,
and the grass had been nipped off more closely than if cut by a scythe.
There was much more cactus than we had seen for some time, and a
reappearance of the sage-brush common nearer to Fort Fetterman.
In the afternoon, messengers from our extreme advance came as fast as
ponies would carry them, with the information that we were upon the
trail of a very great village of the enemy. The cavalry dismounted and
unsaddled, seeking the shelter of all the ravines to await the results
of the examination to be made by a picked detail from the Crows and
Shoshones. The remaining Indians joined in a wild, strange war-dance,
the younger warriors becoming almost frenzied before the exercises
terminated. The young men who had been sent out to spy the land rejoined
us on a full run; from the tops of the hills they yelled like wolves,
the conventional signal among the plains tribes that the enemy has been
sighted. Excitement, among the Indians at least, was at fever heat; many
of the younger members of the party re-echoed the ululation of the
incoming scouts; many others spurred out to meet them and escort them in
with becoming honors. The old chiefs held their bridles while they
dismounted, and the less prominent warriors deferentially formed in a
circle to listen to their narrative. It did not convey much information
to my mind, unaccustomed to the indications so familiar to them. It
simply amounted to this, that the buffaloes were in very large herds
directly ahead of us, and were running away from a Sioux hunting party.
Knowing the unfaltering accuracy of an Indian’s judgment in matters of
this kind, General Crook told the chiefs to arrange their plan of march
according to their own ideas. On occasions like this, as I was told by
our scouts and others, the young men of the Assiniboines and Northern
Sioux were required to hold in each hand a piece of buffalo chip as a
sign that they were telling the truth; nothing of that kind occurred on
the occasion in question. While the above was going on, the Indians were
charging about on their hardy little ponies, to put them out of breath,
so that, when they regained their wind, they would not fail to sustain a
whole day’s battle. A little herb is carried along, to be given to the
ponies in such emergencies, but what virtues are attributed to this
medicine I was unable to ascertain. Much solemnity is attached to the
medicine arrows of the “medicine men,” who seem to possess the power of
arbitrarily stopping a march at almost any moment. As I kept with them,
I had opportunity to observe all that they did, except when every one
was directed to keep well to the rear, as happened upon approaching a
tree—juniper or cedar—in the fork of whose lower branches there was a
buffalo head, before which the principal “medicine man” and his
assistant halted and smoked from their long pipes.
Noon had passed, and the march was resumed to gain the Rosebud, one of
the tributaries of the Yellowstone, marking the ultimate western limit
of our campaign during the previous winter. We moved along over an
elevated, undulating, grassy tableland. Without possessing any very
marked beauty, there was a certain picturesqueness in the country which
was really pleasing. Every few rods a petty rivulet coursed down the
hill-sides to pay its tribute to the Tongue; there was no timber, except
an occasional small cottonwood or willow, to be seen along the banks of
these little water-courses, but wild roses by the thousand laid their
delicate beauties at our feet; a species of phlox, daintily blue in
tint, was there also in great profusion, while in the bushes multitudes
of joyous-voiced singing-birds piped their welcome as the troops filed
by. Yet this lovely country was abandoned to the domination of the
thriftless savage, the buffalo, and the rattlesnake; we could see the
last-named winding along through the tall grass, rattling defiance as
they sneaked away. Buffalo spotted the landscape in every direction, in
squads of ten and twelve and “bunches” of sixty and seventy. These were
not old bulls banished from the society of their mates, to be attacked
and devoured by coyotes, but fine fat cows with calves ambling close
behind them. One young bull calf trotted down close to the column, his
eyes beaming with curiosity and wonder. He was allowed to approach
within a few feet, when our prosaic Crow guides took his life as the
penalty of his temerity. Thirty buffaloes were killed that afternoon,
and the choice pieces—hump, tenderloin, tongue, heart, and rib
steaks—packed upon our horses. The flesh was roasted in the ashes, a
pinch of salt sprinkled over it, and a very savory and juicy addition
made to our scanty supplies. The Indians ate the buffalo liver raw,
sometimes sprinkling a pinch of gall upon it; the warm raw liver alone
is not bad for a hungry man, tasting very much like a raw oyster. The
entrails are also much in favor with the aborigines; they are cleaned,
wound round a ramrod, or something akin to it if a ramrod be not
available, and held in the hot ashes until cooked through; they make a
palatable dish; the buffalo has an intestine shaped like an apple, which
is filled with chyle, and is the _bonne bouche_ of the savages when
prepared in the same manner as the other intestines, excepting that the
contents are left untouched.
While riding alongside of one of our Crow scouts I noticed tears flowing
down his cheeks, and very soon he started a wail or chant of the most
lugubrious tone; I respected his grief until he had wept to his heart’s
content, and then ventured to ask the cause of such deep distress; he
answered that his uncle had been killed a number of years before by the
Sioux, and he was crying for him now and wishing that he might come back
to life to get some of the ponies of the Sioux and Cheyennes. Two
minutes after having discharged the sad duty of wailing for his dead
relative, the young Crow was as lively as any one else in the column.
We bivouacked on the extreme head-waters of the Rosebud, which was at
that point a feeble rivulet of snow water, sweet and palatable enough
when the muddy ooze was not stirred up from the bottom. Wood was found
in plenty for the slight wants of the command, which made small fires
for a few moments to boil coffee, while the animals, pretty well tired
out by the day’s rough march of nearly forty miles, rolled and rolled
again in the matted bunches of succulent pasturage growing at their
feet. Our lines were formed in hollow square, animals inside, and each
man sleeping with his saddle for a pillow and with arms by his side.
Pickets were posted on the bluffs near camp, and, after making what
collation we could, sleep was sought at the same moment the black clouds
above us had begun to patter down rain. A party of scouts returned late
at night, reporting having come across a small gulch in which was a
still burning fire of a band of Sioux hunters, who in the precipitancy
of their flight had left behind a blanket of India-rubber. We came near
having a casualty in the accidental discharge of the revolver of Mr.
John F. Finerty, the bullet burning the saddle and breaking it, but,
fortunately, doing no damage to the rider. By daylight of the next day,
June 17, 1876, we were marching down the Rosebud.
The Crow scouts with whom I was had gone but a short distance when shots
were heard down the valley to the north, followed by the ululation
proclaiming from the hill-tops that the enemy was in force and that we
were in for a fight. Shot after shot followed on the left, and by the
time that two of the Crows reached us, one of them severely wounded and
both crying, “Sioux! Sioux!” it was plain that something out of the
common was to be expected. There was a strong line of pickets out on the
hills on that flank, and this was immediately strengthened by a
respectable force of skirmishers to cover the cavalry horses, which were
down at the bottom of the amphitheatre through which the Rosebud at that
point ran. The Shoshones promptly took position in the hills to the
left, and alongside of them were the companies of the Fourth Infantry,
under Major A. B. Cain, and one or two of the cavalry companies,
dismounted.
The Sioux advanced boldly and in overwhelming force, covering the hills
to the north, and seemingly confident that our command would prove an
easy prey. In one word, the battle of the Rosebud was a trap, and “Crazy
Horse,” the leader in command here as at the Custer massacre a week
later, was satisfied he was going to have everything his own way. He
stated afterwards, when he had surrendered to General Crook at the
agency, that he had no less than six thousand five hundred men in the
fight, and that the first attack was made with fifteen hundred, the
others being concealed behind the bluffs and hills. His plan of battle
was either to lead detachments in pursuit of his people, and turning
quickly cut them to pieces in detail, or draw the whole of Crook’s
forces down into the cañon of the Rosebud, where escape would have been
impossible, as it formed a veritable _cul de sac_, the vertical walls
hemming in the sides, the front being closed by a dam and abatis of
broken timber which gave a depth of ten feet of water and mud, the rear,
of course, to be shut off by thousands of yelling, murderous Sioux and
Cheyennes. That was the Sioux programme as learned that day, or
afterwards at the agencies from the surrendered hostiles in the spring
of the following year.
While this attack was going on on our left and front, a determined
demonstration was made by a large body of the enemy on our right and
rear, to repel which Colonel Royall, Third Cavalry, was sent with a
number of companies, mounted, to charge and drive back. I will restrict
my observations to what I saw, as the battle of the Rosebud has been
several times described in books and any number of times in the
correspondence sent from the command to the journals of those years. The
Sioux and Cheyennes, the latter especially, were extremely bold and
fierce, and showed a disposition to come up and have it out hand to
hand; in all this they were gratified by our troops, both red and white,
who were fully as anxious to meet them face to face and see which were
the better men. At that part of the line the enemy were disconcerted at
a very early hour by the deadly fire of the infantry with their long
rifles. As the hostiles advanced at a full run, they saw nothing in
their front, and imagined that it would be an easy thing for them to
sweep down through the long ravine leading to the amphitheatre, where
they could see numbers of our cavalry horses clumped together. They
advanced in excellent style, yelling and whooping, and glad of the
opportunity of wiping us off the face of the earth. When Cain’s men and
the detachments of the Second Cavalry which were lying down behind a low
range of knolls rose up and delivered a withering fire at less than a
hundred and fifty yards, the Sioux turned and fled as fast as “quirt”
and heel could persuade their ponies to get out of there.
But, in their turn, they re-formed behind a low range not much over
three hundred yards distant, and from that position kept up an annoying
fire upon our men and horses. Becoming bolder, probably on account of
re-enforcements, they again charged, this time upon a weak spot in our
lines a little to Cain’s left; this second advance was gallantly met by
a counter-charge of the Shoshones, who, under their chief “Luishaw,”
took the Sioux and Cheyennes in flank and scattered them before them. I
went in with this charge, and was enabled to see how such things were
conducted by the American savages, fighting according to their own
notions. There was a headlong rush for about two hundred yards, which
drove the enemy back in confusion; then was a sudden halt, and very many
of the Shoshones jumped down from their ponies and began firing from the
ground; the others who remained mounted threw themselves alongside of
their horses’ necks, so that there would be few good marks presented to
the aim of the enemy. Then, in response to some signal or cry which, of
course, I did not understand, we were off again, this time for good, and
right into the midst of the hostiles, who had been halted by a steep
hill directly in their front. Why we did not kill more of them than we
did was because they were dressed so like our own Crows that even our
Shoshones were afraid of mistakes, and in the confusion many of the
Sioux and Cheyennes made their way down the face of the bluffs unharmed.
From this high point there could be seen on Crook’s right and rear a
force of cavalry, some mounted, others dismounted, apparently in the
clutches of the enemy; that is to say, a body of hostiles was engaging
attention in front and at the same time a large mass, numbering not less
than five hundred, was getting ready to pounce upon the rear and flank
of the unsuspecting Americans. I should not forget to say that while the
Shoshones were charging the enemy on one flank, the Crows, led by Major
George M. Randall, were briskly attacking them on the other; the latter
movement had been ordered by Crook in person and executed in such a bold
and decisive manner as to convince the enemy that, no matter what their
numbers were, our troops and scouts were anxious to come to hand-to-hand
encounters with them. This was really the turning-point of the Rosebud
fight for a number of reasons: the main attack had been met and broken,
and we had gained a key-point enabling the holder to survey the whole
field and realize the strength and intentions of the enemy. The loss of
the Sioux at this place was considerable both in warriors and ponies; we
were at one moment close enough to them to hit them with clubs or “coup”
sticks, and to inflict considerable damage, but not strong enough to
keep them from getting away with their dead and wounded. A number of our
own men were also hurt, some of them quite seriously. I may mention a
young trumpeter—Elmer A. Snow, of Company M, Third Cavalry—who went in
on the charge with the Shoshones, one of the few white men with them; he
displayed noticeable gallantry, and was desperately wounded in both
arms, which were crippled for life; his escape from the midst of the
enemy was a remarkable thing.
I did not learn until nightfall that at the same time they made the
charge just spoken of; the enemy had also rushed down through a ravine
on our left and rear, reaching the spring alongside of which I had been
seated with General Crook at the moment the first shots were heard, and
where I had jotted down the first lines of the notes from which the
above condensed account of the fight has been taken. At that spring they
came upon a young Shoshone boy, not yet attained to years of manhood,
and shot him through the back and killed him, taking his scalp from the
nape of the neck to the forehead, leaving his entire skull ghastly and
white. It was the boy’s first battle, and when the skirmishing began in
earnest he asked permission of his chief to go back to the spring and
decorate himself with face-paint, which was already plastered over one
cheek, and his medicine song was half done, when he received the fatal
shot.
Crook sent orders for all troops to fall back until the line should be
complete; some of the detachments had ventured out too far, and our
extended line was too weak to withstand a determined attack in force.
Burt and Burroughs were sent with their companies of the Ninth Infantry
to drive back the force which was congregating in the rear of Royall’s
command, which was the body of troops seen from the hill crest almost
surrounded by the foe. Tom Moore with his sharpshooters from the
pack-train, and several of the Montana miners who had kept along with
the troops for the sake of a row of some kind with the natives, were
ordered to get into a shelf of rocks four hundred yards out on our front
and pick off as many of the hostile chiefs as possible and also to make
the best impression upon the flanks of any charging parties which might
attempt to pass on either side of that promontory. Moore worried the
Indians so much that they tried to cut off him and his insignificant
band. It was one of the ridiculous episodes of the day to watch those
well-meaning young warriors charging at full speed across the open space
commanded by Moore’s position; not a shot was fired, and beyond taking
an extra chew of tobacco, I do not remember that any of the party did
anything to show that he cared a continental whether the enemy came or
stayed. When those deadly rifles, sighted by men who had no idea what
the word “nerves” meant, belched their storm of lead in among the braves
and their ponies, it did not take more than seven seconds for the former
to conclude that home, sweet home was a good enough place for them.
While the infantry were moving down to close the gap on Royall’s right,
and Tom Moore was amusing himself in the rocks, Crook ordered Mills with
five companies to move out on our right and make a demonstration down
stream, intending to get ready for a forward movement with the whole
command. Mills moved out promptly, the enemy falling back on all sides
and keeping just out of fair range. I went with Mills, having returned
from seeing how Tom Moore was getting along, and can recall how deeply
impressed we all were by what we then took to be trails made by
buffaloes going down stream, but which we afterwards learned had been
made by the thousands of ponies belonging to the immense force of the
enemy here assembled. We descended into a measly-looking place: a cañon
with straight walls of sandstone, having on projecting knobs an
occasional scrub pine or cedar; it was the locality where the savages
had planned to entrap the troops, or a large part of them, and wipe them
out by closing in upon their rear. At the head of that column rode two
men who have since made their mark in far different spheres: John F.
Finerty, who has represented one of the Illinois districts in Congress;
and Frederick Schwatka, noted as a bold and successful Arctic explorer.
Crook recalled our party from the cañon before we had gone too far, but
not before Mills had detected the massing of forces to cut him off. Our
return was by another route, across the high hills and rocky places,
which would enable us to hold our own against any numbers until
assistance came. Crook next ordered an advance of our whole line, and
the Sioux fell back and left us in undisputed possession of the field.
Our total loss was fifty-seven, killed or wounded—some of the latter
only slightly. The heaviest punishment had been inflicted upon the Third
Cavalry, in Royall’s column, that regiment meeting with a total loss of
nine killed and fifteen wounded, while the Second Cavalry had two
wounded, and the Fourth Infantry three wounded. In addition to this were
the killed and wounded among the scouts, and a number of wounds which
the men cared for themselves, as they saw that the medical staff was
taxed to the utmost. One of our worst wounded was Colonel Guy V. Henry,
Third Cavalry, who was at first believed to have lost both eyes and to
have been marked for death; but, thanks to good nursing, a wiry frame,
and strong vitality, he has since recovered vision and some part of his
former physical powers. The officers who served on Crook’s staff that
day had close calls, and among others Bubb and Nickerson came very near
falling into the hands of the enemy. Colonel Royall’s staff officers,
Lemly and Foster, were greatly exposed, as were Henry Vroom, Reynolds,
and others of that part of the command. General Crook’s horse was shot
from under him, and there were few, if any, officers or soldiers, facing
the strength of the Sioux and Cheyennes at the Rosebud, who did not have
some incident of a personal nature by which to impress the affair upon
their memories for the rest of their lives.
The enemy’s loss was never known. Our scouts got thirteen scalps, but
the warriors, the moment they were badly wounded, would ride back from
the line or be led away by comrades, so that we then believed that their
total loss was much more severe. The behavior of Shoshones and Crows was
excellent. The chief of the Shoshones appeared to great advantage,
mounted on a fiery pony, he himself naked to the waist and wearing one
of the gorgeous head-dresses of eagle feathers sweeping far along the
ground behind his pony’s tail. The Crow chief, “Medicine Crow,” looked
like a devil in his war-bonnet of feathers, fur, and buffalo horns.
We had pursued the enemy for seven miles, and had held the field of
battle, without the slightest resistance on the side of the Sioux and
Cheyennes. It had been a field of their own choosing, and the attack had
been intended as a surprise and, if possible, to lead into an ambuscade
also; but in all they had been frustrated and driven off, and did not
attempt to return or to annoy us during the night. As we had nothing but
the clothing each wore and the remains of the four days’ rations with
which we had started, we had no other resource but to make our way back
to the wagon trains with the wounded. That night was an unquiet and busy
time for everybody. The Shoshones caterwauled and lamented the death of
the young warrior whose life had been ended and whose bare skull still
gleamed from the side of the spring where he fell. About midnight they
buried him, along with our own dead, for whose sepulture a deep trench
was dug in the bank of the Rosebud near the water line, the bodies laid
in a row, covered with stones, mud, and earth packed down, and a great
fire kindled on top and allowed to burn all night. When we broke camp
the next morning the entire command marched over the graves, so as to
obliterate every trace and prevent prowling savages from exhuming the
corpses and scalping them.
A rough shelter of boughs and branches had been erected for the wounded,
and our medical officers, Hartsuff, Patzki, and Stevens, labored all
night, assisted by Lieutenant Schwatka, who had taken a course of
lectures at Bellevue Hospital, New York. The Shoshones crept out during
the night and cut to pieces the two Sioux bodies within reach; this was
in revenge for their own dead, and because the enemy had cut one of our
men to pieces during the fight, in which they made free use of their
lances, and of a kind of tomahawk, with a handle eight feet long, which
they used on horseback.
June 18, 1876, we were turned out of our blankets at three o’clock in
the morning, and sat down to eat on the ground a breakfast of hard-tack,
coffee, and fried bacon. The sky was an immaculate blue, and the ground
was covered with a hard frost, which made every one shiver. The animals
had rested, and the wounded were reported by Surgeon Hartsuff to be
doing as well “as could be expected.” “Travois” were constructed of
Cottonwood and willow branches, held together by ropes and rawhide, and
to care for each of these six men were detailed. As we were moving off,
our scouts discerned three or four Sioux riding down to the
battle-field, upon reaching which they dismounted, sat down, and bowed
their heads; we could not tell through glasses what they were doing, but
the Shoshones and Crows said that they were weeping for their dead. They
were not fired upon or molested in any way. We pushed up the Rosebud,
keeping mainly on its western bank, and doing our best to select a good
trail along which the wounded might be dragged with least jolting. Crook
wished to keep well to the south so as to get farther into the Big Horn
range, and avoid much of the deep water of the streams flowing into
Tongue River, which might prove too swift and dangerous for the wounded
men in the “travois.” In avoiding Scylla, we ran upon Charybdis: we
escaped much of the deep water, although not all of it, but encountered
much trouble from the countless ravines and gullies which cut the flanks
of the range in every direction.
The column halted for an hour at the conical hill, crested with pine,
which marks the divide between the Rosebud and the Greasy Grass,—a
tributary of the Little Big Horn,—the spot where our Crow guides claimed
that their tribe had whipped and almost exterminated a band of the
Blackfeet Sioux. Our horses were allowed to graze until the rear-guard
had caught up, with the wounded men under its care. The Crows had a
scalp dance, holding aloft on poles and lances the lank, black locks of
the Sioux and Cheyennes killed in the fight of the day before, and one
killed that very morning. It seems that as the Crows were riding along
the trail off to the right of the command, they heard some one calling,
“Mini! Mini!” which is the Dakota term for water; it was a Cheyenne
whose eyes had been shot out in the beginning of the battle, and who had
crawled to a place of concealment in the rocks, and now hearing the
Crows talk as they rode along addressed them in Sioux, thinking them to
be the latter. The Crows cut him limb from limb and ripped off his
scalp. The rear-guard reported having had a hard time getting along with
the wounded on account of the great number of gullies already mentioned;
great assistance had been rendered in this severe duty by Sergeant
Warfield, Troop “F,” Third Cavalry, an old Arizona veteran, as well as
by Tom Moore and his band of packers. So far as scenery was concerned,
the most critical would have been pleased with that section of our
national domain, the elysium of the hunter, the home of the bear, the
elk, deer, antelope, mountain sheep, and buffalo; the carcasses of the
last-named lined the trail, and the skulls and bones whitened the
hill-sides. The march of the day was a little over twenty-two miles, and
ended upon one of the tributaries of the Tongue, where we bivouacked and
passed the night in some discomfort on account of the excessive cold
which drove us from our scanty covering shortly after midnight. The
Crows left during the night, promising to resume the campaign with
others of their tribe, and to meet us somewhere on the Tongue or Goose
Creek.
June 19 found us back at our wagon-train, which Major Furey had
converted into a fortress, placed on a tongue of land, surrounded on
three sides by deep, swift-flowing water, and on the neck by a line of
breastworks commanding all approaches. Ropes and chains had been
stretched from wheel to wheel, so that even if any of the enemy did
succeed in slipping inside, the stock could not be run out. Furey had
not allowed his little garrison to remain inside the intrenchments: he
had insisted upon some of them going out daily to scrutinize the country
and to hunt for fresh meat; the carcasses of six buffaloes and three elk
attested the execution of his orders. Furey’s force consisted of no less
than eighty packers and one hundred and ten teamsters, besides sick and
disabled left behind. One of his assistants was Mr. John Mott MacMahon,
the same man who as a sergeant in the Third Cavalry had been by the side
of Lieutenant Cushing at the moment he was killed by the Chiricahua
Apaches in Arizona. After caring for the wounded and the animals, every
one splashed in the refreshing current; the heat of the afternoon became
almost unbearable, the thermometer indicating 103° Fahrenheit. Lemons,
limes, lime juice, and citric acid, of each of which there was a small
supply, were hunted up and used for making a glass of lemonade for the
people in the rustic hospital.
June 21, Crook sent the wounded back to Fort Fetterman, placing them in
wagons spread with fresh grass; Major Furey was sent back to obtain
additional supplies; the escort, consisting of one company from the
Ninth and one from the Fourth Infantry, was commanded by Colonel
Chambers, with whom were the following officers: Munson and Capron of
the Ninth, Luhn and Seton of the Fourth. Mr. MacMillan, the
correspondent of the _Inter-Ocean_ of Chicago, also accompanied the
party; he had been especially energetic in obtaining all data referring
to the campaign, and had shown that he had as much pluck as any officer
or soldier in the column, but his strength was not equal to the hard
marching and climbing, coupled with the violent alternations of heat and
cold, rain and shine, to which we were subjected. The Shoshones also
left for their own country, going across the Big Horn range due west;
after having a big scalp dance with their own people they would return;
for the same reason, the Crows had rejoined their tribe. Five of the
Shoshones remained in camp, to act in any needed capacity until the
return of their warriors. The care taken of the Shoshone wounded pleased
me very much, and I saw that the “medicine men” knew how to make a fair
article of splint from the twigs of the willow, and that they depended
upon such appliances in cases of fracture fully as much as they did upon
the singing which took up so much of their time, and was so obnoxious to
the unfortunate whites whose tents were nearest.
In going home across the mountains to the Wind River the Crows took one
of their number who had been badly wounded in the thigh. Why he insisted
upon going back to his own home I do not know; perhaps the sufferer
really did not know himself, but disliked being separated from his
comrades. A splint was adjusted to the fractured limb, and the patient
was seated upon an easy cushion instead of a saddle. Everything went
well until after crossing the Big Horn Mountains, when the party ran in
upon a band of Sioux raiders or spies in strong force. The Crows were
hailed by some of the Sioux, but managed to answer a few words in that
language, and then struck out as fast as ponies would carry them to get
beyond reach of their enemies. They were afraid of leaving a trail, and
for that reason followed along the current of all the mountain streams,
swollen at that season by rains and melting snows, fretting into foam
against impeding boulders and crossed and recrossed by interlacing
branches of fallen timber. Through and over or under, as the case might
be, the frightened Crows made their way, indifferent to the agony of the
wounded companion, for whose safety only they cared, but to whose moans
they were utterly irresponsive. This story we learned upon the return of
the Shoshones.
To be obliged to await the train with supplies was a serious annoyance,
but nothing better could be done. We had ceded to the Sioux by the
treaty of 1867 all the country from the Missouri to the Big Horn,
destroying the posts which had afforded protection to the overland route
into Montana, and were now feeling the loss of just such depots of
supply as those posts would have been. It was patent to every one that
not hundreds, as had been reported, but thousands of Sioux and Cheyennes
were in hostility and absent from the agencies, and that, if the war was
to be prosecuted with vigor, some depots must be established at an
eligible location like the head of Tongue River, old Fort Reno, or other
point in that vicinity; another in the Black Hills; and still another at
some favorable point on the Yellowstone, preferably the mouth of Tongue
River. Such, at least, was the recommendation made by General Crook, and
posts at or near all the sites indicated were in time established and
are still maintained. The merits of Tongue River and its tributaries as
great trout streams were not long without proper recognition at the
hands of our anglers. Under the influence of the warm weather the fish
had begun to bite voraciously, in spite of the fact that there were
always squads of men bathing in the limpid waters, or mules slaking
their thirst. The first afternoon ninety-five were caught and brought
into camp, where they were soon broiling on the coals or frying in pans.
None of them were large, but all were “pan” fish, delicious to the
taste. While the sun was shining we were annoyed by swarms of green and
black flies, which disappeared with the coming of night and its
refreshingly cool breezes.
June 23, Lieutenant Schuyler, Fifth Cavalry, reported at headquarters
for duty as aide-de-camp to General Crook. He had been four days making
the trip out from Fort Fetterman, travelling with the two couriers who
brought our mail. At old Fort Reno they had stumbled upon a war party of
Sioux, but were not discovered, and hid in the rocks until the darkness
of night enabled them to resume their journey at a gallop, which never
stopped for more than forty miles. They brought news that the Fifth
Cavalry was at Red Cloud Agency; that five commissioners were to be
appointed to confer with the Sioux; and that Rutherford B. Hayes, of
Ohio, had been nominated by the Republicans for the Presidency. General
Hayes had commanded a brigade under General Crook in the Army of West
Virginia during the War of the Rebellion. Crook spoke of his former
subordinate in the warmest and most affectionate manner, instancing
several battles in which Hayes had displayed exceptional courage, and
proved himself to be, to use Crook’s words, “as brave a man as ever wore
a shoulder-strap.”
My note-books about this time seem to be almost the chronicle of a
sporting club, so filled are they with the numbers of trout brought by
different fishermen into camp; all fishers did not stop at my tent, and
I do not pretend to have preserved accurate figures, much being left
unrecorded. Mills started in with a record of over one hundred caught by
himself and two soldiers in one short afternoon. On the 28th of June the
same party has another record of one hundred and forty-six. On the 29th
of same month Bubb is credited with fifty-five during the afternoon,
while the total brought into camp during the 28th ran over five hundred.
General Crook started out to catch a mess, but met with poor luck. He
saw bear tracks and followed them, bringing in a good-sized “cinnamon,”
so it was agreed not to refer to his small number of trout. Buffalo and
elk meat were both plenty, and with the trout kept the men well fed.
The cavalry companies each morning were exercised at a walk, trot, and
gallop. In the afternoon the soldiers were allowed to roam about the
country in small parties, hunting and seeing what they could see. They
were all the better for the exercise, and acted as so many additional
videttes. The packers organized a mule race, which absorbed all
interest. It was estimated by conservative judges that fully five
dollars had changed hands in ten-cent bets. Up to the end of June no
news of any kind, from any source excepting Crow Indians, had been
received of General Terry and his command, and much comment, not unmixed
with uneasiness, was occasioned thereby.
CHAPTER XIX.
KILLING DULL CARE IN CAMP—EXPLORING THE SNOW-CRESTED BIG HORN
MOUNTAINS—FINERTY KILLS HIS FIRST BUFFALO—THE SWIMMING POOLS—A BIG
TROUT—SIBLEY’S SCOUT—A NARROW ESCAPE—NEWS OF THE CUSTER MASSACRE—THE
SIOUX TRY TO BURN US OUT—THE THREE MESSENGERS FROM TERRY—WASHAKIE
DRILLS HIS SHOSHONES—KELLY THE COURIER STARTS TO FIND TERRY—CROW
INDIANS BEARING DESPATCHES—THE SIGN-LANGUAGE—A PONY RACE—INDIAN
SERENADES—HOW THE SHOSHONES FISHED—A FIRE IN CAMP—THE UTES JOIN US.
In the main, this absence of news from Terry was the reason why General
Crook took a small detachment with him to the summit of the Big Horn
Mountains and remained four days. We left camp on the 1st of July, 1876,
the party consisting of General Crook, Colonel Royall, Lieutenant Lemly,
Major Burt, Lieutenants Carpenter, Schuyler, and Bourke, Messrs. Wasson,
Finerty, Strahorn, and Davenport, with a small train of picked mules
under Mr. Young. The climb to the summit was effected without event
worthy of note, beyond the to-be-expected ruggedness of the trail and
the beauty and grandeur of the scenery. From the highest point gained
during the day Crook eagerly scanned the broad vista of country spread
out at our feet, reaching from the course of the Little Big Horn on the
left to the country near Pumpkin Buttes on the right. Neither the
natural vision nor the aid of powerful glasses showed the slightest
trace of a marching or a camping column; there was no smoke, no dust, to
indicate the proximity of either Terry or Gibbon.
Frank Gruard had made an inspection of the country to the northwest of
camp several days before to determine the truth of reported smokes, but
his trip failed to confirm the story. The presence of Indians near camp
had also been asserted, but scouting parties had as yet done nothing
beyond proving these camp rumors to be baseless. In only one instance
had there been the slightest reason for believing that hostiles had
approached our position. An old man, who had been following the command
for some reason never very clearly understood, had come into camp on
Tongue River and stated that while out on the plain, letting his pony
have a nibble of grass, and while he himself had been sleeping under a
box elder, he had been awakened by the report of a gun and had seen two
Indian boys scampering off to the north: he showed a bullet hole through
the saddle, but the general opinion in camp was that the story had been
made up out of whole cloth, because parties of men had been much farther
down Tongue River that morning, scouting and hunting, without perceiving
the slightest sign or trace of hostiles. Thirty miners from Montana had
also come into camp from the same place, and they too had been unable to
discover traces of the assailants.
The perennial character of the springs and streams watering the
pasturage of the Tongue River region was shown by the great masses of
snow and ice, which were slowly yielding to the assaults of the summer
sun on the flanks of “Cloud Peak” and its sister promontories. Every few
hundred yards gurgling rivulets and crystal brooks leaped down from the
protecting shadow of pine and juniper groves and sped away to join the
Tongue, which warned us of its own near presence in a cañon on the left
of the trail by the murmur of its current flowing swiftly from basin to
basin over a succession of tiny falls. Exuberant Nature had carpeted the
knolls and dells with vernal grasses and lovely flowers; along the
brook-sides, wild rose-buds peeped; and there were harebells, wild flax,
forget-me-nots, and astragulus to dispute with their more gaudy
companions—the sunflowers—possession of the soil. The silicious
limestones, red clays, and sandstones of the valley were replaced by
granites more or less perfectly crystallized. Much pine and fir timber
was encountered, at first in small copses, then in more considerable
bodies, lastly in dense forests. A very curious variety of juniper made
its appearance: it was very stunted, grew prone to the ground, and until
approached closely might be mistaken for a bed of moss. In the
protecting solitude of these frozen peaks, lakes of melted snow were
frequent; upon their pellucid surface ducks swam gracefully, admiring
their own reflection.
We did not get across the snowy range that night, but were compelled to
bivouac two or three miles from it, in a sheltered nook offering fairly
good grass for the mules, and any amount of fuel and water for our own
use. There might be said to be an excess of timber, as for more than six
miles we had crawled as best we could through a forest of tall pines and
firs, uprooted by the blasts of winter. Game trails were plenty enough,
but we did not see an animal of any kind; neither could we entice the
trout which were jumping to the surface of the water, to take hold of
the bait offered them. General Crook returned with a black-tailed deer
and the report that the range as seen from the top of one of the lofty
promontories to which he had climbed appeared to be studded with
lakelets similar to the ones so near our bivouac. We slashed pine
branches to make an odorous and elastic mattress, cut fire-wood for the
cook, and aided in the duty of preparing the supper for which impatient
appetites were clamoring. We had hot strong coffee, bacon and venison
sliced thin and placed in alternate layers on twigs of willow and
frizzled over the embers, and bread baked in a frying-pan.
Our appetites, ordinarily good enough, had been aggravated by the climb
of twelve miles in the keen mountain air, and although epicures might
not envy us our food, they certainly would have sighed in vain for the
pleasure with which it was devoured. After supper, each officer staked
his mule in a patch of grass which was good and wholesome, although not
equal to that of the lower slopes, and then we gathered around the fire
for the post-prandial chat prior to seeking blankets and repose, which
fortunately was not disturbed by excessive cold or the bites of
mosquitoes, the twin annoyances of these great elevations. We arose
early next morning to begin a march of great severity, which taxed to
the utmost the strength, nervous system, and patience of riders and
mules; much fallen timber blocked the trail, the danger of passing this
being increased a hundredfold by boulders of granite and pools of
unknown depth; the leaves of the pines had decayed into a pasty mass of
peat, affording no foothold to the pedestrian or horseman, and added the
peril of drowning in a slimy ooze to the terrors accumulated for the
intimidation of the explorer penetrating these wilds.
We floundered along in the trail made by our Shoshones on their way back
to their own homes, and were the first white men, not connected with
that band of Indians, who had ever ascended to this point. Immense
blocks of granite, some of them hundreds of feet high, towered above us,
with stunted pine clinging to the scanty soil at their bases; above all
loomed the majestic rounded cone of the Cloud Peak, a thousand feet
beyond timber line. The number of springs increased so much that it
seemed as if the ground were oozing water from every pore; the soil had
become a sponge, and travel was both difficult and dangerous; on all
sides were lofty banks of snow, often pinkish in tint; the stream in the
pass had diminished in breadth, but its volume was unimpaired as its
velocity had trebled. At every twenty or thirty feet of horizontal
distance there was a cascade of no great height, but so choked up with
large fragments of granite that the current, lashed into fury, foamed
like milk. The sun’s rays were much obscured by the interlacing branches
of the majestic spruce and fir trees shading the trail, and the rocky
escarpments looming above the timber line. We could still see the little
rivulet dancing along, and hear it singing its song of the icy granite
peaks, the frozen lakes, and piny solitudes that had watched its birth.
The “divide,” we began to congratulate ourselves, could not be far off;
already the pines had begun to thin out, and the stragglers still lining
the path were dwarfed and stunted. Our pretty friend, the mountain
brook, like a dying swan, sang most sweetly in its last moments; we saw
it issue from icy springs above timber line, and bade it farewell to
plunge and flounder across the snow-drifts lining the crest. In this
last effort ourselves and animals were almost exhausted. On the “divide”
was a lake, not over five hundred yards long, which supplied water to
the Big Horn on the west and the Tongue on the east side of the range.
Large cakes and floes of black ice, over a foot in thickness, floated on
its waters. Each of these was covered deep with snow and regelated ice.
It was impossible to make camp in this place. There was no
timber—nothing but rocks and ice-cold water, which chilled the hands
dipped into it. Granite and granite alone could be seen in massy crags,
timberless and barren of all trace of vegetation, towering into the
clouds, in bold-faced ledges, the home of the mountain sheep; and in
cyclopean blocks, covering acres upon acres of surface. Continuing due
west we clambered over another ridge of about the same elevation, and as
deep with snow and ice, and then saw in the distance the Wind River
range, one hundred and thirty miles to the west. With some difficulty a
way was made down the flank of the range, through the asperous
declivities of the cañon of “No Wood” Creek, and, after being sated with
the monotonous beauties of precipices, milky cascades, gloomy forests,
and glassy springs, the welcome command was given to bivouac.
We had climbed and slipped fifteen miles at an altitude of 12,000 feet,
getting far above the timber line and into the region of perpetual snow.
Still, at that elevation, a few pleasant-faced little blue and white
flowers, principally forget-me-nots, kept us company to the very edge of
snow-banks. I sat upon a snowbank, and with one hand wrote my notes and
with the other plucked forget-me-nots or fought off the mosquitoes. We
followed down the cañon of the creek until we had reached the timber,
and there, in a dense growth of spruce and fir, went into bivouac in a
most charming retreat. Buffalo tracks were seen all day, the animal
having crossed the range by the same trail we had used. Besides buffalo
tracks we saw the trails of mountain sheep, of which General Crook and
Lieutenant Schuyler killed two. The only other life was tit-larks,
butterflies, grasshoppers, flies, and the mosquitoes already spoken of.
The snow in one place was sixty to seventy feet deep and had not been
disturbed for years, because there were five or six strata of
grasshoppers frozen stiff, each representing one season. In all cases
where the snow had drifted into sheltered ravines and was not exposed to
direct solar action, it never melted from year’s end to year’s end. Our
supper of mountain mutton and of sheep and elk heart boiled in salt
water was eaten by the light of the fire, and was followed by a restful
sleep upon couches of spruce boughs.
We returned to our main camp on the 4th of July, guided by General Crook
over a new trail, which proved to be a great improvement upon the other.
Mr. John F. Finerty killed his first buffalo, which appeared to be a
very good specimen at the time, but after perusing the description given
by Finerty in the columns of the _Times_, several weeks later, we saw
that it must have been at least eleven feet high and weighed not much
less than nine thousand pounds. We made chase after a herd of sixteen
elk drinking at one of the lakes, but on account of the noise in getting
through fallen timber were unable to approach near enough. An hour
later, while I was jotting down the character of the country in my
note-book, eight mountain sheep came up almost close enough to touch me,
and gazed with wonder at the intruder. They were beautiful creatures in
appearance: somewhat of a cross between the deer, the sheep, and the
mule; the head resembles that of the domestic sheep, surmounted by a
pair of ponderous convoluted horns; the body, in a slight degree, that
of a mule, but much more graceful; and the legs those of a deer, but
somewhat more “chunky;” the tail, short, slender, furnished with a brush
at the extremity; the hair, short and chocolate-gray in color; the eyes
rival the beauty of the topaz. Before I could grasp my carbine they had
scampered around a rocky promontory, where three of them were killed:
one by General Crook and two by others of the party.
Camp kept moving from creek to creek in the valley of the Tongue, always
finding abundant pasturage, plenty of fuel, and an ample supply of the
coldest and best water. The foot-hills of the Big Horn are the ideal
camping-grounds for mounted troops; the grass grows to such a height
that it can be cut with a mowing-machine; cattle thrive, and although
the winters are severe, with proper shelter all kinds of stock should
prosper. The opportunity of making a suitable cross between the
acclimatized buffalo and the domestic stock has perhaps been lost, but
it is not too late to discuss the advisability of introducing the
Thibetan yak, a bovine accustomed to the polar rigors of the Himalayas,
and which has been tamed and used either for the purposes of the dairy
or for those of draught and saddle. The body of the yak is covered with
a long coat of hair, which enables it to lie down in the snow-drifts
without incurring any risk of catching cold. The milk of the yak is said
to be remarkably rich, and the butter possesses the admirable quality of
keeping fresh for a long time.
This constant moving of camp had another object: the troops were kept in
practice in taking down and putting up tents; saddling and unsaddling
horses; packing and unpacking wagons; laying out camps, with a due
regard for hygiene by building sinks in proper places; forming promptly;
and, above all, were kept occupied. The raw recruits of the spring were
insensibly converted into veterans before the close of summer. The
credulity of the reader will be taxed to the utmost limit if he follow
my record of the catches of trout made in all these streams. What these
catches would have amounted to had there been no herds of horses and
mules—we had, it must be remembered, over two thousand when the
wagon-trains, pack-trains, Indian scouts, and soldiers were all
assembled together—I am unable to say; but the hundreds and thousands of
fine fish taken from that set of creeks by officers and soldiers, who
had nothing but the rudest appliances, speaks of the wonderful resources
of the country in game at that time.
The ambition of the general run of officers and men was to take from
fifteen to thirty trout, enough to furnish a good meal for themselves
and their messmates; but others were carried away by the desire to make
a record as against that of other fishers of repute. These catches were
carefully distributed throughout camp, and the enlisted men fared as
well as the officers in the matter of game and everything else which the
country afforded. General Crook and the battalion commanders under him
were determined that there should be no waste, and insisted upon the
fish being eaten at once or dried for later use. Major Dewees is
credited with sixty-eight large fish caught in one afternoon, Bubb with
eighty, Crook with seventy, and so on. Some of the packers having
brought in reports of beautiful deep pools farther up the mountain, in
which lay hidden fish far greater in size and weight than those caught
closer to camp, a party was formed at headquarters to investigate and
report. Our principal object was to enjoy the cool swimming pools so
eloquently described by our informants; but next to that we intended
trying our luck in hauling in trout of exceptional size.
The rough little bridle-path led into most romantic scenery: the grim
walls of the cañon began to crowd closely upon the banks of the stream;
in places there was no bank at all, and the swirling, brawling current
rushed along the rocky wall, while our ponies carefully picked their way
over a trail, narrow, sharp, and dangerous as the knife-edge across
which true believers were to enter into Mahomet’s Paradise. Before long
we gained a mossy glade, hidden in the granite ramparts of the cañon,
where we found a few blades of grass for the animals and shade from the
too warm rays of the sun. The moss-covered banks terminated in a flat
stone table, reaching well out into the current and shaded by
overhanging boulders and widely-branching trees. The dark-green water in
front rushed swiftly and almost noiselessly by, but not more than five
or six yards below our position several sharp-toothed fragments of
granite barred the progress of the current, which grew white with rage
as it hissed and roared on its downward course.
We disrobed and entered the bath, greatly to the astonishment of a
school of trout of all sizes which circled about and darted in and out
among the rocks, trying to determine who and what we were. We were
almost persuaded that we were the first white men to penetrate to that
seclusion. Our bath was delightful; everything combined to make it
so—shade, cleanliness, convenience of access, purity and coolness of the
water, and such perfect privacy that Diana herself might have chosen it
for her ablutions! Splash! splash!—a sound below us! The illusion was
very strong, and for a moment we were willing to admit that the
classical huntress had been disturbed at her toilet, and that we were
all to share the fate of Actæon. Our apprehensions didn’t last long; we
peeped through the foliage and saw that it was not Diana, but an army
teamster washing a pair of unquestionably muddy overalls. Our bath
finished, we took our stand upon projecting rocks and cast bait into the
stream.
We were not long in finding out the politics of the Big Horn trout; they
were McKinleyites, every one; or, to speak more strictly, they were the
forerunners of McKinleyism. We tried them with all sorts of imported and
manufactured flies of gaudy tints or sombre hues—it made no difference.
After suspiciously nosing them they would flap their tails, strike with
the side-fins, and then, having gained a distance of ten feet, would
most provokingly stay there and watch us from under the shelter of
slippery rocks. Foreign luxuries evidently had no charm for them. Next
we tried them with home-made grasshoppers, caught on the banks of their
native stream. The change was wonderful: in less than a second, trout
darted out from all sorts of unexpected places—from the edge of the
rapids below us, from under gloomy blocks of granite, from amid the
gnarly roots of almost amphibious trees. My comrades had come for an
afternoon’s fishing, and began, without more ado, to haul in the
struggling, quivering captives. My own purpose was to catch one or two
of good size, and then return to camp. A teamster, named O’Shaughnessy,
formerly of the Fourteenth Infantry, who had been brought up in the
salmon districts of Ireland, was standing near me with a large mess just
caught; he handed me his willow branch, most temptingly baited with
grasshoppers, at the same time telling me there was a fine big fish, “a
regular buster, in the hole beyant.” He had been unable to coax him out
from his retreat, but thought that, if anything could tempt him, my bait
would. I cautiously let down the line, taking care to keep in the
deepest shadow. I did not remain long in suspense; in an instant the big
fellow came at full speed from his hiding-place, running for the bait.
He was noble, heavy, and gorgeous in his dress of silver and gold and
black and red. He glanced at the grasshoppers to satisfy himself they
were the genuine article, and then one quick, nervous bound brought his
nose to the hook and the bait into his mouth, and away he went. I gave
him all the line he wanted, fearing I should lose him. His course took
him close to the bank, and, as he neared the edge of the stream, I laid
him, with a quick, firm jerk, sprawling on the moss. I was glad not to
have had any fight with him, because he would surely have broken away
amid the rocks and branches. He was pretty to look upon, weighed three
pounds, and was the largest specimen reaching camp that week. He graced
our dinner, served up, roasted and stuffed, in our cook Phillips’s best
style.
