TWO DAYS AFTER THE attack on Geronimo’s ranchería at Bugatseka on August 7, 1885, Captains Crawford and Wirt Davis met on the Bavispe River, and Crawford learned of the fight and the scattering of the Chiricahuas. By August 13 Crawford and his command had reached the site of the encounter and picked up Geronimo’s trail to the east. With Lieutenant Britton Davis and fifty scouts ranging in advance, Crawford followed over the Sierra Madre and down into Chihuahua. At the crest, he sent word forward to Davis to take thirty-two picked scouts (including Chatto), three packers, and seven good mules, get on the trail, and not abandon it for any reason. If rations ran short, he could kill Mexican beef and give a receipt.
This is what Davis did. Alerted to the theft, a Mexican force of Tarahumari Indians set forth to find Davis. Unknown to him, Lieutenant Charles P. Elliott with pack mules bearing rations followed a day behind. The Mexicans cut Elliott’s trail instead of Davis’s and on August 23 set up an ambush in a canyon. Fortunately, with another rainfall threatening, Elliott bivouacked before riding into the trap. From the heights, the Mexicans opened fire. The Indian scouts fired back, but Elliott restrained them. With the packers, they took to the rocks on the canyon’s side. Elliott walked out and tried to explain the identity of his command to the Mexican leader. The Mexican held a cocked rifle to Elliott’s chest and demanded that he call the scouts out of the rocks, which he did. They dropped their rifles and cartridge belts as ordered. The Mexicans then tied their hands behind them and marched them to San Buenaventura. En route they met a command of Mexican regulars, whose commander, Lieutenant Colonel Pedro S. Marcías, doubted Elliott’s explanation. In San Buenaventura, after parading through the town to the jeers of the citizens, all the scouts and packers were lodged in a military barracks.
Davis’s Indian scouts had learned what had happened, and that night he moved them to the edge of San Buenaventura. The lieutenant, who spoke fluent Spanish, went into the town and found the presidente. In a conference with him and Colonel Marcías, Davis established his legitimacy. The colonel liberated the prisoners and returned all their arms and property. They went into camp to await the arrival of Captain Crawford. As instructed, Davis and his scouts got back on the Chiricahua trail and rode north.1
Elliott led his scouts on the back trail until meeting Crawford and his command. They joined and marched back to San Buenaventura. In the main street, a mob blocked the way, and two Mexicans came forth to demand that the officers enter a house for a conference. Outside, mounted soldiers surrounded the scouts. Whatever occurred inside, the scouts believed that an angry confrontation took place and that the Mexicans ordered the Americans to leave Mexico, an order repeated twice as Crawford’s command moved north seeking Geronimo’s trail. The scouts were angry and anxious to fight. In fact, Crawford had resolved to let Davis keep to the trail while he paused at a nearby ranch to refit.2
Meantime, after three days of hard work following the trail, in repeated downpours and glutinous mud, Britton Davis and his scouts halted for the night. A Mexican force rode into the camp. Colonel Marcías commanded. He informed Davis that two other Mexican commands had cut the Chiricahua trail in Davis’s advance and were in pursuit. The treaty under which US forces operated in Mexico specified that, if a Mexican force got in advance of an American force, the Americans would have to call off the operation and return to the United States. If the Mexican officer consented, the Americans could continue, but Colonel Marcías refused to consent. Davis, his scouts and packers broken by days of negotiating precipitous mountains and canyons and plodding through mud under steady downpours, always short on rations, filthy and ragged, gladly accepted the colonel’s decision.
One hundred miles of barren desert separated Davis from the nearest border crossing: El Paso, Texas. Davis’s shabby command reached Fort Bliss, at El Paso, on September 5, 1885. In the city, Davis met a friend of his father’s who owned extensive ranching and mining properties in Chihuahua. His manager had just resigned, and he offered Davis the job. The ordeal through which he had just passed, combined with his hazardous service at Fort Apache, had persuaded him that the army wasn’t for him. He accepted.3
As ordered by Crook, Davis and his scouts headed directly to Fort Bowie, arriving on September 12. Crook expressed disappointment with Davis’s decision to leave the army, but his diary suggests that he was more interested in long talks with Chatto and others of Davis’s scouts. He would have done better to have heeded Davis’s report that Geronimo’s trail pointed toward New Mexico.
