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!
The Lipan Apaches of Texas, a very
troublesome tribe, were crafty enough, when
hard-pressed by their wild foes, the
Comanches, to seek peace with the Spanish
and a settled mission life. Neither the
padres nor the soldiers put much faith in
their sincerity. The Fathers were willing to
experiment, however, and a mission was
founded for the Apaches on the Guadalupe
River. This action was approved as early as
1750 but was not carried out until 1756, and
then the mission was located, not on the
Guadalupe, but on the San Saba River. The
Apaches were now friendly enough, but when
elaborate preparations had been made for
missionary supervision, they were shifty
and, for one reason or another, declined to
settle permanently at the mission. Their
real object was to secure the Spanish as
their allies against the Comanches and other
enemies. As a result of what had already
been done, the animosity of the Comanches
was now directed against the Spanish. The
Apaches warned the Spaniards that the
Comanches, now their common foe, were about
to strike a blow; but it was too late. Under
friendly guise, a Comanche chief with a
thousand warriors gained entrance to the
Apache mission. They made a thorough job of
it--plundering and burning the buildings and
killing nearly all the Spaniards. Two padres
were killed, and a party sent from the
presidio to reenforce the mission was led
into ambush. The wily Apaches suffered
little, for only a few of them were present
at the time of the attack.
This disaster brought such blame upon the
padres that they offered to abandon the
mission, but their suggestion was set aside.
Instead, a punitive expedition made up of
five hundred Spanish soldiers and a
considerable number of Apaches marched
northward against the common enemy. A
surprise attack was made on a ranchería and
more than five hundred of the Comanches were
killed; but when the Spaniards advanced
against the towns in the region of San
Teodoro, the enemy, not waiting to be
attacked, came out against them six thousand
strong and put them to flight. After this,
for several years, it was all the Spaniards
could do to hold their ground against the
bold assaults of the Comanches; so no
aggressive steps were taken. Peace having
been finally effected with the Comanches
through the friendly overtures of Padre
Calaborra, there was talk of moving the
Spanish presidio and mission to the north,
but this idea did not meet with the approval
of the Apaches. Indeed, they turned traitors
to the Spaniards, and in crafty raids
against the Comanches left articles behind
that seemed to give evidence of Spanish
perfidy, and they finally attacked the
Spanish posts and then retreated. Of course,
the northern tribes now became as hostile as
ever toward the Spanish. Yet the Apaches
were still able to convince them that they
wanted missions; so, in 1761, Missions San
Lorenze and Candelaria were established, and
four hundred Apaches came together at these
places. Conditions seemed so propitious that
steps were taken to begin work again at
Saba; but nothing came of all these efforts;
the enterprise was finally given up; and, in
1767, the missions were abandoned.
At this point it may be well to clarify and
summarize the Apache situation as it
confronted the Spanish Government during the
period between 1700 and 1772. By 1700 the
Spanish had pushed their settlements almost
to the present northern borderline of
Mexico. It was a vast region; the scattered
population was to be found in mining camps
and missions and on ranches, not far removed
from the presidios that had been established
for their protection. "Flying squadrons"
too, as we have seen, were kept in the field
in times of special danger or emergency.
However, this frontier military organization
was marked by great corruption and
incompetence, and, in view of the fact that
these northern provinces, especially Sonora,
were continually pouring wealth into the
royal treasury, the Spanish Government
itself was to blame for the failure to
provide a strong and coordinated frontier
program and administration.
Nowhere is there a better statement in brief
space of the weakness and defects of the
Government in its dealing with the Apache
problem than Dr. C. E. Chapman's summary of
a memorial addressed to the King by Pedro de
Labaquera, who had long served in Mexico as
Lieutenant Captain-General:
"The Apaches, when attacked, habitually
retired to the mountains which were
inaccessible to the presidial troops. This
was due not merely to the fact that the
latter were cavalrymen, but to the nature of
the soldiers themselves. Most of them were
mulattoes of very low character, without
ambition, and unconquerably unwilling to
travel on foot, as was necessary in a
mountain attack. Moreover, their weapons
carried so short a distance that the Apaches
were wont to get just out of range and make
open jest of the Spaniards. Furthermore,
some presidial captains were more interested
in making a personal profit out of their
troops, arising from the fact that part of
the latter's wages was paid in effects, than
they were in subjecting the enemy, nor did
the various captains work in harmony when on
campaigns. Continuance of the Apaches in
Apachería was in the highest degree
prejudicial. Not only were they a hindrance
to conquests toward the Colorado and in the
direct route between Sonora and New Mexico,
but also they endangered regions already
held by Spain, leading subjected Indians,
either from fear or from natural
inclination, to abandon missions and
villages, and whether in alliance with the
Apaches or by themselves, to commit the same
kind of atrocities as the Apaches did.