General Crook, wishing to ascertain with some definiteness the
whereabouts of the Sioux, sent out during the first week of July a
reconnoitring party of twenty enlisted men, commanded by Lieutenant
Sibley, Second Cavalry, to escort Frank Gruard, who wished to move along
the base of the mountains as far as the cañon of the Big Horn and
scrutinize the country to the north and west. A larger force would be
likely to embarrass the rapidity of marching with which Gruard hoped to
accomplish his intention, which was that of spying as far as he could
into the region where he supposed the hostiles to be; all the party were
to go as lightly equipped as possible, and to carry little else than
arms and ammunition. With them went two volunteers, Mr. John F. Finerty
and Mr. Jim Traynor, the latter one of the packers and an old
frontiersman. Another member of the party was “Big Bat.”
This little detachment had a miraculous escape from destruction: at or
near the head of the Little Big Horn River, they were discovered,
charged upon, and surrounded by a large body of hostile Cheyennes and
Sioux, who fired a volley of not less than one hundred shots, but aimed
too high and did not hit a man; three of the horses and one of the mules
were severely crippled, and the command was forced to take to the rocks
and timber at the edge of the mountains, whence they escaped, leaving
animals and saddles behind. The savages seemed confident of their
ability to take all of them alive, which may explain in part why they
succeeded in slipping away under the guidance of Frank Gruard, to whom
the whole country was as familiar as a book; they crept along under
cover of high rocks until they had gained the higher slopes of the
range, and then travelled without stopping for two days and nights,
pursued by the baffled Indians, across steep precipices, swift torrents,
and through almost impenetrable forests. When they reached camp the
whole party looked more like dead men than soldiers of the army: their
clothes were torn into rags, their strength completely gone, and they
faint with hunger and worn out with anxiety and distress. Two of the
men, who had not been long in service, went completely crazy and refused
to believe that the tents which they saw were those of the command; they
persisted in thinking that they were the “tepis” of the Sioux and
Cheyennes, and would not accompany Sibley across the stream, but
remained hiding in the rocks until a detachment had been sent out to
capture and bring them back. It should be mentioned that one of the
Cheyenne chiefs, “White Antelope,” was shot through the head by Frank
Gruard and buried in all his fine toggery on the ground where he fell;
his body was discovered some days after by “Washakie,” the head-chief of
the Shoshones, who led a large force of his warriors to the spot.
General Crook, in forwarding to General Sheridan Lieutenant Sibley’s
report of the affair, indorsed it as follows: “I take occasion to
express my grateful appreciation to the guides, Frank Gruard and
Baptiste Pourrier, to Messrs. Bechtel, called Traynor in my telegram,
and John F. Finerty, citizen volunteers, and to the small detachment of
picked men from the Second Cavalry, for their cheerful endurance of the
hardships and perils such peculiarly dangerous duty of necessity
involves. The coolness and judgment displayed by Lieutenant Sibley and
Frank Gruard, the guide, in the conduct of this reconnaissance, made in
the face of the whole force of the enemy, are deserving of my warmest
acknowledgments. Lieutenant Sibley, although one of the youngest
officers in this department, has shown a gallantry that is an honor to
himself and the service.” A very vivid and interesting description of
this perilous affair has been given by Finerty in his fascinating
volume, “War-Path and Bivouac.” During the absence of the Sibley party
General Crook ascended the mountains to secure meat for the command; we
had a sufficiency of bacon, and all the trout the men could possibly
eat, but fresh meat was not to be had in quantity, and the amount of
deer, elk, antelope, and bear brought in by our hunters, although
considerable in itself, cut no figure when portioned out among so many
hundreds of hungry mouths. The failure to hear from Terry or Gibbon
distressed Crook a great deal more than he cared to admit; he feared for
the worst, obliged to give ear to all the wild stories brought in by
couriers and others reaching the command from the forts and agencies. By
getting to the summit of the high peaks which overlooked our camps in
the drainage of the Tongue, the surrounding territory for a distance of
at least one hundred miles in every direction could be examined through
glasses, and anything unusual going on detected. Every afternoon we were
now subjected to storms of rain and lightning, preceded by gusts of
wind. They came with such regularity that one could almost set his watch
by them.
Major Noyes, one of our most earnest fishermen, did not return from one
of his trips, and, on account of the very severe storm assailing us that
afternoon, it was feared that some accident had befallen him: that he
had been attacked by a bear or other wild animal, had fallen over some
ledge of rocks, been carried away in the current of the stream, or in
some other manner met with disaster. Lieutenant Kingsbury, Second
Cavalry, went out to hunt him, accompanied by a mounted detachment and a
hound. Noyes was found fast asleep under a tree, completely exhausted by
his hard work: he was afoot and unable to reach camp with his great haul
of fish, over one hundred and ten in number; he had played himself out,
but had broken the record, and was snoring serenely. Mr. Stevens, chief
clerk for Major Furey, the quartermaster, was another sportsman whose
chief delight in life seemed to be in tearing the clothes off his back
in efforts to get more and bigger fish than any one else.
Word came in from General Crook to send pack mules to a locality
indicated, where the carcasses of fourteen elk and other game for the
command had been tied to the branches of trees. It was not until the
10th of July, 1876, that Louis Richaud and Ben Arnold rode into camp,
bearing despatches from Sheridan to Crook with the details of the
terrible disaster which had overwhelmed the troops commanded by General
Custer; the shock was so great that men and officers could hardly speak
when the tale slowly circulated from lip to lip. The same day the Sioux
made their appearance, and tried to burn us out: they set fire to the
grass near the infantry battalions; and for the next two weeks paid us
their respects every night in some manner, trying to stampede stock,
burn grass, annoy pickets, and devil the command generally. They did not
escape scot-free from these encounters, because we saw in the rocks the
knife left by one wounded man, whose blood stained the soil near it;
another night a pony was shot through the body and abandoned; and on
still another occasion one of their warriors, killed by a bullet through
the brain, was dragged to a ledge of rocks and there hidden, to be found
a week or two after by our Shoshone scouts.
The Sioux destroyed an immense area of pasturage, not less than one
hundred miles each way, leaving a charred expanse of territory where had
so lately been the refreshing green of dainty grass, traversed by
crystal brooks; over all that blackened surface it would have been
difficult to find so much as a grasshopper; it could be likened to
nothing except Burke’s description of the devastation wrought by Hyder
Ali in the plains of the Carnatic. Copious rains came to our relief, and
the enemy desisted; besides destroying the pasturage, the Sioux had
subjected us to the great annoyance of breathing the tiny particles of
soot which filled the air and darkened the sky.
Hearing from some of our hunters that the tracks of a party—a large
party—of Sioux and Cheyennes, mounted, had been seen on the path taken
by Crook and his little detachment of hunters, going up into the Big
Horn, Colonel Royall ordered Mills to take three companies and proceed
out to the relief, if necessary, of our General and comrades. They all
returned safely in the course of the afternoon, and the next day, July
11th, we were joined by a force of two hundred and thirteen Shoshones,
commanded by their head-chief, “Washakie,” whose resemblance in face and
bearing to the eminent divine, Henry Ward Beecher, was noticeable. This
party had been delayed, waiting for the Utes and Bannocks, who had sent
word that they wanted to take part in the war against the Sioux; but
“Washakie” at last grew tired, and started off with his own people and
two of the Bannock messengers.
Of these two a story was related to the effect that, during the previous
winter, they had crossed the mountains alone, and slipped into a village
of Sioux, and begun to cut the fastenings of several fine ponies; the
alarm was given, and the warriors began to tumble out of their beds; our
Bannocks were crouching down in the shadow of one of the lodges, and in
the confusion of tongues, barking of dogs, hurried questioning and
answering of the Sioux, boldly entered the “tepi” just vacated by two
warriors and covered themselves up with robes. The excitement quieted
down after a while, and the camp was once more in slumber, the presence
of the Bannocks undiscovered, and the Sioux warriors belonging to that
particular lodge blissfully ignorant that they were harboring two of the
most desperate villains in the whole western country. When the proper
moment had come, the Bannocks quietly reached out with their keen
knives, cut the throats of the squaws and babies closest to them,
stalked out of the lodge, ran rapidly to where they had tied the two
best ponies, mounted, and like the wind were away.
Besides the warriors with “Washakie,” there were two squaws, wives of
two of the men wounded in the Rosebud fight, who had remained with us.
As this was the last campaign in which great numbers of warriors
appeared with bows, arrows, lances, and shields as well as rifles, I may
say that the shields of the Shoshones, like those of the Sioux and Crows
and Cheyennes, were made of the skin of the buffalo bull’s neck, which
is an inch in thickness. This is cut to the desired, shape, and slightly
larger than the required size to allow for shrinking; it is pegged down
tight on the ground, and covered with a thin layer of clay upon which is
heaped a bed of burning coals, which hardens the skin so that it will
turn the point of a lance or a round bullet. A war-song and dance from
the Shoshones ended the day.
On the 12th of July, 1876, three men, dirty, ragged, dressed in the
tatters of army uniforms, rode into camp and gave their names as Evans,
Stewart, and Bell, of Captain Clifford’s company of the Seventh
Infantry, bearers of despatches from General Terry to General Crook; in
the dress of each was sewed a copy of the one message which revealed the
terrible catastrophe happening to the companies under General Custer.
These three modest heroes had ridden across country in the face of
unknown dangers, and had performed the duty confided to them in a manner
that challenged the admiration of every man in our camp. I have looked
in vain through the leaves of the Army Register to see their names
inscribed on the roll of commissioned officers; and I feel sure that
ours is the only army in the world in which such conspicuous courage,
skill, and efficiency would have gone absolutely unrecognized.
Colonel Chambers, with seven companies of infantry and a wagon-train
loaded with supplies, reached camp on the 13th. With him came, as
volunteers, Lieutenants Hayden Delaney, of the Ninth, and Calhoun and
Crittenden, of the Fourteenth Infantry, and Dr. V. T. McGillicuddy.
Personal letters received from General Sheridan informed General Crook
that General Merritt, with ten companies of the Fifth Cavalry, had left
Red Cloud Agency with orders to report to Crook, and that as soon after
they arrived as possible, but not until then, Crook was to start out and
resume the campaign. Courier Fairbanks brought in despatches from
Adjutant-General Robert Williams at Omaha, Nebraska, to the effect that
we should soon be joined by a detachment of Utes, who were desirous of
taking part in the movements against the Sioux, but had been prevented
by their agent. General Williams had made a representation of all the
facts in the case to superior authority, and orders had been received
from the Department of the Interior directing their enlistment. Nearly
fifty of the Utes did start out under Lieutenant Spencer, of the Fourth
Infantry, and made a very rapid march to overtake us, but failed to
reach our wagon-train camp until after our command had departed; and, in
the opinion of Major Furey, the risk for such a small party was too
great to be undertaken.
Camp was the scene of the greatest activity: both infantry and cavalry
kept up their exercises in the school of the soldier, company and
battalion, and in skirmishing. Detachments of scouts were kept
constantly in advanced positions, and although the enemy had made no
attempt to do anything more than annoy us in our strong natural
intrenchments, as the camps close to the Big Horn might fairly be
designated, yet it was evident that something unusual was in the wind.
“Washakie” ascended to the tops of the highest hills every morning and
scanned the horizon through powerful field-glasses, and would then
report the results of his observations. Colonel Mills did the same thing
from the peaks of the Big Horn, to some of the more accessible of which
he ascended. The Shoshones were kept in the highest state of efficiency,
and were exercised every morning and evening like their white brothers.
At first they had made the circuit of camp unattended, and advanced five
or ten miles out into the plains in the performance of their evolutions;
but after the arrival of fresh troops, under Chambers, “Washakie” was
afraid that some of the new-comers might not know his people and would
be likely to fire upon them when they charged back to camp; so he asked
General Crook to detail some of his officers to ride at the head of the
column, with a view to dispelling any apprehensions the new recruits
might feel. It fell to my lot to be one of the officers selected. In all
the glory of war-bonnets, bright blankets, scarlet cloth, head-dresses
of feathers, and gleaming rifles and lances, the Shoshones, mounted
bareback on spirited ponies, moved slowly around camp, led by
“Washakie,” alongside of whom was borne the oriflamme of the tribe—a
standard of eagle feathers attached to a lance-staff twelve feet in
length. Each warrior wore in his head-dress a small piece of white
drilling as a distinguishing mark to let our troops know who he was.
We moved out in column of twos; first at a fast walk, almost a trot,
afterwards increasing the gait. The young warriors sat like so many
statues, horse and rider moving as one. Not a word was spoken until the
voices of the leaders broke out in their war-song, to which the whole
column at once lent the potent aid of nearly two hundred pairs of sturdy
lungs. Down the valley about three miles, and then, at a signal from
“Washakie,” the column turned, and at another, formed front into line
and proceeded slowly for about fifty yards. “Washakie” was endeavoring
to explain something to me, but the noise of the ponies’ hoofs striking
the burnt ground and my ignorance of his language were impediments to a
full understanding of what the old gentleman was driving at. I learned
afterwards that he was assuring me that I was now to see some drill such
as the Shoshones alone could execute. He waved his hands; the line
spread out as skirmishers and took about two yards’ interval from knee
to knee. Then somebody—“Washakie” or one of his lieutenants—yelled a
command in a shrill treble; that’s all I remember. The ponies broke into
one frantic rush for camp, riding over sage-brush, rocks, stumps,
bunches of grass, buffalo heads—it mattered not the least what, they
went over it—the warriors all the while squealing, yelling, chanting
their war-songs, or howling like coyotes. The ponies entered into the
whole business, and needed not the heels and “quirts” which were plied
against their willing flanks. In the centre of the line rode old
“Washakie;” abreast of him the eagle standard. It was an exciting and
exhilarating race, and the force preserved an excellent alignment. Only
one thought occupied my mind during this charge, and that thought was
what fools we were not to incorporate these nomads—the finest light
cavalry in the world—into our permanent military force. With five
thousand such men, and our aboriginal population would readily furnish
that number, we could harass and annoy any troops that might have the
audacity to land on our coasts, and worry them to death.
General Crook attempted to open communication with General Terry by
sending out a miner named Kelly, who was to strike for the head of the
Little Big Horn, follow that down until it proved navigable, then make a
raft or support for himself of cottonwood or willow saplings and float
by night to the confluence of the Big Horn and the Yellowstone, and down
the latter to wherever Terry’s camp might be. Kelly made two attempts to
start, but was each time driven or frightened back; but the third time
got off in safety and made the perilous journey, and very much in the
lines laid down in his talk with Crook.
Violent storms of snow, hail, and cold rain, with tempests of wind,
prevailed upon the summits of the range, which was frequently hidden
from our gaze by lowering masses of inky vapor. Curious effects, not
strictly meteorological, were noticed; our camp was visited by clouds of
flies from the pine forests, which deposited their eggs upon everything;
the heat of the sun was tempered by a gauze veil which inspection showed
to be a myriad of grasshoppers seeking fresh fields of devastation.
Possibly the burning over of hundreds of square miles of pasturage had
driven them to hunt new and unharmed districts; possibly they were
driven down from the higher elevations by the rigorous cold of the
storms; possibly both causes operated. The fact was all we cared for,
and we found it disagreeable enough. With these insects there was larger
game: mountain sheep appeared in the lower foot-hills, and two of them
were killed along our camp lines. To balk any attempt of the enemy to
deprive us altogether of grass, whenever camp was moved to a new site, a
detail of men was put to work to surround us with a fire-line, which
would prevent the fires set by mischievous Sioux from gaining headway.
In making one of these moves we found the Tongue River extremely swollen
from the storms in the higher peaks, and one of the drivers, a good man
but rather inexperienced, had the misfortune to lose his
self-possession, and his wagon was overturned by the deep current and
three of the mules drowned, the man himself being rescued by the
exertions of the Shoshone scouts, who were passing at the moment.
On the 19th of July four Crow Indians rode into camp bearing despatches,
the duplicates of those already received by the hands of Evans, Stewart,
and Bell. General Terry, realizing the risk the latter ran, had taken
the precaution to repeat his correspondence with Crook in order that the
latter might surely understand the exact situation of affairs in the
north. After being refreshed with sleep and a couple of good warm meals,
the Crows were interrogated concerning all they knew of the position of
the hostiles, their numbers, ammunition, and other points of the same
kind. Squatting upon the ground, with fingers and hands deftly moving,
they communicated through the “sign language” a detailed account of the
advance of Terry, Gibbon, and Custer; the march of Custer, the attack
upon the village of “Crazy Horse” and “Sitting Bull,” the massacre, the
retreat of Reno, the investment, the arrival of fresh troops on the
field, the carrying away of the wounded to the steamboats, the sorrow in
the command, and many other things which would astonish persons ignorant
of the scope and power of this silent vehicle for the interchange of
thought.
The troops having been paid off by Major Arthur, who had come with
Colonel Chambers and the wagon-train, the Shoshones each evening had
pony races for some of the soldiers’ money. This was the great amusement
of our allies, besides gambling, fishing, drilling, and hunting. The
greater the crowd assembled, the greater the pleasure they took in
showing their rare skill in riding and managing their fleet little
ponies. The course laid off was ordinarily one of four hundred yards.
The signal given, with whip and heel each rider plied his maddened
steed; it was evident that the ponies were quite as much worked up in
the matter as their riders. With one simultaneous bound the half-dozen
or more contestants dart like arrow from bow; a cloud of dust rises and
screens them from vision; it is useless to try to pierce this veil; it
is unnecessary, because within a very few seconds the quaking earth
throbs responsive to many-footed blows, and, quick as lightning’s flash,
the mass of steaming, panting, and frenzied steeds dash past, and the
race is over. Over so far as the horses were concerned, but only begun
so far as the various points of excellence of the riders and their
mounts could be argued about and disputed.
This did not conclude the entertainment of each day: the Shoshones
desired to add still more to the debt of gratitude we already owed them,
so they held a serenade whenever the night was calm and fair. Once when
the clouds had rolled by and the pale light of the moon was streaming
down upon tents and pack-trains, wagons and sleeping animals, the
Shoshones became especially vociferous, and I learned from the
interpreter that they were singing to the moon. This was one of the most
pronounced examples of moon worship coming under my observation.
The Shoshones were expert fishermen, and it was always a matter of
interest to me to spend my spare moments among them, watching their way
of doing things. Their war lodges were entirely unlike those of the
Apaches, with which I had become familiar. The Shoshones would take half
a dozen willow branches and insert them in the earth, so as to make a
semi-cylindrical framework, over which would be spread a sufficiency of
blankets to afford the requisite shelter. They differed also from the
Apaches in being very fond of fish; the Apaches could not be persuaded
to touch anything with scales upon it, or any bird which lived upon
fish; but the Shoshones had more sense, and made the most of their
opportunity to fill themselves with the delicious trout of the mountain
streams. They did not bother much about hooks and lines, flies, casts,
and appliances and tricks of that kind, but set to work methodically to
get the biggest mess the streams would yield. They made a dam of rocks
and a wattle-work of willow, through which the water could pass without
much impediment, but which would retain all solids. Two or three young
men would stay by this dam or framework as guards to repair accidents.
The others of the party, mounting their ponies, would start down-stream
to a favorable location and there enter and begin the ascent of the
current, keeping their ponies in touch, lashing the surface of the
stream in their front with long poles, and all the while joining in a
wild medicine song. The frightened trout, having no other mode of
escape, would dart up-stream only to be held in the dam, from which the
Indians would calmly proceed to take them out in gunny sacks. It was not
very sportsmanlike, but it was business.
I find the statement in my note-books that there must have been at least
fifteen thousand trout captured in the streams upon which we had been
encamped during that period of three weeks, and I am convinced that my
figures are far below the truth; the whole command was living upon trout
or as much as it wanted; when it is remembered that we had hundreds of
white and red soldiers, teamsters, and packers, and that when Crook
finally left this region the camp was full of trout, salt or dried in
the sun or smoked, and that every man had all he could possibly eat for
days and days, the enormous quantity taken must be apparent. Added to
this we continued to have a considerable amount of venison, elk, and
bear meat, but no buffalo had been seen for some days, probably on
account of the destruction of grass. Mountain sheep and bear took its
place to a certain extent.
It was the opinion and advice of Sheridan that Crook should wait for the
arrival of Merritt, and that the combined force should then hunt Terry
and unite with him, and punish the Sioux, rather than attempt to do
anything with a force which might prove inadequate. In this view old
“Washakie” fully concurred. The old chief said to Crook: “The Sioux and
Cheyennes have three to your one, even now that you have been
reinforced; why not let them alone for a few days? they cannot subsist
the great numbers of warriors and men in their camp, and will have to
scatter for pasturage and meat; they’ll begin to fight among themselves
about the plunder taken on the battle-field, and many will want to slip
into the agencies and rejoin their families.”
But, while waiting for Merritt to come up with his ten companies of
cavalry, Crook sent out two large scouting parties to definitely
determine the location and strength of the enemy. One of these consisted
entirely of Shoshones, under “Washakie;” it penetrated to the head of
the Little Big Horn and around the corner of the mountain to the cañon
of the Big. Horn; the site of a great camp was found of hundreds of
lodges and thousands of ponies, but the indications were that the enemy
were getting hard pressed for food, as they had been eating their dogs
and ponies whose bones were picked up around the camp-fires. From that
point the trails showed that the enemy had gone to the northeast towards
the Powder River. The other scouting party was led by Louis Richaud, and
passed over the Big Horn Mountains and down into the cañon of the Big
Horn River; they found where the Sioux of the big village had sent
parties up into the range to cut and trim lodge-poles in great numbers.
Richaud and his party suffered extremely from cold; the lakes on the
summit of the mountains were frozen, and on the 1st of August they were
exposed to a severe snow-storm.
Later advices from Sheridan told that the control of the Sioux agencies
had been transferred to the War Department; that Mackenzie and six
companies of his regiment had been ordered to take charge at Red Cloud
and Spotted Tail, assisted by Gordon with two companies of the Fifth
Cavalry. Although showers of rain were of almost daily occurrence, and
storms of greater importance very frequent, the weather was so far
advanced, and the grass so dry and so far in seed, that there was always
danger of a conflagration from carelessness with fire.
One of the Shoshones dropped a lighted match in the dry grass near his
lodge, and in a second a rattle and crackle warned the camp of its
danger. All hands, Indian and white, near by rushed up with blankets,
blouses, switches, and branches of trees to beat back the flames. This
was a dangerous task; as, one after another, the Shoshone frame shelters
were enveloped in the fiery embrace of the surging flames, the explosion
of cartridges and the whistling of bullets drove our men back to places
of safety. In the tall and dry grass the flames held high revel; the
whole infantry command was turned out, and bravely set to work, and,
aided by a change in the wind, secured camp from destruction. While thus
engaged, they discovered a body of Indians moving down the declivity of
the mountain; they immediately sprang to arms and prepared to resist
attack; a couple of white men advanced from the Indian column and called
out to the soldiers that they were a band of Utes and Shoshones from
Camp Brown, coming to join General Crook.
Our men welcomed and led them into camp, where friends gave them a warm
reception, which included the invariable war-dance and the evening
serenade. Some of the new-comers strolled over to chat with the
Shoshones who had been wounded in the Rosebud fight, and who, although
horribly cut up with bullet wounds in the thigh or in the flanks, as the
case was, had recovered completely under the care of their own doctors,
who applied, nothing but cool water as a dressing; but I noticed that
they were not all the time washing out the wounds as Americans would
have done, which treatment as they think would only irritate the tender
surfaces. The new-comers proved to be a band of thirty-five, and were
all good men.
On the 2d of August camp was greatly excited over what was termed a game
of base-ball between the officers of the infantry and cavalry; quite a
number managed to hit the ball, and one or two catches were made; the
playing was in much the same style, and of about the same comparative
excellence, as the amateur theatrical exhibitions, where those who come
to scoff remain to pray that they may never have to come again.
CHAPTER XX.
THE JUNCTION WITH MERRITT AND THE MARCH TO MEET TERRY—THE COUNTRY ON
FIRE—MERRITT AND HIS COMMAND—MR. “GRAPHIC”—STANTON AND HIS
“IRREGULARS”—“UTE JOHN”—THE SITE OF THE HOSTILE CAMP—A SIOUX
CEMETERY—MEETING TERRY’S COMMAND—FINDING TWO SKELETONS—IN THE BAD
LANDS—LANCING RATTLESNAKES—BATHING IN THE YELLOWSTONE—MACKINAW BOATS
AND “BULL” BOATS—THE REES HAVE A PONY DANCE—SOME TERRIBLE
STORMS—LIEUTENANT WILLIAM P. CLARKE.
On the 3d of August, 1876, Crook’s command marched twenty miles
north-northeast to Goose Creek, where Merritt had been ordered to await
its arrival. The flames of prairie fires had parched and disfigured the
country. “Big Bat” took me a short cut across a petty affluent of the
Goose, which had been full of running water but was now dry as a bone,
choked with ashes and dust, the cottonwoods along its banks on fire, and
every sign that its current had been dried up by the intense heat of the
flames. In an hour or so more the pent-up waters forced a passage
through the ashes, and again flowed down to mingle with the Yellowstone.
The Sioux had also set fire to the timber in the Big Horn, and at night
the sight was a beautiful one of the great line of the foot-hills
depicted in a tracery of gold.
General Merritt received us most kindly. He was at that time a very
young man, but had had great experience during the war in command of
mounted troops. He was blessed with a powerful physique, and seemed to
be specially well adapted to undergo any measure of fatigue and
privation that might befall him. His force consisted of ten companies of
the Fifth Cavalry, and he had also brought along with him seventy-six
recruits for the Second and Third Regiments, and over sixty surplus
horses, besides an abundance of ammunition.
The officers with General Merritt, or whose names have not already been
mentioned in these pages, were: Lieutenant-Colonel E. A. Carr, Major
John V. Upham, Lieutenant A. D. B. Smead, A. D. King, George O. Eaton,
Captain Robert H. Montgomery, Emil Adam, Lieutenant E. L. Keyes, Captain
Samuel Sumner, Lieutenant C. P. Rodgers, Captain George F. Price,
Captain J. Scott Payne, Lieutenants A. B. Bache, William P. Hall,
Captain E. M. Hayes, Lieutenant Hoel S. Bishop, Captain Sanford C.
Kellogg, Lieutenants Bernard Reilly and Robert London, Captain Julius W.
Mason, Lieutenant Charles King, Captain Edward H. Leib, Captain William
H. Powell, Captain James Kennington, Lieutenant John Murphy, Lieutenant
Charles Lloyd, Captain Daniel W. Burke, Lieutenant F. S. Calhoun,
Captain Thomas F. Tobey, Lieutenant Frank Taylor, Lieutenant Richard T.
Yeatman, Lieutenants Julius H. Pardee, Robert H. Young, Rockefeller, and
Satterlle C. Plummer, with Lieutenants W. C. Forbush as Adjutant, and
Charles H. Rockwell as Quartermaster of the Fifth Cavalry, and Assistant
Surgeons Grimes, Lecompt, and Surgeon B. H. Clements, who was announced
as Medical Director of the united commands by virtue of rank. Colonel T.
H. Stanton was announced as in command of the irregulars and citizen
volunteers, who in small numbers accompanied the expedition. He was
assisted by Lieutenant Robert H. Young, Fourth Infantry, a gallant and
efficient soldier of great experience. At the head of the scouts with
Merritt rode William F. Cody, better known to the world at large by his
dramatic representation which has since traversed two continents:
“Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.”
Major Furey was directed to remain at this point, or in some eligible
locality close to it, and keep with him the wagon-train and the
disabled. Paymaster Arthur was to stay with him; and outside of that
there were three casualties in the two commands: Sutorius, dismissed by
sentence of general court-martial; Wilson, resigned July 29th; and Cain,
whose mind betrayed symptoms of unsoundness, and who was ordered to
remain with Furey, but persisted in keeping with the column until the
Yellowstone had been reached. Couriers arrived with telegrams from
General Sheridan at Chicago, Williams at Omaha, and Colonel Townsend,
commanding at Fort Laramie; all of whom had likewise sent clippings from
the latest papers, furnishing information from all points in the Indian
country. From these clippings it was learned that the stream of
adventurers pouring into the Black Hills was unabated, and that at the
confluence of the Deadwood and Whitewood Creeks a large town or city of
no less than four thousand inhabitants had sprung up and was working the
gold “placers,” all the time exposed to desperate attacks from the
Indians, who, according to one statement, which was afterwards shown to
be perfectly true, had murdered more than eighty men in less than eight
days. These men were not killed within the limits of the town, but in
its environs and in the exposed “claims” out in the Hills.
Several new correspondents had attached themselves to Merritt’s column;
among them I recall Mills, of the New York _Times_, and Lathrop, of the
_Bulletin_, of San Francisco. These, I believe, were the only real
correspondents in the party, although there were others who vaunted
their pretensions; one of these last, name now forgotten, claimed to
have been sent out by the New York _Graphic_, a statement very few were
inclined to admit. He was the greenest thing I ever saw without
feathers; he had never been outside of New York before, and the way the
scouts, packers, and soldiers “laid for” that man was a caution. Let the
other newspaper men growl as they might about the lack of news, Mr.
“Graphic,” as I must call him, never had any right to complain on that
score. Never was packer or scout or soldier—shall I add officer?—so
weary, wet, hungry, or miserable at the end of a day’s march that he
couldn’t devote a half-hour to the congenial task of “stuffin’ the
tenderfoot,” The stories told of Indian atrocities to captives,
especially those found with paper and lead-pencils, were enough to make
the stoutest veteran’s teeth chatter, and at times our newly-discovered
acquisition manifested a disinclination to swallow, unstrained, the
stories told him; but his murmurs of mild dissent were drowned in an
inundation of “Oh, that hain’t nawthin’ to what I’ve seed ’em do.” Who
the poor fellow was I do not know; no one seemed to know him by any
other designation than “The Tenderfoot.” He had no money, he could not
draw, and was dependent upon the packers and others for every meal; I
must say that he never lacked food, provided he swallowed it with tales
of border horrors which would cause the pages of the Boys’ Own Five-Cent
Novelette series to creak with terror. I never saw him smile but once,
and that was under provocation sufficient to lead a corpse to laugh
itself out of its shroud.
One of the biggest liars among Stanton’s scouts—I do not recall whether
it was “Slap-jack Billy, the Pride of the Pan-Handle,” or “Pisen-weed
Patsey, the Terror of the Bresh”—was devoting a half-hour of his
valuable time to “gettin’ in his work” on the victim, and was riding one
pony and leading another, which he had tied to the tail of the first by
a rope or halter. This plan worked admirably, and would have been a
success to the end had not the led pony started at some Indian clothing
in the trail, and jumped, and pulled the tail of the leader nearly out
by the roots. The front horse wasn’t going to stand any such nonsense as
that; he squealed and kicked and plunged in rage, sending his rider over
his head like a rocket, and then, still attached to the other, something
after the style of a Siamese twin, charged through the column of scouts,
scattering them in every direction. But this paroxysm of hilarity was
soon over, and the correspondent subsided into his normal condition of
deep-settled melancholy. He left us when we reached the Yellowstone, and
I have never blamed him.
One of the facts brought out in the telegrams received by General Crook
was that eight warriors, who had left the hostiles and surrendered at
Red Cloud Agency, had reported that the main body of the hostiles would
turn south. Lieutenant E. B. Robertson, Ninth Infantry, found a
soapstone dish on the line of march, which could have come from the
Mandans only, either by trade or theft; or, possibly, some band of
Mandans, in search of buffalo, had penetrated thus far into the interior
and had lost it.
In a telegram sent in to Sheridan about this date Crook said: “On the
25th or 26th, all the hostile Indians left the foot of the Big Horn
Mountains, and moved back in the direction of the Rosebud Mountains, so
that it is now impracticable to communicate with General Terry by
courier. I am fearful that they will scatter, as there is not sufficient
grass in that country to support them in such large numbers. If we meet
the Indians in too strong force, I will swing around and unite with
General Terry. Your management of the agencies will be a great benefit
to us here.”
We had one busy day; saddles had to be exchanged or repaired, horses
shod, ammunition issued, provisions packed, and all stores in excess
turned into the wagon-train. The allowance of baggage was cut down to
the minimum: every officer and soldier was to have the clothes on his
back and no more; one overcoat, one blanket (to be carried by the
cavalry over the saddle blanket), and one India-rubber poncho or
one-half of a shelter tent, was the allowance carried by General Crook,
the members of his staff, and all the officers, soldiers, and packers.
We had rations for fifteen days—half of bacon, sugar, coffee, and salt,
and full of hard bread; none of vinegar, soap, pepper, etc. There were
two hundred and fifty rounds of ammunition to the man; one hundred to be
carried on the person, and the rest on the pack-mules, of which there
were just three hundred and ninety-nine. The pack-train was in five
divisions, each led by a bell-mare; no tents allowed, excepting one for
the use of the surgeons attending to critical cases. “Travois” poles
were hauled along to drag wounded in case it should become necessary.
Our mess, which now numbered eleven, was, beyond dispute, the most
remarkable mess the army has ever known. I challenge comparison with it
from anything that has ever been seen among our officers outside of
Libby or Andersonville prisons. General Crook did not allow us either
knife, fork, spoon, or plate. Each member carried strapped to the pommel
of his saddle a tin cup, from which at balmy morn or dewy eve, as the
poets would say, he might quaff the decoction called coffee. Our kitchen
utensils comprised one frying-pan, one carving-knife, one carving-fork,
one large coffee pot, one large tin platter, one large and two small tin
ladles or spoons, and the necessary bags for carrying sugar, coffee,
bacon, and hard bread. I forgot to say that we had also one sheet-iron
mess pan. General Crook had determined to make his column as mobile as a
column of Indians, and he knew that example was more potent than a score
of general orders.
We marched down “Prairie Dog” Creek, to its junction with Tongue River,
passing through a village of prairie dogs, which village was six miles
long. The mental alienation of our unfortunate friend—Captain
Cain—became more and more apparent. By preference, I rode with Colonel
Stanton’s scouts; they called themselves the “Montana Volunteers,” but
why they did so I never could understand, unless it was that every other
State and Territory had repudiated them and set a price upon their
heads. There was a rumor widely circulated in camp to the effect that
one or two of these scouts had never been indicted for murder; it was
generally suspected that Stanton himself was at the bottom of this, in
his anxiety to secure a better name for his corps. There were very few
of them who couldn’t claim the shelter of the jails of Cheyenne, Denver,
and Omaha by merely presenting themselves, and confessing certain
circumstances known to the police and detectives of those thriving
boroughs. Many a night Joe Wasson, Strahorn, and I sat upon our saddles,
to be sure that we should have them with us at sunrise. One of the most
important of these volunteers was “Ute John,” a member of the tribe of
the same name, who claimed to have been thoroughly civilized and
Christianized, because he had once, for six months, been “dlivin’ team
fo’ Mo’mon” in Salt Lake. “Ute John” was credited by most people with
having murdered his own grandmother and drunk her blood, but, in my
opinion, the reports to his detriment were somewhat exaggerated, and he
was harmless except when sober, which wasn’t often, provided whiskey was
handy. “John’s” proudest boast was that he was a “Klischun,” and he
assured me that he had been three times baptized in one year by the
“Mo’mon,” who had made him “heap wash,” and gave him “heap biled shirt,”
by which we understood that he had been baptized and clad in the
garments of righteousness, which he sorely needed. “Ute John” had one
peculiarity: he would never speak to any one but Crook himself in regard
to the issues of the campaign. “Hello, Cluke,” he would say, “how you
gittin’ on? Where you tink dem Clazy Hoss en Settin’ Bull is now,
Cluke?”
We had a difficult time marching down the Tongue, which had to be forded
thirteen times in one day, the foot-soldiers disdaining the aid which
the cavalry was ordered to extend by carrying across all who so desired.
The country was found to be one gloomy desolation. We crossed the
Rosebud Mountains and descended into the Rosebud Creek, where trails
were found as broad and distinct as wagon-roads; the grass was picked
clean, and the valley, of which I wrote so enthusiastically in the
spring, was now a desert. We discovered the trap which “Crazy Horse” had
set for us at the Rosebud fight on the 17th of June, and confidence in
Crook was increased tenfold by the knowledge that he had outwitted the
enemy on that occasion. The Sioux and Cheyennes had encamped in seven
circles, covering four miles in length of the valley. The trail was from
ten to twelve days old, and, in the opinion of Frank and the other
guides, had been made by from ten to twenty thousand ponies.
The hills bordering the Rosebud were vertical bluffs presenting
beautiful alternations of color in their stratification; there were
bands of red, pink, cream, black, and purple; the different tints
blending by easy gradations into a general effect pleasing to the eye.
There were quantities of lignite which would be of incalculable benefit
to the white settlers who might in the future flock into this region. In
riding along with our Indian scouts we learned much of the secret
societies among the aboriginal tribes: the “Brave Night Hearts,” the
“Owl Feathers,” and the “Wolves and Foxes.” These control the tribe,
fight its battles, and determine its policy. Initiation into some one of
them is essential to the young warrior’s advancement. The cañon of the
Rosebud would seem to have been the burying-ground of the Western
Dakotas; there were dozens of graves affixed to the branches of the
trees, some of them of great age, and all raided by our ruthless
Shoshones and Utes, who with their lances tumbled the bones to the
ground and ransacked the coverings for mementos of value, sometimes
getting fine bows, at others, nickel-plated revolvers. There was one
which the Shoshones were afraid to touch, and which they said was full
of bad “medicine;” but “Ute John,” fortified, no doubt, by the grace of
his numerous Mormon baptisms, was not restrained by vain fears, and
tumbled it to the ground, letting loose sixteen field mice which in some
way had made their home in those sepulchral cerements.
Captain “Jack Crawford, the Poet Scout,” rode into camp on the 8th of
August attended by a few companions. The weather became rainy, and the
trail muddy and heavy. August 11th our scouts sent in the information
that a line of Indians was coming up the valley, and our men advanced as
skirmishers. Soon word was received that behind the supposed enemy could
be seen the white canvas coders of a long column of wagons, and we then
knew that we were about to meet Terry’s command. Our cavalry were
ordered to halt and unsaddle to await the approach of the infantry. The
Indian scouts were directed to proceed to the front and determine
exactly who the strangers were. They decked themselves in all the
barbaric splendors of which they were capable: war-bonnets streamed to
the ground; lances and rifles gleamed in the sun; ponies and riders,
daubed with mud, pranced out to meet our friends, as we were assured
they must be.
When our Indians raised their yells and chants, the scouts at the head
of the other column took fright and ran in upon the solid masses of
horsemen following the main trail. These immediately deployed into line
of skirmishers, behind which we saw, or thought we saw, several pieces
of artillery. “Buffalo Bill,” who was riding at the head of our column,
waved his hat, and, putting spurs to his horse, galloped up alongside of
Major Reno, of the Seventh Cavalry, who was leading Terry’s advance.
When the news passed down from man to man, cheers arose from the two
columns; as fast as the cheers of Terry’s advance guard reached the ears
of our men, they responded with heart and soul. General Crook sent
Lieutenant Schuyler to extend a welcome to General Terry, and proffer to
him and his officers such hospitalities as we could furnish.
Schuyler returned, leading to the tree under which Crook was seated a
band of officers at whose head rode Terry himself. The meeting between
the two commanders was most cordial, as was that between the subalterns,
many of whom had served together during the war and in other places. We
made every exertion to receive our guests with the best in our
possession: messengers were despatched down to the pack-trains to borrow
every knife, fork, spoon, and dish available, and they returned with
about thirty of each and two great coffee-pots, which were soon humming
on the fire filled to the brim with an exhilarating decoction. Phillips,
the cook, was assisted on this occasion by a man whose experience had
been garnered among the Nez Percés and Flat-Heads, certainly not among
Caucasians, although I must admit that he worked hard and did the best
he knew how. A long strip of canvas was stretched upon the ground and
covered with the tin cups and cutlery. Terry and his staff seated
themselves and partook of what we had to offer, which was not very much,
but was given with full heart.
Terry was one of the most charming and affable of men; his general air
was that of the scholar no less than the soldier. His figure was tall
and commanding; his face gentle, yet decided; his kindly blue eyes
indicated good-nature; his complexion, bronzed by wind and rain and sun
to the color of an old sheepskin-covered Bible, gave him a decidedly
martial appearance. He won his way to all hearts by unaffectedness and
affability. In his manner he was the antithesis of Crook. Crook was also
simple and unaffected, but he was reticent and taciturn to the extreme
of sadness, brusque to the verge of severity. In Terry’s face I thought
I could sometimes detect traces of indecision; but in Crook’s
countenance there was not the slightest intimation of anything but
stubbornness, rugged resolution, and bull-dog tenacity. Of the two men
Terry alone had any pretensions to scholarship, and his attainments were
so great that the whole army felt proud of him; but Nature had been
bountiful to Crook, and as he stood there under a tree talking with
Terry, I thought that within that cleanly outlined skull, beneath that
brow, and behind those clear-glancing blue-gray eyes, there was
concealed more military sagacity, more quickness of comprehension and
celerity to meet unexpected emergencies, than in any of our then living
Generals excepting Grant, of whose good qualities he constantly reminded
me, or Sheridan, whose early friend and companion he had been at West
Point and in Oregon.
That evening, General Crook and his staff dined with General Terry,
meeting with the latter Captains Smith and Gibbs, Lieutenants Maguire,
Walker, Thompson, Nowlan, and Michaelis. From this point Terry sent his
wagon-train down to the Yellowstone, and ordered the Fifth Infantry to
embark on one of the steamboats and patrol the river, looking out for
trails of hostiles crossing or attempting to cross to the north. All the
sick and disabled were sent down with this column; we lost Cain and
Bache and a number of enlisted men, broken down by the exposure of the
campaign. The heat in the middle of the day had become excessive, and
General Terry informed me that on the 8th it registered in his own tent
117° Fahrenheit, and on the 7th, 110°. Much of this increase of
temperature was, no doubt, due to the heat from the pasturage destroyed
by the hostiles, which comprehended an area extending from the
Yellowstone to the Big Horn Mountains, from the Big Horn River on the
west to the Little Missouri on the east.
In two things the column from the Yellowstone was sadly deficient: in
cavalry and in rapid transportation. The Seventh Cavalry was in need of
reorganization, half of its original numbers having been killed or
wounded in the affair of the Big Horn; the pack-train, made up, as it
necessarily was, of animals taken out of the traces of the heavy wagons,
was the saddest burlesque in that direction which it has ever been my
lot to witness—for this no blame was ascribable to Terry, who was doing
the best he could with the means allowed him from Washington. The Second
Cavalry was in good shape, and so was Gibbon’s column of infantry, which
seemed ready to go wherever ordered and go at once. Crook’s pack-train
was a marvel of system; it maintained a discipline much severer than had
been attained by any company in either column; under the indefatigable
supervision of Tom Moore, Dave Mears, and others, who had had an
experience of more than a quarter of a century, our mules moved with a
precision to which the worn-out comparison of “clockwork” is justly
adapted. The mules had been continuously in training since the preceding
December, making long marches, carrying heavy burdens in the worst sort
of weather. Consequently, they were hardened to the hardness and
toughness of wrought-iron and whalebone. They followed the bell, and
were as well trained as any soldiers in the command. Behind them one
could see the other pack-train, a string of mules, of all sizes, each
led by one soldier and beaten and driven along by another—attendants
often rivalling animals in dumbness—and it was hard to repress a smile
except by the reflection that this was the motive power of a column
supposed to be in pursuit of savages. On the first day’s march, after
meeting Crook, Terry’s pack-train dropped, lost, or damaged more stores
than Crook’s command had spoiled from the same causes from the time when
the campaign commenced.
When the united columns struck the Tongue, the trail of the hostile
bands had split into three: one going up stream, one down, and one
across country east towards the Powder. Crook ordered his scouts to
examine in front and on flanks, and in the mean time the commands
unsaddled and went into camp; the scouts did not return until almost
dark, when they brought information that the main trail had kept on in
the direction of the Powder. Colonel Royall’s command found the
skeletons of two mining prospectors in the bushes near the Tongue;
appearances indicated that the Sioux had captured these men and roasted
them alive. On this march we saw a large “medicine rock,” in whose
crevices the Sioux had deposited various propitiatory offerings, and
upon whose face had been graven figures and symbols of fanciful and
grotesque outline.
In following the main trail of the enemy it seemed as if we were on a
newly cut country road; when we reached a projecting hill of marl and
sandy clay, the lodge poles had cut into the soft soil to such an extent
that we could almost believe that we were on the line of work just
completed, with pick, spade, and shovel, by a gang of trained laborers.
Trout were becoming scarce in this part of the Tongue, but a very
delicious variety of the “cat” was caught and added to the mess to the
great delight of the epicure members. The rain had increased in volume,
and rarely an hour now passed without its shower. One night, while
sitting by what was supposed to be our camp-fire, watching the
sputtering flames struggling to maintain life against the down-pouring
waters, I heard my name called, and as soon as I could drag my sodden,
sticky clothes through a puddle of mud I found myself face to face with
Sam Hamilton, of the Second, whom I had not seen since we were boys
together in the volunteer service in the Stone River campaign, in 1862.
It was a very melancholy meeting, each soaked through to the skin,
seated alongside of smoking embers, and chilled to the marrow, talking
of old times, of comrades dead, and wondering who next was to be called.