Remaining with Geronimo after Nana’s departure near Janos were five men and half a dozen women, those with family or relatives taken at Bugatseka and thought to be held at Fort Apache but actually at Fort Bowie. Geronimo crossed into New Mexico by the same route he had entered four months earlier, east of Lake Palomas. On September 11 the army picked up his trail and followed him across the Mimbres Mountains and River. He had already left a trail of murdered men. In Gallinas Canyon, the Chiricahuas fell on still another ranch and killed the inhabitants. Here, though, Geronimo himself took a captive, teenager James “Santiago” McKinn. Like Charley McComas two years earlier, Santiago McKinn would become the focus of an intense effort to liberate him. Swinging north across the Gila River, the little band climbed into the Mogollon Mountains. Among these peaks and canyons, Geronimo could easily evade any pursuers.4
None found him, so high and remote was his base. On September 18 he led his party down into Arizona, making for the east fork of White River, the Chiricahua planting grounds near Fort Apache. Shortly after midnight on September 22, Geronimo threaded his way through the White Mountain scouts patrolling the area. An old White Mountain woman informed him that Lieutenant Gatewood had drawn the Chiricahuas in close to Fort Apache. The woman also told him that only one of his wives and a child lived with the Chiricahuas. Her name was She-gha (Ith-tedda, the Mescalero), and she had not been taken captive in the attack on Bugatseka. Rather, soon after the breakout of May 17, Geronimo had sent her to the Mescalero Reservation to see if these Apaches might join in the outbreak. They refused and turned her, her child, and a companion over to the army, which sent them to Fort Apache. The White Mountain woman guided Geronimo to the Chiricahua camp and pointed out his wife’s wickiup. Without disturbing anyone, he quietly entered the wickiup and emerged with the woman, his child, and her companion.
By daybreak, the White Mountain people had been stirred up, angry that Geronimo had made off with some of their horses. The scouts combed the countryside looking for him. But he had swiftly ridden southeast across Black River and hastened back to the Mogollons. His foray a failure, he received unexpected help in his dash back to Mexico. In the Mogollons he found Nana and his people. And farther west, both Chihuahua and Naiche struck into Arizona, leaving trails north both east and west of the Chiricahua Mountains, uniting to find refuge from pursing Indian scouts in the Dragoon Mountains. Regular troops finally drove them back into Sonora. All this Apache activity confused the army and kept patrols in the field following false leads. By October 10 Geronimo was back in Mexico, and no Chiricahuas remained north of the border.5
Not for long, however, although Geronimo and Naiche remained to raid in Chihuahua. Late in October Ulzana and Chihuahua crossed into New Mexico near Lake Palomas. While Chihuahua remained in New Mexico to provide diversion, Ulzana and twelve men aimed for Fort Apache and San Carlos. Some had left their families with the Chiricahuas on Turkey Creek, and others thought their families captured at Bugatseka might be held at San Carlos. Throughout November 1885, Chihuahua’s destructive raids among the ranches and settlements of southern New Mexico took a large toll in lives and stolen stock and property. A newsman listed the names of five people killed within two weeks and within twenty-five miles of Lake Valley, New Mexico. The newsman also wrote of ranchers who lost their cattle but escaped with their lives. Other newspapers named one after another citizen slain by the Apaches. Chihuahua’s raid also set in motion a score of pursuing cavalry units, and as intended it diverted attention to New Mexico instead of Arizona.
