On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

Alchise: “When you left, there were no bad Indians out. We were all content; everything was peace. The officers you had here were all taken away, and new ones came in—a different kind. The good ones must all have been taken away and the bad ones sent in their places. We couldn’t make out what they wanted; one day they seemed to want one thing, the next day something else. Perhaps we were to blame, perhaps they were; but, anyhow, we hadn’t any confidence in them. We were planting our own corn and melons and making our own living. The agent at the San Carlos never gave us any rations, but we didn’t mind that, as we were taking care of ourselves. One day the agent at the San Carlos sent up and said that we must give up our own country and our corn-patches and go down there to live, and he sent Indian soldiers to seize our women and children and drive us all down to that hot land. ‘Uclenni’ and I were doing all we could to help the whites, when we were both put in the guard-house. All that I have ever done has been honest; I have always been true and obeyed orders. I made campaigns against Apache-Yumas, Apache-Tontos, Pinalenos, and all kinds of people, and even went against my own people. When the Indians broke out at the San Carlos, when Major Randall was here, I helped him to go fight them; I have been in all the campaigns. When Major Randall was here we were all happy; when he promised a thing he did it; when he said a word he meant it; but all that he did was for our own good and we believed in him and we think of him yet. Where has he gone? Why don’t he come back? Others have come to see us since he left, but they talk to us in one way and act in another, and we can’t believe what they say. They say: ‘That man is bad, and that man is bad.’ I think that the trouble is, they themselves are bad. Oh, where is my friend Randall—the captain with the big mustache which he always pulled? Why don’t he come back? He was my brother, and I think of him all the time.”

Old “Pedro” talked in much the same vein: “When you (General Crook) were here, whenever you said a thing we knew that it was true, and we kept it in our minds. When Colonel Green was here, our women and children were happy and our young people grew up contented. And I remember Brown, Randall, and the other officers who treated us kindly and were our friends. I used to be happy; now, I am all the time thinking and crying, and I say, ‘Where is old Colonel John Green, and Randall, and those other good officers, and what has become of them? Where have they gone? Why don’t they come back?’ And the young men all say the same thing.”

“Pedro” spoke of the absurdity of arresting Indians for dancing, as had been done in the case of the “medicine man,” “Bobby-doklinny”—of which he had much to say, but at this moment only his concluding remarks need be preserved: “Often when I have wanted to have a little fun, I have sent word to all the women and children and young men to come up and have a dance; other people have done the same thing; I have never heard that there was any harm in that; but that campaign was made just because the Indians over on the Cibicu were dancing. When you (General Crook) were here we were all content; but we can’t understand why you went away. Why did you leave us? Everything was all right while you were here.”

A matter of great grievance with the Apaches, which they could not understand, being nothing but ignorant savages and not up to civilized ways, was why their little farms, of which I will speak before ending this volume, should be destroyed—as they were—and why their cattle and horses should be driven off by soldiers and citizens. “Severiano,” the interpreter, who was a Mexican by birth, taken captive in early youth, and living among the Apaches all his life, now said: “A lot of my own cattle were taken away by soldiers and citizens.” Had the Apaches had a little more sense they would have perceived that the whole scheme of Caucasian contact with the American aborigines—at least the Anglo-Saxon part of it—has been based upon that fundamental maxim of politics so beautifully and so tersely enunciated by the New York alderman—“The ‘boys’ are in it for the stuff.” The “Tucson ring” was determined that no Apache should be put to the embarrassment of working for his own living; once let the Apaches become self-supporting, and what would become of “the boys”? Therefore, they must all be herded down on the malaria-reeking flats of the San Carlos, where the water is salt and the air poison, and one breathes a mixture of sand-blizzards and more flies than were ever supposed to be under the care of the great fly-god Beelzebub. The conventions entered into with General Howard and Vincent Collyer, which these Apaches had respected to the letter—nay, more, the personal assurances given by the President of the United States to old “Pedro” during a visit made by the latter to Washington—were all swept away like cobwebs, while the conspirators laughed in their sleeves, because they knew a trick or two worth all of that. They had only to report by telegraph that the Apaches were “uneasy,” “refused to obey the orders of the agent,” and a lot more stuff of the same kind, and the Great Father would send in ten regiments to carry out the schemes of the ring, but he would never send one honest, truthful man to inquire whether the Apaches had a story or not.

