While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
For several years the Indian Bureau had
been sowing the wind; now it was harvest
time and it was to reap the whirlwind. In
his annual reports Agent John P. Clum smugly
implies that the transfers, one after
another, of Indians from Camp Verde, Camp
Apache, the Chiricahua Reservation, and Ojo
Caliente, and their concentration on the San
Carlos Reservation were successful and
satisfactory. It was in reality far
otherwise. In every instance the removal of
the Indians was a breach of good faith on
the part of the Government, was contrary to
the best judgment of Army officers in
command, and was in opposition to the desire
of the Indians. Nor was the transfer in any
case completely effected. Many members of
the various bands refused to come along, and
always it was the best fighting men who
slipped away.
The failure of these attempts was shown
clearly in the abortive transfer of the
Chiricahua and Warm Spring band. In his
annual report of August 15, 1877, General
August V. Kautz, Commander of the Department
of Arizona, calls attention to the
conflicting reports of the Bureau of Indian
Affairs for the years 1875 and 1876. Quoting
the figures as set down for these two years,
he says: "The two agencies, Warm Spring and
Chiricahua, contained in 1875, before they
were broken up, according to the report of
that year, 965 and 2,100; total, 3,065. The
number removed were 325 and 454; total, 779.
There are therefore 2,286 Indians
unaccounted for since 1875. It is
unnecessary to comment on these
discrepancies." (Kauts August V. Report of
the Secretary of War, 1877, p. 144.) Add to
this statement of Kautz the comment of
General John Pope (whose Department included
New Mexico) in his report of September 22,
1880, and we begin to see the true state of
affairs: "This outbreak of Victorio and the
severe campaign against him . . . were due
to the determined purpose of the Interior
Department to effect the removal of the band
to the San Carlos Agency in Arizona. . . .
Victorio and his band have always bitterly
objected to being placed there, one of the
reasons given by him being the hostility of
many of the Indians of the Agency. He always
asserted his willingness to live peacefully
with his people at the Warm Springs (Ojo
Caliente) Agency and, so far as I am
informed, gave no trouble to anyone whilst
there. I do not know the reasons of the
Interior Department for insisting upon the
removal to San Carlos Agency, but certainly
they should be cogent to justify the great
trouble and severe losses occasioned by the
attempt to coerce the removal. The present
is the fourth time within five years that
Victorio's band has broken out. Three times
they have been brought in and turned over by
the Military to the Indian Bureau
authorities. Both Victorio and his band are
resolved to die rather than go to the San
Carlos Agency." (Pope John. Report of the
Secretary of War, Vol. I, 1880, p. 88.)
In order to present the tragic story of
Victorio--next to Cochise and Mangas
Coloradas the greatest warrior in Apache
history--we must begin with the year 1871.
At that time some twelve hundred Mimbres,
Gila, and Mogollon Apaches, referred to
usually as the Southern Apaches, were
brought together in the Cafiada Alamosa
Valley, a fertile and beautiful region which
had been their favorite rendezvous for
generations and was claimed by them as their
own. Previous to this time these bands had
been assigned to no reservation. The scanty
rations issued to them weekly were not half
sufficient to sustain them, so they roamed
about existing as best they could--chiefly,
of course, by thievery. On August 29, 1871,
Mr. Vincent Colyer set apart for these
Indians the valley of the Tulerosa, some
distance northwest of Ojo Caliente. They did
not like this location. Only about four
hundred and fifty could be induced to go
there. Most of them took to the mountains, a
good many joining their kindred, the
Chiricahuas, in Arizona. Those who were
removed to Tulerosa were unhappy and hard to
manage. Many of them would leave the the
reservation for months at a time. In the
autumn of 1874 a change was made--the Warm
Spring Reservation was set aside for them,
not far from Caņada Alamosa, and the
wanderers now gathered in the region they
loved. From time to time other bands came in
and joined them. A small body of soldiers
was stationed at the Agency. In general
there was quiet and satisfaction, though the
Indians showed no interest in education and
agriculture, and at times bands of the Warm
Spring Indians left the agency to visit the
Chiricahuas, for the purpose, no doubt, of
joining these enterprising neighbors in
their raids into Mexico.
