ALTHOUGH THE CHIRICAHUA MOUNTAINS remained the homeland of the Chokonens, Cochise passed much time in his two strongholds, east and west, in the Dragoon Mountains, a lesser range forty miles west of the Chiricahuas. The base of the mountains consisted of pile on pile of huge boulders, and the strongholds could be reached only by intricate pathways. The strongholds provided open spaces for councils, with wood and water surrounded by rock walls and accessible only to Apaches. Between the two mountain ranges lay the flat, grassy Sulphur Springs Valley. Anyone approaching the Dragoons from the east could not avoid being seen from the mountains.
Late in September 1872 Cochise’s lookouts, posted on the summit of the Dragoons, spotted the approach across the Sulphur Springs Valley of a group of five men. The sentinels reported to Cochise and kept close watch. Early on the morning of September 30 the party entered a defile that accessed a path to Cochise’s West Stronghold. At the same time, signal smokes announced that the men came in peace. One of the five, who clearly knew the way in, went ahead to take word to Cochise. His name was Chie (ironically, the son of Coyuntera, Cochise’s brother hanged at Apache Pass by Lieutenant Bascom). Word reached Cochise that the party consisted of two other old friends, Ponce and Red Beard Jeffords, and two army officers, one a bearded general who had only one arm. They came, Cochise was told, to talk peace. Two boys went down to lead these men up the steep, winding trail across the Dragoon Mountains to Cochise’s West Stronghold.
A group of Chiricahuas camped here, but not Cochise. He would come the next morning. Early on October 1 he appeared, preceded by his brother Juan and accompanied by his sister, his youngest wife, and his youngest son, a teenager named Naiche. Juan rushed to embrace Red Beard, as did Cochise when he dismounted. “This is the man,” Jeffords said to the older American officer. Cochise turned to shake his one hand, noting that the sleeve of his other arm, severed at the elbow, was tied to a button on the front of his shirt. “Buenos Días, Señor,” Cochise said. After warmly greeting Chie and the other Apache, Ponce, Cochise shook hands with the other officer. Jeffords named them as General Howard and Captain Sladen.1
A blanket had been spread in the shade of a big oak. As a growing circle of women and children crowded toward the blanket, Cochise bid his guests to sit. Cochise, Ponce, and Jeffords all spoke rudimentary Spanish, and the conversation proceeded entirely in Spanish; but what Howard and Cochise expressed emerged clearly. After a long conversation in Apache with Chie and Ponce, Cochise turned to Howard and asked why he had come. Through Jeffords, Howard replied that he had come from Washington to meet Cochise and his people and make peace, that he would stay as long as necessary. Cochise responded that he too wanted peace, that he had done no harm since returning from Cañada Alamosa, that he was poor and could have relieved his distress by raiding traffic on the Tucson road but had not done it.2
Howard then went directly to the point of his visit. He wanted Cochise and the Chokonens to move to Cañada Alamosa and live with the Chihennes. Although he had twice tried to settle there, Cochise now replied that he himself would go, but all his people would not follow. His band of Chokonen Chiricahuas would be broken. He had already said as much to white officials, especially singling out the Nednhis of Juh and Geronimo. Neither they nor some of the Chokonen groups would give up their free life for a reservation.
Abruptly, Cochise also went directly to the point: Why not give him Apache Pass? Give him that and he would protect all the roads. He would see that nobody’s property was taken by Indians.
Howard answered by conceding that this might be possible but went on to extol the virtues of the Cañada Alamosa country.
Without further argument, Cochise asked how long the general would stay. Would he wait for all the subchiefs to be summoned for a formal council? This would take ten days. Howard repeated that he would stay as long as necessary. At once Cochise dispatched runners on this mission.
He also expressed apprehension that his captains would encounter patrols of soldiers while converging on his stronghold. Howard offered to send Captain Sladen to Fort Bowie with orders to initiate a cease-fire and to telegraph this message to all other forts. Cochise objected. Sladen was only a “teniente,” while Howard was a “Grande,” whom the soldiers were certain to obey. Howard agreed to accompany Sladen, but Cochise insisted that only Chie go with him; Sladen and Jeffords would remain in the Apache camp.3
In Howard’s absence, some of Cochise’s men came in and reported slaying four soldiers a few days earlier. Certain that pursuing soldiers could not find his stronghold, he nonetheless abandoned it and led his people to a steep mountainside that could easily be defended. From here, the next morning, they spotted the approach of Howard’s party across the plain below. In a mountain pass, they welcomed the “Grande” back to the Dragoons. He had with him three white men, one of whom drove a spring wagon drawn by four mules and loaded with provisions. By early morning on October 4 all had returned to the original camp.
