On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

Others of the party were killed and wounded, and still others, with the ferocity of tigers, fought their way out through our feeble lines, and made their way to the point of rendezvous at the head of the Santa Maria. Word was at once sent to them by members of their own tribe that they must come in and surrender at once, or else the whole party must expect to be punished for what was originally the crime of a few. No answer was received, and their punishment was arranged for; they were led to suppose that the advance was to be made from Date Creek, but, after letting them alone for several weeks—just long enough to allay to some extent their suspicions—Crook pushed out a column of the Fifth Cavalry under command of Colonel Julius W. Mason, and by forced marches under the guidance of a strong detachment of Hualpai scouts, the encampment of the hostiles was located just where the Hualpais said it would be, at the “Muchos Cañones,” a point where five cañons united to form the Santa Maria; and there the troops and the scouts attacked suddenly and with spirit, and in less than no time everything was in our hands, and the enemy had to record a loss of more than forty. It was a terrible blow, struck at the beginning of winter and upon a band which had causelessly slaughtered a stageful of our best people, not as an act of war, which would have been excusable, but as an act of highway robbery, by sneaking off the reservation where the Government was allowing them rations and clothing in quantity sufficient to eke out their own supplies of wild food. This action of the “Muchos Cañones” had a very beneficial effect upon the campaign which began against the Apaches in the Tonto Basin a few weeks later. It humbled the pride of those of the Apache-Yumas who had never been in earnest in their professions of peace, and strengthened the hands of the chiefs like “Jam-aspi,” “Ochacama,” “Hoch-a-chi-waca,” “Quaca-thew-ya,” and “Tom,” who were sincerely anxious to accept the new condition of things. There was a third element in this tribe, led by a chief of ability, “Chimahuevi-Sal,” which did not want to fight, if fighting could be avoided, but did not care much for the new white neighbors whom they saw crowding in upon them. “Chimahuevi-Sal” made his escape from the reservation with about one hundred and fifty of his followers, intending to go down on the south side of the Mexican line and find an asylum among the Cocopahs. They were pursued and brought back without bloodshed by Captain James Burns, a brave and humane officer of the Fifth Cavalry, who died sixteen years ago worn out by the hard work demanded in Arizona.

It does not seem just, at first sight, to deny to Indians the right to domicile themselves in another country if they so desire, and if a peaceful life can be assured them; but, in the end, it will be found that constant visiting will spring up between the people living in the old home and the new, and all sorts of complications are sure to result. The Apache-Mojaves and the Apache-Tontos, living in the Tonto Basin, misapprehending the reasons for the cessation of scouting against them, had become emboldened to make a series of annoying and destructive attacks upon the ranchos in the Agua Fria Valley, upon those near Wickenburg, and those near what is now the prosperous town of Phœnix, in the Salt River Valley. Their chiefs “Delt-che” (The Red Ant) and “Cha-lipun” (The Buckskin-colored Hat) were brave, bold, able, and enterprising, and rightfully regarded as among the worst enemies the white men ever had. The owners of two of the ranchos attacked were very peculiar persons. One of them, Townsend, of the Dripping Springs in the Middle Agua Fria, was supposed to be a half-breed Cherokee from the Indian Nation; he certainly had all the looks—the snapping black eyes, the coal-black, long, lank hair, and the swarthy skin—of the full-blooded aborigine, with all the cunning, shrewdness, contempt for privation and danger, and ability to read “sign,” that distinguish the red men. It was his wont at the appearance of the new moon, when raiding parties of Apaches might be expected, to leave his house, make a wide circuit in the mountains and return, hoping to be able to “cut” the trail of some prowlers; if he did, he would carefully secrete himself in the rocks on the high hills overlooking his home, and wait until the Apaches would make some movement to let him discover where they were and what they intended doing.

He was a dead shot, cunning as a snake, wily and brave, and modest at the same time, and the general belief was that he had sent twenty-seven Apaches to the Happy Hunting Grounds. Townsend and Boggs, his next-door neighbor who lived a mile or two from him, had made up their minds that they would “farm” in the fertile bottom lands of the Agua Fria; the Apaches had made up their minds that they should not; hence it goes without saying that neither Townsend nor Boggs, nor any of their hired men, ever felt really lonesome in the seclusion of their lovely valley. The sequel to this story is the sequel to all such stories about early Arizona: the Apaches “got him” at last, and my friend Townsend has long been sleeping his last sleep under the shadow of a huge bowlder within a hundred yards of his home at the “Dripping Springs.”

The antipodes of Townsend’s rancho, as its proprietor was the antipodes of Townsend himself, was the “station” of Darrel Duppa at the “sink” of the same Agua Fria, some fifty miles below. Darrel Duppa was one of the queerest specimens of humanity, as his ranch was one of the queerest examples to be found in Arizona, and I might add in New Mexico and Sonora as well. There was nothing superfluous about Duppa in the way of flesh, neither was there anything about the “station” that could be regarded as superfluous, either in furniture or ornament. Duppa was credited with being the wild, harum-scarum son of an English family of respectability, his father having occupied a position in the diplomatic or consular service of Great Britain, and the son having been born in Marseilles. Rumor had it that Duppa spoke several languages—French, Spanish, Italian, German—that he understood the classics, and that, when sober, he used faultless English. I can certify to his employment of excellent French and Spanish, and what had to my ears the sound of pretty good Italian, and I know too that he was hospitable to a fault, and not afraid of man or devil. Three bullet wounds, received in three different fights with the Apaches, attested his grit, although they might not be accepted as equally conclusive evidence of good judgment. The site of his “location” was in the midst of the most uncompromising piece of desert in a region which boasts of possessing more desert land than any other territory in the Union. The surrounding hills and mesas yielded a perennial crop of cactus, and little of anything else.