It is within the limits of possibility, that as the American Indians become better and better acquainted with the English language, and abler to lay their own side of a dispute before the American people, there may be a diminution in the number of outbreaks, scares, and misunderstandings, which have cost the taxpayers such fabulous sums, and which I trust may continue to cost just as much until the tax-payer shall take a deeper and more intelligent interest in this great question. Another fact brought out in this conference was the readiness with which agents and others incarcerated Indians in guard-houses upon charges which were baseless, or at least trivial. At other times, if the charges were grave, nothing was done to press the cases to trial, and the innocent as well as the guilty suffered by the long imprisonment, which deprived the alleged criminals of the opportunity to work for the support of their families. The report of the Federal Grand Jury of Arizona—taken from the Star, of Tucson, Arizona, October 24, 1882—shows up this matter far more eloquently than I am able to do, and I need not say that a frontier jury never yet has said a word in favor of a red man unless the reasons were fully patent to the ordinary comprehension.

To the Honorable Wilson Hoover, District Judge:

The greatest interest was felt in the examination into the cases of the eleven Indian prisoners brought here for trial from San Carlos. The United States District Attorney had spent much time in preparing this investigation. The Department of Justice had peremptorily ordered that these cases should be disposed of at this term of court. Agent Wilcox had notified the district attorney that he should release these Indians by October 1st if they were not brought away for trial. The official correspondence from the various departments with the district attorney included a letter from Agent Tiffany to the Interior Department, asking that these Indians be at once tried, and yet Agent Tiffany released all the guilty Indians without punishment and held in confinement these eleven men for a period of fourteen months without ever presenting a charge against them, giving them insufficient food and clothing, and permitting those whose guilt was admitted by themselves and susceptible of overwhelming proof, to stalk about unblushingly and in defiance of law. This, too, under the very shadow of his authority, and in laughing mockery of every principle of common decency, to say nothing of justice.

How any official possessing the slightest manhood could keep eleven men in confinement for fourteen months without charges or any attempt to accuse them, knowing them to be innocent, is a mystery which can only be solved by an Indian agent of the Tiffany stamp. The investigations of the Grand Jury have brought to light a course of procedure at the San Carlos Reservation, under the government of Agent Tiffany, which is a disgrace to the civilization of the age and a foul blot upon the national escutcheon. While many of the details connected with these matters are outside of our jurisdiction, we nevertheless feel it our duty, as honest American citizens, to express our utter abhorrence of the conduct of Agent Tiffany and that class of reverend peculators who have cursed Arizona as Indian officials, and who have caused more misery and loss of life than all other causes combined. We feel assured, however, that under the judicious and just management of General Crook, these evils will be abated, and we sincerely trust that he may be permitted to render the official existence of such men as Agent Tiffany, in the future, unnecessary.

The investigations of the Grand Jury also establish the fact that General Crook has the unbounded confidence of all the Indians. The Indian prisoners acknowledged this before the Grand Jury, and they expressed themselves as perfectly satisfied that he would deal justly with them all. We have made diligent inquiry into the various charges presented in regard to Indian goods and the traffic at San Carlos and elsewhere, and have acquired a vast amount of information which we think will be of benefit. For several years the people of this Territory have been gradually arriving at the conclusion that the management of the Indian reservations in Arizona was a fraud upon the Government; that the constantly recurring outbreaks of the Indians and their consequent devastations were due to the criminal neglect or apathy of the Indian agent at San Carlos; but never until the present investigations of the Grand Jury have laid bare the infamy of Agent Tiffany could a proper idea be formed of the fraud and villany which are constantly practised in open violation of law and in defiance of public justice. Fraud, peculation, conspiracy, larceny, plots and counterplots, seem to be the rule of action upon this reservation. The Grand Jury little thought when they began this investigation that they were about to open a Pandora’s box of iniquities seldom surpassed in the annals of crime.

With the immense power wielded by the Indian agent almost any crime is possible. There seems to be no check upon his conduct. In collusion with the chief clerk and storekeeper, rations can be issued ad libitum for which the Government must pay, while the proceeds pass into the capacious pockets of the agent. Indians are sent to work on the coal-fields, superintended by white men; all the workmen and superintendents are fed and frequently paid from the agency stores, and no return of the same is made. Government tools and wagons are used in transporting goods and working the coal-mines, in the interest of this close corporation and with the same result. All surplus supplies are used in the interest of the agent, and no return made thereof. Government contractors, in collusion with Agent Tiffany, get receipts for large amounts of supplies never furnished, and the profit is divided mutually, and a general spoliation of the United States Treasury is thus effected. While six hundred Indians are off on passes, their rations are counted and turned in to the mutual aid association, consisting of Tiffany and his associates. Every Indian child born receives rations from the moment of its advent into this vale of tears, and thus adds its mite to the Tiffany pile. In the meantime, the Indians are neglected, half-fed, discontented, and turbulent, until at last, with the vigilant eye peculiar to the savage, the Indians observe the manner in which the Government, through its agent, complies with its sacred obligations.