Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

by Dee Brown

  Whitman meanwhile had written an explanation of the situation to his military superiors, requesting instructions, but late in April his inquiry was returned for resubmission on proper government forms. Uneasy because he knew that all responsibility for actions of Eskiminzin's Apaches was his, the lieutenant kept a close watch on their movements.

  On April 10 Apaches raided San Xavier, south of Tucson, stealing cattle and horses. On April 13 four Americans were killed in a raid near the San Pedro east of Tucson.

  Tucson in 1871 was an oasis of three thousand gamblers, saloon-keepers, traders, freighters, miners, and a few contractors who had made fortunes during the Civil War and were hopeful of continuing their profits with an Indian war. This backwash of citizens had organized a Committee of Public Safety to protect themselves from Apaches, but as none came near the town, the committee frequently saddled up and rode out in pursuit of raiders in the outlying communities. After the two April raids, some members of the committee announced that the raiders had come from the Aravaipa village near Camp Grant. Although Camp Grant was fifty-five miles distant, and it was unlikely that Aravaipas would have traveled that far to raid, the pronouncement was readily accepted by most of the Tucson citizens. In general they were opposed to agencies where Apaches worked for a living and were peaceful; such conditions led to reductions in military forces and a slackening of war prosperity.

  During the last weeks of April, a veteran Indian fighter named William S. Oury began organizing an expedition to attack the unarmed Aravaipas near Camp Grant. Six Americans and forty-two Mexicans agreed to participate, but Oury decided this was

  not enough to ensure success. From the Papago Indians, who years before had been subdued by Spanish soldiers and converted to Christianity by Spanish priests, he recruited ninety-two mercenaries. On April 28 this formidable band of 140 well-armed men was ready to ride.

  The first warning that Lieutenant Whitman at Camp Grant had of the expedition was a message from the small military garrison at Tucson informing him that a large party had left there on the twenty-eighth with the avowed purpose of killing all the Indians near Camp Grant.

  Whitman received the dispatch from a mounted messenger at 7:30 A.M. on April 30.

  "I immediately sent the two interpreters, mounted, to the Indian camp," Whitman later reported, "with orders to tell the chiefs the exact state of things, and for them to bring their entire party inside the post. . . . My messengers returned in about an hour, with intelligence that they could find no living Indians."

  Less than three hours before Whitman received the warning message, the Tucson expedition was deployed along the creek bluffs and the sandy approaches of the Aravaipas' village. The men on the low ground opened fire on the wickiups, and as the Apaches ran into the open, rifle fire from the bluffs cut them down. In half an hour every Apache in the camp had fled, been captured, or was dead.

  The captives were all children, twenty- seven of them, taken by the Christianized Papagos to be sold into slavery in Mexico.

  When Whitman reached the village it was still burning, and the ground was strewn with dead and mutilated women and children. "I found quite a number of women shot while asleep beside their bundles of hay which they had collected to bring in that morning. The wounded who were unable to get away had their brains beaten out with clubs or stones, while some were shot full of arrows after having been mortally wounded by gunshot. The bodies were all stripped."

  Surgeon C. B. Briesly, who accompanied Lieutenant Whitman, reported that two of the women "were lying in such a position, and from the appearance of their genital organs and of their wounds, there can be no doubt that they were first ravished and then shot dead. . One infant of some ten months shot twice and one leg hacked nearly off."

  Whitman was concerned that the survivors who had fled into the mountains would blame him for failing to protect them. "I thought the act of caring for their dead would be an evidence to them of our sympathy at least, and the conjecture proved correct, for while at the work many of them came to the spot and indulged in their expressions of grief too wild and terrible to be described . . of the whole number buried [about a hundred] one was an old man and one was a well-grown boy-all the rest women and children." Death from wounds and the discovery of missing bodies eventually brought the total killed to 144.

  Eskiminzin did not return, and some of the Apaches believed he would go on the warpath in revenge for the massacre.

