1. Originally published in 1906 as Geronimo’s Story of His Life, the book has progressed through many printings. I have used the Penguin edition of 1996 and cite it as S. M. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story: The Autobiography of a Great Patriot Warrior, as told to S. M. Barrett, new edition revised and edited by Frank Turner (New York: Penguin, 1996). Pagination differs among the various editions. The narrative can be easily dismissed as the meanderings of an old man, but it contains much of value when checked with reliable sources. Geronimo dictated his story at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1905, a prisoner of war ever since his surrender in 1886. He spoke in his own language to Asa Daklugie, a Carlisle Indian School graduate and son of Chief Juh. Daklugie in turn translated into English for S. M. Barrett, a Lawton school superintendent. What was lost or corrupted in translation, and what Barrett changed to accord more with the white calendar and understanding, cannot be known. In addition, the War Department objected to the manuscript as reflecting badly on an army that Geronimo had repeatedly eluded, and Barrett made some accommodating changes. Only by direction of President Theodore Roosevelt, however, did the manuscript finally see print. I treat in more detail the autobiography in chap. 28.
At the time of Geronimo’s birth, New Mexico was part of the Mexican state of Chihuahua (Chee-wah-wah). Arizona was also part of Chihuahua and the bordering Mexican state of Sonora to the west. The Mexican War of 1846–48 gained the United States the present states of New Mexico and Arizona, and in 1850 they were organized as the Territory of New Mexico. The Gadsden Purchase of 1853 added the country south of the Gila River as far as the present international boundary. Following the collapse of the Confederate Territory of Arizona in 1863, Arizona was detached from the Territory of New Mexico and established as the US Territory of Arizona. Both territories became states in 1912. To avoid confusion, locations are identified as in Arizona or New Mexico regardless of jurisdiction at the time.
2. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 69. Asa Daklugie (Geronimo’s interpreter for Barrett) had also heard stories of Mahco even though living with his family in Mexico. Eve Ball, with Nora Henn and Lynda Sánchez, Indeh: An Apache Odyssey (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1980), 14. Eve Ball, a retired school teacher in Rudiso, New Mexico, was the only white person ever to get close enough to the Chiricahuas who lived at the nearby Mescalero Reservation in the twentieth century to get them to talk of the early years.
3. Morris E. Opler is the preeminent authority on Apache culture. For his discussion of sibling-cousin relations, see An Apache Life-Way: The Economic, Social, and Religious Institutions of the Chiricahua Indians (New York: Cooper Square, 1965), 58–62. The genealogy of Mahco and his offspring is so tangled in the sparse sources as to rest on much speculation. The most recent standard biography of Geronimo is Angie Debo, Geronimo: The Man, His Time, His Place (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976). She devotes much of her first chapter to this speculation and reaches no firm conclusion. I have turned to other sources as well and stated my conclusions more firmly than she. They seem to be the most that will ever be known about the family origins of Geronimo. Each of those named in my narrative is the subject of a biographical sketch in a large document assembled by Gillett Griswold, longtime director of the Fort Sill Museum. The manuscript is entitled “The Fort Sill Apaches: Their Vital Statistics, Tribal Origins, Antecedents,” and was compiled in 1958–61.
4. To avoid confusion, Mangas Coloradas’s lasting name will be used throughout, even when he was known as Fuerte (Spanish for strong); for the same reason Geronimo will replace Goyahkla even during his youth.
5. Most of my treatment of Chiricahua tribal organization and culture is taken from Opler, Apache Life-Way. Opler divided the Chiricahua tribe into only three bands, ignoring the Bedonkohe altogether. I believe it probable that the Chihenne local group Opler called Mogollon is what is now recognized as Bedonkohe, a full if small band.
6. Mangas Coloradas commands an exceptional biography in Edwin R. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas: Chief of the Chiricahua Apaches (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998). I have relied heavily on him, for he has scoured every possible archive in the United States and Mexico and presented details never before set forth. The physical description of Mangas Coloradas, of which there are many, is drawn largely from the army surgeon who examined his corpse a few hours after his death, xxi.
7. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 59.
8. All these beings, ceremonies, and rituals are treated, with not always consistent testimony of interviewees, throughout Opler, Apache Life-Way, 205–16.
9. Ibid., 436–38, describes preparation of tiswin and its role in social occasions. He does not, however, go beyond its benign part in such affairs. Nor do other ethnologists or historians. That they were common emerges from documentary records of particular events. Some old Apaches denied the reality of tiswin drunks, claiming that they were powered more by the white man’s whiskey than tiswin. For an example, see Sherry Robinson, Apache Voices: Their Stories of Survival as Told to Eve Ball (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000), 168.
10. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 60–61. Ethnologists generally deny that Chiricahuas practiced agriculture, citing the prevalence of nomadic mobility and the pattern of plundering raids on Mexicans and other Indians. Some, however, concede that some Chihennes and Bedonkohes may have resorted to agriculture on a limited scale. This would have been during the longer intervals of peace such as prevailed during Geronimo’s youth. His memory of youthful farming is too explicit to ignore. As warfare grew more intense and mobility increased, opportunities for agriculture shrank. For most of his adult life, Mangas Coloradas farmed at Santa Lucía Springs.
11. Opler, Apache Life-Way, describes the novitiate, 134–39. Geronimo and all other sources state simply that Taslishim died during the boy’s youth. However, he told one interviewer that he was ten at the time, which fits the probable sequence of his early life. MS, Interview by Capt. W. H. C. Bowen with Geronimo at Mount Vernon Barracks AL, in 1893, Col. W. H. C. Bowen Papers, box 3, US Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA. This document was called to my attention by Senior Historian Richard Sommers.
12. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 66–68.
13. Ibid., 70. Geronimo gave the year as 1846, but his true birth year was 1823, so the accurate year would be 1840. My description of the novitiate is drawn from Opler, Apache Life-Way, 134–39.
14. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 70–71.
1. S. M. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 70. “Alope” does not sound like an Apache name, but Geronimo was so specific in recounting his marriage that his statement is accepted.
2. Griswold, “Fort Sill Apaches.” A good character sketch is in Charles Collins, The Great Escape: The Apache Outbreak of 1881 (Tucson: Westernlore, 1994).
3. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 42–44.
4. Ibid., 71–72. See also Sweeney, Cochise: Chiricahua Apache Chief (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 32–35.
5. Ralph A. Smith, Borderlander: The Life of James Kirker, 1793–1852 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), chaps. 7–8. See also Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 83–84.
6. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 102–5, chap. 5.
7. E-mail, Edwin Sweeney to Utley, February 5, 2007, discloses the 1843 date. Sweeney examined Mexican records in preparing his biography of Mangas Coloradas. As for his name, Debo, Geronimo, 13, recounts a tale told by the son of a bombastic future Apache agent of a battle with Mexicans in which they uttered some words of alarm that sounded like Geronimo. This seems implausible to me.
8. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 110. Raids and war are recounted in chaps. 7–11.
9. Sweeney, Cochise, xii–xix.
10. Ibid., 120–24.
11. Smith, Borderlander, 162–68. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 135–36.
12. Jason Betzinez, with Wilbur Sturtevant Nye, I Fought with Geronimo (New York: Bonanza Books, 1969), 4–9, is the principal source for the revenge expedition. Betzinez was born about 1860 and did indeed ride in the final campaigns of Geronimo. He collaborated with W. S. Nye in this book and is regarded as an unusually reliable Apache source. He died at the age of one hundred in 1960. See also Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 146–48.
13. In an interview with Eve Ball, August 10, 1954. Robinson, Apache Voices, 57. Eve Ball sometimes took liberties with her sources. Sherry Robinson examined the Ball papers at Brigham Young University and here set the record straight.
14. Leon Perico interview, box 37, folder 28, no. 14/25/3238, Morris Edward Opler Papers, Division of Rare Manuscript Collections, Cornell University, obtained by Opler from Sol Tax. Copy provided by Edwin Sweeney. See also partial quotation in Opler, Apache Life-Way, 216. A biographical sketch of Perico is in Griswold, “Fort Sill Apaches.”
15. Morris E. Opler, “Some Implications of Culture Theory for Anthropology and Psychology,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 18 (October 1948): 617.
16. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, xviii.
1. The most detailed and authoritative account of what followed is in Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 209–12. His Cochise, 83–87, is less detailed. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 78–83, contains Geronimo’s own detailed account. His chronology is flawed, and he depicts the offensive as a revenge expedition he himself organized in retaliation for a disaster that was yet to befall him, to be treated later in this chapter. He both supports and strays from Sweeney’s narrative. Some of the episodes he recounts probably occurred, and he undoubtedly took part, but he should be read only within the context of the Sweeney accounts.
2. These quotations are selected from Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 82, 83. Geronimo’s account can only refer to Pozo Hediondo, but it is flawed by his assumption that this was a revenge fight for the disaster soon to befall him. He portrays himself as more a tactical leader than he probably was, but he assuredly fought ferociously and in hand-to-hand combat, and his stature rose accordingly.
3. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 212.
4. Scarce and often contradictory sources abound in this episode. Sweeney deals authoritatively with it in Mangas Coloradas, 218–19; and in “‘I Had Lost All’: Geronimo and the Carrasco Massacre of 1851,” Journal of Arizona History 27 (Spring 1986): 35–52. Geronimo tells his story at length in Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 75–78. Although his account is full of untruths, I accept some of his most important statements, as does Sweeney. The most notable untruths are that the Apaches had been and were at peace and his chronology that places this event before Pozo Hediondo and the latter as the revenge expedition. Betzinez, I Fought with Geronimo, 16–17, is the authority for Apaches drinking in town and also recounts the story of the massacre.
5. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 77.
6. E. A. Burbank, as told by Ernest Royce, Burbank among the Indians, ed. Frank J. Taylor (Caldwell, ID: Caxton, 1946), 33.
1. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, chap. 3, deals with the early relations around the copper mines. I have examined and cited most of the original sources in my A Life Wild and Perilous: Mountain Men and the Paths to the Pacific (New York: Henry Holt, 1997).
2. Lt. Delos B. Sackett to AAAG Santa Fe, Doña Ana, December 14, 1848, encl. to Washington to Jones, February 3, 1849, LR, Hq. of the Army, W-21, NARA.
3. Capt. Enoch Steen to AAAG Santa Fe, Doña Ana, September 1, 1849, RG 77, LR, Topographical Engineers, S478/1850, NARA. Steen to AAAG Santa Fe, Doña Ana, October 20, 1849, RG 98, LR, Dept. NM, S-12, NARA. I deduce that these were Bedonkohes from their retreat to the copper mines, Bedonkohe country. Also, a raiding party of one hundred was unusually large and may well have been led by Mangas himself.
4. Steen to AAAG Santa Fe, Doña Ana, March 24, 1850, encl. to Munroe to Jones, April 15, 1850, RG 94, AGO Doc. Files, box 464, doc. 269-M-1850, NARA. Steen to AAG Santa Fe, Doña Ana, September 3, 1850, RG 98, LR, Dept. NM, S23/1850, NARA.
5. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 244. Sumner to AGUSA, Hq. 9th Military Dept., Fort Union, January 1, February 3, 1852, RG 98, LS, Fort Union, NARA. Sumner to Lt. Col. D. S. Miles at Fort Conrad, Hq. 9th Military Dept., Albuquerque, April 5, 1852, RG 98, LS, Dept. NM, NARA.
6. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 258–62. Griener to Lea, July 31, 1852, RG 75, LR, OIA NM, G41/1852, NARA. Sumner to Secretary of the Interior, July 21, 1852, RG 75, OIA Treaty File, NARA. (Saint Louis) Daily Missouri Republican, August 28, 1852. For a copy of the treaty and associated documents, see Michael Steck Papers, University of New Mexico.
7. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 263–80. Griener to Lea, Santa Fe, August 30, 1852, RG 75, LR, OIA NM, G50/1852, NARA. Wingfield to Lane, Fort Webster, December 20, 1852, encl. to Wingfield to CIA, January 29, 1853, RG 75, LR, OIA NM, W307/1854, NARA. Wingfield to Lane, Fort Webster, May 4, 1853, encl. to Lane, “Report,” May 21, 1853, RG 75, LR, OIA NM, N128/1853, NARA. “Articles of a Provisional Compact …,” April 7, 1853, encl. to Meriwether (Lane’s replacement as governor) to Manypenny, August 31, 1853, RG 75, LR, OIA NM, N-153, NARA. Steen to Lane, Fort Webster, May 16, 28, 1853, encl. to Lane to Manypenny, May 28, 1853, RG 75, LR, OIA NM, N131/1853, NARA. Wingfield to Lane, Copper Mines, c. May 20, 1853, ibid. Steen to AGUSA, Fort Webster, June 17, 1853, RG 94, LR, AGO, S438/1853, NARA.
8. Lane to Wingfield, Fort Webster, May 28, 1853, Steck Papers.
9. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 296–304. George Ruhlen, “Fort Thorn—An Historical Vignette,” Password (El Paso Historical Society) 4 (October 1960): 127–37.