Mention has been made of the fact that many
of the Chiricahua Apaches had taken refuge
with their Warm Spring friends and relatives
when the Chiricahua reservation was
abolished in 1876 and that a still larger
number then became renegades in the
mountains of Mexico. In March, 1877, it
became evident that Indians from the Warm
Spring Agency were in collusion with the
Arizona outlaws, taking part in their raids,
and harboring them when storm-tossed or in
dire need of provisions. As a result, four
hundred and fifty-three Southern Apaches,
Victorio among them, were removed to San
Carlos in May, 1877, and the Warm Spring
Reservation was restored to the public
domain. September 2, 1877, Victorio with
three hundred Warm Spring and Chiricahua
followers left the reservation and began
marauding. They were promptly pursued and
overhauled, but only thirty were recaptured.
The main body attacked a settlement in New
Mexico. They killed eight settlers and stole
some horses. All available troops in New
Mexico were now sent out against them. For
about a month the renegades held out and
continued their depredations; but, as the
mountains now swarmed with soldiers and
Indian scouts, early in October one hundred
and ninety surrendered at Fort Wingate.
Later, others gave themselves up. In all,
two hundred and sixty were retaken and
turned over to the War Department at Warm
Spring. Upon recommendation of the Indian
Bureau they were returned to San Carlos by a
detail of troops in October, 1877. But
before the start was made, eighty again
escaped and took to the mountains, and the
rest objected bitterly to being returned.
Near the close of the year 1877 sixty-three
of the eighty who had escaped presented
themselves at the Mescalero Agency in an
almost starving condition and asked to be
allowed to live there. In February, 1878,
Victorio and twenty-two of his band who had
been spending these months in Old Mexico
approached the commanding officer at Ojo
Caliente and expressed a desire to
surrender, provided that Nana's band, who
were among those who had sought refuge at
the Mescalero Agency, be permitted to join
them at Ojo Caliente. This request was
granted, and messengers were sent to confer
with the agent at Mescalero and with Nana
and his people. It seems that only seventeen
Warm Spring Indians cared to return.
Victorio had remained quietly at Ojo
Caliente awaiting the outcome; and now,
February 16, these thirty-nine Southern
Apaches surrendered as prisoners of war, but
at the same time protested that they would
resist to the death any effort to take them
back to San Carlos.
It was then decided that they should be
taken to the Mescalero Agency, but they were
bitterly opposed to this also; and April 15,
1878, they all escaped and took to the
mountains again. June 30 Victorio with a
small party came to the agent at Mescalero
who promised to treat them well if they
would come there and stay. Twenty-eight
agreed to do this and were entered on the
roll with the other Southern Apaches then at
this agency. So genuine seemed the desire of
these harried renegades to settle down
quietly at last that their earnest request
to have their wives and children brought
back to them from San Carlos was also
granted.
July, 1879, a belated indictment was brought
against Victorio in the civil court in Grant
County, New Mexico, for horse stealing and
murder. No steps were taken to arrest him,
it would seem, but the Indians were aware of
the danger that was hanging over their
heads; and when, a little later, a hunting
party rode through the reservation, among
whom Victorio recognized a judge and a
prosecuting attorney, alarm seized them, for
they believed the expedition was a
preliminary to the arrest of the chief and
perhaps the whole band. In September, taking
with them all the other Southern Apaches on
the Mescalero Reservation, Victorio and his
band escaped, rode westward into the wilds,
and again took up their bloody occupation.
The career of this supremely daring and
capable Apache chief was nearing its end.
Such strategy and endurance, such command
over a handful of desperate warriors, such
defiance of interminable mountains and arid
desert, and such victory over superior
numbers of white foes armed and equipped
with the best that a civilized nation could
provide or invent has rarely been equaled in
the records of savage warfare--perhaps never
surpassed. To follow the fights and the
retreats, the ambushes and the flights, the
pillage, the wounds, the torture, and the
slaughter through which this flaming savage
rode as on a red whirlwind would require a
volume. Already both writer and reader are
weary of the frightful details of the insane
and savage warfare so long waged between the
white man and the Apache. As briefly as
possible, then, let us complete the story of
Victorio's outlawry.