  "My women and children have been killed before my face,"

  one of the men told Whitman, "and I have been unable to defend them. Most Indians in my place would take a knife and cut his throat." But after the lieutenant pledged his word that he would not rest until they had justice, the grieving Aravaipas agreed to help rebuild the village and start life over again.

  Whitman's persistent efforts finally brought the Tucson killers to trial. The defense claimed that the citizens of Tucson had followed the trail of murdering Apaches straight to the Aravaipa village. Oscar Hutton, the post guide at Camp Grant, testified for the prosecution: "I give it as my deliberate judgment that no raiding party was ever made up from the Indians at this post." F. L. Austin, the post trader, Miles L. Wood, the beef contractor, and William Kness, who carried the mail between Camp Grant and Tucson, all made similar statements. The trial lasted for five days; the jury deliberated for nineteen minutes; the verdict was for release of the Tucson killers.

  As for Lieutenant Whitman, his unpopular defense of Apaches destroyed his military career. He survived three court-martials on ridiculous charges, and after several more years of service without promotion he resigned.

  The Camp Grant massacre, however, fixed the attention of Washington upon the Apaches. President Grant described the attack as "purely murder," and ordered the Army and the Indian Bureau to take urgent actions to bring peace to the Southwest.

  In June, 1871, General George Crook arrived at Tucson to take command of the Department of Arizona. A few weeks later Yincent Colyer, a special representative of the Indian Bureau, arrived at Camp Grant. Both men were keenly interested in arranging a meeting with the leading Apache chiefs, especially Cochise. Colyer first met with Eskiminzin in hopes of persuading him to return to his peaceful ways.

  Eskiminzin came down out of the mountains and said he would be glad to talk peace with Commissioner Colyer.

  "The commissioner probably thought he would see a great capitan," Eskiminzin remarked quietly, "but he only sees a very poor man and not very much of a capitan If the commissioner had seen me about three moons ago he would have seen me a capitan. Then I had many people, but many have been massacred. Now I have got few people.

  Ever since I left this place, I have been nearby. I knew I had friends here but I was afraid to come back. I never had much to say, but this I can say, I like this place. I have said all I ought to say, since I have few people anywhere to speak for. If it had not been for the massacre, there would have been a great many more people here now; but after that massacre who could have stood it? When I made peace with Lieutenant Whitman my heart was very big and happy. The people of Tucson and San Xavier must be crazy.

  They acted as though they had neither heads nor hearts they must have a thirst for our blood. . These Tucson people write for the papers and tell their own story. The Apaches have no one to tell their story."

  Colyer promised to tell the Apaches' story to the Great Father and to the white people who had never heard of it.

  "I think it must have been God who gave you a good heart to come and see us, or you must have had a good father and mother to make you so kind."

  "It was God," Colyer declared.

  "It was," Eskiminzin said, but the white men present could not tell in the translation whether he spoke in confirmation or was asking a question.

  The next chief on Colyer's agenda was Delshay of the Tonto Apaches. Delshay was a stocky, broad-shouldered man of about thirty-five. He wore a silver ornament in one ear, his facial expression was fierce, and he usual
ly moved at a half-trot as though in a constant hurry. As early as 1868

  Delshay had agreed to keep the Tontos at peace and use Camp McDowell on the west bank of the Rio Verde as his agency. Delshay, however, found the Bluecoat soldiers to be exceedingly treacherous. On one occasion an officer had fired buckshot into Delshay's back for no reason the chief could fathom, and he was quite certain that the post surgeon had tried to poison him. After these occurrences, Delshay stayed clear of Camp McDowell.

  Commissioner Colyer arrived at Camp McDowell late in September with authority to use soldiers to open communications with Delshay. Although truce flags, smoke signals, and night fires were used extensively by parties of cavalry and infantry, Delshay would not respond until he had thoroughly tested the intentions of the Bluecoats. By the time he agreed to meet with Captain W. N. Netterville in Sunflower Valley (October 31, 1871), Commissioner Colyer had returned to Washington to make his report. A copy of Delshay's remarks was forwarded to Colyer.