The Indian trail led down the Tongue for some miles before it turned
east up the “Four Horn” Creek, where we followed it, being rewarded with
an abundance of very fine grama, called by our scouts the “Two-Day”
grass, because a bellyful of it would enable a tired horse to travel for
two days more. An Indian puppy was found abandoned by its red-skinned
owners, and was adopted by one of the infantry soldiers, who carried it
on his shoulders. Part of this time we were in “Bad Lands,” infested
with rattlesnakes in great numbers, which our Shoshones lanced with
great glee. It was very interesting to watch them, and see how they
avoided being bitten: three or four would ride up within easy distance
of the doomed reptile and distract its attention by threatening passes
with their lances; the crotalus would throw itself into a coil in half a
second, and stay there, tongue darting in and out, head revolving from
side to side, leaden eyes scintillating with the glare of the diamond,
ready to strike venomous fangs into any one coming within reach. The
Shoshone boys would drive their lances into the coil from three or four
different directions, exclaiming at the same time: “Gott tammee you!
Gott tammee you!” which was all the English they had been able to
master.
We struck the Powder and followed it down to its junction with the
Yellowstone, where we were to replenish our supplies from Terry’s
steamboats. The Powder contrasted unfavorably with the Tongue: the
latter was about one hundred and fifty feet wide, four feet deep, swift
current, and cold water, and, except in the Bad Lands near its mouth,
clear and sweet, and not perceptibly alkaline. The Powder was the
opposite in every feature: its water, turbid and milky; current, slow;
bottom, muddy and frequently miry, whereas that of the Tongue was nearly
always hard-pan. The water of the Powder was alkaline and not always
palatable, and the fords rarely good and often dangerous. The
Yellowstone was a delightful stream: its width was not over two hundred
and fifty yards, but its depth was considerable, its bed constant, and
channel undeviating. The current flows with so little noise that an
unsuspecting person would have no idea of its velocity; but steamboats
could rarely stem it, and bathers venturing far from the banks were
swept off their feet. The depth was never less than five feet in the
main channel during time of high water. The banks were thickly grassed
and covered with cottonwood and other timber in heavy copses.
Crook’s forces encamped on the western bank of the Powder; the supplies
we had looked for were not on hand in sufficient quantity, and
Lieutenant Bubb, our commissary, reported that he was afraid that we
were going to be grievously disappointed in that regard. General Terry
sent steamers up and down the Yellowstone to gather up all stores from
depots, and also from points where they had been unloaded on account of
shallow water. Crook’s men spent a great deal of the time bathing in the
Yellowstone and washing their clothes, following the example set by the
General himself: each man waded out into the channel clad in his
undergarments and allowed the current to soak them thoroughly, and he
would then stand in the sunlight until dried. Each had but the suit on
his back, and this was all the cleaning or change they had for sixty
days. The Utes and Shoshones became very discontented, and “Washakie”
had several interviews with Crook, in which he plainly told the latter
that his people would not remain longer with Terry’s column, because of
the inefficiency of its transportation; with such mules nothing could be
done; the infantry was all right, and so was part of the cavalry, but
the pack-train was no good, and was simply impeding progress. The
steamer “Far West,” Captain Grant Marsh, was sent up the river to the
mouth of the Rosebud to bring down all the supplies to be found in the
depot at that point, but returned with very little for so many mouths as
we now had—about four thousand all told.
A great many fine agates were found in the Yellowstone near the Powder,
and so common were they that nearly all provided themselves with
souvenirs from that source. Colonel Burt was sent up the river to try to
induce the Crows to send some of their warriors to take the places soon
to be vacated by the Shoshones, as Crook foresaw that without native
scouts the expedition might as well be abandoned. Burt was unsuccessful
in his mission, and all our scouts left with the exception of the
much-disparaged “Ute John,” who expressed his determination to stick it
out to the last.
Mackinaw boats, manned by adventurous traders from Montana, had
descended the river loaded with all kinds of knick-knacks for the use of
the soldiers; these were retailed at enormous prices, but eagerly bought
by men who had no other means of getting rid of their money. Besides the
“Mackinaw,” which was made of rough timber framework, the waters of the
Yellowstone and the Missouri were crossed by the “bull-boat,” which bore
a close resemblance to the basket “coracle” of the west coast of
Ireland, and, like it, was a framework of willow or some kind of
basketry covered with the skins of the buffalo, or other bovine; in
these frail hemispherical barks squaws would paddle themselves and
baggage and pappooses across the swift-running current and gain the
opposite bank in safety.
At the mouth of Powder there was a sutler’s store packed from morning
till night with a crowd of expectant purchasers. To go in there was all
one’s life was worth: one moment a soldier stepped on one of your feet,
and the next some two-hundred-pound packer favored the other side in the
same manner. A disagreeable sand-storm drove Colonel Stanton and myself
to the shelter of the lunette constructed by Lieutenant William P.
Clarke, Second Cavalry, who had descended the Yellowstone from Fort
Ellis with a piece of artillery. Here we lunched with Clarke and Colonel
Carr, of the Fifth Cavalry, stormbound like ourselves. The Ree scouts
attached to Terry’s column favored our Utes and Shoshones with a “pony”
dance after nightfall. The performers were almost naked, and, with their
ponies, bedaubed and painted from head to foot. They advanced in a
regular line, which was not broken for any purpose, going over every
obstruction, even trampling down the rude structures of cottonwood
branches erected by the Utes and Shoshones for protection from the
elements. As soon as they had come within a few yards of the camp-fires
of the Shoshones, the latter, with the Utes, joined the Rees in their
chant and also jumped upon their ponies, which staggered for some
minutes around camp under their double and even treble load, until,
thank Heaven! the affair ended. Although I had what might be called a
“deadhead” view of the dance, I did not enjoy it at all, and was not
sorry when the Rees said that they would have to go back to their own
camp.
There was not very much to eat down on the Yellowstone, and one could
count on his fingers the “square” meals in that lovely valley.
Conspicuous among them should be the feast of hot bacon and beans, to
which Tom Moore invited Hartsuff, Stanton, Bubb, Wasson, Strahorn,
Schuyler, and myself long after the camp was wrapped in slumber. The
beans were cooked to a turn; there was plenty of hard-tack and coffee,
with a small quantity of sugar; each knew the other, there was much to
talk about, and in the light and genial warmth of the fire, with
stomachs filled, we passed a delightful time until morning had almost
dawned.
On the 20th of August, our Utes and Shoshones left, and word was also
received from the Crows that they were afraid to let any of the young
men leave their own country while such numbers of the Sioux and
Cheyennes were in hostility, and so close to them. General Crook had a
flag prepared for his headquarters after the style prevailing in Terry’s
column, which served the excellent purpose of directing orderlies and
officers promptly to the battalion or other command to which a message
was to be delivered. This standard, for the construction of which we
were indebted to the industry of Randall and Schuyler, was rather
primitive in design and general make-up. It was a guidon, of two
horizontal bands, white above, red beneath, with a blue star in the
centre. The white was from a crash towel contributed by Colonel Stanton,
the red came from a flannel undershirt belonging to Schuyler, and an old
blouse which Randall was about to throw away furnished the star. Tom
Moore had a “travois” pole shaved down for a staff, the ferrule and tip
of which were made of metallic cartridges.
Supper had just been finished that day when we were exposed to as
miserable a storm as ever drowned the spirit and enthusiasm out of any
set of mortals. It didn’t come on suddenly, but with slowness and
deliberation almost premeditated. For more than an hour fleecy clouds
skirmished in the sky, wheeling and circling lazily until re-enforced
from the west, and then moving boldly forward and hanging over camp in
dense, black, sullen masses. All bestirred themselves to make such
preparations as they could to withstand the siege: willow twigs and
grasses were cut in quantities, and to these were added sage-brush and
grease-wood. Wood was stacked up for the fire, so that at the earliest
moment possible after the cessation of the storm it could be rekindled
and afford some chance of warming ourselves and drying clothing. With
the twigs and sage-brush we built up beds in the best-drained nooks and
corners, placed our saddles and bridles at our heads, and carbines and
cartridges at our sides to keep them dry. As a last protection, a couple
of lariats were tied together, one end of the rope fastened to a picket
pin in the ground, the other to the limb of the withered Cottonwood
alongside of which headquarters had been established; over this were
stretched a couple of blankets from the pack-train, and we had done our
best. There was nothing else to do but grin and bear all that was to
happen. The storm-king had waited patiently for the completion of these
meagre preparations, and now, with a loud, ear-piercing crash of
thunder, and a hissing flash of white lightning, gave the signal to the
elements to begin the attack. We cowered helplessly under the shock,
sensible that human strength was insignificant in comparison with the
power of the blast which roared and yelled and shrieked about us.
For hours the rain poured down—either as heavy drops which stung by
their momentum; as little pellets which drizzled through canvas and
blankets, chilling our blood as they soaked into clothing; or
alternating with hail which in great, globular crystals, crackled
against the miserable shelter, whitened the ground, and froze the air.
The reverberation of the thunder was incessant; one shock had barely
begun to echo around the sky, when peal after peal, each stronger,
louder, and more terrifying than its predecessors, blotted from our
minds the sounds and flashes which had awakened our first astonishment,
and made us forget in new frights our old alarms. The lightning darted
from zenith to horizon, appeared in all quarters, played around all
objects. In its glare the smallest bushes, stones, and shrubs stood out
as plainly as under the noon sun of a bright summer’s day; when it
subsided, our spirits were oppressed with the weight of darkness. No
stringing together of words can complete a description of what we saw,
suffered, and feared during that awful tempest. The stoutest hearts, the
oldest soldiers, quailed.
The last growl of thunder was heard, the last flash of lightning seen,
between two and three in the morning, and then we turned out from our
wretched, water-soaked couches, and gathering around the lakelet in
whose midst our fire had been, tried by the smoke of sodden chips and
twigs to warm our benumbed limbs and dry our saturated clothing. Not
until the dawn of day did we feel the circulation quicken and our
spirits revive. A comparison of opinion developed a coincidence of
sentiment. Everybody agreed that while perhaps this was not the worst
storm he had ever known, the circumstances of our complete exposure to
its force had made it about the very worst any of the command had ever
experienced. There was scarcely a day from that on for nearly a month
that my note-books do not contain references to storms, some of them
fully as severe as the one described in the above lines; the exposure
began to tell upon officers, men, and animals, and I think the statement
will be accepted without challenge that no one who followed Crook during
those terrible days was benefited in any way.
I made out a rough list of the officers present on this expedition, and
another of those who have died, been killed, died of wounds, or been
retired for one reason or another, and I find that the first list had
one hundred and sixteen names and the second sixty-nine; so it can be
seen that of the officers who were considered to be physically able to
enter upon that campaign in the early summer months of 1876, over fifty
per cent, are not now answering to roll-call on the active list, after
about sixteen years’ interval. The bad weather had the good effects of
bringing to the surface all the dormant geniality of Colonel Evans’s
disposition: he was the Mark Tapley of the column; the harder it rained,
the louder he laughed; the bright shafts of lightning revealed nothing
more inspiriting than our worthy friend’s smile of serene contentment.
In Colonel Evans’s opinion, which he was not at all diffident about
expressing, the time had come for the young men of the command to see
what real service was like. “There had been entirely too much of this
playing soldier, sir; what had been done by soldiers who were soldiers,
sir, before the war, sir, had never been properly appreciated, sir, and
never would be until these young men got a small taste of it themselves,
sir.”
General Merritt’s division of the command was provided with a signal
apparatus, and the flags were of great use in conveying messages to camp
from the outlying pickets, and thus saving the wear and tear of
horse-flesh; but in this dark and rainy season the system was a failure,
and many thought that it would have been well to introduce a code of
signals by whistles, but it was not possible to do so under our
circumstances.
The “Far West” had made several trips to the depot at the mouth of the
Rosebud, and had brought down a supply of shoes, which was almost
sufficient for our infantry battalions, but there was little of anything
else, and Bubb, our commissary, was unable to obtain more than eleven
pounds of tobacco for the entire force.
We were now laboring under the serious disadvantage of having no native
scouts, and were obliged to start out without further delay, if anything
was to be done with the trail of the Sioux, which had been left several
marches up the Powder, before we started down to the Yellowstone to get
supplies. Crook had sent out Frank Gruard, “Big Bat,” and a small party
to learn all that could be learned of that trail, which was found
striking east and south. Terry’s scouts had gone to the north of the
Yellowstone to hunt for the signs of bands passing across the Missouri.
The report came in that they had found some in that direction, and the
two columns separated, Terry going in one direction, and Crook keeping
his course and following the large trail, which he shrewdly surmised
would lead over towards the Black Hills, where the savages would find
easy victims in the settlers pouring into the newly discovered mining
claims. Captain Cain, Captain Burrowes, and Lieutenant Eaton, the latter
broken down with chills and fever as well a pistol wound in the hand,
were ordered on board the transports, taking with them twenty-one men of
the command pronounced unfit for field service. One of these enlisted
men—Eshleman, Ninth Infantry—was violently insane. Our mess gained a new
member, Lieutenant William P. Clarke, Second Cavalry, ordered to report
to General Crook for duty as aide-de-camp. He was a brave, bright,
companionable gentleman, always ready in an emergency, and had he lived
would, beyond a doubt, have attained, with opportunity, a distinguished
place among the soldiers of our country. General Terry very kindly lent
General Crook five of his own small band of Ree scouts; they proved of
great service while with our column.
CHAPTER XXI.
CROOK AND TERRY SEPARATE—THE PICTURESQUE LITTLE MISSOURI—THE “HORSE MEAT
MARCH” FROM THE HEAD OF THE HEART RIVER TO DEADWOOD—ON THE SIOUX
TRAIL—MAKING COFFEE UNDER DIFFICULTIES—SLAUGHTERING WORN-OUT CAVALRY
HORSES FOR FOOD—THE FIGHT AT SLIM BUTTES—LIEUTENANT VON LEUTTEWITZ
LOSES A LEG—THE DYING CHIEF, “AMERICAN HORSE,” SURRENDERS—RELICS OF
THE CUSTER MASSACRE—“CRAZY HORSE” ATTACKS OUR LINES—SUNSHINE AND
RATIONS.
On the 23d of August we were beset by another violent storm, worse, if
such a thing were possible, than any yet experienced. All through the
night we lay in from three to four inches of water, unable to shelter
ourselves against the strong wind and pelting Niagara which inundated
the country. Sleep was out of the question, and when morning came it
threw its cold gray light upon a brigade of drowned rats, of disgusted
and grumbling soldiers. It was with difficulty we got the fires to burn,
but a cup of strong coffee was ready in time, and with the drinking of
that the spirits revived, and with a hearty good-will all hands pulled
out from the valley of the Yellowstone, and plodded slowly through the
plastic mud which lay ankle deep along the course of the Powder. There
was a new acquisition to the column—a fine Newfoundland dog, which
attached itself to the command, or was reported to have done so,
although I have always had doubts upon that subject. Soldiers will steal
dogs, and “Jack,” as he was known to our men, may have been an unwilling
captive, for all I know to the contrary.
There was no trouble in finding the big Sioux trail, or in following it
east to O’Fallon’s Creek, finding plenty of water and getting out of
“the burnt district.” The grass was as nutritive as it ought to have
been in Wyoming and Montana, and as it would have been had not the red
men destroyed it all. Another trying storm soaked through clothing, and
dampened the courage of our bravest. The rain which set in about four in
the afternoon, just as we were making camp, suddenly changed to hail of
large size, which, with the sudden fall in temperature, chilled and
frightened our herds of horses and mules, and had the good effect of
making them cower together in fear, instead of stampeding, as we had
about concluded they would surely do. Lightning played about us with
remorseless vividness, and one great bolt crashed within camp limits,
setting fire to the grass on a post near the sentinel.
The 29th and 30th of August we remained in bivouac at a spring on the
summit of the ridge overlooking the head waters of Cabin Creek, while
our blankets and clothing were drying; and the scouts reconnoitred to
the front and flanks to learn what was possible regarding the trail,
which seemed much fresher, as if made only a few days previously.
Hunting detachments were sent out on each flank to bring in deer,
antelope and jack rabbits for the sick, of whom we now had a number
suffering from neuralgia, rheumatism, malaria, and diarrhœa. Lieutenant
Huntington was scarcely able to sit his horse, and Lieutenant Bache had
to be hauled in a “travois.”
The night of August 31, 1876, was so bitter cold that a number of
General Crook’s staff, commissioned and enlisted, had a narrow escape
from freezing to death. In our saturated condition, with clothing scant
even for summer, we were in no condition to face a sudden “norther,”
which blew vigorously upon all who were encamped upon the crests of the
buttes but neglected those in the shelter of the ravines. The scenery in
this neighborhood was entrancing. Mr. Finerty accompanied me to the
summit of the bluffs, and we looked out upon a panorama grander than any
that artist would be bold enough to trace upon canvas. In the western
sky the waning glories of the setting sun were most dazzling. Scarlet
and gold, pink and yellow—in lovely contrast or graceful harmony—were
scattered with reckless prodigality from the tops of the distant hills
to near the zenith, where neutral tints of gray and pale blue marked the
dividing line between the gorgeousness of the vanishing sunlight and the
more placid splendors of the advancing night, with its millions of
stars. The broken contour of the ground, with its deeply furrowed
ravines, or its rank upon rank of plateaux and ridges, resembled an
angry sea whose waves had been suddenly stilled at the climax of a
storm. The juiciest grama covered the pink hillocks from base to crest,
but scarcely a leaf could be seen; it was pasturage, pure and simple—the
paradise of the grazier and the cowboy. We gave free rein to our fancy
in anticipating the changes ten years would effect in this noble region,
then the hunting ground of the savage and the lair of the wild beast.
We crossed the country to the east, going down Beaver Creek and finding
indications that the hostiles knew that we were on their trail, which
now showed signs of splitting; we picked up four ponies, abandoned by
the enemy, and Frank Gruard, who brought them in, was sure that we were
pressing closely upon the rear of the Indians, and might soon expect a
brush with them. A soldier was bitten in the thumb by a rattlesnake;
Surgeon Patzki cauterized the wound, administered ammonia, and finished
up with two stiff drinks of whiskey from the slender allowance of
hospital supplies. The man was saved. The trail kept trending to the
south, running down towards the “Sentinel” Buttes, where our advance had
a running fight with the enemy’s rear-guard, killing one or two ponies.
The next point of note was the Little Missouri River, into the valley of
which we descended on the 4th of September, at the place where General
Stanley had entered it with the expedition to survey the line of the
Northern Pacific Railroad in 1873. This is called by the Indians the
“Thick Timber” Creek, a name which it abundantly deserves in comparison
with the other streams flowing within one hundred miles on either side
of it. We emerged from the narrow defile of Andrus’ Creek, into a broad
park, walled in by precipitous banks of marl, clay, and sandstone,
ranging from one hundred to three hundred feet high. Down the central
line of this park grew a thick grove of cottonwood, willow, and
box-elder, marking the channel of the stream, which at this spot was
some thirty yards wide, two to three feet deep, carrying a good volume
of cold, sweet water, rather muddy in appearance. The bottom is of clay,
and in places miry, and the approaches are not any too good. A small
amount of work was requisite to cut them down to proper shape, but there
was such a quantity of timber and brush at hand that corduroy and
causeway were soon under construction. The fertility of the soil was
attested by the luxuriance of the grass, the thickness of timber, the
dense growth of grape-vines, wild plums, and bull berries, already
ripening under the warm rays of the sun and the constant showers. Where
the picket lines of Terry’s cavalry had been stretched during the
spring, and the horses had scattered grains of corn from their feed, a
volunteer crop had sprung up, whose stalks were from ten to twelve feet
high, each bearing from two to four large ears still in the milk.
Our scouts and the advance-guard of the cavalry rushed into this
unexpected treasure-trove, cutting and slashing the stalks, and bearing
them off in large armfuls for the feeding of our own animals. The
half-ripened plums and bull berries were thoroughly boiled, and,
although without sugar, proved pleasant to the taste and a valuable
anti-scorbutic. Trial was also made of the common opuntia, or Indian
fig, the cactus which is most frequent in that section of Dakota; the
spines were burnt off, the thick skin peeled, and the inner meaty pulp
fried; it is claimed as an excellent remedy for scurvy, but the taste is
far from agreeable, being slimy and mucilaginous.
On the 5th of September we made a long march of thirty miles in
drizzling rain and sticky mud, pushing up Davis Creek, and benefiting by
the bridges which Terry’s men had erected in many places where the
stream had to be crossed; we reached the head of the Heart River, and
passed between the Rosebud Butte on the right and the Camel’s Hump on
the left. Here we again ran upon the enemy’s rear-guard, which seemed
disposed to make a fight until our advance got up and pushed them into
the bluffs, when they retreated in safety, under cover of the heavy fog
which had spread over the hills all day. Of the fifteen days’ rations
with which we had started out from the Yellowstone, only two and a half
days’ rations were left. When Randall and Stanton returned from the
pursuit of the enemy, the Rees, who were still with us, gave it as their
opinion that the command could easily reach Fort Abraham Lincoln in four
days, or five; Glendive, on the Yellowstone, in our rear, could not be
much farther in a direct line; but here was a hot trail leading due
south towards the Black Hills, which were filling with an unknown number
of people, all of whom would be exposed to slaughter and destruction.
There is one thing certain about a hot trail: you’ll find Indians on it
if you go far enough, and you’ll find them nowhere else. Comfort and
ease beckoned from Fort Lincoln, but duty pointed to Deadwood, and
straight to Deadwood Crook went. His two and a half days’ rations were
made to last five; the Rees were sent in with despatches as fast as
their ponies could travel to Lincoln, to inform Sheridan of our
whereabouts, and to ask that supplies be hurried out from Camp Robinson
to meet us. With anything like decent luck we ought to be able to force
a fight and capture a village with its supplies of meat. Still, it was
plain that all the heroism of our natures was to be tried in the fire
before that march should be ended; Bubb concealed seventy pounds of
beans to be used for the sick and wounded in emergencies; Surgeon
Hartsuff carried in his saddle-bags two cans of jelly and half a pound
of cornstarch, with the same object; the other medical officers had each
a little something of the same sort—tea, chocolate, etc. This was a
decidedly gloomy outlook for a column of two thousand men in an unknown
region in tempestuous weather. We had had no change of clothing for more
than a month since leaving Goose Creek, and we were soaked through with
rain and mud, and suffering greatly in health and spirits in
consequence.
We left the Heart River in the cold, bleak mists of a cheerless morning,
which magnified into grim spectres the half-dozen cottonwoods nearest
camp, which were to be imprinted upon memory with all the more
vividness, because until we had struck the Belle Fourche, the type of
the streams encountered in our march was the same—timberless, muddy, and
sluggish. The ground was covered with grass, alternating with great
patches of cactus. Villages of prairie dogs extended for leagues, and
the angry squeak of the population was heard on all sides. “Jack,” the
noble Newfoundland dog which had been with us since we started out from
the mouth of Powder, was now crazy for some fresh meat, and would charge
after the prairie dogs with such impetuosity that when he attempted to
seize his victim, and the loosely packed soil around the burrow had
given way beneath their united weight, he would go head over heels,
describing a complete somersault, much to his own astonishment and our
amusement. After turning the horses out to graze in the evening, it
generally happened that camp would be visited by half a dozen jack
rabbits, driven out of their burrows by fear of the horses’ hoofs. The
soldiers derived great enjoyment every time one was started, and as poor
pussy darted from bush to bush, doubled and twisted, bounded boldly
through a line of her tormentors, or cowered trembling under some
sage-brush, the pursuers, armed with nose-bags, lariats, and halters,
would advance from all sides, and keep up the chase until the wretched
victim was fairly run to death. There would be enough shouting, yelling,
and screeching to account for the slaughter of a thousand buffaloes. We
learned to judge of the results of the chase in the inverse ratio to the
noise: when an especially deafening outcry was heard, the verdict would
be rendered at once that an unusually pigmy rabbit had been run to
cover, and that the men who had the least to do with the capture had
most to do with the tumult.
The country close to the head of Heart River was strewn with banded
agate, much of it very beautiful. We made our first camp thirty-five
miles south of Heart River by the side of two large pools of brackish
water, so full of “alkali” that neither men nor horses cared to touch
it. There wasn’t a stick of timber in sight as big around as one’s
little finger; we tried to make coffee by digging a hole in the ground
upon which we set a tin cup, and then each one in the mess by turns fed
the flames with wisps of such dry grass as could be found and twisted
into a petty fagot. We succeeded in making the coffee, but the water in
boiling threw up so much saline and sedimentary matter that the
appearance was decidedly repulsive. To the North Fork of the Grand River
was another thirty-five miles, made, like the march of the preceding
day, in the pelting rain which had lasted all night. The country was
beautifully grassed, and we saw several patches of wild onions, which we
dug up and saved to boil with the horse-meat which was now appearing as
our food; General Crook found half a dozen rose-bushes, which he had
guarded by a sentinel for the use of the sick; Lieutenant Bubb had four
or five cracker-boxes broken up and distributed to the command for fuel;
it is astonishing what results can be effected with a handful of
fire-wood if people will only half try. The half and third ration of
hard-tack was issued to each and every officer in the headquarters mess
just the same as it was issued to enlisted men; the coffee was prepared
with a quarter ration, and even that had failed. Although there could
not be a lovelier pasturage than that through which we were marching,
yet our animals, too, began to play out, because they were carrying
exhausted and half-starved men who could not sit up in the saddle, and
couldn’t so frequently dismount on coming to steep, slippery descents
where it would have been good policy to “favor” their faithful steeds.
Lieutenant Bubb was now ordered forward to the first settlement he could
find in the Black Hills—Deadwood or any other this side—and there to buy
all the supplies in sight; he took fifty picked mules and packers under
Tom Moore; the escort of one hundred and fifty picked men from the Third
Cavalry, mounted on our strongest animals, was under command of Colonel
Mills, who had with him Lieutenants Chase, Crawford, Schwatka, Von
Leuttewitz, and Doctor Stevens. Two of the correspondents, Messrs.
Strahorn and Davenport, went along, leaving the main column before it
had reached the camp of the night. We marched comparatively little the
next day, not more than twenty-four miles, going into camp in a
sheltered ravine on the South Fork of the Grand River, within sight of
the Slim Buttes, and in a position which supplied all the fuel needed,
the first seen for more than ninety miles, but so soaked with water that
all we could do with it was to raise a smoke. It rained without
intermission all day and all night, but we had found wood, and our
spirits rose with the discovery; then, our scouts had killed five
antelope, whose flesh was distributed among the command, the sick in
hospital being served first. Plums and bull berries almost ripe were
appearing in plenty, and gathered in quantity to be boiled and eaten
with horse-meat. Men were getting pretty well exhausted, and each mile
of the march saw squads of stragglers, something which we had not seen
before; the rain was so unintermittent, the mud so sticky, the air so
damp, that with the absence of food and warmth, men lost courage, and
not a few of the officers did the same thing. Horses had to be abandoned
in great numbers, but the best of them were killed to supply meat, which
with the bull berries and water had become almost our only certain food,
eked out by an occasional slice of antelope or jack rabbit.
The 8th of September was General Crook’s birthday; fifteen or sixteen of
the officers had come to congratulate him at his fire under the cover of
a projecting rock, which kept off a considerable part of the down-pour
of rain; it was rather a forlorn birthday party,—nothing to eat, nothing
to drink, no chance to dry clothes, and nothing for which to be thankful
except that we had found wood, which was a great blessing. Sage-brush,
once so despised, was now welcomed whenever it made its appearance, as
it began to do from this on; it at least supplied the means of making a
small fire, and provided the one thing which under all circumstances the
soldier should have, if possible. Exhausted by fatiguing marches through
mud and rain, without sufficient or proper food, our soldiers reached
bivouac each night, to find only a rivulet of doubtful water to quench
their thirst, and then went supperless to bed.
In all the hardships, in all the privations of the humblest soldier,
General Crook freely shared; with precisely the same allowance of food
and bedding, he made the weary campaign of the summer of 1876; criticism
was silenced in the presence of a general who would reduce himself to
the level of the most lowly, and even though there might be
dissatisfaction and grumbling, as there always will be in so large a
command, which is certain to have a percentage of the men who want to
wear uniform without being soldiers, the reflective and observing saw
that their sufferings were fully shared by their leader and honored him
accordingly. There was no mess in the whole column which suffered as
much as did that of which General Crook was a member; for four days
before any other mess had been so reduced we had been eating the meat of
played-out cavalry horses, and at the date of which I am now writing all
the food within reach was horse-meat, water, and enough bacon to grease
the pan in which the former was to be fried. Crackers, sugar, and coffee
had been exhausted, and we had no addition to our bill of fare beyond an
occasional plateful of wild onions gathered alongside of the trail. An
antelope had been killed by one of the orderlies attached to the
headquarters, and the remains of this were hoarded with care for
emergencies.
On the morning of September 9th, as we were passing a little watercourse
which we were unable to determine correctly, some insisting that it was
the South Fork of the Grand, others calling it the North Fork of Owl
Creek—the maps were not accurate, and it was hard to say anything about
that region—couriers from Mills’s advance-guard came galloping to
General Crook with the request that he hurry on to the aid of Mills, who
had surprised and attacked an Indian village of uncertain size,
estimated at twenty-five lodges, and had driven the enemy into the
bluffs near him, but was able to hold his own until Crook could reach
him. The couriers added that Lieutenant Von Leuttewitz had been severely
wounded in the knee, one soldier had been killed, and five wounded; the
loss of the enemy could not then be ascertained. Crook gave orders for
the cavalry to push on with all possible haste, the infantry to follow
more at leisure; but these directions did not suit the dismounted
battalions at all, and they forgot all about hunger, cold, wet, and
fatigue, and tramped through the mud to such good purpose that the first
infantry company was overlapping the last one of the mounted troops when
the cavalry entered the ravine in which Mills was awaiting them. Then we
learned that the previous evening Frank Gruard had discovered a band of
ponies grazing on a hill-side and reported to Mills, who, thinking that
the village was inconsiderable, thought himself strong enough to attack
and carry it unaided.
He waited until the first flush of daylight, and then left his
pack-train in the shelter of a convenient ravine, under command of Bubb,
while he moved forward with the greater part of his command on foot in
two columns, under Crawford and Von Leuttewitz respectively, intending
with them to surround the lodges, while Schwatka, with a party of
twenty-five mounted men, was to charge through, firing into the “tepis.”
The enemy’s herd stampeded through the village, awakening the inmates,
and discovering the presence of our forces. Schwatka made his charge in
good style, and the other detachments moved in as directed, but the
escape of nearly all the bucks and squaws could not be prevented, some
taking shelter in high bluffs surrounding the village, and others
running into a ravine where they still were at the moment of our
arrival—eleven A.M.
The village numbered more than Mills had imagined: we counted
thirty-seven lodges, not including four upon which the covers had not
yet been stretched. Several of the lodges were of unusual dimensions:
one, probably that occupied by the guard called by Gruard and “Big Bat”
the “Brave Night Hearts,” contained thirty saddles and equipments. Great
quantities of furs—almost exclusively untanned buffalo robes, antelope,
and other skins—wrapped up in bundles, and several tons of meat, dried
after the Indian manner, formed the main part of the spoil, although
mention should be made of the almost innumerable tin dishes, blankets,
cooking utensils, boxes of caps, ammunition, saddles, horse equipments,
and other supplies that would prove a serious loss to the savages rather
than a gain to ourselves. Two hundred ponies—many of them fine
animals—not quite one-half the herd, fell into our hands. A cavalry
guidon, nearly new and torn from the staff; an army officer’s overcoat;
a non-commissioned officer’s blouse; cavalry saddles of the McClellan
model, covered with black leather after the latest pattern of the
ordnance bureau; a glove marked with the name of Captain Keogh; a letter
addressed to a private soldier in the Seventh Cavalry; horses branded U.
S. and 7 C.—one was branded D 7 / C were proofs that the members of this
band had taken part, and a conspicuous part, in the Custer massacre.
General Crook ordered all the meat and other supplies to be taken from
the village and piled up so that it could be issued or packed upon our
mules. Next, he ordered the wounded to receive every care; this had
already been done, as far as he was able, by Mills, who had pitched one
of the captured lodges in a cool, shady spot, near the stream, and safe
from the annoyance of random shots which the scattered Sioux still fired
from the distant hills.
A still more important task was that of dislodging a small party who had
run into a gulch fifty or sixty yards outside of the line of the lodges,
from which they made it dangerous for any of Mills’s command to enter
the village, and had already killed several of the pack-mules whose
carcasses lay among the lodges. Frank Gruard and “Big Bat” were sent
forward, crawling on hands and feet from shelter to shelter, to get
within easy talking distance of the defiant prisoners in the gulch, who
refused to accede to any terms and determined to fight it out, confident
that “Crazy Horse,” to whom they had despatched runners, would soon
hasten to their assistance. Lieutenant William P. Clarke was directed to
take charge of a picked body of volunteers and get the Indians out of
that gulch; the firing attracted a large crowd of idlers and others, who
pressed so closely upon Clarke and his party as to seriously embarrass
their work. Our men were so crowded that it was a wonder to me that the
shots of the beleaguered did not kill them by the half-dozen; but the
truth was, the Sioux did not care to waste a shot: they were busy
digging rifle-pits in the soft marly soil of the ravine, which was a
perfect ditch, not more than ten to fifteen feet wide, and fifteen to
twenty deep, with a growth of box elder that aided in concealing their
doings from our eyes. But, whenever a particularly good chance for doing
mischief presented itself, the rifle of the Sioux belched out its fatal
missile. Private Kennedy, Company “C,” Fifth Cavalry, had all the calf
of one leg carried away by a bullet, and at the same time another
soldier was shot through the ankle-joint.
The ground upon which Captain Munson and I were standing suddenly gave
way, and down we both went, landing in the midst of a pile of squaws and
children. The warriors twice tried to get aim at us, but were prevented
by the crooked shape of the ravine; on the other side, “Big Bat” and
another one of Stanton’s men, named Cary, had already secured position,
and were doing their best to induce the Indians to surrender, crying out
to them “Washte-helo” (Very good) and other expressions in Dakota, the
meaning of which I did not clearly understand. The women and pappooses,
covered with dirt and blood, were screaming in an agony of terror;
behind and above us were the oaths and yells of the surging soldiers;
back of the women lay what seemed, as near as we could make out, to be
four dead bodies still weltering in their gore. Altogether, the scene,
as far as it went, was decidedly infernal; there was very little to add
to it, but that little was added by one of the scouts named Buffalo
White, who incautiously exposed himself to find out what all the hubbub
in the ravine meant. Hardly had he lifted his body before a rifle-ball
pierced him through and through. He cried out in a way that was
heart-rending: “O, Lord! O, Lord! They’ve got me now, boys!” and dropped
limp and lifeless to the base of the hillock upon which he had perched
himself, thirty feet into the ravine below at its deepest point.
Encouraged by “Big Bat,” the squaws and children ventured to come up to
us, and were conducted down through the winds and turns of the ravine to
where General Crook was; he approached and addressed them pleasantly;
the women divined at once who he was, and clung to his hand and
clothing, their own skirts clutched by the babies, who all the while
wailed most dismally. When somewhat calmed down they said that their
village belonged to the Spotted Tail Agency and was commanded by “Roman
Nose” and “American Horse,” or “Iron Shield,” the latter still in the
ravine. General Crook bade one of them go back and say that he would
treat kindly all who surrendered. The squaw complied and returned to the
edge of the ravine, there holding a parley, as the result bringing back
a young warrior about twenty years old. To him General Crook repeated
the assurances already given, and this time the young man went back,
accompanied by “Big Bat,” whose arrival unarmed convinced “American
Horse” that General Crook’s promises were not written in sand.
“American Horse” emerged from his rifle-pit, supported on one side by
the young warrior, on the other by “Big Bat,” and slowly drew near the
group of officers standing alongside of General Crook; the reception
accorded the captives was gentle, and their wounded ones were made the
recipients of necessary attentions. Out of this little nook twenty-eight
Sioux—little and great, dead and alive—were taken; the corpses were
suffered to lie where they fell. “American Horse” had been shot through
the intestines, and was biting hard upon a piece of wood to suppress any
sign of pain or emotion; the children made themselves at home around our
fires, and shared with the soldiers the food now ready for the evening
meal. We had a considerable quantity of dried buffalo-meat, a few
buffalo-tongues, some pony-meat, and parfleche panniers filled with
fresh and dried buffalo berries, wild cherries, wild plums, and other
fruit—and, best find of all, a trifle of salt. One of the Sioux food
preparations—dried meat, pounded up with wild plums and wild
cherries—called “Toro,” was very palatable and nutritious; it is
cousin-german to our own plum pudding.
These Indians had certificates of good conduct dated at Spotted Tail
Agency and issued by Agent Howard. General Crook ordered that every
vestige of the village and the property in it which could not be kept as
serviceable to ourselves should be destroyed. The whole command ate
ravenously that evening and the next morning, and we still had enough
meat to load down twenty-eight of our strongest pack-mules. This will
show that the official reports that fifty-five hundred pounds had been
captured were entirely too conservative. I was sorry to see that the
value of the wild fruit was not appreciated by some of the company
commanders, who encouraged their men very little in eating it and thus
lost the benefit of its anti-scorbutic qualities. All our wounded were
cheerful and doing well, including Von Leuttewitz, whose leg had been
amputated at the thigh.
The barking of stray puppies, the whining of children, the confused hum
of the conversation going on among two thousand soldiers, officers, and
packers confined within the narrow limits of the ravine, were augmented
by the sharp crack of rifles and the whizzing of bullets, because “Crazy
Horse,” prompt in answering the summons of his distressed kinsmen, was
now on the ground, and had drawn his lines around our position, which he
hoped to take by assault, not dreaming that the original assailants had
been re-enforced so heavily. It was a very pretty fight, what there was
of it, because one could take his seat almost anywhere and see all that
was going on from one end of the field to the other. “Crazy Horse” moved
his men up in fine style, but seemed to think better of the scheme after
the cavalry gave him a volley from their carbines; the Sioux were not
left in doubt long as to what they were to do, because the infantry
battalions commanded by Burt and Daniel W. Burke got after them and
raced them off the field, out of range.
One of our officers whose conduct impressed me very much was Lieutenant
A. B. Bache, Fifth Cavalry: he was so swollen with inflammatory
rheumatism that he had been hauled for days in a “travois” behind a
mule; but, hearing the roll of rifles and carbines, he insisted upon
being mounted upon a horse and strapped to the saddle, that he might go
out upon the skirmish line. We never had a better soldier than he, but
he did not survive the hardships of that campaign. The Sioux did not
care to leave the battle-field without some token of prowess, and seeing
a group of ten or twelve cavalry horses which had been abandoned during
the day, and were allowed to follow along at their own pace, merely to
be slaughtered by Bubb for meat when it should be needed, flattered
themselves that they had a grand prize within reach; a party of bold
young bucks, anxious to gain a trifle of renown, stripped themselves and
their ponies, and made a dash for the broken-down cast-offs; the
skirmishers, by some sort of tacit consent, refrained from firing a
shot, and allowed the hostiles to get right into the “bunch” and see how
hopelessly they had been fooled, and then when the Sioux started to spur
and gallop back to their own lines the humming of bullets apprised them
that our men were having the joke all to themselves.
Just as “Crazy Horse” hauled off his forces, two soldiers bare-footed,
and in rags, walked down to our lines and entered camp; their horses had
“played out” in the morning, and were in the group which the Sioux had
wished to capture; the soldiers themselves had lain down to rest in a
clump of rocks and fallen asleep to be awakened by the circus going on
all around them; they kept well under cover, afraid as much of the
projectiles of their friends as of the fire of the savages, but were not
discovered, and now rejoined the command to be most warmly and sincerely
congratulated upon their good fortune. It rained all night, but we did
not care much, provided as we now were with plenty of food, plenty of
fuel, and some extra bedding from the furs taken in the lodges. In the
drizzling rain of that night the soul of “American Horse” took flight,
accompanied to the Happy Hunting Grounds by the spirit of Private
Kennedy.
After breakfast the next morning General Crook sent for the women and
children, and told them that we were not making war upon such as they,
and that all those who so desired were free to stay and rejoin their own
people, but he cautioned them to say to all their friends that the
American Government was determined to keep pegging away at all Indians
in hostility until the last had been killed or made a prisoner, and that
the red men would be following the dictates of prudence in surrendering
unconditionally instead of remaining at war, and exposing their wives
and children to accidents and dangers incidental to that condition. The
young warrior, “Charging Bear,” declined to go with the squaws, but
remained with Crook and enlisted as a scout, becoming a corporal, and
rendering most efficient service in the campaign during the following
winter which resulted so brilliantly.
“Crazy Horse” felt our lines again as we were moving off, but was held
in check by Sumner, of the Fifth, who had one or two men slightly
wounded, while five of the attacking party were seen to fall out of
their saddles. The prisoners informed us that we were on the main trail
of the hostiles, which, although now split, was all moving down to the
south towards the agencies. Mills, Bubb, Schwatka, Chase, and fifty
picked men of the Third Cavalry, with a train made up of all our strong
mules under Tom Moore, with Frank Gruard as guide, were once more sent
forward to try to reach Deadwood, learn all the news possible concerning
the condition of the exposed mining hamlets near there, and obtain all
the supplies in sight. Crook was getting very anxious to reach Deadwood
before “Crazy Horse” could begin the work of devilment upon which he and
his bands were bent, as the squaws admitted. Bubb bore a despatch to
Sheridan, narrating the events of the trip since leaving Heart River.
Knowing that we were now practically marching among hostile Sioux, who
were watching our every movement, and would be ready to attack at the
first sign of lack of vigilance, Crook moved the column in such a manner
that it could repel an attack within thirty seconds; that is to say,
there was a strong advance-guard, a rear-guard equally strong, and lines
of skirmishers moving along each flank, while the wounded were placed on
“travois,” for the care of which Captain Andrews and his company of the
Third Cavalry were especially detailed. One of the lodges was brought
along from the village for the use of the sick and wounded, and
afterwards given to Colonel Mills. The general character of the country
between the Slim Buttes and the Belle Fourche remained much the same as
that from the head of Heart River down, excepting that there was a small
portion of timber, for which we were truly thankful. The captured ponies
were butchered and issued as occasion required; the men becoming
accustomed to the taste of the meat, which was far more juicy and tender
than that of the broken-down old cavalry nags which we had been
compelled to eat a few days earlier. The sight of an antelope, however,
seemed to set everybody crazy, and when one was caught and killed squads
of officers and men would fight for the smallest portion of flesh or
entrails; I succeeded in getting one liver, which was carried in my
nose-bag all day and broiled over the ashes at night, furnishing a very
toothsome morsel for all the members of our mess.
While speaking upon the subject of horse-meat, let me tell one of the
incidents vividly imprinted upon memory. Bubb’s butcher was one of the
least poetical men ever met in my journey through life; all he cared for
was to know just what animals were to be slaughtered, and presto! the
bloody work was done, and a carcass gleamed in the evening air. Many and
many a pony had he killed, although he let it be known to a couple of
the officers whom he took into his confidence that he had been raised a
gentleman, and had never before slaughtered anything but cows and pigs
and sheep. One evening, he killed a mare whose daughter and
granddaughter were standing by her side, the daughter nursing from the
mother and the granddaughter from the daughter. On another occasion he
was approached by one of Stanton’s scouts—I really have not preserved
his name, but it was the dark Mexican who several weeks after killed,
and was killed by, Carey, his best friend. After being paid off, they
got into some kind of a drunken row in a gambling saloon, in Deadwood,
and shot each other to death. Well, this man drew near the butcher and
began making complaint that the latter, without sufficient necessity,
had cut up a pony which the guide was anxious to save for his own use.
The discussion lasted for several minutes and terminated without
satisfaction to the scout, who then turned to mount his pony and ride
away; no pony was to be seen; he certainly had ridden one down, but it
had vanished into vapor; he could see the saddle and bridle upon the
ground, but of the animal not a trace; while he had been arguing with
the butcher, the assistants of the latter had quickly unsaddled the
mount and slaughtered and divided it, and the quarters were then on
their way over to one of the battalions. It was a piece of rapid work
worthy of the best skill of Chicago, but it confirmed one man in a
tendency to profanity and cynicism.
Our maps led us into a very serious error: from them it appeared that
the South Fork of Owl Creek was not more than twenty or twenty-five
miles from the Belle Fourche, towards which we were trudging so wearily,
the rain still beating down without pity. The foot soldiers, eager to
make the march which was to end their troubles and lead them to food and
rest, were ready for the trail by three on the morning of the 12th of
September, and all of them strung out before four. As soon as it was
light enough we saw that a portion of the trail had set off towards the
east, and Major Upham was sent with one hundred and fifty men from the
Fifth Cavalry to find out all about it. It proved to be moving in the
direction of Bear Lodge Butte, and the intention evidently was to annoy
the settlements in the Hills; one of Upham’s men went off without
permission, after antelope, and was killed and cut to pieces by the
prowling bands watching the column. The clouds lifted once or twice
during the march of the 12th and disclosed the outline of Bear Butte, a
great satisfaction to us, as it proved that we were going in the right
direction for Deadwood. The country was evenly divided between cactus
and grass, in patches of from one to six miles in breadth; the mud was
so tenacious that every time foot or hoof touched it there would be a
great mass of “gumbo” adhering to render progress distressingly tiresome
and slow. Our clothing was in rags of the flimsiest kind, shoes in
patches, and the rations captured at the village exhausted. Mules and
horses were black to the houghs with the accretions of a passage through
slimy ooze which pulled off their shoes.