Ulzana and his party killed many whites and angered the White Mountain Apaches around Fort Apache, who killed one of his men. No family members remained on Turkey Creek, but the angry Chiricahuas turned on the White Mountain rancherías and killed twenty-one people. With San Carlos now on guard, Ulzana circled to the east and headed for New Mexico. By December, Chihuahua and his followers had slipped back across the border.6
Throughout December, from hideouts in the Mogollon Mountains, Ulzana ravaged ranches in western New Mexico, north of Silver City and Fort Bayard. On December 9, while they burned a ranch and rounded up stock, a small detachment of cavalry attacked them. They abandoned their horses and scampered up a snow-covered mountainside. On December 19 the Chiricahuas exacted revenge on the same troopers, ambushing them as they left an overnight camp and killing the four horsemen in the lead. By the end of December 1885, Ulzana and his small band had traveled about twelve hundred miles, killed thirty-eight people, captured and wore out 250 horses and mules, and although twice dismounted crossed back into Mexico with the loss of the one man killed near Fort Apache.7
Geronimo, Chihuahua, and Ulzana had easily breached the elaborate lines of defense set up to keep the Chiricahuas south of the border, and Colonel Bradley already had troops in pursuit. With Bradley chasing these Indians in New Mexico, Crook turned to other matters. He burned the telegraph wires with the continuing battle over dual control of the White Mountain Reservation—a battle he won when the secretary of the interior agreed to turn over the reservation temporarily to Captain Pierce as Indian agent. Crook fended off criticisms of his archenemy, Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles, Bradley’s superior at Fort Leavenworth. Miles made no secret of his contempt for Crook’s reliance on Indian scouts and convinced New Mexico’s governor that with Miles in command the Chiricahuas would quickly be conquered.8
Crook’s hopes lay not with running the Chiricahuas down in New Mexico or Arizona but with the success of Captains Crawford and Davis in Mexico. In the event they succeeded, Crook needed a firm policy from Washington on how to handle the Apaches. On September 17 he began to force the issue by informing his superiors of his first intent to turn the Apaches over to civil authorities to be tried for their offenses. But lawyers advised him of the impossibility of obtaining evidence against individual Indians that could be used in a court of law (as Crook well knew). He then pointed out that killing all the Chiricahuas in the Sierra Madre would take years and that during this time their depredations could not be prevented. With a little more “hammering,” he thought, they could be persuaded to surrender if assured that they would not be killed or turned over to the civil authorities. He asked for an immediate decision.
In Washington, General Sheridan observed that these Indians deserved no consideration at all. But “as a matter of policy,” he believed Crook should be authorized to seek their surrender on the condition that they be regarded as prisoners of war and transported to a distant point. They should never be allowed to return to Arizona or New Mexico. Secretary Endicott approved Sheridan’s endorsement and directed that as soon as the Apaches surrendered they be sent to Fort Marion, Florida, as were the chiefs of the Cheyennes, Kiowas, and Comanches who surrendered at the end of the Red River War in 1875.9
By October 11, Crook believed that none of the Chiricahuas remained north of the border, and he resolved on a new strategy to bring the Chiricahuas in Mexico into negotiations. The scouts and mules of both Crawford and Davis had endured such hard campaigning that they no longer possessed the vigor to embark on another expedition into Mexico. The general thought that the time needed to build new commands would lull the Chiricahuas into believing the army had called off the offensive. Crawford went to Fort Apache and Wirt Davis to San Carlos to begin discharging their scouts and enlisting fresh ones.10
New Mexicans had suffered death and destruction almost constantly since the outbreak from Turkey Creek on May 17, 1885, and they protested repeatedly and vociferously in their newspapers and in letters and telegrams to army commanders, members of Congress, and, increasingly, to President Cleveland. The raids of Chihuahua and Ulzana stirred the most intense outrage yet, and Secretary Endicott and General Sheridan repeatedly called on Crook to provide some reassurance that would relieve the pressures on the president. The reticent Crook would only reply that he and Colonel Bradley were doing the best they could.
