WHILE LAUNCHING RAIDS AND conducting war against Mexicans, Chiricahuas knew about other white people approaching from the north and east. The newcomers called themselves “Americans.” As early as the 1820s, these white people had appeared in Mangas Coloradas’s country. They were American fur trappers, and they began to base themselves at Santa Rita del Cobre for westward expeditions into the Gila country. Located about thirty-five miles east of Santa Lucía Springs, at the southern edge of the Pinos Altos Range of southwestern New Mexico, they lay within the homeland of Mangas Coloradas and his Bedonkohe and Chihenne followers. The Santa Rita copper mines were first exploited by the Spanish in 1803 and then the Mexicans. The Spanish had built a presidio and other adobe structures to work the mines. Both Spanish and Mexicans also had used the copper mines as a military base both for making war and peace with the resident Apaches. Mangas extended friendship to the Americans and often conferred with them; Geronimo was almost certainly nearby. They proved no threat and merely wished to pass through his domain.1
The Americans next appeared in 1846, when they had declared war on Mexico. An American general, Stephen Watts Kearny, led an expedition of dragoons by way of the copper mines and Santa Lucía Springs toward California to claim it for the United States. He needed mules. He and Mangas Coloradas established a wary friendship, and Kearny got his mules.
In the years following the friendly meeting between Mangas Coloradas and the American general, the Chihennes and Bedonkohes largely concentrated on their ongoing war-and-peace relations with Chihuahua and Sonora. The revenge raid for the Janos massacre, in which Geronimo lost his family, had to be plotted and carried out. At the same time, the Chiricahuas noted the creeping advance of American soldiers down the Rio Grande and the few undermanned forts they built.
As early as 1848, some of the Chihennes, the Chiricahua band closest to the Americans, had even stirred up the soldiers. The Rio Grande flowed south from New Mexico through the Pass of the North, after passing the Mexican towns of Mesilla and, nearby to the north, Doña Ana. The soldiers had stationed themselves at Doña Ana. On December 12, 1848, a small party of Apaches approached Doña Ana and shouted that they wanted to talk. When a detachment rode out, the Apaches opened fire and drove them back. This may have been the first hostile encounter with American soldiers.2
The Chiricahuas occasionally raided around the Rio Grande settlements of Mesilla, El Paso, and Doña Ana and carried off many mules. In August 1849 about one hundred raiders, probably Bedonkohes led by Mangas and probably Geronimo, killed citizens near El Paso and hurried home with a big herd of mules. Soldiers from Doña Ana pursued and caught up near the copper mines. In a two-hour battle, the soldiers routed the Apaches, captured and destroyed their camp with all its contents, and recovered some of the stolen mules. From the Apache viewpoint, they had done nothing wrong. Although in country now claimed by the Americans, almost all the victims were Mexicans, still fair game. Mangas had made clear to Kearny himself that the Chiricahuas would always war on Mexicans. The American claim to the land, moreover, meant nothing to the Apaches. After this encounter, although Mangas was still inclined to trust the Americans, for many Chiricahuas Americans as well as Mexicans became enemies.3
Both Apaches and Americans wavered between war and peace. American civil authorities, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, consistently sought peace. The army, also headquartered in Santa Fe, seemed to pursue both war and peace at the same time. Officials closest to the scene had a better feel for the disposition of the Apaches at any given time than those in distant Santa Fe.
