ON MAY 20, 1877, the day Agent John P. Clum reached San Carlos Agency with the people from Ojo Caliente, the shackled Geronimo and his “renegade” cohorts had been thrown in the agency jail. There they remained week after week. Years later Geronimo recalled only that he was tried or perhaps only heard that he was tried. More likely, he picked up occasional tidings of the administrative turmoil afflicting San Carlos, the departure of Clum, and the long-delayed arrival of a new agent. After three months of this infuriating humiliation, the prisoners were set free and, without explanation, walked out to become reservation Indians. Clum had notified the sheriff in Tucson to come get Geronimo, but he had not. So he had been released. He joined Taza’s Chokonens fifteen miles up the Gila from the agency, where Clum had placed them more than a year earlier. He discovered, if he did not already know, that a major change had occurred in the Chokonen leadership.
Clum was to blame. Shortly after locating Taza’s Chokonens in the Gila lowlands upriver from San Carlos, he had decided to take a leave of absence and travel to Ohio, where a young lady waited to wed him. He had the temerity to request the Indian Bureau to pay his way, which met with blunt refusal. Clum therefore conceived the scheme of organizing a band of Apache “thespians” to stage dramas at large cities en route displaying the wild ways of the Apaches. Bankrolled by some friends, he organized a troupe of twenty-two, mostly Chokonens, and including Taza. On July 29, 1876, little more than a month after the Chokonen removal, the entourage loaded on three wagons and set forth for the nearest railroad depot, a monthlong journey to El Moro, Colorado.
Three performances in Saint Louis in early September convinced the theater owner, if not the impresario, that the Apaches failed as “thespians.” Clum took the delegation on to Washington, DC, where he treated them to the usual attractions of the capital. After a violent rainstorm, however, Taza fell ill with pneumonia and on September 26 died. In the medical efforts to save the chief, together with an impressive burial in the congressional cemetery—General Howard attended—the irrepressible agent discerned a bright side: “They afforded the Indians of our party an opportunity to observe the civilized methods and customs of caring for the sick and preparing the dead for burial, as well as our funeral rites and ceremonies.”1
The commissioner of Indian affairs paid the fare for the Apache delegation to return to San Carlos. Clum tarried in the East for his wedding and did not reach San Carlos until late December 1876.
The young chief’s tragic death elevated his younger brother Naiche to the chieftainship. Tall, handsome, and well liked by all, he lacked even the leadership skills of Taza. He had not been schooled by his father in the duties of the chieftainship. This was the change in leadership Geronimo noted when released from jail.
Clum had returned triumphantly from Ojo Caliente with his “renegades” and as many of the Chihennes as he could round up, including Victorio. The day after his arrival, May 21, 1876, Lieutenant Lemuel A. Abbott appeared with a detachment of soldiers, sent by General Kautz, he explained, to inspect agency issues to ensure their honesty. Although San Carlos had reeked with the corruption of contractors and agency employees from the beginning, Clum had tried to conduct an honest administration. His lengthy absences, however, made that impossible. Confronting an army inspector at San Carlos, Clum erupted with protest and refused to have anything to do with him. Finally, making no headway in Washington, he launched a proposal: raise his salary, give him two more companies of Indian police, and he would manage all the Indians of Arizona, allowing the army to withdraw altogether. When the Indian Bureau rejected this wild scheme, Clum resigned and on July 1 rode away from San Carlos.2
Indian inspector William Vandever had been at San Carlos most of the summer of 1876. With Clum’s departure, he informally took over the agency, although he elevated the agency clerk, Martin Sweeney, to acting agent pending the arrival of a new agent. Throughout the summer, beginning with Clum’s return from Ojo Caliente, angry disputes flared between the civil officials and Lieutenant Abbott, backed vociferously by General Kautz. Abbott’s reports persuasively indict Vandever of swindling the Indians, whose ration issues fell so precipitously that they had to take to the mountains to look for subsistence.3
Vandever did understand the resentments caused by the continued incarceration of Geronimo and the others in the agency jail. Since the sheriff in Tucson had failed to come for Geronimo, late in July Vandever sought permission to release the prisoners. Mortified and burning with a hatred of whites that would last for years, Geronimo and his friends walked free.4 He joined the Chokonens upriver from San Carlos and, with Taza dead, immediately attached himself to Naiche. Always respectful, he nonetheless quietly counseled the new chief. The two remained close for the rest of their lives.
A new era appeared to dawn with the arrival on August 21, 1877, of Agent Henry L. Hart. He immediately moved to repair the damage with the military as well as the restless Indians. He sought to clean out the rot long burrowed in the contracting system and, with the departure of Vandever, the fraudulent conduct of agency employees. As it turned out, Hart would prove the most corrupt agent in San Carlos history, his tenure culminating in a scandal that brought down the commissioner of Indian affairs himself.