Labaquera recommended that two hundred
mountain fusileers of Spanish blood be
recruited in Spain, equipped among other
things with guns of long range, and
despatched to New Spain for service against
the Apaches. These men, under a
disinterested leader, would quickly subject
the Apaches, and might then be given lands
in the region." 2
It is necessary to stress the fact that most
of the presidio captains were given to greed
and tyranny. Not all of them, but most of
them, were addicted to graft. They practiced
their greed at the expense of the soldiers
under their command. Instead of paying the
men in the specie provided by the royal
government they took the cash and paid off
the soldiers in goods purchased from stocks
owned or controlled by them. The prices they
charged were excessive. As a natural result
of the unjust advantage thus taken by the
captains, the troops were often illdisposed
toward their commanders and indifferent in
the discharge of duty. Both Viceroy
Francisco de Croix and Visitador José de
Gálvez state bluntly that "the Sonora
presidios served chiefly to enrich captains
and their backers." 3 The Marques de Rubi
and Bucareli point out their shameful
delinquencies with equal force.
After all, the failure to control the
Apaches was the fault of the Spanish
Government. It was their duty to see the
fact that the adequate protection of the
northern frontier absolutely demanded a
coordinated and steadfast program; and it
was obligatory upon them to devise and
enforce such a program. The problem of
controlling the Apaches along the far-flung
northern frontier was a single problem--not
one to be coped with separately by this
province or that, spasmodically. The line of
attack was along an exposed border, twelve
or fifteen hundred miles in extent. The
blows fell thickest and heaviest on Nueva
Viscaya ( Chihuahua) and Sonora; but any
point on the frontier was subject to attack
at any time, and so shrewd were the Apaches
that it was their habit when resistance and
offensive tactics became very strong in a
particular province to turn with lightning
speed to some front that had been left
weakened or unprotected. Indeed, some of
their most successful raids were directed
against the presidios themselves at times
when the troops were in the field on some
ambitious campaign into their territory.
How criminally lacking in cooperation were
the various provinces, presidios, and
commanders, may be illustrated by the
conduct of a captain of the presidio at
Janos. About 1770 he entered into a sham
armistice with enemy Apaches, by the terms
of which they were allowed to go through the
pass that his presidio was responsible for
guarding. They were thus enabled to enter
Nueva Viscaya and make contact with their
friends, the Tarahumara Indians (supposedly
a pacified tribe) who were stealing horses
and mules from the presidio at Chihuahua and
trading or selling them to the Apaches
whenever they made their appearance. In 1771
a band of Apaches from the Gila profited by
this infamous arrangement, slipping by the
presidio of Janos and attacking locales not
far from Chihuahua. It proved to be a very
destructive raid. Two Spanish settlers were
killed near Chihuahua, two wood choppers in
the mountains suffered a like fate, in
another place a cowboy was slain, and
sixteen others on a large ranch. The Indians
also took several captives, and drove off a
large herd of animals. Upon investigation it
was found that seventeen hundred of the
Tarahumara Indians were in collusion with
the invaders. They had a regular rendezvous
with the Apache raiders, in the Sierra de
Rosario, where there was good pasture for
their stolen animals.
But at last great statesmen and great
soldiers set seriously to work to rectify
the long-existing evils. During the years
1765-1768 the famous Marques de Rubi devoted
himself to the task of studying and
reforming the whole military organization
along the border. His proposals were
submitted to his superiors, and in 1772, by
a royal decree, his plans were put into
effect. Some presidios were dropped, and
others, for strategic purposes, were
relocated. The result was a line of fifteen
presidios, stretching from Matagordo Bay to
Altar, Sonora, in the extreme West.
Each fort was assigned a captain, a
lieutenant, a chaplain, an alferez, a
sergeant, two corporals, and forty men. Ten
Indian scouts were attached to each
presidio, also. The presidios were spaced
about a hundred miles apart so that exposed
points all along the line could be
protected. More effective military
discipline was enforced; and, all in all,
opposition to the Apaches became stiffer and
more efficient than ever before.
