On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

“Geronimo” sent word that he would come in and surrender at a spot he would designate. This was the “Cañon de los Embudos,” in the northeast corner of Sonora, on the Arizona line. From Fort Bowie, Arizona, to the “Contrabandista” (Smuggler) Springs, in Sonora, is eighty-four miles, following roads and trails; the lofty mountain ranges are very much broken, and the country is decidedly rough except along the road. There are a number of excellent ranchos—that of the Chiricahua Cattle Company, twenty-five miles out from Bowie; that of the same company on Whitewood Creek, where we saw droves of fat beeves lazily browsing under the shady foliage of oak trees; and Joyce’s, or Frank Leslie’s, where we found Lieutenant Taylor and a small detachment of Indian scouts.

The next morning at an early hour we started and drove first to the camp of Captain Allan Smith, Fourth Cavalry, with whom were Lieutenant Erwin and Surgeon Fisher. Captain Smith was living in an adobe hut, upon whose fireplace he had drawn and painted, with no unskilled hand, pictures, grave and comic, which imparted an air of civilization to his otherwise uncouth surrounding. Mr. Thomas Moore had preceded General Crook with a pack-train, and with him were “Alchise,” “Ka-e-ten-na,” a couple of old Chiricahua squaws sent down with all the latest gossip from the women prisoners at Bowie, Antonio Besias and Montoya (the interpreters), and Mr. Strauss, Mayor of Tucson. All these moved forward towards the “Contrabandista” Springs. At the last moment of our stay a photographer, named Fly, from Tombstone, asked permission for himself and his assistant—Mr. Chase—to follow along in the wake of the column; and still another addition, and a very welcome one, was made in the person of José Maria, another Spanish-Apache interpreter, for whom General Crook had sent on account of his perfect familiarity with the language of the Chiricahuas.

San Bernardino Springs lie twelve miles from Silver Springs, and had been occupied by a cattleman named Slaughter, since General Crook had made his expedition into the Sierra Madre. Here I saw a dozen or more quite large mortars of granite, of aboriginal manufacture, used for mashing acorns and other edible nuts; the same kind of household implements are or were to be found in the Green Valley in the northern part of Arizona, and were also used for this same purpose. We left the wheeled conveyances and mounted mules saddled and in waiting, and rode over to the “Contrabandista,” three miles across the boundary. Before going to bed that night, General Crook showed “Ka-e-ten-na” a letter which he had received from Lorenzo Bonito, an Apache pupil in the Carlisle School. “Ka-e-ten-na” had received one himself, and held it out in the light of the fire, mumbling something which the other Apaches fancied was reading, and at which they marvelled greatly; but not content with this proof of travelled culture, “Ka-e-ten-na” took a piece of paper from me, wrote upon it in carefully constructed school-boy capitals, and then handed it back to me to read aloud. I repressed my hilarity and read slowly and solemnly: “MY WIFE HIM NAME KOWTENNAYS WIFE.” “ONE YEAR HAB TREE HUNNERD SIXY-FIBE DAY.” “Ka-e-ten-na” bore himself with the dignity and complacency of a Boston Brahmin; the envy of his comrades was ill-concealed and their surprise undisguised. It wasn’t in writing alone that “Ka-e-ten-na” was changed, but in everything: he had become a white man, and was an apostle of peace, and an imitation of the methods which had made the whites own such a “rancheria” as San Francisco.

The next morning we struck out southeast across a country full of little hills of drift and conglomerate, passing the cañons of the Guadalupe and the Bonito, the former dry, the latter flowing water. A drove of the wild hogs (peccaries or musk hogs, called “jabali” by the Mexicans) ran across our path; instantly the scouts took after them at a full run, “Ka-e-ten-na” shooting one through the head while his horse was going at full speed, and the others securing four or five more; they were not eaten. Approaching the Cañon de los Embudos, our scouts sent up a signal smoke to warn their comrades that they were coming. The eyes of the Apaches are extremely sharp, and “Alchise,” “Mike,” “Ka-e-ten-na,” and others had seen and recognized a party of horsemen advancing towards us for a mile at least before Strauss or I could detect anything coming out of the hills: they were four of our people on horseback riding to meet us. They conducted us to Maus’s camp in the Cañon de los Embudos, in a strong position, on a low mesa overlooking the water, and with plenty of fine grass and fuel at hand. The surrounding country was volcanic, covered with boulders of basalt, and the vegetation was the Spanish bayonet, yucca, and other thorny plants.

