AS THE 1850S OPENED, Chihuahua and Sonora continued to divide the Chiricahuas. Many, up to half the Chihennes and some Nednhis, succumbed to the lure of Janos, with its prospect of rations and trade. The largest of a cluster of communities in northwestern Chihuahua, about fifty miles below the US boundary, Janos had been a center of Chiricahua attention for a generation, a place to trade plunder from raids in Sonora and to draw rations when the government wanted peace. By the end of 1850 Chihuahua had treaties in place at Janos and issued rations. The rest of the Chihennes, together with the Bedonkohe and Chokonen followers of Mangas Coloradas and Cochise, including Geronimo, opposed the peace overtures. As throughout the 1840s, chiefs continued to waver between the attractions of Janos and the plunder of Sonora.
Even with treaties concluded at Janos, in January 1851 the war faction of the Chihennes, Bedonkohes, and Chokonens organized a formidable expedition against Sonoran towns and ranches. It advanced in two forces of about 150 fighters. With Mangas about sixty years old, the more vigorous Cochise employed superior war skills. But the stature of Mangas ensured his dominant influence, and as always he fought fiercely in the vanguard of any combat. Geronimo, at twenty-eight a highly regarded fighter, was a prominent presence, and his friend Juh had come over from Janos with some treaty Nednhis.1
Mangas and Cochise thrust far down the Sonora River to the southwest as far as Hermosillo. The other division of the war faction rode closer to the western foothills of the Sierra Madre, along the Bavispe River and south as far as Sahuaripa (Sow-ah-reepa). Ranches, haciendas, villages, and travelers fell prey to the warriors, losing lives, horses, mules, cattle, and other booty. Both groups then turned back north, generally up the Nacozari River midway between their downward sweeps along the Sonora and Bavispe Rivers.
As ordained by Apache war culture and inflamed by their hatred of Sonora, the men ruthlessly cut down any Mexican who strayed into their path and made off with any stock or booty that appealed to them. An expedition of this magnitude provided an opportunity for Geronimo to demonstrate his raiding skills and to cement his bond to Mangas Coloradas and Cochise, his mentors.
The raiders encountered little of the organized resistance that confronted earlier Sonoran raids. Unknown to them, their old nemesis, Colonel Elías González, Sonora’s leading military figure since the 1830s, who would have deployed such troops as his little garrisons allowed, had fallen casualty to Mexican politics. His successor, Colonel José María Carrasco, a fierce, arrogant advocate of war of extermination, had yet to arrive in Sonora. Even so, Governor José de Aguilar organized a force to cut off the raiders as they returned northward. Under his orders, fifty national guardsmen under Captain Ignacio Pesqueira moved from Arizpe eastward to unite with another fifty under Captain Manuel Martínez marching west from Bocoachi. They came together amid some rolling hills twelve miles northeast of the upper Nacozari River. Then, when scouts brought word of a dust cloud approaching from the south, Pesqueira and Martínez set up an ambush in a beautiful, mountain-girt valley containing the well-known “Stinking Springs,” or Pozo Hediondo. The date was January 20, 1851.
The dust rose from the war expedition of Mangas Coloradas and Cochise returning to their home country. Ahead of the main force rode a small party driving 350 head of stock. Behind, Mangas drove a herd of about one thousand horses in his front. The advance party triggered the ambush, which took the Apaches by surprise. Although badly outnumbered, the men abandoned their stock, withdrew into defensive positions in the hills, and fought fiercely. The Mexicans assailed these defenses, overran them, and routed the Apaches.
Although also surprised, Mangas and his men quickly recovered. The Mexican ambush had misfired and led them into an Apache ambush. They now faced half again as many as their own number. The Apaches charged to the rescue of their brethren and collided with the foe. A savage conflict, lasting three hours and featuring hand-to-hand encounters, drove the Mexicans from one hilltop defense to another, with heavy losses. Geronimo recalled that “I fought with fury. Many fell by my hand, and constantly I led the advance. Many braves were killed.” At the end, “over the bloody field, covered with the bodies of Mexicans, rang the fierce Apache war-whoop.”2
Contributing to this outcome, by late afternoon, the second war expedition, mainly Chokonens working their way north, reached the scene and threw about a hundred men into the fight. Skirmishing continued until dark, but the Mexicans had been devastatingly defeated. All the officers had been killed or wounded. Mexican casualties amounted to twenty-six killed and forty-six wounded, nearly three-fourths of the command. Apache casualties are unknown.
