On the Border with Crook

by John Gregory Bourke

General Crook did not limit his attentions to the improvement of the Indians alone. There was a wide field of usefulness open to him in other directions, and he occupied it and made it his own. He broke up every one of the old sickly posts, which had been hotbeds of fever and pestilence, and transferred the garrisons to elevated situations like Camp Grant, whose beautiful situation has been alluded to in a previous chapter. He connected every post in the department with every other post by first-class roads over which wagons and ambulances of all kinds could journey without being dashed to pieces. In several cases, roads were already in existence, but he devoted so much care to reducing the length and to perfecting the carriage-way that they became entirely new pathways, as in the case of the new road between Camps Whipple and Verde. The quarters occupied by officers and men were made habitable by repairs or replaced by new and convenient houses. The best possible attention was given to the important matter of providing good, pure, cool water at every camp. The military telegraph line was built from San Diego, California, to Fort Yuma, California, thence to Maricopa Wells, Arizona, where it bifurcated, one line going on to Prescott and Fort Whipple, the other continuing eastward to Tucson, and thence to San Carlos and Camp Apache, or rather to the crossing of the Gila River, fifteen miles from San Carlos.

For this work, the most important ever undertaken in Arizona up to that time, Congress appropriated something like the sum of fifty-seven thousand dollars, upon motion of Hon. Richard C. McCormick, then Delegate; the work of construction was superintended by General James J. Dana, Chief Quartermaster of the Department of Arizona, who managed the matter with such care and economy that the cost was some ten or eleven thousand dollars less than the appropriation. The citizens of Arizona living nearest the line supplied all the poles required at the lowest possible charge. When it is understood that the total length of wire stretched was over seven hundred miles, the price paid (less than forty-seven thousand dollars) will show that there was very little room for excessive profit for anybody in a country where all transportation was by wagon or on the backs of mules across burning deserts and over lofty mountains. The great task of building this line was carried out successfully by Major George F. Price, Fifth Cavalry, since dead, and by Lieutenant John F. Trout, Twenty-third Infantry.

One of the first messages transmitted over the wire from Prescott to Camp Apache was sent by an Apache Indian, to apprise his family that he and the rest of the detachment with him would reach home on a certain day. To use a Hibernicism, the wire to Apache did not go to Apache, but stopped at Grant, at the time of which I am writing. General Crook sent a message to the commanding officer at Camp Grant, directing him to use every endeavor to have the message sent by the Apache reach its destination, carrying it with the official dispatches forwarded by courier to Camp Apache. The family and friends of the scout were surprised and bewildered at receiving a communication sent over the white man’s talking wire (Pesh-bi-yalti), of which they had lately been hearing so much; but on the day appointed they all put on their thickest coats of face paint, and donned their best bibs and tuckers, and sallied out on foot and horseback to meet the incoming party, who were soon descried descending the flank of an adjacent steep mountain. That was a great day for Arizona; it impressed upon the minds of the savages the fact that the white man’s arts were superior to those which their own “Medicine Men” pretended to possess, and made them see that it would be a good thing for their own interests to remain our friends.

The Apaches made frequent use of the wire. A most amusing thing occurred at Crook’s headquarters, when the Apache chief “Pitone,” who had just come up from a mission of peace to the Yumas, on the Colorado, and who had a grievance against “Pascual,” the chief of the latter tribe, had the operator, Mr. Strauchon, inform “Pascual” that if he did not do a certain thing which he had promised to do, the Apaches would go on the war-path, and fairly wipe the ground with the Yumas. There couldn’t have been a quainter antithesis of the elements of savagery and enlightenment than the presence of that chief in the telegraph office on such a mission. The Apaches learned after a while how to stop the communication by telegraph, which they did very adroitly by pulling down the wire, cutting it in two, and tying the ends together with a rubber band, completely breaking the circuit. The linemen would have to keep their eyes open to detect just where such breaks existed.

General Crook held that it was the height of folly for the troops of the United States to attempt to carry on an offensive campaign against an enemy whose habits and usages were a mystery to them, and whose territory was a sealed book. Therefore, he directed that each scouting party should map out its own trail, and send the result on to the headquarters, to be incorporated in the general map of the territory which was to be made by the engineer officers in San Francisco. Arizona was previously unknown, and much of its area had never been mapped. He encouraged his officers by every means in his power to acquire a knowledge of the rites and ceremonies, the ideas and feelings, of the Indians under their charge; he believed, as did the late General P. H. Sheridan, that the greater part of our troubles with the aborigines arose from our ignorance of their character and wants, their aspirations, doubts, and fears. It was much easier and very much cheaper to stifle and prevent an outbreak than it was to suppress one which had gained complete headway. These opinions would not be worthy of note had not Crook and his friend and superior, Sheridan, been officers of the American army; the English—in Canada, in New Zealand, in Australia, in India—have found out the truth of this statement; the French have been led to perceive it in their relations with the nomadic tribes of Algeria; and the Spaniards, to a less extent perhaps, have practised the same thing in America. But to Americans generally, the aborigine is a nonentity except when he is upon the war-path. The moment he concludes to live at peace with the whites, that moment all his troubles begin. Never was there a truer remark than that made by Crook: “The American Indian commands respect for his rights only so long as he inspires terror for his rifle.” Finally Crook was anxious to obtain for Arizona, and set out in the different military posts, such fruits and vines as might be best adapted to the climate. This project was never carried out, as the orders transferring the General to another department arrived, and prevented, but it is worth while to know that several of the springs in northern Arizona were planted with watercress by Mrs. Crook, the General’s wife, who had followed him to Arizona, and remained there until his transfer to another field.