Crook’s orders to the men in advance were to keep a sharp lookout for
anything in the shape of timber, as the column was to halt and bivouac
the moment we struck anything that would do to make a fire. On we
trudged, mile succeeding mile, and still no sign of the fringe of
cottonwood, willow, and elder which we had been taught to believe
represented the line of the stream of which we were in search. The rain
poured down, clothes dripped with moisture, horses reeled and staggered,
and were one by one left to follow or remain as they pleased, while the
men, all of whom were dismounted and leading their animals, fell out
singly, in couples, in squads, in solid platoons. It was half-past ten
o’clock that never-to-be-forgotten night, when the last foot soldier had
completed his forty miles, and many did not pretend to do it before the
next morning, but lay outside, in rear of the column, on the muddy
ground, as insensible to danger and pain as if dead drunk.
We did not reach the Belle Fourche that night, but a tributary called
Willow Creek which answered every purpose, as it had an abundance of
box-elder, willow, ash, and plum bushes, which before many minutes
crackled and sprang skyward in a joyous flame; we piled high the dry
wood wherever found, thinking to stimulate comrades who were weary with
marching and sleeping without the cheerful consolation of a sparkling
camp-fire. There wasn’t a thing to eat in the whole camp but pony-meat,
slices of which were sizzling upon the coals, but the poor fellows who
did not get in killed their played-out horses and ate the meat raw. If
any of my readers imagines that the march from the head of Heart River
down to the Belle Fourche was a picnic, let him examine the roster of
the command and tell off the scores and scores of men, then hearty and
rugged, who now fill premature graves or drag out an existence with
constitutions wrecked and enfeebled by such privations and vicissitudes.
There may still be people who give credence to the old superstitions
about the relative endurance of horses of different colors, and believe
that white is the weakest color. For their information I wish to say
that the company of cavalry which had the smallest loss of horses during
this exhausting march was the white horse troop of the Fifth, commanded
by Captain Robert H. Montgomery; I cannot place my fingers upon the note
referring to it, but I will state from recollection that not one of them
was left behind.
On the 13th we remained in camp until noon to let men have a rest and
give stragglers a chance to catch up with the command. Our cook made a
most tempting ragout out of some pony-meat, a fragment of antelope
liver, a couple of handfuls of wild onions, and the shin-bone of an ox
killed by the Sioux or Cheyennes, and which was to us almost as
interesting as the fragments of weeds to the sailors of Columbus. This
had been simmering all night, and when morning came there was enough of
it to supply many of our comrades with a hot platterful. At noon we
crossed to the Belle Fourche, six miles to the south, the dangerous
approaches of Willow Creek being corduroyed and placed in good order by
a party under Lieutenant Charles King, who had been assigned by General
Merritt to the work.
The Belle Fourche appealed to our fancies as in every sense deserving of
its flattering title: it was not less than one hundred feet wide, three
deep, with a good flow of water, and a current of something like four
miles an hour. The bottom was clay and sandstone drift, and even if the
water was a trifle muddy, it tasted delicious after our late
tribulations. Wells dug in the banks afforded even better quality for
drinking or cooking. The dark clouds still hung threateningly overhead,
but what of that? all eyes were strained in the direction of Deadwood,
for word had come from Mills and Bubb that they had been successful, and
that we were soon to catch a glimpse of the wagons laden with food for
our starving command. A murmur rippled through camp; in a second it had
swelled into a roar, and broken into a wild cry, half yell, half cheer.
Down the hill-sides as fast as brawny men could drive them ran fifty
head of beef cattle, and not more than a mile in the rear wagon sheets
marked out the slower-moving train with the supplies of the
commissariat.
As if to manifest sympathy with our feelings, the sun unveiled himself,
and for one good long hour shone down through scattering clouds—the
first fair look we had had at his face for ten dreary days. Since our
departure from Furey and the wagon-train, it had rained twenty-two days,
most of the storms being of phenomenal severity, and it would need a
very strong mind not to cherish the delusion that the elements were in
league with the red men to preserve the hunting lands of their fathers
from the grasp of the rapacious whites. When the supplies arrived the
great aim of every one seemed to be to carry out the old command: “Eat,
drink, and be merry, for to-morrow ye die.” The busy hum of cheerful
conversation succeeded to the querulous discontent of the past week, and
laughter raised the spirits of the most tired and despondent; we had won
the race and saved the Black Hills with their thousands of unprotected
citizens, four hundred of whom had been murdered since the summer began.
The first preacher venturing out to Deadwood paid the penalty of his
rashness with his life, and yielded his scalp to the Cheyennes. It was
the most ordinary thing in the world to have it reported that one, or
two, or three bodies more were to be found in such and such a gulch;
they were buried by people in no desire to remain near the scene of
horror, and as the Hills were filling up with restless spirits from all
corners of the world, and no one knew his neighbor, it is doubtful if
all the murdered ones were ever reported to the proper authorities. When
the whites succeeded in killing an Indian, which happened at extremely
rare intervals, Deadwood would go crazy with delight; the skull and
scalp were paraded and sold at public auction to the highest bidder.
CHAPTER XXII.
TO AND THROUGH THE BLACK HILLS—HOW DEADWOOD LOOKED IN 1876—THE DEADWOOD
“ACADEMY OF MUSIC”—THE SECOND WINTER CAMPAIGN—THE NAMES OF THE
INDIAN SCOUTS—WIPING OUT THE CHEYENNE VILLAGE—LIEUTENANT MCKINNEY
KILLED—FOURTEEN CHEYENNE BABIES FROZEN TO DEATH IN THEIR MOTHERS’
ARMS—THE CUSTER MASSACRE AGAIN—THE TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE OF RANDALL
AND THE CROW SCOUTS.
The joy of the people in the Hills knew no bounds; the towns of
Deadwood, Crook City, Montana, and many others proceeded to celebrate
the news of their freedom and safety by all the methods suitable to such
a momentous occasion in a frontier civilization: there was much in the
way of bonfires, the firing of salutes from anvils, cheering,
mass-meetings, alleged music, and no small portion of hard drinking. By
resolution of the Deadwood Council, a committee, consisting of the first
mayor, Farnum, and councilmen Kurtz, Dawson, and Philbrick, was sent out
to meet General Crook and extend to him and his officers the freedom of
the city; in the same carriage with them came Mr. Wilbur Hugus, who had
assisted me in burying Captain Philip Dwyer at Camp Date Creek, Arizona,
four years previously. The welcome extended these representatives was
none the less cordial because they had brought along with them a most
acceptable present of butter, eggs, and vegetables raised in the Hills.
Despatches were also received from General Sheridan, informing Crook
that the understanding was that the hostiles were going to slip into the
agencies, leaving out in the Big Horn country “Crazy Horse” and “Sitting
Bull,” with their bands, until the next spring. To prevent a recurrence
of the campaign the next year, Sheridan was determined to disarm and
dismount all the new arrivals, and for that purpose had stationed a
strong force at each agency, but he wished Crook to move in with his
command to “Red Cloud” and “Spotted Tail” and superintend the work there
instead of remaining in the Hills as Crook wished to do, and continue
the campaign from there with some of the towns, either Deadwood or
Custer City, as might be found best adapted to the purpose, as a base.
Congress had authorized the enlistment of four hundred additional Indian
scouts, and had also appropriated a liberal sum for the construction of
the posts on the Yellowstone. Crook was to turn over the command to
Merritt, and proceed in person, as rapidly as possible, to confer with
Sheridan, who was awaiting him at Fort Laramie, with a view to
designating the force to occupy the site of old Fort Reno during the
winter.
After enduring the hardships and discomforts of the march from the head
of Heart River, the situation in the bivouac on the Whitewood, a
beautiful stream flowing out of the Hills at their northern extremity,
was most romantic and pleasurable. The surrounding knolls were thickly
grassed; cold, clear water stood in deep pools hemmed in by thick belts
of timber; and there was an abundance of juicy wild plums, grapes, and
bull berries, now fully ripe, and adding a grateful finish to meals
which included nearly everything that man could desire, brought down in
wagons by the enterprising dealers of Deadwood, who reaped a golden
harvest. We were somewhat bewildered at sitting down before a canvas
upon which were to be seen warm bread baked in ovens dug in the ground,
delicious coffee, to the aroma of which we had been for so long a time
strangers, broiled and stewed meat, fresh eggs, pickles, preserves, and
fresh vegetables. Soldiers are in one respect like children: they forget
the sorrows of yesterday in the delights of to-day, and give to glad
song the same voices which a few hours ago were loudest in grumbling and
petty complaint. So it was with our camp: the blazing fires were
surrounded by crowds of happy warriors, each rivalling the other in
tales of the “times we had” in a march whose severity has never been
approached by that made by any column of our army of the same size, and
of which so little is known that it may truly be said that the hardest
work is the soonest forgotten.
Crook bade good-by to the officers and men who had toiled along with him
through the spring and summer, and then headed for the post of Fort
Robinson, Nebraska, one hundred and sixty miles to the south. For
one-half this distance our road followed down through the centre of the
Black Hills, a most entrancing country, laid out apparently by a
landscape artist; it is not so high as the Big Horn range, although
Harney’s and other peaks of granite project to a great elevation, their
flanks dark with pine, fir, and other coniferæ; the foot-hills velvety
with healthful pasturage; the narrow valleys of the innumerable petty
creeks a jungle of willow, wild rose, live oak, and plum. Climbing into
the mountains, one can find any amount of spruce, juniper, cedar, fir,
hemlock, birch, and whitewood; there are no lakes, but the springs are
legion and fill with gentle melody the romantic glens—the retreat of the
timid deer.
A description of Deadwood as it appeared at that time will suffice for
all the settlements of which it was the metropolis. Crook City, Montana,
Hills City, Castleton, Custer City, and others through which we passed
were better built than Deadwood and better situated for expansion, but
Deadwood had struck it rich in its placers, and the bulk of the
population took root there. Crook City received our party most
hospitably, and insisted upon our sitting down to a good hot breakfast,
after which we pressed on to Deadwood, twenty miles or more from our
camping place on the Whitewood. The ten miles of distance from Crook
City to Deadwood was lined on both sides with deep ditches and
sluice-boxes, excavated to develop or work the rich gravel lying along
the entire gulch. But it seemed to me that with anything like proper
economy and care there was wealth enough in the forests to make the
prosperity of any community, and supply not alone the towns which might
spring up in the hills, but build all the houses and stables needed in
the great pastures north, as far as the head of the Little Missouri. It
was the 16th of September when we entered Deadwood, and although I had
been through the Black Hills with the exploring expedition commanded by
Colonel Dodge, the previous year, and was well acquainted with the
beautiful country we were to see, I was unbalanced by the exhibition of
the marvellous energy of the American people now laid before us. The
town had been laid off in building lots on the 15th of May, and all
supplies had to be hauled in wagons from the railroad two hundred and
fifty miles away and through bodies of savages who kept up a constant
series of assaults and ambuscades.
The town was situated at the junction of the Whitewood and Deadwood
creeks or gulches, each of which was covered by a double line of
block-houses to repel a sudden attack from the ever-to-be-dreaded enemy,
the Sioux and Cheyennes, of whose cruelty and desperate hostility the
mouths of the inhabitants and the columns of the two newspapers were
filled. I remember one of these journals, _The Pioneer_, edited at that
time by a young man named Merrick, whose life had been pleasantly
divided into three equal parts—setting type, hunting for Indians, and
“rasslin’” for grub—during the days when the whole community was reduced
to deer-meat and anything else they could pick up. Merrick was a very
bright, energetic man, and had he lived would have been a prominent
citizen in the new settlements. It speaks volumes for the intelligence
of the element rolling into the new El Dorado to say that the
subscription lists of _The Pioneer_ even then contained four hundred
names.
The main street of Deadwood, twenty yards wide, was packed by a force of
men, drawn from all quarters, aggregating thousands; and the windows of
both upper and lower stories of the eating-houses, saloons, hotels, and
wash-houses were occupied by women of good, bad, and indifferent
reputation. There were vociferous cheers, clappings of hands, wavings of
handkerchiefs, shrieks from the whistles of the planing mills, reports
from powder blown off in anvils, and every other manifestation of
welcome known to the populations of mining towns. The almond-eyed
Celestial laundrymen had absorbed the contagion of the hour, and from
the doors of the “Centennial Wash-House” gazed with a complacency
unusual to them upon the doings of the Western barbarians. We were
assigned quarters in the best hotel of the town: “The Grand Central
Hotel, Main Street, opposite Theatre, C. H. Wagner, Prop. (formerly of
the Walker House and Saddle Rock Restaurant, Salt Lake), the only
first-class hotel in Deadwood City, D. T.”
This was a structure of wood, of two stories, the lower used for the
purposes of offices, dining-room, saloon, and kitchen; the upper was
devoted to a parlor, and the rest was partitioned into bedrooms, of
which I wish to note the singular feature that the partitions did not
reach more than eight feet above the floor, and thus every word said in
one room was common property to all along that corridor. The “Grand
Central” was, as might be expected, rather crude in outline and
construction, but the furniture was remarkably good, and the table
decidedly better than one had a right to look for, all circumstances
considered. Owing to the largeness of our party, the escort and packers
were divided off between the “I. X. L.” and the “Centennial” hotels,
while the horses and mules found good accommodations awaiting them in
Clarke’s livery stable. I suppose that much of this will be Greek to the
boy or girl growing up in Deadwood, who may also be surprised to hear
that very many of the habitations were of canvas, others of unbarked
logs, and some few “dug-outs” in the clay banks. By the law of the
community, a gold placer or ledge could be followed anywhere, regardless
of other property rights; in consequence of this, the office of _The
Pioneer_ was on stilts, being kept in countenance by a Chinese
laundryman whose establishment was in the same predicament. Miners were
at work under them, and it looked as if it would be more economical to
establish one’s self in a balloon in the first place.
That night, after supper, the hills were red with the flare and flame of
bonfires, and in front of the hotel had assembled a large crowd, eager
to have a talk with General Crook; this soon came, and the main part of
the General’s remarks was devoted to an expression of his desire to
protect the new settlements from threatened danger, while the citizens,
on their side, recited the various atrocities and perils which had
combined to make the early history of the settlements, and presented a
petition, signed by seven hundred and thirteen full-grown white
citizens, asking for military protection. Then followed a reception in
the “Deadwood Theatre and Academy of Music,” built one-half of boards
and the other half of canvas. After the reception, there was a
performance by “Miller’s Grand Combination Troupe, with the Following
Array of Stars.” It was the usual variety show of the mining towns and
villages, but much of it was quite good; one of the saddest
interpolations was the vocalization by Miss Viola de Montmorency, the
Queen of Song, prior to her departure for Europe to sing before the
crowned heads. Miss Viola was all right, but her voice might have had
several stitches in it, and been none the worse; if she never comes back
from the other side of the Atlantic until I send for her, she will be
considerably older than she was that night when a half-drunken miner
energetically insisted that she was “old enough to have another set o’
teeth.” We left the temple of the Muses to walk along the main street
and look in upon the stores, which were filled with all articles
desirable in a mining district, and many others not usual in so young a
community. Clothing, heavy and light, hardware, tinware, mess-pans,
camp-kettles, blankets, saddlery, harness, rifles, cartridges,
wagon-grease and blasting powder, india-rubber boots and garden seeds,
dried and canned fruits, sardines, and yeast powders, loaded down the
shelves; the medium of exchange was gold dust; each counter displayed a
pair of delicate scales, and every miner carried a buckskin pouch
containing the golden grains required for daily use.
Greenbacks were not in circulation, and already commanded a premium of
five per cent, on account of their portability. Gambling hells
flourished, and all kinds of games were to be found—three card monte,
keno, faro, roulette, and poker. Close by these were the
“hurdy-gurdies,” where the music from asthmatic pianos timed the dancing
of painted, padded, and leering Aspasias, too hideous to hope for a
livelihood in any village less remote from civilization. We saw and met
representatives of all classes of society—gamblers, chevaliers
d’industrie, callow fledglings, ignorant of the world and its ways,
experienced miners who had labored in other fields, men broken down in
other pursuits, noble women who had braved all perils to be by their
husbands’ sides, smart little children, and children who were adepts in
profanity and all other vices—just such a commingling as might be looked
for, but we saw very little if any drinking, and the general tone of the
place was one of good order and law, to which vice and immorality must
bow.
We started out from Deadwood, and rode through the beautiful hills from
north to south, passing along over well-constructed corduroy roads to
Custer City, sixty miles to the south; about half way we met a
wagon-train of supplies, under charge of Captain Prank Guest Smith, of
the Fourth Artillery, and remained a few moments to take luncheon with
himself and his subordinates—Captain Cushing and Lieutenants Jones,
Howe, Taylor, and Anderson, and Surgeon Price. Custer City was a
melancholy example of a town with the “boom” knocked out of it; there
must have been as many as four hundred comfortable houses arranged in
broad, rectilinear streets, but not quite three hundred souls remained,
and all the trade of the place was dependent upon the three saw and
shingle mills still running at full time. Here we found another
wagon-train of provisions, under command of Captain Egan and Lieutenant
Allison, of the Second Cavalry, who very kindly insisted upon exchanging
their fresh horses for our tired-out steeds so as to let us go on at
once on our still long ride of nearly one hundred miles south to
Robinson; we travelled all night, stopping at intervals to let the
horses have a bite of grass, but as Randall and Sibley were left behind
with the pack-train, our reduced party kept a rapid gait along the wagon
road, and arrived at the post the next morning shortly after breakfast.
Near Buffalo Gap we crossed the “Amphibious” Creek, which has a double
bottom, the upper one being a crust of sulphuret of lime, through which
rider and horse will often break to the discomfort and danger of both;
later on we traversed the “Bad Lands,” in which repose the bones of
countless thousands of fossilized monsters—tortoises, lizards, and
others—which will yet be made to pay heavy tribute to the museums of the
world. Here we met the officers of the garrison as well as the members
of the commission appointed by the President to confer with the Sioux,
among whom I remember Bishop Whipple, Judge Moneypenny, Judge Gaylord,
and others.
This terminated the summer campaign, although, as one of the results of
Crook’s conference with Sheridan at Fort Laramie, the Ogallalla chiefs
“Red Cloud” and “Red Leaf” were surrounded on the morning of the 23d of
October, and all their guns and ponies taken from them. There were seven
hundred and five ponies and fifty rifles. These bands were supposed to
have been selling arms and ammunition to the part of the tribe in open
hostility, and this action of the military was precipitated by “Red
Cloud’s” refusal to obey the orders to move his village close to the
agency, so as to prevent the incoming stragglers from being confounded
with those who had remained at peace. He moved his village over to the
Chadron Creek, twenty-two miles away, where he was at the moment of
being surrounded and arrested.
General Crook had a conference with the head men of the Ogallallas and
Brulés, the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, and told them in plain language
what he expected them to do. The Government of the United States was
feeding them, and was entitled to loyal behavior in return, instead of
which many of our citizens had been killed and the trails of the
murderers ran straight for the Red Cloud Agency; it was necessary for
the chiefs to show their friendship by something more than empty words,
and they would be held accountable for the good behavior of their young
men. He did not wish to do harm to any one, but he had been sent out
there to maintain order and he intended to do it, and if the Sioux did
not see that it was to their interest to help they would soon regret
their blindness. If all the Sioux would come in and start life as
stock-raisers, the trouble would end at once, but so long as any
remained out, the white men would insist upon war being made, and he
should expect all the chiefs there present to aid in its prosecution.
There were now fifty-three companies of soldiers at Red Cloud, and they
could figure for themselves just how long they could withstand such
force. “Red Cloud” had been insolent to all officers placed over him,
and his sympathies with the hostiles had been open and undisguised;
therefore he had been deposed, and “Spotted Tail,” who had been
friendly, was to be the head chief of all the Sioux.
The assignment of the troops belonging to the summer expedition to
winter quarters, and the organization from new troops of the expedition,
which was to start back and resume operations in the Big Horn and
Yellowstone country, occupied several weeks to the exclusion of all
other business, and it was late in October before the various commands
began concentrating at Fort Fetterman for the winter’s work.
The wagon-train left at Powder River, or rather at Goose Creek, under
Major Furey, had been ordered in by General Sheridan, and had reached
Fort Laramie and been overhauled and refitted. It then returned to
Fetterman to take part in the coming expedition. General Crook took a
small party to the summit of the Laramie Peak, and killed and brought
back sixty-four deer, four elk, four mountain sheep, and one cinnamon
bear; during the same week he had a fishing party at work on the North
Platte River, and caught sixty fine pike weighing one hundred and one
pounds.
Of the resulting winter campaign I do not intend to say much, having in
another volume described it completely and minutely; to that volume
(“Mackenzie’s Last Fight with the Cheyennes—a Winter Campaign in
Wyoming”) the curious reader is referred; but at the present time, as
the country operated in was precisely the same as that gone over during
the preceding winter and herein described—as the Indians in hostility
were the same, with the same habits and peculiarities, I can condense
this section to a recapitulation of the forces engaged, the fights
fought, and the results thereof, as well as a notice of the invaluable
services rendered by the Indian scouts, of whom Crook was now able to
enlist all that he desired, the obstructive element—the Indian
agent—having been displaced. Although this command met with severe
weather, as its predecessor had done, yet it was so well provided and
had such a competent force of Indian scouts that the work to be done by
the soldiers was reduced to the zero point; had Crook’s efforts to
enlist some of the Indians at Red Cloud Agency not been frustrated by
the agent and others in the spring, the war with the hostile Sioux and
Cheyennes would have been over by the 4th of July, instead of dragging
its unsatisfactory length along until the second winter and entailing
untold hardships and privations upon officers and men and swelling the
death roll of the settlers.
The organization with which Crook entered upon his second winter
campaign was superb in equipment; nothing was lacking that money could
provide or previous experience suggest. There were eleven companies of
cavalry, of which only one—“K,” of the Second (Egan’s)—had been engaged
in previous movements, but all were under excellent discipline and had
seen much service in other sections.
Besides Egan’s there were “H” and “K,” of the Third, “B,” “D,” “E,” “F,”
“I,” and “M,” of the Fourth, and “H” and “L,” of the Fifth Cavalry.
These were placed under the command of Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie, of
the Fourth Cavalry.
Colonel R. I. Dodge, Twenty-third Infantry, commanded the infantry and
artillery companies, the latter serving as foot troops; his force
included Batteries “C,” “F,” “H,” and “K,” of the Fourth Artillery;
Companies “A,” “B,” “C,” “F,” “I,” and “K,” of the Ninth Infantry; “D”
and “G,” of the Fourteenth Infantry; and “C,” “G,” and “I,” of the
Twenty-third Infantry.
General Crook’s personal staff was composed of myself as Acting
Assistant Adjutant-General; Schuyler and Clarke, Aides-de-Camp; Randall,
Chief of Scouts; Rockwell, of the Fifth Cavalry, as Commissary; Surgeon
Joseph R. Gibson as Chief Medical Officer.
In the list of officers starting out with this expedition are to be
found the names of Major G. A. Gordon, Fifth Cavalry, and Major E. F.
Townsend, Ninth Infantry, and Captain C. V. Mauck, Fourth Cavalry, and
Captain J. B. Campbell, Fourth Artillery, commanding battalions;
Lieutenant Hayden Delaney, Ninth Infantry, commanding company of Indian
scouts; and the following from the various regiments, arranged without
regard to rank: Wessels and Hammond; Gerald Russell, Oscar Elting, and
George A. Dodd, of the Third Cavalry; James Egan and James Allison, of
the Second Cavalry; John M. Hamilton, E. W. Ward and E. P. Andrus,
Alfred B. Taylor and H. W. Wheeler, of the Fifth Cavalry; J. H. Dorst,
H. W. Lawton, C. Mauck, J. W. Martin, John Lee, C. M. Callahan, S. A.
Mason, H. H. Bellas, Wirt Davis, F. L. Shoemaker, J. Wesley Rosenquest,
W. C. Hemphill, J. A. McKinney, H. G. Otis, of the Fourth Cavalry;
Cushing, Taylor, Bloom, Jones, Campbell, Cummins, Crozier, Frank G.
Smith, Harry R. Anderson, Greenough, Howe, French, of the Fourth
Artillery; Jordan, MacCaleb, Devin, Morris C. Foot, Pease, Baldwin,
Rockefeller, Jesse M. Lee, Bowman, of the Ninth Infantry; Vanderslice,
Austin, Krause, Hasson, Kimball, of the Fourteenth Infantry; Pollock,
Hay, Claggett, Edward B. Pratt, Wheaton, William L. Clarke, Hoffman,
Heyl, of the Twenty-third Infantry; and Surgeons Gibson, Price, Wood,
Pettys, Owsley, and La Garde.
Mackenzie’s column numbered twenty-eight officers and seven hundred and
ninety men; Dodge’s, thirty-three officers and six hundred and forty-six
enlisted men. There were one hundred and fifty-five Arapahoes,
Cheyennes, and Sioux; ninety-one Shoshones, fifteen Bannocks, one
hundred Pawnees, one Ute, and one Nez Percé, attached as scouts; and
four interpreters.
The supplies were carried on four hundred pack-mules, attended by
sixty-five packers under men of such experience as Tom Moore, Dave
Mears, Young Delaney, Patrick, and others; one hundred and sixty-eight
wagons and seven ambulances—a very imposing cavalcade. Major Frank
North, assisted by his brother, Luke North, commanded the Pawnees; they,
as well as all the other scouts, rendered service of the first value, as
will be seen from a glance at these pages. General Crook had succeeded
in planting a detachment of infantry at old Fort Reno, which was rebuilt
under the energetic administration of Major Pollock, of the Ninth, and
had something in the way of supplies, shelter, and protection to offer
to small parties of couriers or scouts who might run against too strong
a force of the enemy. This post, incomplete as it was, proved of prime
importance before the winter work was over.
We noticed one thing in the make-up of our scouting force: it was an
improvement over that of the preceding summer, not in bravery or energy,
but in complete familiarity with the plans and designs of the hostile
Sioux and Cheyennes whom we were to hunt down. Of the Cheyennes, I am
able to give the names of “Thunder Cloud,” “Bird,” “Blown Away,” “Old
Crow,” “Fisher,” and “Hard Robe.” Among the Sioux were, in addition to
the young man, “Charging Bear,” who had been taken prisoner at the
engagement of Slim Buttes, “Three Bears,” “Pretty Voiced Bull,” “Yellow
Shirt,” “Singing Bear,” “Lone Feather,” “Tall Wild Cat,” “Bad Boy,”
“Bull,” “Big Horse,” “Black Mouse,” “Broken Leg,” a second Indian named
“Charging Bear,” “Crow,” “Charles Richaud,” “Eagle,” “Eagle” (2),
“Feather On The Head,” “Fast Thunder,” “Fast Horse,” “Good Man,” “Grey
Eyes,” “James Twist,” “Kills First,” “Keeps The Battle,” “Kills In The
Winter,” “Lone Dog,” “Owl Bull,” “Little Warrior,” “Leading Warrior,”
“Little Bull,” “No Neck,” “Poor Elk,” “Rocky Bear,” “Red Bear,” “Red
Willow,” “Six Feathers,” “Sitting Bear,” “Scraper,” “Swift Charger,”
“Shuts The Door,” “Slow Bear,” “Sorrel Horse,” “Swimmer,” “Tobacco,”
“Knife,” “Thunder Shield,” “Horse Comes Last,” “White Face,” “Walking
Bull,” “Waiting,” “White Elk,” “Yellow Bear,” “Bad Moccasin,” “Bear
Eagle,” “Yankton,” “Fox Belly,” “Running Over,” “Red Leaf”—representing
the Ogallallas, Brulés, Cut Offs, Loafers, and Sans Arcs bands.
The Arapahoes were “Sharp Nose,” “Old Eagle,” “Six Feathers,” “Little
Fox,” “Shell On The Neck,” “White Horse,” “Wolf Moccasin,” “Sleeping
Wolf,” “William Friday,” “Red Beaver,” “Driving Down Hill,” “Yellow
Bull,” “Wild Sage,” “Eagle Chief,” “Sitting Bull,” “Short Head,” “Arrow
Quiver,” “Yellow Owl,” “Strong Bear,” “Spotted Crow,” “White Bear,” “Old
Man,” “Painted Man,” “Left Hand,” “Long Hair,” “Ground Bear,” “Walking
Water,” “Young Chief,” “Medicine Man,” “Bull Robe,” “Crying Dog,” “Flat
Foot,” “Flint Breaker,” “Singing Beaver,” “Fat Belly,” “Crazy,” “Blind
Man,” “Foot,” “Hungry Man,” “Wrinkled Forehead,” “Fast Wolf,” “Big Man,”
“White Plume,” “Coal,” “Sleeping Bear,” “Little Owl,” “Butcher,” “Broken
Horn,” “Bear’s Backbone,” “Head Warrior,” “Big Ridge,” “Black Man,”
“Strong Man,” “Whole Robe,” “Bear Wolf.”
The above will surely show that we were excellently provided with
material from the agencies, which was the main point to be considered.
The Pawnees were led by “Li-here-is-oo-lishar” and “U-sanky-su-cola;”
the Bannocks and Shoshones by “Tupsi-paw” and “O-ho-a-te.” The chief
“Washakie” was not with them this time; he sent word that he was
suffering from rheumatism and did not like to run the risks of a winter
campaign, but had sent his two sons and a nephew and would come in
person later on if his services were needed. These guides captured a
Cheyenne boy and brought him in a prisoner to Crook, who learned from
him much as to the location of the hostile villages.
In the gray twilight of a cold November morning (the 25th), Mackenzie
with the cavalry and Indian scouts burst like a tornado upon the
unsuspecting village of the Cheyennes at the head of Willow Creek, a
tributary of the Powder, and wiped it from the face of the earth. There
were two hundred and five lodges, each of which was a magazine of
supplies of all kinds—buffalo and pony meat, valuable robes, ammunition,
saddles, and the comforts of civilization—in very appreciable
quantities. The roar of the flames exasperated the fugitive Cheyennes to
frenzy; they saw their homes disappearing in fire and smoke; they heard
the dull thump, thump, of their own medicine drum, which had fallen into
the hands of our Shoshones; and they listened to the plaintive drone of
the sacred flageolets upon which the medicine men of the Pawnees were
playing as they rode at the head of their people. Seven hundred and five
ponies fell into our hands and were driven off the field; as many more
were killed and wounded or slaughtered by the Cheyennes the night after
the battle, partly for food and partly to let their half-naked old men
and women put their feet and legs in the warm entrails. We lost one
officer, Lieutenant John A. McKinney, Fourth Cavalry, and six men killed
and twenty-five men wounded; the enemy’s loss was unknown; at least
thirty bodies fell into our hands, and at times the fighting had a
hand-to-hand character, especially where Wirt Davis and John M. Hamilton
were engaged. The village was secured by a charge on our left in which
the companies of Taylor, Hemphill, Russell, Wessells, and the Pawnees
participated. The Shoshones, under Lieutenant Schuyler and Tom Cosgrove,
seized a commanding peak and rained down bullets upon the brave
Cheyennes, who, after putting their women and children in the best
places of safety accessible, held on to the rocks, and could not be
dislodged without great loss of life.
Mackenzie sent couriers to Crook, asking him to come to his help as soon
as he could with the long rifles of the infantry, to drive the enemy
from their natural fortifications. Crook and the foot troops under
Dodge, Townsend, and Campbell made the wonderful march of twenty-six
miles over the frozen, slippery ground in twelve hours, much of the
distance by night. But they did not reach us in time, as the excessive
cold had forced the Cheyennes to withdraw from our immediate front,
eleven of their little babies having frozen to death in their mothers’
arms the first night and three others the second night after the fight.
The Cheyennes were spoken to by Bill Roland and Frank Gruard, but were
very sullen and not inclined to talk much; it was learned that we had
struck the village of “Dull Knife,” who had with him “Little Wolf,”
“Roman Nose,” “Gray Head,” “Old Bear,” “Standing Elk,” and “Turkey
Legs.” “Dull Knife” called out to our Sioux and Cheyenne scouts: “Go
home—you have no business here; we can whip the white soldiers alone,
but can’t fight you too.” The other Cheyennes called out that they were
going over to a big Sioux village, which they asserted to be near by,
and get its assistance, and then come back and clean us out. “You have
killed and hurt a heap of our people,” they said, “and you may as well
stay now and kill the rest of us.” The Custer massacre was represented
by a perfect array of mute testimony: gauntlets, hats, and articles of
clothing marked with the names of officers and men of the ill-fated
Seventh Cavalry, saddles, silk guidons, and other paraphernalia pointing
the one moral, that the Cheyennes had been as foremost in the battle
with Custer as they had been in the battle with Crook on the Rosebud a
week earlier.
All the tribes of the plains looked up to the Cheyennes, and respected
their impetuous valor; none stood higher than they as fierce, skilful
fighters; and to think that we had broken the back of their hostility
and rendered them impotent was a source of no small gratification. They
sent a party of young men to follow our trail and see whither we went;
these young men crawled up close to our camp-fires and satisfied
themselves that some of their own people were really enlisted to fight
our battles, as Ben Roland had assured them was the case. This
disconcerted them beyond measure, added to what they could see of our
column of scouts from the other tribes. “Dull Knife” made his way down
the Powder to where “Crazy Horse” was in camp, expecting to be received
with the hospitality to which his present destitution and past services
entitled him. “Crazy Horse” was indifferent to the sufferings of his
allies and turned the cold shoulder upon them completely, and this so
aroused their indignation that they decided to follow the example of
those who had enrolled under our flag and sent in word to that effect.
At first it was not easy to credit the story that the Cheyennes were not
only going to surrender, but that every last man of them would enlist as
a soldier to go out and demolish “Crazy Horse;” but the news was
perfectly true, and in the last days of December and the first of
January the first detachment of them arrived at Red Cloud Agency; just
as fast as the condition of their ponies and wounded would admit,
another detachment arrived; and then the whole body—men, women, and
children—made their appearance, and announced their desire and intention
to help us whip “Crazy Horse.” “Crazy Horse” happened to be related by
blood or by marriage to both “Spotted Tail” and “Red Cloud,” and each of
these big chiefs exerted himself to save him. “Spotted Tail” sounded the
Cheyennes and found that they were in earnest in the expressed purpose
of aiding the Americans; and when he counted upon his fingers the
hundreds of allies who were coming in to the aid of the whites in the
suppression, perhaps the extermination, of the Dakotas, who had so long
lorded it over the population of the Missouri Valley, he saw that it was
the part of prudence for all his people to submit to the authority of
the General Government and trust to its promises.
Colonel Mason was not only a good soldier, he was a man of most
excellent education, broad views and humane impulses; he had gained a
great influence over “Spotted Tail,” which he used to the best
advantage. He explained to his red-skinned friends that the force soon
to be put in the field would embrace hundreds of the Sioux at the
agencies, who were desirous of providing themselves with ponies from the
herds of their relations, the Minneconjous; that every warrior of the
Cheyennes had declared his intention of enlisting to fight “Crazy
Horse”; that there would be, if needed, two hundred and fifty men, or
even more, from the Utes, Bannocks, and Shoshones; that over one hundred
Pawnees were determined to accompany any expedition setting out; that
one hundred Winnebagoes had offered their services; that all the
able-bodied Arapahoes were enrolled, and that the Crows had sent word
that two hundred of their best warriors would take part. In the early
part of the winter the Crows had sent two hundred and fifty of their
warriors under Major George M. Randall and the interpreter, Fox, to find
and join Crook’s expedition. After being subjected to indescribable
privations and almost frozen to death in a fierce wind and snow storm
upon the summits of the Big Horn range—from the fury of which Randall
and his companions were saved by the accident of discovering a herd of
buffaloes hiding from the blast in a little sag, which animals they
attacked, killing a number and eating the flesh raw, as no fire could
live in such a blast, and putting their feet inside the carcasses to
keep from freezing stiff—the brave detachment of Crows succeeded in
uniting with us on Christmas morning, 1876, in one of the most
disagreeable blizzards of that trip.
Their number had been reduced below one hundred, but they were still
able to aid us greatly, had not Crook deemed it best for them to return
home and apprise their tribe of the complete downfall of the Cheyennes
and the breaking of the backbone of hostility. There might be other
fights and skirmishes in the future, but organized antagonism to the
whites was shattered when the Cheyenne camp was laid low, and future
military operations would be minimized into the pursuit of straggling
detachments or conflicts with desperate bands which had no hope of
success, but would wish to sell their lives at the highest rate
possible. The best thing for the Crows and Utes and Shoshones to do
would be to move into, or at least close to, the Big Horn Mountains, and
from there raid upon the petty villages of the Sioux who might try to
live in the seclusion of the rocks and forests. “Spotted Tail” said that
“Crazy Horse” was his nephew, and he thought he could make him see the
absolute inutility of further resistance by going out to have a talk
with him.
Mason telegraphed all the foregoing facts to General Crook, who had been
summoned to Cheyenne as a witness before a general court-martial; Crook
replied that there was no objection to the proposed mission, but that
“Spotted Tail” must let “Crazy Horse” understand that he was not sent
out with any overtures, and that all “Crazy Horse” could count upon was
safety in his passage across the country, by setting out at once before
another movement should begin. “Spotted Tail” found “Crazy Horse”
encamped near the head of the Little Powder, about midway between
Cantonment Reno and the southwestern corner of the Black Hills. He made
known his errand, and had no great difficulty in making his nephew see
that he had better begin his movement towards the agency without a
moment’s delay. Several of “Crazy Horse’s” young men came in with
“Spotted Tail,” who was back at Camp Robinson by the last week in
January, 1877. General Crook’s headquarters had been transferred to that
point, and there was little to do beyond waiting for the arrival of
“Crazy Horse” and other chiefs.
Of our mess and its members, as well as the people who dined or supped
with us, I am sure that my readers will pardon me for saying a word.
CHAPTER XXIII.
STRANGE MESS-MATES—THE JOURNEY TO THE AGENCIES—GENERAL SHERIDAN’S
VISIT—“SPOTTED TAIL”—THE STORY OF HIS DEAD DAUGHTER’S
BONES—“WHITE THUNDER”—“RED CLOUD”—“DULL KNIFE”—“BIG WOLF”—THE
NECKLACE OF HUMAN FINGERS—THE MEDICINE MAN AND THE ELECTRIC
BATTERY—“WASHINGTON”—“FRIDAY”—INDIAN BROTHERS—“SORREL
HORSE”—“THREE BEARS”—“YOUNG MAN AFRAID OF HIS HORSES”—“ROCKY
BEAR”—“RED CLOUD’S” LETTER—INDIAN DANCES—THE BAD LANDS—HOW THE
CHEYENNES FIRST GOT HORSES.
Camp Robinson was situated in the extreme northwestern corner of the
State of Nebraska, close to the line of Dakota and that of Wyoming;
aside from being the focus of military activity, there was little in the
way of attraction; the scenery in the vicinity is picturesque, without
any special features. There were great numbers of Indians of the Sioux,
Cheyenne, and Arapahoe tribes, to whose ranks accessions were made daily
by those surrendering, but reference to them will be postponed for the
present. The white members of our mess were General Crook, General
Mackenzie, Colonel J. W. Mason, Lieutenant William P. Clarke, Lieutenant
Hayden Delaney, Lieutenant Walter S. Schuyler, Major George M. Randall,
and myself. Neither Mackenzie nor Mason could, strictly speaking, be
called a member of the mess, but as they generally “dropped in,” and as
a plate was regularly placed for each, there is no direct violation of
the unities in including them. Randall was still full of his recent
perilous adventure with the Crows, and we often were successful in
drawing him out about his experiences in the Civil War, in which he had
borne a most gallant part and of which he could, when disposed, relate
many interesting episodes. Schuyler had made a tour through Russia and
Finland, and observed not a little of the usages and peculiarities of
the people of those countries. Mr. Strahorn, who was often with us, had
wandered about in many curious spots of our own territory, and was
brimful of anecdote of quaint types of human nature encountered far away
from the centres of civilization. Crook and Mackenzie and Mason would
sometimes indulge in reminiscences to which all eagerly listened, and it
is easy to see that such a mess would of itself have been a place of no
ordinary interest; but for me the greatest attraction was to be found in
the constant presence of distinguished Indian chiefs whose names had
become part and parcel of the history of our border. General Sheridan
had paid one hurried visit and remained a day, but being better known to
American readers, there is no use in speaking of him and his work during
the war.
There were two cooks, Phillips and Boswell, the former of whom had
shared the trials and tribulations of the terrible march down from the
head of Heart River, and seemed resolved to make hay while the sun
shone; he could make anything but pie—in that he failed miserably. I
think it was Oliver Wendell Holmes who once wrote an essay to
demonstrate that the isothermal line of perpetual pumpkin pie was the
line of highest civilization and culture. The converse of the
proposition would seem to be equally true: pie, of any kind, cannot be
made except under the most æsthetic surroundings; amid the chilling
restraints of savagery and barbarism, pie is simply an impossibility. It
did not make much difference what he prepared, Boswell was sure of an
appreciative discussion of its merits by a mess which was always hungry,
and which always had guests who were still hungrier and still more
appreciative.
Taking our aboriginal guests in order of rank, the chief, of course, was
“Spotted Tail.” This is, unfortunately, not the age of monument-building
in America; if ever the day shall come when loyal and intelligent
friendship for the American people shall receive due recognition, the
strong, melancholy features of “Siutiega-leska,” or “Spotted Tail,” cast
in enduring bronze, will overlook the broad area of Dakota and Nebraska,
which his genius did so much to save to civilization. In youth a warrior
of distinction, in middle age a leader among his people, he became, ere
time had sprinkled his locks with snow, the benefactor of two races. A
diplomatist able to hold his own with the astutest agents the Great
Father could depute to confer with him, “Spotted Tail” recognized the
inevitable destruction of his kinsmen if they persisted in war and
turned their backs upon overtures of peace. He exerted himself, and
generally with success, to obtain the best terms possible from the
Government in all conferences held with its representatives, but he was
equally earnest in his determination to restrain the members of his own
band, and all others whom he could control, from going out upon the
war-path. If any persisted in going, they went to stay; he would not
allow them to return.
There was a story current in army circles that years and years ago a
young daughter of “Spotted Tail” had fallen in love with an officer just
out of West Point, and had died of a broken heart. In her last hours she
asked of her father the pledge that he would always remain the friend of
the Americans—a pledge given with affectionate earnestness, and observed
with all the fidelity of a noble nature. I have often seen the grave of
this young maiden at Fort Laramie—a long pine box, resting high in air
upon a scaffold adorned with the tails of the ponies upon which her
gentle soul had made the lonesome journey to the Land of the Great
Hereafter. I may as well tell here a romance about her poor bones, which
insatiate Science did not permit to rest in peace. Long after her
obsequies, when “Spotted Tail’s” people had been moved eastward to the
White Earth country, and while the conflict with the hostiles was at its
bitterest, the garrison of Fort Laramie was sent into the field, new
troops taking their places. There was a new commanding officer, a new
surgeon, and a new hospital steward; the last was young, bright,
ambitious, and desirous of becoming an expert in anatomy. The Devil saw
his opportunity for doing mischief; he whispered in the young man’s ear:
“If you want an articulated skeleton, what’s the matter with those
bones? Make your own articulated skeleton.” Turn where he would, the
Devil followed him; the word “bones” sounded constantly in his ears,
and, close his eyes or open them, there stood the scaffold upon which,
wrapped in costly painted buffalo robes and all the gorgeous decoration
of bead-work, porcupine quill, and wampum that savage affection could
supply, reposed the mortal remains of the Dakota maiden.... A dark
night, a ladder, a rope, and a bag—the bones were lying upon the
steward’s table, cleaned, polished, and almost adjusted, and if there
was one happy man in the United States Army it was the hospital steward
of Fort Laramie.
How fleeting is all human joy! A little cloud of dust arose above the
hills to the northeast in the direction of the Raw-Hide; it grew bigger
and bigger and never ceased until, in front of the commanding officer’s
quarters, it revealed the figures of “Spotted Tail,” the head chief of
the Sioux, and a dozen of his warriors. The great chief had come, he
said, for the bones of his child; he was getting old, and his heart felt
cold when it turned to the loved one who slept so far from the graves of
her people. The way was long, but his ponies were fresh, and to help out
the ride of the morrow he would start back with the rising of the moon
that night. Consternation! Panic! Dismay! Use any term you please to
describe the sensation when the steward confessed to the surgeon, and
the surgeon to the commanding officer, the perilous predicament in which
they were placed. The commanding officer was polite and diplomatic. He
urged upon “Spotted Tail” that the requirements of hospitality could not
permit of his withdrawal until the next day; neither was it proper that
the bones of the daughter of so distinguished a chief should be carried
off in a bundle uncoffined. He would have a coffin made, and when that
should be ready the remains could be placed in it without a moment’s
delay or a particle of trouble. Once again, a ladder, a rope, and the
silence of night—and the secret of the robbery was secure. When the
story reached our camp on Goose Creek, Terry’s Crow Indian messengers
were relating to Crook the incidents of the Custer massacre.