The rancheria of the hostile Chiricahuas was in a lava bed, on top of a small conical hill surrounded by steep ravines, not five hundred yards in direct line from Maus, but having between the two positions two or three steep and rugged gulches which served as scarps and counter-scarps. The whole ravine was romantically beautiful: shading the rippling water were smooth, white-trunked, long, and slender sycamores, dark gnarly ash, rough-barked cottonwoods, pliant willows, briery buckthorn, and much of the more tropical vegetation already enumerated. After General Crook had lunched, “Geronimo” and most of the Chiricahua warriors approached our camp; not all came in at once; only a few, and these not all armed. The others were here, there, and everywhere, but all on the qui vive, apprehensive of treachery, and ready to meet it. Not more than half a dozen would enter camp at the same time. “Geronimo” said that he was anxious for a talk, which soon took place in the shade of large cottonwood and sycamore trees. Those present were General Crook, Dr. Davis, Mr. Moore, Mr. Strauss, Lieutenants Maus, Shipp, and Faison; Captain Roberts and his young son Charlie, a bright lad of ten; Mr. Daily and Mr. Carlisle, of the pack-trains; Mr. Fly, the photographer, and his assistant, Mr. Chase; packers Shaw and Foster; a little boy, named Howell, who had followed us over from the San Bernardino ranch, thirty miles; and “Antonio Besias,” “Montoya,” “Concepcion,” “José Maria,” “Alchise,” “Ka-e-ten-na,” “Mike,” and others as interpreters.

I made a verbatim record of the conference, but will condense it as much as possible, there being the usual amount of repetition, compliment, and talking at cross-purposes incident to all similar meetings. “Geronimo” began a long disquisition upon the causes which induced the outbreak from Camp Apache: he blamed “Chato,” “Mickey Free,” and Lieutenant Britton Davis, who, he charged, were unfriendly to him; he was told by an Indian named “Nodiskay” and by the wife of “Mangas” that the white people were going to send for him, arrest and kill him; he had been praying to the Dawn (Tapida) and the Darkness, to the Sun (Chigo-na-ay) and the Sky (Yandestan), and to Assunutlije to help him and put a stop to those bad stories that people were telling about him and which they had put in the papers. (The old chief was here apparently alluding to the demand made by certain of the southwestern journals, at the time of his surrender to Crook in 1883, that he should be hanged.) “I don’t want that any more; when a man tries to do right, such stories ought not to be put in the newspapers. What is the matter that you [General Crook] don’t speak to me? It would be better if you would speak to me and look with a pleasant face; it would make better feeling; I would be glad if you did. I’d be better satisfied if you would talk to me once in a while. Why don’t you look at me and smile at me? I am the same man; I have the same feet, legs, and hands, and the Sun looks down on me a complete man; I wish you would look and smile at me. The Sun, the Darkness, the Winds, are all listening to what we now say. To prove to you that I am now telling you the truth, remember I sent you word that I would come from a place far away to speak to you here, and you see me now. Some have come on horseback and some on foot; if I were thinking bad or if I had done bad, I would never have come here. If it had been my fault would I have come so far to talk with you?” He then expressed his delight at seeing “Ka-e-ten-na” once more: he had lost all hope of ever having that pleasure; that was one reason why he had left Camp Apache.

