“I have the honor to say that the agreement of July 7, 1883, by which ‘the War Department was intrusted with the entire police control of all the Indians on the San Carlos reservation,’ was entered into upon my own expressed willingness to be personally responsible for the good conduct of all the Indians there congregated. My understanding then was, and still is, that I should put them to work and set them to raising corn instead of scalps. This right I have exercised for two years without a word of complaint from any source. During all this time not a single depredation of any kind has been committed. The whole country has looked to me individually for the preservation of order among the Apaches, and the prevention of the outrages from which the southwest frontier has suffered for so many years.
“In pursuance of this understanding, the Chiricahuas, although nominally prisoners, have been to a great extent scattered over the reservation and placed upon farms, the object being to quietly and gradually effect a tribal disintegration and lead them out from a life of vagabondage to one of peace and self-maintenance. They have ramified among the other Apaches to such an extent that it is impossible to exercise jurisdiction over them without exercising it over the others as well. At the same time trusted Indians of the peaceful bands are better enabled to keep the scattered Chiricahuas under constant surveillance, while the incentive to industry and good conduct which the material prosperity of the settled Apaches brings to the notice of the Chiricahuas is so palpable that it is hardly worth while to allude to it. As this right of control has now been withdrawn from me, I must respectfully decline to be any longer held responsible for the behavior of any of the Indians on that reservation. Further, I regret being compelled to say that in refusing to relieve me from this responsibility (as requested in my letter of January 20th), and at the same time taking from me the power by which these dangerous Indians have been controlled and managed and compelled to engage in industrial pursuits, the War Department destroys my influence and does an injustice to me and the service which I represent.”
The indorsement of Major-General John Pope, the commander of the military division, was even more emphatic than the preceding one had been, but for reasons of brevity it is omitted excepting these words.
“If General Crook’s authority over the Indians at San Carlos be curtailed or modified in any way, there are certain to follow very serious results, if not a renewal of Indian wars and depredations in Arizona.”
These papers in due course of time were referred by the War to the Interior Department, in a communication the terminal paragraph of which reads as follows, under date of March 28, 1885:
“I submit for your consideration whether it is not desirable and advisable in the public interests, that the entire control of these Indians be placed under the charge of General Crook, with full authority to prescribe and enforce such regulations for their management as in his judgment may be proper, independently of the duties of the civil agents, and upon this question this Department will appreciate an early expression of your views.
“(Signed) William C. Endicott, Secretary of War.”
One of the principal causes of trouble was the disinclination of the agent to permit the Apaches to excavate and blast an irrigating ditch, which had been levelled and staked out for them by Lieutenant Thomas Dugan, Third Cavalry, one of Captain Crawford’s assistants, the others being Parker, West, and Britton Davis of the Third Cavalry, Elliott of the Fourth Cavalry, and Strother of the First Infantry. Captain Crawford, feeling that his usefulness had gone, applied to be relieved from his duties at the San Carlos and allowed to rejoin his regiment, which application was granted, and his place was taken by Captain Pierce, of the First Infantry, who was also clothed with the powers of the civil agent.
It was too late. The Chiricahuas had perceived that harmony did not exist between the officials of the Government, and they had become restless, suspicious, and desirous of resuming their old career. A small number of them determined to get back to the Sierra Madre at all hazards, but more than three-fourths concluded to remain. On the 17th of May, 1885, one hundred and twenty-four Chiricahuas, of all ages and both sexes, under the command of “Geronimo” and “Nachez,” the two chiefs who had been most energetic in their farm work, broke out from the reservation, but the other three-fourths listened to the counsels of “Chato,” who was unfriendly to “Geronimo” and adhered to the cause of the white man. It has never been ascertained for what special reason, real or assigned, the exodus was made. It is known that for several days and nights before leaving, “Geronimo” and “Nachez,” with some of their immediate followers, had been indulging in a prolonged debauch upon the “tizwin” of the tribe, and it is supposed that fearing the punishment which was always meted out to those caught perpetuating the use of this debasing intoxicant, they in a drunken frenzy sallied out for the Sierra Madre. Lieutenant Britton Davis, Third Cavalry, under whose control the Chiricahuas were, telegraphed at once to General Crook, but the wires were working badly and the message was never delivered. Had the message reached Crook it is not likely that any trouble would have occurred, as he would have arranged the whole business in a moment. To quote his own words as given in the very report under discussion:
“It should not be expected that an Indian who has lived as a barbarian all his life will become an angel the moment he comes on a reservation and promises to behave himself, or that he has that strict sense of honor which a person should have who has had the advantage of civilization all his life, and the benefit of a moral training and character which has been transmitted to him through a long line of ancestors. It requires constant watching and knowledge of their character to keep them from going wrong. They are children in ignorance, not in innocence. I do not wish to be understood as in the least palliating their crimes, but I wish to say a word to stem the torrent of invective and abuse which has almost universally been indulged in against the whole Apache race. This is not strange on the frontier from a certain class of vampires who prey on the misfortunes of their fellow-men, and who live best and easiest in time of Indian troubles. With them peace kills the goose that lays the golden egg. Greed and avarice on the part of the whites—in other words, the almighty dollar—is at the bottom of nine-tenths of all our Indian trouble.”