One after another Chokonen captain brought his people to the stronghold. To Cochise’s disappointment, his eldest son, Taza, had not come; he was raiding deep in Sonora. During the wait, Howard and Cochise continued to argue over the solution—Cañada Alamosa or Cochise’s traditional homeland. One of the white men who had arrived with Howard was a Spanish interpreter; he spoke no Apache. So again the dialogue proceeded in Spanish.4
By October 10 all had come who could be expected, ten, all men of influence. Cochise decided to proceed with a formal council, which he regarded as of great significance. He and his ten captains sat in the center of a shaded circle, with Howard, Jeffords, Sladen, and Howard’s Spanish interpreter. Cochise wanted his own Spanish interpreter, and he too seated himself next to the chief. Circle after circle of people—men, women, and children—crowded as close as possible to try to hear what transpired.
The issue was the general’s proposition that all the Chiricahuas move to a reservation, yet to be selected, and be fed and cared for by the government. Actually, Howard had already given in. Even so, formal agreement had to be reached. Cochise spoke in Apache to his interpreter, who translated into Spanish for the general’s interpreter, who translated into English for him. The talks amounted to a formal ratification of what had already been decided. Instead of moving to Cañada Alamosa, as Howard had wanted, Cochise could have a reservation in his own homeland, with Red Beard Jeffords as agent. In return, his people would cease all raiding and warfare and keep the roads open and safe.
Cochise wanted the officers at Fort Bowie to know what had been decided and asked the general to summon them to a council at Sulphur Springs the next day, October 12. Four officers appeared there after a nighttime ride, and again, for their benefit, the terms of the agreement were set forth—again, from Apache to Spanish to English.
Geronimo claimed in his autobiography to have been at the Howard peace conference, and one of the officers at Sulphur Springs backed his claim.5
Without much effort, Cochise had got his way from the American general, who did not argue very forcefully for his way or against Cochise’s way. Both Jeffords and Cochise were pleased with the outcome, although neither foresaw the immense trouble it would cause the Chiricahuas in only a few years.
Unknown to Cochise—or Geronimo—General Howard’s mission was but part of a comprehensive government effort to concentrate all the Apaches of Arizona and New Mexico on reservations, either by diplomacy or by military force. For Howard, diplomacy had worked.
In Washington, in March 1869, a new Great Father had taken office. He was Ulysses S. Grant, the Union Army’s most famous general in the Civil War. Under his auspices, a new policy toward the Indians had taken shape. Labeled Grant’s Peace Policy, it sought to approach the Indians by peaceful means, not military force: “conquest by kindness.” As part of the reform package, an act of Congress had authorized creation of a Board of Indian Commissioners, composed of eminent humanitarians, to advise the Interior Department on policy and ensure the proper expenditure of funds appropriated for the Indians. Under its oversight, moreover, Protestant religious bodies were to nominate agents to gather roaming Indians on reservations and see to their care and “civilization.”
