SINCE THE MEETINGS BETWEEN the Chiricahua leaders and Lieutenant Marion P. Maus, following the killing of Captain Crawford on January 11, 1886, Sonora had borne the brunt of destructive raids on ranches and travelers. The raiders worked in two bodies, Geronimo and Naiche leading one, Chihuahua and his brother Ulzana the other. By early March 1886, two months after they had told Maus they needed time to collect their stock, they united in the Teras Mountains, nestled in the bend of the Bavispe River. Mexican troops had been combing Sonora trying to bring the raiders to battle, and the Apaches judged talks with Crook preferable to fighting the Mexicans.
Geronimo and Naiche sent four emissaries to the Pitachaiche Mountains, across the Bavispe to the north, to send up smoke to signal Maus that they stood ready to talk. Maus’s scouts camped impatiently on the San Bernardino River eighteen miles north of the smokes. On March 14 Maus appeared with four Indian scouts, including the Chiricahua sergeant major, Noche. The messengers said that Geronimo and Naiche wanted to talk with Crook, as promised. Maus told them to return and bring them and their people to his camp. Reinforcing their anxiety, he warned them of the perils of an attack by Mexican troops.1
On March 19 Geronimo and Naiche, with twenty-two men and a herd of stolen cattle, appeared near the scouts’ camp on the San Bernardino. Chihuahua and seven of his followers remained out. Mangas had no intention of coming in. Geronimo and Naiche held several talks with the lieutenant the next day. He wanted them to move closer to the boundary. They refused, declaring that Crook could meet them here. Warned repeatedly of the possibility of a Mexican attack, however, they reluctantly agreed. Selecting a shallow gorge named Canyon de los Embudos (Funnel Canyon), twenty-five miles south of the border, on March 22 Geronimo and Naiche moved twelve miles to this location. Maus and his scouts moved, too.
In their talks with Maus, and later with Crook, Geronimo and Naiche appear in the record as equal negotiators. These talks reaffirm the relationship between the two: Naiche the more pliable, Geronimo the firmly stubborn. Geronimo did most of the talking and displayed the stubbornness that Naiche lacked. Yet Geronimo always played the role of subordinate to Naiche because he was a chief, the son of Cochise, while Geronimo was never a chief. Naiche could speak his mind, but on important issues he rarely disagreed with Geronimo.
Brimming with distrust and anxiety, the Chiricahuas made camp half a mile from Maus’s bivouac. They positioned themselves in an impregnable fortification, atop a small rocky hill amid a lava bed surrounded by deep ravines. Three steep gulches separated their fortress from the scouts’ camp. They allowed no one from the military camp to enter their own. Heavily armed with rifles and abundant cartridges, they remained on the alert for treachery.2
Although expected daily, Crook had not arrived. Another white man had, a beef contractor named Charles Tribollet, who erected a small shanty near San Bernardino but below the border, where he dispensed whiskey and mescal. The scouts quickly discovered Tribollet, and even as the Chiricahuas settled into their positions, Maus’s camp rocked with wild debauches. The Chiricahuas lost no time in discovering Tribollet, and for three days, until Crook belatedly appeared, both scouts and Chiricahuas indulged in raucous drunks. By this time, they were all badly hungover and the Chiricahuas in a foul mood.3
Late on the morning of March 25, 1886, Crook and his staff rode into Embudos Canyon, Crook in his canvas suit and astride his mule. He went at once to the camp of the packers and had lunch. Afterward, as Geronimo and Naiche stood by watching, Nana and Kayatena approached and shook hands with Crook. The sudden appearance of Kayatena took Geronimo by surprise and pleased him, too. The last he knew, Kayatena had been sent to Alcatraz Prison. When Geronimo and Naiche walked to Crook, the three decided to begin the council at once.
While preparing for the meeting, a shout went up and in rode Chihuahua and Ulzana with six men trailing a herd of stolen horses. Chihuahua went at once to Crook and greeted him warmly. As the council proceeded, Chihuahua and Ulzana stood on the edge of the ravine and watched.
In a half circle Geronimo and Naiche, Crook, and a few officers and civilians sat on one side and at the bottom of a ravine shaded by cottonwoods and sycamores. Another surprise to the Indians, a photographer unpacked his rig and set up the camera for a picture of the participants.
Crook spoke gruffly, stating that he had come all the way from Fort Bowie, and asked what Geronimo had to say. After three nights of Tribollet’s whiskey, Geronimo took offense at Crook’s attitude and his refusal to say anything until Geronimo had finished talking. As an officer wrote words on paper, Geronimo launched into a long speech about how the “stories of bad people” at Turkey Creek had set him up for arrest and execution. He blamed Lieutenant Britton Davis, Chatto, and interpreter Mickey Free. Geronimo may truly have believed that he had been targeted for execution by the “stories of bad people.” But he well knew that his denial of a plot to assassinate Chatto and Davis was a blatant lie because he himself had arranged it.
