War parties went out frequently, sometimes under Geronimo, sometimes under Cochise also. The warriors marched on foot, as a rule, because then they could climb and hide better. On foot an Apache could travel forty to seventy-five miles at a stretch, which was as much as a horse could do. No white man could equal an Apache, in covering rough country and desert country.
The parties were sent out mainly against the Mexicans of Mexico, to get plunder, although the Chiricahuas had no love for the Americans, either, Nah-che explained again.
He was sitting, pulling the hairs from his chin and cheeks with a pair of bone tweezers. It was unmanly for a warrior to have any hair on his face, and Nah-che expected to be a warrior after he had made four war-trails. Four was the lucky number, with the Apaches.
“We hate the Mexicans. They are bad,” said Nah-che. “They kill our women and children, and pay for scalps. With the Americans it is like this:
“When they first came into our country we were friendly to them. We saw that they were different from the Mexicans, and they had been at war with the Mexicans, too. They shot one of us, and offered to pay a little something, which was not punishment enough. Still we did not stay at war with them. Cochise made a camp near the American wagon-road at Apache Pass, where Camp Bowie is now, and traded, and sold wood. One time a Mexican woman and her baby were stolen by some bad Indians from an American, and the Chiricahua were asked to return them. We did not have them, or know anything about them, but Cochise and Mangas Coloradas of the Mimbreño Apaches and some other chiefs went with a white flag to meet a young American war chief at Apache Pass, and talk.
“When they got there the American chief surrounded them with his soldiers and told them that they would be kept shut in a tent until they sent and got the baby and woman. They decided they would rather be killed than be kept prisoners. So they drew their knives, and Cochise cut a hole through the back of the tent, and there was a fight. Several were killed. But Cochise and Mangas Coloradas escaped. Cochise was wounded in the knee by a gun knife (bayonet). The Americans hung his brother and five others, by the neck, and Cochise hung an American by the neck; and he and Mangas Coloradas called all their warriors and nearly captured the Americans. The young American captain had acted very foolish.
“After two or three years Mangas Coloradas (this was Spanish for ‘Red Sleeves’) grew tired of fighting. He was badly wounded, and he sent word that he would like to treat for peace. The Americans told him to come in with his people. Cochise had married his sister, and we and the Mimbreños often helped each other, and now Cochise advised him not to trust the word of the Americans. But Mangas Coloradas went to an American fort in New Mexico.
“Then they seized him and put him into a little house with only one window, high up. The soldiers scowled at him; so that when he was put into the little house he said to himself: ‘This is my end. I shall never again hunt through the valleys and mountains of my people.’ And that was so. This night while he was asleep somebody from outside threw a big rock down on his chest—or else a soldier guard punched him with a hot knife on the end of a gun. We do not know. Anyway, he was much frightened. He ran about, trying to climb out and fight with his hands and then the soldiers shot him many times, and he died.
“Now you see that the Chiricahua cannot be friends with the Americans any more than with the Mexicans, and it is so with other Tinneh. The Warm Springs are friendly, because Chief Victorio thinks that is wise; and the Sierra Blanca (White Mountains) have agreed not to fight. But they have not lost chiefs and brothers like we have.”
This was the way the Chiricahua Apaches thought. But of course there were two sides to the quarrel. Joe Felmer and Pete Kitchen and other pioneers had claimed that old Mangas Coloradas had been a regular bandit who never intended to stay at peace. He had tortured and killed men and women and children, and was determined to drive all the Americans out of the country. Once he had been captured by miners and tied up and whipped, which had made him worse.