On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

The fine condition of our pack-trains awakened continued interest, and evoked constant praise; the mules had followed us over some of the worst trails in Arizona, and were still as fresh as when they left Grant, and all in condition for the most arduous service with the exception of two, one of which ate, or was supposed to have eaten, of the insect known as the “Compra mucho” or the “Niña de la Tierra,” which is extremely poisonous to those animals which swallow it in the grass to which it clings. This mule died. Another was bitten on the lip by a rattlesnake, and though by the prompt application of a poultice of the weed called the “golondrina” we managed to save its life for a few days, it too died. On Christmas Day we were joined by Captain James Burns, Fifth Cavalry, with Lieutenant Earl D. Thomas, of the same regiment, and a command consisting of forty enlisted men of Company G, and a body of not quite one hundred Pima Indians. They had been out from MacDowell for six days, and had crossed over the highest point of the Matitzal range, and had destroyed a “rancheria,” killing six and capturing two; one, a squaw, sent in to MacDowell, and the other, a small but very bright and active boy, whom the men had promptly adopted, and upon whom had been bestowed the name “Mike” Burns, which he has retained to this day. This boy, then not more than six or seven years old, was already an expert in the use of the bow and arrow, and, what suited Captain Burns much better, he could knock down quail with stones, and add much to the pleasures of a very meagre mess, as no shooting was allowed. During the past twenty years, Mike Burns has, through the interposition of General Crook, been sent to Carlisle, and there received the rudiments of an education; we have met at the San Carlos Agency, and talked over old times, and I have learned what was not then known, that in Burns’s fight with the band on the summit of the Four Peaks, seven of the latter were killed, and the men and women who escaped, under the leadership of Mike’s own father, hurried to the stronghold in the cañon of the Salt River, where they were all killed by our command a few days later. On the evening of the 27th of December, 1872, we were bivouacked in a narrow cañon called the Cottonwood Creek, flowing into the Salado at the eastern base of the Matitzal, when Major Brown announced to his officers that the object for which General Crook had sent out this particular detachment was almost attained; that he had been in conference with “Nantaje,” one of our Apache scouts, who had been brought up in the cave in the cañon of the Salt River, and that he had expressed a desire to lead us there, provided we made up our minds to make the journey before day-dawn, as the position of the enemy was such that if we should be discovered on the trail, not one of our party would return alive. The Apaches are familiar with the stars, and “Nantaje” had said that if we were to go, he wanted to start out with the first appearance above the eastern horizon of a certain star with which he was acquainted.

Brown gave orders that every officer and man who was not in the best condition for making a severe march and climb over rugged mountains, should stay with the pack-trains and be on the watch for any prowling band of the enemy. First, there was made a pile of the aparejos and supplies which could serve in emergency as a breastwork for those to remain behind; then a picket line was stretched, to which the mules and horses could be tied, and kept under shelter from fire; and lastly, every officer and man looked carefully to his weapons and ammunition, for we were to start out on foot and climb through the rough promontory of the Matitzal into the Salt River Cañon, and on to the place in which we were to come upon the cave inhabited by the hostiles of whom we were in search. Every belt was filled with cartridges, and twenty extra were laid away in the blanket which each wore slung across his shoulders, and in which were placed the meagre allowance of bread, bacon, and coffee taken as provision, with the canteen of water. The Apache scouts had asked the privilege of cooking and eating the mule which had died during the morning, and as the sky had clouded and the light of small fires could not well be seen, Major Brown consented, and they stuffed themselves to their hearts’ content, in a meal which had not a few points of resemblance to the “Festins à manger tout,” mentioned by Father Lafitau, Parkman, and other writers. Before eight o’clock, we were on our way, “Nantaje” in the van, and all marching briskly towards the summit of the high mesas which enclosed the cañon.