Before Victorio had gone ten miles from the
reservation, he began his depredations. With
sixty warriors, September 4, he suddenly
descended upon the horse guard of Company E,
Ninth Cavalry, at Ojo Caliente, killing or
wounding eight of the men and capturing
about forty-six horses. Major Morrow, in
command in Southern New Mexico, at once
pursued the marauders with all the troops at
his disposal. The chase was carried on with
tireless energy and persistence; there were
several spirited engagements; but just as
often as the Indians were hard-pressed, they
would scatter into small parties and make
their escape into the mountains northwest of
Ojo Caliente. There were Mexican
sheepherders all through this region. Many
of these were killed, and the Indians were
able to subsist. upon the stolen sheep.
Major Morrow was never able to force the
renegades to stand and fight, and the
skirmishes were always indecisive. Finally,
his horses nearly all dead or broken down
from casualties, exposure, or lack of
forage, and his troops exhausted and in
tatters, Morrow was compelled to return to
his post to refit.
In January, 1880, General Edward Hatch,
Commander of the District of New Mexico, a
brave and energetic officer, ordered his
entire regiment to southern New Mexico and
took personal command of operations in the
field. March 16 he was reenforced by troops
and Indian scouts from the Department of
Arizona under Lieutenants Gatewood and
Mills, numbering one hundred and
twenty-eight men in all. A little later
Captain McLellan of the Sixth Cavalry
arrived with an additional troop and took
command of the entire Arizona force.
During the late winter and early spring of
1880 Victorio and his band, together with
one hundred renegades from Old Mexico, were
in the mountains within forty miles of the
Mescalero Agency and were in frequent
communication with their friends on the
reservation. He had been so uniformly
successful in his frequent fights and
skirmishes that he was able to induce many
of the Mescaleros to take the warpath with
him. April 12, after a hard fight in the San
Andreas Mountains, Colonel Hatch with a
strong body of troops, supported by Colonel
Grierson of the Tenth Cavalry from Texas
with an equally strong force, surrounded the
Mescalero Agency where the agent had brought
together as many of the Indians as he could
persuade to come in, and took their horses
and arms from them. It was too late. Two
hundred had left the reservation by April I
to join Victorio in the mountains, fifty of
them being effective fighting men.
Victorio's raids continued, frequent and
furious; the hearts of the settlers in New
Mexico, Arizona, and Chihuahua were filled
with terror and they made little effort to
resist the savages. Victorio rarely, if
ever, had more than two hundred and fifty
fighting men, and there were more than one
thousand troops in the field against him,
yet he nearly always got the best of it. The
pursuit by the troops was unremitting and
their number was constantly increasing.
Though almost completely hemmed in by two
thousand cavalrymen and several hundred
Indian scouts at the last, about June 1,
1880, Victorio made his escape into Mexico;
for the Mexican Government refused to let
our troops cross the line. During the raids
and skirmishes described above, it is
estimated that at least two hundred settlers
and soldiers had been killed in New Mexico
and an equal number in Old Mexico. Not less
than one hundred Indians had been slain--Victorio's
son among others.
Given no respite, driven from pillar to
post, hard beset by both United States and
Mexican troops, Victorio, now wounded and an
old man, had about reached the end of his
rope. Many of his warriors had been killed,
many were suffering from wounds, and his
band was divided. In October, 1880, a large
force of Mexican troops under General
Terrazas encountered Victorio with one
hundred warriors and four hundred women and
children at Tres Castillos. The Indians were
trapped in a box canyon. A fight began in
the evening and lasted all night. By morning
the Apaches had run out of ammunition.
Still, terribly as they had suffered and
hopeless as their case seemed, not until
Victorio, who had already been wounded more
than once during the battle, fell dead on
the field would they yield.