General Crook: “I have heard what you have said. It seems very strange that more than forty men should be afraid of three; but if you left the reservation for that reason, why did you kill innocent people, sneaking all over the country to do it? What did those innocent people do to you that you should kill them, steal their horses, and slip around in the rocks like coyotes? What had that to do with killing innocent people? There is not a week passes that you don’t hear foolish stories in your own camp; but you are no child—you don’t have to believe them. You promised me in the Sierra Madre that that peace should last, but you have lied about it. When a man has lied to me once, I want some better proof than his own word before I can believe him again. Your story about being afraid of arrest is all bosh; there were no orders to arrest you. You sent up some of your people to kill ‘Chato’ and Lieutenant Davis, and then you started the story that they had killed them, and thus you got a great many of your people to go out. Everything that you did on the reservation is known; there is no use for you to try to talk nonsense. I am no child. You must make up your minds whether you will stay out on the war-path or surrender unconditionally. If you stay out I’ll keep after you and kill the last one if it takes fifty years. You are making a great fuss about seeing ‘Ka-e-ten-na’; over a year ago, I asked you if you wanted me to bring ‘Ka-e-ten-na’ back, but you said ‘no.’ It’s a good thing for you, ‘Geronimo,’ that we didn’t bring ‘Ka-e-ten-na’ back, because ‘Ka-e-ten-na’ has more sense now than all the rest of the Chiricahuas put together. You told me the same sort of a story in the Sierra Madre, but you lied. What evidence have I of your sincerity? How do I know whether or not you are lying to me? Have I ever lied to you? I have said all I have to say; you had better think it over to-night and let me know in the morning.”

During this conference “Geronimo” appeared nervous and agitated; perspiration, in great beads, rolled down his temples and over his hands; and he clutched from time to time at a buckskin thong which he held tightly in one hand. Mr. Fly, the photographer, saw his opportunity, and improved it fully: he took “shots” at “Geronimo” and the rest of the group, and with a “nerve” that would have reflected undying glory on a Chicago drummer, coolly asked “Geronimo” and the warriors with him to change positions, and turn their heads or faces, to improve the negative. None of them seemed to mind him in the least except “Chihuahua,” who kept dodging behind a tree, but was at last caught by the dropping of the slide. Twenty-four warriors listened to the conference or loitered within ear-shot; they were loaded down with metallic ammunition, some of it reloading and some not. Every man and boy in the band wore two cartridge-belts. The youngsters had on brand-new shirts, such as are made and sold in Mexico, of German cotton, and nearly all—young or old—wore new parti-colored blankets, of same manufacture, showing that since the destruction of the village by Crawford, in January, they had refitted themselves either by plunder or purchase.

Mr. Strauss, Mr. Carlisle, “José Maria,” and I were awakened at an early hour in the morning (March 26, 1886), and walked over to the rancheria of the Chiricahuas. “Geronimo” was already up and engaged in an earnest conversation with “Ka-e-ten-na” and nearly all his warriors. We moved from one “jacal” to another, all being constructed alike of the stalks of the Spanish bayonet and mescal and amole, covered with shreds of blanket, canvas, and other textiles. The “daggers” of the Spanish bayonet and mescal were arranged around each “jacal” to form an impregnable little citadel. There were not more than twelve or fifteen of these in the “rancheria,” which was situated upon the apex of an extinct crater, the lava blocks being utilized as breastworks, while the deep seams in the contour of the hill were so many fosses, to be crossed only after rueful slaughter of assailants. A full brigade could not drive out that little garrison, provided its ammunition and repeating rifles held out. They were finely armed with Winchesters and Springfield breech-loading carbines, with any quantity of metallic cartridges.

Physically, the Chiricahuas were in magnificent condition: every muscle was perfect in development and hard as adamant, and one of the young men in a party playing monte was as finely muscled as a Greek statue. A group of little boys were romping freely and carelessly together; one of them seemed to be of Irish and Mexican lineage. After some persuasion he told Strauss and myself that his name was Santiago Mackin, captured at Mimbres, New Mexico; he seemed to be kindly treated by his young companions, and there was no interference with our talk, but he was disinclined to say much and was no doubt thoroughly scared. Beyond showing by the intelligent glance of his eyes that he fully comprehended all that was said to him in both Spanish and English, he took no further notice of us. He was about ten years old, slim, straight, and sinewy, blue-gray eyes, badly freckled, light eyebrows and lashes, much tanned and blistered by the sun, and wore an old and once-white handkerchief on his head which covered it so tightly that the hair could not be seen. He was afterwards returned to his relations in New Mexico.