The night became extremely cold, and we were only too glad of the opportunity of pushing ahead with vigor, and regretted very much to hear the whispered command to halt and lie down until the last of the rear-guard could be heard from. The Apache scouts in front had detected lights in advance, and assured Major Brown that they must be from the fires of the Indians of whom we were in quest. While they went ahead to search and determine exactly what was the matter, the rest of us were compelled to lie prone to the ground, so as to afford the least chance to the enemy to detect any signs of life among us; no one spoke beyond a whisper, and even when the cold compelled any of the party to cough, it was done with the head wrapped up closely in a blanket or cape. “Nantaje,” “Bocon,” and others were occupied with the examination of the track into which the first-named had stepped, as he and Brown were walking ahead; it seemed to the Indian to be the footprint of a man, but when all had nestled down close to the earth, covered heads over with blankets, and struck a match, it proved to be the track of a great bear, which closely resembles that of a human being. Within a few moments, Felmer, Archie, and the others, sent on to discover the cause of the fires seen ahead, returned with the intelligence that the Apaches had just been raiding upon the white and Pima Indian settlements in the valley of the Gila, and had driven off fifteen horses and mules, which, being barefoot and sore from climbing the rocky trail up the face of the mountain, had been abandoned in a little nook where there was a slight amount of grass and a little water. Worst news of all, there had been four large “wickyups” in the same place which had just been vacated, and whether on account of discovering our approach or not it was hard to say.

We were becoming rather nervous by this time, as we still had in mind what “Nantaje” had said the previous evening about killing the last of the enemy, or being compelled to fight our own way back. “Nantaje” was thoroughly composed, and smiled when some of the party insinuated a doubt about the existence of any large “rancheria” in the neighborhood. “Wait and see,” was all the reply he would vouchsafe.

By advice of “Nantaje,” Major Brown ordered Lieutenant William J. Ross to proceed forward on the trail with twelve or fifteen of the best shots among the soldiers, and such of the packers as had obtained permission to accompany the command. “Nantaje” led them down the slippery, rocky, dangerous trail in the wall of the gloomy cañon, which in the cold gray light of the slowly creeping dawn, and under the gloom of our surroundings, made us think of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. “They ought to be very near here,” said Major Brown. “Good Heavens! what is all that?” It was a noise equal to that of a full battery of six-pounders going off at once. Brown knew that something of the greatest consequence had happened, and he wasn’t the man to wait for the arrival of messengers; he ordered me to take command of the first forty men in the advance, without waiting to see whether they were white or red, soldiers or packers, and go down the side of the cañon on the run, until I had joined Ross, and taken up a position as close to the enemy as it was possible for me to get without bringing on a fight; meantime, he would gather up all the rest of the command, and follow me as fast as he could, and relieve me. There was no trouble at all in getting down that cañon; the difficulty was to hold on to the trail; had any man lost his footing, he would not have stopped until he had struck the current of the Salado, hundreds of feet below. In spite of everything, we clambered down, and by great good luck broke no necks. As we turned a sudden angle in the wall, we saw the condition of affairs most completely. The precipice forming that side of the cañon was hundreds of feet in height, but at a point some four or five hundred feet below the crest had fallen back in a shelf upon which was a cave of no great depth. In front of the cave great blocks of stone furnished a natural rampart behind which the garrison could bid defiance to the assaults of almost any enemy; in this eyrie, the band of “Nanni-chaddi” felt a security such as only the eagle or the vulture can feel in the seclusion of the ice-covered dizzy pinnacles of the Andes; from the shelf upon which they lived these savages, who seem to me to have been the last of the cliff-dwellers within our borders, had on several occasions watched the commands of Sanford and Carr struggling to make their way up the stream in the cañon below. The existence of one, or perhaps two, rancherias somewhere within this gloomy cañon had long been suspected, but never demonstrated until the present moment. When we joined Ross we heard his story told in few words: he and his small band of twelve had followed Felmer and Macintosh down the face of the cliff until they had reached the small open space in front of the cave; there they saw within a very few yards of them the party of raiders just returned from the Gila settlements, who had left at pasture the band of fifteen ponies which we had seen. These warriors were dancing, either to keep themselves warm or as a portion of some religious ceremonial, as is generally the case with the tribes in the southwest. Close by them crouched half a dozen squaws, aroused from slumber to prepare food for the hungry braves. The flames of the fire, small as it was, reflected back from the high walls, gave a weird illumination to the features of the circle, and enabled the whites to take better aim upon their unsuspecting victims. Ross and “Nantaje” consulted in whispers, and immediately it was decided that each man should with the least noise possible cock his piece and aim at one of the group without reference to what his next-door neighbor might be doing. Had not the Apaches been interested in their own singing, they might surely have heard the low whisper: ready! aim! fire! but it would have been too late; the die was cast, and their hour had come.