Only two clouds, neither bigger than a man’s hand, but each fraught with mischief to the territory and the whole country, appeared above Arizona’s horizon—the Indian ring and the Chiricahuas. The Indian ring was getting in its work, and had already been remarkably successful in some of its manipulations of contracts. The Indian Agent, Dr. Williams, in charge of the Apache-Yumas and Apache-Mojaves, had refused to receive certain sugar on account of the presence of great boulders in each sack. Peremptory orders for the immediate receipt of the sugar were received in due time from Washington. Williams placed one of these immense lumps of stone on a table in his office, labelled “Sample of sugar received at this agency under contract of ——.” Williams was a very honest, high-minded gentleman, and deserved something better than to be hounded into an insane asylum, which fate he suffered. I will concede, to save argument, that an official who really desires to treat Indians fairly and honestly must be out of his head, but this form of lunacy is harmless, and does not call for such rigorous measures.

The case of the Chiricahua Apaches was a peculiar one: they had been specially exempted from General Crook’s jurisdiction, and in his plans for the reduction of the other bands in hostility they had not been considered. General O. O. Howard had gone out on a special mission to see the great chief “Cocheis,” and, at great personal discomfort and no little personal risk, had effected his purpose. They were congregated at the “Stronghold,” in the Dragoon Mountains, at the same spot where they had had a fight with Gerald Russell a few months previously. Their chief, “Cocheis,” was no doubt sincere in his determination to leave the war-path for good, and to eat the bread of peace. Such, at least, was the opinion I formed when I went in to see him, as a member of Major Brown’s party, in the month of February, 1873.

“Cocheis” was a tall, stately, finely built Indian, who seemed to be rather past middle life, but still full of power and vigor, both physical and mental. He received us urbanely, and showed us every attention possible. I remember, and it shows what a deep impression trivial circumstances will sometimes make, that his right hand was badly burned in two circular holes, and that he explained to me that they had been made by his younger wife, who was jealous of the older and had bitten him, and that the wounds had been burned out with a kind of “moxa” with which the savages of this continent are familiar. Trouble arose on account of this treaty from a combination of causes of no consequence when taken singly, but of great importance in the aggregate. The separation of the tribe into two sections, and giving one kind of treatment to one and another to another, had a very bad effect: some of the Chiricahuas called their brethren at the San Carlos “squaws,” because they had to work; on their side, a great many of the Apaches at the San Carlos and Camp Apache, feeling that the Chiricahuas deserved a whipping fully as much as they did, were extremely rancorous towards them, and never tired of inventing stories to the disparagement of their rivals or an exaggeration of what was truth. There were no troops stationed on the Chiricahua reservation to keep the unruly young bucks in order, or protect the honest and well-meaning savages from the rapacity of the white vultures who flocked around them, selling vile whiskey in open day. All the troubles of the Chiricahuas can be traced to this sale of intoxicating fluids to them by worthless white men.

Complaints came up without cease from the people of Sonora, of raids alleged to have been made upon their exposed hamlets nearest the Sierra Madre; Governor Pesquiera and General Crook were in correspondence upon this subject, but nothing could be done by the latter because the Chiricahuas were not under his jurisdiction. How much of this raiding was fairly attributable to the Chiricahuas who had come in upon the reservation assigned them in the Dragoon Mountains, and how much was chargeable to the account of small parties which still clung to the old fastnesses in the main range of the Sierra Madre will never be known; but the fact that the Chiricahuas were not under military surveillance while all the other bands were, gave point to the insinuations and emphasis to the stories circulated to their disparagement.

Shortly after the Apaches had been put upon the various reservations assigned them, it occurred to the people of Tucson that they were spending a great deal of money for the trials, re-trials, and maintenance of murderers who killed whom they pleased, passed their days pleasantly enough in jail, were defended by shrewd “Jack lawyers,” as they were called, and under one pretest or another escaped scot free. There had never been a judicial execution in the territory, and, under the technicalities of law, there did not appear much chance of any being recorded for at least a generation. It needed no argument to make plain to the dullest comprehension that that sort of thing would do good to no one; that it would end in perpetuating a bad name for the town; and destroy all hope of its becoming prosperous and populous with the advent of the railroads of which mention was now frequently made. The more the matter was talked over, the more did it seem that something must be done to free Tucson from the stigma of being the refuge of murderers of every degree.