10. The Michael Steck Papers at the University of New Mexico Library are rich in his history as agent and later as superintendent of Indian affairs. The collection includes Steck’s appointment papers of May 9 and July 24, 1854. Steck’s activities in examining the Chiricahua lands and meeting with the chiefs are addressed to Governor Meriwether from Fort Thorn, August 31 and October (n.d.), 1854. That Steck’s issues were substantial is recorded in a certificate of contractor Estevan Ochoa listing the items issued on September 10, Steck Papers.
11. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 306–7.
12. Steck to CIA, Santa Fe, August 7, 1857, CIA, Annual Report (1857), 579.
13. I narrate and document the Bonneville campaign of 1857 in Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army and the Indian, 1848–1865 (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 155–57.
14. For Mangas’s turn to Cochise and factionalizing of his following, see Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 343–62.
15. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 373ff. Collins to CIA C. E. Mix, Santa Fe, December 5, 1858, RG 75, LR, OIA NM, C1903/1859, NARA. Draft, Steck to Collins, Apache Agency, February 1, 1859, Steck Papers. CIA, Annual Report (1858), 184–99; (1859), 334–47.
16. Griswold, “Fort Sill Apaches,” under these names, including Geronimo.
1. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 384. R. S. Allen, “Pinos Altos, New Mexico,” New Mexico Historical Review 23 (1948): 302–32.
2. Steck to CIA A. B. Greenwood, Washington, May 11, 1860, RG 75, LR, OIA NM FP, NARA. Greenwood to Steck, May 16, 1860, Steck Papers.
3. Collins to Greenwood, RG 75, LR, OIA NM, 0620/1860, NARA. Steck to Greenwood, Apache Agency, October 17, 1860, RG 75, LR, OIA NM, C795/1860, NARA. Greenwood to Collins, January 5, 1861, RG 75, LR, OIA NM FP, NARA.
4. Unless otherwise cited, my account is based largely on Sweeney, Cochise, chap. 8. Like his biography of Mangas Coloradas, Sweeney’s biography of Cochise is the ultimate authority. Sweeney had consulted every source and assembled a day-by-day narrative of this episode from the viewpoint of both sides.
5. Geronimo’s account is in Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 114–16. Geronimo mixed up the chronology and got some facts wrong, but he recalled enough detail to establish that he was there and participated in some of what followed. The scene was witnessed from behind the line of tents by Sergeant Daniel Robinson, leading a train of supply wagons west to Fort Buchanan. His eyewitness account is critical to understanding the sequence of events. Douglas C. McChristian and Larry L. Ludwig, “Eyewitness to the Bascom Affair: An Account by Sergeant Daniel Robinson, Seventh Infantry,” Journal of Arizona History 42 (Autumn 2001): 277–300. See also McChristian, Fort Bowie, Arizona: Combat Post of the Southwest, 1858–1894 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005), 21–35.
6. I recount this in greater detail in Frontiersmen in Blue, 157–61. For more, see Benjamin Sacks, “The Origins of Fort Buchanan, Myth and Fact,” Arizona and the West 7 (1965): 207–26.
7. Sweeney, Cochise, chap. 8. Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, 161–63.
8. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 117.
9. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, covers these events, chap. 16.
1. Robinson, Apache Voices, 27–29. Griswold, “Fort Sill Apaches,” under Nana-tha-thtithl. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 86–89. Geronimo does not mention the loss of his third wife and their child, although his account closely follows the other two citations.
2. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 423–25. R. S. Allen, “Pinos Altos, New Mexico,” New Mexico Historical Review 23 (October 1948): 303–4.
3. For Victorio, see Eve Ball, In the Days of Victorio: Recollections of a Warm Springs Apache (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1972); and Dan L. Thrapp, Victorio and the Mimbres Apaches (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974). For Loco, see Bud Shapard, Chief Loco: Apache Peacemaker (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010).
4. Griswold, “Fort Sill Apaches,” under Nana. Multiple sources chronicle Nana’s career in later years, when he continued as a respected war leader into old age.
5. Aside from a few brief comments of Asa Daklugie in Ball, Indeh: An Apache Odyssey, 19–20, no sources record the Apache perspective. The sequence is thoroughly detailed in military records, from which Sweeney reconstructed it in Mangas Coloradas, 429–40, and Cochise, 198–202. I have recounted the Apache viewpoint in what may be plausibly inferred from the military accounts, which I have examined numerous times in the past. Debo, Geronimo, 68, shares my assumption that Geronimo participated, alluding to Chiricahua tribal tradition. Geronimo’s failure to leave any hint of his presence is consistent with his lifelong practice. Even his account of the Bascom affair focuses on the ambush of the freight train in Apache Pass, not the soldiers.
6. Larry Ludwig, longtime park ranger at Fort Bowie National Historic Site, conducted an archaeological survey of both sides of what is now called Overlook Hill. He found no artillery fragments among the Indian defenses but plenty on the other side of the hill. He also found the small hill used to elevate the howitzers, confirmed by the artillery fuses dug up at its base. Infantry, not trained artillerymen, manned these guns and cut the fuses too long for bursts above the Indian positions. The exploding shells, even though missing the target, frightened the Apaches into abandoning their positions.
7. An excellent history of Fort Bowie, including chapters on the Bascom affair and the Battle of Apache Pass, is McChristian, Fort Bowie.
8. Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, 232–33.
9. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, chap. 18, recounts in detail all the following events involving Mangas and documents them thoroughly from the ample original sources. Geronimo provides a reasonably accurate account in Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, chap. 13. I have treated the story from the military perspective in Frontiersmen in Blue, 249–56.
10. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, presents the most detailed and thoroughly documented account of the slaying of Mangas. I have relied heavily on his reconstruction. See also Lee Myers, “The Enigma of Mangas Coloradas’ Death,” New Mexico Historical Review 41 (October 1966): 287–304. This article quotes from all the relevant sources but reaches no conclusion. My version, in addition to Sweeney, is taken from the same sources.
1. Geronimo mentions a number of clashes with soldiers following the death of Mangas Coloradas, although the details do not coincide with the military reports. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 119–20. Sweeney, Cochise, 209–10.
2. Griswold, “Fort Sill Apaches,” under named individuals.
3. Edwin R. Sweeney, From Cochise to Geronimo: The Chiricahua Apaches, 1874–1886 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 19. Sweeney to Utley, June 20, 2007.
4. Official correspondence documenting this series of campaigns may be found in War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, ser. 1, vol. 34, part 3; and vol. 60, part 2. See also Sweeney, Cochise, 218–23; and Steck Papers.
5. Annual Report of Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell, San Francisco, October 18, 1866, SW, Annual Report (1866), 34–36.
6. Griswold, “Fort Sill Apaches,” under named individuals, including Geronimo.
7. These conflicts are detailed in McChristian, Fort Bowie, chap. 6.
8. Cochise’s year of birth is speculative. After careful analysis of contemporary evidence, Sweeney, Cochise, 6–7, arrives at the year 1810.
9. The agent, Lt. Charles E. Drew, fought hard for rations but could not move superiors. They supported him but lacked the resources to back him. Appointed in May 1869, he was removed a year later and died of exposure pursuing Mescaleros across the Jornada del Muerto. The correspondence between Drew and his superiors is printed in CIA, Annual Report (1869), 104–9. The circumstances of his death are recounted in W. F. M. Arny, Indian Agent in New Mexico: The Journal of Special Agent W. F. M. Arny, 1870, ed. Lawrence R. Murphy (Santa Fe, NM: Stagecoach, 1967), 54–58. The tortuous story of attempts to establish a reservation is detailed in Shapard, Loco, chaps. 2–4.
10. Sweeney, Cochise, 281ff. The post was Camp Mogollon, soon to be named Fort Apache. The officer, Maj. John Green, was undoubtedly startled to meet with the renowned Cochise.
11. Arny, Indian Agent in New Mexico, 54–58. Sweeney, Cochise, 297.
12. Sweeney, Cochise, 315. Cochise’s name for Jeffords had been learned by Gen. O. O. Howard (to be treated below), who related it to a reporter in Washington, DC. “Account of Gen’l Howard’s Mission to the Apaches and Navajos,” reprinted from Washington Daily Morning Chronicle, November 10, 1872, 10. Papers of the Order of the Indian Wars, US Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA.
13. Sweeney, Cochise, 324–25.
14. Ibid., 339–40.
15. Ibid., 343–44.
1. I have tried to describe these scenes as the Indians would have experienced them. Of course, they have been reconstructed from white sources, the only sources that exist. I have drawn my narrative from Sweeney, Cochise, 356–66, based on thorough research in original sources; “Account of Gen’l Howard’s Mission,” the newspaper interview, which is far more informative than his official report; Howard’s official report, November 7, 1872, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1871–80, M666, 2465 AGO 1871, roll 123, frames 474–85, NARA (reprinted in CIA, Annual Report [1872], 175–78); Sweeney, ed., Making Peace with Cochise: The 1872 Journal of Captain Joseph Alton Sladen (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997) (MS, Sladen Papers, US Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA); and (in an edition for which I wrote the foreword) Oliver O. Howard, My Life and Experiences among Our Hostile Indians (1907; New York: Da Capo Press, 1972), chaps. 13, 14.
2. All the sources quote the exchange in English, which nonetheless conveys the essence of what the two said in halting Spanish.
3. Actually, Sladen was a “teniente”–a first lieutenant and aide-de-camp to Howard. He held a brevet of captain and was addressed as such as a courtesy.
4. Puzzled by how Cochise and Howard communicated, I queried Edwin Sweeney. In an e-mail of December 25, 2009, he replied that the Howard Papers at Bowdoin College contained a contract with Jacob May to serve as Spanish interpreter. Also, Howard wrote an article, also in his papers, that described the exchanges. Cochise spoke in Apache, and Ponce and Jeffords translated through Spanish into English. After May arrived, of course, he translated from Spanish into English for Howard.
5. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 124. His account is badly confused but establishes his presence. A letter in the Howard Papers, cited by Sweeney, Cochise, 362, attributes the confirmation to Capt. Samuel S. Sumner, who was present at the Sulphur Springs parley on October 12.
6. Pile to Secretary of State, Santa Fe, June 19, 1871; Safford to editor, Tucson, November 9, 1871; both in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1871–80, M666, 2465 AGO 1871, roll 24, NARA.
7. For a history of Grant’s Peace Policy, see Francis Paul Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis: Christian Reformers and the Indian, 1865–1900 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976); and Henry E. Fritz, The Movement for Indian Assimilation, 1860–1890 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1963). For the origins of the Colyer mission, see Grant to Secretary of the Interior Columbus Delano, Long Branch, NJ, July 18, 1871; Grant to SW W. W. Belknap, Long Branch, July 29, 1871; both in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1871–80, M666, 2465 AGO 1871, Correspondence Relating to Vincent Colyer, roll 123, frames 37–38, 40–41, NARA.
8. Peace with the Apaches of New Mexico and Arizona: Report of Vincent Colyer (Washington, DC: GPO, 1871), 9–11 (Reprint, Tucson: Territorial Press, 1964). Colyer to Superintendent of Indian Affairs Nathaniel Pope, Camp Tularosa, August 29, 1871, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1871–80, M666, 2465 AGO 1871, Correspondence Relating to Vincent Colyer, roll 123, frames 85–87, NARA. Secretary of the Interior Columbus Delano to SW W. W. Belknap, September 4, 1871, transmitting Colyer to Delano, Cañada Alamosa, August 18, 1871, and Colyer to Delano, Ojo Caliente, September 2, 1871, ibid., frames 66–70. Pope to Col. Gordon Granger, Camp Apache, AZ, September 6, 1871, ibid., frames 81–82. CIA, Annual Report (1872), 295–302.
9. An authoritative biography is Charles M. Robinson III, General Crook and the Western Frontier (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001). General George Crook: His Autobiography, edited by Martin F. Schmitt (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1946), contains much of value that does not appear in official reports. Crook’s reputation rests in large part on the excellent hagiographic book by his longtime aide: John G. Bourke, On the Border with Crook (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891).
10. Exhaustive documentation of the handling of the Colyer mission by the Interior and War Departments, and the president’s final approval of Colyer’s reservations, is contained in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1871–80, M666, 2465 AGO 1871, Correspondence Relating to Vincent Colyer, roll 123, for August 1871 to February 1872. See also Crook, Autobiography; and Robinson, Crook.
11. Howard’s lengthy report, dated June 1872, with attachments, is printed in CIA, Annual Report (1872), 148–75. His statement to Crook is in Crook, Autobiography, 169. Extensive official documentation leading to and during the Howard mission is in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1871–80, M666, 2465 AGO 1871, Correspondence Relating to Vincent Colyer, roll 123, NARA.
12. Howard to CIA, November 7, 1872; Pope to CIA, October 10, 1872; both in CIA, Annual Report (1872), 176, 295–302. Sladen, Making Peace with Cochise, 32–35. Appendix A reprints the transcript of the September 12 council. Sweeney, Cochise, 352–53. Howard, My Life and Experiences, relates his experiences at Tularosa and Cañada Alamosa, and the circumstances of his meeting with Jeffords, in a number of ways that are contradicted by contemporary evidence.
