CHAPTER XXVI.
CROOK RE-ASSIGNED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ARIZONA—ALL THE APACHES ON THE WAR-PATH—LIEUTENANTS MORGAN AND CONVERSE WOUNDED—CAPTAIN HENTIG KILLED—CROOK GOES ALONE TO SEE THE HOSTILES—CONFERENCES WITH THE APACHES—WHAT THE ARIZONA GRAND JURY SAID OF AN INDIAN AGENT—CONDITION OF AFFAIRS AT THE SAN CARLOS AGENCY—WHISKEY SOLD TO THE CHIRICAHUA APACHES—APACHE TRIALS BY JURY—ARIZONA IN 1882—PHŒNIX, PRESCOTT, AND TUCSON—INDIAN SCHOOLS.
Before the summer of 1882 had fairly begun, Indian affairs in Arizona had relapsed into such a deplorable condition that the President felt obliged to re-assign General Crook to the command. To the occurrences of the next four years I will devote very few paragraphs, because, although they formed an epoch of great importance in our Indo-military history and in General Crook’s career, they have previously received a fair share of my attention in the volume, “An Apache Campaign,” to which there is little to add. But for the sake of rounding out this narrative and supplying data to those who may not have seen the book in question, it may be stated that affairs had steadily degenerated from bad to worse, and that upon Crook’s return to Prescott no military department could well have been in a more desperate plight. In one word, all the Apaches were again on the war-path or in such a sullen, distrustful state of mind that it would have been better in some sense had they all left the reservation and taken to the forests and mountains.
Crook was in the saddle in a day, and without even stopping to inquire into the details of the new command—with which, however, he was to a great extent familiar from his former experience—he left the arrangement of such matters to his Adjutant-General, Colonel James P. Martin, and started across the mountainsto Camp Apache. Not many of the Apaches were to be seen, and practically none except the very old, the very feeble, or the very young. All the young men who could shoot were hiding in the mountains, and several sharp actions had already been had with the troops: the Third and Sixth Cavalry had had a fight with the renegades from the reservation, and had had two officers—Morgan and Converse, of the Third—severely wounded; Captain Hentig, of the Sixth, had been killed on the Cibicu some months before; and the prospects of peace, upon a permanent and satisfactory basis, were extremely vague and unpromising. But there was a coincidence of sentiment among all people whose opinion was worthy of consultation, that the blame did not rest with the Indians; curious tales were flying about from mouth to mouth, of the gross outrages perpetrated upon the men and women who were trying faithfully to abide in peace with the whites. It was openly asserted that the Apaches were to be driven from the reservation marked out for them by Vincent Collyer and General O. O. Howard, upon which they had been living for more than eleven years. No one had ever heard the Apaches’ story, and no one seemed to care whether they had a story or not.
Crook made every preparation for a resumption of hostilities, but he sent out word to the men skulking in the hills that he was going out alone to see them and hear what they had to say, and that if no killing of white people occurred in the meantime, not a shot should be fired by the troops. In acting as he did at this time, Crook lost a grand opportunity for gaining what is known as military glory: he could have called for additional troops and obtained them; the papers of the country would have devoted solid columns to descriptions of skirmishes and marches and conferences, what the military commander thought and said, with perhaps a slight infiltration of what he did not think and did not say; but, in any event, Crook would have been kept prominently before the people. His was not, however, a nature which delighted in the brass-band-and-bugle school of military renown: he was modest and retiring, shy almost as a girl, and conscientious to a peculiar degree. He had every confidence in his own purposes and in his own powers, and felt that if not interfered with he could settle the Apache problem at a minimum of cost. Therefore he set out to meet the Apaches in their ownhaunts and learn all they had to say, and he learned much. He took with him Mr. C. E. Cooley, formerly one of his principal scouts, who was to act as interpreter; Al Seiber, who had seen such wonderful service in that country; Surgeon J. O. Skinner; and myself. Captain Wallace, with his company of the Sixth Cavalry, remained in charge of the pack-train.
Upon the elevated plateau of broken basalt which separates the current of the White River from that of the Black there is a long line of forest, principally cedar, with no small amount of pine, and much yucca, soapweed, Spanish bayonet, and mescal. The knot-holes in the cedars seemed to turn into gleaming black eyes; the floating black tresses of dead yucca became the snaky locks of fierce outlaws, whose lances glistened behind the shoots of mescal and amole. Twenty-six of these warriors followed us down to our bivouac in the cañon of the “Prieto,” or Black River, and there held a conference with General Crook, to whom they related their grievances.
Before starting out from Camp Apache General Crook had held a conference with such of the warriors as were still there, among whom I may mention “Pedro,” “Cut-Mouth Moses,” “Alchise,” “Uklenni,” “Eskitisesla,” “Noqui-noquis,” “Peltie,” “Notsin,” “Mosby,” “Chile,” “Eskiltie,” and some forty others of both sexes. “Pedro,” who had always been a firm friend of the whites, was now old and decrepit, and so deaf that he had to employ an ear-trumpet. This use of an ear-trumpet by a so-called savage Apache struck me as very ludicrous, but a week after I saw at San Carlos a young baby sucking vigorously from a rubber tube attached to a glass nursing-bottle. The world does move.
From the journal of this conference, I will make one or two extracts as illustrative of General Crook’s ideas on certain seemingly unimportant points, and as giving the way of thinking and the manner of expression of the Apaches.