When he finally finished, Crook acidly replied by branding every one of his explanations a lie. Geronimo protested, but to no avail. At last, without ending the heated dispute, Crook interjected, addressing the interpreter. Everything Geronimo did on the reservation is known. No use for him to try to talk nonsense. Crook is no child. Geronimo must make up his own mind whether he will stay out on the warpath or surrender unconditionally. “If you stay out I’ll keep after you and kill the last one, if it takes fifty years.” The dispute raged on until Crook called a halt. During the night Geronimo should think over the issue, he said, and give his answer in the morning.4
Back in his stronghold, Geronimo felt angry and mortified by the attitude of Crook and his ultimatum to surrender unconditionally or fight to the end. He had come to the talks expecting to be allowed to return to the reservation and live as before. Crook’s rude talk upset him. Two more Apaches figured in the talks that night: Alchise and Kayatena. Alchise, a White Mountain, had long been trusted by Crook as a willing agent. Kayatena had come back from Alcatraz a thoroughly transformed Apache, now committed to the white man’s way.5
Alchise and Kayatena slipped into the Chiricahua camp that night. They found the Indians stirred up, suspicious, furious, and even straining to bolt once again. Geronimo stormed and ranted more than the others, directing all the men to keep guns in hand ready to shoot at a moment’s notice. The chiefs argued all night. As the mood grew more rational, Alchise and Kayatena offered bits of advice, carefully ensuring that their words threw no more fuel on the fire. By morning the Chiricahuas felt calmer.
Later in the morning, Alchise and Kayatena left the Chiricahua camp with word that Geronimo, Naiche, and Chihuahua wanted to talk again with Crook. They came down to his camp. Chihuahua and Naiche seemed ready to accept Crook’s ultimatum of unconditional surrender, but not Geronimo. Crook declared that under no circumstances could they return to the reservation, but they did agree to his next proposal: surrender on condition that they be transported to the East for two years, then allowed to come back to their homes.
The final formal meeting, again recorded, took place on March 27. The terms had been worked out the day before but not set to paper. No one repeated them here, only that they now surrendered to Crook. All knew the word meant the terms Crook had agreed to on March 26: transport to the East for two years, then return to the reservation. Chihuahua did most of the talking, much to Geronimo’s irritation. Naiche simply declared that he surrendered. Last to speak was Geronimo, who said little beyond his decision to surrender. “Once I moved like the wind,” he observed. “Now I surrender to you and that is all.”6
The Chiricahuas remained in their fortress all night, except to ride to Tribollet’s shanty. Returning at daylight on March 28, widely scattered and reeling drunkenly, Geronimo and a few others met Crook and his staff moving back to the boundary. Lieutenant Maus and his scouts remained in camp, waiting to escort the Chiricahuas to Fort Bowie. They had no intention of being escorted. They gathered in their defenses and continued to drink through the night, constantly firing their rifles. Naiche got so drunk that he shot and wounded his wife. On the morning of March 29 Scout Noche and Kayatena appeared in their camp to get them moving. They moved, but in a random, dispersed body, firing their rifles. Five miles up the valley they came together to meet Maus, all still drunk. They told him they would come in as soon as they were sober. By nightfall, five miles farther, they settled in a camp near Maus’s.7
Among those in Chihuahua’s camp was a white boy. He turned out to be Santiago McKinn, the teenager taken prisoner by Geronimo in New Mexico six months earlier. Unlike Charley McComas, who was killed when Crook’s scouts fell on Geronimo’s camp in 1883, McKinn had been transformed into an Apache, and as such he wanted to remain. He continued to live in Chihuahua’s camp.
Although the army had destroyed Tribollet’s shanty and all its contents, Geronimo and Naiche had retained enough to get drunk during the night of March 30. At 2:30 a.m. the next day, March 31, the two leaders gathered eighteen men, fifteen women, and seven children and slipped away from the camp, headed back for the Sierra Madre. They took only three horses from the herd and made their way on foot. Knowing that the scouts would pursue as soon as they discovered them gone, the Chiricahuas scattered and walked only on rocks, thus leaving no trail.