13. Sladen, Making Peace with Cochise, 89–93.
14. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 124.
15. Schofield to AGUSA, San Francisco, December 26, 1872, enclosing Crook to AAG San Francisco, Camp Grant, December 13, 1872; Crook to AAG San Francisco, Florence, AZ, February 11, 1873; Crook to AAG San Francisco, Prescott, April 12, 1873; GO 12, by command of Bvt. Maj. Gen. Crook, Prescott, April 7, 1873; GO 13, by command of Bvt. Maj. Gen. Crook, Prescott, April 8, 1873; all in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1871–80, M666, AGO 2465 1871, Correspondence Relating to Vincent Colyer, roll 123, frames 519–27, 570–72, 595–601, NARA.
1. Sweeney, Cochise, 369.
2. Ibid., 374. Crook to AAG San Francisco, Hq. DA Camp Grant, December 13, 1872, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1871–80, M666, 3383 AGO 1873, roll 24, frames 523–27, NARA.
3. Sweeney covers these events in Cochise, 363. However, he narrates them in greater and somewhat different detail in Cochise to Geronimo, 24–25, based on a variety of Arizona newspapers. He prepared this account long after publication of Cochise, and it reflects further research. See also Jeffords to CIA, Chiricahua Agency, Sulphur Springs, August 31, 1873, CIA, Annual Report (1873), 291–93; and Jeffords to CIA, Pinery Canyon (now agency headquarters), November 30, 1873, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1871–80, M666, 3383 AGO 1873, roll 24, frames 61–64, NARA.
4. Indian Inspector William Vandever to CIA, Washington, January 23, 1874 (repeating a report of October 18 gone astray), RG 94, LR, OAG, 1871–80, M666, 3383 AGO 1873, roll 24, frames 70–78, NARA.
5. Sweeney, Cochise, 386–87. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 39. The Chiricahua Agency was located at Sulphur Springs, in the valley of the same name, until August 1873. It then moved across the Chiricahua Mountains to San Simon, where sufficient arable land afforded agricultural potential. But this location proved so unhealthy that the agency was moved in November 1873 to Pinery Canyon.
6. Howard’s report of June 1872, CIA, Annual Report (1872), 155.
7. Crook to AAG San Francisco, December 13, 1872, January 24, February 11, 1873, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1871–80, M666, 2465 AGO 1871, roll 123, frames 519–21, 557–58, 570–72, NARA. GO 10, Hq. Military Division of the Pacific, San Francisco, November 21, 1871, ibid., frames 209–10. Charles Robinson, Crook, 130–31. John G. Bourke, The Diaries of John Gregory Bourke, Vol. 1, November 20, 1872–July 28, 1876, ed. Charles M. Robinson III (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2003), 63–64, 468–70.
8. Charles J. Kappler, comp., Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, 7 vols. (Washington, DC: GPO, 1902–3), 1:813–14.
9. Vandever to CIA, Washington, January 23, 1874.
10. Smith to Jeffords, December 29, 1873, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1871–80, M666, 3383 AGO 1873, roll 123, frames 56–59, NARA.
11. Jeffords to CIA, May 31, 1874, RG 75, BIA NM, 1849–89, MT-21, roll 23, 1874, NARA.
12. Dudley to CIA, Santa Fe, June 30, 1874, CIA, Annual Report (1874), 300–302.
13. Sweeney, Cochise, 395–97, deals with Cochise’s last days and burial.
14. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 30.
15. Shapard, Loco, chaps. 4–10, deals with the tortuous events that led to this outcome.
16. CIA, Annual Report (1874), 59, 63, 302–4, 310–11. Jeffords’s annual report, August 21, 1875, ibid., 209–10. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 39.
17. Jeffords to CIA, Apache Pass, August 21, 1875, CIA, Annual Report (1875), 209–10.
18. Clum’s annual report, September 1, 1875, ibid., 215–20. Events on the White Mountain Reservation, which involved incessant feuding with the military, are traced in a lengthy series of official documents in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1871–80, M666, 2504 AGO 1875, roll 194, on frames starting at the beginning of the roll. The White Mountains (or Coyoteros) were mountain Indians, and their homes starkly contrasted with the low-lying Gila Valley in the Howard extension.
19. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 47, citing Arizona newspapers. Jeffords to CIA, Apache Pass, October 3, 1876, CIA, Annual Report (1876), 3–4.
20. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 47, citing Jeffords to CIA, April 27, 1876, RG 75, M234, R16, NARA, and Thomas E. Farish, History of Arizona, 8 vols. (San Francisco: Filmer Brothers, 1915–18), 2:238–39.
21. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 49–50, including citations.
22. (Tucson) Arizona Citizen, April 15, 1876.
1. The threat to Jeffords’s life is recounted only in his final report, which strangely has not turned up in official records. It was printed in the Silver City Grant County Herald, July 22, 1876.
2. Schofield to AGUSA, citing telegram from Kautz, Fort Bowie, June 7, 1876, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1871–80, 2576 AGO 1876, M666, Correspondence relating to the removal of the Chiricahua Apaches to San Carlos, roll 265, frame 338, NARA. Kautz to AAG San Francisco, Hq. DA Prescott, June 30, 1876, ibid., frames 363–71. John P. Clum annual report, San Carlos, October 1876, CIA, Annual Report (1876), 10–12. Jeffords to CIA, Apache Pass, October 3, 1876, ibid., 3–4. Jeffords’s final report is in Grant County Herald, July 22, 1876. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 56–57.
3. (Tucson) Arizona Weekly Citizen, June 17, 24, 1876.
4. Kautz to AAG San Francisco, Hq. DA Prescott, June 30, 1876. Kautz annual report, September 15, 1876, SW, Annual Report (1876), 98–104. Clum annual report, San Carlos, October 1876. John P. Clum, “Geronimo,” New Mexico Historical Review 3 (January 1928): 18–19. In the 1920s, Clum wrote a series of long articles for this journal, all designed to portray himself as hugely important. Because Clum exaggerated and sometimes fabricated, the articles must be used with extreme caution. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 57–59.
5. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 69, citing Mexican and Arizona newspapers and RG 75, NARA.
6. Ibid., 75–77, citing newspapers. Also Thrapp, Victorio, 183.
7. Geronimo, scrambling chronology and facts, describes this fight in Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 121. Detailed military reports are cited below. Perico Interview, Sol Tax Papers, box 19, folder 15, University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center.
8. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 122. Balatchu Account, “Chiricahua Bands,” Opler Papers, box 35, folder 3. Sam Haozous told Opler that the peace at Ojo Caliente was shattered by the presence of these fugitives. Ibid., box 37, folder 36.
9. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 78–79. (Tucson) Arizona Weekly Citizen, February 10, 17, March 17, 1877.
10. The charges and countercharges, and the articles in the Tucson newspapers, are treated in Army and Navy Journal, April 7, 1877, 563. See also Kautz annual report, August 15, 1877, SW, Annual Report (1877), 133–49. Kautz to Gen. W. T. Sherman, Prescott, April 9, 1877, Sherman Papers, Library of Congress.
11. (Tucson) Arizona Daily Citizen, January 6, 1877.
12. Rucker to Post Adjutant Fort Bowie, January 14, 1877, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1871–80, M666, roll 265, frames 507–10, NARA. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 121–22. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 76–77. Rucker counted ten dead men. Geronimo recalled five women, seven children, and four men.
13. (Tucson) Arizona Weekly Citizen, March 17, 1877.
14. Andrew Wallace, “General August V. Kautz in Arizona, 1874–1878,” Arizoniana 4 (Winter 1963): 54–65. Kautz annual report, 135.
15. Telegram, CIA J. Q. Smith to Clum at Camp Grant via Tucson, March 20, 1877, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1871–89, M666, 1927 AGO 1877, roll 326, frame 252, NARA.
16. This seems the best version that can be recovered, and it coincides closely with the first account Clum penned, on April 24—not to his superiors but to his friend, the editor of the (Tucson) Arizona Weekly Citizen; it appeared in the edition of May 8, 1877; another version was published on May 19, 1877. In a chain of magazine and newspaper articles, together with speeches and a pamphlet, ending only in 1929, Clum exaggerated and fabricated an increasingly dramatic account of his courageous and dangerous encounter with Geronimo. He repeatedly labeled it “the first capture of Geronimo.” Andrew Wallace, “General August V. Kautz in Arizona, 1974–1878,” Arizoniana 4 (Winter 1963): 62, is a more reliable rendering, as is a collection of documents entitled “All about Courtesy,” in “Documents of Arizona History, Selected from the Archives of the Society: ‘All about Courtesy’: In a Verbal War, John P. Clum Has a Parting Shot,” Arizoniana 4 (Spring 1962): 11–18. Wallace’s conclusion, which I share, is that Clay Beauford deserves most of the credit for subduing Geronimo. So abundant are Clum’s vainglorious rants over half a century that they provide the basis for most accounts of Geronimo’s arrest.
For typical samples of Clum’s version of history, see his “Victorio,” New Mexico Historical Review 4 (April 1929): 107–27; “Geronimo,” ibid. 3 (January 1928): 1–40; and Woodworth Clum, Apache Agent: The Story of John P. Clum (1936; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978), chaps. 28–33.
17. Thrapp, Victorio, citing official records, has the clearest account of this sequence, 187–90.
1. Clum, Apache Agent, 195. Clum recounts the story of this misadventure in chaps. 26–27. Sweeney, From Cochise to Geronimo, 67–69.
2. Ralph H. Ogle, Federal Control of the Western Apaches, 1848–1886 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1970), 178. Clum, Apache Agent, 250–56. John P. Clum, “The San Carlos Apache Police,” New Mexico Historical Review 4 (July 1929): 203–19. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 87.
3. Abbott to AAG Prescott, San Carlos, August 21, 1877, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1871–80, M666, 5705 AGO 1877, roll 366, frames 96–116, NARA.
4. Vandever to CIA, July 16, 1877, RG 75, Records of Field Jurisdiction of the Office of Indian Affairs, 1873–90, M1070, R2, NARA.
5. RG 393, E204, “Brief of Action Taken in the Matter of Indian Affairs at San Carlos A.T.,” items 12, 25, NARA.
6. Ibid., items 27ff. Although Victorio’s break from San Carlos and the events that followed are documented by much official paper, for the story more succinctly told, see Thrapp, Victorio, chap. 16.
7. RG 393, E204, “Brief of Action,” item 45. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 105, citing Mexican and Arizona newspapers.
8. Hart to Vandever, San Carlos, September 24, 1877, RG 75, M1070, R2, NARA.
9. This state of affairs can be traced throughout RG 393, E204, “Brief of Action.”
10. Ibid., item 63. Acting Agent George Smerdon to Abbott, San Carlos, August 9, 1878, RG 93, Misc. Records, DA, 1875–79, NARA. Betzinez, I Fought with Geronimo, 47–48. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 118–19. E-mail, Sweeney to Utley, April 5, 2010.
1. (Tucson) Arizona Weekly Citizen, October 12, 1879, citing (Silver City, NM) Grant County Herald, October 8, 1879.
2. Abbott to AAG DA, Fort Thomas, December 4, 1878, RG 393, LS, Fort Thomas, NARA. Two women and two children, en route to San Carlos from the Nednhis south of Janos, stopped at Fort Thomas and related these events to Lt. Abbott, including casualties and locations and the Nednhi division into three groups. The attack on Geronimo is reported in the Sonoran Boletin Oficial, January 3, 1879, printing a military document from Arizpe of November 16, 1878. Edwin Sweeney generously provided this document in e-mail, Sweeney to Utley, April 16, 2010. In Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 105, Geronimo recounts this fight, although he got the date wrong and he did not kill all the Mexican soldiers. His location and admitted loss of twelve warriors coincides with the Mexican commander’s report. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 123.
3. Shapard, Loco, 120–23.
4. I have treated the war in “Victorio’s War,” MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History 21 (Autumn 2008): 20–29. The history of the events preceding has been well chronicled in Thrapp, Victorio, chaps 16–22; and Shapard, Loco, chaps. 10–17. For involvement of Juh’s Chiricahuas in the Victorio War, see Maj. A. P. Morrow to AAG Dist. NM, Fort Bayard, November 3, 1879; and U.S. Consul H. L. Scott to Second Assistant Secretary of State, Chihuahua City, November 29, 1879; both in M1495, roll 14, Special Files of Hq. Div. of the Missouri Relating to Military Operations and Administration, 1863–1885, NARA.
5. Robinson, Apache Voices, 103. These words were related to Eve Ball by Eustice Fatty, Gordo’s son.
6. A thorough account of Haskell’s little-known mission is Allan Radbourne, “The Juh-Geronimo Surrender of 1879,” English Westerners Brand Book 21 (1983): 1–18. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 138–39, is more detailed and in places differs from Radbourne.
7. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 139–45, has the best account of these activities.
8. Haskell reported these and later events in great detail in two long telegrams from Camp Rucker to Willcox in Prescott, December 14, 21, 1879, RG 393, LR, DA, 3995 DA 1879, 8294 AGO 1879, NARA.
9. Tucson dispatch of May 24, 1880, in New York Times, June 4, 1880, contains the item about Geronimo killing the dissident leader. It is part of a long and surprisingly accurate account of Haskell’s mission.
10. Telegram, Haskell to ADC DA, Fort Bowie, December 31, 1879, RG 393, LR, DA, NARA. The entire Haskell episode is treated in Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 138–43.
1. Sweeney, “In the Shadow of Geronimo: Chihuahua of the Chiricahuas,” Wild West 13 (August 2000), 25–28, 67. For the views of Asa Daklugie (Juh’s son) and Eugene Chihuahua (Chihuahua’s son), see Ball, Indeh, 31, 43, 47.
2. This paragraph has been distilled from Collins, Great Escape, 21–34. Ample documentation in both Indian and white sources confirms this portrait.
3. Albert E. Wrattan, “George Wrattan: ChiefApache Scout and Interpreter [for] Geronimo and His Warriors,” MS, n.d., intended as a book. Albert was George’s son. MS loaned by Henrietta Stockel.
4. Affidavit by Chatto, Opler Papers, box 36, folder 23.
5. Daklugie made this point in Ball, Indeh, 11.
6. The Cibicue affair and its aftermath generated reams of official documentation, both civil and military, which I have examined. Relevant in this study is the effect of Cibicue on Geronimo and the Chiricahuas, and the details need not be laid out. An authoritative history of Cibicue is Charles Collins, Apache Nightmare: The Battle at Cibicue Creek (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999).
7. Ibid. chronicles the Cibicue story in well-documented detail.
8. Opler Papers, box 35, folder 4.
9. Chihuahua and Naiche throw some light on this council, although nothing we do not know from other sources. Statement of Naiche to Capt. Emmet Crawford at San Carlos, November 5, 1883; and Chihuahua, November 19, 1883, RG 393, Records of San Carlos, NARA.
10. The official military and civil reports are self-serving. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 182–83, presents the best interpretation. See also Collins, Great Escape, 26–28; and CIA, Annual Report (1881), vii–x.
11. Maj. George B. Sanford to AAG DA, Willcox, October 15, 1881, SW, Annual Report (1881), 146–47. John F. Finerty, “On Campaign after Cibicue Creek,” Chicago Times, September 18–October 21, 1881, in Peter Cozzens, ed., Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 1865–1890, Vol. 1, The Struggle for Apacheria (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2001), 256–59.
12. My account of the breakout is based mainly on Collins, Great Escape, chaps. 3–7; and Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 182–83.
1. James Kaywaykla, Nana’s grandson, was present and described the conference. Ball, In the Day of Victorio, 123–28. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 192–93.
2. Shapard, Loco, 143, discusses motivations, including the traditions of Loco’s descendants. Shapard is also a prime authority for the following narrative. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 195–96. Geronimo recalled that Mexican troops had grown stronger, creating a need for more men to fight them. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 107.
3. Shapard, Loco, 146–48. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 211–14. Willcox’s annual report, August 31, 1882, SW, Annual Report (1882), 147.
4. Betzinez, I Fought with Geronimo, 56. Sam Hauzhous, another of Loco’s people, identified the shouting leader as Geronimo. Sam Hauzhous interview, Opler Papers, box 37, folder 36.
5. Shapard, Loco, 158. His account, based on official records, differs from Sweeney’s account, also drawing on official records. The officer, Lt. George Sands, puzzled his superiors over his readiness to give up the pursuit, but he contended that he expected reinforcements and was running short on rations.
6. Betzinez, I Fought with Geronimo, 58.
7. The literature of Horseshoe Canyon and its aftermath is extensive: RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1749 AGO 1882, Papers relating to the outbreaks of violence, including several murders in New Mexico and Arizona, by Chiricahua Apaches who escaped from the San Carlos Reservation and to their pacification, NARA. Rolls 96 and 97 contain this entire file of official records from the outbreak of April 1882 to the denouement in Mexico. Forsyth tells his version of Horseshoe Canyon in Thrilling Days of Army Life (1900; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 79–120. His account includes one by Lt. David N. McDonald recounting his own experience. A biography is David Dixon, Hero of Beecher Island: The Life and Military Career of George A. Forsyth (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994.). “Record of Events during the Expedition under Lt. Col. G. A. Forsyth, 4th Cavalry, from Fort Cummings, N.M., on April 18, ’82, against the Hostile Apache Indians,” Papers of the Order of the Indian Wars, box 10, folder X18, US Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA. Scout Al Sieber tells his version, critical of Forsyth, in (Prescott) Weekly Courier, May 27, 1882, in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 290–94. Betzinez, I Fought with Geronimo, 62–66. Shapard, Loco, 159–63. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 215–17.
Neither Indian nor white accounts deal with McDonald’s foray into the canyon, only with the following battle. McDonald himself told the story in detail in Forsyth’s book, cited above. Much of the Apache actions during this phase must be inferred from this account. Betzinez recounts only the battle.
8. Betzinez, I Fought with Geronimo, 65.
9. Forsyth’s official report to AAAG Dist. NM Santa Fe, Stein’s Pass, April 25, 1882, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1749 AGO 1882, roll 96, NARA. Reports of the troop commanders are appended.
10. Betzinez, I Fought with Geronimo, 63.
11. The Indian movements are traced both in Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 217–18; and Shapard, Loco, 162–64.
12. Scout Sherman Curley was next to the sergeant of scouts who shot the young woman at the mescal pit. He also tells of the party that got behind the force of scouts blocking the way to the Enmedio Mountains. Grenville Goodwin Papers, autobiography of Sherman Curley. Hauzous interview. Betzinez, I Fought with Geronimo, 68–69. See also Shapard, Loco, chap. 13; and Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 219–21.
13. Betzinez, I Fought with Geronimo, 79–71. See also Shapard, Loco, 176; and Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 222.
14. Betzinez, I Fought with Geronimo, 72. Hauzous interview.
15. Shapard, Loco, 181–82, accepts this accusation. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 226–28, analyzes all the evidence and concludes that the charge is groundless. Sweeney also has details of the battle drawn from Mexican official sources.
16. The entire sequence recounted here is based on an extensive report of Maj. Perry to AAG DA, Willcox, May 16, 1882. The report annexes Tupper to Perry, Fort Huachuca, May 8, 1882, and Rafferty to Perry, Fort Bowie, May 15, 1882. Tupper’s first dispatch, telegraphed to Perry from “East Side of Animas Mountains,” on April 28, located the battle site only as thirty-five miles east of Galeyville, omitting any mention of crossing the border. The army’s official list of engagements places the battle in the Hatchet Mountains, New Mexico. Interestingly, Capt. Rafferty in 1890 received a brevet of major for gallantry in the battle in the Hatchet Mountains. These documents appear in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 97, NARA. Rafferty kept a daily diary, the relevant part printed in the (Tucson) Arizona Daily Star, May 17, 1882, in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 286–89. Perhaps sanitized for public consumption, the journal concedes no mistake in the battle nor admits crossing into Mexico. Lt. Stephen C. Mills commanded a scout company. He described the battle in detail in a letter to his mother, Fort Huachuca, May 8, 1882, Stephen C. Mills Papers, US Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA. See also Al Sieber in (Prescott) Weekly Courier, May 27, 1882, ibid., 290–94.
17. Forsyth’s penetration of Mexico is drawn from Record of Events during the expedition of Lt. Col. G. A. Forsyth, 4th Cavalry, from Fort Cummings, New Mexico, on April 18, 1882, against hostile Apache Indians, box 10, folder X18, US Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA; and from his autobiography, Thrilling Days of Army Life, 114–20. Colonel Mackenzie, who a decade earlier had led a similar American foray into Mexico, returned Forsyth’s official report with the explanation that if the Mexicans made a big issue of the crossing into Mexico, Forsyth might find himself in trouble—“the result justified the end, but the less said about it the better.”
1. Griswold, “Fort Sill Apaches,” under Geronimo.
2. Betzinez, I Fought with Geronimo, 75–77. Betzinez followed Geronimo for nearly a year. He had a remarkable memory, which is validated by Mexican military records examined by Sweeney and set forth in Cochise to Geronimo, 233–37. Much of what follows is based on these two sources.
3. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 106. Betzinez, I Fought with Geronimo, 78.
4. Sam Hauzous biography, Opler Papers, box 36, folder 37.
5. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 234–35, citing Mexican military sources.
6. Betzinez, I Fought with Geronimo, 81.
7. Betzinez went with Geronimo and chronicled his movements and actions in detail. Mexican sources examined by Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 239–48, confirm Betzinez’s narrative. Betzinez, I Fought with Geronimo, chap. 9.
8. Betzinez, I Fought with Geronimo, 90.
9. Ibid., 91.
10. Ibid., chap. 10. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 252–53, citing Mexican sources. (Silver City) New Southwest and Grant County Herald, December 2, 1882.
11. Interview of “Peaches” by Lt. John G. Bourke, in Bourke’s diary, April 7, 1883, US Military Academy Library, West Point, NY. Peaches was the anglicized name for a Chiricahua who lived with Geronimo throughout the winter of 1882–83 and was familiar both with these Chiricahuas and the country in which they roamed. He will appear later in this narrative. Betzinez accompanied the raiders into Sonora and described the victims as well as the route, again corroborated by Mexican sources. Betzinez, I Fought with Geronimo, 99–101, and map. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 284–85.
12. Daklugie, in Ball, Indeh, 70–73, 101–2. Peaches interview, Bourke diary. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 286–89.
13. Betzinez accompanied Geronimo and Chihuahua so does not describe the Chatto raid. The best source is Peaches interview, Bourke diary. Peaches, a Cibicue White Mountain Apache, wanted to return to San Carlos, so went with the raiders in hopes of slipping away. The best account of the raid is Marc Simmons, Massacre on the Lordsburg Road: A Tragedy of the Apache Wars (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997).
14. Brig. Gen. George Crook to AG MDP, Hq. DA Whipple Barracks Prescott, September 27, 1883, SW, Annual Report (1883), 159–70ff. See also Brig. Gen. R. S. Mackenzie to AAG DM, Santa Fe, September 26, 1883, ibid., 137–45. RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 173, NARA, during March and April 1883 is laden with army reports of operations seeking the raiders.
1. The officer was retired Brig. Gen. James Parker. He wrote an informative book entitled Old Army Memories (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1929). The observations in my text, however, are drawn from “Extracts from Personal Memoirs of Brig. Gen. James Parker,” Papers of the Order of the Indian Wars, x38/2, box 11, folder X-40, US Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA. A competent recent biography is Robinson, General Crook and the Western Frontier. Other sources: Crook, Autobiography; Joseph C. Porter, Paper Medicine Man: John Gregory Bourke and His American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986); and especially Bourke, On the Border with Crook. This book, by Crook’s longtime aide, has had more influence in shaping public perceptions of Crook than any other and has gone through many editions. Despite Bourke’s hagiographic portrayal of the general, Crook treated his aide shabbily.
2. Crook to AG, MDP, Prescott, September 27, 1883, SW, Annual Report (1883), 160. He shared his thinking with all his subordinates in GO 43, Hq. DA, October 5, 1882, ibid., 170–71.
3. Ibid., 160–61.
4. Britton Davis, The Truth about Geronimo (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929, 1963), 31–32.
5. Ibid., 32. M. Salzman Jr., “Geronimo, the Napoleon of Indians,” Journal of Arizona History 8 (Winter 1967): 240.
6. Davis, Truth about Geronimo, 57–59. Crook to AAG MDP, Prescott, July 23, 1883, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, roll 174, NARA. This is Crook’s initial report after his return from Mexico. He expanded on it in his annual report. As soon as he crossed the border, on June 11, he telegraphed an abbreviated report to DA headquarters. As forwarded to MDP, it is contained in ibid. In Washington in July, Crook gave an interview to a correspondent that provided some details of the expedition. New York Herald, July 9, 1883, in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 396–404.
7. Simmons, Massacre on the Lordsburg Road, 109–12, describes the event in detail. This book also is the most authoritative treatment of not only the McComas story but also the Chatto-Bonito raid.
8. Crook to AAG MDP, July 23, 1883, as cited in note 4, describes the force he assembled. Lt. Bourke kept a daily diary, May 1–23, which is reprinted in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 346–85. Another officer, thought to be Lt. William Forsyth, kept a diary reprinted in the (Tucson) Arizona Daily Star, June 17, 1883, ibid., 391–93. Still another diary, by A. Frank Randall (a photographer whose equipment smashed when a mule fell off a trail), appeared in the El Paso Times, June 20, 1883, ibid., 394–95. See also Dan L. Thrapp, Al Sieber, Chief of Scouts (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), chap. 17.