The new agent had to deal with Apaches made uneasy by the concentration policy, which mixed so many tribes of Apaches that had long been at enmity, and by the summer-long shortage of rations. Worse, only ten days after taking control, he suddenly confronted two crises. On September 1, the always fractious Pionsenay, who had never settled at San Carlos, entered the Chokonen subagency and persuaded several men and their families to flee with him to Mexico.5
Probably coincidentally, on September 3 Victorio launched his long-planned breakout. He and Loco fled the reservation with about three hundred Chihennes and headed east for their home country. Cavalry and Indian police skirmished with them, but they made good their escape. In New Mexico they ran into the Ninth Cavalry, which pushed them northward to ultimate surrender at Fort Wingate. The army could think of no better solution than to place them at Ojo Caliente as prisoners of war until the government decided what to do with them. Victorio and his people greeted this move joyously—they were back in their homeland.6
Geronimo held fast with Naiche and the Chokonens, despite the temptations of Pionsenay and Victorio—and despite the fact that about 150 Chokonens and Bedonkohes who had refused to move to San Carlos raided in New Mexico and Arizona. Taza had agreed with Clum to settle in the Gila bottomlands east of San Carlos, where a subagency took care of them. The army erected Fort Thomas upstream from the subagency. Officials reported the Chokonens well satisfied. They may have said so, but these were mountain Apaches planted in a desert environment seared by the sun and swept by wind, sand, and dust. Worse, a nearby spring created a swamp that bred mosquitoes, and malaria would soon begin to strike down the people. Geronimo cannot have been any more satisfied here than the rest of the Chokonens, but he had been chastened by the weeks spent in irons behind bars.
Meantime, Juh had returned to Mexico late in 1876 and remained for more than a year raiding and fighting Sonorans. By late 1877 he and the other Apaches who had not moved to San Carlos with Taza, about 250 Chokonens, Nednhis, and Bedonkohes, had begun to concentrate near Janos in another bid to make peace. A Sonoran force took the trail of a group leading stolen cattle toward Janos. The camp stampeded before the Mexicans could attack, but they confronted a force of fifty to sixty fighters under Juh, Pion-senay, and Nolgee riding from Janos to help their comrades. In an exchange of fire, Pionsenay met his death.7
Back at San Carlos, Geronimo found himself labeled a “bad Indian” by none other than Victorio. When the Chihennes surrendered after their breakout from San Carlos, Victorio explained the motivation as the influence of “bad Indians.” These were about 145 Chokonens, Bedonkohes, and a few Chihennes who had been moved from Ojo Caliente by Clum in April 1877 and had chosen to remain with Naiche’s Chokonens rather than go with Victorio. Although they bore no direct blame for the breakout, Victorio correctly held them responsible for the removal by using Ojo Caliente as a base for raiding and thus bringing the wrath of the government down on all the agency people. In fact, Loco had opposed the outlaws using Ojo Caliente as a base, while Victorio had refused to condemn them. Geronimo was the most prominent of the “bad Indians” living with Naiche. On September 23, 1877, Agent Hart held a council with Naiche and the other Chokonen chiefs at their subagency. He appointed Geronimo “captain” of the Chiricahuas Clum had moved from Ojo Caliente. Together with Naiche and the Chokonen chiefs, Geronimo promised the agent that he would remain on the reservation.8
Affairs at San Carlos remained uneasy into the summer of 1878. The scarcity and uncertainty of ration issues caused anxiety and threatened hostilities. Appropriations failed to provide for the full amounts. Contractors proved consistently late in delivery. Graft continued to take its toll. Several times, emergencies forced the army to “lend” the Indian Bureau flour and the secretary of the interior to authorize purchases of beef and flour on the open market. At times Apaches took to the mountains to supply their own wants. Some committed depredations outside the reservation. General Kautz kept patrols ranging the country, which helped dampen the impulse to break out.
On March 7, 1878, Colonel Orlando B. Willcox took over from Kautz, serving in his brevet grade of major general. He continued Kautz’s operations. The Chokonen subagent used various words to describe the temper of his charges, including “sulky.” He believed that sooner or later they would flee.9
Two developments in 1878 contributed to the next stage of Geronimo’s life. In the spring, for the first time, malaria struck Naiche’s Chokonens with particular vehemence. Some fifty to sixty people died of the “shaking sickness.” Availing themselves of Agent Hart’s permission to augment their scarce rations by hunting and gathering in the mountains, many also sought to escape the malarial scourge by fleeing to the mountains.
Either by trade or as part of their scant rations, the Chiricahuas had acquired corn. Except for Tom Jeffords, agents as far back as Michael Steck in the 1850s had tried to end the manufacture of tiswin. Clum had used his police to break up tiswin stills wherever found. Now, without any police or other officials watching, Naiche’s Chokonens and Geronimo’s Chokonen and Bedonkohe followers resumed making tiswin.
On the night of August 1, 1878, Geronimo and some of his people staged a tiswin drunk. Well into the evening, with most of the group intoxicated, Geronimo began to berate his nephew (name unknown), “for no reason at all,” as Jason Betzinez recalled. In some manner, however, the youth offended Geronimo, probably a remark or behavior induced by tiswin. Mortified by the great Geronimo’s scolding, the nephew killed himself. While rare, suicide occurred among the Apaches, but for reasons more substantive than the nephew’s offense. Shamed—a common Apache characteristic— and vividly remembering his weeks in the San Carlos jail, Geronimo and his immediate family, three wives and two children, packed their gear and fled to the east. That no men went with him persuaded the agent acting in Hart’s absence that Geronimo would return when the affair blew over. He did not. He and his family kept going, south through the Peloncillo Mountains and into Chihuahua. Near Janos he teamed up once more with his old friend Juh.10
As in the past, when a real or imagined threat took shape in Geronimo’s mind, he reacted in the same way—Mexico. He had broken his promise to Agent Hart to remain with Naiche at San Carlos. He made no more such promises, and his breakout of 1878 would not be his last.