DEMORALIZED BY THE MURDER of their venerable chief Mangas Coloradas and fearful of aggressive campaigning by the soldiers, the Bedonkohes abandoned the headwaters of the Gila River and moved west. As Geronimo recalled, “We retreated into the mountains near Apache Pass.” This was Cochise country, and as Geronimo noted, Cochise “took command of both divisions.” The Chokonen chief assumed the mantle of Mangas Coloradas, although he lacked the qualities to bind the Bedonkohes as solidly to his leadership.
Neither the Chokonens nor Bedonkohes remained quietly in the Chiricahua Mountains around Apache Pass. The killing of Mangas Coloradas demanded revenge. On March 22, 1863, a raiding party struck a newly built military post in the Pinos Altos Mountains and ran off with sixty horses. They fled westward into Arizona and paused on the Rio Bonita, a southern tributary of the Gila, at a place favored by Cochise. Pursing soldiers found them. A surprise attack took twenty-five lives in twenty minutes and scattered the rest.1
Revenge raids continued throughout 1864 and into 1865, both in New Mexico and Arizona. Soldiers proved unrelenting in tracking down raiding parties and exacting many lives in sudden surprise attacks while suffering few casualties themselves. Their victories fueled the need for more vengeance, hence more raiding parties. They ran off much military stock, killed a few soldiers, but only seemed to stir them to further offensives. Rarely had the Chiricahuas engaged an enemy in so many open conflicts or suffered such damaging losses.
As the conflict escalated, Indian families remained relatively secure, tucked away in mountain recesses in the Chiricahua and neighboring mountain ranges. Among the women and children was Geronimo’s family. It consisted of his second wife, Chee-hash-kish, who in 1864 gave birth to a son, Chappo (not to be confused with Chatto, another Chiricahua). Lulu would follow in 1865. Geronimo’s third wife, Nana-tha-thithl, and her child had been killed by Mexican soldiers in 1861. Geronimo would soon take another wife, a Chiricahua-Nednhi whose name is lost but who was the sister of a close relative of Cochise and his second son, Naiche.2
Deprived of the strong leadership of Mangas Coloradas, in the three years after his death the Bedonkohes fractured into three groups. Illustrating the hybrid composition of Mangas’s following, some joined with Victorio’s Chihennes in New Mexico, ultimately to seek peace with the Americans; by the early 1870s, they would be fully absorbed by the Chihennes. Others drifted under the influence of Cochise and Juh. Given his friendship and family tie with Juh since youth, Geronimo and his following joined Juh. The bond linking the two grew ever stronger by the year.3
The treacherous murder of Mangas Coloradas in January 1863 should have alerted the Chiricahuas that they faced a new breed of soldiers. Brigadier General James H. Carleton, the military potentate in Santa Fe, set the tone: ruthless, energetic, persistent, demanding, determined that his men keep in the field until they had accomplished their mission. In southern New Mexico, the task fell to Brigadier General Joseph R. West. He wholeheartedly subscribed to Carleton’s mind-set, as demonstrated by his personal order to kill the captive Mangas Coloradas. He expected no less from the able captains who so aggressively kept to the trail of raiding parties and inflicted heavy casualties; nor from the troops themselves, consisting of hardy California gold miners anxious to sweep aside the Indians and, as Carleton encouraged, exploit the mines of southern New Mexico. From 1863 to 1865, the California Volunteers conducted rigorous campaigns that cost Chiricahua lives but did not conquer them.4
In his annual report for 1866, Major General Irvin McDowell reported from division headquarters in San Francisco that the regular Fourteenth Infantry and First Cavalry had replaced all the Volunteers in the District of Arizona. They were warring successfully against the Apaches and letting them know they could have peace by settling at Fort Goodwin, a post erected on the Gila River by the Volunteers. But they could not be kept there. The army could not feed them, and they did not want to settle with other Apache groups with which they had long been at enmity. In 1866, therefore, the US Regular Army opened a new era in the Apache wars.5
What part Geronimo played in Cochise’s battles with the California Volunteers for the three years after the death of Mangas Coloradas in 1863 can only be speculated. Consistent with his growing drift away from Mangas in the years before his death, as the Bedonkohes gradually fragmented Geronimo aligned himself with the local group that adhered only partly to Cochise. Sometimes they followed him into battle. Sometimes they raided and fought on their own. Equally as often, they could be found with Juh’s Nednhis in Sonora. There, Geronimo and Juh grew ever closer in raids and warfare, on both sides of the border. Both against the California Volunteers and in the intense warfare with the regulars after 1866, Geronimo and Juh came and went between Mexico and Arizona. Although more independent than Chokonens, Geronimo and Juh still honored the power of Cochise’s leadership and fought closely for and with him.
