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 Creekprecipitated 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 Cañonesâ€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 ofhope 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 speakat 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,â€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 conductedus 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 betweenthe 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 ourmess—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. Thepersonnelof 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 constitutedthe 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“rancheriaâ€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,â€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.â€
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“rancheriaâ€of “Chuntz,†consisting of twelve“jacales,â€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“palmillaâ€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 tiempoâ€(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 muchoâ€or the“Niña de la Tierra,â€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“golondrinaâ€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 Matitzalrange, and had destroyed a“rancheria,â€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 theaparejosand 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 betied, 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,â€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 theApaches 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“rancheriaâ€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 greatgood 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 Rossand 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.
SHARP NOSE.
SHARP NOSE.
SHARP NOSE.
Brown’s first work was to see that the whole line was impregnableto 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 overlookingthe 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 therampart, 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; everybullet 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“rancheriasâ€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 ofthe 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 thatno 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. Behindand 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“rancheriaâ€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; theywould be sure to push on to the other“rancheria,â€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.