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Show fjje Started One of Uncle Sam's ! Longest and Most Expensive Wars V-g f ABy ReSUlt!d '"5 h:e CchIse'S !n9 Warpath with His Apaches . 86l; 10,000 Americans Lost The, Lves and United States Spent $50,000,000 During i Next 25 Years of Effort to Conquer These "Ishmaels of the Southwest." Western Newspaper Union. By ELMO SCOTT WATSON LE chances are that you've never heard of Mickey free so you'd be a bit skeptical if some one told you Ijjgt he was an important figure in American history. . !..he was that is, if being largely responsible for one of !;', nest and most expensive wars which Uncle Sam ever '-M makes a person "important." J tlickey, you see, was the principal character in an inci-' inci-' which occurred 77 years ago and which sent the Chi-v'sbua Chi-v'sbua Apache chieftain, Cochise, on the warpath. The , ( ;'j which he thus started went on intermittently for 25 V'rsand before the last hostile Apache had been captured "'i; penned up on a reservation or sent away to an Eastern ''ress as a prisoner of war, the lives of ten thousand 1; ;emen, women and children had been sacrificed and "4 Sam had spent fifty millions of dollars in what :;;3ed for a long time to be an utterly futile attempt to '' 'l0r Cochise's people. -:e story of that long- -.out war is told in a , j -prehensive and detailed ' I ' ry of those people pub-: pub-: recently by the Mac-" Mac-" ;an company. It is "The ;che Indians," by Dr. ''i C. Lockwood, a pro-.. pro-.. Tjr of English at the Uni-k Uni-k rjty of Arizona and a long-!- -j student of the culture of ' ;: region. In it he traces : story of these "Ishmael-" "Ishmael-" of the Southwest" from a earliest contact with Spanish in Mexico down f it present time when the :ches are making an earn- - and surprisingly success-'- attempt to adapt them- GEN. GEORGE. CROOK . .ves to modern conditions s modern ways of life. : for "important" Mickey, he ;; e the son of Jesus Martinez, f- "exican woman, who in 1860 ; living with an Irishman ;d John Ward near the Sono-: Sono-: 'ver west of Fort Buchanan. :'-ry does not record who : W''s father was but it seems . ; Ward had adopted him. : Mickey Is Kidnaped. ; - day in October while the as watching his foster fa's fa-'s cattle in a meadow a band hes raided the ranch and both the boy and the stock. followed the trail of raided, raid-ed, becoming convinced that Monged to Cochise's band i -ncahuas, rode over to Fort anan and asked its com-;:!-i8 officer, Col. Pitcairn S ;-m for troops to help him v ' the boy and his cattle. . n, u was not until late in u :fy, 1861, that Morrison or-, or-, ' force of 54 men to pro-. pro-. 0 Cochise's encampment .! ;; tahe Pass and demand ! :'ckey and the stock be re- ; jo Ward. Command of i '-7achment was given to H 'lLleut; George N. Bascom. j :, willingly accepted Bas-, Bas-, .' "Nation to a conference Officer's tent but when the i :M made that he deliv- i! 'e t ?y Free and Ward's 1 1 ; declared that neither ,, n's People had any knowl-I knowl-I " .r Jaid nor we they ' ;t t boy and the stock, i " was proved that he was ; :;;h truth for it was a :alLApaches. nt Chir-' Chir-' W k had made the raid. ";W5pUSquely disregarding lerto make inquiries fl ::,;e Mty Indians and pur- -S&2nd the cattle from ,. s Wormed the chief that he - as ?mPan'ons would be ;'SS until Mickey the interpreter CochiJ, , officer's words ''CihSl0Uthls knife J' Jt lent j , canvas waU ';l :;t of h! ,leaPed into the , ironed by Ward tQ suf " 'i(i'ans mediately after "!cished f.i1- They were !rS0?,.the chif but re-ly re-ly to SPnrflr surPrise suf- ' Rafter I a fusiHade of ? -? One ofln2. as he dashed ; -- ao tri-rtl comPanions, down ' dteSCape' was J with u pinned to the a bayonet but the others sat quietly through the excitement ex-citement and were made prisoners. pris-oners. The immediate result of the rash young officer's action was a series of attacks by Cochise's warriors on stage stations, mail coaches and wagon trains and the slaughter of several men. In retaliation, another officer with Bascom's consent, albeit hanged three of his Indian hostages. hos-tages. Cochise's Reign of Terror. "When Cochise learned the fate of his three relatives, his fury knew no bounds. He swore he would exterminate or drive out the entire white population of Arizona . . . The result was that by the summer of 1861 terror ter-ror reigned supreme. Ranches, mines and small settlements were desolated and abandoned." When the outbreak of the Civil war made it necessary for