That was not good enough for Washington, which had to keep New Mexicans from bedeviling the president. On November 20, 1885, Secretary Endicott and General Sheridan met to consider Crook’s latest telegrams, which offered no encouragement. They discussed an idea that had been considered both in the Interior and War Departments for more than a year—a lasting solution to the Apache problem. It contemplated no less than the permanent removal to Florida of the entire Chiricahua tribe—not only the few who were in Mexico but the large majority living quietly on the White Mountain Reservation. The meeting ended with Endicott directing Sheridan to travel at once to Fort Bowie to broach this idea to Crook and resolve other problems.11
Sheridan and three members of his staff left Washington on November 22. He stopped in Chicago to talk with Major General John M. Schofield, who despite his assurances had failed to keep General Miles quiet. That was one of the issues Sheridan had to discuss with Crook. Because it involved Colonel Bradley, Miles’s subordinate, Sheridan also stopped in Santa Fe to add him to his retinue. On November 29 the group disembarked at Bowie Station, where an escort conducted them to Fort Bowie and a seventeen-gun salute of welcome.
In conference, the officers readily resolved the problem of General Miles, except that it only provoked him to more interference. The solution was simple: temporarily transfer the District of New Mexico from Miles’s department to Crook’s. So far as the rest of the army knew, or the public, this was the purpose and the only outcome of Sheridan’s visit. Except in a long report of Sheridan to Endicott from Albuquerque, the larger issue of Chiricahua removal escaped mention.
The topic probably overshadowed the easy restructuring of Crook’s command. Sheridan broached removal to Crook, who objected but suggested that they seek the opinion of Captain Crawford. Only three days earlier, he and his battalion of two hundred White Mountain and Chiricahua Apache scouts had arrived at Fort Bowie, ready to head for Sonora. Crawford pointed out that such a mass removal would be likely to affect the conduct of his Chiricahua scouts. Crook had demurred on the same grounds. The phrasing was probably a polite way of making the point to the lieutenant general. Both had to know that the effect on the Chiricahua scouts would be disastrous. The argument had its desired result: Sheridan would drop the subject for the time being. The record does not reveal whether Crook or Crawford had any moral or other objections to the proposal; if so, they failed to voice them.
The meeting had another important consequence. For the first time, Sheridan gained an appreciation of the obstacles Crook faced, both in the Apaches and in the character of the country in which he had to operate. In his report to Endicott, Sheridan described them at great length and strongly supported Crook as the officer most likely to destroy or gain the surrender of the Chiricahuas in Mexico. Left unsaid was Sheridan’s skepticism of Crook’s heavy reliance on Apache scouts, which almost certainly the two talked about at Fort Bowie.12
Sheridan and his entourage left Fort Bowie the next day, November 30. His visit had fixed policy and turned Crook loose. But it had done nothing to relieve the pressure on President Cleveland. On December 23, Sheridan appealed almost plaintively for an immediate report of what steps Crook was taking to kill or capture the raiders in New Mexico. All Crook could do was detail the movement of troops seeking to catch them. Even Ulzana’s return to Mexico at the end of December failed to end the stream of angry protests.13
Sheridan muted his doubts about the loyalty of the Apache scouts. Not so the newspapers in the areas of Arizona and New Mexico pounded by Geronimo and other leaders. One example of many, all employing the same language and tone, appeared in the Tombstone Epitaph early in 1886. The editor, reflecting public opinion, faulted Crook for “this most miserable campaign,” attributable to his “incredible and criminal obstinacy, in continuing to employ the Chiricahua scouts.” These “Indian hirelings … rob, ravish, and kill peaceful inhabitants of Sonora.”
When Geronimo is arraigned as murderer at the law of justice, General George Crook should stand by his side for upon his head lies the responsibility for the long consonance of this campaign for the deaths of scores of worthy men and women … and the damage done to this territory by the long series of outrages which his infamous system of employing these notoriously treacherous Chiricahua scouts has made possible.14
Crook ignored such inflammatory rhetoric, as political leaders could not, for as the editor correctly wrote: “Once General Crook gets a fixed idea in his head, nothing can remove it.”15 And his fixed idea was that only an Apache could catch an Apache.
