Meanwhile Jimmie was helping to run the first telegraph lines in Arizona, connecting military post with military post. He stayed in telegraph work some years—during which a number of things happened.
XVIII
“CLUKE” GOES AWAY
The general’s plans had apparently worked out all right, when for no especial reason, as far as Arizona could understand, the management of the reservations was changed from the Military Department of Arizona to the civilian agents appointed by the Indian Bureau at Washington. The soldiers were to be retained only as guards and not as instructors.
The Indian Bureau started in to move the Apaches about. That had been tried two years before, when in New Mexico Chief Victorio’s Warm Spring Apaches had been ordered from the Cañada Alamosa to the hated Tularosa tract. But General Howard had obtained from the President permission for them to live again at their beloved Cottonwood Canyon.
In the summer of 1874 it was reported that the Camp Verde Indians were to be taken over to the San Carlos reservation. The Camp Verde lands were desired by the white people.
General Crook had much opposed this scheme. He was powerless, but he sent a protest to the War Department, saying:
There are now on the Verde reservation about fifteen hundred Indians; they have been among the worst in Arizona; but if the Government keeps its promise to them that it shall be their home for all time, there will be no difficulty in keeping them at peace, and engaged in peaceful pursuits. I sincerely hope that the interests that are now at work to deprive these Indians of this reservation will be defeated; but if they succeed, the responsibility of turning these fifteen hundred Apaches loose upon the settlers of Arizona should rest where it belongs.
All that winter of 1874–1875 the general (who had given his word) and Chief Chalipun strove against the threatened change to the San Carlos reservation. But it was of no avail.
In the spring of 1875 the general had been transferred to the Department of the Platte, with headquarters at Omaha, Nebraska. He had pacified the Snakes in the Northwest and the Apaches in the Southwest; now he was needed to subdue the bold-riding Sioux and Cheyennes of the great northern plains.