the federal government to withdraw its troops in Arizona, there was rejoicing among the Apaches for they believed they had conquered the Americans. They were soon disillusioned for other troops moved in and, under the command com-mand of Gen. James H. Carle-ton, Carle-ton, attempted to "exterminate the Apaches." But they had little success. Under the leadership of Cochise and Mangas Coloradas the Indians continued to raid and burn and kill. The Indian loss was relatively small. Among those killed was the chief, Mangas Coloradas but not in battle. He was induced to surrender under a promise of safety and then was shot while "attempting to escape" after being goaded to desperation which led him to make the attempt. at-tempt. Little wonder that Cochise, Co-chise, when overtures for a cessation cessa-tion of hostilities were made, replied, re-plied, "I was at peace with the whites until they tried to kill me for what other Indians did; I now live and die at war with them." However, through the influence of a frontiersman, Capt. T. J. Jeffords, the only white man Cochise had ever trusted, the chief settled on a reservation and lived there peaceably until his death in 1874. Crook Comes to Arizona. Although Cochise's Chiricahuas were at peace, there were other tribes of that nation who continued contin-ued to make war on the whites. r "US' i X , GERONIMO Then Gen. George Crook, "the Terrible and the Just," took command com-mand of the department of Arizona. Ari-zona. Crook at once proved that he could beat the Apaches at their own game and that once they had surrendered they could rely upon his promises to them. His campaigns in 1871-72 finally brought a greater degree of peace to Arizona than it had ever known and with the hostiles settled set-tled on reservations, the Apache problem seemed to be settled. In March, 1875, however, Crook was transferred to the department depart-ment of the Platte because of the threatening situation there. During Dur-ing the next two years, while he was helping subdue the Sioux and Cheyennes, all of his work in Arizona Ari-zona was undone by the strife be- ilf- 1 6 ml 1 j MICKEY FREE tween the war department and the department of the interior and by grafting Indian agents, aided and abetted in defrauding the Indians by unscrupulous citizens citi-zens of Arizona. The result was easy to predict. The Apaches went on the warpath war-path again. Taza, who had succeeded suc-ceeded his father, Cochise, as chief of the Chiricahuas, managed to keep most of his people on the reservation but others under the leadership of Geronimo, who was later joined by Nachez, another an-other son of .Cochise, began raiding, raid-ing, as did the Warm Springs Apaches, led by Victorio, the successor suc-cessor of Mangas Coloradas. For three years Victorio spread a reign of terror throughout the Southwest until he was killed by Mexican troops in the Tres Cas-tillos Cas-tillos mountains in 1880. But Geronimo, Ge-ronimo, Nachez, Juh, Chato and other leaders took up the tas! of harassing the whites where he had left off. In 1882 Crook was again assigned to Arizona and again took up the difficult task of catching the elusive Apaches. Crook's method of doing this was to enlist friendly Apaches to serve as scouts against their brethren. Incidentally, one of them was Mickey Free, who had grown to young manhood among his captors. Crook's campaigning was successful and after pursuing pursu-ing the hostiles into Mexico, where he took his life in his hands and entered Geronimo's camp for a conference, he persuaded per-suaded them to surrender. However, thanks to the work of a white bootlegger, who smuggled smug-gled liquor into their camp and told them a pack of lies about the fate that awaited them when they were returned to the United States, a party of 38, headed by Geronimo and Nachez, slipped away before they had crossed the border and hid out again in the Sierra Madre mountains. The Last Chapter. There was an angry exchange of telegrams between Crook and Phil Sheridan, his commanding general, and when Crook learned that President Cleveland and Sheridan had repudiated the terms under which the Apaches had surrendered to him, he asked to be relieved of his command. He was succeeded by Gen. Nelson A. Miles and the last chapter in the war saga of the Apaches was written a few months later. Dr. Lockwood's chapter dealing deal-ing with Miles' campaign indicates indi-cates that there is little in it of which to be proud. The title of the chapter is "Victory With Dishonor." Dis-honor." Ordered