The senior military officer in southern New Mexico, one of the army’s best, was Captain Enoch Steen, who commanded a squadron of the First Dragoons at Doña Ana. He had led the pursuit in August 1849 that destroyed the Bedonkohe camp near the Santa Rita copper mines. Yet in August 1850 he led sixty dragoons to the copper mines to try to discuss peace. For six days he and Mangas Coloradas talked. Other chiefs participated, including some of the major Chihenne chiefs, still residing in their homeland closer to the Rio Grande. All said they wanted peace, but with Mexicans it was “war to the knife.” Steen concluded that if a civil agent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs established himself at the copper mines within the next six weeks, he could conclude a lasting peace.4
That did not happen because Colonel Edwin V. Sumner, a tough old dragoon who commanded the army in New Mexico, did not want peace. In January 1852 he established Fort Webster at the copper mines, but moved it nine months later fourteen miles to the east, on the Mimbres River, Chihenne country. The colonel had hoped that Fort Webster would control the resident Apaches, but in his mind control meant military power rather than peaceful accommodation. And with good reason. The Bedonkohes and Chihennes had never stopped raiding the Rio Grande settlements. Sumner considered them at war and sent weak military columns into their country. And the Apaches did consider themselves at war, since the soldiers clearly invaded their country with hostile intent. Sumner blamed the civil authorities for the failure of peace initiatives. In truth, they had lacked both money and officials to extend their reach into the Chiricahua country.5
Ironically, even before Sumner had fully organized his offensive, in June 1852 word reached Santa Fe that the Chihennes and Bedonkohes wanted to make peace. The leading chiefs had achieved triumph at Pozo Hediondo and suffered defeat at the Janos disaster and now wanted to be friends with the Americans. With Mangas Coloradas, they had even started north to meet with the officials. John Griener, acting as superintendent of Indian affairs, and Colonel Sumner set forth to negotiate a treaty. On July 11, 1852, at Ácoma Pueblo, Mangas Coloradas and the other chiefs placed their marks on a treaty of peace and friendship. It ceded no country and promised issues of rations and other items. Mangas vigorously rejected articles requiring an end to raiding in Mexico and the return of Mexican captives, but signed anyway. Now he could go back to the Santa Lucía country and resume life as normal, warring with Mexico and farming at home. He had signed the only treaty he ever would sign with the United States.6
Griener and a new governor, William Carr Lane, followed up on the Ácoma treaty. A new agent, Edward H. Wingfield, arrived at Fort Webster in December 1852, to find the veteran Captain Enoch Steen commanding the post. Together, they spent the winter trying to round up the Chiricahua chiefs and launch a farming enterprise among the Mimbres local group of the Chihennes on the Mimbres River. At the same time, however, small raiding parties struck the Mexican settlements along the Rio Grande, undermining the prospects for peace. In the spring of 1853, Governor Lane himself journeyed to Fort Webster and worked with Wingfield and Steen to gather enough chiefs to negotiate a compact supplementing the Ácoma treaty. Since it still took no land and promised rations, the chiefs signed. Mangas Coloradas, raiding in Sonora with Chokonens, did not show up until May 18 to give his “cordial assent.” Lane even traveled west of the copper mines to inspect Santa Lucía Springs. He concluded that this country would make an ideal reservation and agency for the Chihennes and Bedonkohes.7
As so often would happen in the unhappy relations between the Chiricahuas and US officialdom, Lane’s compact met with disapproval. He had to advise Wingfield of a “chilling frost” in Washington and instruct him to reduce rations to the lowest level possible and tell the Indians to hunt and collect desert food.8
The “chilling frost” lasted nearly two years. For Mangas and his followers, the small handouts at Fort Webster hardly warranted the effort to go there, although in September 1853 he had a brief talk with the agent. Besides, Mangas and his people felt secure in their homes on the upper Gila and in the Mogollons. Also, in part reflecting disappointment over the broken promises of the Lane compact, they turned their attention to Mexico. Both provisions and revenge could be gained there. During 1853–54, Mangas and his son-in-law Cochise repeatedly led savage forays into Sonora. The raids distracted Mangas’s attention from what the Americans and the Chihenne chiefs were up to. Cochise, his Chokonen homeland remote from American officials, did not care. Geronimo, the loss of his family still heavy in his mind, probably welcomed the opportunity to kill more Mexicans.
Not until the summer of 1854 did Mangas begin to think about the Americans, with whom he continued to desire good relations. He found that Fort Webster had been abandoned in December 1853 and the soldiers and the Indian agent relocated on the Rio Grande. The army named the new station Fort Thorn. A new agent had appeared and reestablished the old agency at Doña Ana, and he was doling out rations and other issues to the Chihennes. With the Janos massacre amply revenged by the bloody incursions into Sonora, Mangas turned his attention back to the Americans. Nothing is known of Geronimo’s part in any of these events. He either remained close to Mangas Coloradas or carried out his own raiding in Mexico.9
None of the Chiricahua chiefs or their followers, including Mangas Coloradas, knew anything of the changes taking place in Washington and Santa Fe. Nor would they have understood had they known. The governmental structure of the Americans, so different from Apache organization, remained a mystery for decades to come. What motivated the baffling fluctuations in American policy and action remained equally unknown. Somehow, a remote and vague “Great Father” determined relations with the Apaches.
In March 1853 a new “Great Father” had taken office in Washington. President Franklin Pierce, following the usual practice, replaced the appointees of President Millard Fillmore with his own loyal followers. That meant a new secretary of the interior, a new commissioner of Indian affairs, and a new governor and superintendent of Indian affairs for New Mexico. A veteran fur trapper, David Meriwether, replaced William Carr Lane in Santa Fe. He in turn repudiated most of Lane’s program and named new Indian agents. Fortuitously for harmonious relations in Santa Fe, “Bull” Sumner yielded the New Mexico military command. Meriwether sought to negotiate treaties with all the tribes of New Mexico. He succeeded, although only a few Mimbres represented the Chiricahuas. The Senate ratified none of the Meriwether treaties.