With Arizona and New Mexico swept by Apache depredations, no part of the West demanded quicker action. The outraged governor of New Mexico, William A. Pile, had journeyed to the southwestern counties of the territory and compiled a list of depredations between November 25, 1869, and May 21, 1871. For each of the fifty-four entries, he specified the loss in cows, horses, mules, burros, sheep, and other stock, together with the dollar value of each. He named ten men killed and two wounded. Governor Anson Safford of Arizona also complained of depredations in a letter published in the San Francisco Alta California. Between September 15 and October 24, 1871, he listed and described ten. Both governors and settlers ensured that Washington knew of their distress.6
The grievances of the citizens had to be addressed. The secretary of the Board of Indian Commissioners, a man of colossal ego named Vincent Colyer, received instructions directly from the president to travel to New Mexico and Arizona and collect all roaming Apaches on a reservation to be set aside at Cañada Alamosa. En route, Colyer succeeded in getting his powers enlarged to place the Indians not just at Cañada Alamosa but at any reservations he might designate. The army received orders to aid Colyer in any way he asked. He arrived in New Mexico in August 1871.7
To collect even all the Chihenne Chiricahuas at Cañada Alamosa, much less all the Apache tribes, dramatizes how ignorant of Apaches and their country the Washington policy-makers were. When Colyer got to Cañada Alamosa, he found only a few Indians; most had left because of a rumored impending attack by miners. Worse yet, he judged it unsuitable for a reservation. The Mexican improvements in their village would have to be purchased; why incur that expense when so much unoccupied land lay nearby? Also, he believed that Cañada Alamosa afforded insufficient land once Cochise and his people settled there. So, aided by the superintendent of Indian affairs and the local agent, he chose another reservation. It lay in the Tularosa Valley about seventy miles to the northwest. Colyer pronounced it remote from whites and surrounded by mountains and arable land, with plenty of wood, water, and grass. When they returned to Cañada Alamosa, the Chihennes did not want to go to Tularosa: it was too high, too cold, and swampy, and it lacked good farming grounds; above all, they loved their sacred homeland. Not until April 1872 did the movement begin, and then only 350 people could be found. Already, all Apaches not at Tularosa or still at Cañada Alamosa had been declared hostile and subject to military action.8
Understanding that Cochise would settle his people at Cañada Alamosa (that is, now Tularosa), Colyer proceeded to Arizona to deal with the other Apache tribes. Here he entered another military jurisdiction. In 1870 the military District of Arizona had been elevated to the Department of Arizona, a part of the Division of the Pacific. Colonel George Stoneman had been named commander. Ensconced in comfortable headquarters in distant Los Angeles, he designated certain forts as “feeding stations,” where Indians could be safe and receive rations. He proved unable, however, to quell the bloody depredations sweeping the territory, including many by Cochise’s men. The governor and territorial press demanded aggressive military action instead of “feeding stations.”
On June 4, 1871, a new commander relieved Stoneman. Lieutenant Colonel George Crook had achieved outstanding success against the tribes of the Pacific Northwest. Ignoring both Secretary of War William W. Belknap and General-in-Chief William T. Sherman and the claims of many officers of superior rank, President Grant assigned Crook to command the Department of Arizona in his brevet grade of major general. A taciturn, aggressive field commander, the militarily unorthodox Crook set forth at once to learn how to deal with and fight Apaches. With five troops of cavalry, he made a grand sweep of eastern Arizona, by way of Forts Bowie, McDowell, Apache, and Verde. Finding no Apaches to fight, he turned to establish headquarters at Whipple Barracks in Prescott.9
En route, while contemplating the organization of a multipronged offensive against all the warring Apaches, Crook learned from a newspaper of Vincent Colyer’s mission. Although his own chain of command had not withdrawn authorization to round up the Apaches by force, he had little choice but to suspend operations. He believed “Vincent the Good” a tool of the “Indian Ring” and abject failure the certain result of his efforts. As he had in New Mexico, however, Colyer sketched out a complex of reservations for all but the Chiricahuas and left the army’s post commanders in charge until the Indian Bureau could take responsibility. Reports from post commanders declared that as soon as Colyer had left each group, the Apaches had resumed their marauding ways.10
On February 7, 1872, Crook issued orders that after February 16 any Indians not within the boundaries of the reservations defined by Colyer would be regarded as hostile and subject to military action. He immediately began preparing his long-deferred offensive against all such roamers, including those of Cochise. This set off alarm bells in Washington, which desperately wanted to preserve the peace thought to have been concluded by Vincent Colyer. To head off an Apache war, another peace commissioner vested with the full powers Colyer had enjoyed set forth early in March 1872.