General Crook: “I want to have all that you say here go down on paper, because what goes down on paper never lies. A man’s memory may fail him, but what the paper holds will be fresh and true long after we are all dead and forgotten. This will not bring back the dead, but what is put down on this paper today may help the living. What I want to get at is all that has happened since I left here to bring about this trouble, this presentcondition of affairs. I want you to tell the truth without fear, and to tell it in as few words as possible, so that everybody can read it without trouble.”
Alchise: “When you left, there were no bad Indians out. We were all content; everything was peace. The officers you had here were all taken away, and new ones came in—a different kind. The good ones must all have been taken away and the bad ones sent in their places. We couldn’t make out what they wanted; one day they seemed to want one thing, the next day something else. Perhaps we were to blame, perhaps they were; but, anyhow, we hadn’t any confidence in them. We were planting our own corn and melons and making our own living. The agent at the San Carlos never gave us any rations, but we didn’t mind that, as we were taking care of ourselves. One day the agent at the San Carlos sent up and said that we must give up our own country and our corn-patches and go down there to live, and he sent Indian soldiers to seize our women and children and drive us all down to that hot land. ‘Uclenni’ and I were doing all we could to help the whites, when we were both put in the guard-house. All that I have ever done has been honest; I have always been true and obeyed orders. I made campaigns against Apache-Yumas, Apache-Tontos, Pinalenos, and all kinds of people, and even went against my own people. When the Indians broke out at the San Carlos, when Major Randall was here, I helped him to go fight them; I have been in all the campaigns. When Major Randall was here we were all happy; when he promised a thing he did it; when he said a word he meant it; but all that he did was for our own good and we believed in him and we think of him yet. Where has he gone? Why don’t he come back? Others have come to see us since he left, but they talk to us in one way and act in another, and we can’t believe what they say. They say: ‘That man is bad, andthatman is bad.’ I think that the trouble is, they themselves are bad. Oh, where is my friend Randall—the captain with the big mustache which he always pulled? Why don’t he come back? He was my brother, and I think of him all the time.”
Old “Pedro” talked in much the same vein: “When you (General Crook) were here, whenever you said a thing we knew that it was true, and we kept it in our minds. When Colonel Green was here, our women and children were happy and ouryoung people grew up contented. And I remember Brown, Randall, and the other officers who treated us kindly and were our friends. I used to be happy; now, I am all the time thinking and crying, and I say, ‘Where is old Colonel John Green, and Randall, and those other good officers, and what has become of them? Where have they gone? Why don’t they come back?’ And the young men all say the same thing.”
“Pedro” spoke of the absurdity of arresting Indians for dancing, as had been done in the case of the “medicine man,” “Bobby-doklinny”—of which he had much to say, but at this moment only his concluding remarks need be preserved: “Often when I have wanted to have a little fun, I have sent word to all the women and children and young men to come up and have a dance; other people have done the same thing; I have never heard that there was any harm in that; but that campaign was made just because the Indians over on the Cibicu were dancing. When you (General Crook) were here we were all content; but we can’t understand why you went away. Why did you leave us? Everything was all right while you were here.”
A matter of great grievance with the Apaches, which they could not understand, being nothing but ignorant savages and not up to civilized ways, was why their little farms, of which I will speak before ending this volume, should be destroyed—as they were—and why their cattle and horses should be driven off by soldiers and citizens. “Severiano,” the interpreter, who was a Mexican by birth, taken captive in early youth, and living among the Apaches all his life, now said: “A lot of my own cattle were taken away by soldiers and citizens.” Had the Apaches had a little more sense they would have perceived that the whole scheme of Caucasian contact with the American aborigines—at least the Anglo-Saxon part of it—has been based upon that fundamental maxim of politics so beautifully and so tersely enunciated by the New York alderman—“The ‘boys’ are in it for the stuff.” The “Tucson ring” was determined that no Apache should be put to the embarrassment of working for his own living; once let the Apaches become self-supporting, and what would become of “the boys”? Therefore, they must all be herded down on the malaria-reeking flats of the San Carlos, where the water is salt and the air poison, and one breathes a mixture of sand-blizzards and more flies than were ever supposedto be under the care of the great fly-god Beelzebub. The conventions entered into with General Howard and Vincent Collyer, which these Apaches had respected to the letter—nay, more, the personal assurances given by the President of the United States to old “Pedro” during a visit made by the latter to Washington—were all swept away like cobwebs, while the conspirators laughed in their sleeves, because they knew a trick or two worth all of that. They had only to report by telegraph that the Apaches were “uneasy,” “refused to obey the orders of the agent,” and a lot more stuff of the same kind, and the Great Father would send in ten regiments to carry out the schemes of the ring, but he would never send one honest, truthful man to inquire whether the Apaches had a story or not.
It is within the limits of possibility, that as the American Indians become better and better acquainted with the English language, and abler to lay their own side of a dispute before the American people, there may be a diminution in the number of outbreaks, scares, and misunderstandings, which have cost the taxpayers such fabulous sums, and which I trust may continue to cost just as much until the tax-payer shall take a deeper and more intelligent interest in this great question. Another fact brought out in this conference was the readiness with which agents and others incarcerated Indians in guard-houses upon charges which were baseless, or at least trivial. At other times, if the charges were grave, nothing was done to press the cases to trial, and the innocent as well as the guilty suffered by the long imprisonment, which deprived the alleged criminals of the opportunity to work for the support of their families. The report of the Federal Grand Jury of Arizona—taken from theStar, of Tucson, Arizona, October 24, 1882—shows up this matter far more eloquently than I am able to do, and I need not say that a frontier jury never yet has said a word in favor of a red man unless the reasons were fully patent to the ordinary comprehension.