  “I don't want to run over the mountains anymore," Delshay said. "I want to make a big treaty. . . . I will make a peace that will last; I will keep my word until the stones melt." He did not want to take the Tontos back to Camp McDowell, however. It was not a good place (after all, he had been shot and poisoned there). The Tontos preferred to live in Sunflower Valley near the mountains so they could gather the fruit and get the wild game there. "If the big capitan at Camp McDowell does not put a post where I say," he insisted, "I can do nothing more, for God made the white man and God made the Apache, and the Apache has just as much right to the country as the white man. I want to make a treaty that will last, so that both can travel over the country and have no trouble; as soon as the treaty is made I want a piece of paper so that I can travel over the country as a white man. I will put a rock down to show that when it melts the treaty is to be broken. . . . If I make a treaty, I expect the big capitan will come and see me whenever I send for him, and I will do the same whenever he sends for me. If a treaty is made and the big capitan does not keep his promises with me I will put his word in a hole and cover it up with dirt. I promise that when a treaty is made the white man or soldiers can turn out all their horses and mules without anyone to look after them, and if any are stolen by the Apaches I will cut my throat. I want to make a big treaty, and if the Americans break the treaty I do not want any more trouble; the white man can take one road and I can take the other. . . . Tell the big capitan at Camp McDowell that I will go to see him in twelve days."

  The closest that Colyer carne to Cochise was Canada Alamosa, an agency which had been established by the Indian Bureau forty-two miles southwest of Fort Craig, New Mexico. There he talked with two members of Cochise's band. They told him that the Chiricahuas had been in Mexico, but the Mexican government was offering three hundred dollars for Apache scalps, and this had brought out scouting parties who attacked them in the mountains of Sonora. They had scattered and were returning to their old Arizona strongholds. Cochise was somewhere in the Dragoon Mountains.

  A courier was sent to find Cochise, but when the man crossed into Arizona Territory he unexpectedly met General Crook, who refused to recognize his authority to go to Cochise's camp. Crook ordered the courier to return immediately to New Mexico.

  Crook wanted Cochise for himself, and to find him dead or alive he ordered out five companies of cavalry to scour the Chiricahua Mountains. Gray Wolf was the name the Apaches gave General Crook. Cochise eluded the Gray Wolf by crossing into New Mexico. He sent a messenger to the Star Chief at Santa Fe, General Gordon Granger, informing him that he would meet him at Canada Alamosa to talk peace.

  Granger arrived in a six-mule ambulance with a small escort, and Cochise was waiting for him. The preliminaries were brief. Both men were eager to get the matter settled.

  For Granger it was an opportunity to win fame as the man who took the surrender of the great Cochise. For Cochise it was the end of the road; he was almost sixty years old and was very tired; streaks of silver dominated his shoulder-length hair.

  Granger explained that peace was possible only if the chiricahuas agreed to settle on a reservation. "No Apache would be allowed to leave the reservation without a written pass from the agent," the general said, “and permission would never be given to go on any kind of excursion across the line into old Mexico.”

  Cochise replied in a quiet voice, seldom gesturing: “The sun has been very hot on my head and made me as in a fire; my blood was on fire, but now I have come into this valley and drunk of these waters and washed myself in them and they have cooled me. Now that I am cool I have come with my hands open to you to live in peace with you. I speak straight and do not wish to deceive or be deceived. I want a good, .strong and lasting peace. When God made the world he gave one part to the white man and another to the Apache. Why was it? Why did they come together? Now that I am to speak, the sun, the moon, the earth, the air, the waters, the birds and beasts, even the children unborn shall rejoice at my words. The white people have looked for me long. I am here! What do they want? They have looked for me long; why am I worth so much? If I am worth so much why not mark where I set my foot and look when I spit? The coyotes go about at night to rob and kill; I cannot see them; I am not God. I am no longer chief of all the Apaches. I am no longer rich; I am but a poor man. The world was not always this way. God made us not as you; we were born like the animals, in the dry grass, not on beds like you. This is why we do as the animals, go about at night and rob and steal. If I had such things as you have, I would not do as I do, for then I would not need to do so. There are Indians who go about killing and robbing. I do not command them.

