The Mammoth Book of the West (50 page)

No Indians were spared in the backlash that followed
Custer’s Last Stand. Although the Nez Perce (“Pierced Noses”) had never killed a White man, they were ordered in 1877 to leave their homeland for a new reservation elsewhere in Idaho. They were given just 30 days to round up their stock and dismantle their homes. While they were doing this, a young Nez Perce whose father had been killed by Whites led a series of raids that took the lives of 18 settlers.

Fearing reprisals, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce led 700 of his band into hiding in White Bird Canyon. After beating back an army detachment, he decided to lead his people to safety in Canada. Newspapers and politicians clamoured for the Nez Perce to be punished, for the Whites to be avenged. For 1,300 miles the Nez Perce walked, through Idaho, Wyoming, the Yellowstone (already a national park) and up towards the border, and as they did so they beat off army attack after attack. Only when Chief Joseph’s “Long March” was in the snows of the Bear Paw Mountains, within 40 miles of Canada, did Colonel Nelson A. Miles manage to trap the Nez Perce. Chief Joseph surrendered after being promised that his people would be sent back to Idaho. “I am tired; my heart is sick,” Chief Joseph told Nelson Miles. “From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”

The Nez Perce were not sent home to Idaho. They were sent to Indian Territory, where many died. Nelson Miles protested, and eventually the Nez Perce went to a reservation in Washington.

After the Nez Perce, it was time for the Bannocks – the same Bannocks who had just scouted for Miles against the Nez Perce. When Congress failed to provide their promised rations, the starving Bannocks began fighting the settlers who had illegally occupied their camass (an edible plant of the hyacinth family) prairie. “I do not wonder,” General Crook reported, “that when these Indians see
their wives and children starving, and their last source of supplies cut off, they go to war. And then we are sent out to kill them.”

After the Bannocks, it was the turn of the Utes. In 1879 Colorado citizens elected a governor whose platform was “UTES MUST GO”. And so they did, forcibly banished to a strip of land in Utah that the Mormons thought too barren for human habitation.

All the Indians of the north and the plains were now on the White man’s reservations. Only in the Southwest were there still Indians to be reckoned with.

Five years had passed since the Chiricahua Apache under Cochise had entered the reservation. And gradually, imperceptibly, the peace had come undone.

When Cochise died in 1874 his son Taza became chief, tribal leadership being hereditary amongst the Apache. But Taza, if likeable, lacked authority, and larger numbers of Chiricahua warriors came under the influence of Geronimo, the warrior leader of the sub-band of Bedonkohe Apache who had become assimilated into the Chiricahua. The son of a Nednai chief who had renounced his chieftainship to marry into the Bedonkohe, Geronimo had been born One Who Yawns (Goyahkla). He had been given the name Geronimo by the Mexicans, for he had once fought them at Arispe – after they had murdered his family – with such terrifying ferocity that they prayed to St Geronimo for salvation. The name had stuck, and was used by Apache, Mexicans and White alike. Geronimo had the Power; it had visited him when he had grieved for his slain family. “No gun can ever kill you,” the Power had told him. He was invincible.

Geronimo had grown tired of the monotony of reservation life, and begun to sneak off to indulge his old habit of
raiding Mexico. The Mexicans complained bitterly, and in 1876 the Arizonans joined the outcry when two stagecoach attendants and a rancher were killed by drunken Apaches. (That the stagecoach attendants had gotten the Apaches drunk and tried to cheat them was conveniently ignored.) The Governor of Arizona, Anson P. Safford, demanded that Washington replace Thomas Jeffords as Apache Agent, while Tucsons’s
Arizona Citizen
declared: “The kind of war needed for the Chiricahua Apaches is steady, unrelenting, hopeless, and undiscriminating war, slaying men, women and children, until every valley and crest and crag and fastness shall send to high heaven the grateful incense of festering and rotting Chiricahuas.”

The murder of the three White men gave Washington a pretext to close the Chiricahua reservation, something it wanted to do anyway as part of its 1875 policy of “consolidation” of the reservations. The Apaches were all to be forced onto one overcrowded reservation at San Carlos. On learning of the consolidation plan, Geronimo, now aged 46, fled across the border to Mexico.