I thought then with horror, and I still think, what might have been the
consequences had “Spotted Tail” discovered the abstraction of those
bones? Neither North nor South Dakota, Wyoming nor Montana might now be
on the map, and their senators might not be known in Congress; and,
perhaps, those who so ably represent the flourishing States of Kansas,
Nebraska and Colorado might have some difficulty in finding all of their
constituents. The Northern Pacific Railroad might not yet have been
built, and thousands who to-day own happy homes on fertile plains would
still be toiling aimlessly and hopelessly in the over-populated States
of the Atlantic seaboard.
We found “Spotted Tail” a man of great dignity, but at all moments easy
and affable in manner; not hard to please, sharp as a brier, and
extremely witty. He understood enough English to get along at table, and
we picked up enough Dakota to know that when he asked for “ahúyape,” he
meant bread; “wosúnna” was butter; “wáka-maza,” corn; that “bellô” was
the name for potatoes, “tollô” for beef, “pazúta-sápa” for coffee,
“witká” for eggs; that white sugar became in his vocabulary
“chahúmpiska,” salt was transformed into “minni-squia”; and that our
mushrooms and black pepper resolved themselves into the jaw-breaking
words: “yamanuminnigawpi” and “numcatchy-numcapa,” respectively. He was
addicted to one habit, not strictly according to our canons, of which we
never succeeded in breaking him: if he didn’t like a piece of meat, or
if he had been served with a greater abundance than he needed of
anything, he lifted what he didn’t want back upon the platter. His
conversational powers were of a high order, his views carefully formed,
clearly expressed. My personal relations with him were extremely
friendly, and I feel free to say that “Spotted Tail” was one of the
great men of this country, bar none, red, white, black, or yellow. When
“Crow Dog” murdered him, the Dakota nation had good reason to mourn the
loss of a noble son.
“Spotted Tail” was several times accompanied by “White Thunder,” a
handsome chief, most favorably disposed towards the whites, and of good
mental calibre, but in no sense “Spotted Tail’s” equal. On other
occasions we had both “Spotted Tail” and “Red Cloud” at dinner or lunch
on the same day. This we tried to avoid as much as possible, as they
were unfriendly to each other, and were not even on speaking terms.
However, at our table, they always behaved in a gentlemanly manner, and
no stranger would have suspected that anything was wrong. “Red Cloud”
had shown a better disposition since the coming in of the Cheyennes,
their avowed intentions having as much of an effect upon him as upon
“Spotted Tail.” The delegation of Ogallalla warriors had done such good
work during the campaign that General Crook had allowed the members of
the other bands to give to the more deserving some of the ponies taken
away from them and distributed among the other divisions of the Sioux.
This developed a much better feeling all around, and “Red Cloud” had
asked to be enlisted as a soldier, to show that he meant well.
He had also said that “Crazy Horse” could not travel in as fast as
General Crook expected, partly on account of the soft state of the
trails induced by a heavy January thaw, and partly because it would be
necessary for him to hunt in order to get food for his women and
children. If he, “Red Cloud,” were permitted to take out enough food to
support the women and children on their way to the agency, it would
deprive “Crazy Horse” of any excuse for delay, granting that he was
disposed to be dilatory in his progress; he would go out to see the band
of “Crazy Horse,” and tell them all to come in at once, and give to all
the women and children who needed it the food for their support while
coming down from the Black Hills. This proposition was approved, and
“Red Cloud” started out and did good work, to which I will allude later
on.
One day when the Cheyenne chief, “Dull Knife,” was at headquarters, I
invited him to stay for luncheon.
“I should be glad to do so,” he replied, “but my daughters are with me.”
“Bring them in too,” was the reply from others of the mess, and “Spotted
Tail,” who was present, seconded our solicitations; so we had the
pleasure of the company, not only of old “Dull Knife,” whose life had
been one of such bitterness and sorrow, but of his three daughters as
well. They were fairly good-looking—the Cheyennes will compare favorably
in appearance with any people I’ve seen—and were quite young; one of
nine or ten, one of twelve, and the oldest not yet twenty—a young widow
who, with the coquettishness of the sex, wore her skirts no lower than
the knees to let the world see that in her grief for her husband, killed
in our fight of November 25th, she had gashed and cut her limbs in
accordance with the severest requirements of Cheyenne etiquette. Had she
lost a child she would have cut off one of the joints of the little
finger of her left hand.
Of the other Cheyennes, there were “Little Wolf,” one of the bravest in
fights, where all were brave; and “Standing Elk,” cool and determined in
action, wise in council, polite in demeanor, reserved in speech, and
adhering in dress to the porcelain bead breastplates of the tribes of
the plains. Last among this deputation was the medicine man, “High
Wolf,” or “Tall Wolf,” or “Big Wolf ”; he had been proud to wear, as his
pet decoration, a necklace of human fingers, which he knew had fallen
into my possession in the fight with Mackenzie. There was no affection
lost between us, but he imagined that by getting upon good terms with me
negotiations might be opened for a return of the ghastly relic. But I
knew its value too well: there is no other in the world that I know
of—that is, in any museum—although the accounts of explorations in the
early days in the South Sea, among the Andamanese, and by Lewis and
Clark, make mention of such things having been seen. While we were
destroying the Cheyenne village, “Big Bat” found two of these necklaces,
together with a buckskin bag containing twelve of the right hands of
little babies of the Shoshone tribe, lately killed by the Cheyennes. The
extra necklace was buried, the buckskin bag with its dreadful relics was
given to our Shoshone allies, who wept and wailed over it all night,
refusing to be comforted, and neglecting to assume the battle-names with
which the Pawnees were signalizing their prowess. The necklace belonging
to “High Wolf” contained eight fingers of Indian enemies slain by that
ornament of society, and has since been deposited in the National
Museum, Washington, D. C.
There was an old, broken-down electrical apparatus in the post hospital,
which had long ago been condemned as unserviceable, but which we managed
to repair so that it would send a pretty severe shock through the person
holding the poles. The Indian boys and girls looked upon this as
wonderful “medicine,” and hung in groups about the headquarters, from
reveille till retreat, hoping to see the machine at work—not at work
upon themselves exactly, but upon some “fresh fish” which they had
enticed there from among the later surrenders. Many and many a time,
generally about the lunch hour, a semicircle would form outside the
door, waiting for the appearance of some one connected with the
headquarters, who would be promptly nudged by one of the more
experienced boys, as a sign that there was fun in sight. The novice
couldn’t exactly comprehend what it all meant when he saw at the bottom
of a pail of water a shining half-dollar which was to be his if he could
only reach it while holding that innocent-looking cylinder in one hand.
There was any amount of diversion for everybody; the crop of shorn lambs
increased rapidly, each boy thinking that the recollection of his own
sorrows could be effaced in no better way than by contemplating those of
the newer arrivals; and so from guard mount to parade the wonder grew as
to what was the mysterious machine which kept people from seizing the
piece of silver.
We were becoming more generous, or more confident, by this time, and
doubled the value of the money prize, and issued a challenge to the
“medicine men” to try their powers. Several of them did so, only to be
baffled and disgraced. No matter what “medicine” they made use of, no
matter what “medicine song” they chanted, our “medicine song” was more
potent: never were the strains of “Pat Malloy” warbled to a nobler
purpose, and ere long it began to be bruited about from “tepi” to
“tepi”—from “Sharp Nose’s” hearth-fire to “White Thunder’s,” and farther
down the vale to where the blue smoke from “Little Wolf’s” cottonwood
logs curled lazily skyward—that “Wichakpa-yamani” (“Three Stars,” the
Sioux name for General Crook) had a “Mini-hoa” (Ink Man-Adjutant
General) whose “medicine song” would nullify anything that Cheyenne or
Arapahoe or Dakota could invent; and naturally enough, this brought
“High Wolf,” the great doctor of the Cheyennes, to the fore. The squaws
nagged him into accepting the gauntlet thrown down so boldly. Excitement
ran high when word was passed around that “High Wolf” was going to test
the power of the battery. There was a most liberal attendance of
spectators, and both whites and reds knew that the ordeal was to be one
of exceptional importance. “High Wolf” had with him a good deal of
“medicine,” but he asked a few moments’ delay, as he had to make some
more. I watched him closely to guard against trickery, but detected
nothing to cause me any apprehension: he plucked one or two lengths of
grass just peeping above the ground, rolled them in the palms of his
hands, and then put them into his mouth, wherein he had previously
placed a small stone, glanced up at the sun, and then at the cardinal
points, all the while humming, half distinctly, his “medicine song,” in
which two sympathizing friends were joining, and then was ready for the
fray.
I was not asleep by any means, but putting in all the muscle I could
command in revolving the handle of the battery, and so fully absorbed in
my work, that I almost forgot to summon “Pat Malloy” to my aid. “High
Wolf” took one of the poles, and of course felt no shock; he looked
first at the glittering dollar in the bottom of the bucket, and next at
the extra prize—five dollars, if I remember correctly—contributed by the
officers standing by; and in another second his brawny left arm was
plunged up to the elbow in the crystal fluid. Not being an adept in such
matters, I am not prepared to say exactly how many hundred thousand
volts he got in the back of the neck, but he certainly had a more
thorough experience with electricity than any aborigine, living or dead,
and, worst of all, he couldn’t let go. He was strong as a mule and
kicked like a Texas congressman, smashing the poor, rickety battery all
to pieces, which was a sad loss to us. He was neither conquered nor
humiliated, and boldly announced his readiness to repeat the trial, a
proposal we could not in honor decline. The battery was patched up as
well as we knew how, and we allowed him to try again; this time, as the
crafty rascal knew would be the case, the wheezy machine furnished no
great current, and he fished out the dollar, although moisture gathered
in beads around his neck, and his fingers were doubled upon his wrists.
He got the rest of the money, according to promise, and the decision of
the onlookers was that the whole business must be adjudged a “draw.”
“High Wolf” was a powerful “medicine man” as of yore, and he alone of
all the Indians at Red Cloud could compete with the white man’s
“medicine box” whose wheels went whir-r-r-whir-r-r-r.
The Arapahoes were well represented. Their principal men were of fine
mental calibre, and in all that galaxy of gallant soldiers, white and
copper-colored, whom I met during those years, none stands out more
clearly in my recollection than “Sharp Nose.” He was the inspiration of
the battle-field. He reminded me of a blacksmith: he struck with a
sledge-hammer, but intelligently, at the right spot and right moment. He
handled men with rare judgment and coolness, and was as modest as he was
brave. He never spoke of his own deeds, but was an excellent talker on
general topics, and could not, as a matter of course, refrain from
mention, at times, of active work in which he had had a share.
“Washington,” his boon companion and councillor, was a handsome chief
who had assumed this name in token of his desire to “walk in the new
road.” He had been taken on a trip East, and had been so impressed with
all the wonders seen, that he devoted most of his time to missionary
work among his people, telling them that they could only hope for
advancement by becoming good friends of these progressive white men and
adopting their ways.
“Friday Fitzpatrick” had been lost when a mere child, during a fight
which arose between the Arapahoes and Blackfeet, at a time when they
were both on the Cimarron, engaged in trading with the Apaches, New
Mexico Pueblos, Kiowas, Utes, Pawnees, and Comanches, some distance to
the south of where the foundry and smelter chimneys of the busy city of
Pueblo, Colorado, now blacken the air. The lost Indian boy fell into the
hands of Mr. Fitzpatrick, a trader of St. Louis, who had him educated by
the Jesuits, an order which had also given the rudiments of learning to
Ouray, the head chief of the Utes. “Friday” was intelligent and shrewd,
speaking English fluently, but his morals were decidedly shady. I used
to talk to him by the hour, and never failed to extract pages of most
interesting information concerning savage ideas, manners, and customs.
He explained the Indian custom of conferring names each time a warrior
had distinguished himself in battle, and gave each of the four agnomens
with which he personally had been honored—the last being a title
corresponding in English to “The Man Who Sits in the Corner and Keeps
His Mouth Shut.”
“Six Feathers,” “White Horse,” and “Black Coal” were also able men to
whom the Arapahoes looked up; the first was as firm a friend of the
whites as was “Washington”—he became General Crook’s “brother”; others
of our mess were equally fortunate. Being an Arapahoe’s “brother”
possessed many advantages—for the Arapahoe. You were expected to keep
him in tobacco, something of a drain upon your pocket-book, although
Indians did not smoke to such an extent as white men and very rarely
used chewing-tobacco. If your newly-acquired relation won any money on a
horse-race, the understanding was that he should come around to see you
and divide his winnings; but all the Indian “brothers” I’ve ever known
have bet on the wrong plug, and you have to help them through when they
go broke. “White Horse” was a grim sort of a wag. One day, I had him and
some others of the Arapahoes aiding me in the compilation of a
vocabulary of their language, of which the English traveller, Burton,
had made the groundless statement that it was so harsh, meagre, and
difficult that to express their ideas the Arapahoes were compelled to
stand by a camp-fire and talk the “sign language.” I am in a position to
say that the Arapahoe language is full of guttural sounds, and in that
sense is difficult of acquisition, but it is a copious, well-constructed
dialect, inferior to none of the aboriginal tongues of North America. We
had been hard at work for several hours, and all were tired. “To eat,”
said “White Horse,” “is so and so; but to eat something good, and hot,
and sweet, right now, right here in this room, is so and so and so, and
you can tell your good cook to bring it.” It was brought at once.
I have not introduced the lesser figures in this picture: men like
“American Horse,” “Young Man Afraid,” “Blue Horse,” “Rocky Bear,” and
others who have since become, and were even in those days, leaders among
the Dakotas. My canvas would become too crowded. It must do to say that
each of these was full of native intelligence, wise in his way, and
worthy of being encouraged in his progress along the new and toilsome
path of civilization. But I must make room for a few words about “Three
Bears” (“Mato-yamani”), a warrior fierce in battle and humane to the
vanquished. I remember his coming into my tent one dismally cold night,
while we lay on the Belle Fourche, on the outskirts of the Black Hills,
after wiping out “Dull Knife’s” village. “Three Bears’s” eyes were
moist, and he shook his head mournfully as he said, “Cheyenne pappoose
heap hung’y.”
“Sorrel Horse” (“Shunca-luta”) was a “medicine man,” a ventriloquist,
and a magician. The women and children stood in awe of an uncanny wretch
who boasted that, if they doubted his power, they might let him cut off
a lock of their hair, and inside of three days they should die. After my
electrical duel with “High Wolf,” “Sorrel Horse” manifested an
inclination to show me what he could do. He lay down on the floor, put
the hot bowl of a pipe in his mouth, and alternately inhaled the smoke
or caused it to issue from the stem. Pretty soon he went into a trance,
and deep groans and grunts were emitted from the abdominal region. When
he came to, he assured us that that was the voice of a spirit which he
kept within him. He shuffled a pack of cards, and handing it to General
Mackenzie, bade him take out any one he wanted and he would tell the
name; Mackenzie did as he desired, and “Sorrel Horse” promptly fixed his
fingers in diamond-shape and called out “Squaw,” for the queen of
diamonds, and similarly for the seven of clubs, and others as fast as
drawn. He again lay down on the floor, and opened his shirt so that his
ribs were exposed; he took a small piece of tobacco, and pretended to
swallow it. To all appearances, he became deathly sick: his countenance
turned of an ashen hue, perspiration stood on his brow, the same
lugubrious grunts issued from his stomach and throat, and I was for a
moment or two in alarm about his condition; but he soon recovered
consciousness, if he had ever lost it, and triumphantly drew the moist
leaf of tobacco from beneath his ribs. He had been a great traveller in
his day, and there was but little of the Missouri or Yellowstone
drainage that he was not familiar with. I have known him to journey
afoot from Red Cloud to Spotted Tail Agency, a distance of forty-three
measured miles, between two in the morning and noon of the same day,
bearing despatches. The Apaches, Mojaves, and other tribes of the
Southwest are far better runners than the horse Indians of the plains,
but I have known few of them who could excel “Sorrel Horse” in this
respect.
Nothing was to be done at this time except wait for news from “Red
Cloud” and “Crazy Horse.” The Cheyennes were impatient to go out to war,
but it was war against “Crazy Horse” and not the white man. However, the
promise had been sent by General Crook to “Crazy Horse” that if he
started in good faith and kept moving straight in to the agency, he
should be allowed every reasonable facility for bringing all his people
without molestation. “Red Cloud” sent word regularly of the march made
each day: one of the half-breeds with him, a man who prided himself upon
his educational attainments, wrote the letters to Lieutenant Clarke,
who, with Major Randall, was in charge of the Indian scouts. The
following will serve as an example:
A Pril 16th 1877.
Sir My Dear I have met some indians on road and thare say the indians
on bear lodge creek on 16th april and I thought let you know it. And I
think 1 will let you know better after I get to the camp so I sent the
young man with this letter he have been to the camp before his name is
arme blown off
RED CLOUD.
When “Red Cloud” and his party reached “Crazy Horse” they found the
statements made by the latter Indian were strictly correct. The
thousands of square miles of country burned over during the
preceding season were still gaunt and bare, and “Crazy Horse” was
compelled to march with his famished ponies over a region as
destitute as the Sahara. The rations taken out for the women and
children were well bestowed; there was no food in the village, and
some of the more imprudent ate themselves sick, and I may add that
one of “Crazy Horse’s” men sent on in advance to Camp Robinson
surfeited himself and died.
While Red Cloud was absent there were several small brushes with
petty bands of prowling hostiles. Lieutenants Lemly, Cumings, and
Hardie, of the Third Cavalry, did spirited work near Deadwood and
Fort Fetterman respectively, and a battalion of the same regiment,
under Major Vroom, was kept patrolling the eastern side of the
Hills.
Time did not hang heavy upon our hands at Robinson: there were rides
and walks about the post for those who took pleasure in them;
sometimes a party would go as far as Crow Butte, with its weird,
romantic story of former struggles between the Absaroka and the
Dakota; sometimes into the pine-mantled bluffs overlooking the
garrison, where, two years later, the brave Cheyennes, feeling that
the Government had broken faith with them, were again on the
war-path, fighting to the death. There were visits to the Indian
villages, where the courteous welcome received from the owners of
the lodges barely made amends for the vicious attacks by half-rabid
curs upon the horses’ heels. The prismatic splendors of the rainbow
had been borrowed to give beauty to the raiment or lend dignity to
the countenances of Indians of both sexes, who moved in a steady
stream to the trader’s store to buy all there was to sell. Many of
the squaws wore bodices and skirts of the finest antelope skin,
thickly incrusted with vari-colored beads or glistening with the
nacreous brilliancy of the tusks of elk; in all these glories of
personal adornment they were well matched by the warriors, upon
whose heads were strikingly picturesque war-bonnets with eagle
feathers studding them from crown to ground. These were to be worn
only on gala occasions, but each day was a festal one at that time
for all these people. Almost as soon as the sun proclaimed the hour
of noon groups of dancers made their way to the open ground in front
of the commanding general’s quarters, and there favored the whites
with a never-ending series of “Omaha” dances and “Spoon” dances,
“Squaw” dances and “War” dances, which were wonderfully interesting
and often beautiful to look upon, but open to the objection that the
unwary Caucasian who ventured too near the charmed circle was in
danger of being seized by stout-armed viragoes, and compelled to
prance about with them until his comrades had contributed a ransom
of two dollars.
Neither were we altogether ignorant of the strange wonders of the
“Bad Lands,” which began near by, and are, or were, filled with the
skeletons of mammoth saurians and other monsters of vanished seas.
“Old Paul”—I don’t think he ever had any other name—the driver of
General Mackenzie’s ambulance, had much to relate about these
marvellous animal cemeteries. “Loo-o-tin-int,” he would say, “it’s
the dog-gonedest country I ever seed—reg’lar bone-yard. (Waugh!
Tobacco juice.) Wa’al, I got lots o’ things out thar—thighs ’n
jaw-bones ’n sich—them’s no account, th’ groun’s chock full o’
_them_. (Waugh! Tobacco juice.) But, pew-trified tar’pin ’n snappin’
torkle—why, them’s wallerble. Onct I got a bone full o’ pew-trified
marrer; looks like glass; guess I’ll send it to a mew-see-um.”
(Waugh! Tobacco juice.)
The slopes of the hills seemed to be covered with Indian boys,
ponies, and dogs. The small boy and the big dog are two of the
principal features of every Indian village or Indian cavalcade; to
these must be added the bulbous-eyed pappoose, in its bead-covered
cradle slung to the saddle of its mother’s pony, and wrapped so
tightly in folds of cloth and buckskin that its optics stick out
like door-knobs. The Indian boy is far ahead of his white
contemporary in healthy vigor and manly beauty. Looking at the
subject as a boy would, I don’t know of an existence with more
happiness to the square inch than that of the young redskin from
eight to twelve years old. With no one to reproach him because face
or hands are unclean, to scowl because his scanty allowance of
clothing has run to tatters, and no long-winded lessons in geography
or the Constitution of the United States, his existence is one
uninterrupted gleam of sunshine. The Indian youngster knows every
bird’s nest for miles around, every good place for bathing, every
nice pile of sand or earth to roll in. With a pony to ride—and he
has a pony from the time he is four years old; and a bow—or, better
luck still, a rifle—for shooting: he sees little in the schools of
civilization to excite his envy. On ration days, when the doomed
beeves are turned over to each band, what bliss to compare to that
of charging after the frenzied steers and shooting them down on the
dead run? When the winter sun shone brightly, these martial scions
would sometimes forget their dignity long enough to dismount and
engage in a game of shinny with their gayly-attired sisters, who
rarely failed to bring out all the muscle that was in them.
It would be impossible to give more than the vaguest shadow of the
occurrences of that period without filling a volume. Indian life was
not only before us and on all sides of us, but we had also
insensibly and unconsciously become part of it. Our eyes looked upon
their pantomimic dances—our ears were regaled with their songs, or
listened to the myths and traditions handed down from the old men.
“Spotted Tail” said that he could not remember the time when the
Sioux did not have horses, but he had often heard his father say
that in _his_ youth they still had dogs to haul their “travois,” as
their kinsmen, the Assiniboines, to the north still do.
“Friday” said that when he was a very small child, the Arapahoes
still employed big dogs to haul their property, and that old women
and men marched in front laden with paunches filled with water, with
which to sprinkle the parched tongues of the animals every couple of
hundred yards.
“Fire Crow,” a Cheyenne, here interposed, and said that the
Cheyennes claimed to have been the first Northern Indians to use
horses, and thereupon related the following story: “A young Cheyenne
maiden wandered away from home, and could not be found. Her friends
followed her trail, going south until they came to the shore of a
large lake into which the foot-prints led. While the Indians were
bewailing the supposed sad fate of their lost relative, she suddenly
returned, bringing with her a fine young stallion, the first the
Cheyennes had ever seen. She told her friends that she was married
to a white man living near by, and that she would go back to obtain
a mare, which she did. From this pair sprung all the animals which
the Cheyennes, Sioux, and Arapahoes now have.”
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE SURRENDER OF “CRAZY HORSE”—SELLING AMMUNITION TO HOSTILE
INDIANS—PLUNDERING UNARMED, PEACEABLE INDIANS—SUPPER WITH “CRAZY
HORSE”—CHARACTER OF THIS CHIEF—HIS BRAVERY AND GENEROSITY—THE
STORY OF THE CUSTER MASSACRE AS TOLD BY “HORNY HORSE”—LIEUTENANT
REILLY’S RING—THE DEATH OF “CRAZY HORSE”—“LITTLE BIG MAN’S”
STORY ABOUT IT—“CRAZY HORSE” PROBABLY HIS OWN SLAYER—THE EBB OF
SIOUX SUPREMACY
On the 6th of May, 1877, shortly after meridian, “Crazy Horse’s”
band approached the agency, descending the hills in the following
order: First, Lieutenant William P. Clarke, with the agency
Indians—that is, “Red Cloud” and his Indian soldiers; next, “Crazy
Horse,” at the head of his warriors, having abreast of him “Little
Big Man,” “Little Hawk,” “He Dog,” “Old Hawk,” and “Bad Road.”
Stringing along behind, for a distance of nearly two miles, came the
old men with the women and children, lodges, ponies, dogs, and other
plunder. Lieutenant Clarke had gone out early in the morning to a
point seven or eight miles from the post to meet the incoming party.
“Crazy Horse,” upon learning who he was, remained silent, but was
not at all ungracious or surly. He dismounted from his pony, sat
down upon the ground, and said that then was the best time for
smoking the pipe of peace. He then held out his left hand to Clarke,
telling him: “Cola (friend), I shake with this hand because my heart
is on this side; I want this peace to last forever.” The principal
warriors were then presented, each shaking hands. “Crazy Horse” had
given his feather bonnet and all other regalia of the war-path to
“Red Cloud,” his brother-in-law, as he had no further use for them.
“He-Dog” took off his own war bonnet and scalp shirt and put them
upon Clarke in sign of friendly good-will. The most perfect
discipline was maintained, and silence reigned from the head of the
cavalcade to the farthest “travois.”
When the post was reached, the warriors began to intone a peace
chant, in whose refrain the squaws and older children joined, and
which lasted until a halt was ordered and the work of turning over
ponies and surrendering arms began. An enumeration disclosed the
fact that “Crazy Horse” had with him not quite twenty-five hundred
ponies, over three hundred warriors, one hundred and forty-six
lodges, with an average of almost two families in each, and between
eleven hundred and eleven hundred and fifty people all told, not
counting the very considerable number who were able to precede the
main body, on account of having fatter and stronger ponies.
Lieutenant Clarke, in firm but quiet tones, informed the new
arrivals that everything in the shape of a fire-arm must be given
up, and to insure this being done he would wait until after the
squaws had pitched their “tepis,” and then make the collection in
person. One hundred and seventeen fire-arms, principally cavalry
carbines and Winchesters, were found and hauled away in a cart.
“Crazy Horse” himself gave up three Winchesters, and “Little Hawk”
two. By what seemed to be a curious coincidence, “Little Hawk” wore
pendent at his neck the silver medal given to his father at the
Peace Conference on the North Platte, in 1817; it bore the effigy of
President Monroe. Some of the other chiefs, in surrendering, laid
sticks down upon the ground, saying: “Cola, this is my gun, this
little one is a pistol; send to my lodge and get them.” Every one of
these pledges was redeemed by the owner. There was no disorder and
no bad feeling, which was remarkable enough, considering that so
many of “Crazy Horse’s” band had never been on a reservation before.
Everything ran along as smooth as clock-work, such interpretation as
was necessary being made by Frank Gruard and Billy Hunter; Clarke,
however, needed little help, as he could converse perfectly in the
sign language. Just behind the knoll overlooking the flat upon which
“Crazy Horse’s” village had been erected, every one of the Cheyenne
warriors was in the saddle, armed to the teeth, and ready to charge
down upon “Crazy Horse” and settle their score with him, at the
first sign of treachery.
“Crazy Horse’s” warriors were more completely disarmed than any
other bands coming under my observation, not so much in the number
of weapons as in the pattern and condition; to disarm Indians is
always an unsatisfactory piece of business, so long as the cowboys
and other lawless characters in the vicinity of the agencies are
allowed to roam over the country, each one a travelling arsenal. The
very same men who will kill unarmed squaws and children, as was done
in January, 1891, near Pine Ridge Agency, will turn around and sell
to the bucks the arms and ammunition which they require for the next
war-path. At the very moment when Crook was endeavoring to deprive
the surrendering hostiles of deadly weapons, Colonel Mason captured
a man with a vehicle loaded with metallic cartridges, brought up
from Cheyenne or Sidney, to be disposed of to the young men at
Spotted Tail. As with cartridges, so with whiskey: the western
country has too many reprobates who make a nefarious living by the
sale of vile intoxicants to savages; this has been persistently done
among the Sioux, Mojaves, Hualpais, Navajos, and Apaches, to my
certain knowledge. Rarely are any of these scoundrels punished. The
same class of men robbed the Indians with impunity; “Spotted Tail”
lost sixty head of ponies which the Indian scouts trailed down to
North Platte, where they were sold among the stock-raisers. The
arrest of the thieves was confided to the then sheriff of Sidney,
who, somehow, always failed to come up with them; possibly the fact
that he was the head of the gang himself may have had something to
do with his non-success, but that is hard to say.
“Crazy Horse” took his first supper at Red Cloud Agency with Frank
Gruard, who had been his captive for a long time and had made his
escape less than two years previously. Frank asked me to go over
with him. When we approached the chief’s “tepi,” a couple of squaws
were grinding coffee between two stones, and preparing something to
eat. “Crazy Horse” remained seated on the ground, but when Frank
called his name in Dakota, “Tashunca-uitco,” at the same time adding
a few words I did not understand, he looked up, arose, and gave me a
hearty grasp of his hand. I saw before me a man who looked quite
young, not over thirty years old, five feet eight inches high, lithe
and sinewy, with a scar in the face. The expression of his
countenance was one of quiet dignity, but morose, dogged, tenacious,
and melancholy. He behaved with stolidity, like a man who realized
he had to give in to Fate, but would do so as sullenly as possible.
While talking to Frank, his countenance lit up with genuine
pleasure, but to all others he was, at least in the first days of
his coming upon the reservation, gloomy and reserved. All Indians
gave him a high reputation for courage and generosity. In advancing
upon an enemy, none of his warriors were allowed to pass him. He had
made hundreds of friends by his charity towards the poor, as it was
a point of honor with him never to keep anything for himself,
excepting weapons of war. I never heard an Indian mention his name
save in terms of respect. In the Custer massacre, the attack by Reno
had at first caused a panic among women and children, and some of
the warriors, who started to flee, but “Crazy Horse,” throwing away
his rifle, brained one of the incoming soldiers with his stone
war-club and jumped upon his horse.
“Little Hawk,” who appeared to rank next to “Crazy Horse” in
importance, was much like his superior in size and build, but his
face was more kindly in expression and he more fluent in speech; he
did most of the talking. “Little Big Man” I did not like in those
days; principally on account of his insolent behavior to the members
of the Allison Commission at this same agency, during the summer. In
appearance he was crafty, but withal a man of considerable ability
and force. He and I became better friends afterwards, and exchanged
presents. I hold now his beautiful calumet and a finely-beaded
tobacco bag, as well as a shirt trimmed with human scalps, which was
once the property of “Crazy Horse.”
As it is never too soon to begin a good work, Mr. Thomas Moore, the
Chief of Transportation, was busy the next morning in teaching the
Sioux squaws how to make bread out of the flour issued to them,
which used to be wasted, fed to their ponies, or bartered off at the
trader’s store.
Mingling as we were with chiefs and warriors who had been fighting
the Government without intermission for more than a year, and who
had played such a bloody part in the Custer tragedy, it was natural
that we should seek to learn all we could to throw light upon that
sombre page in our military annals. I cannot say that much
information was gained not already known to the public. The Indians
appeared to believe that from the moment that Custer divided his
forces in presence of such overwhelming odds, the destruction of the
whole or the greater part was a foregone conclusion. A picture of
the battle-field was drawn by one of the Indians present in
hostility, and marked by myself under his direction. In some of the
villages indicated there were portions of several bands.
This is the exact language of “Horny Horse”: “Some lodges came out
from Standing Rock Agency and told us the troops were coming. The
troops charged on the camp before we knew they were there. The
lodges were strung out about as far as from here to the Red Cloud
Agency slaughter-house (about two and a half miles). I was in the
council-house with a lot of the old men, when we heard shots fired
from up the river. The troops first charged from up the river. We
came out of the council-house and ran to our lodges.
“All the young bucks got on their horses and charged the troops. All
the old bucks and squaws ran the other way. We ran the troops back.
Then there was another party of troops on the other side of the
river. One half of the Indians pursued the first body of troops (_i.
e._, Reno’s); the other half went after the other body (_i. e._,
Custer’s). I didn’t see exactly all the fight, but by noon, all of
one party (_i. e._, Custer’s) were killed, and the others driven
back into a bad place. We took no prisoners. I did not go out to see
the bodies, because there were two young bucks of my band killed in
the fight and we had to look after them.
“We made the other party of soldiers (_i. e._, Reno’s) cross the
creek and run back to where they had their pack-train. The reason we
didn’t kill all this (Reno’s) party was because while we were
fighting his party, we heard that more soldiers were coming up the
river, so we had to pack up and leave. We left some good young men
killed in that fight. We had a great many killed in the fight, and
some others died of their wounds. I know that there were between
fifty and sixty Indians killed in the fight. After the fight we went
to Wolf Mountain, near the head of Goose Creek. Then we followed
Rosebud down, and then went over to Bluestone Creek. We had the
fight on Rosebud first, and seven days after, this fight. When we
got down to Bluestone, the band broke up.”
[Illustration:
Lt. Faison. Geronimo. Capt. Maus. Capt. Bourke. Mayor.
Strauss.
Capt. Roberts. Lt. Shipp. Gen. Crook. Charles
Roberts.
Antonio Besias.
CONFERENCE BETWEEN GENERAL CROOK AND GERONIMO
]
From the bands surrendering at Red Cloud and Spotted Tail agencies,
many relics of the Custer tragedy were obtained. Among other things
secured was a heavy gold ring, surmounted with a bloodstone seal,
engraved with a griffin, which had formerly belonged to Lieutenant
Reilly of the Seventh Cavalry, who perished on that day. This
interesting relic was returned to his mother in Washington.
The total number of Indians surrendering at these agencies (Red
Cloud and Spotted Tail) was not quite four thousand five hundred,
who made no secret of the fact that they had yielded because they
saw that it was impossible to stand out against the coalition made
by General Crook between the white soldiers and their own people;
the terrible disaster happening to the Cheyenne village had opened
their ears to the counsels of their brethren still in those
agencies, and the alliance between the Cheyennes and the whites
proved to them that further resistance would be useless. They
surrendered, and they surrendered for good; there has never been
another battle with the tribes of the northern plains as such; work
of a most arduous and perilous character has been from time to time
performed, in which many officers and brave soldiers have laid down
their lives at the behest of duty, but the statement here made
cannot be gainsaid, and will never be questioned by the honest and
truthful investigator, that the destruction of the village of “Dull
Knife,” and the subsequent enlistment of the whole of the northern
Cheyennes as scouts in the military service, sounded the death-knell
of Indian supremacy for Nebraska, Wyoming, both the Dakotas, and
Montana.
Crook took up the tangled threads of Indian affairs at the agencies
with his accustomed energy, intelligence, coolness, patience, and
foresight gained in an experience of almost twenty-five years. The
new surrenders were ignorant, timid, sullen, distrustful,
suspicious, revengeful, and with the departure of the Cheyennes for
the Indian Territory, which took place almost immediately after,
began to reflect more upon the glories of the fight with Custer than
upon the disaster of November. This was the normal state of affairs,
but it was intensified by the rumors, which proved to be only too
well founded, that Congress was legislating to transfer the Sioux to
another locality—either to the Missouri River or the Indian
Territory. A delegation was sent down to the Indian Territory to
look at the land, but upon its return it reported unfavorably.
“Crazy Horse” began to cherish hopes of being able to slip out of
the agency and get back into some section farther to the north,
where he would have little to fear, and where he could resume the
old wild life with its pleasant incidents of hunting the buffalo,
the elk, and the moose, and its raids upon the horses of Montana. He
found his purposes detected and baffled at every turn: his camp was
filled with soldiers, in uniform or without, but each and all
reporting to the military officials each and every act taking place
under their observation. Even his council-lodge was no longer safe:
all that was said therein was repeated by some one, and his most
trusted subordinates, who had formerly been proud to obey
unquestioningly every suggestion, were now cooling rapidly in their
rancor towards the whites and beginning to doubt the wisdom of a
resumption of the bloody path of war. The Spotted Tail Agency, to
which “Crazy Horse” wished to belong, was under the supervision of
an army officer—Major Jesse M. Lee, of the Ninth Infantry—whose word
was iron, who never swerved from the duty he owed to these poor,
misguided wretches, and who manifested the deepest and most
intelligent interest in their welfare. I will not bother the reader
with details as to the amount of food allowed to the Indians, but I
will say that every ounce of it got to the Indian’s stomach, and the
Indians were sensible enough to see that justice, truth, and common
honesty were not insignificant diplomatic agencies in breaking down
and eradicating the race-antipathies which had been no small barrier
to progress hitherto. General Crook had been specially fortunate in
the selection of the officers to take charge of Indian matters, and
in such men as Major Daniel W. Burke and Captain Kennington, of the
Fourteenth Infantry, and Mills, of the Third Cavalry, had deputies
who would carry out the new policy, which had as one of its
fundamentals that the Indians must not be stolen blind. The Sioux
were quick to perceive the change: less than twelve months before,
they had been robbed in the most bold-faced manner, the sacks which
were accepted as containing one hundred pounds of flour containing
only eighty-eight. When delivery was made, the mark of the
inspecting and receiving officer would be stamped upon the outer
sack, and the moment his back was turned, that sack would be pulled
off, and the under and unmarked one submitted for additional
counting.
Those two agencies were a stench in the nostrils of decent people;
the attention of honest tax-payers was first called to their
disgraceful management, by Mr. Welsh, of Philadelphia, and Professor
Marsh, of New Haven. After a sufficiently dignified delay, suited to
the gravity of the case, a congressional committee recommended the
removal of the agents, and that the contractor be proceeded against,
which was done, and the contractor sentenced to two years in the
penitentiary.
Two other officers of the army did good work in the first and most
trying days at these agencies, and their services should not be
forgotten. They were Lieutenant Morris Foote, of the Ninth, and
Lieutenant A. C. Johnson, of the Fourteenth Infantry. Lieutenant
William P. Clarke, who had remained in charge of the Indian scouts,
kept General Crook fully posted upon all that “Crazy Horse” had in
contemplation; but nothing serious occurred until the fall of the
year 1877, when the Nez Percé war was at its height, and it became
necessary to put every available man of the Department of the Platte
at Camp Brown to intercept Chief “Joseph” in his supposed purpose of
coming down from the Gray Bull Pass into the Shoshone and Bannock
country, in the hope of getting aid and comfort. “Crazy Horse” had
lost so many of his best arms at the surrender, and he felt that he
was so closely watched, and surrounded by so many lukewarm
adherents, that it would be impossible to leave the agency openly;
and accordingly he asked permission to go out into the Big Horn on a
hunt for buffalo, which permission was declined. He then determined
to break away in the night, and by making a forced march, put a good
stretch of territory between himself and troops sent in pursuit.
Including the band of “Touch the Clouds,” which had surrendered at
Spotted Tail Agency some time before the arrival of “Crazy Horse” at
Red Cloud, and the stragglers who had preceded him into the latter
agency, “Crazy Horse” reckoned on having about two thousand people
to follow his fortunes to British America, or whithersoever he might
conclude to go. When his purposes became known his arrest was made
necessary. General Crook hurried to Red Cloud Agency, and from there
started over towards Spotted Tail Agency, intending to have a talk
with “Crazy Horse” and the other chiefs; but when about half-way our
conveyance was stopped by a Sioux runner—“Woman’s Dress”—who said
that he had been sent by “Spotted Tail” and the other Indians to
warn General Crook that “Crazy Horse” had unequivocally asserted
that he would kill General Crook in the coming council, if Crook’s
words did not suit him. Crook returned to Red Cloud Agency and
summoned all the chiefs, including “Crazy Horse,” to a conference;
“Crazy Horse” paid no attention to the message.
General Crook informed the Indians that they were being led astray
by “Crazy Horse’s” folly, and that they must preserve order in their
own ranks and arrest “Crazy Horse.” The chiefs deliberated and said
that “Crazy Horse” was such a desperate man, it would be necessary
to kill him; General Crook replied that that would be murder, and
could not be sanctioned; that there was force enough at or near the
two agencies (“Crazy Horse” had removed from Red Cloud to Spotted
Tail) to round up not only “Crazy Horse,” but his whole band, and
that more troops would be sent, if necessary; he counted upon the
loyal Indians effecting this arrest themselves, as it would prove to
the nation that they were not in sympathy with the non-progressive
element of their tribe.
General Crook had started for Camp Brown to superintend in person
the massing of the troops who were to head off Chief “Joseph,” but
when Sheridan heard of the threatening look of things at the
Nebraska agencies, he telegraphed to Crook under date of September
1, 1877: “I think your presence more necessary at Red Cloud Agency
than at Camp Brown, and wish you to get off (the Union Pacific
Railroad train) at Sidney, and go there.” Again, under date of
September 3, 1877: “I do not like the attitude of affairs at Red
Cloud Agency, and very much doubt the propriety of your going to
Camp Brown. The surrender or capture of ‘Joseph’ in that direction
is but a small matter compared with what might happen to the
frontier from a disturbance at Red Cloud.” ... Agent Irwin, who had
assumed charge of affairs at Red Cloud Agency, was a faithful and
conscientious representative of the Indian bureau; he did all in his
power to assist in breaking down the threatened uprising, and showed
a very competent understanding of the gravity of the situation.
“Crazy Horse” broke away during the night of the 3d of September,
but was unable to get away from the column in pursuit, whose work
may perhaps be best described in the language of General L. P.
Bradley, Ninth Infantry, commanding the district of the Black Hills,
which embraced the posts of Laramie, Fetterman, Robinson, and
Sheridan.
“General Crook left here on the morning of the 4th, and, under his
instructions, I sent out a strong force about 9 o’clock of that date
to surround ‘Crazy Horse’s’ village, about six miles below the post.
The column consisted of eight companies of the Third Cavalry, and
about four hundred friendly Indians. The Indian scouts were under
Lieutenant Clarke; the other Indians under chiefs ‘Red Cloud,’
‘Little Wound,’ ‘American Horse,’ ‘Young Man Afraid of His Horses,’
‘Yellow Bear,’ ‘Black Coal,’ ‘Big Road,’ ‘Jumping Shield,’ and
‘Sharp Nose.’ The cavalry were under the command of Colonel Mason,
Third Cavalry. When the command reached the site of the village,
they found it had broken up in the night, and most of it had
disappeared. A part of the lodges returned to the agency of their
own accord and joined the friendly bands, a large number were
overtaken by the friendly Indians and brought back, and a few went
to the Spotted Tail Agency. ‘Crazy Horse’ escaped alone and went to
the Spotted Tail Agency, where he was arrested the same day by
friendly Indians and was brought here under guard of Indians on the
5th instant. My orders from General Crook were to capture this
chief, confine him, and send him under guard to Omaha. When he was
put in the guardhouse he suddenly drew a knife, struck at the guard,
and made for the door. ‘Little Big Man,’ one of his own chiefs,
grappled with him, and was cut in the arm by ‘Crazy Horse’ during
the struggle. The two chiefs were surrounded by the guard, and about
this time ‘Crazy Horse’ received a severe wound in the lower part of
the abdomen, either from a knife or bayonet, the surgeons are in
doubt which. He was immediately removed, and placed in charge of the
surgeons, and died about midnight. His father and ‘Touch the
Clouds,’ chief of the Sans Arcs, remained with him till he died, and
when his breath ceased, the chief laid his hand on ‘Crazy Horse’s’
breast and said: ‘It is good; he has looked for death, and it has
come.’ The body was delivered to his friends the morning after his
death. ‘Crazy Horse’ and his friends were assured that no harm was
intended him, and the chiefs who were with him are satisfied that
none was intended; his death resulted from his own violence. The
leading men of his band, ‘Big Road,’ ‘Jumping Shield,’ and ‘Little
Big Man,’ are satisfied that his death is the result of his own
folly, and they are on friendly terms with us.”
The chiefs spoken of in General Bradley’s telegram an accompanying
“Crazy Horse” were: “Touch the Clouds,” “Swift Bear,” and “High
Bear.” All accounts agree in stating that “Crazy Horse” suddenly
drew two knives, and with one in each hand started to run amuck
among the officers and soldiers. “Little Big Man,” seeing what he
had done, jumped upon “Crazy Horse’s” back and seized his arms at
the elbows, receiving two slight cuts in the wrists while holding
his hands down. Here, there is a discrepancy: some say that the
death wound of “Crazy Horse” was given by the sentinel at the door
of the guard-house, who prodded him in the abdomen with his bayonet
in return for the thrust with a knife made by “Crazy Horse”; others
affirm that “Little Big Man,” while holding down “Crazy Horse’s”
hands, deflected the latter’s own poniard and inflicted the gash
which resulted in death. Billy Hunter, whose statement was written
out for me by Lieutenant George A. Dodd, Third Cavalry, is one of
the strongest witnesses on the first side, but “Little Big Man”
himself assured me at the Sun Dance in 1881 that he had
unintentionally killed “Crazy Horse” with the latter’s own weapon,
which was shaped at the end like a bayonet (stiletto), and made the
very same kind of a wound. He described how he jumped on “Crazy
Horse’s” back and seized his arms at the elbow, and showed how he
himself had received two wounds in the left wrist; after that, in
the struggle, the stiletto of the captive was inclined in such a
manner that when he still struggled he cut himself in the abdomen
instead of harming the one who held him in his grasp. “Little Big
Man” further assured me that at first it was thought best to let the
idea prevail that a soldier had done the killing, and thus reduce
the probability of any one of the dead man’s relatives revenging his
taking off after the manner of the aborigines. The bayonet-thrust
made by the soldier was received by the door of the guard-house,
where “Little Big Man” said it could still be seen. I give both
stories, although I incline strongly to believe “Little Big Man.”