  If I did, they would not do so. My warriors have been killed in Sonora. I came in, here because God told me to do so. He said it was good to be at peace-so I came ! I was going around the world with the clouds, and the air, when God spoke to my thoughts and told me to come in here and be at peace with air. He said the world was for us all; how was it?

  "When I was young I walked all over this country, east and west, and saw no other people than the Apache.. After many summers I walked again and found another race of people had come to take it. How is it? Why is it that the Apaches wait to die-that they carry their lives on their fingernails. They roam over the hills and plains and want the heavens to fall on them. The Apaches were once a great nation; they are now but few, and because of this they want to die and so carry their lives on their fingernails. Many have been killed in battle. You must speak straight so that your words may go as sunlight to our hearts. Tell me, if the Virgin Mary has walked throughout all the land, why has she never entered the wickiups of the Apaches? Why have we never seen or heard her?

  "I have no father nor mother; I am alone in the world. No one cares for Cochise; that is why I do not care to live, and wish the rocks to fall on me and cover me up. If I had a father and mother like you, I would be with them and they with me. When I was going around the world, all were asking for Cochise. Now he is here-you see him and hear him-are you glad? If so, say so. Speak, Americans and Mexicans, I do not wish to hide anything from you nor have you hide anything from me; I will not lie to you; do not lie to me'"

  When the discussion came around to a location for the Chiricahua reservation, Granger said that the government wanted to move the agency from Canada Alamosa to Fort Tularosa in the Mogollons. (At Canada Alamosa three hundred Mexicans had settled and made land claims.)

  "I want to live in these mountains," Cochise protested' "I do not want to go to Tularosa. That is a long ways off. The flies on those mountains eat out the eyes of the horses. The bad spirits live there. I have drunk of these waters and they have cooled me; I do not want to leave here."

  General Granger said that he would do what he could to persuade the government to let the Chiricahuas live in Canada Alamosa with its streams of clear cold water.

  Cochise promised that he would keep his people there in peace with their Mexican neighbors, and he kept his promise. A few months later, however, the go
vernment ordered the removal of all Apaches from Canada Alamosa to Fort Tularosa. As soon as he heard of the order, Cochise slipped away with his warriors. They divided into small parties, fleeing once again to their dry and rocky mountains in southeastern Arizona. This time, Cochise resolved, he would stay there. Let the Gray Wolf, Crook, come after him if he must; Cochise would fight him with rocks if need be, and then if God willed it, the rocks could fall on Cochise and cover him up.

  In the Time When the Corn Is Taken In (September, 1872) Cochise began receiving reports from his lookouts that a small party of white men was approaching his stronghold.

  They were traveling in one of the Army's little wagons that were made for carrying wounded men. The lookouts reported that Taglito, the Red Beard, was with them - Tom Jeffords. Cochise had not seen Taglito for a long time.

  Back in the old days after Cochise and Mangas had gone to war with the Bluecoats, Tom Jeffords contracted to carry the mail between Fort Bowie and Tucson. Apache warriors ambushed Jeffords and his riders so often that he almost gave up the contract. And then one day the red-bearded white man came all alone to Cochise's camp. He dismounted, unbuckled his cartridge belt, and handed it and his weapons to one of the Chiricahua women. With no show of fear whatsoever, Taglito walked over to where Cochise was sitting and sat down beside him. After a proper interval of silence, Taglito Jeffords told Cochise he wanted a personal treaty with him so that he could earn his living carrying the mails. Cochise was baffled. He had never known such a white man. There was nothing he could do but honor Taglito's courage by promising to let him ride his mail route unmolested. Jeffords and his riders were never ambushed again , and many times afterward the tall red-bearded man came back to Cochise's camp and they would talk and drink tiswin together.