To the Honorable Wilson Hoover, District Judge:The greatest interest was felt in the examination into the cases of the eleven Indian prisoners brought here for trial from San Carlos. The United States District Attorney had spent much time in preparing this investigation. The Department of Justice had peremptorily ordered that these cases should be disposed of at this term of court. Agent Wilcox had notified the district attorney that he should release these Indians by October 1st if they were notbrought away for trial. The official correspondence from the various departments with the district attorney included a letter from Agent Tiffany to the Interior Department, asking that these Indians be at once tried, and yet Agent Tiffany released all the guilty Indians without punishment and held in confinement these eleven men for a period of fourteen months without ever presenting a charge against them, giving them insufficient food and clothing, and permitting those whose guilt was admitted by themselves and susceptible of overwhelming proof, to stalk about unblushingly and in defiance of law. This, too, under the very shadow of his authority, and in laughing mockery of every principle of common decency, to say nothing of justice.How any official possessing the slightest manhood could keep eleven men in confinement for fourteen months without charges or any attempt to accuse them, knowing them to be innocent, is a mystery which can only be solved by an Indian agent of the Tiffany stamp. The investigations of the Grand Jury have brought to light a course of procedure at the San Carlos Reservation, under the government of Agent Tiffany, which is a disgrace to the civilization of the age and a foul blot upon the national escutcheon. While many of the details connected with these matters are outside of our jurisdiction, we nevertheless feel it our duty, as honest American citizens, to express our utter abhorrence of the conduct of Agent Tiffany and that class of reverend peculators who have cursed Arizona as Indian officials, and who have caused more misery and loss of life than all other causes combined. We feel assured, however, that under the judicious and just management of General Crook, these evils will be abated, and we sincerely trust that he may be permitted to render the official existence of such men as Agent Tiffany, in the future, unnecessary.The investigations of the Grand Jury also establish the fact that General Crook has the unbounded confidence of all the Indians. The Indian prisoners acknowledged this before the Grand Jury, and they expressed themselves as perfectly satisfied that he would deal justly with them all. We have made diligent inquiry into the various charges presented in regard to Indian goods and the traffic at San Carlos and elsewhere, and have acquired a vast amount of information which we think will be of benefit. For several years the people of this Territory have been gradually arriving at the conclusion that the management of the Indian reservations in Arizona was a fraud upon the Government; that the constantly recurring outbreaks of the Indians and their consequent devastations were due to the criminal neglect or apathy of the Indian agent at San Carlos; but never until the present investigations of the Grand Jury have laid bare the infamy of Agent Tiffany could a proper idea be formed of the fraud and villany which are constantly practised in open violation of law and in defiance of public justice. Fraud, peculation, conspiracy, larceny, plots and counterplots, seem to be the rule of action upon this reservation. The Grand Jury little thought when they began this investigation that they were about to open a Pandora’s box of iniquities seldom surpassed in the annals of crime.With the immense power wielded by the Indian agent almost any crime is possible. There seems to be no check upon his conduct. In collusionwith the chief clerk and storekeeper, rations can be issuedad libitumfor which the Government must pay, while the proceeds pass into the capacious pockets of the agent. Indians are sent to work on the coal-fields, superintended by white men; all the workmen and superintendents are fed and frequently paid from the agency stores, and no return of the same is made. Government tools and wagons are used in transporting goods and working the coal-mines, in the interest of this close corporation and with the same result. All surplus supplies are used in the interest of the agent, and no return made thereof. Government contractors, in collusion with Agent Tiffany, get receipts for large amounts of supplies never furnished, and the profit is divided mutually, and a general spoliation of the United States Treasury is thus effected. While six hundred Indians are off on passes, their rations are counted and turned in to the mutual aid association, consisting of Tiffany and his associates. Every Indian child born receives rations from the moment of its advent into this vale of tears, and thus adds its mite to the Tiffany pile. In the meantime, the Indians are neglected, half-fed, discontented, and turbulent, until at last, with the vigilant eye peculiar to the savage, the Indians observe the manner in which the Government, through its agent, complies with its sacred obligations.This was the united testimony of the Grand Jury, corroborated by white witnesses, and to these and kindred causes may be attributed the desolation and bloodshed which have dotted our plains with the graves of murdered victims.Foreman of the Grand Jury.
To the Honorable Wilson Hoover, District Judge:
The greatest interest was felt in the examination into the cases of the eleven Indian prisoners brought here for trial from San Carlos. The United States District Attorney had spent much time in preparing this investigation. The Department of Justice had peremptorily ordered that these cases should be disposed of at this term of court. Agent Wilcox had notified the district attorney that he should release these Indians by October 1st if they were notbrought away for trial. The official correspondence from the various departments with the district attorney included a letter from Agent Tiffany to the Interior Department, asking that these Indians be at once tried, and yet Agent Tiffany released all the guilty Indians without punishment and held in confinement these eleven men for a period of fourteen months without ever presenting a charge against them, giving them insufficient food and clothing, and permitting those whose guilt was admitted by themselves and susceptible of overwhelming proof, to stalk about unblushingly and in defiance of law. This, too, under the very shadow of his authority, and in laughing mockery of every principle of common decency, to say nothing of justice.