“Crazy Horse” was one of the great soldiers of his day and
generation; he never could be the friend of the whites, because he
was too bold and warlike in his nature; he had a great admiration
for Crook, which was reciprocated; once he said of Crook that he was
more to be feared by the Sioux than all other white men. As the
grave of Custer marked high-water mark of Sioux supremacy in the
trans-Missouri region, so the grave of “Crazy Horse,” a plain fence
of pine slabs, marked the ebb.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE MANAGEMENT OF THE INDIAN AGENCIES—AGENT MACGILLICUDDY’S
WONDERFUL WORK—CROOK’S REMAINING DAYS IN THE DEPARTMENT OF THE
PLATTE—THE BANNOCK, UTE, NEZ PERCÉ, AND CHEYENNE OUTBREAKS—THE
KILLING OF MAJOR THORNBURGH AND CAPTAIN WEIR—MERRRITT’S FAMOUS
MARCH AGAINST TIME—HOW THE DEAD CAME TO LIFE AND WALKED—THE
CASE OF THE PONCAS—CROOK’S HUNTS AND EXPLORATIONS; NEARLY
FROZEN TO DEATH IN A BLIZZARD—A NARROW ESCAPE FROM AN ANGRY
SHE-BEAR—CATCHING NEBRASKA HORSE-THIEVES—“DOC” MIDDLETON’S
GANG
After Doctor Irwin the Indians at Red Cloud had as agent Doctor V.
T. MacGillicuddy, whose peculiar fitness for the onerous and
underpaid responsibilities of the position brought him deserved
recognition all over the western country, as one of the most
competent representatives the Indian Bureau had ever sent beyond the
Missouri. Two or three times I looked into affairs at his agency
very closely, and was surprised both at the immense amount of
supplies on hand—running above a million pounds of flour and other
parts of the ration in proportion—and the perfect system with which
they were distributed and accounted for. There were then eight
thousand Indians of both sexes at the agency or on the reserve, and
the basis of supplies was either Pierre, in Dakota, on the Missouri,
or Sidney, Nebraska, on the Union Pacific; the former two hundred
and the latter one hundred and twenty-five miles distant.
MacGillicuddy was kept on the go all the time from morning till
night, and managed to do the work of twenty men. His salary was the
munificent sum of twenty-two hundred and fifty dollars per annum. I
could not help saying to myself that this man was carrying upon his
shoulders the weight of a force equal to one-third the United States
Army; were he in the army, MacGillicuddy would have been a
major-general, surrounded by a high-priced staff, dividing the work
and relieving him of nearly all care; he would have had three
aides-de-camp, too frequently his own relations, each getting from
the Government a better salary than the agent of this great
concourse of savages was receiving. MacGillicuddy was expected and
required to keep his wards at peace, feed and clothe them in health,
see that they received proper medical attendance while sick,
encourage them in habits of industry, especially farming and
cattle-raising, prepare all kinds of accounts for the information of
his bureau, and in his moments of leisure instruct the aborigines in
the Catechism and Testament. In this matter of Indian agents, as in
all that pertains to Indian affairs, the great trouble is that the
American people have so little common sense. Let the salaries paid
to agents be raised to such a standard that the position will be an
inducement for first-class men to consider, and there will not be so
much trouble in getting an honest administration, if there should be
coupled a good-conduct tenure, subject to the approval of some such
organization as the Indian Rights Association. Civil Service Reform
may well be introduced in the Indian service.
Of the other services rendered by General Crook while in command of
the Department of the Platte there is no room to speak. Much of the
highest importance and greatest interest happened under his
administration, and it is needless to say that all which devolved
upon him to do was done well, done quietly, done without flourish of
trumpets, and without the outside world learning much about it. In
the line of military operations, there was the trouble with the
Cheyennes who broke out from the Indian Territory during the summer
of 1878, and fought their way across three military departments to
the Tongue River, where they surrendered to their old commanding
officer, Lieutenant William P. Clarke, Second Cavalry. There was the
nipping in the bud of the outbreak among the Shoshones and Bannocks,
principally the latter, led by “Tindoy” and “Buffalo Horn,” both of
whom were personally well known to Crook, who used his influence
with them to such advantage that they remained at peace until the
aggressions of the whites became too great and drove them out upon
the war-path. These Indians did not, properly speaking, belong to
General Crook’s department, but lived on the extreme northwestern
corner of it in a chain of almost inaccessible mountains in central
Idaho. There was the Ute outbreak, dating back to inadequate rations
and failure to keep pledges. The Utes were not of Crook’s
department, but it was a battalion of the Third and Fifth Cavalry
and Fourth Infantry, which moved out from Rawlins, Wyoming, under
Major Thornburgh, Fourth Infantry, to save the agency and the lives
of the employees; and, after poor Thornburgh had been sacrificed, it
was Merritt’s column which made the wonderful march of one hundred
and sixty miles in two and a half days to rescue the survivors in
the “rat-hole” on Milk River.
Merritt had been preceded by a company of the Ninth Cavalry,
commanded by Captain Dodge and Lieutenant M. B. Hughes, who had
aided the beleaguered garrison to withstand the attack of the Utes
till the arrival of re-enforcements. The concentration of cars and
the clearing of obstacles from the track of the Union Pacific
Railroad imposed a great tax upon the shoulders of its principal
officials, Mr. S. H. Clark and Mr. T. L. Kimball, but they were
found equal to every demand made upon them and turned over their
track to General Williams and Colonel Ludington, the two staff
officers charged with aiding the Merritt expedition. In the
campaign, we lost Thornburgh and Weir, killed—two noble soldiers
whom the country could ill afford to lose; and had a number of men
killed and wounded and several officers badly hurt—Grimes, Paddock,
Payne, and Cherry.
A very singular thing occurred during the time that the troops were
besieged behind their feeble rifle-pits down in the hollow. One of
the first to be struck was the blacksmith of the citizen train which
had moved out from Fort Fred Steele under Lieutenant Butler D.
Price, Fourth Infantry; his corpse, without wasting ceremony, was
rolled up in place and made to do its part in supplying protection
to the soldiers; a piece of canvas was thrown over it, and in the
excitement and danger the dead man was forgotten. When Merritt’s
column arrived on the ground, the trumpeter alongside of him was
ordered to sound “Officers’ Call,” upon hearing which the invested
troops sprang upon the earthworks and gave cheer after cheer. It may
have been the noise—it may have been something else—but at any rate
there was a movement at one end of the rifle-pits, and slowly and
feebly from under the overlying clay and canvas, the dead man arose,
shook himself, put his hand wearily to his head, and asked: “My God,
what’s the matter, boys?” Then he staggered about, many of the men
afraid to touch him, or even go near him, and in a few moments was
dead in good earnest. The explanation made by Doctor Grimes was
that, in the first place, the man had been shot through the head at
the intersection or junction of the jaws just under the brain; the
shock had knocked him senseless, and the blood spurting from the
ghastly wound had led the soldiers to conclude somewhat hastily that
he was dead; the slip of canvas carelessly thrown over the body had
preserved it from being suffocated by the earth scraped against it;
the wound was so near the brain that it would have been impossible
to avoid inflammation of the latter organ, and when this set in, the
victim fell dead.
The case of the Poncas was, beyond question, the most important one
occurring within General Crook’s jurisdiction after the pacification
of the Sioux. I do not purpose entering into all its ramifications,
which would be entirely too tedious for the reader, but it may be
summed up in a nutshell. The Poncas were a small band of Siouan
stock, closely affiliated to the Omahas, who lived at the mouth of
the Niobrara, on the Missouri River. They had a reservation which,
unluckily for them, was arable and consequently coveted by the white
invader. From this they were bulldozed by officials of the
Government and transported to the Indian Territory, where malaria
and other disorders, complicated with homesickness, depleted their
numbers, and made them all anxious to return to the old land.
Application for permission to do this was refused, and thereupon a
portion of the band tried the experiment of going at their own
expense across country, walking every foot of the way, molesting
nobody, and subsisting upon charity. Not a shot was fired at any
one; not so much as a dog was stolen. The western country was at
that time filled with white tramps by thousands, whose presence
excited no comment; but the spectacle of nearly two hundred Indians
going along peaceably back to their old habitat to seek work and
earn their own bread, was too much for the equilibrium of the
authorities in Washington. One of the Indians was carrying a sack
tied by a string to his neck; it contained the bones of a beloved
grandchild—not a very heinous offence in itself, but having been
committed by a man whose skin was wrinkled and red, and whose people
had for generations been the consistent friends of the white race,
it was tantamount to felony.
To make a long story short, some people in Omaha began talking about
the peculiarities presented in this case of the Omahas, and
wondering why they had been arrested by the military authorities.
Lieutenant W. L. Carpenter, Ninth Infantry, had them under his
charge at Fort Omaha, and gave them an excellent character for
sobriety and good behavior of every kind. Public sympathy became
aroused; meetings were held, one of the first, if not the first,
being that in the Presbyterian Church, conducted by the Rev. Mr.
Harsha and Rev. Mr. Sherrill, and it was determined to bring the
matter before the United States court upon a writ of habeas corpus
to ascertain by what right these people were restrained of their
liberty. Competent lawyers were enlisted, and the case was taken up
by the Hon. A. J. Poppleton and Hon. J. L. Webster, two of the most
prominent members of the bar in Nebraska. Dr. George L. Miller, in
the _Herald_, and Mr. Edward Rosewater, in the _Bee_, and such
citizens as the late Judge Savage, Bishop O’Connor, Rev. John
Williams, and Bishop Clarkson brought much influence to bear; and by
the time that Judge Dundy’s court had convened the attention of the
people of the United States was to some extent converged upon the
trial, which was simply to determine the momentous question whether
or not an American Indian who had never been upon the war-path could
sever his tribal relations and go to work for his own living. Judge
Dundy’s decision was to the effect that he could; and the path of
citizenship was opened for the Indian.
Mrs. “Bright Eyes” Tibbles, an Omaha Indian lady of excellent
attainments and bright intellect, and her husband, Mr. J. H.
Tibbles, editor of the Omaha _Republican_, took up the cudgels, and
travelled through the Eastern and Middle States, addressing large
concourses in all the principal towns and cities, and awakening an
intelligent and potent interest in the advancement of the native
tribes which has not yet abated. President Hayes appointed a
commission, to consist of General George Crook, General Nelson A.
Miles, Messrs. Stickney and Walter Allen, and the Rev. J. Owen
Dorsey, to look into the general subject of the condition and
prospects of the Poncas; and as the result of this the members of
the band who had returned to the mouth of the Niobrara were
permitted to remain there unmolested.
To incorporate herein an account of the explorations and hunts upon
which General Crook engaged while in command of the Department of
the Platte, after the Indians had been reduced to submission, would
be tantamount to a description of the topography of the country west
of the Missouri up to and including the head-waters of the Columbia,
and north and south from the Yellowstone Park to the Grand Cañon of
the Colorado, and would swell in volume until it would include a
description of the methods of catching or killing every fish that
swam in the streams, every bird that floated in the air, and every
wild animal that made its lair or burrow within those limits. Ducks,
geese, turkeys, sage hens, prairie chickens; pike, pickerel,
catfish, trout, salmon-trout, and whitefish; elk, deer, moose,
antelope, mountain sheep; bears, wolverines, badgers, coyotes,
mountain wolves—all yielded tribute to his rod or rifle. He kept
adding to his collection of stuffed birds and eggs until there was
no man in the country who possessed a more intimate practical
knowledge of the habits of the fauna and flora of the vast region
beyond the Missouri. As he made these journeys on horse or mule
back, there was no man who could pretend to compare with him in an
acquaintance with the trails and topography of the country off from
the lines of railroad, and only one—General Sherman—who could
compare in a general knowledge of the area of the United States.
Sherman, while General of the army, was a great traveller,
constantly on the go, but nearly all of his trips were made by rail
or in stage-coach, and but few by other methods.
In company with General Sheridan, General Sackett, and General
Forsyth, General Crook travelled across the then unknown territory
between the Wind River and the Big Horn to the Tongue River, then
down to the Custer battle-field, and by steamer from the mouth of
the Little Horn to the Yellowstone, and down the Missouri to
Bismarck. In company with the Hon. Carl Schurz, then Secretary of
the Interior, he explored all the Yellowstone Park, and viewed its
wonders—the exquisite lake, the lofty precipices of the cañon, the
placid flow of the beautiful river, and its sudden plunge over the
falls into the depths below, the eruptions of the geysers, the
immense mass of waters contained in the springs, the pits of boiling
sulphur, the solid wall of forest of so many varieties of timber,
the dainty flowers, the schools of trout, the shady nooks in the
hill-sides resounding to the footfall of black-tail, elk, or bear,
the lofty cones, snow-crusted, reflecting back the rays of the
summer sun—all the beauties, oddities, and marvels which combine to
make the National Park a fairyland to dwell forever in the dreams of
those who have the good fortune to enter its precincts. With all the
cañons, passes, peaks, and trails of the Wahsatch, Uintah, Medicine
Bow, Laramie, and other ranges he was as familiar as with his
alphabet.
He was not always so prudent as he should have been while out on
these trips, and several times had very close calls for death. Once,
while shooting wild geese on one of the little tributaries of the
Platte, he was caught in a blizzard, and while trying to make his
way back to his comrades, stepped into an air-hole, and would have
been drowned had it not been for the heroic exertions of Mr. John
Collins and the late Mr. A. E. Touzalin. He had more adventures than
I can count, with bears of all kinds and with maddened, wounded
stags. Once, while hunting in the range known as the Three Tetons,
he stationed his party so as to cut off the retreat of a very large
bear which had taken refuge in a tule thicket or swamp; the enraged
animal rushed out on the side where Crook was, and made straight
towards him, mouth wide open and eyes blazing fire; Crook allowed
Bruin to come within ten feet, and then, without the quiver of a
muscle or the tremor of a nerve, fired and lodged a rifle-ball in
the back of the throat, not breaking out through the skull, but
shattering its base and severing the spinal cord. It was a beautiful
animal, and Crook was always justifiably proud of the rug.
For eight or nine years, Mr. Webb C. Hayes, of Cleveland, Ohio,
hunted with Crook, and probably knows more of his encounters with
ursine monsters than any living man, not excepting Tom Moore. Mr.
Hayes became a renowned bear-hunter himself, and is well known in
all the mountains close to the Three Tetons. In addition to being an
excellent shot, he is a graceful runner; I remember seeing him make
a half-mile dash down the side of a mountain with a bear cub at his
heels, and the concurrence of opinion of all in camp was that the
physical culture of Cornell University was a great thing. General
Crook became prominently identified with the Omaha Gun Club, which
included in its membership such crack shots as the late Major T. T.
Thornburgh (afterwards killed by the Utes), Messrs. Barriger,
Collins, Coffman, Parmlee, Patrick, Petty, and others. In all their
hunts General Crook participated, as well as in the fishing
expeditions organized by such inveterate anglers as T. L. Kimball,
Frank Moores and the late Judge Carter, of Wyoming, whose home at
Fort Bridger offered every comfort to his friends that could be
found in a great city.
Carter was a man of means and the most hospitable, generous
instincts. He was never content unless his house was filled with
guests, for whom nothing was too good, provided they humored his
whimsical notion that a certain patent medicine, called “The Balm of
Life,” was a panacea for every ill. Judge Carter had entered the far
western country near Fort Bridger with the expedition sent out to
Utah under General Albert Sydney Johnston, although I am not
absolutely sure as to the exact time, and had remained and
accumulated means, principally from the increase of his herds, which
might truly have been styled the cattle upon a thousand hills. The
last time I saw this grand-looking old patriarch was at a very
substantial breakfast, served in his own princely style, where the
venison, mountain mutton, and broiled trout would have evoked praise
from Lucullus, but after which—much as the Egyptians introduced
images of mummies at their banquets—Ludington, Bisbee, Stanton,
McEldree, and I had to face the ordeal of being dosed with the “Balm
of Life,” which came near being the Balm of Death for some of us.
In the great riots of 1877, and again in 1882, Crook’s energies
were severely taxed for the protection of the Government property
along the line of the Union Pacific Railroad, but he performed the
duty to the satisfaction of all classes. The handsome, stately,
soldierly figure of the late General John H. King, Colonel of the
Ninth Infantry, rises up in my memory in this connection. He
rendered most valuable and efficient service during the periods in
question. Similarly, in running down and scattering the robber
bands of Doctor Middleton, and other horse-thieves in the Loup
country, in northwestern Nebraska, the intelligent work performed
by General Crook, Captain Munson, and Lieutenant Capron was well
understood and gratefully recognized by all who were acquainted
with it. Nebraska had reason to feel indebted for the destruction
of one of the most desperate gangs, led by a leader of unusual
nerve and intelligence—the celebrated “Doc.” Middleton, who was
wounded and captured by Deputy United States Marshal Llewellyn.
CHAPTER XXVI.
CROOK RE-ASSIGNED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ARIZONA—ALL THE APACHES ON
THE WAR-PATH—LIEUTENANTS MORGAN AND CONVERSE WOUNDED—CAPTAIN
HENTIG KILLED—CROOK GOES ALONE TO SEE THE HOSTILES—CONFERENCES
WITH THE APACHES—WHAT THE ARIZONA GRAND JURY SAID OF AN INDIAN
AGENT—CONDITION OF AFFAIRS AT THE SAN CARLOS AGENCY—WHISKEY SOLD
TO THE CHIRICAHUA APACHES—APACHE TRIALS BY JURY—ARIZONA IN
1882—PHŒNIX, PRESCOTT, AND TUCSON—INDIAN SCHOOLS.
Before the summer of 1882 had fairly begun, Indian affairs in
Arizona had relapsed into such a deplorable condition that the
President felt obliged to re-assign General Crook to the command. To
the occurrences of the next four years I will devote very few
paragraphs, because, although they formed an epoch of great
importance in our Indo-military history and in General Crook’s
career, they have previously received a fair share of my attention
in the volume, “An Apache Campaign,” to which there is little to
add. But for the sake of rounding out this narrative and supplying
data to those who may not have seen the book in question, it may be
stated that affairs had steadily degenerated from bad to worse, and
that upon Crook’s return to Prescott no military department could
well have been in a more desperate plight. In one word, all the
Apaches were again on the war-path or in such a sullen, distrustful
state of mind that it would have been better in some sense had they
all left the reservation and taken to the forests and mountains.
Crook was in the saddle in a day, and without even stopping to
inquire into the details of the new command—with which, however, he
was to a great extent familiar from his former experience—he left
the arrangement of such matters to his Adjutant-General, Colonel
James P. Martin, and started across the mountains to Camp Apache.
Not many of the Apaches were to be seen, and practically none except
the very old, the very feeble, or the very young. All the young men
who could shoot were hiding in the mountains, and several sharp
actions had already been had with the troops: the Third and Sixth
Cavalry had had a fight with the renegades from the reservation, and
had had two officers—Morgan and Converse, of the Third—severely
wounded; Captain Hentig, of the Sixth, had been killed on the Cibicu
some months before; and the prospects of peace, upon a permanent and
satisfactory basis, were extremely vague and unpromising. But there
was a coincidence of sentiment among all people whose opinion was
worthy of consultation, that the blame did not rest with the
Indians; curious tales were flying about from mouth to mouth, of the
gross outrages perpetrated upon the men and women who were trying
faithfully to abide in peace with the whites. It was openly asserted
that the Apaches were to be driven from the reservation marked out
for them by Vincent Collyer and General O. O. Howard, upon which
they had been living for more than eleven years. No one had ever
heard the Apaches’ story, and no one seemed to care whether they had
a story or not.
Crook made every preparation for a resumption of hostilities, but
he sent out word to the men skulking in the hills that he was
going out alone to see them and hear what they had to say, and
that if no killing of white people occurred in the meantime, not a
shot should be fired by the troops. In acting as he did at this
time, Crook lost a grand opportunity for gaining what is known as
military glory: he could have called for additional troops and
obtained them; the papers of the country would have devoted solid
columns to descriptions of skirmishes and marches and conferences,
what the military commander thought and said, with perhaps a
slight infiltration of what he did not think and did not say; but,
in any event, Crook would have been kept prominently before the
people. His was not, however, a nature which delighted in the
brass-band-and-bugle school of military renown: he was modest and
retiring, shy almost as a girl, and conscientious to a peculiar
degree. He had every confidence in his own purposes and in his own
powers, and felt that if not interfered with he could settle the
Apache problem at a minimum of cost. Therefore he set out to meet
the Apaches in their own haunts and learn all they had to say, and
he learned much. He took with him Mr. C. E. Cooley, formerly one
of his principal scouts, who was to act as interpreter; Al Seiber,
who had seen such wonderful service in that country; Surgeon J. O.
Skinner; and myself. Captain Wallace, with his company of the
Sixth Cavalry, remained in charge of the pack-train.
Upon the elevated plateau of broken basalt which separates the
current of the White River from that of the Black there is a long
line of forest, principally cedar, with no small amount of pine, and
much yucca, soapweed, Spanish bayonet, and mescal. The knot-holes in
the cedars seemed to turn into gleaming black eyes; the floating
black tresses of dead yucca became the snaky locks of fierce
outlaws, whose lances glistened behind the shoots of mescal and
amole. Twenty-six of these warriors followed us down to our bivouac
in the cañon of the “Prieto,” or Black River, and there held a
conference with General Crook, to whom they related their
grievances.
Before starting out from Camp Apache General Crook had held a
conference with such of the warriors as were still there, among whom
I may mention “Pedro,” “Cut-Mouth Moses,” “Alchise,” “Uklenni,”
“Eskitisesla,” “Noqui-noquis,” “Peltie,” “Notsin,” “Mosby,” “Chile,”
“Eskiltie,” and some forty others of both sexes. “Pedro,” who had
always been a firm friend of the whites, was now old and decrepit,
and so deaf that he had to employ an ear-trumpet. This use of an
ear-trumpet by a so-called savage Apache struck me as very
ludicrous, but a week after I saw at San Carlos a young baby sucking
vigorously from a rubber tube attached to a glass nursing-bottle.
The world does move.
From the journal of this conference, I will make one or two extracts
as illustrative of General Crook’s ideas on certain seemingly
unimportant points, and as giving the way of thinking and the manner
of expression of the Apaches.
GENERAL CROOK: “I want to have all that you say here go down on
paper, because what goes down on paper never lies. A man’s memory
may fail him, but what the paper holds will be fresh and true long
after we are all dead and forgotten. This will not bring back the
dead, but what is put down on this paper today may help the living.
What I want to get at is all that has happened since I left here to
bring about this trouble, this present condition of affairs. I want
you to tell the truth without fear, and to tell it in as few words
as possible, so that everybody can read it without trouble.”
ALCHISE: “When you left, there were no bad Indians out. We were all
content; everything was peace. The officers you had here were all
taken away, and new ones came in—a different kind. The good ones
must all have been taken away and the bad ones sent in their places.
We couldn’t make out what they wanted; one day they seemed to want
one thing, the next day something else. Perhaps we were to blame,
perhaps they were; but, anyhow, we hadn’t any confidence in them. We
were planting our own corn and melons and making our own living. The
agent at the San Carlos never gave us any rations, but we didn’t
mind that, as we were taking care of ourselves. One day the agent at
the San Carlos sent up and said that we must give up our own country
and our corn-patches and go down there to live, and he sent Indian
soldiers to seize our women and children and drive us all down to
that hot land. ‘Uclenni’ and I were doing all we could to help the
whites, when we were both put in the guard-house. All that I have
ever done has been honest; I have always been true and obeyed
orders. I made campaigns against Apache-Yumas, Apache-Tontos,
Pinalenos, and all kinds of people, and even went against my own
people. When the Indians broke out at the San Carlos, when Major
Randall was here, I helped him to go fight them; I have been in all
the campaigns. When Major Randall was here we were all happy; when
he promised a thing he did it; when he said a word he meant it; but
all that he did was for our own good and we believed in him and we
think of him yet. Where has he gone? Why don’t he come back? Others
have come to see us since he left, but they talk to us in one way
and act in another, and we can’t believe what they say. They say:
‘That man is bad, and _that_ man is bad.’ I think that the trouble
is, they themselves are bad. Oh, where is my friend Randall—the
captain with the big mustache which he always pulled? Why don’t he
come back? He was my brother, and I think of him all the time.”
Old “Pedro” talked in much the same vein: “When you (General Crook)
were here, whenever you said a thing we knew that it was true, and
we kept it in our minds. When Colonel Green was here, our women and
children were happy and our young people grew up contented. And I
remember Brown, Randall, and the other officers who treated us
kindly and were our friends. I used to be happy; now, I am all the
time thinking and crying, and I say, ‘Where is old Colonel John
Green, and Randall, and those other good officers, and what has
become of them? Where have they gone? Why don’t they come back?’ And
the young men all say the same thing.”
“Pedro” spoke of the absurdity of arresting Indians for dancing, as
had been done in the case of the “medicine man,” “Bobby-doklinny”—of
which he had much to say, but at this moment only his concluding
remarks need be preserved: “Often when I have wanted to have a
little fun, I have sent word to all the women and children and young
men to come up and have a dance; other people have done the same
thing; I have never heard that there was any harm in that; but that
campaign was made just because the Indians over on the Cibicu were
dancing. When you (General Crook) were here we were all content; but
we can’t understand why you went away. Why did you leave us?
Everything was all right while you were here.”
A matter of great grievance with the Apaches, which they could not
understand, being nothing but ignorant savages and not up to
civilized ways, was why their little farms, of which I will speak
before ending this volume, should be destroyed—as they were—and why
their cattle and horses should be driven off by soldiers and
citizens. “Severiano,” the interpreter, who was a Mexican by birth,
taken captive in early youth, and living among the Apaches all his
life, now said: “A lot of my own cattle were taken away by soldiers
and citizens.” Had the Apaches had a little more sense they would
have perceived that the whole scheme of Caucasian contact with the
American aborigines—at least the Anglo-Saxon part of it—has been
based upon that fundamental maxim of politics so beautifully and so
tersely enunciated by the New York alderman—“The ‘boys’ are in it
for the stuff.” The “Tucson ring” was determined that no Apache
should be put to the embarrassment of working for his own living;
once let the Apaches become self-supporting, and what would become
of “the boys”? Therefore, they must all be herded down on the
malaria-reeking flats of the San Carlos, where the water is salt and
the air poison, and one breathes a mixture of sand-blizzards and
more flies than were ever supposed to be under the care of the great
fly-god Beelzebub. The conventions entered into with General Howard
and Vincent Collyer, which these Apaches had respected to the
letter—nay, more, the personal assurances given by the President of
the United States to old “Pedro” during a visit made by the latter
to Washington—were all swept away like cobwebs, while the
conspirators laughed in their sleeves, because they knew a trick or
two worth all of that. They had only to report by telegraph that the
Apaches were “uneasy,” “refused to obey the orders of the agent,”
and a lot more stuff of the same kind, and the Great Father would
send in ten regiments to carry out the schemes of the ring, but he
would never send one honest, truthful man to inquire whether the
Apaches had a story or not.
It is within the limits of possibility, that as the American Indians
become better and better acquainted with the English language, and
abler to lay their own side of a dispute before the American people,
there may be a diminution in the number of outbreaks, scares, and
misunderstandings, which have cost the taxpayers such fabulous sums,
and which I trust may continue to cost just as much until the
tax-payer shall take a deeper and more intelligent interest in this
great question. Another fact brought out in this conference was the
readiness with which agents and others incarcerated Indians in
guard-houses upon charges which were baseless, or at least trivial.
At other times, if the charges were grave, nothing was done to press
the cases to trial, and the innocent as well as the guilty suffered
by the long imprisonment, which deprived the alleged criminals of
the opportunity to work for the support of their families. The
report of the Federal Grand Jury of Arizona—taken from the _Star_,
of Tucson, Arizona, October 24, 1882—shows up this matter far more
eloquently than I am able to do, and I need not say that a frontier
jury never yet has said a word in favor of a red man unless the
reasons were fully patent to the ordinary comprehension.
TO THE HONORABLE WILSON HOOVER, District Judge:
The greatest interest was felt in the examination into the cases
of the eleven Indian prisoners brought here for trial from San
Carlos. The United States District Attorney had spent much time in
preparing this investigation. The Department of Justice had
peremptorily ordered that these cases should be disposed of at
this term of court. Agent Wilcox had notified the district
attorney that he should release these Indians by October 1st if
they were not brought away for trial. The official correspondence
from the various departments with the district attorney included a
letter from Agent Tiffany to the Interior Department, asking that
these Indians be at once tried, and yet Agent Tiffany released all
the guilty Indians without punishment and held in confinement
these eleven men for a period of fourteen months without ever
presenting a charge against them, giving them insufficient food
and clothing, and permitting those whose guilt was admitted by
themselves and susceptible of overwhelming proof, to stalk about
unblushingly and in defiance of law. This, too, under the very
shadow of his authority, and in laughing mockery of every
principle of common decency, to say nothing of justice.
How any official possessing the slightest manhood could keep
eleven men in confinement for fourteen months without charges or
any attempt to accuse them, knowing them to be innocent, is a
mystery which can only be solved by an Indian agent of the Tiffany
stamp. The investigations of the Grand Jury have brought to light
a course of procedure at the San Carlos Reservation, under the
government of Agent Tiffany, which is a disgrace to the
civilization of the age and a foul blot upon the national
escutcheon. While many of the details connected with these matters
are outside of our jurisdiction, we nevertheless feel it our duty,
as honest American citizens, to express our utter abhorrence of
the conduct of Agent Tiffany and that class of reverend peculators
who have cursed Arizona as Indian officials, and who have caused
more misery and loss of life than all other causes combined. We
feel assured, however, that under the judicious and just
management of General Crook, these evils will be abated, and we
sincerely trust that he may be permitted to render the official
existence of such men as Agent Tiffany, in the future,
unnecessary.
The investigations of the Grand Jury also establish the fact that
General Crook has the unbounded confidence of all the Indians. The
Indian prisoners acknowledged this before the Grand Jury, and they
expressed themselves as perfectly satisfied that he would deal
justly with them all. We have made diligent inquiry into the
various charges presented in regard to Indian goods and the
traffic at San Carlos and elsewhere, and have acquired a vast
amount of information which we think will be of benefit. For
several years the people of this Territory have been gradually
arriving at the conclusion that the management of the Indian
reservations in Arizona was a fraud upon the Government; that the
constantly recurring outbreaks of the Indians and their consequent
devastations were due to the criminal neglect or apathy of the
Indian agent at San Carlos; but never until the present
investigations of the Grand Jury have laid bare the infamy of
Agent Tiffany could a proper idea be formed of the fraud and
villany which are constantly practised in open violation of law
and in defiance of public justice. Fraud, peculation, conspiracy,
larceny, plots and counterplots, seem to be the rule of action
upon this reservation. The Grand Jury little thought when they
began this investigation that they were about to open a Pandora’s
box of iniquities seldom surpassed in the annals of crime.
With the immense power wielded by the Indian agent almost any
crime is possible. There seems to be no check upon his conduct. In
collusion with the chief clerk and storekeeper, rations can be
issued _ad libitum_ for which the Government must pay, while the
proceeds pass into the capacious pockets of the agent. Indians are
sent to work on the coal-fields, superintended by white men; all
the workmen and superintendents are fed and frequently paid from
the agency stores, and no return of the same is made. Government
tools and wagons are used in transporting goods and working the
coal-mines, in the interest of this close corporation and with the
same result. All surplus supplies are used in the interest of the
agent, and no return made thereof. Government contractors, in
collusion with Agent Tiffany, get receipts for large amounts of
supplies never furnished, and the profit is divided mutually, and
a general spoliation of the United States Treasury is thus
effected. While six hundred Indians are off on passes, their
rations are counted and turned in to the mutual aid association,
consisting of Tiffany and his associates. Every Indian child born
receives rations from the moment of its advent into this vale of
tears, and thus adds its mite to the Tiffany pile. In the
meantime, the Indians are neglected, half-fed, discontented, and
turbulent, until at last, with the vigilant eye peculiar to the
savage, the Indians observe the manner in which the Government,
through its agent, complies with its sacred obligations.
This was the united testimony of the Grand Jury, corroborated by
white witnesses, and to these and kindred causes may be attributed
the desolation and bloodshed which have dotted our plains with the
graves of murdered victims.
FOREMAN OF THE GRAND JURY.
The above official report of a United States Grand Jury is about as
strong a document as is usually to be found in the dusty archives of
courts; to its contents it is not necessary for me to add a single
syllable. I prefer to let the intelligent reader form his own
conclusions, while I resume the thread of my narrative where I left
off in General Crook’s bivouac on the Black River.
The cañon of the Black River is deep and dark, walled in by towering
precipices of basalt and lava, the latter lying in loose blocks
along the trail down which the foot-sore traveller must descend,
leading behind him his equally foot-sore mule. The river was deep
and strong, and in the eddies and swirls amid the projecting rocks
were hiding some of the rare trout of the Territory, so coy that the
patience of the fisherman was exhausted before they could be induced
to jump at his bait. The forbidding ruggedness of the mountain
flanks was concealed by forests of pine and juniper, which extended
for miles along the course of the stream. The music of our
pack-train bells was answered by the silvery laughter of squaws and
children, as we had with us in this place over one hundred Apaches,
many of them following out from Camp Apache to hear the results of
the conference.
The Apaches with whom General Crook talked at this place were, in
addition to “Alchise” and several others who had been sent out from
Camp Apache to notify the members of the tribe hiding in the
mountains, “Nagataha,” “A-ha-ni,” “Comanchi,” “Charlie,” “Nawdina,”
“Lonni,” “Neta,” “Kulo,” “Kan-tzi-chi,” “Tzi-di-ku,” “Klishe.” The
whole subject of their relations with the whites was traversed, and
much information elicited. The only facts of importance to a volume
of this kind were: the general worthlessness and rascality of the
agents who had been placed in charge of them; the constant robbery
going on without an attempt at concealment; the selling of supplies
and clothing intended for the Indians, to traders in the little
towns of Globe, Maxey, and Solomonville; the destruction of the corn
and melon fields of the Apaches, who had been making their own
living, and the compelling of all who could be forced to do so to
depend upon the agent for meagre supplies; the arbitrary punishments
inflicted without trial, or without testimony of any kind; the
cutting down of the reservation limits without reference to the
Apaches. Five times had this been done, and much of the most
valuable portion had been sequestered; the copper lands on the
eastern side were now occupied by the flourishing town of Clifton,
while on the western limit Globe and MacMillin had sprung into
being.
Coal had been discovered at the head of Deer Creek on the southern
extremity, and every influence possible was at work to secure the
sequestration of that part of the reservation for speculators, who
hoped to be able to sell out at a big profit to the Southern Pacific
Railroad Company. The Mormons had trespassed upon the fields already
cultivated by the Apaches at Forestdale, and the agent had
approached a circle of twenty of the chiefs and head men assembled
at the San Carlos, and offered each of them a small bag, containing
one hundred dollars—Mexican—and told them that they must agree to
sign a paper, giving up all the southern part of the reservation, or
troops would be sent to kill them. A silver mine had been
discovered, or was alleged to have been discovered, and the agent
and some of his pals proposed to form a stock company, and work it
off on confiding brethren in the East. In none of the curtailments,
as consummated or contemplated, had the interests or feelings of the
Indians been consulted.
The rations doled out had shrunk to a surprising degree: one of the
shoulders of the small cattle of that region was made to do twenty
people for a week; one cup of flour was issued every seven days to
each adult. As the Indians themselves said, they were compelled to
eat every part of the animal, intestines, hoofs, and horns. Spies
were set upon the agency, who followed the wagons laden with the
Indian supplies to Globe and the other towns just named, to which
they travelled by night, there to unload and transfer to the men who
had purchased from the agent or his underlings. One of the Apaches
who understood English and Spanish was deputed to speak to the agent
upon the matter. It was the experience of Oliver Twist over again
when he asked for more. The messenger was put in the guardhouse,
where he remained for six months, and was then released without
trial or knowing for what he had been imprisoned. In regard to the
civilian agents, the Apaches said they ran from bad to worse, being
dishonest, indifferent, tyrannical, and generally incompetent. Of
Captain Chaffee, of the Sixth Cavalry, who had been for a while in
charge at San Carlos, the Apaches spoke in terms of respect, saying
that he was very severe in his notions, but a just and honest man,
and disposed to be harsh only with those who persisted in making,
selling, or drinking the native intoxicant, “tizwin.” The rottenness
of the San Carlos Agency extended all the way to Washington, and
infolded in its meshes officials of high rank. It is to the lasting
credit of Hon. Carl Schurz, then Secretary of the Interior, that
when he learned of the delinquencies of certain of his subordinates,
he swung his axe without fear or favor, and the heads of the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the Inspector-General of the Indian
Bureau, and the agent at San Carlos fell into the basket.
At the San Carlos Agency itself, Crook met such men as “Cha-lipun,”
“Chimahuevi-sal,” “Navatane,” “Nodikun,” “Santos,” “Skinospozi,”
“Pedilkun,” “Binilke,” “Captain Chiquito,” “Eskiminzin,”
“Huan-klishe,” and numbers of others; those who had always lived in
the hills near the San Carlos were content to live in the country,
but such of the number as had been pulled away from the cool climate
and pure water of the Cibicu, Carrizo, and other cañons in the
vicinity of Camp Apache, and had seen their fields of corn tramped
down at the orders of the agent, were full of grievous complaint.
The Apache-Yumas and the Apaches are an entirely different people,
speaking different languages and resembling each other only in the
bitter hostility with which they had waged war against the whites.
The young men of the Apache-Yuma bands who attended the conferences,
were in full toilet—that is, they were naked from shoulders to
waist, had their faces painted with deer’s blood or mescal, their
heads done up in a plaster of mud three inches thick, and pendent
from the cartilage of the nose wore a ring with a fragment of
nacreous shell. General Crook’s own estimate of the results of these
conferences, which are entirely too long to be inserted here, is
expressed in the following General Orders (Number 43), issued from
his headquarters at Fort Whipple on the 5th of October, 1882.
“The commanding general, after making a thorough and exhaustive
examination among the Indians of the eastern and southern part of
this Territory, regrets to say that he finds among them a general
feeling of distrust and want of confidence in the whites,
especially the soldiery; and also that much dissatisfaction,
dangerous to the peace of the country, exists among them. Officers
and soldiers serving in this department are reminded that one of
the fundamental principles of the military character is justice to
all—Indians as well as white men—and that a disregard of this
principle is likely to bring about hostilities, and cause the
death of the very persons they are sent here to protect. In all
their dealings with the Indians, officers must be careful not only
to observe the strictest fidelity, but to make no promises not in
their power to carry out; all grievances arising within their
jurisdiction should be redressed, so that an accumulation of them
may not cause an outbreak.
“Grievances, however petty, if permitted to accumulate, will be
like embers that smoulder and eventually break into flame. When
officers are applied to for the employment of force against
Indians, they should thoroughly satisfy themselves of the
necessity for the application, and of the legality of compliance
therewith, in order that they may not, through the inexperience of
others, or through their own hastiness, allow the troops under
them to become the instruments of oppression. There must be no
division of responsibility in this matter; each officer will be
held to a strict accountability that his actions have been fully
authorized by law and justice, and that Indians evincing a desire
to enter upon a career of peace shall have no cause for complaint
through hasty or injudicious acts of the military.”
Crook’s management of the Department of Arizona was conducted on the
same lines as during his previous administration: he rode on
mule-back all over it, and met and understood each and every Indian
with whom he might have to deal as friend or enemy; he reorganized
his pack-trains and the Indian scouts, put the control of military
affairs at the San Carlos under charge of Captain Emmet Crawford,
Third Cavalry, a most intelligent and conscientious officer,
encouraged the Indians to prepare for planting good crops the next
spring, and made ready to meet the Chiricahuas. These Indians, for
whom a reservation had been laid out with its southern line the
boundary between the United States and the Mexican Republic, had
been dealing heavily at the ranch of Rogers and Spence, at Sulphur
Springs, where they were able to buy all the vile whiskey they
needed. In a row over the sale of liquor both Rogers and Spence were
killed, and the Apaches, fearing punishment, fled to the mountains
of Mexico—the Sierra Madre. From that on, for six long years, the
history of the Chiricahuas was one of blood: a repetition of the
long series of massacres which, under “Cocheis,” they had
perpetrated in the old days.
On several occasions a number of them returned to the San Carlos, or
pretended to do so, but the recesses of the Sierra Madre always
afforded shelter to small bands of renegades of the type of
“Ka-e-tan-ne,” who despised the white man as a liar and scorned him
as a foe. The unfortunate policy adopted by the Government towards
the “Warm Springs” Apaches of New Mexico, who were closely related
to the Chiricahuas, had an unhealthy effect upon the latter and upon
all the other bands. The “Warm Springs” Apaches were peremptorily
deprived of their little fields and driven away from their crops,
half-ripened, and ordered to tramp to the San Carlos; when the band
reached there the fighting men had disappeared, and only decrepit
warriors, little boys and girls, and old women remained. “Victorio”
went on the war-path with every effective man, and fairly deluged
New Mexico and Chihuahua with blood.
General Crook felt that the Chiricahua Apache problem was a burning
shame and disgrace, inasmuch as the property and lives not only of
our own citizens but of those of a friendly nation, were constantly
menaced. He had not been at San Carlos twenty-four hours before he
had a party of Apaches out in the ranges to the south looking for
trails or signs; this little party penetrated down into the northern
end of the Sierra Madre below Camp Price, and saw some of the
Mexican irregular troops, but found no fresh traces of the enemy.
Crook insisted upon the expulsion from the reservation of all
unauthorized squatters and miners, whether appearing under the guise
of Mormons or as friends of the late agents, and opposed resolutely
the further curtailment of the reservation or the proposition to
transfer the Apaches to the Indian Territory, having in mind the
contemptible failure of the attempt to evict the Cherokees from the
mountains of North Carolina, where some twenty-two hundred of them
still cling to the homes of their forefathers. He also insisted upon
giving to the Apaches all work which could be provided for them, and
in paying for the same in currency to the individual Indians without
the interposition of any middlemen or contractors in any guise.
This will explain in a word why Crook was suddenly abused so roundly
in the very Territory for which he had done so much. People who were
not influenced by the disappointed elements enumerated, saw that
General Crook’s views were eminently fair and sound, based upon the
most extended experience, and not the hap-hazard ideas of a
theoretical soldier. To quote from the Annual Message of Governor
Tritle: “The Indians know General Crook and his methods, and respect
both.” Had the notion ever taken root among the Apaches that they
were all to be transplanted to unknown regions, the country would
have had to face the most terrible and costly war in its history.
Crook did not want wars—he wanted to avert them. In a letter to
United States District Attorney Zabriskie, he used the following
language: “I believe that it is of far greater importance to prevent
outbreaks than to attempt the difficult and sometimes hopeless task
of quelling them after they do occur; this policy can only be
successful when the officers of justice fearlessly perform their
duty in proceeding against the villains who fatten on the supplies
intended for the use of Indians willing to lead peaceful and orderly
lives. Bad as Indians often are, I have never yet seen one so
demoralized that he was not an example in honor and nobility to the
wretches who enrich themselves by plundering him of the little our
Government appropriates for him.”
To prevent any of the Indians from slipping off from the agency,
they were all enrolled, made to wear tags as of yore, and compelled
to submit to periodical counts occurring every few days. It was
found that there were then at the San Carlos Agency eleven hundred
and twenty-eight males capable of bearing arms; this did not include
the bands at or near Camp Apache or the Chiricahuas. The Apaches
manifested the liveliest interest in the system of trial by jury,
and it was apparent that criminals stood but a small chance of
escaping punishment when arraigned before their own people. While we
were at San Carlos on this occasion Captain Crawford had arrested
two Apaches on the charge of making “tizwin,” getting drunk, and
arousing camp by firing off guns late at night. The jury was
impanelled, the trial began, and the room soon filled with
spectators. The prisoners attempted to prove an “alibi,” and
introduced witnesses to swear to the shooting having been done by
other parties.
“Eskiminzin” impatiently arose to his feet and interrupted the
proceedings: “That man is not telling the truth.”
“Tell ‘Eskiminzin’ to sit down and keep quiet,” ordered Captain
Crawford; “he must not interrupt the proceedings of the court.”
A few moments after, in looking down the long list of witnesses, it
was discovered that “Eskiminzin” was present as a witness, and he
was called upon to testify.
“Tell the Captain,” said the indignant chief, “that I have nothing
to say. I do not understand these white men; they let all kinds of
people talk at a trial, and would just as soon listen to the words
of a liar as those of a man telling the truth. Why, when I began to
tell him that So-and-so was lying, he made me sit down and keep my
mouth shut, but So-and-so went on talking, and every word he said
was put down on paper.”
It took some time to explain to “Eskiminzin” the intricacies of our
laws of evidence, and to pacify him enough to induce him to give his
version of the facts.
Our quarters while at San Carlos were the adobe building erected as
a “school-house,” at a cost to the Government of forty thousand
dollars, but occupied by the late agent as a residence. It had been
erected at a net cost of something between eight and nine thousand
dollars, or at least I would contract to duplicate it for that and
expect to make some money in the transaction besides. The walls were
covered over with charcoal scrawls of Apache gods, drawn by
irreverent youngsters, and the appearance of the place did not in
the remotest sense suggest the habitation of the Muses.