to "kill or capture" cap-ture" the 38 renegades under Geronimo Ge-ronimo and Nachez, Miles' force of 5,000 men hunted them through the mountains for four months without killing or capturing a single sin-gle one. But they did wear down the resistance of the hostiles until un-til eventually Geronimo and Nachez consented to give up. That surrender was brought about by Lieut. Charles B. Gate-wood Gate-wood of the Sixth cavalry, "though he was long denied the full meed of honor he deserved through army jealousies and through the pettiness and vanity that marred the really creat soldierly sol-dierly qualities of Miles." But the dishonor in this victory vic-tory was not the dishonor of Miles. It was that of the government govern-ment which he served. Again the promises made to the Indians to get them to submit were repudiated re-pudiated by the higher authorities authori-ties But most dishonorable of all was the fact that the loyal Apache scouts, who had helped run down the renegades, were given exactly the same treatment as was meted out to the hostiles. They were sent as prisoners of war to Florida and kept there for several years. Cochise's war was not the first trouble which Uncle Sam had had with these red children of his. That had begun as far back as 1825 when a party of American trappers had a skirmish with them on the Gila river. Treacherous White Men. But the Indians weren't always the aggressors nor were they any more treacherous than were some of the Americans whom they met. There was, for example, ex-ample, a certain James Johnson who in 1835 lured to a feast a band of Apaches whose chief, Juan Jose, was his personal friend, then slaughtered many of them to collect a bounty on their scalps offered by the Mexican governor of Sonora. That incident inci-dent sowed the seed of Apache fear and distrust of Americans. It would grow as the years passed and result in a red harvest har-vest of bloodshed and burning. "On August 14, 1846, with as little forethought as the dissolute father gives to his chance-begotten offspring, the United States government assumed the wardship ward-ship of the Apache," writes Dr. Lockwood. "On that day, from the flat roof of a one-story house in the village of Las Vegas, N. M., Gen. Stephen W. Kearney issued is-sued a proclamation in which he took possession of the country and extended over it the laws of the United States . . . "Never before nor since did Uncle Sam take into his strong awkward arms such a turbulent infant as this Apache nation. It was one thing for Kearney to declare de-clare himself military governor and that, if the people would go on quietly with their affairs and not oppose the new government, they would be secure in all their civic rights and would be pro- ft Is - ' : TV GEN. NELSON A. MILES tected from the nomadic Indians; but it was a very different thing for the United States to make good these promises. Here, too, it should be stated that in the Guadelupe Hidalgo treaty, signed by the representatives of the United States, February 2, 1848, and ratified by the senate March 10, our government formally and solemnly agreed to prevent Indians Indi-ans living in the United States from making raids into Mexico and from carrying Mexicans away into captivity. "These obligations were hard, indeed, to fulfill, and often impossible im-possible of fulfillment. For 40 years the Apache problem was a festering thorn in the flesh of the American republic and a source of desolation and death to thousands of individual citizens, both Mexican and American." This Apache problem was such a "source of desolation and death" for several reasons, not 4 V " f ! LT. CHARLES B. GATEWOOD the least of which were the vacillation vacil-lation of Uncle Sam in his attitude atti-tude toward his newly acquired children and the savage brutality brutal-ity of some of his white children toward them. The first Indian agent sent to New Mexico, James S. Calhoun, informed the authorities authori-ties at Washington that "the Co-manches Co-manches and Apaches with all the adjacent fragments of other tribes, must be penned up; and this should be done at the earliest earli-est possible day." To that he added this significant warning: "Expend your millions now, if necessary, that you may avoid the expenditure of millions hereafter." here-after." But this advice was ig- nored. So during the next 40 years Uncle Sam had to spend j many more millions than would have been required at the beginning, begin-ning, had Calhoun's warning been heeded. I |