On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

Or it may so happen the Apache prefers, for reasons best known to himself, to await the coming of night, when he will sneak in upon the herd and stampede it, and set the soldiery on foot, or drive a few arrows against the sentinels, if he can discern where they may be moving in the gloom.

All sorts of signals are made for the information of other parties of Apaches. At times, it is an inscription or pictograph incised in the smooth bark of a sycamore; at others, a tracing upon a smooth-faced rock under a ledge which will protect it from the elements; or it may be a knot tied in the tall sacaton or in the filaments of the yucca; or one or more stones placed in the crotch of a limb, or a sapling laid against another tree, or a piece of buckskin carelessly laid over a branch. All these, placed as agreed upon, afford signals to members of their own band, and only Apaches or savages with perceptions as keen would detect their presence.

When information of some important happening is to be communicated to a distance and at once, and the party is situated upon the summit of a mountain chain or in other secure position, a fire is lighted of the cones of the resinous pine, and the smoke is instantaneously making its way far above the tracery of the foliage. A similar method is employed when they desire to apprise kinsfolk of the death of relatives; in the latter case the brush “jacal” of the deceased—the whole village, in fact—is set on fire and reduced to ashes.

The Apache was a hard foe to subdue, not because he was full of wiles and tricks and experienced in all that pertains to the art of war, but because he had so few artificial wants and depended almost absolutely upon what his great mother—Nature—stood ready to supply. Starting out upon the war-path, he wore scarcely any clothing save a pair of buckskin moccasins reaching to mid-thigh and held to the waist by a string of the same material; a piece of muslin encircling the loins and dangling down behind about to the calves of the legs, a war-hat of buckskin surmounted by hawk and eagle plumage, a rifle (the necessary ammunition in belt) or a bow, with the quiver filled with arrows reputed to be poisonous, a blanket thrown over the shoulders, a watertight wicker jug to serve as a canteen, and perhaps a small amount of “jerked” meat, or else of “pinole” or parched corn-meal.

That is all, excepting his sacred relics and “medicine,” for now is the time when the Apache is going to risk no failure by neglecting the precaution needed to get all his ghosts and gods on his side. He will have sacred cords of buckskin and shells, sacred sashes ornamented with the figures of the powers invoked to secure him success; possibly, if he be very opulent, he may have bought from a “medicine man” a sacred shirt, which differs from the sash merely in being bigger and in having more figures; and a perfect menagerie of amulets and talismans and relics of all kinds, medicine arrows, pieces of crystal, petrified wood, little bags of the sacred meal called “hoddentin,” fragments of wood which has been struck by lightning, and any and all kinds of trash which his fancy or his fears have taught him are endowed with power over the future and the supernatural. Like the Roman he is not content with paying respect to his own gods; he adopts those of all the enemies who yield to his power. In many and many an instance I have seen dangling from the neck, belt or wrist of an Apache warrior the cross, the medals, the Agnus Dei or the rosary of the Mexican victims whom his rifle or arrow had deprived of life.

To his captives the Apache was cruel, brutal, merciless; if of full age, he wasted no time with them, unless on those rare occasions when he wanted to extract some information about what his pursuers were doing or contemplated doing, in which case death might be deferred for a few brief hours. Where the captive was of tender years, unable to get along without a mother’s care, it was promptly put out of its misery by having its brains dashed against a convenient rock or tree; but where it happened that the raiders had secured boys or girls sufficiently old to withstand the hardships of the new life, they were accepted into the band and treated as kindly as if Apache to the manner-born.

It was often a matter of interest to me to note the great amount of real, earnest, affectionate good-will that had grown up between the Mexican captives and the other members of the tribe; there were not a few of these captives who, upon finding a chance, made their escape back to their own people, but in nearly all cases they have admitted to me that their life among the savages was one of great kindness, after they had learned enough of the language to understand and be understood.

Many of these captives have risen to positions of influence among the Apaches. There are men and women like “Severiano,” “Concepcion,” “Antonio,” “Jesus Maria,” “Victor,” “Francesca,” “Maria,” and others I could name, who have amassed property and gained influence among the people who led them into slavery.

A brief account of the more prominent of foods entering into the dietary of the Apache may not be out of place, as it will serve to emphasize my remarks concerning his ability to practically snap his fingers at any attempts to reduce him to starvation by the ordinary methods. The same remarks, in a minor degree, apply to all our wilder tribes. Our Government had never been able to starve any of them until it had them placed on a reservation. The Apache was not so well provided with meat as he might have been, because the general area of Arizona was so arid and barren that it could not be classed as a game country; nevertheless, in the higher elevations of the Sierra Mogollon and the San Francisco, there were to be found plenty of deer, some elk, and, in places like the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, the Cañon of the Rio Salado, and others, there were some Rocky Mountain sheep; down on the plains or deserts, called in the Spanish idiom “playas” or “beaches,” there were quite large herds of antelope, and bears were encountered in all the high and rocky places.

Wild turkeys flock in the timbered ranges, while on the lower levels, in the thickets of sage-brush and mesquite, quail are numerous enough to feed Moses and all the Israelites were they to come back to life again. The jack-rabbit is caught by being “rounded up,” and the field-rat adds something to the meat supply. The latter used to be caught in a very peculiar way. The rat burrowed under a mesquite or other bush, and cast up in a mound all the earth excavated from the spot selected for its dwelling; and down through this cut or bored five or six entrances, so that any intruder, such as a snake, would be unable to bar the retreat of the inmates, who could seek safety through some channel other than the one seized upon by the invader.