How any official possessing the slightest manhood could keep eleven men in confinement for fourteen months without charges or any attempt to accuse them, knowing them to be innocent, is a mystery which can only be solved by an Indian agent of the Tiffany stamp. The investigations of the Grand Jury have brought to light a course of procedure at the San Carlos Reservation, under the government of Agent Tiffany, which is a disgrace to the civilization of the age and a foul blot upon the national escutcheon. While many of the details connected with these matters are outside of our jurisdiction, we nevertheless feel it our duty, as honest American citizens, to express our utter abhorrence of the conduct of Agent Tiffany and that class of reverend peculators who have cursed Arizona as Indian officials, and who have caused more misery and loss of life than all other causes combined. We feel assured, however, that under the judicious and just management of General Crook, these evils will be abated, and we sincerely trust that he may be permitted to render the official existence of such men as Agent Tiffany, in the future, unnecessary.
The investigations of the Grand Jury also establish the fact that General Crook has the unbounded confidence of all the Indians. The Indian prisoners acknowledged this before the Grand Jury, and they expressed themselves as perfectly satisfied that he would deal justly with them all. We have made diligent inquiry into the various charges presented in regard to Indian goods and the traffic at San Carlos and elsewhere, and have acquired a vast amount of information which we think will be of benefit. For several years the people of this Territory have been gradually arriving at the conclusion that the management of the Indian reservations in Arizona was a fraud upon the Government; that the constantly recurring outbreaks of the Indians and their consequent devastations were due to the criminal neglect or apathy of the Indian agent at San Carlos; but never until the present investigations of the Grand Jury have laid bare the infamy of Agent Tiffany could a proper idea be formed of the fraud and villany which are constantly practised in open violation of law and in defiance of public justice. Fraud, peculation, conspiracy, larceny, plots and counterplots, seem to be the rule of action upon this reservation. The Grand Jury little thought when they began this investigation that they were about to open a Pandora’s box of iniquities seldom surpassed in the annals of crime.
With the immense power wielded by the Indian agent almost any crime is possible. There seems to be no check upon his conduct. In collusionwith the chief clerk and storekeeper, rations can be issuedad libitumfor which the Government must pay, while the proceeds pass into the capacious pockets of the agent. Indians are sent to work on the coal-fields, superintended by white men; all the workmen and superintendents are fed and frequently paid from the agency stores, and no return of the same is made. Government tools and wagons are used in transporting goods and working the coal-mines, in the interest of this close corporation and with the same result. All surplus supplies are used in the interest of the agent, and no return made thereof. Government contractors, in collusion with Agent Tiffany, get receipts for large amounts of supplies never furnished, and the profit is divided mutually, and a general spoliation of the United States Treasury is thus effected. While six hundred Indians are off on passes, their rations are counted and turned in to the mutual aid association, consisting of Tiffany and his associates. Every Indian child born receives rations from the moment of its advent into this vale of tears, and thus adds its mite to the Tiffany pile. In the meantime, the Indians are neglected, half-fed, discontented, and turbulent, until at last, with the vigilant eye peculiar to the savage, the Indians observe the manner in which the Government, through its agent, complies with its sacred obligations.
This was the united testimony of the Grand Jury, corroborated by white witnesses, and to these and kindred causes may be attributed the desolation and bloodshed which have dotted our plains with the graves of murdered victims.
Foreman of the Grand Jury.
The above official report of a United States Grand Jury is about as strong a document as is usually to be found in the dusty archives of courts; to its contents it is not necessary for me to add a single syllable. I prefer to let the intelligent reader form his own conclusions, while I resume the thread of my narrative where I left off in General Crook’s bivouac on the Black River.
The cañon of the Black River is deep and dark, walled in by towering precipices of basalt and lava, the latter lying in loose blocks along the trail down which the foot-sore traveller must descend, leading behind him his equally foot-sore mule. The river was deep and strong, and in the eddies and swirls amid the projecting rocks were hiding some of the rare trout of the Territory, so coy that the patience of the fisherman was exhausted before they could be induced to jump at his bait. The forbidding ruggedness of the mountain flanks was concealed by forests of pine and juniper, which extended for miles along the course of the stream. The music of our pack-train bells was answered by the silvery laughter of squaws and children, as we had with usin this place over one hundred Apaches, many of them following out from Camp Apache to hear the results of the conference.
The Apaches with whom General Crook talked at this place were, in addition to “Alchise” and several others who had been sent out from Camp Apache to notify the members of the tribe hiding in the mountains, “Nagataha,” “A-ha-ni,” “Comanchi,” “Charlie,” “Nawdina,” “Lonni,” “Neta,” “Kulo,” “Kan-tzi-chi,” “Tzi-di-ku,” “Klishe.” The whole subject of their relations with the whites was traversed, and much information elicited. The only facts of importance to a volume of this kind were: the general worthlessness and rascality of the agents who had been placed in charge of them; the constant robbery going on without an attempt at concealment; the selling of supplies and clothing intended for the Indians, to traders in the little towns of Globe, Maxey, and Solomonville; the destruction of the corn and melon fields of the Apaches, who had been making their own living, and the compelling of all who could be forced to do so to depend upon the agent for meagre supplies; the arbitrary punishments inflicted without trial, or withouttestimonytestimonyof any kind; the cutting down of the reservation limits without reference to the Apaches. Five times had this been done, and much of the most valuable portion had been sequestered; the copper lands on the eastern side were now occupied by the flourishing town of Clifton, while on the western limit Globe and MacMillin had sprung into being.