9. White Mountain Apache scout John Rope described the movement in long and exacting detail: “Experiences of an Indian Scout: Excerpts from the Life of John Rope, an ‘Old Timer’ of the White Mountain Apaches,” as told to Grenville Goodwin, Arizona Historical Review 7 (January 1936): 31–68. Another scout’s story is shorter and less useful: “The Life of Sherman Curley—Arivaipa Apache,” Grenville Goodwin Papers, Arizona State Museum, Tucson.
10. Bourke diary, May 16, 1883. Crook to AG MDP, July 23, 1883. Bourke writes that the woman said the Apaches had talked of sending emissaries to San Carlos, while Crook reports that they had been dispatched a few days earlier. Bourke also wrote of the Crook expedition of 1883 in An Apache Campaign in the Sierra Madre: An Account of the Expedition in Pursuit of Hostile Chiricahua Apaches in the Spring of 1883 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1886, 1958).
11. Bourke diary, May 17, 1883. Crook’s report of July 23, 1883, as cited. Rope, “Experiences of an Indian Scout.” Bourke and Crook give slightly different versions. Rope goes into great detail, although he confuses the horse episode with the captive woman first sent out rather than the sister of Chihuahua. For a profile of Chihuahua, see Sweeney, “Shadow of Geronimo,” 25–28, 67.
12. Rope, “Experiences of an Indian Scout,” 64–65.
13. Betzinez, I Fought with Geronimo, 118–19.
14. Ibid., 113–14.
15. An extended description of the exchange is in Thrapp, Sieber, 280–82. See also Bourke diary, May 20, 1883; Bourke, Apache Campaign in the Sierra Madre, 101–5; and Crook to AG MDP, July 23, 1883.
16. Source cited in note 4. The quotation is from the Crook July 23, 1883, report.
17. Teller to Lincoln, June 14, 1883, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, roll 173, NARA. John Bret Harte, “Conflict at San Carlos: The Military-Civilian Struggle for Control, 1882–1885,” Arizona and the West 15 (Spring 1973): 33, 36–37.
18. Lincoln to Teller, June 15, 1883; Telegram, Schofield to AGUSA (forwarding Crook telegram), Presidio, June 20, 1883; Wilcox to Teller, San Carlos, June 15, 1883; Teller to Lincoln, June 18, 1883; Schofield to AGUSA, June 22, 1883; Telegram, AGUSA to Crook, June 25, 1883; Telegram, Crook to AGUSA, Prescott, June 26, 1883; Telegram, Schofield to AGUSA, Presidio, June 28, 1883; all in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, roll 173, NARA. Davis, Truth about Geronimo, 69–71. Harte, “Conflict at San Carlos,” 36–37.
19. Memorandum of the result of a conference between the secretary of the interior, the commissioner of Indian affairs, the secretary of war, and Brig. Gen. George Crook, July 7, 1883, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 174, NARA. The official transmittal to Crook, same date, added that the secretary of war directed that the Indians brought in by Crook and those to follow be subsisted by War Department appropriations.
1. The movements of the various Chiricahua groups in the summer and fall of 1883 are recounted by the following: Chihuahua, Naiche, Zele, Chatto, Kayatena, Geronimo, and one of his wives, Mañanita. All accounts basically agree with one another, although the chronology and sequence of occurrence is mixed. When buttressed by Mexican sources, however, the story of the Chiricahuas before they began arriving at San Carlos can be reconstructed. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, chap. 15. Indian sources, all of which I have examined, are: Statement of Chihuahua to Capt. Crawford, November 19, 1883; Statement of Kayatena to Capt. Crawford, November 7, 1883; Statement of Naiche to Capt. Crawford, November 5, 1883; Statement of Mañanita, March 21, 1884; Statement of Geronimo, March 21, 1884; all in RG 393, Misc. Records, 1882–1900, Post of San Carlos, NARA. Statement of Zele to Capt. Crawford, December 31, 1883; Statement of Chatto to Capt. Crawford, March 3, 1884; both in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, rolls 175, 176, NARA. The Indian statements were generously provided me by Edwin Sweeney.
2. Chatto’s statement. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 327.
3. Zele’s statement quotes Juh. The statements made by the Chiricahuas to Capt. Crawford at San Carlos make no mention of Chatto’s raid but turn at once to Casas Grandes. Mexican sources, however, amply document the murderous destruction in western Sonora during July 1883. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 327–29.
4. Mañanita statement. All the statements of Indian leaders to Crawford dwell on the Casas Grandes venture as if it happened soon after Crook’s departure. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 329.
5. All the cited statements of leaders to Capt. Crawford deal with the Casas Grandes adventure. They are reconciled only by Mexican military reports cited by Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 330–32. The quotations are from Zele’s, Naiche’s, and Kayatena’s statements.
6. Naiche’s statement. Allan Radbourne, “Geronimo’s Contraband Cattle,” Missionaries, Indians, and Soldiers: Studies in Cultural Interaction (1996): 3. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 336.
7. Radbourne, “Geronimo’s Contraband Cattle,” 3–4. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 339. The Sonoran raids during October were reported in a dispatch from Chihuahua printed in the New York Times, October 28, 1883.
8. A profile of Davis, including Crook’s commendation, is in Radbourne, “Geronimo’s Contraband Cattle,” 3.
9. Radbourne, “Contraband Cattle,” 5. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 354–55.
10. Geronimo statement. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 347–48. Radbourne, “Geronimo’s Contraband Cattle,” 5–7. Crook to AAG MDP, December 18, 1883, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 175, NARA.
11. Telegram, Davis to AG DA, Camp near Skull Canyon, NM, February 26, 1884, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 176, NARA. Davis does not name the three men sent from San Carlos, nor does any other source I have found. But the three men included Chihuahua and Chappo. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 355–56. Radbourne, “Geronimo’s Contraband Cattle,” 7–8. Davis, Truth about Geronimo, tells his version of the story, chap. 6; but he must be used with caution because of many errors and a tendency to enlarge his role.
12. Crook to AGUSA, through MDP, March 20, 1884, enclosing telegram; Davis to AG DA, Sulphur Springs, March 12, 1884; Davis to Crawford, San Carlos, March 16,1884; all in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 175, NARA. Radbourne, “Geronimo’s Contraband Cattle,” 9–15, gives the most balanced account, drawn from official records of Treasury Department and the Bureau of Customs, as well as local newspapers. Davis, Truth about Geronimo, 85–101, recounts an essentially accurate but somewhat more colorful version. See also Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 356–58.
1. Statement of Geronimo, March 21, 1884, RG 393, Misc. Records, 1882–1900, Post of San Carlos, NARA. This is the original. For the cleaner version transmitted to Crook, see Crawford to Crook, San Carlos, March 21, 1884 RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 176, NARA. Encloses statement of Geronimo made to Crawford here on March 21, 1884, through J. M. Montoya and Antonio Díaz, interpreters.
2. This prominent feature of Geronimo’s character emerges clearly in Edwin R. Sweeney, “Geronimo and Chatto: Alternative Apache Ways,” Wild West 20 (August 2007): 30–39.
3. Crook to AGUSA, August 15, 1884, transmitting relevant documents, including Crawford to AAAG DA, July 24, 1884, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 175, NARA.
4. Crook to AAG MDP, Prescott, May 17, 1884, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 176, NARA. Crook to AAG MDP, Prescott, [c. September 1884], SW, Annual Report (1884), 131–34. Betzinez, I Fought with Geronimo, 125. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 368–69. Porter, Paper Medicine Man, 167.
5. Davis, Truth about Geronimo, 107. Davis writes that the Indians did no farming during the summer of 1884. Contemporary reports contradict this, although early winter storms reduced the yield.
6. Crook to AAG MDP, Fort Bowie, September 9, 1885, SW, Annual Report (1885), 175–76. Crawford to Morton, San Carlos, June 25, 1884, Charles Morton Papers, MS 564, folder 7, Arizona Historical Society, Tucson. Maj. Gen. John Pope to AGUSA, MDP, July 14, 1884, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 176, NARA. Pope had replaced Schofield in command of the Military Division of the Pacific. Davis, Truth about Geronimo, 125–30, recounts the arrest in detail, but with a dramatic flair that calls its credibility into question, especially in view of his similar exaggeration of the incident at Sulphur Creek. The best account, drawing on official records, is Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 376–79.
7. Sweeney, “Geronimo and Chatto.”
8. Davis, Truth about Geronimo, 106. Sweeney names the agents, drawn from the official roster of scouts. Cochise to Geronimo, 371.
9. As related by Chihuahua’s son Eugene in Ball, Indeh, 49–50.
10. SO 31, Hq. DA, April 21, 1884, convened the court, while GO 13, Hq. DA, July 14, 1884, set forth the findings and conclusions of the court. RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 175, NARA. Rolls 175 and 176 of this special file contain the documentation of the controversy. They are not cited individually because not central to the story of the Chiricahuas. A good synthesis is Harte, “Conflict at San Carlos,” 27–44.
11. Britton Davis, “A Short History of the Chiricahua Tribe of Apache Indians and the Causes Leading to the Outbreak in May –1885,” [c. 1920s] MS, Papers of the Order of the Indian Wars, box 4, C-4, US Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 375–87.
12. Davis, Truth about Geronimo, 136–37.
13. Ibid., 142. Crook in Arizona Daily Star, April 2, 1886. Parker, Old Army Memories, 152.
14. Fisher to Capt. C. S. Roberts, In the Field, October 22, 1885, RG 393, LR, DA, 1885, NARA. Fisher attributed the delay to active field duty.
15. Thomas Cruse, Apache Days and After (1941; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), 205–6. A highly successful young officer in Apache country at this time, Cruse was not present but obtained his information from men who were. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 396–97.
16. Sweeney, “Geronimo and Chatto,” 33–34.
17. Davis, Truth about Geronimo, 149–51. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 400–405. Davis’s book omits some critical details, but they are provided in a Davis report to Crook in Crook to AGUSA, May 21, 1885, RG 393, LS, DA, 1885, NARA; and in a subsequent lengthy report to Crook, Fort Bowie, September 15, 1885. The latter was published in the Army and Navy Journal, October 24, 1885, and as an appendix to the 1951 edition of Davis’s book; this appendix was not included in the 1963 edition of Truth about Geronimo. See also Sweeney, “Shadow of Geronimo.”
18. Thrapp, Sieber, 294.
1. The route, chronology, and actions of the Chiricahua breakouts must be inferred from the account of Lt. James Parker, an officer in the pursuing command, and from an account by Lt. Britton Davis. Davis is authority for the angry determination of Chihuahua to kill Geronimo, but he is vague about exactly where and when it happened. Davis treats it as a camp in the Mogollon Mountains. But that camp, on a rim of Devil’s Canyon, was the first true camp the Indians made after leaving Fort Apache, it was on the western edge of the Mogollon Mountains, and it consisted only of the people of Geronimo and Mangas. So the Chihuahua episode had to have occurred before this camp was made. I have treated it as a brief pause to rest on the San Francisco River, the only plausible explanation I can arrive at. Parker, Old Army Memories, 152–56. More detailed, and the source I have used, is “Extracts from Personal Memoirs of Brigadier General James Parker, U.S. Army Retired,” 113–16. For Davis, see his report to AG DA, Fort Bowie, September 15, 1885, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 183.
2. Crook to AG MDP, Fort Bowie, April 10, 1886, SW, Annual Report (1886), 147. The telegraphic traffic ordering and describing these operations appears in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 178, NARA. I have examined all these documents.
3. The assault on Chihuahua is described in Capt. Emmett Crawford to Crook, Camp on Bertchito River six miles above Oputo, June 25, 1885; the surprise of Geronimo in Capt. Wirt Davis to Crook, Camp ten miles southwest of Huachinera, August 14, 1885. Both are in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, the first in roll 178, the second in roll 179, NARA. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 434–35, 444–45.
4. Crook to AG MDP Presidio, Fort Bowie, April 10, 1886, SW, Annual Report (1886), 148–49. Telegram, Crook to Sheridan, Deming, June 7, 1885, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 178, NARA. Crawford to Morton, Camp Skeleton Canyon, June 10, 1885, Charles Morton Papers, MS 563, folder 7, Arizona Historical Society. Henry W. Daly, “The Geronimo Campaign,” Journal of the U.S. Cavalry Association 18 (1908): 68. Charles P. Elliott, “The Geronimo Campaign of 1885–86,” ibid. 21 (1910): 217. Lt. Robert Hanna, “With Crawford in Mexico,” Arizona Historical Review 6 (April 1936): 56–58 (reprinted from Clifton Clarion, July 7, 14, 1886). Daly was a mule packer whose account is reliable. Hanna and Elliott were officers with Crawford. Morton was a member of Crook’s staff in Prescott.