The name Geronimo surfaced in Mexican records in 1843 and occasionally in American records in the 1860s. Not until the 1870s, however, in his fifties, did Geronimo appear to any whites in both name and person. His autobiography links him to numerous fights and raids throughout the period when Mangas and Cochise battled Mexicans and Americans, but placing him definitely in all but a few is impossible. That in the middle and late 1860s his Bedonkohe local group bonded as closely with Juh’s Nednhis as with Cochise’s Chokonens suggests that Geronimo passed much of these years in Sonora and Chihuahua. His family probably remained hidden in the Sierra Madre most of the time. Sometime in the years after 1865, Geronimo added to his family of four wives and three children a fifth and a sixth wife. His fifth was a Bedonkohe named Shit-sha-she, his sixth a Nednhi named Zi-yeh. Since the two children of Geronimo and Zi-yeh, Fenton and Eva, were not born until 1882 and 1889, respectively, the sixth marriage probably occurred in the middle or late 1870s.6
As the Chiricahuas learned of the end of the white man’s Civil War, they watched anxiously as Arizona and New Mexico began to fill with miners, cattlemen, and farmers. They provided tempting targets, and Apache depredations increased. Many of the newcomers lost life and possessions. Travelers on the overland route, especially the mail coaches, proved especially vulnerable. Cochise had not forgotten the Bascom Affair, and the years 1869 and 1870 featured the fiercest fighting of the Chiricahua wars. Fort Bowie, in the heart of Cochise’s homeland, played a central role in the fighting, its patrols tracking and defeating the chief’s raiding parties time and again.7
In his ten-year war of revenge for the senseless atrocity inflicted on his family by Lieutenant Bascom, Cochise had killed many white people and fought many battles with the white soldiers. He had made southern Arizona dangerous for travelers and settlers. But the conflicts with soldiers, both California Volunteers and US regulars, had cost many fighters. His women and children never felt secure from a sudden attack. They never had enough food and feared to search widely for it. He grew increasingly alarmed at his shrinking population and personally weary of always being forced to fight, whether offensively or defensively. Sixty or more years old by the early 1870s and in failing health, Cochise began to think seriously of peace.8
To the east, the Warm Springs Chihennes had the same thoughts. Their homeland centered at Ojo Caliente, the sacred springs that fed the Alamosa River, which flowed southeast into the Rio Grande. Downstream lay the Mexican village of Cañada Alamosa, where the Warm Springs people traded. In 1869 hunger had driven them to seek peace and rations from the officer at Fort McRae assigned as their agent. Within a year they were holding peace talks at Cañada Alamosa, although the government’s sparse rations had done little to abate their hunger. During one of the many talks, in December 1869, Chief Loco disclosed that Cochise had said he would bring his people in as soon as a treaty was made. But he wanted to be satisfied that it involved no treachery.9
Only a month earlier, although raids continued unabated, Cochise had sent a peace messenger, perhaps his wife, to a new military post to the north, where the White Mountain Apaches lived. He himself followed on August 30 and told the officer in charge that he wanted peace. But, uncomfortable among the alien tribe of White Mountains, he returned to his own country. His Chokonen followers refused to go there ostensibly for the same reason. More likely, they had heard of the promising talks between the Chihenne chiefs and government agents at Cañada Alamosa.10