Coal had been discovered at the head of Deer Creek on the southern extremity, and every influence possible was at work to secure the sequestration of that part of the reservation for speculators, who hoped to be able to sell out at a big profit to the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. The Mormons had trespassed upon the fields already cultivated by the Apaches at Forestdale, and the agent had approached a circle of twenty of the chiefs and head men assembled at the San Carlos, and offered each of them a small bag, containing one hundred dollars—Mexican—and told them that they must agree to sign a paper, giving up all the southern part of the reservation, or troops would be sent to kill them. A silver mine had been discovered, or was alleged to have been discovered, and the agent and some of his pals proposed to form a stock company, and work it off on confiding brethren in the East. In none of thecurtailments, as consummated or contemplated, had the interests or feelings of the Indians been consulted.
The rations doled out had shrunk to a surprising degree: one of the shoulders of the small cattle of that region was made to do twenty people for a week; one cup of flour was issued every seven days to each adult. As the Indians themselves said, they were compelled to eat every part of the animal, intestines, hoofs, and horns. Spies were set upon the agency, who followed the wagons laden with the Indian supplies to Globe and the other towns just named, to which they travelled by night, there to unload and transfer to the men who had purchased from the agent or his underlings. One of the Apaches who understood English and Spanish was deputed to speak to the agent upon the matter. It was the experience of Oliver Twist over again when he asked for more. The messenger was put in the guardhouse, where he remained for six months, and was then released without trial or knowing for what he had been imprisoned. In regard to the civilian agents, the Apaches said they ran from bad to worse, being dishonest, indifferent, tyrannical, and generally incompetent. Of Captain Chaffee, of the Sixth Cavalry, who had been for a while in charge at San Carlos, the Apaches spoke in terms of respect, saying that he was very severe in his notions, but a just and honest man, and disposed to be harsh only with those who persisted in making, selling, or drinking the native intoxicant, “tizwin.” The rottenness of the San Carlos Agency extended all the way to Washington, and infolded in its meshes officials of high rank. It is to the lasting credit of Hon. Carl Schurz, then Secretary of the Interior, that when he learned of the delinquencies of certain of his subordinates, he swung his axe without fear or favor, and the heads of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the Inspector-General of the Indian Bureau, and the agent at San Carlos fell into the basket.
At the San Carlos Agency itself, Crook met such men as “Cha-lipun,” “Chimahuevi-sal,” “Navatane,” “Nodikun,” “Santos,” “Skinospozi,” “Pedilkun,” “Binilke,” “Captain Chiquito,” “Eskiminzin,” “Huan-klishe,” and numbers of others; those who had always lived in the hills near the San Carlos were content to live in the country, but such of the number as had been pulled away from the cool climate and pure water of the Cibicu, Carrizo, and other cañons in the vicinity of CampApache, and had seen their fields of corn tramped down at the orders of the agent, were full of grievous complaint. The Apache-Yumas and the Apaches are an entirely different people, speaking different languages and resembling each other only in the bitter hostility with which they had waged war against the whites. The young men of the Apache-Yuma bands who attended the conferences, were in full toilet—that is, they were naked from shoulders to waist, had their faces painted with deer’s blood or mescal, their heads done up in a plaster of mud three inches thick, and pendent from the cartilage of the nose wore a ring with a fragment of nacreous shell. General Crook’s own estimate of the results of these conferences, which are entirely too long to be inserted here, is expressed in the following General Orders (Number 43), issued from his headquarters at Fort Whipple on the 5th of October, 1882.
“The commanding general, after making a thorough and exhaustive examination among the Indians of the eastern and southern part of this Territory, regrets to say that he finds among them a general feeling of distrust and want of confidence in the whites, especially the soldiery; and also that much dissatisfaction, dangerous to the peace of the country, exists among them. Officers and soldiers serving in this department are reminded that one of the fundamental principles of the military character is justice to all—Indians as well as white men—and that a disregard of this principle is likely to bring about hostilities, and cause the death of the very persons they are sent here to protect. In all their dealings with the Indians, officers must be careful not only to observe the strictest fidelity, but to make no promises not in their power to carry out; all grievances arising within their jurisdiction should be redressed, so that an accumulation of them may not cause an outbreak.“Grievances, however petty, if permitted to accumulate, will be like embers that smoulder and eventually break into flame. When officers are applied to for the employment of force against Indians, they should thoroughly satisfy themselves of the necessity for the application, and of the legality of compliance therewith, in order that they may not, through the inexperience of others, or through their own hastiness, allow the troops under them to become the instruments of oppression. There must be no division of responsibility in this matter; each officer will be held to a strict accountability that his actions have been fully authorized by law and justice, and that Indians evincing a desire to enter upon a career of peace shall have no cause for complaint through hasty or injudicious acts of the military.”
“The commanding general, after making a thorough and exhaustive examination among the Indians of the eastern and southern part of this Territory, regrets to say that he finds among them a general feeling of distrust and want of confidence in the whites, especially the soldiery; and also that much dissatisfaction, dangerous to the peace of the country, exists among them. Officers and soldiers serving in this department are reminded that one of the fundamental principles of the military character is justice to all—Indians as well as white men—and that a disregard of this principle is likely to bring about hostilities, and cause the death of the very persons they are sent here to protect. In all their dealings with the Indians, officers must be careful not only to observe the strictest fidelity, but to make no promises not in their power to carry out; all grievances arising within their jurisdiction should be redressed, so that an accumulation of them may not cause an outbreak.