5. Crook to AG MDP Presidio, Fort Bowie, July 7, 1885, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 178, NARA.
6. Ibid. Crook to AG MDP Presidio, Fort Bowie, April 10, 1886, SW, Annual Report (1886), 149.
7. Pope to Sheridan, MDP Presidio, July 8, 1885, transmits Crook’s request to hold the women and children at Fort Bowie. Endorsements of Sheridan and Endicott approve but forbid transferring these people to the reservation under any circumstances. A Tucson dispatch of September 3 in the New York Times, September 4, 1885, reported the arrival at Fort Bowie of the captives taken at Bugatseka and the women’s description of the fight. The official report is Capt. Wirt Davis to Crook, Camp ten miles southwest of Huachinera, August 14, 1885, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 179, NARA.
8. Telegrams, Pope to AGUSA, MDP Presidio, July 27, 31, 1885, both transmitting Crook telegrams of same dates, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 179, NARA. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 448.
9. Geronimo’s movements are reconstructed from reports of the officers trying to run him down. Crawford to Crook, Camp near Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, August 30, 1885, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 183, NARA. Telegram, Pope to AGUSA, MDP Presidio, September 6, 1885, repeating dispatch from Crook repeating telegram from CO Fort Bliss, ibid., roll 179. Lt. Britton Davis to Crook, Fort Bowie, September 15, 1885, ibid., roll 183. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 454–60.
1. Crawford to Crook at Fort Bowie, Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, August 30, 1885, attaching Elliott to Crawford, Buenaventura, August 24, 1885. Lt. Col. Pedro S. Marcías, to Commander in Chief 2nd Military Zone Chihuahua, San Buenaventura, August 23, 1885. Pope to AGUSA, MDP Presidio, September 6, 1885, repeating dispatch from Crook repeating dispatch from CO Fort Bliss, September 5. Elliott to AGUSA, Fort Columbus, NY, June 22, 1886. Britton Davis to AG DA Prescott, Fort Bowie, September 15, 1885. All in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, rolls 179, 183, 184, NARA. Elliott, “Geronimo Campaign of 1885–1886,” 217, 225–26. Davis, Truth about Geronimo, 184–88.
2. None of the official sources, including Crawford’s August 30 report, refer to the confrontation in San Buenaventura. The only source is the account of scout Sherman Curley, which is specific enough to establish credibility. In his August 30 report, Crawford referred briefly to Elliott’s experience but emphasized the cordial way in which it ended. Elliott wrote nothing about what may have happened after his release. See “The Life of Sherman Curley—Arivaipa Apache,” Grenville Goodwin Papers, folder 32.
3. Davis, Truth about Geronimo, 190–95.
4. Col. Luther Bradley to AAG DA, Santa Fe, September 13, 1886, SW, Annual Report (1886), 182. Telegrams, Bradley to AG DM, Santa Fe, September 12, 13, 1885, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 179, NARA. Daniel D. Aránda, “Santiago McKinn, Indian Captive,” Real West 24 (June 1881): 41–43. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 462–63.
5. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 469–76. Louis Kraft, Gatewood and Geronimo (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000), 106–8. Telegram, Gatewood to Crook at Bowie, Fort Apache, September 22, 23 (4), 1885, RG 393, LR, DA, 1885, NARA. Telegram, Bradley to AG DM, Santa Fe, September 22, 24 (2), 26, 1885;telegram, Pope to AGUSA, MDP Presidio, September 30, October 2, 10, 1885; all in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 179, NARA.
6. Telegrams, Bradley to AAG DM, Santa Fe, November 5, 7, 9, 16, 1885; telegram, Schofield to Sheridan, MDM Chicago, November 11, 1885 (repeating Miles from DM); telegram, Crook to AG MDP Presidio, Fort Bowie, November 17, 1885; all in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 180, NARA. George Crook diary, 1885–87, entries through November 1885, Crook-Kennon Papers, US Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 479–91. Silver City Enterprise, November 20, 1885.
7. Crook to AG MDP Presidio, Fort Bowie, April 10, 1886, SW, Annual Report (1886), 151. 1st Lt. S. W. Fountain to AG Dist. NM Santa Fe, Alma, NM, December 12, 21, 1885, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 181, NARA. Crook to Sheridan, Fort Bowie, December 26, 30, 1885, ibid., roll 180. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 480–83, 487–91, 507–12.
8. For the Miles controversy, see telegram, Gov. Edmund Ross to President Cleveland, Santa Fe, September 18, 1885. This is followed by an exchange of telegrams up and down the chain of command, including between Crook and Miles, with a final blast by Crook to AG MDP Presidio, Fort Bowie, September 18, 1885. On September 19, Gen. John M. Schofield, Miles’s superior in Chicago, advised Washington that he had just given instructions to Miles that would remove all cause of conflict between him and Crook. RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 179, NARA.
9. Crook to AG MDP Presidio, Fort Bowie, September 17, 1885, with endorsements by Gens. Pope and Sheridan and SW Endicott, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 179, NARA.
10. Crook to AG MDP Presidio, Fort Bowie, October 11, 1885. Crook diary, November 7, 11, 13, 14, 1885. Capt. Wirt Davis to Capt. Cyrus Roberts, AADC, at Fort Bowie, Fort Lowell, March 20, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 183, NARA.
11. Telegram, Sheridan to Crook at Fort Bowie, November 19, 1885; Crook to Sheridan, November 19, 1885; Endicott to Sheridan, November 20, 1885; all in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 180, NARA. Annual reports of the Lieutenant General and the Secretary of War: Sheridan to SW, October 10, 1886; Endicott’s annual report, November 30, 1886, SW, Annual Report (1886), 7, 71.
12. Sheridan to Endicott, Albuquerque, December 3, 1885; telegram, Sheridan to SW, Fort Bowie, November 30, 1885 (2); telegram, Sheridan to SW, Deming, NM, December 1, 1885; GO 121, AGO, November 30, 1885 (transferring NM to AZ); GFO 1, Fort Bowie, December 1, 1885 (implementing transfer); all in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 180, NARA. Annual reports of Sheridan and Endicott, SW, Annual Report (1886), 7, 71.
13. Telegram, Sheridan to Crook, December 23, 1885; telegrams, Crook to Sheridan, Fort Bowie, December 26, 30, 1885; all in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 180, NARA.
14. Tombstone Epitaph, February 4, 1886.
15. Ibid., January 13, 1886.
16. Davis to Roberts, AADC, at Fort Bowie, Fort Lowell, March 20, 1886, chronicles in almost daily detail the fruitless movements of Davis’s command. Crawford to Crook, Huasaras, Sonora, December 24, 1885, and from Camp near Nácori, Sonora, December 28, 1885, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, rolls 183 (Davis) and 181 (Crawford), NARA. An accurate and much more descriptive narrative than the official reports is Lt. W. E. Shipp, “Captain Crawford’s Last Expedition,” Journal of the U.S. Cavalry Association 5 (December 1892): 343–61, in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 516.
17. Chiricahua movements are inferred from a detailed report of 1st Lt. Marion P. Maus to Crook, February 23, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 181, NARA. This and other military reports are cited in more detail in a subsequent section dealing with these operations from the military viewpoint. The events are detailed in Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 494–507. See also Shipp, “Captain Crawford’s Last Expedition,” 9.
18. Maus dispatch of January 21, 1886, repeated in telegram, Crook to Sheridan, Fort Bowie, January 27, 1886, details the negotiations between Maus and the Chiricahua chiefs, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 181, NARA. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 516–19, details the raids in Sonora, based on Mexican sources.
1. Maus to Capt. C. S. Roberts, aide to Crook at Fort Bowie, Camp 18 miles south of camp near San Bernardino, March 14, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 182, NARA.
2. Maus to Roberts, Fort Bowie, April 8, 1886; Maus to Roberts, March 14, 1886; ibid., rolls 183, 182. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 473–74. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 516–20.
3. Daly, “Geronimo Campaign,” 94.
4. Crook’s aide, Capt. John G. Bourke, kept a verbatim record of the council: RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 182, NARA. Daly, “Geronimo Campaign,” 94–95. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 474–76. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 521–23.
5. Daly, “Geronimo Campaign,” 100–101, is the authority for the role of Chihuahua, Alchise, and Kayatena. Long interview with Crook in Tucson Daily Citizen, April 2, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 182, NARA.
6. The two-year exile is hard to piece together from several documents. Crook’s diary for March 26, 1886, concedes the terms, as does his report of the conference to Gen. Sheridan in telegram (confidential), Crook to Sheridan, Canyon de los Embudos (through Fort Bowie), March 27, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 182, NARA. He briefly acknowledges the terms in the interview in the Tucson Daily Citizen, April 12, 1886, ibid. Capt. Bourke kept the transcript of the March 27 formal council, which includes nothing about terms, only “surrender.” Ibid. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 479. All these sources deal with the work of Alchise and Kayatena in the Chiricahua camp in the night of March 25.
7. Crook diary, March 28, 1886. Maus to Roberts, Fort Bowie, April 8, 1886.
8. Maus to Roberts, Fort Bowie, April 8, 1886. Bourke, On the Border with Crook, 481. Daly, “Geronimo Campaign,” 100–103, 249–53. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 525–27.
9. Notes of an interview between Crook and Chatto, Kayatena, Naiche, and other Chiricahua Apaches, Mount Vernon Barracks, AL, January 20, 1890, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 191, NARA.
10. Crook to AAG MDP Presidio, Fort Bowie, January 11, 1886, ibid., roll 181, is the long report on Apache warfare. For the Maus transmittals, see telegram, Crook to Sheridan, Fort Bowie, January 17, 1886 (Maus’s dispatch of January 21); telegram, Crook to Pope, Fort Bowie, February 10, 1886 (paraphrasing Maus’s dispatch without giving date); Crook to AGUSA, Fort Bowie, February 28, 1886 (transmitting full Maus report of January 21); telegram, Crook to Sheridan, March 16, 1886 (reporting highly condensed version of Maus’s dispatch of January 14). All in ibid. For the diplomatic protest to Mexico: Acting SS to US Minister Mexico City, February 2, 1886, ibid.
11. Telegram, Crook to Sheridan, March 16, 1886; telegram, AAG DA to AG MDP Presidio, March 22, 1886; both in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 181, NARA. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 519–21.
12. Telegrams, Crook to Sheridan, Canyon de los Embudos, via Fort Bowie, March 28, 29, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 179, NARA.
13. Telegram, Sheridan to Crook at Fort Bowie, March 30, 1886; telegram, Crook to Sheridan, March 30, 1886, ibid.
14. Telegram, Sheridan to Crook, April 1, 1886; telegram, Crook to Sheridan, April 1, 1886, ibid., roll 182.
15. Telegrams, Crook to Sheridan, Fort Bowie, April 2, 4, 7, 1886, ibid.
1. Personal Recollections and Observations of General Nelson A. Miles (Chicago: Werner, 1896), 476. Miles, Serving the Republic: Memoirs of the Civil and Military Life of Nelson A. Miles (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1911), 221. I have written the introduction to a reprint edition of the first autobiography (New York: Da Capo Press, 1969). Of several biographies, consult Robert Wooster, Nelson A. Miles and the Twilight of the Frontier Army (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995).
2. Telegram, Sheridan to Miles, April 3, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 182, NARA. SW, Annual Report (1886), 11, 72.
3. GO 7, DA, Fort Bowie, April 20–21, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 186.
4. The Chiricahua movements and raids in Mexico are detailed in Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 535–37. Miles alluded to these raids and reported the intrusion into Arizona in dispatches forwarded by Howard to AGUSA, MDP Presidio, April 28, 30, May 1, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 182, NARA. A thorough account of this last raid by Geronimo and Naiche north of the border is Allan Radbourne, “Geronimo’s Last Raid into Arizona,” True West 41 (March 1994): 22–29.
5. Jack C. Gale, “Lebo in Pursuit,” Journal of Arizona History 21 (Spring 1980): 13–24. Telegram, Howard to AGUSA, MDP Presidio, May 4, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 182, NARA.
6. Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story, 134.
7. The events narrated above are badly scrambled in military records, testimony to the agility and leadership of Naiche. For the story, consult Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 531–51; Radbourne, “Geronimo’s Last Raid into Arizona,” 22–29; and Jack C. Gale, “An Ambush for Natchez,” True West 27 (July–August 1980): 32–37.
8. The Peck affair is described in detail in Radbourne, “Geronimo’s Last Raid into Arizona,” 23.
9. Gale, “Lebo in Pursuit,” 13–24.
10. Telegram, Howard to AGUSA, MDP Presidio (repeating telegram from Miles from Nogales, May 16, 17, and ibid., May 18, 1886, repeating telegram from Miles from Fort Huachuca, May 17); all in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 183, NARA. Annual report of Miles, September 18, 1886, in SW, Annual Report (1886), 167–68. Officers of 4th Cavalry, Fort Huachuca, to editor, June 14, 1886, Army and Navy Journal 23 (June 26, 1887): 989 (defending Hatfield). Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 541.
