He took with him Lieutenant John G. Bourke, chief of staff, and other officers whom Jimmie so well knew. Tom Moore, chief packer, was to follow with the best of the pack-trains. The Third Cavalry already was in the north; and the Fifth Cavalry was soon to go.
“Cluke has been sent away. The Apaches have lost their best friend,” mourned Chief Chalipun; and submitted to being removed. So the Yavapais and the Apache-Yumas at Camp Verde left their ditch and fields, and went to a strange region—that of San Carlos.
Young Second Lieutenant George O. Eaton, of the Fifth Cavalry, was the only man whom they would trust, to take them over. Even at that, on the way they had a fight among themselves, and eighteen were killed and fifty wounded.
The White Mountains were moved, next, down to the San Carlos. Their reservation was to be closed.
Whatever the reasons of the Indian Bureau, Chiefs Pedro, Pi-to-ne and others objected bitterly.
“These are our lands,” asserted Chief Pedro. “They were promised to us by the great one-armed soldier-captain, Howard. When I went to Washington, our White Father there told me again that if we were good, these should be our lands forever. We have been good. We have done as we were asked to do. We have raised more crops than all the other Apaches put together. We have helped the soldiers fight our brothers. We are contented here. But we are mountain Indians and we cannot live down there in the low country where the water is bad and the air is hot. The Pinals and the Arivaipas are not friendly to us, and the Yavapai ways are not our ways.”
Finally eighteen hundred of them were herded down to the San Carlos. Some hid out, and after a time many stole back from the San Carlos. The soldiers at Camp Apache permitted them to stay.
The next year, 1876, the Chiricahua reservation was broken up. It had no soldiers and no Indian police, and was too near the border. Whiskey-sellers and outlaw Apaches sneaked in, but Taza said that if the American government would help him he could keep the bad people out.
“Why does Washington punish good people on account of bad people?” he asked, when told that the Chiricahuas must go.