“Grievances, however petty, if permitted to accumulate, will be like embers that smoulder and eventually break into flame. When officers are applied to for the employment of force against Indians, they should thoroughly satisfy themselves of the necessity for the application, and of the legality of compliance therewith, in order that they may not, through the inexperience of others, or through their own hastiness, allow the troops under them to become the instruments of oppression. There must be no division of responsibility in this matter; each officer will be held to a strict accountability that his actions have been fully authorized by law and justice, and that Indians evincing a desire to enter upon a career of peace shall have no cause for complaint through hasty or injudicious acts of the military.”
Crook’s management of the Department of Arizona was conducted on the same lines as during his previous administration: he rode on mule-back all over it, and met and understood each andevery Indian with whom he might have to deal as friend or enemy; he reorganized his pack-trains and the Indian scouts, put the control of military affairs at the San Carlos under charge of Captain Emmet Crawford, Third Cavalry, a most intelligent and conscientious officer, encouraged the Indians to prepare for planting good crops the next spring, and made ready to meet the Chiricahuas. These Indians, for whom a reservation had been laid out with its southern line the boundary between the United States and the Mexican Republic, had been dealing heavily at the ranch of Rogers and Spence, at Sulphur Springs, where they were able to buy all the vile whiskey they needed. In a row over the sale of liquor both Rogers and Spence were killed, and the Apaches, fearing punishment, fled to the mountains of Mexico—the Sierra Madre. From that on, for six long years, the history of the Chiricahuas was one of blood: a repetition of the long series of massacres which, under “Cocheis,” they had perpetrated in the old days.
On several occasions a number of them returned to the San Carlos, or pretended to do so, but the recesses of the Sierra Madre always afforded shelter to small bands of renegades of the type of “Ka-e-tan-ne,” who despised the white man as a liar and scorned him as a foe. The unfortunate policy adopted by the Government towards the “Warm Springs” Apaches of New Mexico, who were closely related to the Chiricahuas, had an unhealthy effect upon the latter and upon all the other bands. The “Warm Springs” Apaches were peremptorily deprived of their little fields and driven away from their crops, half-ripened, and ordered to tramp to the San Carlos; when the band reached there the fighting men had disappeared, and only decrepit warriors, little boys and girls, and old women remained. “Victorio” went on the war-path with every effective man, and fairly deluged New Mexico and Chihuahua with blood.
General Crook felt that the Chiricahua Apache problem was a burning shame and disgrace, inasmuch as the property and lives not only of our own citizens but of those of a friendly nation, were constantly menaced. He had not been at San Carlos twenty-four hours before he had a party of Apaches out in the ranges to the south looking for trails or signs; this little party penetrated down into the northern end of the Sierra Madre below Camp Price, and saw some of the Mexican irregular troops, but found no freshtraces of the enemy. Crook insisted upon the expulsion from the reservation of all unauthorized squatters and miners, whether appearing under the guise of Mormons or as friends of the late agents, and opposed resolutely the further curtailment of the reservation or the proposition to transfer the Apaches to the Indian Territory, having in mind the contemptible failure of the attempt to evict the Cherokees from the mountains of North Carolina, where some twenty-two hundred of them still cling to the homes of their forefathers. He also insisted upon giving to the Apaches all work which could be provided for them, and in paying for the same in currency to the individual Indians without the interposition of any middlemen or contractors in any guise.
This will explain in a word why Crook was suddenly abused so roundly in the very Territory for which he had done so much. People who were not influenced by the disappointed elements enumerated, saw that General Crook’s views were eminently fair and sound, based upon the most extended experience, and not the hap-hazard ideas of a theoretical soldier. To quote from the Annual Message of Governor Tritle: “The Indians know General Crook and his methods, and respect both.” Had the notion ever taken root among the Apaches that they were all to be transplanted to unknown regions, the country would have had to face the most terrible and costly war in its history. Crook did not want wars—he wanted to avert them. In a letter to United States District Attorney Zabriskie, he used the following language: “I believe that it is of far greater importance to prevent outbreaks than to attempt the difficult and sometimes hopeless task of quelling them after they do occur; this policy can only be successful when the officers of justice fearlessly perform their duty in proceeding against the villains who fatten on the supplies intended for the use of Indians willing to lead peaceful and orderly lives. Bad as Indians often are, I have never yet seen one so demoralized that he was not an example in honor and nobility to the wretches who enrich themselves by plundering him of the little our Government appropriates for him.”
To prevent any of the Indians from slipping off from the agency, they were all enrolled, made to wear tags as of yore, and compelled to submit to periodical counts occurring every few days. It was found that there were then at the San CarlosAgency eleven hundred and twenty-eight males capable of bearing arms; this did not include the bands at or near Camp Apache or the Chiricahuas. The Apaches manifested the liveliest interest in the system of trial by jury, and it was apparent that criminals stood but a small chance of escaping punishment when arraigned before their own people. While we were at San Carlos on this occasion Captain Crawford had arrested two Apaches on the charge of making “tizwin,” getting drunk, and arousing camp by firing off guns late at night. The jury was impanelled, the trial began, and the room soon filled with spectators. The prisoners attempted to prove an “alibi,” and introduced witnesses to swear to the shooting having been done by other parties.