General Crook returned late in the fall of 1882 to his headquarters
at Fort Whipple, and awaited the inevitable irruption of the
Chiricahua Apaches from their stronghold in the Sierra Madre in
Mexico. Large detachments of Indian scouts, under competent
officers, were kept patrolling the boundary in the vicinity of
Cloverdale and other exposed points, and small garrisons were in
readiness to take the field from Fort Bowie and other stations. The
completion of the Southern Pacific and the Atchison, Topeka, and
Santa Fé systems, and the partial completion of the Atlantic and
Pacific Railroad, had wrought certain changes in the condition of
affairs, to which reference may be made. In a military sense they
had all been a great benefit by rendering the transportation of
troops and supplies a matter of most agreeable surprise to those who
still remembered the creaking ox-teams and prairie schooners, which
formerly hauled all stores from the banks of the distant Missouri;
in a social sense they had been the means of introducing
immigration, some of which was none too good, as is always the case
with the earlier days of railroad construction on the frontier.
The mining towns like Tombstone, then experiencing a “boom,” had
been increased by more than a fair quota of gamblers, roughs, and
desperate adventurers of all classes. Cowboys and horse thieves
flooded the southeastern corner of the Territory and the
southwestern corner of the next Territory—New Mexico; with
Cloverdale, in southwestern New Mexico, as a headquarters, they bade
defiance to the law and ran things with a high hand, and made many
people sigh for the better days when only red-skinned savages
intimidated the settlements. The town of Phoenix had arisen in the
valley of the Salt River, along the lines of prehistoric irrigating
ditches, marking the presence of considerable population, and
suggesting to Judge Hayden and others who first laid it out the
propriety of bestowing the name it now bears. The new population
were both intelligent and enterprising: under the superintendence of
the Hon. Clark Churchill they had excavated great irrigating canals,
and begun the planting of semi-tropical fruits, which has proved
unusually remunerative, and built up the community so that it has
for years been able to care for itself against any hostile attacks
that might be threatened. Prescott, being off the direct line of
railroad (with which, however, it has since been connected by a
branch), had not responded so promptly to the new condition of
affairs, but its growth had been steady, and its population had not
been burdened with the same class of loafers who for so long a time
held high carnival in Tombstone, Deming, and elsewhere. Prescott had
always boasted of its intelligent, bright family society—thoroughly
American in the best sense—and the boast was still true.
There is no point in the southwestern country so well adapted, none
that can compare with Prescott as the site of a large Indian school;
and when the time comes, as I am certain it is to come, when we
shall recognize the absurdity of educating a few Indian boys and
then returning them back to their tribes, in which they can exert no
influence, but can excite only jealousy on account of their superior
attainments—when by a slight increase of appropriations, the whole
race of Indian boys and girls could be lifted from savagery into the
path to a better life—Prescott will become the site of such a
school. It is education which is to be the main lever in this
elevation, but it is wholesale education, not retail. This phase of
the case impressed itself upon the early settlers in Canada, who
provided most liberally for the training of, comparatively speaking,
great numbers of the Algonquin youth of both sexes. In Mexico was
erected the first school for the education of the native
American—the college at Patzcuaro—built before foot of Puritan had
touched the rock of Plymouth.
Prescott possesses the advantages of being the centre of a district
inhabited by numbers of tribes whose children could be educated so
near their own homes that parents would feel easier in regard to
them, and yet the youngsters would be far removed from tribal
influences and in the midst of a thoroughly progressive American
community. The climate cannot be excelled anywhere; the water is as
good as can be found; and the scenery—of granite peaks, grassy
meads, balmy pine forests, and placid streamlets—cannot well be
surpassed. The post of Fort Whipple could be transferred to the
Interior Department, and there would be found ready to hand the
houses for teachers, the school-rooms, dormitories, refectories,
blacksmith-shops, wagoners’ shops, saddlers’ shops, stables,
granaries, and other buildings readily adaptable to the purposes of
instruction in various handicrafts. Five hundred children, equally
divided as to sex, could be selected from the great tribes of the
Navajos, Apaches, Hualpais, Mojaves, Yumas, Pimas, and Maricopas.
The cost of living is very moderate, and all supplies could be
brought in on the branch railroad, while the absence of excitement
incident to communities established at railroad centres or on
through lines will be manifest upon a moment’s reflection. It would
require careful, intelligent, absolutely honest administration, to
make it a success; it should be some such school as I have seen
conducted by the Congregationalists and Presbyterians among the
Santee Sioux, under the superintendence of Rev. Alfred Riggs, or by
the Friends among the Cherokees in North Carolina, under Mr. Spray,
where the children are instructed in the rudiments of Christian
morality, made to understand that labor is most honorable, that the
saddler, the carpenter, or blacksmith must be a gentleman and come
to the supper-table with clean face and combed hair, and that the
new life is in every respect the better life.
But if it is to be the fraud upon the confiding tax-payers that the
schools at Fort Defiance (Navajo Agency), Zuni, San Carlos, and
other places that I personally examined have been, money would be
saved by not establishing it at all. The agent of the Navajos
reported in 1880 that his “school” would accommodate eighty
children. I should dislike to imprison eight dogs that I loved in
the dingy hole that he called a “school”—but then the agent had a
pull at Washington, being the brother-in-law of a “statesman,” and I
had better not say too much; and the school-master, although an
epileptic idiot, had been sent out as the representative of the
family influence of another “statesman,” so I will not say more
about him. The Indians to be instructed in the school whose
establishment is proposed at Prescott, Arizona, should be trained in
the line of their “atavism,” if I may borrow a word from the medical
dictionary—that is, they should be trained in the line of their
inherited proclivities and tendencies. Their forefathers for
generations—ever since the time of the work among them of the
Franciscan missionaries—have been a pastoral people, raising great
flocks of sheep, clipping, carding, and spinning the wool, weaving
the most beautiful of rugs and blankets and sashes, and selling them
at a profit to admiring American travellers. They have been
saddle-makers, basket-makers, silver-smiths, and—as in the case of
the Mojaves, Pimas, and Maricopas—potters and mat-makers. In such
trades, preferentially, they should be instructed, and by the
introduction of a few Lamb knitting machines, they could be taught
to make stockings for the Southwestern market out of the wool raised
by their own families, and thus help support the institution and
open a better market for the products of their own tribe. They could
be taught to tan the skins of their own flocks and herds, and to
make shoes and saddles of the result. But all this must be put down
as “whimsical,” because there is no money in it “for the boys.” The
great principle of American politics, regardless of party lines, is
that “the boys” must be taken care of at all times and in all
places.
Tucson had changed the most appreciably of any town in the
Southwest; American energy and American capital had effected a
wonderful transformation: the old garrison was gone; the railroad
had arrived; where Jack Long and his pack-train in the old times had
merrily meandered, now puffed the locomotive; Muñoz’s corral had
been displaced by a round-house, and Muñoz himself by a one-lunged
invalid from Boston; the Yankees had almost transformed the face of
nature; the exquisite architectural gem of San Xavier del Bac still
remained, but the “Shoo Fly” restaurant had disappeared, and in its
place the town boasted with very good reason of the “San Xavier”
Hotel, one of the best coming within my experience as a traveller.
American enterprise had moved to the front, and the Castilian with
his “marromas” and “bailes” and saints’ days and “funcciones” had
fallen to the rear; telephones and electric lights and Pullman cars
had scared away the plodding burro and the creaking “carreta”; it
was even impossible to get a meal cooked in the Mexican style of
Mexican viands; our dreams had faded; the chariot of Cinderella had
changed back into a pumpkin, and Sancho was no longer governor.
“I tell you, Cap,” said my old friend, Charlie Hopkins, “them
railroads’s playin’ hob with th’ country, ’n a feller’s got to
hustle hisself now in Tucson to get a meal of frijoles or
enchiladas; this yere new-fangled grub doan’ suit me ’n I reckon
I’ll pack mee grip ’n lite out fur Sonora.”
Saddest of all, the old-timers were thinning out, or if not dead
were living under a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph; the Postons, Ourys,
Bradys, Mansfields, Veils, Rosses, Montgomerys, Duncans, Drachmans,
Handys, and others were unappreciated by the incoming tide of
“tenderfeet,” who knew nothing of the perils and tribulations of
life in Arizona and New Mexico before Crook’s genius and valor had
redeemed them from the clutch of the savage. On the Colorado River
Captain Jack Mellon still plied the good ship “Cocopah,” and Dan
O’Leary still dealt out to expectant listeners tales of the terrible
days when he “fit” with Crook; within sight of the “Wickytywiz,”
Charlie Spencer still lived among his Hualpai kinsmen, not much the
worse for the severe wounds received while a scout; the old Hellings
mill on the Salt River, once the scene of open-handed hospitality to
all travellers, still existed under changed ownership, and the
Arnolds, Ehls, Bowers, Bangharts, and other ranchmen of northern
Arizona were still in place; but the mill of Don José Peirson no
longer ground its toll by the current of the San Ignacio; the
Samaniegos, Suasteguis, Borquis, Ferreras, and other Spanish
families had withdrawn to Sonora; and, oldest survival of all,
“Uncle Lew Johnson” was living in seclusion with the family of
Charlie Hopkins on the Salumay on the slopes of the Sierra Ancha. It
would pay some enterprising man to go to Arizona to interview this
old veteran, who first entered Arizona with the earliest band of
trappers; who was one of the party led by Pauline Weaver; who knew
Kit Carson intimately; who could recall the days when Taos, New
Mexico, was the metropolis of fashion and commerce for the whole
Southwest, and the man who had gone as far east as St. Louis was
looked upon as a traveller whose recitals merited the closest
attention of the whole camp.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE SIERRA MADRE CAMPAIGN AND THE CHIRICAHUAS—“CHATO’S” RAID—CROOK’S
EXPEDITION OF FORTY-SIX WHITE MEN AND ONE HUNDRED AND
NINETY-THREE INDIAN SCOUTS—THE SURPRISE OF THE APACHE
STRONGHOLD—THE “TOMBSTONE TOUGHS”—THE MANAGEMENT OF THE
CHIRICAHUAS—HOW INDIANS WILL WORK IF ENCOURAGED—GIVING THE
FRANCHISE TO INDIANS; CROOK’S VIEWS—THE CRAWFORD COURT OF
INQUIRY—“KA-E-TEN-NA’S” ARREST ORDERED BY MAJOR BARBER—TROUBLE
ARISES BETWEEN THE WAR AND INTERIOR DEPARTMENTS—CROOK ASKS TO BE
RELIEVED FROM THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR INDIAN AFFAIRS—SOME OF THE
CHIRICAHUAS RETURN TO THE WAR-PATH.
When the Chiricahuas did break through into Arizona in the early
days of March, 1883, they numbered twenty-six, and were under the
command of “Chato,” a young chief of great intelligence and especial
daring. They committed great outrages and marked their line of
travel with fire and blood by stealing horses from every ranch they
were enabled to cover not less than seventy-five miles a day, and by
their complete familiarity with the country were able to dodge the
troops and citizens sent in pursuit. One of their number was killed
in a fight at the “Charcoal Camp,” in the Whetstone Mountains, and
another—“Panayotishn,” called “Peaches” by the soldiers—surrendered
at San Carlos and offered his services to the military to lead them
against the Chiricahuas. He was not a Chiricahua himself, but a
member of the White Mountain Apaches and married to a Chiricahua
squaw, and obliged to accompany the Chiricahuas when they last left
the agency.
Crook determined to take up the trail left by the Chiricahuas and
follow it back to their stronghold in the Sierra Madre, and surprise
them or their families when least expected. “Peaches” assured him
that the plan was perfectly feasible, and asked permission to go
with the column. By the terms of the convention then existing
between Mexico and the United States, the armed forces of either
country could, when in pursuit of hostile Indians, cross the
frontier and continue pursuit until met by troops of the country
into whose territory the trail led, though this convention applied
only to desert portions of territory. Crook visited Guaymas,
Hermosillo (in Sonora), and Chihuahua, the capital of the Mexican
State of the same name, where he conferred with Generals Topete,
Bernardo Reyes, and Carbo, of the Mexican Army, Governor Torres, of
Sonora, and Mayor Zubiran, of Chihuahua, by all of whom he was
received most hospitably and encouraged in his purposes.
He organized a small force of one hundred and ninety-three Apache
scouts and one small company of the Sixth Cavalry, commanded by
Major Chaffee and Lieutenant Frank West. The scouts were commanded
by Captain Emmet Crawford, Third Cavalry; Lieutenant Gatewood, Sixth
Cavalry; Lieutenant W. W. Forsyth, Sixth Cavalry; Lieutenant Mackay,
Third Cavalry, with Surgeon Andrews as medical officer. Crook took
command in person, having with him Captain John G. Bourke, Third
Cavalry, and Lieutenant G. J. Febiger, Engineer Corps, as
aides-de-camp; Archie Macintosh and Al Seiber as chiefs of scouts;
Mickey Free, Severiano, and Sam Bowman as interpreters. The
expedition was remarkably successful: under the guidance of
“Peaches,” “To-klanni,” “Alchise,” and other natives, it made its
way down to the head waters of the Yaqui River, more than two
hundred miles south of the international boundary, into the unknown
recesses of the Sierra Madre, and there surprised and captured,
after a brief but decisive fight, the stronghold of the Chiricahuas,
who were almost all absent raiding upon the hapless Mexican hamlets
exposed to their fury. As fast as the warriors and squaws came home,
they were apprehended and put under charge of the scouts.
This was one of the boldest and most successful strokes ever
achieved by an officer of the United States Army: every man, woman,
and child of the Chiricahuas was returned to the San Carlos Agency
and put to work. They had the usual story to tell of ill-treatment,
broken pledges, starvation, and other incidentals, but the reader
has perhaps had enough of that kind of narrative. The last straw
which drove them out from the agency was the attempt to arrest one
of their young men for some trivial offence. The Chiricahuas found
no fault with the arrest in itself, but were incensed at the
high-handed manner in which the chief of police had attempted to
carry it out: the young buck started to run away and did not halt
when summoned to do so by the chief of police, but kept on in his
retreat among a crowd of children and squaws. The chief of police
then fired, and, his aim not being good, killed one of the squaws;
for this he apologized, but the Chiricahuas got it into their heads
that he ought not to have fired in the first place; they dissembled
their resentment for a few days until they had caught the chief of
police, killed him, cut off his head, played a game of football with
it, and started for the Mexican boundary in high glee.
Crook’s expedition passed down through the hamlets of Huachinera,
Basaraca, and Bavispe, Sonora, where occurred the terrible
earthquake of the next year. Mexican eye-witnesses asserted that the
two or three ranges of mountains which at that point form the Sierra
Madre played hide-and-seek with each other, one range rising and the
others falling. The description, which had all the stamp of truth,
recalled the words of the Old Testament: “What ailed thee, O sea,
that thou didst flee? And thou, O Jordan, that thou wast turned
back? Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams; and ye hills, like
the lambs of the flock?”
General Crook was about this time made the target of every sort of
malignant and mendacious assault by the interests which he had
antagonized. The telegraph wires were loaded with false reports of
outrages, attacks, and massacres which had never occurred; these
reports were scattered broadcast with the intention and in the hope
that they might do him injury. Crook made no reply to these
scurrilous attempts at defamation, knowing that duty well performed
will in the end secure the recognition and approval of all
fair-minded people, the only ones whose recognition and approval are
worth having. But he did order the most complete investigation to be
made of each and every report, and in each and every case the utter
recklessness of the authors of these lies was made manifest. Only
one example need be given—the so-called “Buckhorn Basin Massacre,”
in which was presented a most circumstantial and detailed narrative
of the surrounding and killing by a raiding party of Apaches of a
small band of miners, who were forced to seek safety in a cave from
which they fought to the death. This story was investigated by Major
William C. Rafferty, Sixth Cavalry, who found no massacre, no
Indians, no miners, no cave, nothing but a Buckhorn basin.
There was a small set of persons who took pleasure in disseminating
such rumors, the motive of some being sensationalism merely, that of
others malice or a desire to induce the bringing in of more troops
from whose movements and needs they might make money. Such people
did not reflect, or did not care, that the last result of this
conduct, if persisted in, would be to deter capital from seeking
investment in a region which did not require the gilding of refined
gold or the painting of the lily to make it appear the Temple of
Horrors; surely, enough blood had been shed in Arizona to make the
pages of her history red for years to come, without inventing
additional enormities to scare away the immigration which her mines
and forests, her cattle pasturage and her fruit-bearing oases, might
well attract.
It was reported that the Chiricahua prisoners had been allowed to
drive across the boundary herds of cattle captured from the
Mexicans; for this there was not the slightest foundation. When the
last of the Chiricahuas, the remnant of “Ju’s” band, which had been
living nearly two hundred miles south of “Geronimo’s” people in the
Sierra Madre, arrived at the international boundary, a swarm of
claimants made demand for all the cattle with them. Each cow had, it
would seem, not less than ten owners, and as in the Southwest the
custom was to put on the brand of the purchaser as well as the vent
brand of the seller, each animal down there was covered from brisket
to rump with more or less plainly discernible marks of ownership.
General Crook knew that there must be a considerable percentage of
perjury in all this mass of affidavits, and wisely decided that the
cattle should be driven up to the San Carlos Agency, and there
herded under guard in the best obtainable pasturage until fat enough
to be sold to the best advantage. The brand of each of the cattle,
probable age, name of purchaser, amount realized, and other items of
value, were preserved, and copies of them are to be seen in my
note-books of that date. The moneys realized from the sale were
forwarded through the official military channels to Washington,
thence to be sent through the ordinary course of diplomatic
correspondence to the Government of Mexico, which would naturally be
more competent to determine the validity of claims and make the most
sensible distribution.
There were other parties in Arizona who disgraced the Territory by
proposing to murder the Apaches on the San Carlos, who had sent
their sons to the front to aid the whites in the search for the
hostiles and their capture or destruction. These men organized
themselves into a company of military, remembered in the Territory
as the “Tombstone Toughs,” and marched upon the San Carlos with the
loudly-heralded determination to “clean out” all in sight. They
represented all the rum-poisoned bummers of the San Pedro Valley,
and no community was more earnest in its appeals to them to stay in
the field until the last armed foe expired than was Tombstone, the
town from which they had started; never before had Tombstone enjoyed
such an era of peace and quiet, and her citizens appreciated the
importance of keeping the “Toughs” in the field as long as possible.
The commanding officer, of the “Toughs” was a much better man than
the gang who staggered along on the trail behind him: he kept the
best saloon in Tombstone, and was a candidate for political honors.
When last I heard of him, some six years since, he was keeping a
saloon in San Francisco.
All that the “Tombstone Toughs” did in the way of war was to fire
upon one old Indian, a decrepit member of “Eskiminzin’s” band, which
had been living at peace on the lower San Pedro ever since
permission had been granted them to do so by General Howard; they
were supporting themselves by farming and stock-raising, and were
never accused of doing harm to any one all the time they remained in
that place. White settlers lived all around them with whom their
relations were most friendly. The “Toughs” fired at this old man and
then ran away, leaving the white women of the settlements, whose
husbands were nearly all absent from home, to bear the brunt of
vengeance. I have before me the extract from the _Citizen_ of
Tucson, which describes this flight of the valiant “Toughs”:
“leaving the settlers to fight it out with the Indians and suffer
for the rash acts of these senseless cowards, who sought to kill a
few peaceable Indians, and thereby gain a little cheap notoriety,
which cannot result otherwise than disastrously to the settlers in
that vicinity.” “The attack of the Rangers was shameful, cowardly,
and foolish. They should be taken care of at once, and punished
according to the crime they have committed.” It is only just that
the above should be inserted as a proof that there are many
intelligent, fair-minded people on the frontier, who deprecate and
discountenance anything like treachery towards Indians who are
peaceably disposed.
By the terms of the conference entered into between the Secretary of
the Interior, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the Secretary of
War, and Brigadier-General Crook, on the 7th of July, 1883, it was
stipulated that “the Apache Indians recently captured, and all such
as may hereafter be captured or may surrender, shall be kept under
the control of the War Department at such points on the San Carlos
Reservation as may be determined by the War Department, but not at
the agency without the consent of the Indian agent—to be fed and
cared for by the War Department until further orders.... The War
Department shall be intrusted with the entire police control of all
the Indians on the San Carlos Reservation. The War Department shall
protect the Indian agent in the discharge of his duties as agent,
which shall include the ordinary duties of an Indian agent and
remain as heretofore except as to keeping peace, administering
justice, and punishing refractory Indians, all of which shall be
done by the War Department.”
In accordance with the terms of the above conference, five hundred
and twelve of the Chiricahua Apaches—being the last man, woman, and
child of the entire band—were taken to the country close to Camp
Apache, near the head-waters of the Turkey Creek, where, as well as
on a part of the White River, they were set to work upon small
farms. Peace reigned in Arizona, and for two years her record of
deaths by violence, at the hands of red men at least, would compare
with the best record to be shown by any State in the East; in other
words, there were no such deaths and no assaults. That Apaches will
work may be shown by the subjoined extracts from the official
reports, beginning with that of 1883, just one year after the
re-assignment of General Crook to the command: “The increase of
cultivation this year over last I believe has been tenfold. The
Indians during the past year have raised a large amount of barley,
which they have disposed of, the largest part of it being sold to
the Government for the use of the animals in the public service
here. Some has been sold to the Indian trader, and quite an amount
to freighters passing through between Wilcox and Globe. Their corn
crop is large; I think, after reserving what will be needed for
their own consumption and seed for next year, they will have some
for sale. The only market they have for their produce is from
freighters, the trader, and the Q. M. Department here. They are
being encouraged to store their corn away and use it for meal; for
this purpose there should be a grist-mill here and one at Fort
Apache. They have cut and turned in during the year to the Q. M.
Department and at the agency about four hundred tons of hay cut with
knives and three hundred cords of wood, for which they have been
paid a liberal price.” Attached to the same report was the
following: “Statement showing the amount of produce raised by the
Apache Indians on the White Mountain Indian Reservation during the
year 1883: 2,625,000 lbs. of corn, 180,000 lbs. of beans, 135,000
lbs. of potatoes, 12,600 lbs. of wheat, 200,000 lbs. of barley,
100,000 pumpkins, 20,000 watermelons, 10,000 muskmelons, 10,000
cantelopes. Small patches of cabbage, onions, cucumbers, and lettuce
have been raised. (Signed) EMMET CRAWFORD, _Captain Third Cavalry_,
Commanding.”
I have seen Indian bucks carrying on their backs great bundles of
hay cut with knives, which they sold in the town of Globe to the
stable owners and keepers of horses.
During that winter General Crook wrote the following letter, which
expresses his views on the subject of giving the franchise to
Indians; it was dated January 5, 1885, and was addressed to Mr.
Herbert Welsh, Secretary of the Indian Rights Association,
Philadelphia:
“MY DEAR MR. WELSH:
“The law prohibiting the sale of liquor to Indians is practically
a dead letter. Indians who so desire can to-day obtain from
unprincipled whites and others all the vile whiskey for which they
can pay cash, which is no more and no less than the Indian as a
citizen could purchase. The proposition I make on behalf of the
Indian is, that he is at this moment capable, with very little
instruction, of exercising every manly right; he doesn’t need to
have so much guardianship as so many people would have us believe;
what he does need is protection under the law; the privilege of
suing in the courts, which privilege must be founded upon the
franchise to be of the slightest value.
“If with the new prerogatives, individual Indians continue to use
alcoholic stimulants, we must expect to see them rise or fall
socially as do white men under similar circumstances. For my own
part, I question very much whether we should not find the Indians
who would then be drunkards to be the very same ones who under
present surroundings experience no difficulty whatever in
gratifying this cursed appetite. The great majority of Indians are
wise enough to recognize the fact that liquor is the worst foe to
their advancement. Complaints have frequently been made by them to
me that well-known parties had maintained this illicit traffic
with members of their tribe, but no check could be imposed or
punishment secured for the very good reason that Indian testimony
carries no weight whatever with a white jury. Now by arming the
red men with the franchise, we remove this impediment, and provide
a cure for the very evil which seems to excite so much
apprehension; besides this, we would open a greater field of
industrial development. The majority of the Indians whom I have
met are perfectly willing to work for their white neighbors, to
whom they can make themselves serviceable in many offices, such as
teaming, herding, chopping wood, cutting hay, and harvesting; and
for such labor there is at nearly all times a corresponding demand
at reasonable wages. Unfortunately, there are many unscrupulous
characters to be found near all reservations who don’t hesitate
after employing Indians to defraud them of the full amount agreed
upon. Several such instances have been brought to my notice during
the present year, but there was no help for the Indian, who could
not bring suit in the courts. Every such swindle is a
discouragement both to the Indian most directly concerned and to a
large circle of interested friends, who naturally prefer the
relations of idleness to work which brings no remuneration.
“Our object should be to get as much voluntary labor from the
Indian as possible. Every dollar honestly gained by hard work is
so much subtracted from the hostile element and added to that
which is laboring for peace and civilization. In conclusion, I
wish to say that the American Indian is the intellectual peer of
most, if not all, the various nationalities we have assimilated to
our laws, customs, and language. He is fully able to protect
himself if the ballot be given, and the courts of law not closed
against him. If our aim be to remove the aborigine from a state of
servile dependence, we cannot begin in a better or more practical
way than by making him think well of himself, to force upon him
the knowledge that he is part and parcel of the nation, clothed
with all its political privileges, entitled to share in all its
benefits. Our present treatment degrades him in his own eyes, by
making evident the difference between his own condition and that
of those about him. To sum up, my panacea for the Indian trouble
is to make the Indian self-supporting, a condition which can never
be attained, in my opinion, so long as the privileges which have
made labor honorable, respectable, and able to defend itself, be
withheld from him.”
Chancellor Kent has well said that unity increases the efficiency,
by increasing the responsibility, of the executive. This rule
applies to every department of life. The dual administration of
the Apache reservation, by the Departments of War and the
Interior, did not succeed so well as was at first expected: there
were constant misunderstandings, much friction, with complaints
and recriminations. Captain Crawford had won in a remarkable
degree the esteem and confidence of the Indians upon the
reservation, who looked up to him as a faithful mentor and friend.
They complained that certain cows which had been promised them
were inferior in quality, old and past the age for breeding, and
not equal to the number promised. This complaint was forwarded
through the routine channels to Washington, and the Interior
Department ordered out an inspector who reported every thing
serene at the agency and on the reservation. The report did not
satisfy either Indians or whites, but upon receiving the report of
its inspecting officer the Interior Department requested that
Captain Crawford be relieved, coupling the request with remarks
which Crawford took to be a reflection upon his character; he
thereupon demanded and was accorded by his military superiors a
court of inquiry, which was composed of Major Biddle, Sixth
Cavalry, Major Purington, Third Cavalry, Captain Dougherty, First
Infantry, as members, and First Lieutenant George S. Anderson,
Sixth Cavalry, as Recorder. This court, all of whose members were
officers of considerable experience in the Indian country, and one
of whom (Dougherty) had been in charge of one of the largest Sioux
reservations in Dakota, set about its work with thoroughness,
examined all witnesses and amassed a quantity of testimony in
which it was shown that the Apaches had good ground of complaint
both in the character and in the number of cows supplied them:
they were in many cases old and unserviceable, and instead of
there being one thousand, there were scarcely six hundred, the
missing cattle being covered by what was termed a “due bill,” made
out by the contractor, agreeing to drive in the missing ones upon
demand.
There was only one serious case of disturbance among the Chiricahua
Apaches: the young chief “Ka-e-ten-na” became restless under the
restraints of the reservation, and sighed to return to the wild
freedom of the Sierra Madre. He was closely watched, and all that he
did was reported to headquarters by the Indian scouts. General Crook
was absent at the time, by direction of the Secretary of War,
delivering the address to the graduating class at the Military
Academy at West Point; but Major Barber, Adjutant-General, carried
out Crook’s methods, and the surly young man was arrested by his own
people, tried by his own people, and sentenced to be confined in
some place until he learned sense. He was sent to Alcatraz Island,
in San Francisco Harbor, where he remained twelve months, the
greater part of the time being allowed to see the sights of the city
and to become saturated with an idea of the white man’s power in
numbers, wealth, machinery, and other resources. He became a great
friend, and rendered great help, to General Crook later on.
Under date of January 20, 1885, General Crook wrote as follows to
his military superiors:
“In the event that the views of the Indian agent are approved, I
respectfully request that matters referred to in the agreement be
relegated to the control of the Interior Department, and that I be
relieved from all the responsibilities therein imposed.”
In forwarding the above communication to Washington, General John
Pope, commanding the Military Division of the Pacific, indorsed the
following views:
“Respectfully forwarded to the adjutant-general of the army. It is
needless to reiterate what the authorities in Washington and
everybody in this region know perfectly well now. General Crook’s
management of these Indians has been marked by unusual and
surprising success, and if matters are left in his charge a very
few years longer all fears of Indian trouble in Arizona may be
dismissed.
“One of the difficulties (and the principal one) he has met with
is the constant discord between the civilian Indian agents and the
military. It is not even hoped that a stop may be put to such
controversies so long as there is a joint jurisdiction over the
Arizona Indians. It is not human nature that such an anomalous
relation should escape such troubles, but in view of General
Crook’s superior ability and experience, and the great success he
has met with, I must emphatically recommend that, instead of
relieving him as he suggests, the entire control of the Indians be
turned over to him.
“(Signed) JOHN POPE, _Major-General_.”
For people interested in the question of Indian management and of
Indian pacification, no more important document can be presented
than General Crook’s Annual Report for the year 1885. As this
document will not be accessible to every reader, I will take the
liberty of making a number of extracts from it, at the same time
warning the student that nothing will compensate him for a failure
to peruse the complete report.
In answer to the letter forwarded with an indorsement by
Major-General Pope, given above, General Crook received a telegram
dated Washington, February 14, 1885, which directed him, pending
conferences between the Interior and War Departments with a view of
harmonizing matters, “not to interfere with farming operations of
Indians who are not considered as prisoners.”
General Crook replied in these terms:
“I have the honor to say that the agreement of July 7, 1883, by
which ‘the War Department was intrusted with the entire police
control of all the Indians on the San Carlos reservation,’ was
entered into upon my own expressed willingness to be personally
responsible for the good conduct of all the Indians there
congregated. My understanding then was, and still is, that I
should put them to work and set them to raising corn instead of
scalps. This right I have exercised for two years without a word
of complaint from any source. During all this time not a single
depredation of any kind has been committed. The whole country has
looked to me individually for the preservation of order among the
Apaches, and the prevention of the outrages from which the
southwest frontier has suffered for so many years.
“In pursuance of this understanding, the Chiricahuas, although
nominally prisoners, have been to a great extent scattered over
the reservation and placed upon farms, the object being to quietly
and gradually effect a tribal disintegration and lead them out
from a life of vagabondage to one of peace and self-maintenance.
They have ramified among the other Apaches to such an extent that
it is impossible to exercise jurisdiction over them without
exercising it over the others as well. At the same time trusted
Indians of the peaceful bands are better enabled to keep the
scattered Chiricahuas under constant surveillance, while the
incentive to industry and good conduct which the material
prosperity of the settled Apaches brings to the notice of the
Chiricahuas is so palpable that it is hardly worth while to allude
to it. As this right of control has now been withdrawn from me, I
must respectfully decline to be any longer held responsible for
the behavior of any of the Indians on that reservation. Further, I
regret being compelled to say that in refusing to relieve me from
this responsibility (as requested in my letter of January 20th),
and at the same time taking from me the power by which these
dangerous Indians have been controlled and managed and compelled
to engage in industrial pursuits, the War Department destroys my
influence and does an injustice to me and the service which I
represent.”
The indorsement of Major-General John Pope, the commander of the
military division, was even more emphatic than the preceding one had
been, but for reasons of brevity it is omitted excepting these
words.
“If General Crook’s authority over the Indians at San Carlos be
curtailed or modified in any way, there are certain to follow very
serious results, if not a renewal of Indian wars and depredations
in Arizona.”
These papers in due course of time were referred by the War to the
Interior Department, in a communication the terminal paragraph of
which reads as follows, under date of March 28, 1885:
“I submit for your consideration whether it is not desirable and
advisable in the public interests, that the entire control of
these Indians be placed under the charge of General Crook, with
full authority to prescribe and enforce such regulations for their
management as in his judgment may be proper, independently of the
duties of the civil agents, and upon this question this Department
will appreciate an early expression of your views.
“(Signed) WILLIAM C. ENDICOTT, _Secretary of War_.”
One of the principal causes of trouble was the disinclination of the
agent to permit the Apaches to excavate and blast an irrigating
ditch, which had been levelled and staked out for them by Lieutenant
Thomas Dugan, Third Cavalry, one of Captain Crawford’s assistants,
the others being Parker, West, and Britton Davis of the Third
Cavalry, Elliott of the Fourth Cavalry, and Strother of the First
Infantry. Captain Crawford, feeling that his usefulness had gone,
applied to be relieved from his duties at the San Carlos and allowed
to rejoin his regiment, which application was granted, and his place
was taken by Captain Pierce, of the First Infantry, who was also
clothed with the powers of the civil agent.
It was too late. The Chiricahuas had perceived that harmony did not
exist between the officials of the Government, and they had become
restless, suspicious, and desirous of resuming their old career. A
small number of them determined to get back to the Sierra Madre at
all hazards, but more than three-fourths concluded to remain. On the
17th of May, 1885, one hundred and twenty-four Chiricahuas, of all
ages and both sexes, under the command of “Geronimo” and “Nachez,”
the two chiefs who had been most energetic in their farm work, broke
out from the reservation, but the other three-fourths listened to
the counsels of “Chato,” who was unfriendly to “Geronimo” and
adhered to the cause of the white man. It has never been ascertained
for what special reason, real or assigned, the exodus was made. It
is known that for several days and nights before leaving, “Geronimo”
and “Nachez,” with some of their immediate followers, had been
indulging in a prolonged debauch upon the “tizwin” of the tribe, and
it is supposed that fearing the punishment which was always meted
out to those caught perpetuating the use of this debasing
intoxicant, they in a drunken frenzy sallied out for the Sierra
Madre. Lieutenant Britton Davis, Third Cavalry, under whose control
the Chiricahuas were, telegraphed at once to General Crook, but the
wires were working badly and the message was never delivered. Had
the message reached Crook it is not likely that any trouble would
have occurred, as he would have arranged the whole business in a
moment. To quote his own words as given in the very report under
discussion:
“It should not be expected that an Indian who has lived as a
barbarian all his life will become an angel the moment he comes on
a reservation and promises to behave himself, or that he has that
strict sense of honor which a person should have who has had the
advantage of civilization all his life, and the benefit of a moral
training and character which has been transmitted to him through a
long line of ancestors. It requires constant watching and
knowledge of their character to keep them from going wrong. They
are children in ignorance, not in innocence. I do not wish to be
understood as in the least palliating their crimes, but I wish to
say a word to stem the torrent of invective and abuse which has
almost universally been indulged in against the whole Apache race.
This is not strange on the frontier from a certain class of
vampires who prey on the misfortunes of their fellow-men, and who
live best and easiest in time of Indian troubles. With them peace
kills the goose that lays the golden egg. Greed and avarice on the
part of the whites—in other words, the almighty dollar—is at the
bottom of nine-tenths of all our Indian trouble.”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST “GERONIMO”—THE CROPS RAISED BY THE APACHES—THE
PURSUIT OF THE HOSTILES—THE HARD WORK OF THE TROOPS—EFFICIENT
AND FAITHFUL SERVICE OF THE CHIRICAHUA SCOUTS—WAR DANCES AND
SPIRIT DANCES—CAPTAIN CRAWFORD KILLED—A VISIT TO THE HOSTILE
STRONGHOLD—A “NERVY” PHOTOGRAPHER—A WHITE BOY CAPTIVE AMONG THE
APACHES—“ALCHISE’S” AND “KA-E-TEN-NA’S” GOOD WORK—“GERONIMO”
SURRENDERS TO CROOK.
To show that Apaches will work under anything like proper
encouragement, the reader has only to peruse these extracts from the
annual report of Captain F. E. Pierce, who succeeded Captain Emmet
Crawford:
“They have about eleven hundred acres under cultivation, and have
raised about 700,000 lbs. of barley and an equal amount of corn.
They have delivered to the Post Quartermaster here 60,000 lbs. of
barley and 60,000 lbs. to the agency, have hauled 66,000 lbs. to
Thomas and about 180,000 lbs. to Globe, and still have about
330,000 lbs. on hand. Since they have been hauling barley to
Thomas and Globe, however, where they receive fair prices, they
feel much better. It gives them an opportunity to get out and
mingle with people of the world, and get an idea of the manner of
transacting business and a chance to make purchases at
considerably less rates than if they bought of the Indian traders
at San Carlos. The people at Globe are particularly kind to them,
and, so far as I can learn, deal justly with them, and the more
respectable ones will not permit the unprincipled to impose upon
them or maltreat them in any way. The Indians also conduct
themselves properly, and all citizens with whom I have conversed
speak very highly of their conduct while in Globe. About a dozen
are now regularly employed there at various kinds of work; and
they are encouraged as much as possible to seek work with
citizens, as they thereby learn much that will be of benefit to
them in the future. Shortly after the Chiricahua outbreak, word
was sent to the head of each band that General Crook wanted two
hundred more scouts to take the field, and all who wished to go
were invited to appear here next morning. It is difficult to say
how many reported, but almost every able-bodied man came. It was
difficult to tell which ones to take when all were so eager to go.
But a body of as fine men was selected as could well be secured in
any country. They repeatedly told me they meant fight; that they
intended to do the best they could, and reports from the field
show that they have made good their promises. Sixteen hundred
White Mountain Indians have been entirely self-sustaining for
nearly three years.”
The Indians at the White Mountains, according to the official
reports, were doing remarkably well.
“At this date there have been 700,000 pounds of hay and 65,000
pounds of barley purchased by the Quartermaster. Of course, the
amount of hay which will yet be furnished by them will be
regulated by the amount required, which will be in all about
1,800,000 pounds. As near as I can judge, the total yield of
barley will be about 80,000 pounds, or about double the quantity
produced last year. If no misfortune happens the crops, the yield
of corn for this year should fully reach 3,500,000 pounds,
including that retained by the Indians for their own consumption
and for seed.
“Cantelopes, watermelons, muskmelons, beans, and pumpkins are
raised by them to a considerable extent, but only for their own
consumption, there being no market for this class of produce.
“A few of the Indians—principally Chiricahuas—are delivering wood
on the contract at the post of Fort Apache. I have no doubt that
more would engage in it if it were not for the fact that the White
Mountain Apaches have no wagons for hauling it.”
It would take many more pages than I care to devote to the subject
to properly describe the awful consequences of the official blunder,
which in this case was certainly worse than a crime, shown in the
bickerings and jealousies between the representatives of the War and
Interior Departments, which culminated in the “Geronimo” outbreak of
May, 1885. Those of my readers who have followed this recital need
no assurances that the country was as rough as rocks and ravines,
deep cañons and mountain streams, could make it; neither do they
need to be assured that the trail of the retreating Chiricahuas was
reddened with the blood of the innocent and unsuspecting settlers,
or that the pursuit made by the troops was energetic, untiring, and,
although often baffled, finally successful. No more arduous and
faithful work was ever done by any military commands than was
performed by those of Emmet Crawford, Lieutenant Britton Davis,
Frank L. Bennett, Lieutenant M. W. Day, Surgeon Bermingham, and
Major Wirt Davis in tracking the scattered fragments of the
“Geronimo” party over rocks and across country soaked with the heavy
rains of summer which obliterated trails as fast as made. The work
done by “Chato” and the Chiricahuas who had remained on the
reservation was of an inestimable value, and was fittingly
recognized by General Crook, Captain Crawford, and the other
officers in command of them.
Thirty-nine white people were killed in New Mexico and thirty four
in Arizona, as established in official reports; in addition to these
there were numbers of friendly Apaches killed by the renegades,
notably in the raid made by the latter during the month of November,
1885, to the villages near Camp Apache, when they killed twelve of
the friendlies and carried off six women and children captive. The
White Mountain Apaches killed one of the hostile Chiricahuas and cut
off his head. On the 23d of June, 1885, one of the hostile
Chiricahua women was killed and fifteen women and children captured
in an engagement in the Bavispe Mountains, northeast of Opata
(Sonora, Mexico), by Chiricahua Apache scouts under command of
Captain Crawford; these prisoners reported that one of their
warriors had been shot through the knee-joint in this affair, but
was carried off before the troops could seize him. July 29, 1885,
two of the hostile Chiricahua bucks were ambushed and killed in the
Hoya Mountains, Sonora, by the detachment of Apache scouts with
Major Wirt Davis’s command. August 7, 1885, five of the hostile
Chiricahuas were killed (three bucks, one squaw, and one boy fifteen
years old) by the Apache scouts of Wirt Davis’s command, who
likewise captured fifteen women and children in the same engagement
(northeast of the little town of Nacori, Sonora, Mexico). On the 22d
of September, 1885, the same scouts killed another Chiricahua in the
mountains near Bavispe.
An ex-army-officer, writing on this subject of scouting in the
southwestern country, to the _Republican_, of St. Louis, Mo.,
expressed his opinion in these words:
“It is laid down in our army tactics (Upton’s ‘Cavalry Tactics,’
p. 477), that twenty-five miles a day is the maximum that cavalry
can stand. Bear this in mind, and also that here is an enemy with
a thousand miles of hilly and sandy country to run over, and each
brave provided with from three to five ponies trained like dogs.
They carry almost nothing but arms and ammunition; they can live
on the cactus; they can go more than forty-eight hours without
water; they know every water-hole and every foot of ground in this
vast extent of country; they have incredible powers of endurance;
they run in small bands, scattering at the first indications of
pursuit. What can the United States soldier, mounted on his heavy
American horse, with the necessary forage, rations, and camp
equipage, do as against this supple, untiring foe? Nothing,
absolutely nothing. It is no exaggeration to say that these fiends
can travel, week in and week out, at the rate of seventy miles a
day, and this over the most barren and desolate country
imaginable. One week of such work will kill the average soldier
and his horse; the Apache thrives on it. The frontiersman, as he
now exists, is simply a fraud as an Indian-fighter. He may be good
for a dash, but he lacks endurance. General Crook has pursued the
only possible method of solving this problem. He has, to the
extent of his forces, guarded all available passes with regulars,
and he has sent Indian scouts on the trail after Indians. He has
fought the devil with fire. Never in the history of this country
has there been more gallant, more uncomplaining, and more
efficient service than that done by our little army in the attempt
to suppress this Geronimo outbreak.”...
In the month of November additional scouts were enlisted to take the
place of those whose term of six months was about to expire. It was
a great time at San Carlos, and the “medicine men” were in all their
glory; of course, it would never do for the scouts to start out
without the customary war dance, but besides that the “medicine men”
held one of their “spirit” dances to consult with the powers of the
other world and learn what success was to be expected. I have
several times had the good luck to be present at these “spirit
dances,” as well as to be with the “medicine men” while they were
delivering their predictions received from the spirits, but on the
present occasion there was an unusual vehemence in the singing, and
an unusual vim and energy in the dancing, which would betray the
interest felt in the outcome of the necromancy. A war dance,
attended by more than two hundred men and women, was in full swing
close to the agency buildings in the changing lights and shadows of
a great fire. This enabled the “medicine men” to secure all the more
privacy for their own peculiar work, of which I was an absorbed
spectator. There were about an even hundred of warriors and young
boys not yet full grown, who stood in a circle surrounding a huge
bonfire, kept constantly replenished with fresh fagots by assiduous
attendants. At one point of the circumference were planted four
bunches of green willow branches, square to the cardinal points.
Seated within this sacred grove, as I may venture to call it, as it
represented about all the trees they could get at the San Carlos,
were the members of an orchestra, the leader of which with a small
curved stick beat upon the drum improvised out of an iron
camp-kettle, covered with soaped calico, and partially filled with
water. The beat of this rounded stick was a peculiar rubbing thump,
the blows being sliding. Near this principal drummer was planted a
sprig of cedar. The other musicians beat with long switches upon a
thin raw-hide, lying on the ground, just as the Sioux did at their
sun dance. There were no women present at this time. I did see three
old hags on the ground, watching the whole proceedings with curious
eyes, but they kept at a respectful distance, and were Apache-Yumas
and not Apaches.
The orchestra thumped and drummed furiously, and the leader began to
intone, in a gradually increasing loudness of voice and with much
vehemence, a “medicine” song, of which I could distinguish enough to
satisfy me that part of it was words, which at times seemed to
rudely rhyme, and the rest of it the gibberish of “medicine”
incantation which I had heard so often while on the Sierra Madre
campaign in 1883. The chorus seconded this song with all their
powers, and whenever the refrain was chanted sang their parts with
violent gesticulations. Three dancers, in full disguise, jumped into
the centre of the great circle, running around the fire, shrieking
and muttering, encouraged by the shouts and singing of the
on-lookers, and by the drumming and incantation of the chorus which
now swelled forth at full lung-power. Each of these dancers was
beautifully decorated; they were naked to the waist, wore kilts of
fringed buckskin, bound on with sashes, and moccasins reaching to
the knees. Their identity was concealed by head-dresses, part of
which was a mask of buckskin, which enveloped the head as well as
the face, and was secured around the neck by a “draw-string” to
prevent its slipping out of place. Above this extended to a height
of two feet a framework of slats of the amole stalk, each differing
slightly from that of the others, but giving to the wearer an
imposing, although somewhat grotesque appearance. Each “medicine
man’s” back, arms, and shoulders were painted with emblems of the
lightning, arrow, snake, or other powers appealed to by the Apaches.