This first stint as a holdout was inauspicious. Early in 1877 he came out of Mexico, driving a herd of stolen horses, to visit the agency at Warm Springs (Ojo Caliente). The regime at Warm Springs was lax, and the place was used frequently as a refuge by “renegades” in their cross-border raids. News of Geronimo’s whereabouts reached the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, who wired John Philip Clum, the young agent of the San Carlos reservation, and ordered him to arrest Geronimo. Clum immediately set out on the 400-mile journey to Warm Springs, accompanied by about 100 of his Apache Indian police.

After reaching Warm Springs, Clum sent a message to Geronimo and other “renegade” warriors, like Chief Victorio who had jumped the reservation, that he desired to talk. Having no reason to expect confrontation, the
Apache rode the three miles to the agency accompanied by their wives and children. Geronimo found Clum sitting on the porch of the adobe agency building, a dozen of his police around him. Clum opened the proceedings by accusing Geronimo of killing men and violating the agreement made between Cochise and General Howard. He told Geronimo he was taking him to San Carlos. Geronimo answered defiantly: “We are not going to San Carlos with you, and unless you are very careful, you and your Apache police will not go back to San Carlos either. Your bodies will stay here at Ojo Caliente to make food for coyotes.” To emphasize the point, Geronimo hitched his rifle up in his arms.

At this moment Clum gave a prearranged signal, a touch of the brim of his hat; the doors of the commissary building burst open and 80 police charged out. Geronimo’s thumb began to creep towards the hammer of his rifle, but he thought better of it and stood stock-still. Clum stepped forward to disarm the Apache. This was the only time that Geronimo was ever captured, and then it was by a trick.

Conveyed to San Carlos in shackles, Geronimo found the reservation worse than he had feared. Situated alongside the Gila River, much of it was low-lying, reaching temperatures of 110 degrees in summer. White settlers were already beginning to squat the best land. There were outbreaks of malaria and smallpox.

John Clum who, despite his deceit in the capture of Geronimo, was well-liked by many Apache, believed he could work with the People and keep them peaceful on the reservation. The Army, however, because of the concentration of Apache leaders at San Carlos, sent the cavalry to guard the reservation. John Clum was forced to disband his self-regulating Apache police. He resigned in protest, and went on to edit the Tombstone
Epitaph
.

Victorio fled San Carlos almost immediately, moving
back with his people to Warm Springs. The Army harassed them, and Victorio declared he would “make war forever” against the USA. He was killed in 1880 in a fight with Mexican soldiers.

Geronimo endured the reservation for a year. He had little choice, for much of the time he was incarcerated, an experience he thought “might easily have been death to me.” As soon as he was able to he escaped to Mexico with a few other Chiricahuas. He returned voluntarily in 1880 following a bitter winter of starvation in the mountains, but again he did not stay long.

During the spring of 1881, a religious movement arose among the reservation Apache which preached the end of the White man and the raising again of the old Apache order. In August, the agent sent a detachment of soldiers to arrest the spiritual leader of the movement, Noch-ay-del-klinne. His followers attacked the troops; a pitched battle ensued, with dead on both sides. Army reinforcements were rushed in, and the rumour began to circulate that the Apache leaders would be arrested. More specifically, the rumours said that Geronimo – who had been sceptical about the new religion – was to be hanged. In September of 1881, in response to these rumours, Geronimo and the Nednai chief, Juh, along with 70 warriors, jumped the reservation and made for the Sierra Madre. Their route took them past Tombstone, where a posse including three of the Earp brothers tried to head them off, to no avail.

Six months later, in April 1882, Geronimo and his band returned to the reservation but not, this time, as captives. They rode in as self-declared liberators, and persuaded most of the remaining Chiricahuas and Warm Springs
Apaches to leave with them for Mexico. Near the border, at Horse Shoe Canyon, pursuing cavalry caught up with them. The warriors fought a stiff rearguard action, allowing the main body of women and children to cross into Mexico. Then disaster struck. A Mexican infantry regiment stumbled upon the Apaches, killing most of the women and children who were riding in front.