Remaining in the camp next to Maus were Chihuahua, Ulzana, Nana, ten other men, and forty-seven women and children. Later two of the escapees returned to give up, making the total men fifteen. Even so, the two principal Chiricahua leaders and most of the men who surrendered to Crook at Canyon de los Embudos had escaped. They made another war inevitable.8
Geronimo and Naiche did not bolt simply because they got drunk. Tribollet’s whiskey may have brought to the surface thoughts suppressed after the events at Canyon de los Embudos. Three years later Naiche explained to Crook what went through his mind that night. He conceded that all were drunk, but he said he worked it out himself. He didn’t know how to do white-man labor and didn’t think he would like it. He feared being taken away to some place he didn’t know and wouldn’t like it. And he concluded that all who were taken away would die. For Naiche at least, and likely for Geronimo and the others, alcoholic fumes mixed with simple reality: they knew life in the Sierra Madre, they did not know life in Florida. They chose the Sierra Madre.9
While Geronimo raided in Sonora in the first months of 1886, General Crook passed the weeks at Fort Bowie, hunting quail and playing whist with the post officers. Except for a long report on military operations during the breakout from Turkey Creek, which dwelled more on the difficulties of Apache warfare than on the campaigns in New Mexico, he retained his usual reticence. He confined his reports to transmitting Lieutenant Maus’s dispatches. He expressed no reaction to the death of Crawford or even the perfidy of the Mexican attack. He received Maus’s dispatches but never replied.10
Crook put on a show of reluctance to meet with the Indians, part of his strategy of taking a firm stance that admitted of no compromise. He knew of the plan to exile all the Chiricahuas from the reservation to Florida, but never alluded to it during these weeks or gave any hint that his opinion had changed since he and Crawford had met with Sheridan at Fort Bowie in November 1885. He would demand unconditional surrender, and if he could not get that he had the authority given him by the secretary of war on September 30, 1885, to accept their surrender as prisoners of war on condition of transport to the East. Above all, they could not be allowed to return to the reservation. If they insisted, war again.
When Crook received word from Maus on March 16 that he had established connection with the Chiricahuas, he telegraphed General Pope to release Kayatena from Alcatraz Prison and send him quickly by train to Bowie Station. He had learned from Pope that prison had entirely transformed Kayatena and believed that he might be a key to gaining a surrender. As Crook waited, at Canyon de los Embudos Maus and his scouts and the waiting Chiricahuas grew increasingly apprehensive. They had come this close to the border to talk with Crook, and he had not arrived. Maus appealed to Crook to hurry but received no reply. He delayed his departure for four days awaiting Kayatena. Finally, on March 22 Kayatena appeared, and Crook and his staff left for the talks. On the same day, at Canyon de los Embudos, both scouts and Chiricahuas launched their debauches with Tribollet’s whiskey and mescal.11
Crook and his staff met with Geronimo and chiefs as soon as they arrived on March 25. His aide, Captain Bourke, transcribed the talks. This was the first of two formal talks. The second, also transcribed, took place on March 27. The crucial day was March 26, the day after the nighttime work of Alchise and Kayatena in the Chiricahua camp. Crook met privately with Geronimo and Naiche. Captain Bourke kept no record. Chihuahua had already accepted unconditional surrender, and perhaps Naiche could be persuaded. But not Geronimo. Faced by a long standoff with Geronimo, Crook invoked his fallback position: surrender as prisoners of war and accept exile in the East. Geronimo agreed to this with the added condition that their families accompany them east and all return home in two years. Crook accepted, although the two-year term and especially the return had not been authorized. In fact, the secretary of war had explicitly ruled that they never be permitted to return to Arizona.
The formal meeting of March 27 was just that, a formality that seemed to ratify the decision of the day before without actually recording it.
To the dismay of Lieutenant Maus, and especially packer Henry W. Daly, Crook insisted on starting back to Fort Bowie on the morning of March 28, leaving Maus to escort the newly designated POWs back to Fort Bowie. Soon after beginning the journey, Crook’s party met Geronimo and others returning from Tribollet’s shanty. Their drunken condition should have been a warning, but Crook was anxious to learn Sheridan’s reaction to the reports he had already sent forward by courier.12
He got it soon enough, on March 30, the day after he reached Fort Bowie. A telegram from Sheridan relayed the president’s decision: he would not assent to the surrender on Crook’s terms. He instructed Crook to reopen negotiations on the basis of unconditional surrender, sparing only their lives. Later in the day Crook had to wire Sheridan the embarrassing news that Geronimo and Naiche and their followers had escaped.13
Before learning this distressing news, Crook had responded to the president’s instructions by wiring that any attempt to renegotiate would result in an instant stampede by the Chiricahuas back to Mexico. Sheridan merely repeated the president’s directive. Then, informed of the escape of Geronimo and Naiche and thoroughly exasperated, he declared that the only thing to be done now was to dispose the troops to protect the settlements and to request a plan of future operations. Instead of such a plan, Crook replied with another lecture on the difficulties of Apache warfare. He concluded by asserting that his plan of relying on scouts would ultimately prove successful but that perhaps he had become too wedded to his views. Therefore, since he had spent the hardest eight years of his life in Arizona, he asked to be relieved of command.14
Sheridan replied the next day, April 1. He transmitted General Orders No. 15, issued by the adjutant general, directing Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles to proceed at once to Fort Bowie and assume command of the Department of Arizona.