The accounts of Victorio's death vary in a
perplexing way, and unfortunately, none of
the writers who describe this last battle
refer to official records or eyewitnesses.
Twitchell (Twitchell Ralph E. The Leading
Facts of New Mexican History, Vol. II. Torch
Press Cedar Rapids, 1911.) says that the
Mexican troops, while on a march through
Chihuahua, discovered Victorio encamped near
a lake in the vicinity of Tres Castillos and
in an all-night battle killed the chief and
many of his followers and compelled the
survivors to surrender. Paul I. Wellman , in
Death in the Desert, (Wellman Paul I. Death
in the Desers, pp. 190-192. New York,
Macmillan, 1935.) states that Colonel
Joaquin Terrazas with a large body of
irregular troops trapped Victorio and his
band in the Tres Castillos Mountains; that
in locating Victorio, Terrazas was joined by
several fighting organizations from the
United States, including a body of
sixty-eight Chiricahua Apache scouts under
Captain Charles Parker; that when, with this
combined force, Terrazas had trailed
Victorio to Tres Castillos, he dismissed his
allies on the ground that he could not trust
the Chiricahua scouts, and then took all the
glory of the exploit to himself. Wellman
says that Terrazas had with him Tarahumari
Indian scouts, one of whom, Mauricio, a
famous rifleman, caught sight of Victorio
directing the battle and with Careful aim
shot him down; and that the Governor of
Sonora was so pleased with Mauricio's feat
that he had the State present him with a
beautiful nickle-plated rifle.
Lieutenant Thomas Cruse, who was in command
of Company A Indian Scouts during an
expedition led by General Carr into Mexico
to cooperate with the Mexican Government in
its attempt to destroy Victorio and his
renegades, says that in the month of
September, 1880, with his scouts he was far
beyond the Mexican border. He gives this
account of Victorio's end: "Victorio and his
band stayed in the mountains for a month or
so, but finally ventured into the vicinity
of Santa Rosalia to buy ammunition and
supplies if possible. They seemed to have
plenty of money and a keen desire to be
peaceful, all of which was taken at face
value, but the Mexicans sent a courier to
Chihuahua for some rurales to come to Santa
Rosalia quietly. They then had a big fiesta
to which all the Indians were invited and
came. When it was over Victorio and his band
had been exterminated summarily, except Nana
and three others who had been sent into the
mountains a few days before to get money
cached by them on the road when retreating."
(Cruse Thomas. Unpublished Autobiography in
the author's possession. Cruse is still
living, a brigadier-general, retired. He is
a man of eminent honor and ability, and
since, both as to time and place, he was
near the event, his statement must be
respected.)
In spite of their leader's death these
desperate renegades remained irreconcilable.
Nana, seventy years old, stepped into the
breach. In the Sierra Madre he was able to
bring together about fifteen members of the
scattered survivors of Victorio. Twenty-five
Mescaleros reenforced him, and a few
renegade Chiricahuas joined him. With this
last remnant of hardened and cruel outlaws,
Nana, between July, 1881, and April, 1882,
almost outdid the flaming deeds of Victorio
at their best--or worst--crossing the Rio
Grande and making his way into New Mexico on
two whirlwind campaigns during which he
butchered mercilessly herders, prospectors,
and all others who came in his path,
plundered the country, and set the whole
American Army in the Southwest in violent
motion.
In June, 1881, Nock-ay-del-Klinne, a White
Mountain medicine man, began a series of
religious dances in the region about Fort
Apache that continued for weeks, increasing
constantly in fervor to the degree, at
times, almost of frenzy. The meetings
reached their climax late in the summer at
Cibicu, about fortyfive miles west of Fort
Apache, though they had been held at various
camps in the northern part of the
reservation. They were instrumental in
arousing to the highest degree the primitive
and racial emotions of the people. They
affected the Apaches very much as the
exciting religious revivals carried on by
Peter Cartwright and others did the frontier
white people who gathered for camp meetings
in the primeval forests a hundred years ago.