Among the warriors and chiefs who managed to escape were Naiche (a son of Cochise), Loco, Chato, and Geronimo himself. Embittered, they joined up with old Nana, chief of the Mimbrenos after the death of Victorio, to form a united guerrilla band of 80 warriors.

Over the next two years, Geronimo and the united band raided Mexican towns and villages with near impunity. The raiding life of the band was later described by Jason Betzinez, a young Chiricahua, in his memoir
I Fought with Geronimo
:

Preparations for the raid deep into Sonora consisted of making extra pairs of moccasins, cleaning our hair, sharpening knives, and cleaning and greasing guns. We had no tomahawks, arrows or spears. The Apaches never did have tomahawks and by 1882 arrows and spears were rarely used.

We established most of the young boys, women, and children on top of the mountain where they could keep a good lookout and take care of themselves. Mother and I went with the men at least part of the way. Our job was to bring back stolen beeves to our camp so that the women and children would have plenty to eat while the men were away.

After crossing a mountain range we bivouacked for the night. The next morning our leaders told us to travel close together because of the dense timbers, briars, and cactus. The trip was to be dangerous and difficult; it would be
almost impossible to travel at night. We were nearly among the enemy now but kept on going to the vicinity of the nearest town. Then our men began scouting around for horses and mules while mother and I together with five young boys, waited on a hill top where we could see the surrounding country and watch out for signs of the enemy.

After a long and anxious wait, toward evening we were relieved to see our men coming, driving some horses. It had been a risky adventure for us. Even one Mexican cowboy spotting us would have meant serious trouble, we being without weapons.

The next day the men killed several head of cattle, which we cut up and loaded on horses. Late in the afternoon mother and I, together with five boys, started back toward the rest of our band. We traveled part of the night through the thick timber. In the morning we resumed our journey, our horses heavily laden with meat, arriving late in the afternoon within sight of camp. Some of the women came out to help us carry in the beef. As we climbed up the mountainside we were very careful not to leave tracks that would show. After we got to camp and unloaded the animals some of the boys drove the horses down to the river away from camp. We now had enough dried beef to last us for at least a month.

Meantime our men went on west to where a main road passed between several towns, south towards Ures, the then capital of Sonora. Where the road ran along the river through the timber was the locality in which the Apaches were accustomed to lie in wait for travelers especially pack trains laden with drygoods.

Our men were gone about fifteen days. Meanwhile we lived very quietly at camp. One day a woman standing in front of her tepee saw a white object approaching us in the distance. The women and children immediately became
very excited and fearful, thinking that the enemy were coming. Two of us boys going out to investigate found that it was our warriors coming home with great quantities of dry goods, bolts of cloth and wearing apparel. When they arrived at the foot of the mountain they called up to us whereupon all the people in camp hurried down to meet them. We surely were glad to see them and they to see us. One thing we
didn’t
see was scalps. The Apaches did not practice the custom of scalping a fallen enemy. There may have been exceptions to this but they were very, very rare. Concerning Geronimo I never knew him to bring in a scalp. Much nonsense has been written about this.

After our warriors returned, we hiked farther up the Yaqui River, camped for awhile, then again moved upstream. Here we had plenty of food and nothing to worry about. Nevertheless we were very careful not to disclose our presence because we were quite near a number of Mexican towns. Every day our men stationed lookouts on the hills. Our camp at this time was at the junction of the Bavispe and Yaqui Rivers.

The leaders decided to raid toward the northwest. This time we started off on foot leaving all the animals in the valley near the Bavispe River where there was plenty of good grass. We concealed in caves our saddles and the loot which the men had brought back from the earlier raid, as well as all our camp gear which we could not carry on our backs. We took only one mule, my big mule, on which Geronimo’s wife and baby rode.

Our band moved straight west toward a Mexican town. Just when it appeared that we were going right on into the village the leaders stopped a few miles to the east. The plan was to avoid stealing any horses or mules while we were sneaking around in between these towns, two of which lay to the west and one to the east of our route.

From the last campsite the band turned northwest toward the mountains. Since we were about to cross the main road we were especially careful not to be seen or leave any sign that would put the soldiers on our trail. Our men knew that each town contained a garrison of troops. So we carefully covered our tracks.