The dread Apache: That early-day scourge of the Southwest

By DR. M. P. FREEMAN
Tucson, Arizona November 14 1915
The Dread Apache—That Early-Day Scourge of the Southwest
BY DR. M. P. FREEMAN
A short time ago, idling through a collection of early-day photographs, I came across two that vividly recalled the closing scenes in that bloody frontier drama in which the Apache was the chief actor. For many years the relentless foe of the pioneer, wary, tireless, cowardly and treacherous, he was the very incarnation of fiendishness, if possible, more pronounced in the squaw than in the man. Never meeting you in the open, always in ambush, concealed behind the big granite boulder, the point of a hill or a clump of brush, he and his fellows patiently awaited your solitary coming, all unconscious of danger, then—the crack of the rifle and it is all over. Today he might be a “sniper”, but in the days of his hellish activities the word had not yet been given its more recently enlarged meaning.
How many breakers of the wilderness, hardy, fearless old-timers, were sent to their final rest by this early scourge of the desert, who can say! Some place their number at two thousand, some say more, others less. This does not include the soldier boy, whose profession it is to risk his life, and when necessary, his duty, its sacrifice. Of the number of these there is probably a record somewhere, but of the old pioneer, only an estimate. In the valley, on the mesa and the hillside, on the mountain-top and in the deep shadows of the canyon, everywhere this broad land is dotted with their unknown and unmarked graves.
Captain John G. Bourke, author of “On the Border with Crook,” and “An Apache Campaign,” who was with Gen. Crook, tells us that the Apache “is no coward, but that he has no false ideas about courage, that he would prefer to skulk like a coyote for hours and then kill his enemy, rather than by injudicious exposure receive a wound.” May we not attribute to the chivalrous spirit of Capt. Bourke, not to criticize a foe, his delicate way of putting this?