He was Brigadier General Oliver O. Howard, the one-armed “Christian general” known throughout the army for his deep piety. His recent assignment as head of the Freedmen’s Bureau, caring for freed slaves, had hardly covered him with glory. Yet he later told Crook “that he thought the Creator had placed him on earth to be the Moses to the Negro. Having accomplished that mission, he felt satisfied his next mission was with the Indians.” Howard’s main accomplishment during the four months he toured Arizona and conferred with Indians was to force Crook, once again, to call off military action against the Apaches. Back in Washington by June, Howard reported extensively on his peace efforts, which he viewed with as much optimism as had Colyer. He conceded, however, that he had not dealt with New Mexico or with Cochise and believed he should return and carry out that task.11
After conferring with the Navajos early in August 1872, Howard proceeded to Fort Apache, where he made some unsuccessful efforts to contact Cochise, then turned back to Fort Tularosa. There he found fewer than three hundred Indians, although more, including the principal chiefs, camped nearby. From various sources, both Indian and white, Howard had learned that the only white man who could take him to Cochise was Thomas J. Jeffords, then an Indian trader at Cañada Alamosa. Sent for, Jeffords arrived at Tularosa on September 7. He bluntly informed the general that Cochise would not come for talks, that Howard, accompanied only by his aide, Jeffords, and two Indian guides, would have to journey to Cochise and talk there. Howard agreed. The party was later enlarged to include a Spanish interpreter, a mule packer, and a cook.
Meantime, while awaiting Jeffords, Howard had been talking with Chihenne chiefs Victorio, Loco, Nana, and Chiva. All, especially Victorio and Nana, impressed the general. They poured forth their complaints about the awful conditions at Tularosa, the appeal of their home country, and the government’s betrayal in making them move after they thought the government would give them a reservation at Cañada Alamosa. Howard not only sympathized with the chiefs but had in mind the larger scheme of persuading Cochise to move his people to Cañada Alamosa and gathering all other Chiricahuas there. On September 12, with the agent and New Mexico superintendent of Indian affairs Nathaniel Pope sitting in, Howard and the chiefs met in a formal council that simply repeated the arguments already stated. The council ended with an agreement to inspect the Cañada Alamosa area. This occurred on September 16, when Howard promised the chiefs to recommend to the president that the Tularosa Reservation be abolished and the people there returned to their home in the Alamosa Valley below Ojo Caliente. So certain was he of the success of his larger plan that he appointed Tom Jeffords agent of the new “Cochise Reservation.”12
In his autobiography, Howard narrates his long journey across New Mexico and into Arizona as if fraught with high risk. Accompanied by Jeffords, Ponce, and Chie, however, and with Jeffords having already learned directly from Cochise of his desire for peace, the danger was considerably diminished. Howard did heed advice to reduce his party and sent his ambulance and driver, interpreter, and cook to wait at Fort Bowie. Nor does Howard hint of the earlier talks with Cochise or of his efforts to settle at Cañada Alamosa. Not that the mission lacked risk, and Howard did accomplish a significant feat in persuading Cochise to settle peaceably on the reservation of his own choice. Because of his autobiography, however, and the mythology that developed around Jeffords as he aged, history has tended to credit General Howard with a larger achievement than the facts warrant.
Because of his companions, Howard readily gained admission to the Dragoon Mountains and sat with Cochise in the West Stronghold. Although arguing for a “Cochise Reservation” in the Alamosa Valley around Ojo Caliente and Cañada Alamosa, he did not push this scheme very hard and easily acquiesced in Cochise’s demand for a reservation in his homeland. Yielding to his insistence that Tom Jeffords be appointed his agent posed no problem, since Howard had already appointed him agent of the “Cochise Reservation” at Cañada Alamosa. Omitted from any consideration was the understanding of Victorio and the other Chihenne chiefs that Tularosa would be abandoned and they could return to their homes around Ojo Caliente. In Howard’s mind, this depended on persuading Cochise to move there and make it a genuine “Cochise Reservation.” If he stated or implied such a condition to the Chihenne chiefs, they certainly gained no impression of it. Not surprisingly, they felt grievously betrayed when Tularosa remained in place and the government continued to argue over whether the reservation should be there or at Cañada Alamosa. Howard thus contributed to the mix that within seven years would lead to the bloody Victorio War.