11. The order, GO 58, by order of Col. W. B. Royall, Fort Huachuca, May 4, 1886, is in SW, Annual Report (1886), 176–77.
12. Miles’s annual report, September 18, 1886, 169. Telegram, AAG MDP Presidio to AGUSA, June 8, 1886, repeating telegram of June 7 from Miles at Calabasas, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 OAG 1883, roll 184, NARA. Lawton to Mame (his wife), June 22, 1886, Lawton Papers, Indian Wars, Misc. Corres., box 1, folder Personal Letters, US Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA. Lawton’s daily movements may be followed in the diary of Leonard Wood: Jack C. Lane, ed., Chasing Geronimo: The Journal of Leonard Wood, May–September 1886 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1970).
13. Lawton to Mame, Camp at Cumpas, June 30, 1886, Lawton Papers. Telegram, Miles to AAG MDP Presidio, Deming, NM, June 23, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 OAG 1883, roll 184, NARA. A detailed account of the confrontation with the Mexican troops and the recovery of Trinidad Verdin is in Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entry of June 18, 1886, 55–56.
14. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 549–53, assembles this account in detail from Mexican accounts and the story told by Trinidad Verdin.
15. Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entry of July 13, 1886, 69–72. Lawton to Mame, Camp south of Aros River, July 16, 1886, Lawton Papers. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 554–55. Miles’s annual report in SW, Annual Report (1886), 170. Lawton’s official report of September 9, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGP 1883, roll 186, NARA.
16. Telegrams, Miles to AAG MDP Presidio, Fort Apache, July 3, 7, 1886; Lamar to Endicott, July 10, 1886; both in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 184, NARA.
17. Endorsement of July 7 on telegram of July 3, ibid.
18. Morris E. Opler, “A Chiricahua Apache’s Account of the Geronimo Campaign of 1886,” New Mexico Historical Review 13 (October 1938): 371–73. The narrator is Sam Kenoi, a youth of eleven among the reservation Chiricahuas; his father was close to Noche, Kayitah, and Martine. Kraft, Gatewood and Geronimo, 133.
19. Kraft, Gatewood and Geronimo, 114–15. Lt. Charles Gatewood and His Apache Wars Memoir, ed. Louis Kraft (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 122–24. Parker, Old Army Memories, 174.
20. Parker, Old Army Memories, 174–76. Kraft, Gatewood and Geronimo, 138–39.
1. This whole story, involving dozens of telegrams, is told in condensed form by both SW Endicott and Gen. Sheridan in their annual reports, November 30, October 10, SW, Annual Report (1886), 36–48, 69–78.
2. A transcript of a July 26 meeting between Chatto and Secretary Endicott, kept by Capt. John G. Bourke, mostly concerns Chatto’s continuing preoccupation with the fate of his family in Mexico and efforts of the government to get them back: RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 187, NARA. Transcripts have not been found of the substantive exchanges. Telegram, AGUSA to CG MDM, Chicago, August 11, 1886; telegram, Dorst to AGUSA, Fort Leavenworth, August 14, 1886; telegram, Miles to AGUSA, Albuquerque, August 20, 1886; all in ibid., roll 184.
3. Telegram, Cleveland to Acting SW R. C. Drum, Prospect House, NY, August 23, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 186, NARA. Like most top officials, the president escaped Washington’s summer heat by vacationing in more comfortable climes.
4. Miles to Sheridan, Willcox, August 2, 1886; telegram, Miles to AGUSA, Willcox, August 6, 1886; telegram, Acting SW R. C. Drum to CG MDA, September 12, 1886; all in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 186, NARA. This telegram informs the commanding general, Division of the Atlantic, that General Terry in Chicago has been ordered to have Capt. Dorst escort the Chatto delegation directly to Florida. Fort Marion lay within the Atlantic Division.
5. Notes of interview between Gen. George Crook and Chatto, Kayatena, Naiche, and other Chiricahua Apaches, George Wrattan interpreting, Mount Vernon Barracks, Alabama, January 20, 1890, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 191, NARA.
6. Lawton to Mame, July 7, 1886, Lawton Papers. He continued this letter through July 14. Lawton’s official report to AG DA, September 9, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 186, NARA. Lane, Chasing Geronimo, entry of July 13, 1886, 69–72. In several ways, Lawton and Wood describe this event differently. I have chosen the Wood version, a journal, as the more reliable.
7. Lawton to Mame, July 22, 1886, continued through July 25, 26, 27, 29, Lawton Papers.
8. James Parker, Old Army Memories, 177. Lawton to Mame, August 1, 1886, continued through August 3, 4, 5, Lawton Papers.
9. Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entries of August 3, 7, 88, 92. Kraft, Gatewood and Geronimo, 144–47. In his memoir, Gatewood does not mention the disagreement with Lawton; Gatewood Memoir, 127–28.
10. Telegram, Howard to AGUSA, MDP Presidio, August 19, 1886, repeating telegram from Miles, August 18, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 184, NARA.
11. Lawton to Mame, August 19, 1886, Lawton Papers. Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entry of August 19, 1886, 98.
12. Lawton to Mame, San Bernardino River, August 2, 1886, Lawton Papers. Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entry of August 22, 1886, 99–100. Editor Jack Lane explains in a footnote (p. 136) that Wood failed in his journal to mention Lawton’s condition. Lane later reconstructed the story of that night from the papers of officers who were there.
13. This paragraph has been assembled from bits of information included in the sources cited in note 12. See also telegram, Howard to AGUSA, MDP Presidio, August 24, 1886, repeating Miles telegram from Fort Huachuca, August 23; Miles to Lawton, n.p., August 25, 1886, Nelson A. Miles Papers, box 3, folder 6, US Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA; New York Times, August 25, 1886, carrying Tombstone dispatch of August 24. Kraft, Gatewood and Geronimo, 149, 151–53. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 559–64, drawing on Mexican sources, traces Geronimo’s movements and raids leading to the Fronteras exchange.
14. Kraft, Gatewood and Geronimo, 158–59. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 562. Robinson, Apache Voices, 51–52, quoting interview with Martine’s son George by Eve Ball. This includes testimony by Kanseah, who was there. Opler, “Chiricahua Apache’s Account,” 337–86. This is Sam Kenoi, who was never off the reservation but who grew up learning the details. He portrays Martine as a coward, lagging behind Kayitah and never reaching the top; Kanseah does not confirm this. This reflects an ongoing feud on the reservation between Martine and Kayitah factions. Kanseah related that Geronimo wanted to kill the two before they reached the top but was restrained by Yahnosha.
15. I have relied on Kanseah for this dialogue, which may not be accurate but represents the essence of the exchange. Kanseah was there. See Robinson, Apache Voices, 51–52. Eve Ball, In the Days of Victorio, 185–87, gives a longer version and different dialogue but substantially the same as Kanseah.
16. For the talks in the canebrake, I follow principally Kraft, Gatewood and Geronimo, chap. 12; and Gatewood Memoir, 134–35. Sweeney, Cochise to Geronimo, 563–65, details the meeting.
1. Lawton to Mame, San Bernardino River, August 26 (continued into August 27), 1886, Lawton Papers. Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entry of August 26, 1886, 103.
2. Thompson to Lawton, Fort Bowie, April 29, 1886; Lawton to Miles, San Bernardino, August 30, 1886; Miles to Lawton, Fort Bowie, August 31, 1886, Miles Papers, box 3, folder A.
3. Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entry of August 28, 1886, 104–6.
4. Gatewood Memoir, 145–47. Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entry of August 28, 1886, 106–7.
5. This entire sequence is documented by Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entries of August 29, 30, 31, 107–8; and Gatewood Memoir, 148–52.
6. The ranch belonged to Texas cowman John Slaughter, whose ranch headquarters lay west of the San Bernardino River, at San Bernardino Springs, on the Mexican border. By 1886, with the Tombstone violence in the past, Slaughter was elected sheriff of Cochise County. San Bernardino is still a working ranch, open to the public as a historic site. It lies at the end of the “Geronimo Trail,” twenty-five miles east of Douglas, Arizona.
7. Gatewood Memoir, 151. In his memoir, Gatewood slides over this incident, writing only that some of the officers talked of killing Geronimo. Editor Kraft, however, researched the matter in the Gatewood and other collections and found the testimony of other officers who were present. Wood, Chasing Geronimo, provides a daily chronicle of happenings, entries of August 30, 31, 1886, 107–8.
8. Gatewood Memoir, 151–52.
9. Who said what to whom and when differs from one participant and witness to another. In a sequence of lengthy reports, and in his autobiography, Miles describes long conversations. He had an interest, official and personal, in misrepresenting the exchange. Even Geronimo, in his autobiography, cannot be relied on. Other sources are vague. Secondary works draw on these sources and portray the surrender differently. I rely on Gatewood Memoir, 152–53; and Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entries of September 1–5, 1886, 109–10. My main reliance in the paragraphs that follow, however, is based on Geronimo’s more contemporary version in two documents: one is Geronimo, Naiche, and Mangas to Miles (written by George Wrattan), Fort Pickens, FL, April 17, 1887, Miles Papers, box 3, folder 4. The second is Brig. Gen. David S. Stanley to AGUSA, San Antonio, TX, October 27, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 186, NARA. Stanley commanded the Department of Texas. Because Naiche was present and had not surrendered, I infer that this explanation took place on September 4, a day after Geronimo gave in. As narrated later, Geronimo and his people were held in San Antonio while Miles argued with the president. When the decision had been made to send them on to Florida, Geronimo requested an interview with General Stanley. It is detailed, witnessed by two other officers, and interpreted by George Wrattan. Stanley stated that he believed the interview credible. I accept these documents as authoritative.
10. Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entries of September 5, 8, 1886.
1. The names, ages, and other details were furnished by Brig. Gen. David S. Stanley by orders of the War Department. Telegram, Stanley to AGUSA, San Antonio, October 11, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 186, NARA.
2. Stanley endorsement on critical newspaper item, October 8, 1886, ibid.
3. Kanseah, in Ball, Indeh, 131.
4. Telegrams, Stanley to Acting SW, San Antonio, September 30, October 1, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 186, NARA.
5. New York Times, October 3, 1886, printing dispatch from San Antonio October 2.
6. Stanley to AGUSA, October 27, 1886, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 186, NARA.
7. All these telegram are available on microfilm in ibid., scattered through rolls 184, 185, and 186. Most are printed in Senate Executive Document 117, 49th Cong., 2nd sess., vol. 2, 1887, serial 2449. Leonard Wood’s diary, normally reliable, contains a passage relating that on the way down to Bowie Station on September 8, he rode next to Miles’s adjutant, Capt. William Thompson. Influenced by old friendship and perhaps a few drinks, Wood wrote, Thompson leaned over, patted his pocket, and said: “I have got something here which would stop this movement, but I am not going to let the old man see it until you are gone, then I will repeat it to him.” The only telegram that could have stopped the movement was the directive to hold the prisoners at Fort Bowie, but Miles received and responded to this on September 7 or 8. I have found no other telegram that would have stopped the movement, the latest being the president’s directive of September 8, overriding earlier directives, to confine the prisoners at the nearest secure fort or military prison. Thompson wired the message to Miles en route, and he answered it, typically fogging the language, from Engle, New Mexico, as the train bore the prisoners across Texas to San Antonio. Wood, Chasing Geronimo, entry of September 8, 1886, 112. Later a controversy arose between Miles and Howard over a dispatch that Miles claimed he did not see for forty-one days. The dispute extended well into 1887 before apparently ending with Howard’s transfer to another assignment. I have been unable to locate this dispatch.
8. Telegrams, Acting SW to President, September 10, 1886, and to Stanley, September 29, 1886, both in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 186, NARA.
9. The scene is described by a reporter for the Pensacolan, October 27, 1886, quoted in Woodward B. Skinner, The Apache Rock Crumbles: The Captivity of Geronimo’s People (Pensacola, FL: Skinner, 1987), 106.
10. Details of life at Fort Pickens are taken from Capt. J. E. Wilson to AAG Division of the Atlantic, Fort Barrancas, FL, November 30, 1886; and Lt. Col. Loomis Langdon to AAG Division of the Atlantic, Fort Barrancas, January 7, 1887; both in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 187, NARA.
11. Skinner, Apache Rock Crumbles, 151–52. Skinner had access to the Wrattan Papers but apparently found this undated letter in a newspaper.
12. Annual Report of Brig. Gen. Nelson A. Miles, September 3, 1887, SW, Annual Report (1887), 158.
13. Skinner, Apache Rock Crumbles, chaps. 11, 13, describes many of these visits, drawn from Pensacola newspapers.
14. Ibid., 184–87.
15. Langdon to AAG Division of the Atlantic, St. Francis Barracks, August 23, 1886; with endorsement of Schofield August 28 and Sheridan September 3, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 184, NARA.
16. Telegram, Schofield to AGUSA, Governors Island, September 20, 1886; telegrams, Langdon to AAG Division of the Atlantic, St. Augustine, September 20, 29, 1886, the latter with string of endorsements decreeing disposition of scouts, ibid., roll 186.
17. Herbert Welsh, The Apache Prisoners in Fort Marion, St. Augustine, Florida (Philadelphia: Indian Rights Association, 1887), 20.
18. Teller to Endicott, March 21, 1887, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 189, NARA.
19. Welsh, Apache Prisoners, 20n.
20. Ayres to Sheridan, St. Francis Barracks, March 25, 1887, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 189, NARA.
