On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

This was the united testimony of the Grand Jury, corroborated by white witnesses, and to these and kindred causes may be attributed the desolation and bloodshed which have dotted our plains with the graves of murdered victims.

Foreman of the Grand Jury.

The above official report of a United States Grand Jury is about as strong a document as is usually to be found in the dusty archives of courts; to its contents it is not necessary for me to add a single syllable. I prefer to let the intelligent reader form his own conclusions, while I resume the thread of my narrative where I left off in General Crook’s bivouac on the Black River.

The cañon of the Black River is deep and dark, walled in by towering precipices of basalt and lava, the latter lying in loose blocks along the trail down which the foot-sore traveller must descend, leading behind him his equally foot-sore mule. The river was deep and strong, and in the eddies and swirls amid the projecting rocks were hiding some of the rare trout of the Territory, so coy that the patience of the fisherman was exhausted before they could be induced to jump at his bait. The forbidding ruggedness of the mountain flanks was concealed by forests of pine and juniper, which extended for miles along the course of the stream. The music of our pack-train bells was answered by the silvery laughter of squaws and children, as we had with us in this place over one hundred Apaches, many of them following out from Camp Apache to hear the results of the conference.

The Apaches with whom General Crook talked at this place were, in addition to “Alchise” and several others who had been sent out from Camp Apache to notify the members of the tribe hiding in the mountains, “Nagataha,” “A-ha-ni,” “Comanchi,” “Charlie,” “Nawdina,” “Lonni,” “Neta,” “Kulo,” “Kan-tzi-chi,” “Tzi-di-ku,” “Klishe.” The whole subject of their relations with the whites was traversed, and much information elicited. The only facts of importance to a volume of this kind were: the general worthlessness and rascality of the agents who had been placed in charge of them; the constant robbery going on without an attempt at concealment; the selling of supplies and clothing intended for the Indians, to traders in the little towns of Globe, Maxey, and Solomonville; the destruction of the corn and melon fields of the Apaches, who had been making their own living, and the compelling of all who could be forced to do so to depend upon the agent for meagre supplies; the arbitrary punishments inflicted without trial, or without testimony[testimony] of any kind; the cutting down of the reservation limits without reference to the Apaches. Five times had this been done, and much of the most valuable portion had been sequestered; the copper lands on the eastern side were now occupied by the flourishing town of Clifton, while on the western limit Globe and MacMillin had sprung into being.

Coal had been discovered at the head of Deer Creek on the southern extremity, and every influence possible was at work to secure the sequestration of that part of the reservation for speculators, who hoped to be able to sell out at a big profit to the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. The Mormons had trespassed upon the fields already cultivated by the Apaches at Forestdale, and the agent had approached a circle of twenty of the chiefs and head men assembled at the San Carlos, and offered each of them a small bag, containing one hundred dollars—Mexican—and told them that they must agree to sign a paper, giving up all the southern part of the reservation, or troops would be sent to kill them. A silver mine had been discovered, or was alleged to have been discovered, and the agent and some of his pals proposed to form a stock company, and work it off on confiding brethren in the East. In none of the curtailments, as consummated or contemplated, had the interests or feelings of the Indians been consulted.

The rations doled out had shrunk to a surprising degree: one of the shoulders of the small cattle of that region was made to do twenty people for a week; one cup of flour was issued every seven days to each adult. As the Indians themselves said, they were compelled to eat every part of the animal, intestines, hoofs, and horns. Spies were set upon the agency, who followed the wagons laden with the Indian supplies to Globe and the other towns just named, to which they travelled by night, there to unload and transfer to the men who had purchased from the agent or his underlings. One of the Apaches who understood English and Spanish was deputed to speak to the agent upon the matter. It was the experience of Oliver Twist over again when he asked for more. The messenger was put in the guardhouse, where he remained for six months, and was then released without trial or knowing for what he had been imprisoned. In regard to the civilian agents, the Apaches said they ran from bad to worse, being dishonest, indifferent, tyrannical, and generally incompetent. Of Captain Chaffee, of the Sixth Cavalry, who had been for a while in charge at San Carlos, the Apaches spoke in terms of respect, saying that he was very severe in his notions, but a just and honest man, and disposed to be harsh only with those who persisted in making, selling, or drinking the native intoxicant, “tizwin.” The rottenness of the San Carlos Agency extended all the way to Washington, and infolded in its meshes officials of high rank. It is to the lasting credit of Hon. Carl Schurz, then Secretary of the Interior, that when he learned of the delinquencies of certain of his subordinates, he swung his axe without fear or favor, and the heads of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the Inspector-General of the Indian Bureau, and the agent at San Carlos fell into the basket.

At the San Carlos Agency itself, Crook met such men as “Cha-lipun,” “Chimahuevi-sal,” “Navatane,” “Nodikun,” “Santos,” “Skinospozi,” “Pedilkun,” “Binilke,” “Captain Chiquito,” “Eskiminzin,” “Huan-klishe,” and numbers of others; those who had always lived in the hills near the San Carlos were content to live in the country, but such of the number as had been pulled away from the cool climate and pure water of the Cibicu, Carrizo, and other cañons in the vicinity of Camp Apache, and had seen their fields of corn tramped down at the orders of the agent, were full of grievous complaint. The Apache-Yumas and the Apaches are an entirely different people, speaking different languages and resembling each other only in the bitter hostility with which they had waged war against the whites. The young men of the Apache-Yuma bands who attended the conferences, were in full toilet—that is, they were naked from shoulders to waist, had their faces painted with deer’s blood or mescal, their heads done up in a plaster of mud three inches thick, and pendent from the cartilage of the nose wore a ring with a fragment of nacreous shell. General Crook’s own estimate of the results of these conferences, which are entirely too long to be inserted here, is expressed in the following General Orders (Number 43), issued from his headquarters at Fort Whipple on the 5th of October, 1882.

“The commanding general, after making a thorough and exhaustive examination among the Indians of the eastern and southern part of this Territory, regrets to say that he finds among them a general feeling of distrust and want of confidence in the whites, especially the soldiery; and also that much dissatisfaction, dangerous to the peace of the country, exists among them. Officers and soldiers serving in this department are reminded that one of the fundamental principles of the military character is justice to all—Indians as well as white men—and that a disregard of this principle is likely to bring about hostilities, and cause the death of the very persons they are sent here to protect. In all their dealings with the Indians, officers must be careful not only to observe the strictest fidelity, but to make no promises not in their power to carry out; all grievances arising within their jurisdiction should be redressed, so that an accumulation of them may not cause an outbreak.

“Grievances, however petty, if permitted to accumulate, will be like embers that smoulder and eventually break into flame. When officers are applied to for the employment of force against Indians, they should thoroughly satisfy themselves of the necessity for the application, and of the legality of compliance therewith, in order that they may not, through the inexperience of others, or through their own hastiness, allow the troops under them to become the instruments of oppression. There must be no division of responsibility in this matter; each officer will be held to a strict accountability that his actions have been fully authorized by law and justice, and that Indians evincing a desire to enter upon a career of peace shall have no cause for complaint through hasty or injudicious acts of the military.”