After conferring with General Sheridan at Fort Bowie in November 1885, Crook turned his attention to the campaigns in Mexico. Captain Wirt Davis had crossed into Mexico at Guadalupe Canyon on November 21. He led a battalion of one hundred Apache scouts—none Chiricahua—a troop of cavalry, and three pack trains. His mission was to scour the eastern base of the Sierra Madre, in Chihuahua, while Crawford worked the western side, in Sonora. That is where the Chiricahuas were, as Crawford learned from villagers as he worked his way south along the Bavispe River. In two months of punishing campaigning, Wirt Davis learned that reality. He broke down his troops, scouts, and pack trains, together with his own health. Early in January, Crook allowed him to return to Fort Bowie for medical treatment. His command already had been in touch with Crawford’s outfit. From the first, all the action had fallen to Crawford, whose command consisted entirely of Apache scouts. In his first campaign, Crawford had found the regulars an impediment. As in the first expedition, White Mountain and Chiricahua Apaches made up his command. Chatto had been discharged with the rest of the earlier scouts. The sergeant major was now Noche, equally accomplished if not enjoying the depth of Crawford’s confidence in Chatto.16
Geronimo had not participated in the scourges of Chihuahua and Ulzana. In October 1885 Geronimo and Naiche based themselves in the Teras Mountains, in the great bend of the Bavispe River in Sonora. They raided settlements on both sides of the mountains, and then plunged far south to the Aros River for more raids. By December they had climbed into the mountain fastness called Espinosa del Diablo, between the Aros and Satachi Rivers. At the end of November Chihuahua had returned from his diversionary thrust into New Mexico and joined Geronimo and Naiche. Except for the handful with Ulzana, still north of the border, all the breakouts had gathered for the first time since fleeing Fort Apache in May. Only Mangas and his small party held back.
As usual, the Chiricahuas had watched for any army or scout units following their trail. They knew some were on the other side of the Sierra Madre, in Chihuahua; but since September none had been detected in Sonora. Feeling increasingly secure, they frequently failed even to post sentinels at night. Their ranchería—housing about eighty people, including twenty-four fighting men—perched on a high, rocky ridge a mile north of the Aros River and about fifty miles southeast of Nácori Chico. Before dawn on January 10, 1886, three men awoke to the braying of burros and walked out to investigate. From a higher slope shots aimed at the Chiricahuas sparked volleys from all around. Because the herd grazed about four hundred yards from the ranchería, the people had time to escape. Geronimo shouted for the women and children to run and scatter, and the men drew up to delay the attack. A running fight developed between army scouts and the fleeing Chiricahuas, but in the darkness no one was hurt on either side. The scouts took possession of a deserted camp, with all its contents and stock.
Rarely did the army with its Indian scouts succeed in finding a fugitive camp, much less in shooting down and capturing the inhabitants. That these Indian scouts found and attacked Geronimo’s camp on the Aros River only to find it deserted by all its people illustrates how skillfully the Apaches could detect an impending assault and scatter before the attack fell. The loss of all their stock and belongings meant little; raids could replenish what they had lost.
As the fleeing Chiricahuas discovered, they had been routed not only by White Mountain scouts but Chiricahuas, too. That their own tribesmen were army scouts who knew the country and their likely hiding places again proved highly unsettling. More immediately, their condition was perilous: high in the mountains in midwinter without food, stock, or any of the contents of their ranchería. Naiche spoke with one of the Chiricahua scouts and told him to tell the officer he wanted to come in and talk. If Naiche did not know who the officer was by now, the scout probably told him: Captain Emmet Crawford. The breakouts had known him at San Carlos as a fair, firm, and honest officer, and one who clearly had the confidence of General Crook.
That afternoon, Naiche sent a woman to the scouts’ camp on the ridge line above the abandoned ranchería. The scouts had taken what they wanted and burned the rest. Now they rested or slept among the rocks as the woman made her way to Captain Crawford and relayed Naiche’s request. The captain gave her some food and sent her back with word that he would meet with the chiefs the next morning on level ground about a mile from camp.
