On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

At old Camp Grant, the operations of the campaign began in earnest; in two or three days the troops at that post were ready to move out under command of Major Brown, of the Fifth Cavalry, and the general plan of the campaign unfolded itself. It was to make a clean sweep of the Tonto Basin, the region in which the hostiles had always been so successful in eluding and defying the troops, and this sweep was to be made by a number of converging columns, each able to look out for itself, each provided with a force of Indian scouts, each followed by a pack-train with all needful supplies, and each led by officers physically able to go almost anywhere. After the centre of the Basin had been reached, if there should be no decisive action in the meantime, these commands were to turn back and break out in different directions, scouring the country, so that no nook or corner should be left unexamined. The posts were stripped of the last available officer and man, the expectation being that, by closely pursuing the enemy, but little leisure would be left him for making raids upon our settlements, either military or civil, and that the constant movements of the various detachments would always bring some within helping distance of beleaguered stations.

General Crook kept at the front, moving from point to point, along the whole periphery, and exercising complete personal supervision of the details, but leaving the movements from each post under the control of the officers selected for the work. Major George M. Randall, Twenty-third Infantry, managed affairs at Camp Apache, having under him as chief of scouts, Mr. C. E. Cooley, of whom mention has just been made. Major George F. Price, Fifth Cavalry, commanded from Date Creek. Major Alexander MacGregor, First Cavalry, had the superintendence of the troops to move out from Fort Whipple; Colonel Julius W. Mason, Fifth Cavalry, of those to work down from Camp Hualpai, while those of the post of Camp MacDowell were commanded by Captain James Burns, Fifth Cavalry. Colonel C. C. C. Carr, First Cavalry, led those from Verde. All these officers were experienced, and of great discretion and good judgment. Each and all did excellent work and struck blow after blow upon the savages.

Before starting out, General Crook’s instructions were communicated to both Indian scouts and soldiers at Camp Grant; as they were of the same tenor as those already given at other posts, I have not thought it necessary to repeat them for each post. Briefly, they directed that the Indians should be induced to surrender in all cases where possible; where they preferred to fight, they were to get all the fighting they wanted, and in one good dose instead of in a number of petty engagements, but in either case were to be hunted down until the last one in hostility had been killed or captured. Every effort should be made to avoid the killing of women and children. Prisoners of either sex should be guarded from ill-treatment of any kind. When prisoners could be induced to enlist as scouts, they should be so enlisted, because the wilder the Apache was, the more he was likely to know of the wiles and stratagems of those still out in the mountains, their hiding-places and intentions. No excuse was to be accepted for leaving a trail; if horses played out, the enemy must be followed on foot, and no sacrifice should be left untried to make the campaign short, sharp, and decisive.

Lieutenant and Brevet Major William J. Ross, Twenty-first Infantry, and myself were attached to the command of Major Brown, to operate from Camp Grant, through the Mescal, Pinal, Superstition, and Matitzal ranges, over to Camp MacDowell and there receive further instructions. Before leaving the post, I had to record a very singular affair which goes to show how thoroughly self-satisfied and stupid officialism can always become if properly encouraged. There was a Roman Catholic priest dining at our mess—Father Antonio Jouvenceau—who had been sent out from Tucson to try and establish a mission among the bands living in the vicinity of Camp Apache. There wasn’t anything in the shape of supplies in the country outside of the army stores, and of these the missionary desired permission to buy enough to keep himself alive until he could make other arrangements, or become accustomed to the wild food of such friends as he might make among the savages. Every request he made was refused on the ground that there was no precedent. I know that there was “no precedent” for doing anything to bring savages to a condition of peace, but I have never ceased to regret that there was not, because I feel sure that had the slightest encouragement been given to Father Antonio or to a handful of men like him, the wildest of the Apaches might have been induced to listen to reason, and there would have been no such expensive wars. A missionary could not well be expected to load himself down with supplies and carry them on his own back while he was hunting favorable specimens of the Indians upon whom to make an impression. There were numbers of Mexican prisoners among the Apaches who retained enough respect for the religion of their childhood to be from first acquaintance the firm and devoted friends of the new-comer, and once set on a good basis in the Apache villages, the rest would have been easy. This, however, is merely conjecture on my part.