To the distinguished soldier General Don
Hugo Oconor was assigned the task of
carrying out the reorganization. For a
period of five years he was engaged in the
very difficult task of remaking the military
system along the border. At the same time
that he was selecting new sites, and
shifting the location of various forts, he
carried on wide and devastating campaigns
against the daring, shrewd, and ever-hostile
foe. The Apaches repeatedly suffered severe
punishment, and at times sought terms of
peace. However, only at brief intervals was
there cessation of active warfare; and,
usually, the Apaches got the better of the
fighting. In Sonora, most of the time, the
conditions were very distressing.
The Apaches carried on their raids under the
very shadow of the presidios--at Tubac,
killing a soldier and driving off a hundred
horses, and likewise at Terrenate, killing
the horseguard and getting away with two
hundred and fifty-seven animals. In
December, 1772, they murdered an Indian and
a Spanish settler at another settlement and
escaped with one hundred head of cattle. An
expedition against the Apaches had been
planned for January, 1773, but the governor
of Sonora, disheartened by these bold raids,
wrote to his superiors that no more
inopportune time for an aggressive campaign
into the Apache territory could be chosen,
as the residents of Sonora were finding it
impossible to protect their own homes. A
year later the enemy made another attack on
Tubac. This time they killed a sergeant and
stampeded one hundred head of cattle. Most
outrageous of all, in a third descent upon
the presidio of Tubac a little later, they
stole one hundred and thirty horses--the
best mounts to be had in northern
Sonora-that Captain Anza had collected for
his famous overland expedition to the
Pacific coast. May 7, 1774, a great number
of Apaches made a savage assault on
Frontéras and drove off three hundred horses
from that garrison. In July Tubac was again
robbed of thirty horses. As if the impudence
and daring of the Apaches knew no limit, in
September they got away with thirtysix
animals that were used in carrying the mail
from Sonora to the Viceroy. And all this
time, individual settlers--miners, wood
choppers, and ranchmen in lonely
places--were being robbed and murdered.
But, in the summer of 1775, Oconor made
plans for concerted action along the whole
front from Sonora to Texas. Orders to
mobilize were issued to governors and
captains of presidios in Coahuila,
Chihuahua, New Mexico, and Sonora. More than
two thousand men, including settlers and
Opata Indian allies, were mustered for
active service. Every presidio on the border
supplied its quota, and Oconor brought into
action under his immediate command three
hundred soldiers from the various flying
squadrons. It was his purpose to strike the
Indians hip and thigh, front and rear, in
camp and on the move. Buffeted from this
direction and that, whether they stood or
retreated, they were to be found, repulsed,
and beaten. Fifteen defeats of devastating
proportions were administered to the Apaches
during this campaign. The Spaniards killed,
in all, one hundred and four of the enemy
and recaptured nearly two thousand animals.
Again, in 1776, Oconor massed his forces for
concerted attacks. The results were somewhat
disappointing to the Spanish, but in five
battles twenty-seven Indians were killed and
eighteen captured. It was very plain that
Oconor's repeated blows were beginning to
tell. From Zuñi, October 12, 1776, Fray
Francisco Garcés wrote to the General
stating that all the Western Apaches were
returning to their old haunts in the north
with their families and horses and were very
much inclined toward peace with the
Spaniards. Now came the climax of their
woes. As they were attempting to escape
toward the northeast, they encountered large
numbers of their hereditary enemies, the
Comanches. Caught, thus, between the upper
and the nether millstone, they perished by
hundreds.
Favorable as the situation, in general, had
been for the Spanish, hostilities still
continued on the Sonora border. At eight
o'clock one morning in November, 1776,
Magdalena was attacked by forty Apache and
Seri Indians and almost completely
destroyed. At the time there were only four
ablebodied Pima men in the village. When the
attack began, the priest and the women and
children were engaged in the regular
religious exercises of the day. At once they
all took refuge in the home of the
missionary. The leader of the attacking
party placed a ladder against the wall of
the house and, climbing it, set fire to the
grass that formed the covering of the roof.
The savages next began to rob and desecrate
the church. They carried off the vestments
and the altar utensils and tore up the
missal and threw it away. Meantime, some of
the band had driven the cattle into the
mountains. The house by this time was in
flames and the people--men, women, and
children --on the point of suffocation. With
heavy stones the enemy managed to batter
down one of the doors. But this proved their
undoing; for the three brave Pima warriors
within were able to discharge their arrows
through the opening, and so, for a time,
drove off the foe. As all were now
momentarily expecting to die in the flames,
the priest prepared to administer
absolution. Salvation came from a different
quarter, however. The fourth Pima brave,
soon after the attack began, had slipped
away to San Ignacio where there was a
detachment of soldiers; and, barely in the
nick of time, the soldiers arrived and drove
off the murderers, not, however, before they
had mortally wounded one woman and carried
another one and two children into captivity.