On July 6, 1854, a new agent arrived at Doña Ana. He was a Pennsylvania physician with proper political credentials, Dr. Michael Steck, and he turned out to be the best Indian agent in New Mexico, certainly the best the Chiricahuas had ever had or would have. Governor Meriwether instructed Steck to move his agency up the Rio Grande from Doña Ana to the vicinity of Fort Thorn, and he issued the September annuities there. By October Steck had toured all the Chihenne and Bedonkohe country under his jurisdiction and met with as many chiefs as he could find– except Mangas Coloradas.10
Late in October the chiefs and their people began to gather around Fort Thorn for the next ration issue. On October 27 Mangas Coloradas came in with two other chiefs and ninety people, probably including Geronimo. Mangas met with Steck, the first meeting between the two. They quickly established a rapport that, as Mangas came in for the monthly issues, ripened into a genuine friendship and mutual respect. For the balance of the 1850s, each supported the other and established an increasingly close relationship.11
Michael Steck saw the Mimbres as only a small part of his mission. The Mimbres River could not sustain even the Mimbres, much less other Chihennes. In August 1857 he urged that a new reservation be set aside on the upper Gila River with a military post of at least four companies and an agent to get them started farming and see to their immediate wants.12
Steck did not yield his vision, even though it had already been severely undermined. A Bedonkohe had murdered a Navajo Indian agent, which led to a major military offensive against both Chiricahuas and White Mountains. Colonel Benjamin L. E. Bonneville thrust far down the Gila River and assaulted a White Mountain village. The campaign sent shock waves through all the Apaches.13
Bonneville’s invasion predictably alarmed the Chiricahuas, and they began to draw off to the south and contemplate overtures to Janos for rations. Mangas’s hybrid following began to fall apart as he aged and younger chiefs asserted leadership of their respective local groups. His influence weakening and his country swarming with soldiers, Mangas turned to his son-in-law Cochise, now the leading chief of the Chokonens to the west. He remained with him until the Bonneville campaign had run its course.14
Back at Santa Lucía Springs for the October 1858 issue of government provisions, Mangas and Geronimo took their provisions and again moved to Cochise’s country, from which they intended to launch raids into Sonora. About December 1, 1858, both Mangas and Cochise, with about a hundred Bedonkohe and Chokonen warriors, struck into Sonora. Geronimo accompanied Mangas. Cochise had returned with much stock by the end of December, when he met the energetic Michael Steck and received government issues for the first time. Mangas and Geronimo returned from Sonora in the middle of February 1859, also with many horses, mules, and other booty, leaving behind the usual scenes of devastation. With their Mexican plunder, they went back to the upper Gila and settled into farming near Santa Lucía.15
By 1860, Geronimo was thirty-seven and a tough, seasoned fighter with a long record of raid and war in Sonora and Chihuahua. He had risen in stature to gain the respect and admiration of Mangas Coloradas. Mangas often took him on forays into Sonora as a trusted lieutenant, and he enjoyed the admiration of the Bedonkohes and Chihennes. He had also cemented relations with Cochise and often mixed with the Chokonens in the Chiricahua Mountains and used them as a springboard for incursions into Mexico. His home, however, remained the Gila country near his birthplace in New Mexico.
That he lived there drew motivation from two sources: first, the nearby home of his mentor, Mangas Coloradas, at Santa Lucía Springs; second, his evolving role as a family man. Shortly after losing his mother, his wife, Alope, and his three children in the Carrasco massacre of 1851, Geronimo had married Chee-hash-kish, a Bedonkohe, and would later sire a son and a daughter. Soon afterward, he took still another wife, his third, Nana-thathtithl, another Bedonkohe. Together, they had one child. The family probably traveled occasionally with Geronimo but most of the time remained on the upper Gila.16
As a well-known Bedonkohe fighting man and a close associate of both Mangas Coloradas and Cochise, by 1860 Geronimo had become a prominent figure not only among Bedonkohes but Chihennes, Chokonens, and even Nednhis.
Three developments interrupted the favorable prospects of Steck’s alliance with Mangas Coloradas. First was the discovery of gold in the Pinos Altos Range twenty-five miles east of Santa Lucía and the gold rush this set off in 1860. Second was a grievous wrong to Cochise inflicted by a young army officer bereft of experience and judgment. Third was the outbreak of the Civil War.