Pozo Hediondo stood as the greatest victory Apaches had ever won over Mexican military forces. As the biographer of Mangas Coloradas notes, his importance at Pozo Hediondo “rested on his ability to draw together the coalition of bands and to infuse them with a confidence—perhaps even bordering on arrogance—that they were invincible to Sonoran firepower, which resulted in the rout and annihilation of Pesqueira’s command.” Geronimo fought fiercely, as did Cochise, Juh, and others. But to Mangas Coloradas belonged the laurels.3
That Apache culture mandated wars of revenge is ironic in light of the revenge motive that powered the response of the new Sonoran commander, Colonel José María Carrasco. The catastrophe at Pozo Hediondo demanded savage reprisal.
Mangas Coloradas and others who participated in the war expedition, including Geronimo, withdrew to their homes, Mangas and the Bedonkohes to the Burro Mountains. Fearing Sonoran retaliation for Pozo Hediondo and aware of the peace and rations enjoyed by many Chiricahuas at Janos, Mangas put out peace feelers to see if he and his people could receive similar benefits. He did not want to relocate to Janos but wished to move to more secure havens in the Animas Mountains about seventy-five miles northwest of Janos, in New Mexico. Following up on these overtures, he and many of his people, including Geronimo, journeyed to Janos to discuss the issue with the authorities. Like other Apaches settled near Janos, Mangas and his people camped outside town. Each day the men went into the town to trade, bargaining with loot taken in the recent war expedition into Sonora and freely partaking of the intoxicants available there. They produced a quicker and stronger effect than tiswin.4
Meantime, Colonel Carrasco and about four hundred guardsmen and militia crossed the Sierra Madre from Sonora into Chihuahua and crept up on Janos without discovery by either the Apaches or the Janos authorities. On March 5, 1851, he struck, destroying several of the Apache rancherías. Carrasco reported killing sixteen men and five women and taking sixty-two captives. Fifty-six of these were women and children, herded off with his command to be sold into slavery. Carrasco’s count of women and children likely fell short of the actual number. Most of the victims were Chokonens and Nednhis, although Mangas’s Bedonkohes, including Geronimo, temporarily at Janos on a peace mission, suffered also.
As Geronimo recounted his own experience:
Late one afternoon when returning from town we were met by a few women and children, who told us that Mexican troops from some other town had attacked our camp, killed all the warriors of the guard, captured all our ponies, secured our arms, destroyed our supplies, and killed many of our women and children. Quickly we separated, concealing ourselves as best we could until nightfall, when we assembled at our appointed place of rendezvous—a thicket by the river. Silently we stole in one by one: sentinels were placed, and, when all were counted, I found that my aged mother, my young wife, and my three small children were among the slain. There were no lights in camp, so without being noticed I silently turned away and stood by the river. How long I stood there I do not know, but when I saw the warriors arranging for a council I took my place.5
Geronimo leaves unsaid whether he actually saw or recognized the bodies of his family, although in old age he told artist E. A. Burbank that he found them lying in a pool of blood.6 He may have seen them; more likely, since no lights were lit, he did not. For all he knew, they were among the captives taken into slavery. Uncontested, however, is that Carrasco had wiped out Geronimo’s entire family. “I had lost all,” he lamented. “I was never again contented in our quiet home. True, I could visit my father’s grave, but I had vowed vengeance upon the Mexican troopers who had wronged me, and whenever I came near his grave or saw anything to remind me of former happy days my heart would ache for revenge against Mexico.”
As Geronimo testified, the Carrasco massacre planted in him a bitter hatred of all Mexicans that lasted until the end of his life. At twenty-eight, this landmark event shaped the man and marked out his life’s pathway.