Oconor's health gave way under the strain of
his long and unremitting duties on the
border, and at the beginning of 1777 he was
relieved. Don Teodoro de Croix now took over
responsibility for the control of the
Apaches. Frequent and deadly raids still
continued in New Mexico and Chihuahua, and
bleeding Sonora had never been given time
even to bandage her wounds; but Croix's
immediate and most urgent task was the
suppression of the apparently irrepressible
Gila Apaches. On October 12, 1777, a band of
these Indians attacked Janos. But they met a
hot reception, and were not only repulsed,
but were pursued so energetically that they
found it convenient to ask for a peace
parley. Stern and bitter, indeed, were the
conditions offered them. However, the time
had come when they must either come to terms
or perish. They were between the devil and
the deep sea--that is, the merciless
Comanches and the unremitting concerted
action of the Spanish.
It was left to Croix to determine upon a
course of action. He was a humane man, but a
shrewd one, too. He saw that to deal with a
widely scattered people, every member of
which was law unto himself, was all but
impossible. No binding treaty could be made
with the nation as a whole. He could not
suppose that these savages would ever give
up robbery and butchery, trained to it as
they had been from infancy. They could not
change their nature overnight; it was
impossible that the thought of good faith to
the Spaniards could find permanent lodgment
in the brain of an Apache. It was too much
to expect that they would give up roaming
the plains, abandon the hunt, and settle
down to the life of Christians. Nor did he
believe that they would return their white
captives, or the horses they had stolen, or
that they would give hostages. In short, he
felt confident that their present overture
was simply a makeshift. What they were
trying to do was to gain time, and escape
immediate destruction at the hands of the
Comanches.
A renewed application for peace on the part
of the Apaches in the region of Janos
brought matters to a head. Croix offered
peace on the following terms: they were to
come together at Janos, and at other places
with their families and live in regularly
organized pueblos; were to obey the captain
of the presidio, or such justices as Croix
should designate; were to select one of
their own leading men as governor; were to
give up a roving life, and not leave the
pueblo without permission; were to set about
the building of their houses and the
cultivation of the patch of ground that
would be allotted to each head of a family;
and were also to help cultivate the mission
fields (for it was required that they should
be under the instruction of the padres). It
was further stipulated that, for one year,
rations should be issued each week by
families; but that at the end of the year
they were to support themselves from their
own herds and from the crops that they were
to raise. They were to be provided with
necessary tools, were to be supplied with
horses to tend their herds, and were not to
be required to return animals previously
stolen.
But, as Croix had feared, this attempt at a
peaceful solution was in vain. Depredation
went on as usual. A party of twentyfive
Spaniards was set upon and a soldier badly
wounded. Raids were made on San Elezario and
El Paso. Early in the year 1778 the very
Indians who had sought peace at Janos killed
a settler near the fort. In August, only a
short distance from Chihuahua, one hundred
and thirty-three horses and mules were
stolen. When Croix sent Captain Gil to
punish the marauders and to make exchange of
prisoners, the Indians refused to come down
from their mountain retreats to talk with
him. Other military expeditions sent out to
punish these recalcitrants all failed.
Just about this time the able and
experienced explorer and Apache fighter, Don
Juan Bautista de Anza, was entering upon his
duties as governor of New Mexico. For the
next two years Croix and Anza worked hand in
hand for the complete conquest of the
Apaches. Croix was convinced once for all
that the Spanish must adopt an aggressive
policy and pursue it relentlessly. He
determined that from this time on the war
should be carried into the heart of the
Indians' own territory, and that a constant
stream of detachments should be poured in
from all of the frontier states, so that the
Indians might have no rest. It was his plan
to have expeditions concenter upon the
Apaches from Santa Fe, Zuñi, El Paso,
Chihuahua, and Sonora and encircle them with
a ring of iron. To Anza was assigned the
task of breaking a direct road from the
Pueblos on the Rio Grande into central
Sonora as a line of communication. He was
also required, if possible, to enter into an
alliance with the Comanches.