The fearful noise which we had heard, reverberating from peak to peak and from crag to crag, was the volley poured in by Ross and his comrades, which had sent six souls to their last account, and sounded the death-knell of a powerful band. The surprise and terror of the savages were so complete that they thought only of the safety which the interior of the cave afforded, and as a consequence, when my party arrived on the scene, although there were a number of arrows thrown at us as we descended the path and rounded the angle, yet no attempt was made at a counter-assault, and before the Apaches could recover from their astonishment the two parties united, numbering more than fifty, nearer sixty, men, had secured position within thirty yards of one flank of the cave, and within forty yards of the other, and each man posted behind rocks in such a manner that he might just as well be in a rifle pit. My instructions were not to make any fight, but to keep the Apaches occupied, in case they tried to break out of the trap, and to order all men to shelter themselves to the utmost. Major Brown was down with the remainder of the command almost before a shot could be exchanged with the enemy, although there were two more killed either a moment before his arrival or very soon after. One of these was a Pima, one of our own allies, who persisted in disregarding orders, and exposed himself to the enemy’s fire, and was shot through the body and died before he ever knew what had struck him. The other was one of the Apaches who had sneaked down along our right flank, and was making his way out to try to open up communication with another village and get its people to attack us in rear. He counted without his host, and died a victim to his own carelessness; he had climbed to the top of a high rock some distance down the cañon, and there fancied himself safe from our shots, and turned to give a yell of defiance. His figure outlined against the sky was an excellent mark, and there was an excellent shot among us to take full advantage of it. Blacksmith John Cahill had his rifle in position like a flash, and shot the Indian through the body. At the time of the fight, we did not know that the savage had been killed, although Cahill insisted that he had shot him as described, and as those nearest him believed. The corpse could not be found in the rocks before we left, and therefore was not counted, but the squaws at San Carlos have long since told me that their relative was killed there, and that his remains were found after we had left the neighborhood.

SHARP NOSE.

Brown’s first work was to see that the whole line was impregnable to assault from the beleaguered garrison of the cave, and then he directed his interpreters to summon all to an unconditional surrender. The only answer was a shriek of hatred and defiance, threats of what we had to expect, yells of exultation at the thought that not one of us should ever see the light of another day, but should furnish a banquet for the crows and buzzards, and some scattering shots fired in pure bravado. Brown again summoned all to surrender, and when jeers were once more his sole response, he called upon the Apaches to allow their women and children to come out, and assured them kind treatment. To this the answer was the same as before, the jeers and taunts of the garrison assuring our people that they were in dead earnest in saying that they intended to fight till they died. For some moments the Apaches resorted to the old tactics of enticing some of our unwary soldiers to expose themselves above the wall of rocks behind which Major Brown ordered all to crouch; a hat or a war bonnet would be set up on the end of a bow, and held in such a way as to make-believe that there was a warrior behind it, and induce some one proud of his marksmanship to “lay” for the red man and brother, who would, in his turn, be “laying” for the white man in some coign of vantage close to where his squaw was holding the head-gear. But such tricks were entirely too transparent to deceive many, and after a short time the Apaches themselves grew tired of them, and began to try new methods. They seemed to be abundantly provided with arrows and lances, and of the former they made no saving, but would send them flying high in air in the hope that upon coming back to earth they might hit those of our rearguard who were not taking such good care of themselves as were their brothers at the front on the skirmish line.

There was a lull of a few minutes; each side was measuring its own strength and that of its opponent. It was apparent that any attempt to escalade without ladders would result in the loss of more than half our command; the great rock wall in front of the cave was not an inch less than ten feet in height at its lowest point, and smooth as the palm of the hand; it would be madness to attempt to climb it, because the moment the assailants reached the top, the lances of the invested force could push them back to the ground wounded to death. Three or four of our picked shots were posted in eligible positions overlooking the places where the Apaches had been seen to expose themselves; this, in the hope that any recurrence of such fool-hardiness would afford an opportunity for the sharpshooters to show their skill. Of the main body, one-half was in reserve fifty yards behind the skirmish line—to call it such where the whole business was a skirmish line—with carbines loaded and cocked, and a handful of cartridges on the clean rocks in front, and every man on the lookout to prevent the escape of a single warrior, should any be fortunate enough to sneak or break through the first line. The men on the first line had orders to fire as rapidly as they chose, directing aim against the roof of the cave, with the view to having the bullets glance down among the Apache men, who had massed immediately back of the rock rampart.