At the formal councils on October 10 in the stronghold and the next day at Sulphur Springs, none of the whites knew or cared who Cochise’s Spanish interpreter was. Lieutenent Sladen, however, left compelling clues in his journal. Even though Geronimo was not yet known to the white world, Sladen’s description accurately portrays the man who would soon become known to the white world, an
old looking [nearly fifty], very dark complexioned, unprepossessing appearing Indian, who had returned to camp only the day before. His sensual, cruel, crafty face, as well as his dissatisfied manner had prejudiced me against him from the start. … He was short and stout, exceedingly dirty, and wore a white man’s shirt, loose like a blouse, and with little else beyond the usual breech cloth and moccasins. I thought nothing strange about this at first but, later, my interest was aroused in the garment by several unusual things about it.
For one thing, despite its filth, the shirt betrayed its origins as of white manufacture: eyelets substituted for buttons, which meant that it came from no trader’s store but had been purchased in the East. Mainly, however, Sladen got close enough to read a name embroidered on the shirt flap: “Cushing.” One of the army’s most aggressive Indian fighters, Lieutenant Howard B. Cushing had been slain in the Whetstone Mountains on May 5, 1871, a year and a half earlier. Sladen believed that this Indian had probably either killed Cushing or been a member of the war party.
The leader of the war party that had killed Cushing was recognized on a hilltop as Juh. Since Geronimo and Juh often rode and fought together, Geronimo may well have been the wearer of Cushing’s shirt. Moreover, at this time Geronimo and Juh camped with the Nednhis near Janos. Geronimo had come in the day before, according to Sladen. And he brought his people into the new reservation early in November 1872. The factors of time and distance are not inconsistent with his identity as the interpreter. Sladen continued:
I … had conceived the utmost dislike and repugnance of him. It was not entirely the incident of the shirt, though this intensified it much. But his crafty, cruel, vindictive looks; his seeming disinclination to treat with us at all made him an object of extreme dislike and suspicion to myself and others of our party. I think the General was inclined to share this dislike, but he thought him a man of importance in these consultations and attempted to win him over by every reasonable means in his power.13
In 1872 Sladen knew no more than the name Geronimo, and probably not even that. Neither did Captain Samuel Sumner, who was present at the Sulphur Springs council; but Sumner knew Geronimo later and recognized him as present at the Howard peace conference. Although the identity of Cochise’s interpreter cannot be proven, Sladen’s observations raise a strong presumption that he was Geronimo.
However flawed Howard’s agreement turned out to be, it left the Chiricahuas with a lasting memory of a rare friend among the military. As Geronimo would recall thirty years later, “He always kept his word with us and treated us as brothers. We never had so good a friend among the United States officers as General Howard. … If there is any pure, honest white man in the United States army, that man is General Howard.” No other American officer earned such an accolade. That Geronimo remembered his brief experience with Howard more than thirty years later reinforces the possibility that he was indeed Cochise’s interpreter.14
Howard’s peace mission had insulated Cochise from Crook’s military operations. Crook had launched small striking commands, composed of cavalry and Indian scouts, to follow and destroy the other Apache groups that had resumed old habits after Vincent Colyer had made peace with them. His tactics proved both innovative and effective and by the end of 1872 had subdued most of the recalcitrants. By February 1873, he had concentrated thirteen troops of cavalry near the new Cochise Reservation to enforce the general order that required all reservation Indians to submit to a daily roll call. He then learned that Howard had promised Cochise that no soldiers would go near the new reservation. “The whole peace system among the Apaches here has been a fraud,” he had declared. Now he wanted a copy of the treaty Howard had concluded with Cochise, only to discover that nothing had been set to paper.
The Apaches did not expect a paper and had never been asked to sign one. Howard had promised the reservation, and therefore the reservation existed. Howard had promised that no soldiers would go near the reservation, and the Apaches expected to see none except those at Fort Bowie. From the white perspective, these promises should have been committed to paper, whether called a treaty or something else. How else for all to understand commitments both sides had made? Howard never explained why he failed this elementary requirement, the more important since he knew that Crook eagerly waited for him to leave so that the long-contemplated offensive could be launched. The incident dramatically illustrated the clash of the oral with the written, the Apaches’ concept and the whites’ concept.
By April 1873 Crook could issue a general order announcing the end of his Tonto Basin campaign and the surrender of all the Tonto, Pinal, and other Apache groups against which he had been campaigning.15
On October 29, 1873, President Grant again intervened in army affairs. Jumping all the colonels and senior lieutenant colonels, he promoted Lieutenant Colonel George Crook to brigadier general in the regular army.