INDIAN SUMMER TENT.
The treaty was kept by Cochise and the Chiricahuas for nine years, as long as he lived. They were greatly incensed and felt that they were wronged when Capt. Jefferds was displaced, the reservation marked out in the treaty was taken away, and they were removed from their traditional home and herded upon the San Carlos reservation with other tribes, some of whom they greatly despised. This, however, they still bore patiently or without manifest resentment until October, 1881. At that time there was trouble with other San Carlos tribes. The army marched upon the reservation. The next night the Chiricahuas left. They started in the direction of their old haunts, met freighting teams, murdered the drivers and took the horses, killed cattle and stole other horses from ranchmen, had one or two slight skirmishes with the United States cavalry and escaped into Mexico.
Gen. Crook's campaign into Mexico in pursuit of them is familiar to all. He captured their women and children and old people, and in order, doubtless, to induce the leaders, who were hidden in the fastnesses of the Sierra Madre mountains, to surrender, promised terms that have been severely criticised. Those leaders, like Geronomo, whose hands were stained with murder, were allowed to come back unmolested upon the reservation, to retain their arms, and to feel that, instead of conquered foes of the government, and criminals justly and duly punished, they had outwitted their white enemy and dictated their own terms of a peace to be broken at will.
Should not these Chiricahua leaders, having deliberately broken their treaty, and known to be incorrigibly criminal, have been at least confined where they could neither incite nor lead more murderous raids? It was neither a dictate of humanity nor of true statesmanship to set them loose with arms in their hands. One of the essential steps in the civilization of any tribe is to demonstrate that crimes are to be promptly and adequately punished.
But the utter neglect of the government, and of all missionary bodies, to send to these Chiricahuas any teachers or to make any earnest attempt to civilize them, during the entire nine years of their peaceable stay on the reservation, should, no doubt, be duly weighed when considering the question of ultimate responsibility for this outbreak.—The Chicago Standard.