“Eskiminzin” impatiently arose to his feet and interrupted the proceedings: “That man is not telling the truth.”
“Tell ‘Eskiminzin’ to sit down and keep quiet,” ordered Captain Crawford; “he must not interrupt the proceedings of the court.”
A few moments after, in looking down the long list of witnesses, it was discovered that “Eskiminzin” was present as a witness, and he was called upon to testify.
“Tell the Captain,” said the indignant chief, “that I have nothing to say. I do not understand these white men; they let all kinds of people talk at a trial, and would just as soon listen to the words of a liar as those of a man telling the truth. Why, when I began to tell him that So-and-so was lying, he made me sit down and keep my mouth shut, but So-and-so went on talking, and every word he said was put down on paper.”
It took some time to explain to “Eskiminzin” the intricacies of our laws of evidence, and to pacify him enough to induce him to give his version of the facts.
Our quarters while at San Carlos were the adobe building erected as a “school-house,” at a cost to the Government of forty thousand dollars, but occupied by the late agent as a residence. It had been erected at a net cost of something between eight and nine thousand dollars, or at least I would contract to duplicate it for that and expect to make some money in the transaction besides. The walls were covered over with charcoal scrawls of Apache gods, drawn by irreverent youngsters, and the appearance of the place did not in the remotest sense suggest the habitation of the Muses.
General Crook returned late in the fall of 1882 to his headquarters at Fort Whipple, and awaited the inevitable irruption of the Chiricahua Apaches from their stronghold in the Sierra Madre in Mexico. Large detachments of Indian scouts, under competent officers, were kept patrolling the boundary in the vicinity of Cloverdale and other exposed points, and small garrisons were in readiness to take the field from Fort Bowie and other stations. The completion of the Southern Pacific and the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé systems, and the partial completion of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, had wrought certain changes in the condition of affairs, to which reference may be made. In a military sense they had all been a great benefit by rendering the transportation of troops and supplies a matter of most agreeable surprise to those who still remembered the creaking ox-teams and prairie schooners, which formerly hauled all stores from the banks of the distant Missouri; in a social sense they had been the means of introducing immigration, some of which was none too good, as is always the case with the earlier days of railroad construction on the frontier.
The mining towns like Tombstone, then experiencing a “boom,” had been increased by more than a fair quota of gamblers, roughs, and desperate adventurers of all classes. Cowboys and horse thieves flooded the southeastern corner of the Territory and the southwestern corner of the next Territory—New Mexico; with Cloverdale, in southwestern New Mexico, as a headquarters, they bade defiance to the law and ran things with a high hand, and made many people sigh for the better days when only red-skinned savages intimidated the settlements. The town of Phoenix had arisen in the valley of the Salt River, along the lines of prehistoric irrigating ditches, marking the presence of considerable population, and suggesting to Judge Hayden and others who first laid it out the propriety of bestowing the name it now bears. The new population were both intelligent and enterprising: under the superintendence of the Hon. Clark Churchill they had excavated great irrigating canals, and begun the planting of semi-tropical fruits, which has proved unusually remunerative, and built up the community so that it has for years been able to care for itself against any hostile attacks that might be threatened. Prescott, being off the direct line of railroad (with which, however, it has since been connectedby a branch), had not responded so promptly to the new condition of affairs, but its growth had been steady, and its population had not been burdened with the same class of loafers who for so long a time held high carnival in Tombstone, Deming, and elsewhere. Prescott had always boasted of its intelligent, bright family society—thoroughly American in the best sense—and the boast was still true.
There is no point in the southwestern country so well adapted, none that can compare with Prescott as the site of a large Indian school; and when the time comes, as I am certain it is to come, when we shall recognize the absurdity of educating a few Indian boys and then returning them back to their tribes, in which they can exert no influence, but can excite only jealousy on account of their superior attainments—when by a slight increase of appropriations, the whole race of Indian boys and girls could be lifted from savagery into the path to a better life—Prescott will become the site of such a school. It is education which is to be the main lever in this elevation, but it is wholesale education, not retail. This phase of the case impressed itself upon the early settlers in Canada, who provided most liberally for the training of, comparatively speaking, great numbers of the Algonquin youth of both sexes. In Mexico was erected the first school for the education of the native American—the college at Patzcuaro—built before foot of Puritan had touched the rock of Plymouth.
Prescott possesses the advantages of being the centre of a district inhabited by numbers of tribes whose children could be educated so near their own homes that parents would feel easier in regard to them, and yet the youngsters would be far removed from tribal influences and in the midst of a thoroughly progressive American community. The climate cannot be excelled anywhere; the water is as good as can be found; and the scenery—of granite peaks, grassy meads, balmy pine forests, and placid streamlets—cannot well be surpassed. The post of Fort Whipple could be transferred to the Interior Department, and there would be found ready to hand the houses for teachers, the school-rooms, dormitories, refectories, blacksmith-shops, wagoners’ shops, saddlers’ shops, stables, granaries, and other buildings readily adaptable to the purposes of instruction in various handicrafts. Five hundred children, equally divided as to sex, could be selected from the great tribes of the Navajos, Apaches, Hualpais, Mojaves, Yumas,Pimas, and Maricopas. The cost of living is very moderate, and all supplies could be brought in on the branch railroad, while the absence of excitement incident to communities established at railroad centres or on through lines will be manifest upon a moment’s reflection. It would require careful, intelligent, absolutely honest administration, to make it a success; it should be some such school as I have seen conducted by the Congregationalists and Presbyterians among the Santee Sioux, under the superintendence of Rev. Alfred Riggs, or by the Friends among the Cherokees in North Carolina, under Mr. Spray, where the children are instructed in the rudiments of Christian morality, made to understand that labor is most honorable, that the saddler, the carpenter, or blacksmith must be a gentleman and come to the supper-table with clean face and combed hair, and that the new life is in every respect the better life.