On October 20, 1870, at Cañada Alamosa, a government emissary from Santa Fe parleyed with Warm Springs chiefs Victorio and Loco. The next day, as Loco had predicted, Cochise rode in with thirty-four men, including captains and headmen with their families, ninety-six in all. On October 22, he conferred for several hours with the official and explained that since 1860 he had been at war and had lost many men. Now he had more women and children than he could care for and still fight. He wanted peace so that he would not have to hide his women and children and could travel the roads in safety. The official said the Great Father wanted peace, too, and would provide rations. Cochise promised to try to bring his people to Cañada Alamosa and keep them quiet. He returned with some in December, but learning now that the government intended to move them all to the Mescalero Reservation near Fort Stanton, east of the Rio Grande, he led his people back home. Cochise had made clear that he wanted peace, and he intended, if the government called off the plan to move to Mescalero, to take his people back to Cañada Alamosa. But the war continued, as the troops chased him all over his homeland, allowing him “no rest, no peace.”11
In fact, the government had not established a reservation for the Chihennes but argued over several proposals. Loco and his fellow chiefs made it clear that they wanted a reservation only in the Ojo Caliente country and would accept no other.
On June 16, 1871, on a spur of the Dragoon Mountains, Cochise received an emissary from Cañada Alamosa, one Cochise had met there the previous October. Cochise liked him and named him “Stagalito,” Red Beard—a fitting sobriquet for the big man with red hair and beard. (Thomas J. Jeffords, a trader; earlier he had scouted for General Carleton and briefly operated a mail and stage line between Santa Fe and Tucson.) Now Stagalito told Cochise that the highest government official in New Mexico asked him to bring his people and settle near Cañada Alamosa, where he would receive rations and protection and an invitation to visit Washington. Cochise replied that he would like to settle there, but he could not expose his people to the soldiers swarming in the country. If they were withdrawn, he would come.12
Finally, in September 1871, Cochise summoned the resolve to gather some of his people and move to Cañada Alamosa. They arrived on September 28—thirty men and about two hundred others. Still another big chief hastened down from Santa Fe and joined with the new agent to meet with Cochise. Meantime, more people arrived, bringing the number of his followers close to 250. In the council with the white officials early in October, Cochise promised to remain at peace and send runners to bring in other Chokonens. He thought that most of the groups still out would come, but not all. He could not be held responsible for them. Specifically, the Nednhis under Juh and Geronimo would fight to the last.13
Thus Cochise himself confirmed the activities and attitude of Geronimo. Teamed with Juh and the Nednhis since 1865, he remained wedded to continuing raid and war against both Americans and Mexicans. Even though Cochise wanted peace, Geronimo remained in good health and determined to take life and property as long as he pleased. Peace formed no part of his thinking. With Juh, he ranged between Mexico and Arizona, murdering and depredating at will.
Having finally settled Cochise at Cañada Alamosa, the government again blundered. No reservation existed here, and another touring special agent judged it unsuited for a reservation. He decreed that all the Chihennes be moved to a high, cold, sterile, and unhealthy mountain location seventy miles to the northwest in the Tularosa Valley, a tributary of the San Francisco River. This enraged them. They looked on the Alamosa Valley and the Ojo Caliente at its head as their sacred homeland. All resisted such a move, and as the controversy played out Cochise gathered his people and, at the end of March 1872, returned to their Arizona homeland. For the government and Cochise, peace remained as elusive as ever.14
Rejecting Tularosa and giving up on Cañada Alamosa, Cochise turned to Janos in hopes of a treaty and rations from the Mexicans. Also in the vicinity were Juh and Geronimo with the Nednhis, who had been hounded out of Sonora by aggressive Mexican offensives and also sought succor at Janos. Cochise remained near Janos until late July 1872, when he concluded that the Mexicans would not respond. He therefore returned to his favored stronghold in Arizona’s Dragoon Mountains.15