I succeeded in obtaining drawings of all these, and also secured one
of these head-dresses of the “Cha-ja-la,” as they are called, but a
more detailed description does not seem to be called for just now.
Each of the dancers was provided with two long wands or sticks, one
in each hand, with which they would point in every direction,
principally towards the cardinal points. When they danced, they
jumped, pranced, pirouetted, and at last circled rapidly, revolving
much as the dervishes are described as doing. This must have been
hard work, because their bodies were soon moist with perspiration,
which made them look as if they had been coated with oil.
“Klashidn,” the young man who had led me down, said that the
orchestra was now singing to the trees which had been planted in the
ground, and I then saw that a fourth “medicine man,” who acted with
the air of one in authority, had taken his station within. When the
dancers had become thoroughly exhausted, they would dart out of the
ring and disappear in the gloom to consult with the spirits; three
several times they appeared and disappeared, at each return dancing,
running, and whirling about with increased energy. Having attained
the degree of mental or spiritual exaltation necessary for
satisfactory communion with the denizens of the other world, they
remained absent for at least half an hour, the orchestra rendering a
monotonous refrain, mournful as a funeral dirge. At last a thrill of
expectancy ran through the throng, and I saw that they were looking
anxiously for the incoming of the “medicine men.” When they arrived
all the orchestra stood up, their leader slightly in advance,
holding a bunch of cedar in his left hand. The “medicine men”
advanced in single file, the leader bending low his head, and
placing both his arms about the neck of the chief in such a manner
that his wands crossed, he murmured some words in his ear which
seemed to be of pleasing import. Each of the others did the same
thing to the chief, who took his stand first on the east, then on
the south, then on the west, and lastly on the north of the little
grove through which the three pranced, muttering a jumble of sounds
which I cannot reproduce, but which sounded for all the world like
the chant of the “Hooter” of the Zunis at their Feast of Fire. This
terminated the great “medicine” ceremony of the night, and the glad
shouts of the Apaches testified that the incantations of their
spiritual advisers or their necromancy, whichever it was, promised a
successful campaign.
Captain Crawford, whose services, both in pursuit of hostile Apaches
and in efforts to benefit and civilize those who had submitted, had
won for him the respect and esteem of every manly man in the army or
out of it who had the honor of knowing him, met his death at or near
Nacori, Sonora, Mexico, January 11, 1886, under peculiarly sad and
distressing circumstances. These are narrated by General Crook in
the orders announcing Crawford’s death, of which the following is an
extract:
“Captain Crawford, with the zeal and gallantry which had always
distinguished him, volunteered for the arduous and thankless task
of pursuing the renegade Chiricahua Apaches to their stronghold in
the Sierra Madre, Mexico, and was assigned to the command of one
of the most important of the expeditions organized for this
purpose. In the face of the most discouraging obstacles, he had
bravely and patiently followed in the track of the renegades,
being constantly in the field from the date of the outbreak in May
last to the day of his death.
“After a march of eighteen hours without halt in the roughest
conceivable country, he had succeeded in discovering and
surprising their rancheria in the lofty ranges near the Jarras
River, Sonora. Everything belonging to the enemy fell into our
hands, and the Chiricahuas, during the fight, sent in a squaw to
beg for peace. All arrangements had been made for a conference
next morning. Unfortunately, a body of Mexican irregular troops
attacked Captain Crawford’s camp at daybreak, and it was while
endeavoring to save the lives of others that Crawford fell.
“His loss is irreparable. It is unnecessary to explain the
important nature of the services performed by this distinguished
soldier. His name has been prominently identified with most of the
severest campaigns, and with many of the severest engagements with
hostile Indians, since the close of the War of the Rebellion, in
which also, as a mere youth, he bore a gallant part.”
The irregular troops of the Mexicans were Tarahumari Indians, almost
as wild as the Apaches themselves, knowing as little of morality and
etiquette, the mortal enemies of the Apaches for two hundred years.
While it is probable that their statement may be true, and that the
killing of Crawford was unpremeditated, the indignities afterwards
heaped upon Lieutenant Maus, who succeeded Crawford in command, and
who went over to visit the Mexican commander, did not manifest a
very friendly spirit. The Government of Mexico was in as desperate
straits as our own in regard to the subjugation of the Chiricahua
Apaches, which could never have been effected without the employment
of just such wild forces as the Tarahumaris, who alone would stand
up and fight with the fierce Chiricahuas, or could trail them
through the mountains.
“Geronimo” sent word that he would come in and surrender at a spot
he would designate. This was the “Cañon de los Embudos,” in the
northeast corner of Sonora, on the Arizona line. From Fort Bowie,
Arizona, to the “Contrabandista” (Smuggler) Springs, in Sonora, is
eighty-four miles, following roads and trails; the lofty mountain
ranges are very much broken, and the country is decidedly rough
except along the road. There are a number of excellent ranchos—that
of the Chiricahua Cattle Company, twenty-five miles out from Bowie;
that of the same company on Whitewood Creek, where we saw droves of
fat beeves lazily browsing under the shady foliage of oak trees; and
Joyce’s, or Frank Leslie’s, where we found Lieutenant Taylor and a
small detachment of Indian scouts.
The next morning at an early hour we started and drove first to
the camp of Captain Allan Smith, Fourth Cavalry, with whom were
Lieutenant Erwin and Surgeon Fisher. Captain Smith was living in
an adobe hut, upon whose fireplace he had drawn and painted, with
no unskilled hand, pictures, grave and comic, which imparted an
air of civilization to his otherwise uncouth surrounding. Mr.
Thomas Moore had preceded General Crook with a pack-train, and
with him were “Alchise,” “Ka-e-ten-na,” a couple of old Chiricahua
squaws sent down with all the latest gossip from the women
prisoners at Bowie, Antonio Besias and Montoya (the interpreters),
and Mr. Strauss, Mayor of Tucson. All these moved forward towards
the “Contrabandista” Springs. At the last moment of our stay a
photographer, named Fly, from Tombstone, asked permission for
himself and his assistant—Mr. Chase—to follow along in the wake of
the column; and still another addition, and a very welcome one,
was made in the person of José Maria, another Spanish-Apache
interpreter, for whom General Crook had sent on account of his
perfect familiarity with the language of the Chiricahuas.
San Bernardino Springs lie twelve miles from Silver Springs, and had
been occupied by a cattleman named Slaughter, since General Crook
had made his expedition into the Sierra Madre. Here I saw a dozen or
more quite large mortars of granite, of aboriginal manufacture, used
for mashing acorns and other edible nuts; the same kind of household
implements are or were to be found in the Green Valley in the
northern part of Arizona, and were also used for this same purpose.
We left the wheeled conveyances and mounted mules saddled and in
waiting, and rode over to the “Contrabandista,” three miles across
the boundary. Before going to bed that night, General Crook showed
“Ka-e-ten-na” a letter which he had received from Lorenzo Bonito, an
Apache pupil in the Carlisle School. “Ka-e-ten-na” had received one
himself, and held it out in the light of the fire, mumbling
something which the other Apaches fancied was reading, and at which
they marvelled greatly; but not content with this proof of travelled
culture, “Ka-e-ten-na” took a piece of paper from me, wrote upon it
in carefully constructed school-boy capitals, and then handed it
back to me to read aloud. I repressed my hilarity and read slowly
and solemnly: “MY WIFE HIM NAME KOWTENNAYS WIFE.” “ONE YEAR HAB TREE
HUNNERD SIXY-FIBE DAY.” “Ka-e-ten-na” bore himself with the dignity
and complacency of a Boston Brahmin; the envy of his comrades was
ill-concealed and their surprise undisguised. It wasn’t in writing
alone that “Ka-e-ten-na” was changed, but in everything: he had
become a white man, and was an apostle of peace, and an imitation of
the methods which had made the whites own such a “rancheria” as San
Francisco.
The next morning we struck out southeast across a country full of
little hills of drift and conglomerate, passing the cañons of the
Guadalupe and the Bonito, the former dry, the latter flowing water.
A drove of the wild hogs (peccaries or musk hogs, called “jabali” by
the Mexicans) ran across our path; instantly the scouts took after
them at a full run, “Ka-e-ten-na” shooting one through the head
while his horse was going at full speed, and the others securing
four or five more; they were not eaten. Approaching the Cañon de los
Embudos, our scouts sent up a signal smoke to warn their comrades
that they were coming. The eyes of the Apaches are extremely sharp,
and “Alchise,” “Mike,” “Ka-e-ten-na,” and others had seen and
recognized a party of horsemen advancing towards us for a mile at
least before Strauss or I could detect anything coming out of the
hills: they were four of our people on horseback riding to meet us.
They conducted us to Maus’s camp in the Cañon de los Embudos, in a
strong position, on a low mesa overlooking the water, and with
plenty of fine grass and fuel at hand. The surrounding country was
volcanic, covered with boulders of basalt, and the vegetation was
the Spanish bayonet, yucca, and other thorny plants.
The rancheria of the hostile Chiricahuas was in a lava bed, on top
of a small conical hill surrounded by steep ravines, not five
hundred yards in direct line from Maus, but having between the two
positions two or three steep and rugged gulches which served as
scarps and counter-scarps. The whole ravine was romantically
beautiful: shading the rippling water were smooth, white-trunked,
long, and slender sycamores, dark gnarly ash, rough-barked
cottonwoods, pliant willows, briery buckthorn, and much of the more
tropical vegetation already enumerated. After General Crook had
lunched, “Geronimo” and most of the Chiricahua warriors approached
our camp; not all came in at once; only a few, and these not all
armed. The others were here, there, and everywhere, but all on the
_qui vive_, apprehensive of treachery, and ready to meet it. Not
more than half a dozen would enter camp at the same time. “Geronimo”
said that he was anxious for a talk, which soon took place in the
shade of large cottonwood and sycamore trees. Those present were
General Crook, Dr. Davis, Mr. Moore, Mr. Strauss, Lieutenants Maus,
Shipp, and Faison; Captain Roberts and his young son Charlie, a
bright lad of ten; Mr. Daily and Mr. Carlisle, of the pack-trains;
Mr. Fly, the photographer, and his assistant, Mr. Chase; packers
Shaw and Foster; a little boy, named Howell, who had followed us
over from the San Bernardino ranch, thirty miles; and “Antonio
Besias,” “Montoya,” “Concepcion,” “José Maria,” “Alchise,”
“Ka-e-ten-na,” “Mike,” and others as interpreters.
I made a verbatim record of the conference, but will condense it as
much as possible, there being the usual amount of repetition,
compliment, and talking at cross-purposes incident to all similar
meetings. “Geronimo” began a long disquisition upon the causes which
induced the outbreak from Camp Apache: he blamed “Chato,” “Mickey
Free,” and Lieutenant Britton Davis, who, he charged, were
unfriendly to him; he was told by an Indian named “Nodiskay” and by
the wife of “Mangas” that the white people were going to send for
him, arrest and kill him; he had been praying to the Dawn (Tapida)
and the Darkness, to the Sun (Chigo-na-ay) and the Sky (Yandestan),
and to Assunutlije to help him and put a stop to those bad stories
that people were telling about him and which they had put in the
papers. (The old chief was here apparently alluding to the demand
made by certain of the southwestern journals, at the time of his
surrender to Crook in 1883, that he should be hanged.) “I don’t want
that any more; when a man tries to do right, such stories ought not
to be put in the newspapers. What is the matter that you [General
Crook] don’t speak to me? It would be better if you would speak to
me and look with a pleasant face; it would make better feeling; I
would be glad if you did. I’d be better satisfied if you would talk
to me once in a while. Why don’t you look at me and smile at me? I
am the same man; I have the same feet, legs, and hands, and the Sun
looks down on me a complete man; I wish you would look and smile at
me. The Sun, the Darkness, the Winds, are all listening to what we
now say. To prove to you that I am now telling you the truth,
remember I sent you word that I would come from a place far away to
speak to you here, and you see me now. Some have come on horseback
and some on foot; if I were thinking bad or if I had done bad, I
would never have come here. If it had been my fault would I have
come so far to talk with you?” He then expressed his delight at
seeing “Ka-e-ten-na” once more: he had lost all hope of ever having
that pleasure; that was one reason why he had left Camp Apache.
GENERAL CROOK: “I have heard what you have said. It seems very
strange that more than forty men should be afraid of three; but if
you left the reservation for that reason, why did you kill innocent
people, sneaking all over the country to do it? What did those
innocent people do to you that you should kill them, steal their
horses, and slip around in the rocks like coyotes? What had that to
do with killing innocent people? There is not a week passes that you
don’t hear foolish stories in your own camp; but you are no
child—you don’t have to believe them. You promised me in the Sierra
Madre that _that_ peace should last, but you have lied about it.
When a man has lied to me once, I want some better proof than his
own word before I can believe him again. Your story about being
afraid of arrest is all bosh; there were no orders to arrest you.
You sent up some of your people to kill ‘Chato’ and Lieutenant
Davis, and then you started the story that they had killed them, and
thus you got a great many of your people to go out. Everything that
you did on the reservation is known; there is no use for you to try
to talk nonsense. I am no child. You must make up your minds whether
you will stay out on the war-path or surrender unconditionally. If
you stay out I’ll keep after you and kill the last one if it takes
fifty years. You are making a great fuss about seeing ‘Ka-e-ten-na’;
over a year ago, I asked you if you wanted me to bring ‘Ka-e-ten-na’
back, but you said ‘no.’ It’s a good thing for you, ‘Geronimo,’ that
we didn’t bring ‘Ka-e-ten-na’ back, because ‘Ka-e-ten-na’ has more
sense now than all the rest of the Chiricahuas put together. You
told me the same sort of a story in the Sierra Madre, but you lied.
What evidence have I of your sincerity? How do I know whether or not
you are lying to me? Have I ever lied to you? I have said all I have
to say; you had better think it over to-night and let me know in the
morning.”
During this conference “Geronimo” appeared nervous and agitated;
perspiration, in great beads, rolled down his temples and over his
hands; and he clutched from time to time at a buckskin thong which
he held tightly in one hand. Mr. Fly, the photographer, saw his
opportunity, and improved it fully: he took “shots” at “Geronimo”
and the rest of the group, and with a “nerve” that would have
reflected undying glory on a Chicago drummer, coolly asked
“Geronimo” and the warriors with him to change positions, and turn
their heads or faces, to improve the negative. None of them seemed
to mind him in the least except “Chihuahua,” who kept dodging behind
a tree, but was at last caught by the dropping of the slide.
Twenty-four warriors listened to the conference or loitered within
ear-shot; they were loaded down with metallic ammunition, some of it
reloading and some not. Every man and boy in the band wore two
cartridge-belts. The youngsters had on brand-new shirts, such as are
made and sold in Mexico, of German cotton, and nearly all—young or
old—wore new parti-colored blankets, of same manufacture, showing
that since the destruction of the village by Crawford, in January,
they had refitted themselves either by plunder or purchase.
Mr. Strauss, Mr. Carlisle, “José Maria,” and I were awakened at an
early hour in the morning (March 26, 1886), and walked over to the
rancheria of the Chiricahuas. “Geronimo” was already up and engaged
in an earnest conversation with “Ka-e-ten-na” and nearly all his
warriors. We moved from one “jacal” to another, all being
constructed alike of the stalks of the Spanish bayonet and mescal
and amole, covered with shreds of blanket, canvas, and other
textiles. The “daggers” of the Spanish bayonet and mescal were
arranged around each “jacal” to form an impregnable little citadel.
There were not more than twelve or fifteen of these in the
“rancheria,” which was situated upon the apex of an extinct crater,
the lava blocks being utilized as breastworks, while the deep seams
in the contour of the hill were so many fosses, to be crossed only
after rueful slaughter of assailants. A full brigade could not drive
out that little garrison, provided its ammunition and repeating
rifles held out. They were finely armed with Winchesters and
Springfield breech-loading carbines, with any quantity of metallic
cartridges.
Physically, the Chiricahuas were in magnificent condition: every
muscle was perfect in development and hard as adamant, and one of
the young men in a party playing monte was as finely muscled as a
Greek statue. A group of little boys were romping freely and
carelessly together; one of them seemed to be of Irish and Mexican
lineage. After some persuasion he told Strauss and myself that his
name was Santiago Mackin, captured at Mimbres, New Mexico; he seemed
to be kindly treated by his young companions, and there was no
interference with our talk, but he was disinclined to say much and
was no doubt thoroughly scared. Beyond showing by the intelligent
glance of his eyes that he fully comprehended all that was said to
him in both Spanish and English, he took no further notice of us. He
was about ten years old, slim, straight, and sinewy, blue-gray eyes,
badly freckled, light eyebrows and lashes, much tanned and blistered
by the sun, and wore an old and once-white handkerchief on his head
which covered it so tightly that the hair could not be seen. He was
afterwards returned to his relations in New Mexico.
One of the Chiricahuas had a silver watch which he called
“Chi-go-na-ay” (Sun), an evidence that he had a good idea of its
purpose. Nearly every one wore “medicine” of some kind: either
little buckskin bags of the Hoddentin of the Tule, the feathers
of the red-bird or of the woodpecker, the head of a quail, the
claws of a prairie dog, or silver crescents; “medicine”
cords—“Izze-kloth”—were also worn. I stopped alongside of a
young Tubal Cain and watched him hammering a Mexican dollar
between two stones, and when he had reduced it to the proper
fineness he began to stamp and incise ornamentation upon it with
a sharp-pointed knife and a stone for a hammer. Nearly all the
little girls advanced to the edge of our camp and gazed in mute
admiration upon Charlie Roberts, evincing their good opinion in
such an unmistakable manner that the young gentleman at once
became the guy of the packers. “Geronimo” and his warriors
remained up in their village all day, debating the idea of an
unconditional surrender.
The next morning (March 27th) “Chihuahua” sent a secret message to
General Crook, to say that he was certain all the Chiricahuas would
soon come in and surrender; but whether they did or not, he would
surrender his own band at noon and come down into our camp.
“Ka-e-ten-na” and “Alchise” had been busy at work among the
hostiles, dividing their councils, exciting their hopes, and
enhancing their fears; could General Crook have promised them
immunity for the past, they would have come down the previous
evening, when “Chihuahua” had first sent word of his intention to
give up without condition, but General Crook did not care to have
“Chihuahua” leave the hostiles at once; he thought he could be more
useful by remaining in the village for a day or two as a leaven to
foment distrust of “Geronimo” and start a disintegration and
demoralization of the band. “Ka-e-ten-na” told General Crook that
all the previous night “Geronimo” kept his warriors ready for any
act of treachery on our part, and that during the talk of the 25th
they were prepared to shoot the moment an attempt should be made to
seize their leaders. It was scarcely noon when “Geronimo,”
“Chihuahua,” “Nachita,” “Kutli,” and one other buck came in and said
they wanted to talk. “Nané” toddled after them, but he was so old
and feeble that we did not count him. Our people gathered under the
sycamores in the ravine, while “Geronimo” seated himself under a
mulberry, both he and “Kutli” having their faces blackened with
pounded galena. “Chihuahua” spoke as follows: “I am very glad to see
you, General Crook, and have this talk with you. It is as you say:
we are always in danger out here. I hope that from this on we may
live better with our families, and not do any more harm to anybody.
I am anxious to behave. I think that the Sun is looking down upon
me, and the Earth is listening. I am thinking better. It seems to me
that I have seen the one who makes the rain and sends the winds, or
he must have sent you to this place. I surrender myself to you,
because I believe in you and you do not deceive us. You must be our
God; I am satisfied with all that you do. You must be the one who
makes the green pastures, who sends the rain, who commands the
winds. You must be the one who sends the fresh fruits that come on
the trees every year. There are many men in the world who are big
chiefs and command many people, but you, I think, are the greatest
of them all. I want you to be a father to me and treat me as your
son. I want you to have pity on me. There is no doubt that all you
do is right, because all you say is true. I trust in all you say;
you do not deceive; all the things you tell us are facts. I am now
in your hands. I place myself at your disposition to dispose of as
you please. I shake your hand. I want to come right into your camp
with my family and stay with you. I don’t want to stay away at a
distance. I want to be right where you are. I have roamed these
mountains from water to water. Never have I found the place where I
could see my father or mother until to-day. I see you, my father. I
surrender to you now, and I don’t want any more bad feeling or bad
talk. I am going over to stay with you in your camp.
“Whenever a man raises anything, even a dog, he thinks well of it,
and tries to raise it up, and treats it well. So I want you to feel
towards me, and be good to me, and don’t let people say bad things
about me. Now I surrender to you and go with you. When we are
travelling together on the road or anywhere else, I hope you’ll talk
to me once in a while. I think a great deal of ‘Alchise’ and
‘Ka-e-ten-na’; they think a great deal of me. I hope some day to be
all the same as their brother. [Shakes hands.] How long will it be
before I can live with these friends?”
Despatches were sent ahead to Bowie to inform General Sheridan of
the conference and its results; the Chiricahuas had considered three
propositions: one, their own, that they be allowed to return to the
reservation unharmed; the second, from General Crook, that they be
placed in confinement for a term of years at a distance from the
Agency, and that, if their families so desired, they be permitted to
accompany them, leaving “Nané,” who was old and superannuated, at
Camp Apache; or, that they return to the war-path and fight it out.
“Mangas,” with thirteen of the Chiricahuas, six of them warriors,
was not with “Geronimo,” having left him some months previously and
never reunited with him. He (General Crook) asked that instructions
be sent him with as little delay as possible.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE EFFECTS OF BAD WHISKEY UPON SAVAGE INDIANS—THE WRETCH
TRIBOLLET—SOME OF THE CHIRICAHUAS SLIP AWAY FROM MAUS DURING A
RAINY NIGHT—THE BURIAL OF CAPTAIN CRAWFORD—CROOK’S TERMS
DISAPPROVED IN WASHINGTON—CROOK ASKS TO BE RELIEVED FROM COMMAND
IN ARIZONA—“GERONIMO” INDUCED TO COME IN BY THE CHIRICAHUA
AMBASSADORS, “KI-E-TA” AND “MARTINEZ”—TREACHERY SHOWN IN THE
TREATMENT OF THE WELL-BEHAVED MEMBERS OF THE CHIRICAHUA APACHE
BAND.
“Alchise” and “Ka-e-ten-na” came and awakened General Crook before
it was yet daylight of March 28th and informed him that “Nachita,”
one of the Chiricahua chiefs, was so drunk he couldn’t stand up and
was lying prone on the ground; other Chiricahuas were also drunk,
but none so drunk as “Nachita.” Whiskey had been sold them by a
rascal named Tribollet who lived on the San Bernardino ranch on the
Mexican side of the line, about four hundred yards from the
boundary. These Indians asked permission to take a squad of their
soldiers and guard Tribollet and his men to keep them from selling
any more of the soul-destroying stuff to the Chiricahuas. A
beautiful commentary upon the civilization of the white man! When we
reached Cajon Bonito, the woods and grass were on fire; four or five
Chiricahua mules, already saddled, were wandering about without
riders. Pretty soon we came upon “Geronimo,” “Kuthli,” and three
other Chiricahua warriors riding on two mules, all drunk as lords.
It seemed to me a great shame that armies could not carry with them
an atmosphere of military law which would have justified the hanging
of the wretch Tribollet as a foe to human society. Upon arriving at
San Bernardino Springs, Mr. Frank Leslie informed me that he had
seen this man Tribollet sell thirty dollars’ worth of mescal in less
than one hour—all to Chiricahuas—and upon being remonstrated with,
the wretch boasted that he could have sold one hundred dollars’
worth that day at ten dollars a gallon in silver. That night, during
a drizzling rain, a part of the Chiricahuas—those who had been
drinking Tribollet’s whiskey—stole out from Maus’s camp and betook
themselves again to the mountains, frightened, as was afterward
learned, by the lies told them by Tribollet and the men at his
ranch. Two of the warriors upon sobering up returned voluntarily,
and there is no doubt at all that, had General Crook not been
relieved from the command of the Department of Arizona, he could
have sent out runners from among their own people and brought back
the last one without a shot being fired. Before being stampeded by
the lies and vile whiskey of wicked men whose only mode of
livelihood was from the vices, weaknesses, or perils of the human
race, all the Chiricahuas—drunk or sober—were in the best of humor
and were quietly herding their ponies just outside of Maus’s camp.
“Chihuahua,” and the eighty others who remained with Maus, reached
Fort Bowie on the second day of April, 1886, under command of
Lieutenant Faison, Lieutenant Maus having started in pursuit
of “Geronimo,” and followed him for a long distance, but
unsuccessfully. As “Chihuahua” and his people were coming into
Bowie, the remains of the gallant Captain Emmet Crawford were _en
route_ to the railroad station to be transported to Nebraska for
interment. Every honor was shown them which could indicate the
loving tenderness of comrades who had known Crawford in life, and
could not forget his valor, nobleness, and high-minded character.
General Crook, Colonel Beaumont, Lieutenant Neal, and all other
officers present at the post attended in a body. Two companies of
the First Infantry, commanded, respectively, by Captain Markland and
Lieutenant Benjamin, formed the escort for one-half the
distance—seven miles; they then turned over the casket to the care
of two companies of the Eighth Infantry, commanded by Captain Savage
and Lieutenant Smiley. The detachment of Apache scouts, commanded by
Lieutenant Macdonald, Fourth Cavalry, was drawn up in line at the
station to serve as a guard of honor; and standing in a group, with
uncovered heads, were the officers and soldiers of the Eighth
Infantry, Second and Fourth Cavalry, there on duty—Whitney, Porter,
Surgeon R. H. White, Ames, Betts, Worth, Hubert, and many others.
Having been detailed, in company with Captain Charles Morton, Third
Cavalry, to conduct the remains to the city of Kearney, Nebraska,
and there see to their interment, my official relations with the
Department of Arizona terminated. I will insert, from the published
official correspondence of General Crook, a few extracts to throw a
light upon the history of the Chiricahuas. Lieutenant Macdonald
informed me, while at Bowie, that the “medicine men” present with
his Indian scouts had been dancing and talking with the spirits, who
had responded that “Geronimo” would surely return, as he had been
stampeded while drunk, and by bad white men. Under date of March 30,
1886, General Sheridan telegraphed to Crook:
“You are confidentially informed that your telegram of March 29th
is received. The President cannot assent to the surrender of the
hostiles on the terms of their imprisonment East for two years,
with the understanding of their return to the reservation. He
instructs you to enter again into negotiations on the terms of
their unconditional surrender, only sparing their lives. In the
meantime, and on the receipt of this order, you are directed to
take every precaution against the escape of the hostiles, which
must not be allowed under any circumstances. You must make at once
such disposition of your troops as will insure against further
hostilities, by completing the destruction of the hostiles, unless
these terms are acceded to.”
General Crook’s reply to the Lieutenant-General read as follows:
“There can be no doubt that the scouts were thoroughly loyal, and
would have prevented the hostiles leaving had it been possible.
When they left their camp with our scouts, they scattered over the
country so as to make surprise impossible, and they selected their
camp with this in view, nor would they all remain in camp at one
time. They kept more or less full of mescal. To enable you to
clearly understand the situation, it should be remembered that the
hostiles had an agreement with Lieutenant Maus that they were to
be met by me twenty-five miles below the line, and that no regular
troops were to be present. While I was very averse to such an
arrangement, I had to abide by it as it had already been entered
into. We found them in a camp on a rocky hill about five hundred
yards from Lieutenant Maus, in such a position that a thousand men
could not have surrounded them with any possibility of capturing
them. They were able, upon the approach of any enemy being
signalled, to scatter and escape through dozens of ravines and
cañons which would shelter them from pursuit until they reached
the higher ranges in the vicinity. They were armed to the teeth,
having the most improved arms and all the ammunition they could
carry. Lieutenant Maus with Apache scouts was camped at the
nearest point the hostiles would agree to his approaching. Even
had I been disposed to betray the confidence they placed in me it
would have been simply an impossibility to get white troops to
that point either by day or by night without their knowledge, and
had I attempted to do this the whole band would have stampeded
back to the mountains. So suspicious were they that never more
than from five to eight of the men came into our camp at one time,
and to have attempted the arrest of those would have stampeded the
others to the mountains.”
General Crook also telegraphed that “to inform the Indians that the
terms on which they surrendered are disapproved would, in my
judgment, not only make it impossible for me to negotiate with them,
but result in their scattering to the mountains, and I can’t at
present see any way to prevent it.”
Sheridan replied:
“I do not see what you can now do except to concentrate your
troops at the best points and give protection to the people.
Geronimo will undoubtedly enter upon other raids of murder and
robbery, and as the offensive campaign against him with scouts has
failed, would it not be best to take up the defensive, and give
protection to the business interests of Arizona and New Mexico?”
Crook’s next despatch to Sheridan said:
“It has been my aim throughout present operations to afford the
greatest amount of protection to life and property interests, and
troops have been stationed accordingly. Troops cannot protect
property beyond a radius of one half mile from camp. If offensive
operations against the Indians are not resumed, they may remain
quietly in the mountains for an indefinite time without crossing
the line, and yet their very presence there will be a constant
menace, and require the troops in this department to be at all
times in position to repel sudden raids; and so long as any remain
out they will form a nucleus for disaffected Indians from the
different agencies in Arizona and New Mexico to join. That the
operations of the scouts in Mexico have not proved so successful
as was hoped is due to the enormous difficulties they have been
compelled to encounter, from the nature of the Indians they have
been hunting, and the character of the country in which they have
operated, and of which persons not thoroughly conversant with the
character of both can have no conception. I believe that the plan
upon which I have conducted operations is the one most likely to
prove successful in the end. It may be, however, that I am too
much wedded to my own views in this matter, and as I have spent
nearly eight years of the hardest work of my life in this
department, I respectfully request that I may now be relieved from
its command.”
General Crook had carefully considered the telegrams from his
superiors in Washington, and was unable to see how he could allow
Indians, or anybody else, to enter his camp under assurances of
personal safety, and at the same time “take every precaution against
escape.” Unless he treacherously murdered them in cold blood, he was
unable to see a way out of the dilemma; and Crook was not the man to
lie to any one or deal treacherously by him. If there was one point
in his character which shone more resplendent than any other, it was
his absolute integrity in his dealings with representatives of
inferior races: he was not content with telling the truth, he was
careful to see that the interpretation had been so made that the
Indians understood every word and grasped every idea; and all his
remarks were put down in black and white, which, to quote his own
words, “would not lie, and would last long after the conferees had
been dead and buried.”
The whole subject of the concluding hours of the campaign against
the Chiricahuas, after Crook had been relieved from command, has
been fully covered by documents accessible to all students, among
which may well be mentioned: Senate Documents, No. 117; General
Crook’s “Resumé of Operations against Apache Indians from 1882 to
1886”; the report made by Mr. Herbert Welsh, Secretary of the Indian
Rights Association, of his visit to the Apache prisoners confined at
Fort Marion, St. Augustine, Florida; the reports made to General
Sheridan by General R. B. Ayres, commanding the military post of St.
Francis Barracks (St. Augustine, Florida); the telegrams between the
War Department and Brigadier-General D. S. Stanley, commanding the
Department of Texas, concerning his interview with “Geronimo” and
other prisoners, etc.
It may be laid down in one paragraph that the Chiricahua fugitives
were followed into the Sierra Madre by two Chiricahua Apaches, sent
from Fort Apache, named “Ki-e-ta” and “Martinez,” who were assisted
by Lieutenant Gatewood, of the Sixth Cavalry, and Mr. George
Wrattan, as interpreter. Not all the band surrendered; there are
several still in the Sierra Madre who, as late as the past month of
January (1891), have been killing in both Sonora and Arizona. But
those that did listen to the emissaries were led to believe that
they were to see their wives and families within five days; they
were instead hurried off to Florida and immured in the dungeons of
old Fort Pickens, Pensacola, Florida, and never saw their families
until the indignant remonstrances of Mr. Herbert Welsh caused an
investigation to be made of the exact terms upon which they had
surrendered, and to have their wives sent to join them. For
“Geronimo” and those with him any punishment that could be inflicted
without incurring the imputation of treachery would not be too
severe; but the incarceration of “Chato” and the three-fourths of
the band who had remained faithful for three years and had rendered
such signal service in the pursuit of the renegades, can never meet
with the approval of honorable soldiers and gentlemen.
Not a single Chiricahua had been killed, captured, or wounded
throughout the entire campaign—with two exceptions—unless by
Chiricahua-Apache scouts who, like “Chato,” had kept the pledges
given to General Crook in the Sierra Madre in 1883. The exceptions
were: one killed by the White Mountain Apaches near Fort Apache, and
one killed by a white man in northern Mexico. Yet every one of those
faithful scouts—especially the two, “Ki-e-ta” and “Martinez,” who
had at imminent personal peril gone into the Sierra Madre to hunt up
“Geronimo” and induce him to surrender—were transplanted to Florida
and there subjected to the same punishment as had been meted out to
“Geronimo.” And with them were sent men like “Goth-kli” and
“To-klanni,” who were not Chiricahuas at all, but had only lately
married wives of that band, who had never been on the war-path in
any capacity except as soldiers of the Government, and had devoted
years to its service. There is no more disgraceful page in the
history of our relations with the American Indians than that which
conceals the treachery visited upon the Chiricahuas who remained
faithful in their allegiance to our people. An examination of the
documents cited will show that I have used extremely mild language
in alluding to this affair.
CHAPTER XXX.
CROOK’S CLOSING YEARS—HE AVERTS A WAR WITH THE UTES—A MEMBER OF THE
COMMISSION WHICH SECURED A CESSION OF ELEVEN MILLIONS OF ACRES
FROM THE SIOUX—HIS INTEREST IN GAME LAWS—HIS DEATH—WHAT THE
APACHES DID—WHAT “RED CLOUD” SAID—HIS FUNERAL IN CHICAGO—BURIAL
IN OAKLAND, MARYLAND—RE-INTERMENT IN ARLINGTON CEMETERY,
VIRGINIA.
The last years of General Crook’s eventful career were spent in
Omaha, Nebraska, as Commanding General of the Department of the
Platte, and, after being promoted to the rank of Major-General by
President Cleveland, in Chicago, Illinois, as Commanding General of
the Military Division of the Missouri. During that time he averted
the hostilities with the Utes of Colorado, for which the cowboys of
the western section of that State were clamoring, and satisfied the
Indians that our people were not all unjust, rapacious, and
mendacious. As a member of the Sioux Commission to negotiate for the
cession of lands occupied by the Sioux in excess of their actual
needs, he—in conjunction with his associates: ex-Governor Charles
Foster, of Ohio, and Hon. William Warner, of Missouri—effected the
relinquishment of eleven millions of acres, an area equal to
one-third of the State of Pennsylvania.
The failure of Congress to ratify some of the provisions of this
conference and to make the appropriations needed to carry them into
effect, has been alleged among the numerous causes of the recent
Sioux outbreak. In this connection the words of the Sioux chief “Red
Cloud,” as spoken to the Catholic missionary—Father Craft—are worthy
of remembrance: “Then General Crook came; he, at least, had never
lied to us. His words gave the people hope. He died. Their hope died
again. Despair came again.” General Crook also exerted all the
influence he could bring to bear to induce a rectification of the
wrong inflicted upon the faithful Chiricahua Apaches, in confounding
them in the same punishment meted out to those who had followed
“Geronimo” back to the war-path. He manifested all through his life
the liveliest interest in the preservation of the larger game of the
Rocky Mountain country, and, if I mistake not, had some
instrumentality, through his old friend Judge Carey, of Cheyenne,
now United States Senator, in bringing about the game laws adopted
by the present State of Wyoming.
General Crook’s death occurred at the Grand Pacific Hotel, his
residence in Chicago, on the 21st of March, 1890; the cause of his
death, according to Surgeon McClellan, his attending physician, was
heart failure or some other form of heart disease; the real cause
was the wear and tear of a naturally powerful constitution, brought
on by the severe mental and physical strain of incessant work under
the most trying circumstances.
It would be unjust to select for insertion here any of the thousands
of telegrams, letters, resolutions of condolence, and other
expressions of profound sympathy received by Mrs. Crook from old
comrades and friends of her illustrious husband in all sections of
our country: besides the official tribute from the War Department,
there were eloquent manifestations from such associations as the
Alumni of the Military Academy, the Military Order of the Loyal
Legion, the Sons of the American Revolution, the Pioneers of
Arizona, the citizens of Omaha, Nebraska, Prescott, Arizona,
Chicago, Illinois, Dayton, Ohio, and other places in which he had
served during the thirty-eight years of his connection with the
regular army, and feeling expressions uttered in the United States
Senate by Manderson and Paddock of Nebraska, Gorman of Maryland, and
Mitchell of Oregon; and a kind tribute from the lips of Governor
James E. Boyd of Nebraska. When the news of Crook’s death reached
the Apache Reservation, the members of the tribe who had been his
scouts during so many years were stupefied: those near Camp Apache
sat down in a great circle, let down their hair, bent their heads
forward on their bosoms, and wept and wailed like children. Probably
no city in the country could better appreciate the importance of
Crook’s military work against the savages than Omaha, which through
the suppression of hostilities by General Crook had bounded from the
dimensions of a straggling town to those of a metropolis of 150,000
people. The resolutions adopted in convention represent the opinions
of a committee composed of the oldest citizens of that community—men
who knew and respected Crook in life and revered him in death. Among
these were to be seen the names of old settlers of the stamp of the
Wakeleys, Paxtons, Pritchetts, Doanes, Millers, Cowins, Clarkes,
Markels, Wymans, Horbachs, Hanscoms, Collins, Lakes, Millards,
Poppletons, Caldwells, Broatches, Mauls, Murphys, Rustins, Woods,
Davis, Laceys, Turners, Ogdens, Moores, Cushings, Kitchens,
Kimballs, Yates, Wallaces, Richardsons, McShanes, and Kountzes—men
perfectly familiar with all the intricacies of the problem which
Crook had to solve and the masterly manner in which he had solved
it.
As a mark of respect to the memory of his former friend and
commander, General John R. Brooke, commanding the Department of the
Platte, has protected and fed in honorable retirement the aged mule,
“Apache,” which for so many years had borne General Crook in all his
campaigns, from British America to Mexico.
Could old “Apache” but talk or write, he might relate adventures and
perils to which the happy and prosperous dwellers in the now
peaceful Great West would listen with joy and delight.
General Crook had not yet attained great age, being scarcely
sixty-one years old when the final summons came, but he had gained
more than a complement of laurels, and may therefore be said to have
died in the fulness of years. He was born at Dayton, Ohio, on the
23d day of September, 1829; graduated from the United States
Military Academy in the class of 1852; was immediately assigned to
the Fourth Infantry; was engaged without cessation in service
against hostile Indians, in the present States of Oregon and
Washington, until the outbreak of the Rebellion, and was once
wounded by an arrow which was never extracted. His first assignment
during the War of the Rebellion was to the colonelcy of the
Thirty-sixth Ohio, which he drilled to such a condition of
efficiency that the other regiments in the same division nick named
it the “Thirty-sixth Regulars.” Before the war ended he had risen to
the rank of brigadier and of major-general of volunteers, and was
wounded in the battle of Lewisburgh, West Virginia.
He commanded the Army of West Virginia, and later on was assigned to
the command of cavalry under Lieutenant-General P. H. Sheridan. His
services during the war were of the most gallant and important
nature, not at all inferior to his campaigns against the western
tribes, but it was of the latter only that this treatise was
intended to speak and to these it has been restricted.
The funeral services were held at the Grand Pacific Hotel, where the
remains had lain in state. The Rev. Dr. MacPherson conducted the
services, assisted by Doctors Clinton Locke, Fallows, Thomas, and
Swing. The honorary pall-bearers were Colonel James F. Wade, Fifth
Cavalry, Colonel Thaddeus H. Stanton, Pay Department, John Collins,
Omaha, General W. Sooy Smith, Potter Palmer, ex-President R. B.
Hayes, Marshall Field, W. C. De Grannis, Wirt Dexter, Colonel J. B.
Sexton, Judge R. S. Tuthill, Mayor D. C. Cregier, John B. Drake,
General M. R. Morgan, General Robert Williams, P. E. Studebaker, J.
Frank Lawrence, George Dunlap, Judge W. Q. Gresham, John B. Carson,
General W. E. Strong, John M. Clark, W. Penn Nixon, H. J.
MacFarland, and C. D. Roys. The casket was escorted to the Baltimore
& Ohio Railroad Depot by a brigade of the Illinois National Guard,
commanded by Brigadier-General Fitzsimmons and by the members of the
Illinois Club in a body.
The interment, which took place at Oakland, Maryland, March 24,
1891, was at first intended to be strictly private, but thousands of
people had gathered from the surrounding country, and each train
added to the throng which blocked the streets and lanes of the
little town.
Among those who stood about the bereaved wife, who had so devotedly
followed the fortunes of her illustrious husband, were her sister,
Mrs. Reed, Colonel Corbin, Colonel Heyl, Colonel Stanton, Major
Randall, Major Roberts, Lieutenant Kennon, Mr. John S. Collins, Mr.
and Mrs. W. J. Hancock, Mr. Webb C. Hayes, Andrew Peisen, who had
been the General’s faithful servant for a quarter of a century, and
Dr. E. H. Bartlett, who had been present at the wedding of General
and Mrs. Crook.
One of the General’s brothers—Walter Crook, of Dayton, Ohio—came on
with the funeral train from Chicago, but another brother was unable
to leave Chicago on account of a sudden fit of illness.
Three of the soldiers of the Confederacy who had formed part of the
detachment—of which Mrs. Crook’s own brother, James Daily, was
another—that had captured General Crook during the closing years of
the Civil War and sent him down to Libby prison, requested
permission to attend the funeral services as a mark of respect for
their late foe. While the Rev. Dr. Moffatt was reciting prayer, two
of them whispered their names, May and Johnson, but the third I
could not learn at the moment. I have since heard it was Ira Mason.
Among those who attended from Washington were General Samuel Breck,
Captain George S. Anderson, Captain Schofield, Hon. George W.
Dorsey, M. C. from Nebraska, Hon. Nathan Goff, ex-Secretary of the
Navy, and Hon. William McKinley, M. C. from Ohio, who during the
Civil War had served as one of General Crook’s confidential staff
officers, and who through life had been his earnest admirer and
stanch friend.
As the earth closed over the remains of a man whom I had known and
loved for many years, and of whose distinguished services I had
intimate personal knowledge, the thought flitted through my mind
that there lay an exemplification of the restless energy of the
American people. Ohio had given him birth, the banks of the Hudson
had heard his recitations as a cadet, Oregon, Washington,
California, and Nevada witnessed his first feats of arms, West
Virginia welcomed him as the intelligent and energetic leader of the
army which bore her name, and Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, Montana,
both Dakotas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah owed him a debt
of gratitude for his operations against the hostile tribes which
infested their borders and rendered life and property insecure.
No man could attempt to write a fair description of General Crook’s
great services and his noble traits of character unless he set out
to prepare a sketch of the history of the progress of civilization
west of the Missouri. I have here done nothing but lay before the
reader an outline, and a very meagre outline, of all he had to
oppose, and all he achieved, feeling a natural distrust of my own
powers, and yet knowing of no one whose association with my great
chief had been so intimate during so many years as mine had been.
Crook’s modesty was so great, and his aversion to pomp and
circumstance so painfully prominent a feature of his character and
disposition, that much which has been here related would never be
known from other sources.
Shakespeare’s lines have been present in my mind:
“Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues
We write in water.”
------------------------------------
On the 11th of November, 1890, General Crook’s body was transferred
to Arlington Cemetery, Virginia, opposite Washington, those present
being Major-General Schofield, commanding the army, and his aide,
Lieutenant Andrews, Colonel H. C. Corbin, Lieutenant Kennon, Colonel
T. H. Stanton, Captain John G. Bourke, Mr. Webb C. Hayes, and Mr.
George H. Harries.
The escort consisted of two companies of cavalry, commanded by Major
Carpenter, Captain George S. Anderson, Captain Parker, and
Lieutenant Baird.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Note
The author mentions a band of Utes call the ‘Timpanoags’. The
currently accepted name is ‘Timpanogos’, but we defer to the author
on the point.
Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected,
and are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the
original. The following issues should be noted, along with the
resolutions.
ix.16 THE GRAND CA[N/Ñ]ON—THE CATARACT CA[N/Ñ]ON Replaced.
43.18 the ranch of Archie Mac[ ]Intosh Removed.
121.34 the salient features of a [strategetical] _sic_
combination
165.25 the band of Utes called the [Timpanoags] _sic_
210.1 Crawford,[ford,]> Cushing, Removed.
335.24 and like the wind were away[.] Added.
441.19 without test[it]imony Removed.
a1.13 and that much good.[”] Added.
a1.46 perception of his meaning.[”] Added.
a2.39 ethnology, and philology.[”] Added.
a2.45 is rare and very inviting.[”] Added.
a3.37 [“]The work has been singularly well done. Added.
a3.47 has attracted wider attention.[”] Added.
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