The dwelling itself was nothing but a “ramada,” a term which has already been defined as a roof of branches; the walls were of rough, unplastered wattle work, of the thorny branches of the ironwood, no thicker than a man’s finger, which were lashed by thongs of raw-hide to horizontal slats of cottonwood; the floor of the bare earth, of course—that almost went without saying in those days—and the furniture rather too simple and meagre even for Carthusians. As I recall the place to mind, there appears the long, unpainted table of pine, which served for meals or gambling, or the rare occasions when any one took into his head the notion to write a letter. This room constituted the ranch in its entirety. Along the sides were scattered piles of blankets, which about midnight were spread out as couches for tired laborers or travellers. At one extremity, a meagre array of Dutch ovens, flat-irons, and frying-pans revealed the “kitchen,” presided over by a hirsute, husky-voiced gnome, half Vulcan, half Centaur, who, immersed for most of the day in the mysteries of the larder, at stated intervals broke the stillness with the hoarse command: “Hash pile! Come a’ runnin’!” There is hardly any use to describe the rifles, pistols, belts of ammunition, saddles, spurs, and whips, which lined the walls, and covered the joists and cross-beams; they were just as much part and parcel of the establishment as the dogs and ponies were. To keep out the sand-laden wind, which blew fiercely down from the north when it wasn’t blowing down with equal fierceness from the south, or the west, or the east, strips of canvas or gunny-sacking were tacked on the inner side of the cactus branches.

My first visit to this Elysium was made about midnight, and I remember that the meal served up was unique if not absolutely paralyzing on the score of originality. There was a great plenty of Mexican figs in raw-hide sacks, fairly good tea, which had the one great merit of hotness, and lots and lots of whiskey; but there was no bread, as the supply of flour had run short, and, on account of the appearance of Apaches during the past few days, it had not been considered wise to send a party over to Phœnix for a replenishment. A wounded Mexican, lying down in one corner, was proof that the story was well founded. All the light in the ranch was afforded by a single stable lantern, by the flickering flames from the cook’s fire, and the glinting stars. In our saddle-bags we had several slices of bacon and some biscuits, so we did not fare half so badly as we might have done. What caused me most wonder was why Duppa had ever concluded to live in such a forlorn spot; the best answer I could get to my queries was that the Apaches had attacked him at the moment he was approaching the banks of the Agua Fria at this point, and after he had repulsed them he thought he would stay there merely to let them know he could do it. This explanation was satisfactory to every one else, and I had to accept it.

We should, before going farther, cast a retrospective glance upon the southern part of the territory, where the Apaches were doing some energetic work in be-devilling the settlers; there were raids upon Montgomery’s at “Tres Alamos,” the “Cienaga,” and other places not very remote from Tucson, and the Chiricahuas apparently had come up from Sonora bent upon a mission of destruction. They paid particular attention to the country about Fort Bowie and the San Simon, and had several brushes with Captain Gerald Russell’s Troop “K” of the Third Cavalry. While watering his horses in the narrow, high, rock-walled defile in the Dragoon Mountains, known on the frontier at that time as “Cocheis’s Stronghold,” Russell was unexpectedly assailed by Cocheis and his band, the first intimation of the presence of the Chiricahuas being the firing of the shot, which, striking the guide, Bob Whitney, in the head, splashed his brains out upon Russell’s face. Poor Bob Whitney was an unusually handsome fellow, of great courage and extended service against the Apaches; he had been wounded scores of times, I came near saying, but to be exact, he had been wounded at least half a dozen times by both bullets and arrows. He and Maria Jilda Grijalva, an escaped Mexican prisoner, who knew every foot of the southern Apache country, had been guides for the commands of Winters and Russell, and had seen about as much hard work as men care to see in a whole generation.

So far as the army was concerned, the most distressing of all these skirmishes and ambuscades was that in which Lieutenant Reid T. Steward lost his life in company with Corporal Black, of his regiment, the Fifth Cavalry. They were ambushed near the spring in the Davidson Cañon, twenty-five or thirty miles from Tucson, and both were killed at the same moment.

CHAPTER X.

CROOK BEGINS HIS CAMPAIGN—THE WINTER MARCH ACROSS THE MOGOLLON PLATEAU—THE GREAT PINE BELT—BOBBY-DOKLINNY, THE MEDICINE MAN—COOLEY AND HIS APACHE WIFE—THE APACHE CHIEF ESQUINOSQUIZN—THE APACHE GUIDE NANAAJE—THE FEAST OF DEAD-MULE MEAT—THE FIGHT IN THE CAVE IN THE SALT RIVER CAÑON—THE DEATH-CHANT—THE CHARGE—THE DYING MEDICINE MAN—THE SCENE IN THE CAVE.