The new recruits from among the Apaches were under the command of a chief responding to the name of “Esquinosquizn,” meaning “Bocon” or Big Mouth. He was crafty, cruel, daring, and ambitious; he indulged whenever he could in the intoxicant “Tizwin,” made of fermented corn and really nothing but a sour beer which will not intoxicate unless the drinker subject himself, as the Apache does, to a preliminary fast of from two to four days. This indulgence led to his death at San Carlos some months later. The personnel of Brown’s command was excellent; it represented soldiers of considerable experience and inured to all the climatic variations to be expected in Arizona, and nowhere else in greater degree. There were two companies of the Fifth Cavalry, and a detachment of thirty Apache scouts, that being as many as could be apportioned to each command in the initial stages of the campaign. Captain Alfred B. Taylor, Lieutenant Jacob Almy, Lieutenant William J. Ross, and myself constituted the commissioned list, until, at a point in the Superstition Mountains, we were joined by Captain James Burns and First Lieutenant Earl D. Thomas, Fifth Cavalry, with Company G of that regiment, and a large body—not quite one hundred—of Pima Indians. In addition to the above we had Archie Macintosh, Joe Felmer, and Antonio Besias as guides and interpreters to take charge of the scouts. Mr. James Dailey, a civilian volunteer, was also with the command. The pack train carried along rations for thirty days, and there was no lack of flour, bacon, beans, coffee, with a little chile colorado for the packers, and a small quantity of dried peaches and chocolate, of which many persons in that country made use in preference to coffee. We were all cut down to the lowest notch in the matter of clothing, a deprivation of which no one complained, since the loss was not severely felt amid such surroundings.

It was now that the great amount of information which General Crook had personally absorbed in regard to Arizona came of the best service. He had been in constant conference with the Apache scouts and interpreters concerning all that was to be done and all that was positively known of the whereabouts of the hostiles; especially did he desire to find the “rancheria” of the chief “Chuntz,” who had recently murdered in cold blood, at Camp Grant, a Mexican boy too young to have been a cause of rancor to any one. It may be said in one word that the smallest details of this expedition were arranged by General Crook in person before we started down the San Pedro. He had learned from “Esquinosquizn” of the site of the rancheria supposed to be occupied by “Deltchay” in the lofty range called the “Four Peaks” or the “Matitzal,” the latter by the Indians and the former by the Americans, on account of there being the distinctive feature of four peaks of great elevation overlooking the country for hundreds of miles in all directions. One of the most important duties confided to our force was the destruction of this rancheria if we could find it. These points were not generally known at the time we left Grant, neither was it known that one of our Apache guides, “Nantaje,” christened “Joe” by the soldiers, had been raised in that very stronghold, and deputed to conduct us to it. First, we were to look up “Chuntz,” if we could, and wipe him out, and then do our best to clean up the stronghold of “Deltchay.”

I will avoid details of this march because it followed quite closely the line of the first and second scouts made by Lieutenant Cushing, the preceding year, which have been already outlined. We followed down the dusty bottom of the San Pedro, through a jungle of mesquite and sage brush, which always seem to grow on land which with irrigation will yield bountifully of wheat, and crossed over to the feeble streamlet marked on the maps as Deer Creek. We crossed the Gila at a point where the Mescal and Pinal ranges seemed to come together, but the country was so broken that it was hard to tell to which range the hills belonged. The trails were rough, and the rocks were largely granites, porphyry, and pudding stones, often of rare beauty. There was an abundance of mescal, cholla cactus, manzanita, Spanish bayonet, pitahaya, and scrub oak so long as we remained in the foothills, but upon gaining the higher levels of the Pinal range, we found first juniper, and then pine of good dimensions and in great quantity. The scenery upon the summit of the Pinal was exhilarating and picturesque, but the winds were bitter and the ground deep with snow, so that we made no complaint when the line of march led us to a camp on the northwest extremity, where we found water trickling down the flanks of the range into a beautiful narrow cañon, whose steep walls hid us from the prying gaze of the enemy’s spies, and also protected from the wind; the slopes were green with juicy grama grass, and dotted with oaks which gracefully arranged themselves in clusters of twos and threes, giving grateful shade to men and animals. Far above us waved the branches of tall pines and cedars, and at their feet could be seen the banks of snow, but in our own position the weather was rather that of the south temperate or the northern part of the torrid zone.