21. Naiche, Mangas, and Geronimo to Miles, Fort Pickens, April 17, 1887, dictated to “G.W.”; Wrattan to Miles, April 17, 1887; both in Miles Papers, box 3, folder W.
22. Telegram, Bourke to Endicott, Mobile, April 13, 1887; Bourke to Endicott, Washington, April 19, 1887; both in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, rolls 190, 189, NARA.
23. Telegrams from AGUSA to General Schofield, Colonels Ayers at St. Francis Barracks, Colonel Langdon at Fort Barrancas, and Maj. William Sinclair at Mount Vernon Barracks, April 18, 1887; Ayers to AAG Division of the Atlantic, St. Francis Barracks, April 27, 1887; all in ibid., roll 189.
24. Langdon to AAG Division of the Atlantic, Fort Barrancas, June 6, August 9, 1887, ibid., roll 190.
25. Wrattan to Miles, Fort Pickens, October 27, 1887, Miles Papers, box 3, folder W. Wrattan to Stanley, Fort Pickens, October 3, 1887, with Stanley endorsement of December 24 and Sheridan endorsement of December 28, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 190, NARA.
1. Walter Reed, “Geronimo and His Warriors in Captivity,” Illustrated American 3 (August 16, 1890): 231–35, in Cozzens, Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 627. Skinner, Apache Rock Crumbles, 223, drawing on Mobile newspaper accounts. He confirms Reed except that he has some people emerging from their habitations. Albert E. Wrattan, “George Wrattan, Friend of the Apaches,” Journal of Arizona History 27 (Spring 1986): 106.
2. Skinner, Apache Rock Crumbles, 223.
3. Monthly report on prisoners, Maj. William Sinclair to AAG Division of the Atlantic, Mount Vernon Barracks, May 31, 1888, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 190, NARA.
4. Bourke to AGUSA, Washington, April 19, 1887, ibid., roll 189.
5. Eugene Chihuahua in Ball, Indeh, 139, 152.
6. For example, see Skinner, Apache Rock Crumbles, 169–73, quoting from description by a reporter in the Mobile Register, June 26, 1887.
7. Eugene Chihuahua’s quotation is from Ball, Indeh, 153. Skinner, Apache Rock Crumbles, describes many excursions from Mobile drawn in detail from Mobile newspaper accounts. See also Wrattan, “George Wrattan, Friend of the Apaches,” 106.
8. Sinclair to AAG Division of the Atlantic, Mount Vernon Barracks, September 30, 1887, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 190, NARA.
9. Ball, Indeh, 153. The War Department required a monthly report from the officer in charge of the Apaches; it annexed a detailed report by the post surgeon.
10. Welsh to SW William C. Endicott, Philadelphia, June 11, 1888, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 190, NARA.
11. Welsh to President Cleveland, Indian Rights Association, Philadelphia, August 25, 1888, ibid.
12. Welsh to Secretary of the Interior William F. Vilas, November 27, 1888; Welsh to Endicott, December 13, 1888; Welsh to Cleveland, February 2, 1889; S. C. Armstrong (superintendent of Hampton Industrial Institute) to Maj. Gen. O. O. Howard, February 11, 1889; Bourke to SW Redfield Proctor, March 14, 1889; Extract of Report of an Inspection of Mount Vernon Barracks on April 7, 1889, by Inspector General Robert P. Hughes; three members of Boston Indian Citizenship Committee, Committee on Mount Vernon Apaches, to Maj. Gen. O. O. Howard, Boston, May 16, 1889 (Howard commanded the Division of the Atlantic at Governors Island, NY); Howard to Proctor (following visit to Mount Vernon), July 1, 1889; Proctor to Welsh, July 7, 1889; Bourke to AGUSA, Washington, July 5, 1889; all in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, rolls 192, 193, NARA. These are only a sample of the correspondence that flew among all parties through 1888 and 1889. The controversy continued, and more sources are cited as needed.
13. Ball, Indeh, 154. See also Reed, “Geronimo and His Warriors in Captivity,” 628.
14. Pratt to 1st Lt. C. C. Ballou at Mount Vernon Barracks, June 15, 1894, enclosing letter Geronimo to Chappo, June 6, 1894, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 198, NARA.
15. Pratt to CIA, Carlisle, May 24, 1889; Howard to AGUSA, New York, May 31, 1889; both in bid., roll 192.
16. Reed to AAG Division of the Atlantic, Mount Vernon Barracks, November 18, 1889, ibid., roll 193.
17. President Harrison to Senate and House, January 20, 1889, attaching Proctor to President, January 13, 1890; Crook to Proctor, Washington, January 6, 1890; Guy Howard to Proctor, New York, December 23, 1889; Howard to Proctor, March 18, 1890; Herbert Welsh to Proctor, June 24, 1890; Sen. Henry Dawes to Proctor, June 28, 1890; all in ibid., rolls 193, 194. John Anthony Turcheneske Jr., The Chiricahua Apache Prisoners of War: Fort Sill, 1894–1914 (Niwot: University Press of Colorado), 27–28, recounts the handling of the legislation in the House and Senate.
18. Wotherspoon to Post Adjutant, Mount Vernon Barracks, June 21, 1890, with endorsements of Howard, the Quartermaster General, and Secretary Proctor, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 194, NARA.
19. Wotherspoon’s monthly reports describe these events in detail, all in ibid.
20. Wotherspoon, “The Apache Prisoners of War,” presentation to Lake Mohonk Conference, in Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian, 1891 (Lake Mohonk Conference, 1891), reprinted in House Reports, 52nd Cong., 1st sess., 1891–92, at 1159–80.
21. Eric Feaver, “Indian Soldiers, 1891–96: An Experiment on the Closing Frontier,” Prologue: The Journal of the National Archives 7 (Summer 1975): 109–18. SW, Annual Report (1891), 14–16.
22. Wotherspoon to Post Adjutant, April 20, 1891; Wotherspoon to Proctor, May 16, 1891, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 195, NARA. Michael L. Tate, “Soldiers of the Line: Apache Companies in the U.S. Army, 1891–97,” Arizona and the West 16 (Winter 1974): 343–64. Skinner, Apache Rock Crumbles, 312, 316–17, 320.
23. Skinner, Apache Rock Crumbles, 324–25, chaps. 35–36. Wotherspoon’s monthly reports in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 196, NARA, recount in detail the activities of the company, as does Skinner.
24. Morris Opler, comp., “Autobiography of a Chiricahua Apache, Sam Kenoi,” Opler Papers, no. 14/25/3238, part II, box 35, folder 4.
25. MS, “Interview by Capt. H. C. Bowen, 5th Infantry, with Geronimo at Mount Vernon Barracks, Alabama, beginning late summer 1893,” Col. H. C. Bowen Papers, box 3, US Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA.
26. Plattsburgh (NY) Republican, February 15, 1893. RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 196, NARA.
27. Russell to Capt. George W. Davis (military secretary to SW), April 4, 1894; Wotherspoon to Davis, May 11, 1894; AGUSA to CO, Mount Vernon Barracks, May 14, 1894; all in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 198, NARA. Wrattan, “George Wrattan,” 111. Skinner, Apache Rock Crumbles, 372–77.
28. Wotherspoon to CO, Mount Vernon Barracks, July 25, 1892, with endorsements including Surgeon General’s of August 28, 1892, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 196, NARA. Sutherland retired a year later.
29. The trail of this bill through the Congress is complicated, convoluted, and laden with maneuver, deception, falsehood, and misunderstanding. It is recounted in detail in Turcheneske, Chiricahua Apache Prisoners of War, chap. 3.
1. Pratt to 1st Lt. C. C. Ballou (Wotherspoon’s successor), Carlisle, June 15, 1894, enclosing letter of Geronimo to Chappo, June 6, 1894, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 198, NARA.
2. Miles to Maj. George W. Davis in Office of SW, MDM Chicago, September 3, 1894, ibid., roll 197. This is a very long letter with informative attachments by 1st Lt. Hugh L. Scott and Capt. Marion P. Maus, both of whom General Miles sent to interview and assess all the adults at Mount Vernon.
3. Griswold, “Fort Sill Apaches,” 43.
4. Scott to AAG MDM Chicago, Fort Sill, November 7, 1894, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 198, NARA.
5. Ibid.
6. Sam Kenoi interview, Opler Papers, box 37.
7. Wrattan to Scott, December 29, 1894, with endorsements periodically until May 1895, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 199, NARA.
8. Tate, “Soldiers of the Line,” 343–64; Feaver, “Indian Soldiers, 1891–96,” 109–18. Skinner, Apache Rock Crumbles, 397.
9. The history of the implementation of the Dawes Act on this and other reservations is too complex to detail here. As applied to the Chiricahuas, it is described by Brenda L. Haes, “Fort Sill, the Chiricahua Apaches, and the Government’s Promise of Permanent Residence,” Chronicles of Oklahoma 78 (Spring 2000): 28–43; and Turcheneske, Chiricahua Apache Prisoners of War. Scott to AG DM, February 2, 1897, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 200, NARA, reports the Scott-Baldwin agreement with the Kiowas and Comanches.
10. Kenoi interview.
11. E. A. Burbank, Burbank among the Indians, as told by Ernest Royce, ed. Frank J. Taylor (Caldwell, ID: Caxton, 1946), 18–19, 21.
12. Francis E. Leupp, Notes of a Summer Tour among the Indians of the Southwest (Philadelphia: Indian Rights Association, 1897), 3.
13. Capron to AGUSA, Fort Sill, February 28, 1898, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 200, NARA. Capron became a troop commander in Theodore Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders” and was killed at San Juan Hill.
14. W. S. Nye, Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1937), 298–99. The officer was Capt. William C. Brown, from whom Nye obtained his information, as well as other facts from the post trader, W. H. Quinnette.
15. The telegrams that kept the wires humming April 16–20 are in RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 200, NARA. A more detailed account is in Turcheneske, Chiricahua Apache Prisoners of War, 68–20.
1. (Nebraska City) Conservative September 29, 1898. The exposition and Indian Congress are described in http://digital.omahapubliclibrary.org/transmiss/congress/about.html and http://digital.omahapubliclibrary.org/transmiss/secretary/indcongress.html. The second is a link from the first including a lengthy report by the Smithsonian’s distinguished ethnologist James Mooney, who was brought in to assist in setting up the Indian Congress.
2. New York Tribune, October 11, 1898.
3. New York Times, July 4, 1904. Both Buffalo and Saint Louis are described at http://library.bfn.org/local/pan-am.html. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/papr/mckpanex.html. http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/fairs/louis.htm. http://library.bfn.org/local/pan-am.html. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/papr/mckpanex.html. http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/fairs/louis.htm.
4. St. Louis Republic, August 6, 1904.
5. Guthrie (OK) Daily Leader, June 20, 1904.
6. (Woodstock, VA) Shenandoah Herald, July 12, 1901.
7. New York Times, February 2, March 9, 1905. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specialsections/heritage/Indians-on-the-Inaugural-March.html?c=y&page=1#.
8. (Richmond, VA) Times Dispatch, March 5, 1905.
9. Alexandria (VA) Gazette, March 9, 1905. Accounts also appear in Washington (DC) Times, March 10, 1905; and New York Times, March 10, 1905.
10. For the opening of the Kiowa-Comanche Reservation, see http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/K/KI020.html. A long report on the condition and activities of the Indians for the year 1901–2 is Capt. Farrand Sayre to AG MDM, Fort Sill, June 30, 1902, RG 94, LR, OAG, 1881–89, M689, 1066 AGO 1883, roll 202, NARA. Sayre presents great detail on farming, herding, health, school, missionary work, sale of beef, hay, and other products, and the flow of whiskey from Lawton and other surrounding settlements.
11. Kate Uttinger, “Geronimo: A Study in Grace,” Leben: A Journal of Reformation Life 5 (October–December 2009).
12. Barrett relates the story of the process of getting Geronimo’s autobiography into print in the introduction to the book. It went through a number of editions, with different pagination. I have used Barrett, Geronimo, His Own Story.
13. Betzinez, I Fought with Geronimo, 38.
14. Ibid., 198. My account is drawn largely from this source, Betzinez, and Debo, Geronimo, chap. 23. She based her account on sources, largely the Lawton newspaper, that I have not been able to access. New York Times, February 17, 1909.
15. A stone monument now marks his grave, but controversy continues to question whether his bones are still there.
1. The Hugh Scott Papers, Library of Congress, contain most of the documents recording his assignment to the Chiricahua problem. I have relied on the complete history set forth by Turcheneske, Chiricahua Prisoners of War. See also Haes, “Fort Sill, the Chiricahua Apaches, and the Government’s Promise of Permanent Residence,” 28–43.
2. All the Indian sketches are taken from Griswold, “Fort Sill Apaches,” which is alphabetized; and Dan L. Thrapp, ed., Dictionary of Frontier Biography, 3 vols. (Glendale, AZ: Arthur H. Clark, 1988).