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 possiblywant 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 threateneduntil 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 acquireda 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 arousedhis 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 knowledgeof 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 theAmerican 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 thered 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 makeupon 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 theking’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 yardsinto 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, givesa 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, sellingwithout 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.
Dr.
Dr.
“The United States to Cocheis,“For one brother, killed ‘while resisting arrest.’”
“The United States to Cocheis,“For one brother, killed ‘while resisting arrest.’”
“The United States to Cocheis,“For one brother, killed ‘while resisting arrest.’”
“The United States to Cocheis,
“For one brother, killed ‘while resisting arrest.’”
Cr.
Cr.
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 pioneerwhose 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 aroseen masseand 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 astrategeticalstrategeticalcombination, 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 thePueblo 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 whichevertype 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 oflance-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 havehad 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 willsneak 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 neglectingthe 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, theAgnus Deior 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 reachedthe 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 theirbonne 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 sideto 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 andbegun 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 toldin extensoin 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 ownreligious 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 anyother 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.