On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

If from this history the Caucasian can extract any cause of self-laudation I am glad of it: speaking as a censor who has read the evidence with as much impartiality as could be expected from one who started in with the sincere conviction that the only good Indian was a dead Indian, and that the only use to make of him was that of a fertilizer, and who, from studying the documents in the case, and listening little by little to the savage’s own story, has arrived at the conclusion that perhaps Pope Paul III. was right when he solemnly declared that the natives of the New World had souls and must be treated as human beings, and admitted to the sacraments when found ready to receive them, I feel it to be my duty to say that the Apache has found himself in the very best of company when he committed any atrocity, it matters not how vile, and that his complete history, if it could be written by himself, would not be any special cause of self-complacency to such white men as believe in a just God, who will visit the sins of parents upon their children even to the third and the fourth generation.

We have become so thoroughly Pecksniffian in our self-laudation, in our exaltation of our own virtues, that we have become grounded in the error of imagining that the American savage is more cruel in his war customs than other nations of the earth have been; this, as I have already intimated, is a misconception, and statistics, for such as care to dig them out, will prove that I am right. The Assyrians cut their conquered foes limb from limb; the Israelites spared neither parent nor child; the Romans crucified head downward the gladiators who revolted under Spartacus; even in the civilized England of the past century, the wretch convicted of treason was executed under circumstances of cruelty which would have been too much for the nerves of the fiercest of the Apaches or Sioux. Instances in support of what I here assert crop up all over the page of history; the trouble is not to discover them, but to keep them from blinding the memory to matters more pleasant to remember. Certainly, the American aborigine is not indebted to his pale-faced brother, no matter of what nation or race he may be, for lessons in tenderness and humanity.

Premising the few remarks which I will allow myself to make upon this subject, by stating that the territory over which the Apache roamed a conqueror, or a bold and scarcely resisted raider, comprehended the whole of the present Territories of Arizona and New Mexico, one half of the State of Texas—the half west of San Antonio—and the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua, with frequent raids which extended as far as Durango, Jalisco, and even on occasion the environs of Zacatecas, I can readily make the reader understand that an area greater than that of the whole German Empire and France combined was laid prostrate under the heel of a foe as subtle, as swift, as deadly, and as uncertain as the rattle-snake or the mountain lion whose homes he shared.

From the moment the Castilian landed on the coast of the present Mexican Republic, there was no such thing thought of as justice for the American Indian until the authorities of the Church took the matter in hand, and compelled an outward regard for the rights which even animals have conceded to them.

Christopher Columbus, whom some very worthy people are thinking of having elevated to the dignity of a saint, made use of bloodhounds for running down the inhabitants of Hispaniola.

The expedition of D’Ayllon to the coast of Chicora, now known as South Carolina, repaid the kind reception accorded by the natives by the basest treachery; two ship-loads of the unfortunates enticed on board were carried off to work in the mines of the invaders.

Girolamo Benzoni, one of the earliest authors, describes the very delightful way the Spaniards had of making slaves of all the savages they could capture, and branding them with a red-hot iron on the hip or cheek, so that their new owners could recognize them the more readily.

Cabeza de Vaca and his wretched companions carried no arms, but met with nothing but an ovation from the simple-minded and grateful natives, whose ailments they endeavored to cure by prayer and the sign of the cross.

Yet, Vaca tells us, that as they drew near the settlements of their own countrymen they found the whole country in a tumult, due to the efforts the Castilians were making to enslave the populace, and drive them by fire and sword to the plantations newly established. Humboldt is authority for the statement that the Apaches resolved upon a war of extermination upon the Spaniards, when they learned that all their people taken captive by the king’s forces had been driven off, to die a lingering death upon the sugar plantations of Cuba or in the mines of Guanaxuato.

Drawing nearer to our own days, we read the fact set down in the clearest and coldest black and white, that the state governments of Sonora and Chihuahua had offered and paid rewards of three hundred dollars for each scalp of an Apache that should be presented at certain designated headquarters, and we read without a tremor of horror that individuals, clad in the human form—men like the Englishman Johnson, or the Irishman Glanton—entered into contracts with the governor of Chihuahua to do such bloody work.