The agent at San Carlos and the Army
officers at Fort Apache were aware that
these dances and incantations were going on
and were not a little disturbed, as the
summer advanced, by the tremendous
excitement created and the everwidening
influence of the medicine man. They had even
been present at one or two of the meetings
held near the Fort.
"What particularly amazed me," wrote
Lieutenant Thomas Cruse, "was the unusual
mixture of his audience, which included
Apaches who had been proscribed as
murderers, horse-thieves, women-stealers;
all there mingling with the best elements of
the tribes who only a short time before had
been trying to locate and exterminate these
same renegades." (Ibid.) All seemed to be
under the influence of some strange
superstition that lifted them out of
themselves and the affairs of this world.
Nock-ay-delKlinne, it seems, spoke of
raising from the dead certain of their great
chiefs; but this could not be accomplished,
he said, until the white man had left the
country, which would not be before the time
of the corn harvest. He seemed to exercise
some hypnotic power over the Indians, and
long afterwards an Apache told Cruse that he
had been one of three who went with
Nockay-del-Klinne to a high mesa--a sort of
Mount of Transfiguration--where, after many
hours of silent prayer and fervent appeals
to the dead to return, three of their former
chiefs did actually rise part way out of the
ground and address them, asking why they
were disturbed, saying they did not wish to
come back, as the hunting was poor, the
buffalo gone, and the white people all over
the land; exhorting them to let them rest
and to remain at peace with the whites. Then
they slowly faded from view.
Cruse and others believed that the medicine
man was sincere and had the best interests
of his people at heart, that he was the
victim of his own belief and strange power,
that he lost control of the tremendous
forces of tribal enthusiasm and superstition
that he had let loose, and that the bad men
of the tribe, taking advantage of the
situation created by his prophecies and
incantations, determined to wipe out or
drive out the white men from the hunting
grounds of their fathers. Steeped in the
legends of his tribe, reflective and
introspective from boyhood, Nock-ay-del-Klinne
naturally became a medicine man. In 1871,
when he was twenty-six years of age, he was
chosen as one of the delegates to go to
Washington to meet President Grant. With the
other representatives of the Indians who met
the President of the United States at that
time, he was presented with a silver medal
as a souvenir of the trip and this he wore
about his neck at the time he was killed. As
a young man he went to Santa Fe, attended
school there for a while, and became imbued,
crudely, with some of the Christian
doctrines. The account of the Resurrection,
in particular, seemed to make a deep
impression upon him. After he returned to
the reservation he spent much time in
seclusion and meditation in the mountains,
but was always kind and attentive to the
sick and disposed toward all good works. At
the time of the events now to be narrated,
he was about thirty-six, a slender,
lightskinned, ascetic-looking man, about one
hundred and twentyfive pounds in weight and
less than five feet and a half in height.
By early August both Colonel E. A. Carr, in
command at Fort Apache, and Tiffany, Indian
agent at San Carlos, became alarmed as the
strange excitement created by the medicine
man's prophecies grew more intense and
ominous. August 6 Carr telegraphed General
Willcox, in command of the Department of
Arizona, that he was informed by his
interpreter that Nockay-del-Klinne was
telling the Indians their dead chiefs would
not return "because of the presence of the
white people; that when the white people
left, the dead would return, and the whites
would be out of the country when the corn
was ripe." August 11 Tiffany telegraphed
Willcox that he was sure some medicine man
of influence was moving on the San Carlos
and White Mountain Indians for some evil
purpose. He also requested additional arms.
August 13 Carr received the following
telegram from Willcox: "The commanding
general desires that you arrest the Indian
doctor whom you report as stirring up
hostilities as soon as possible"; and August
14 a formal request came to Carr from
Tiffany to arrest Nock-ay-del-Klinne or kill
him or both. Bitter disputes later arose as
a result of the killing of the medicine man
and the battle of Cibicu now to be related.
Both General Willcox and Tiffany were
disposed to evade responsibility and to
throw blame upon Colonel Carr.