Croix carried on one well-coordinated
campaign that reached to the remote
strongholds of the enemy, but the result was
not highly successful. He had intended to
follow this campaign up with a similar one
the following season, but emergencies arose
that prevented him from doing this.
Likewise, Anza, because of a crisis in New
Mexico, was forced to give his immediate
attention to the suppression of the
destructive Comanches in the north and to
vital negotiations with the Pueblo Indians
of northeastern Arizona. So it was not until
November, 1780, that he was able to
undertake the all-important road-breaking
expedition through the Apache country into
Sonora. Even when he was free to make this
long and perilous march, the result was
disappointing. He merely skirted the eastern
edge of the Apache wilds; and so failed to
penetrate to their strongholds on the
Gila--the main purpose of the expedition.
Croix's ambitious plans were carried out to
some extent by his successor, Felipe de
Neve; and Anza, also, between 1783 and 1787,
made solid gains against the Apaches. Neve
launched a great drive during April and May,
1786, for the purpose of dislodging the
enemy from their mountain rancherías near
the frontier and forcing them back into more
remote fastnesses. As a result sixty-eight
Apaches were killed and eleven captured; two
Spanish captives were delivered and one
hundred and sixty-eight animals recovered.
Nor were the spoils of war
inconsiderable--in the form of buffalo robes
and deer skins. Perhaps most important of
all was the shock that must have come to the
savages when they found themselves
confronted by the Spanish in remote sierras
where white men had never before been seen.
Indeed, they were so alarmed and depressed
that they sought an alliance with the
Navajos.
The Navajos, however, were unstable allies.
They were bound by a treaty of peace entered
into with the former governor of New Mexico;
and Anza forced them to stand by this former
agreement. Anza's skill in effecting an
alliance with the Comanches, and then in
mustering Comanches, Navajos, and Spanish
unitedly in active operations against the
Apaches, is deserving of great praise.
However, when he resigned as Governor, the
good work he had done came to naught. In
1796 the Navajos again established friendly
relations with the Apaches, and again the
Spanish were at war with both tribes.
Coincident with the increased rigors of war
that had been visited upon the Apaches by
Oconor, Croix, and Neve, was the Spanish
policy of encouraging friendly Indians to
make settlements near the presidios and
missions along the border; and this policy
was made to include well-disposed bodies of
Apaches, as well as Opatas and Pimas. So,
occasionally, groups of Apaches did thus
settle down peaceably. Eventually treaties
were entered into with such communities, and
these agreements in some instances were
mutually observed. The Indians found it to
their advantage to keep these treaties, for
the Government expended from eighteen to
thirty thousand pesos a year in cash for
their support. Of course the Spanish knew
that the Apaches were not to be trusted,
even in this seemingly friendly relation.
They were aware that the spirit of hostility
was not fully allayed. That such attempts at
peace were very uncertain and dangerous is
illustrated by an incident at Arispe when
Apaches came there to make a peace treaty in
1795. Says Bancroft: "Being lodged in the
barracks they rose in the night, killed the
sentry, and fled to the mountains, killing
all they found on the way." 4
Nevertheless, from 1790 to 1810, there was a
nearer approximation to peace than at any
previous time. It is true that recalcitrant
bands, operating independently, continued to
make raids now and then and that the
soldiers had to be forever on the alert to
meet these attacks and to pursue and
chastise the troublemakers; but, as compared
with earlier conditions and with those that
were, unhappily, to follow, there was a
state of peace between the red man and the
white. For the first time in generations
there was an opportunity for constructive
development along the border, and it was
during these years of respite that mines
were opened and successfully operated,
churches built and beautified, and ranches
prosperously conducted.
Bibliography
Bancroft H. H. North American States and
Texas. San Francisco.
Benavides Fray Alonso De, The Memorial of,
tr. by Mrs. Emma Burbank Ayer .
Bolton Herbert E. Kino's Historical Memoirs
of Primaria Alta. Cleveland, Arthur H.
Clark, 1919.
Castañeda De Nagera Pedro. The Journey of
Coronado, tr. by George Parker Winship .
Chicago, Laidlaw.
Chapman C. E. The Founding of Spanish
California. New York, Macmillan, 1916.
Coues Elliott. The Expeditions of Zebulon
Montgomery Pike. New York, F. P. Harper,
1895.
Lockwood Frank C. With Padre Kino on the
Trail. University of Arizona Bulletin,
Tucson.
Manje Juan Mateo. Lux de Tierra Incognita.
Thomas Alfred B. Forgotten Frontiers.
Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1932.
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