But if it is to be the fraud upon the confiding tax-payers that the schools at Fort Defiance (Navajo Agency), Zuni, San Carlos, and other places that I personally examined have been, money would be saved by not establishing it at all. The agent of the Navajos reported in 1880 that his “school” would accommodate eighty children. I should dislike to imprison eight dogs that I loved in the dingy hole that he called a “school”—but then the agent had a pull at Washington, being the brother-in-law of a “statesman,” and I had better not say too much; and the school-master, although an epileptic idiot, had been sent out as the representative of the family influence of another “statesman,” so I will not say more about him. The Indians to be instructed in the school whose establishment is proposed at Prescott, Arizona, should be trained in the line of their “atavism,” if I may borrow a word from the medical dictionary—that is, they should be trained in the line of their inherited proclivities and tendencies. Their forefathers for generations—ever since the time of the work among them of the Franciscan missionaries—have been a pastoral people, raising great flocks of sheep, clipping, carding, and spinning the wool, weaving the most beautiful of rugs and blankets and sashes, and selling them at a profit to admiring American travellers. They have been saddle-makers, basket-makers, silver-smiths, and—as in the case of the Mojaves, Pimas, and Maricopas—potters and mat-makers. In such trades, preferentially, they should be instructed, and bythe introduction of a few Lamb knitting machines, they could be taught to make stockings for the Southwestern market out of the wool raised by their own families, and thus help support the institution and open a better market for the products of their own tribe. They could be taught to tan the skins of their own flocks and herds, and to make shoes and saddles of the result. But all this must be put down as “whimsical,” because there is no money in it “for the boys.” The great principle of American politics, regardless of party lines, is that “the boys” must be taken care of at all times and in all places.
Tucson had changed the most appreciably of any town in the Southwest; American energy and American capital had effected a wonderful transformation: the old garrison was gone; the railroad had arrived; where Jack Long and his pack-train in the old times had merrily meandered, now puffed the locomotive; Muñoz’s corral had been displaced by a round-house, and Muñoz himself by a one-lunged invalid from Boston; the Yankees had almost transformed the face of nature; the exquisite architectural gem of San Xavier del Bac still remained, but the “Shoo Fly” restaurant had disappeared, and in its place the town boasted with very good reason of the “San Xavier” Hotel, one of the best coming within my experience as a traveller. American enterprise had moved to the front, and the Castilian with his“marromas”and“bailes”and saints’ days and“funcciones”had fallen to the rear; telephones and electric lights and Pullman cars had scared away the plodding burro and the creaking“carreta”; it was even impossible to get a meal cooked in the Mexican style of Mexican viands; our dreams had faded; the chariot of Cinderella had changed back into a pumpkin, and Sancho was no longer governor.
“I tell you, Cap,” said my old friend, Charlie Hopkins, “them railroads’s playin’ hob with th’ country, ’n a feller’s got to hustle hisself now in Tucson to get a meal of frijoles or enchiladas; this yere new-fangled grub doan’ suit me ’n I reckon I’ll pack mee grip ’n lite out fur Sonora.”
Saddest of all, the old-timers were thinning out, or if not dead were living under a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph; the Postons, Ourys, Bradys, Mansfields, Veils, Rosses, Montgomerys, Duncans, Drachmans, Handys, and others were unappreciated by the incoming tide of “tenderfeet,” who knew nothing of the perilsand tribulations of life in Arizona and New Mexico before Crook’s genius and valor had redeemed them from the clutch of the savage. On the Colorado River Captain Jack Mellon still plied the good ship “Cocopah,” and Dan O’Leary still dealt out to expectant listeners tales of the terrible days when he “fit” with Crook; within sight of the “Wickytywiz,” Charlie Spencer still lived among his Hualpai kinsmen, not much the worse for the severe wounds received while a scout; the old Hellings mill on the Salt River, once the scene of open-handed hospitality to all travellers, still existed under changed ownership, and the Arnolds, Ehls, Bowers, Bangharts, and other ranchmen of northern Arizona were still in place; but the mill of Don José Peirson no longer ground its toll by the current of the San Ignacio; the Samaniegos, Suasteguis, Borquis, Ferreras, and other Spanish families had withdrawn to Sonora; and, oldest survival of all, “Uncle Lew Johnson” was living in seclusion with the family of Charlie Hopkins on the Salumay on the slopes of the Sierra Ancha. It would pay some enterprising man to go to Arizona to interview this old veteran, who first entered Arizona with the earliest band of trappers; who was one of the party led by Pauline Weaver; who knew Kit Carson intimately; who could recall the days when Taos, New Mexico, was the metropolis of fashion and commerce for the whole Southwest, and the man who had gone as far east as St. Louis was looked upon as a traveller whose recitals merited the closest attention of the whole camp.