From a steep bluff across the Aros River where they had spent the night, the Chiricahuas awoke at daybreak of January 11, 1886, to the sound of gunfire. In the distance they could see the scout camp and rifle fire bursting from a rocky slope above. Some of the scouts briefly returned the fire, but it quickly ceased. The officers walked out to meet leaders of the attacking force, now discerned to be Mexican militia, including the hated Tarahumari Indians. The spectators heard more shots fired and then made out an officer, in his blue uniform, scaling a large rock and waving a white handkerchief. Another shot knocked him from the top of the rock. For several hours, the two sides maneuvered and periodically fired at each other. Geronimo, Naiche, Chihuahua, and Nana had never witnessed such a spectacle—a source of elation, possibly, but also concern over whether they could now arrange the talks they hoped for. As in the past, they had tired of life on the run, especially now that their own Chiricahua kin had joined the army. Once again, the security and rations of the reservation beckoned. Captain Crawford seemed their best chance for arranging to talk with General Crook and, as before, promise to return to life as it was before the breakout.17
Crawford’s command awoke on the morning of January 11, 1886, to shouts from the scouts, scattered among the rocks, followed by a burst of rifle fire. The officers saw the attacking force as Mexicans, not in uniform, 154 in number. Crawford and First Lieutenant Marion P. Maus (Moss) rushed out waving their arms to stop: they were Americans. The firing stopped, and the officers turned back to camp. But the Mexicans opened fire again. Crawford climbed to the top of a large rock, his blue uniform clearly visible, and waved a white handkerchief. A bullet hit him in the head and knocked him to the ground. Maus turned to see his brains on the side of the rock.
As senior officer, Maus took command and tried to get the firing stopped. The scouts had returned fire and reluctantly stopped. With his interpreter, Concepcíon, Maus tried talking with the Mexican officer. The Mexican force, mostly Tarahumari Indians, were irregulars and plainly intent more on plunder than in attacking hostile Apaches. The determined scouts, positioned behind rocks, made further fighting an obviously costly effort. The Mexican officer took Maus prisoner, but he saw the excited scouts preparing for a fight and, after haggling over a bribe in mules, freed Maus and Concepcíon.
Maus worried that the Mexicans would try another scheme. The attack was clearly perfidious, as they at once knew they faced an American army force. Anxious to be away, and with ample grounds for a diplomatic protest, Maus gathered Crawford and the other wounded on litters and broke camp the next day, January 12. Slowed by the litter-borne wounded, the command moved only four miles before camping.
Geronimo held back, motivated by the proximity of Mexican Tarahumaris and the perennial suspicion of soldiers, even though he knew and trusted Captain Crawford. Only after the Americans had succeeded in separating themselves from their attackers did the chiefs cautiously venture forth. They watched the scouts begin the march toward Nácori Chico on January 12. In camp that night two Chiricahua women came in to ask permission for a council. They had to deal with an unknown officer because Captain Crawford lay on the ground with a bullet in his brain. Lieutenant Maus consented to a meeting. One occurred the next day, January 13, but still the chiefs hung back. Maus told the two men to say to the chiefs that if they would come in with their families and give up their arms, he would take them to General Crook. Finally, on January 14, Geronimo and Naiche appeared. Predictably, they refused to give up their weapons or bring in their families; even Crawford could not have accomplished that. They said they wanted to meet with Crook somewhere near the border in about a month, and meanwhile they would commit no depredations. They also agreed to yield some people as guarantees of good faith. By January 15, Maus had in his camp Nana and one of his men, a wife and child of both Geronimo’s and Naiche’s, and a sister of Geronimo’s.
The Chiricahuas watched as Maus and his command crawled slowly toward Nácori Chico and the Bavispe River corridor to the north. They promptly broke their promise not to raid. They badly needed to replenish the stock and provisions lost when Crawford attacked their camp. For two months, in separate parties, all the chiefs led murderous raids on the ranches and settlements of Sonora. No communication passed between them and Lieutenant Maus, whom they expected to arrange the meeting with Crook. By the middle of March 1886, they had raided their way north toward the border, ready to meet with the general.18
Thus Geronimo and his comrades demonstrated their willingness to break agreements.