Crook still had to deal with Chihuahua’s people, and he urged that they be sent away immediately. Once Maus arrived with Chihuahua and his people, arrangements had to be made to get them on a train headed east, which finally occurred on April 7. Only then could Santiago McKinn be taken away from his Apache friends. He was returned to his father and disappears from history. At Bowie Station, seventy-seven men, women, and children boarded the cars and, guarded by an armed escort, steamed eastward. Crook did not inform Chihuahua that the surrender terms had been rejected.15
On April 11, 1886, in what had to be a tense meeting, Crook turned over command of the Department of Arizona to General Miles and boarded a train for his new assignment, commanding the Department of the Platte, with headquarters in Omaha.
General Crook’s time had run out; he was right to request relief. For nearly a year he had been caught in an unbreakable political vise. On the one hand, everyone conceded that he knew more about Apache warfare than any other senior officer. General Pope fully supported Crook’s strategy. General Sheridan had reservations about the heavy reliance on Indian scouts, whose loyalty he had doubted since the Cibicue mutiny. But he, too, backed Crook until the final crisis.
On the other hand, despite Pope’s support, the issue finally resolved itself into a collision of Crook’s expert knowledge with the ignorance of President Grover Cleveland, Secretary of War William C. Endicott, and General Sheridan. Their knowledge of Apache warfare came only from Crook’s descriptions, which failed to dilute their ignorance. They constantly complained of Crook’s failure to end the Geronimo outbreaks or explain why to their satisfaction. Finally, they imposed conditions on Crook’s negotiations that contradicted his expert knowledge.
Crook failed to handle his problem with much finesse. His unconcealed attitude of being the only know-it-all about Apaches irritated superiors and fellow officers alike. He hunted quail and played whist when he could have been thinking about how to deal more subtly with his superiors, how to convince them of his strategy without simply describing the difficulties of tracking Apaches in challenging country. Especially, he should have devoted more effort to explaining why only an Apache could catch an Apache, a doctrine hardly flattering to officers steeped in the traditions of the regular army. His characteristic reticence not only inhibited such an effort with his superiors but tormented his subordinates. His failure to keep Lieutenant Maus informed of his intentions diluted the effectiveness of that able officer.
Crook made three mistakes in conducting the talks, one deplorable. He waited too long to request the release of Kayatena from Alcatraz, which delayed his departure from Fort Bowie at a critical time when the Chiricahuas expected to talk but instead left them to indulge in Tribollet’s whiskey for three days. The second mistake was his hasty departure from Canyon de los Embudos on the morning of March 28, leaving Lieutenant Maus to herd the drunken POWs to Fort Bowie. His presence on these pivotal days might have prevented the breakout of Geronimo and Naiche and their people.
His fatal error, however, was to concede terms of surrender that included return to Arizona. He had been enjoined by the secretary of war from promising a return to Arizona. Crook justified his departure from that command by declaring it the only terms he could get. And when the president rejected that, Crook rightly pointed out that reopening negotiations would stampede the entire band back to Mexico. He also knew that such a betrayal would violate his sense of honor, although he did not emphasize the point.
Whatever George Crook’s mistakes and miscalculations in the final dealings with the Chiricahuas, history still awards him the distinction of the army’s premier authority on Apaches and Apache warfare, a distinction demonstrated by his achievements and by the strategy that finally brought Geronimo to bay.
Geronimo would not be brought to bay for another five months. He went to Canyon de los Embudos simply because he was tired of life on the run and wanted to go back to the security of Turkey Creek. In the first meeting with Crook, hungover as he was, he understood that he would have to go back east. Chihuahua had readily agreed. Furious as Geronimo was the night after the first talk, he must have sensed that Alchise and Kayatena had been sent to calm him down and point him toward Crook’s terms. He probably also puzzled over the huge change in Kayatena, who had made so much trouble that he had been sent to Alcatraz. The two emissaries of Crook may have influenced Geronimo to think about terms. But the general had “talked ugly” and Geronimo deeply resented it. If he had to leave Arizona for the East and trust the government to treat him well, he wanted to ensure that he could come back to Arizona. So the day after the first talk he haggled with Crook until he secured a promise to return from the East in two years—terms Crook had no authority to grant. Even those terms failed to prevent Geronimo and Naiche from breaking for the Sierra Madre. Whiskey may have been part of the motive, but distrust of Crook, mistrust of the government, and fear of the unknown doubtless proved stronger propellants.
Geronimo did not know it, but the terms he had wrung from Crook followed by his flight back to the Sierra Madre led to the downfall of the general who had treated him so insultingly ever since 1883.