In his telegram to headquarters from Fort
Apache, after the tragic events at Cibicu,
Carr said: "I first hoped to arrest him when
he came to hold his dances and incantations
here, but he did not keep his appointment. I
then sent two Indian scouts with message
that I wanted to see him on Sunday, August
28. I received an evasive reply from him,
and next day marched with troops D, E, Sixth
Cavalry, and Company A, Indian Scouts, the
command numbering 6 officers, 79 soldiers,
and 23 Indian scouts. I reached his village
on the 30th, and arrested the medicine man.
He professed entire willingness to come with
me, said he would not try to escape, and
there would be no attempt at rescue; but as
we were making camp, our own scouts and many
other Indians opened fire upon us, killed
Captain Hentig the first fire, and ran off
the animals already turned out to graze. The
medicine man was killed as soon as they
commenced firing, and we drove them off
after a severe fight in which we lost
Captain Hentig, shot in the back by our own
Indian scouts as he turned to get his gun;
four privates killed, one sergeant and three
privates wounded, two mortally." (Report of
Secretary of War, 1881. Vol. I.)
Second Lieutenant Thomas Cruse, in command
of Company A, Indian Scouts, in his story of
his life adds graphic details to this terse
report concerning the battle at Cibicu. For
some time past both Cruse and Carr had
feared that the scouts, however good their
intention, could not remain loyal in view of
the religious frenzy that was taking
possession of the whole tribe. Some of them
had grown sullen and truculent. For a time
their arms were called in. Cruse suggested
that he be ordered to Fort Huachuca with his
Company and that Company C scouts under
Lieutenant Mills, a mixed organization made
up of MohaveApaches, Yuma-Apaches, and some
Chiricahuas, be brought to replace them. It
was so ordered, but before the reply could
be sent from headquarters, the telegraph
line went down; and when authorization for
the transfer came, August 30, both Carr and
Cruse were fighting desperately for their
lives at Cibicu.
Nock-ay-del-Klinne was in camp about three
miles above the point where the expedition
struck Cibicu Creek. As they started up the
valley toward his rancheria, they met armed
and painted Indians everywhere. Nock-ay-del-Klinne
was reclining on a pile of Navajo blankets.
He greeted the officers gravely and
courteously, and after the General had
explained the situation to him, he was
promptly arrested. About twenty Indians were
gathered about him, but at that time they
showed no hostile intent. Nock-ay-del-Klinne
said that he could not leave at once but
would return to the post in a few days. Carr
replied that he must go with the command at
once. So tense was the situation at this
instant that Cruse thought the clash was
coming. He felt a thrill run through the
crowd--Indians and white men alike.
Two scouts took charge of the medicine man
and Carr sent for McDonald, an army
sergeant, and made him personally
responsible for Nock-ay-del-Klinne. He was
to see that no harm came to him unless he
tried to escape or his friends fired on the
troops. In such an event the Sergeant was
ordered to shoot Nock-ay-del-Klinne
instantly. Cruse, with the scouts and
Lieutenant Stanton, brought up the rear, as
the command started down the stream to look
for a suitable camping place. The medicine
man gave orders to bring in his pony and to
gather up some of his belongings, which
caused some delay. Meantime he had seated
himself on the ground. Finally McDonald was
ordered by Stanton to lift him to his feet,
and the march began. All this time more and
more Indians were flocking down the side
canyons. In about twenty minutes Stanton and
Cruse, with the prisoner, reached the spot
selected for the night's camp. Cruse
remarked to General Carr:
"Things looked pretty 'scaley' as we marched
along."
"What do you mean by 'scaley'?" Carr asked
somewhat sharply.
Cruse replied: "The Indians, armed and
painted for fight, have kept pouring into
the valley from the side canyons, and it
looked to Stanton and me as if we might be
attacked any minute."
He looked surprised and exclaimed: "Where
are those Indians now?"
"There are some of them crossing at the ford
right now," replied Cruse.
He looked, and turning to Adjutant Carter,
said: "Those Indians must not be allowed to
come into camp; direct the troop commanders
to keep them out."
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