This rapid change of climate made scouting in Arizona very trying. During this campaign we were often obliged to leave the warm valleys in the morning and climb to the higher altitudes and go into bivouac upon summits where the snow was hip deep, as on the Matitzal, the Mogollon plateau, and the Sierra Ancha. To add to the discomfort, the pine was so thoroughly soaked through with snow and rain that it would not burn, and unless cedar could be found, the command was in bad luck. Our Apache scouts, under Macintosh, Felmer, and Besias, were kept from twelve to twenty-four hours in advance of the main body, but always in communication, the intention being to make use of them to determine the whereabouts of the hostiles, but to let the soldiers do the work of cleaning them out. It was difficult to restrain the scouts, who were too fond of war to let slip any good excuse for a fight, and consequently Macintosh had two or three skirmishes of no great consequence, but which showed that his scouts could be depended upon both as trailers and as a fighting force. In one of these, the village or “rancheria” of “Chuntz,” consisting of twelve “jacales,” was destroyed with a very full winter stock of food, but only one of the party was wounded, and all escaped, going in the direction of the Cañon of the Rio Salado or Salt River. The advance of the scouts had been discovered by a squaw, who gave the alarm and enabled the whole party to escape.

A day or two after this, the scouts again struck the trail of the enemy, and had a sharp brush with them, killing several and capturing three. The Apaches had been making ready to plant during the coming spring, had dug irrigating ditches, and had also accumulated a great store of all kinds of provisions suited to their needs, among others a full supply of baked mescal, as well as of the various seeds of grass, sunflower, and the beans of mesquite which form so important a part of their food. As well as could be determined, this was on or near the head of the little stream marked on the maps as Raccoon Creek, on the south slope of the Sierra Ancha. Close by was a prehistoric ruin, whose wall of rubble stone was still three feet high. On the other (the south) side of the Salt River we passed under a well-preserved cliff-dwelling in the cañon of Pinto Creek, a place which I have since examined carefully, digging out sandals of the “palmilla” fibre, dried mescal, corn husks and other foods, and some small pieces of textile fabrics, with one or two axes and hammers of stone, arrows, and the usual débris to be expected in such cases. We worked our way over into the edge of the Superstition Mountains. There was very little to do, and it was evident that whether through fear of our own and the other commands which must have been seen, or from a desire to concentrate during the cold weather, the Apaches had nearly all abandoned that section of country, and sought refuge somewhere else.

The Apache scouts, however, insisted that we were to find a “heap” of Indians “poco tiempo” (very soon). By their advice, most of our officers and men had provided themselves with moccasins which would make no noise in clambering over the rocks or down the slippery trails where rolling stones might arouse the sleeping enemy. The Apaches, I noticed, stuffed their moccasins with dry hay, and it was also apparent that they knew all the minute points about making themselves comfortable with small means. Just as soon as they reached camp, those who were not posted as pickets or detailed to go off on side scouts in small parties of five and six, would devote their attention to getting their bed ready for the night; the grass in the vicinity would be plucked in handfuls, and spread out over the smoothed surface upon which two or three of the scouts purposed sleeping together; a semicircle of good-sized pieces of rock made a wind break, and then one or two blankets would be spread out, and upon that the three would recline, huddling close together, each wrapped up in his own blanket. Whenever fires were allowed, the Apaches would kindle small ones, and lie down close to them with feet towards the flame. According to the theory of the Indian, the white man makes so great a conflagration that, besides alarming the whole country, he makes it so hot that no one can draw near, whereas the Apache, with better sense, contents himself with a small collection of embers, over which he can if necessary crouch and keep warm.