The Sierra Madre campaign of 1885 was an exhausting and largely profitless struggle against heat, insects, hunger, thirst, and fatigue. Crawford’s scouts struck a hostile camp once, on June 23, and Wirt Davis’ scouts three times, on July 28, August 7, and September 22. But in each instance the occupants escaped with slight loss. Late in September the fugitives even mounted a counterattack that sent twenty warriors on a swift horse-stealing foray into southeastern Arizona. Crook’s elaborate border defenses proved no more successful at intercepting Apaches than his offensive forces in Mexico. In October, at Crook’s summons, Crawford and Wirt Davis put in at Fort Bowie to refit and prepare for another assault on the Sierra Madre.
As if to point up the failure of the campaign, early in November Chihuahua’s brother Josanie led about a dozen warriors in a raid across New Mexico and Arizona that in sheer magnitude of achievement surpassed all raids that had gone before. As summarized by Crook, within four weeks Josanie and his party rode no less than 1,200 miles, killed 38 people, captured and wore out 250 animals, and escaped back into Mexico without encountering any of the scores of army patrols that tried desperately to cut them off.
While Josanie rampaged across the Southwest, Crook fended off a threat from still another quarter. On November 29, as Wirt Davis took the field once more and Crawford made final preparations, Lieutenant General Sheridan appeared at Fort Bowie. He came at the behest of Secretary of War William C. Endicott to discuss with Crook a growing conviction in Washington that a satisfactory resolution of the Apache problem depended on removing all the Chiricahua and Warm Springs people to a location distant from the Southwest. Crook, backed by Crawford, opposed the measure, explaining that the newly reconstituted scout companies contained many Chiricahuas, whose performance could not fail to be affected by a removal scheme. The discussion also touched on undefined “kindred matters” that can only be guessed at. In light of later developments, it is not unlikely that Sheridan expressed or implied skepticism of Crook’s heavy reliance on Indian scouts. For the moment, however, with a new campaign just beginning, he could not well challenge Crook’s opinions or methods openly.30
In fact, Crook’s second expedition departed even further from orthodoxy than his first. Crawford’s scout battalion, two fifty-man companies under Lt. Marion P. Maus and William E. Shipp, had been recruited mainly from White Mountain and Chiricahua bands around Fort Apache—the latter tribesmen of the very people being hunted—and this time no regular unit went along. Regulars were supposed to provide rallying points for the scouts and protection for the pack trains, but Crawford had discovered that they also severely inhibited the scouts’ mobility, and he was willing to forego these advantages. Wirt Davis declined the risk of treachery; his scouts came from the San Carlos tribes, and a cavalry troop accompanied them.
While Davis and Crawford worked deeper and deeper into Mexico, Crook sipped Christmas eggnog at Fort Bowie and ignored Sheridan’s anxious telegraphic requests for information. At last, on January 9, 1886, Crawford found the main Apache camp in a tangled and frigid wilderness near the head of the Aros River, some 200 miles south of the international boundary. A braying mule gave warning of his presence, and the attack the next morning fell on a hastily vacated camp. But, their sense of security shattered once more, the leaders—Geronimo, Nachez, Chihuahua, and Nana—sent a woman to tell Crawford that they wanted to talk. The scouts rested in the abandoned Apache camp while awaiting a conference to be held on January 11.
Tragedy intervened. Unknown to Crawford, a force of 150 Mexican militiamen had also trailed Geronimo to this camp, and on the morning of January 11 they attacked. Crawford hastily mounted a large rock in full view of the Mexicans to expose his blue uniform and brown beard. A bullet fired at close range drove itself into his brain. While Geronimo and his people watched from surrounding heights, the scouts and the Mexicans exchanged fire for two hours before Lieutenant Maus managed to persuade the Mexican commander of his error—if indeed it was an error.31 Deep in unfriendly country, faced by hostile Apaches and suspicious Mexicans, ammunition and food almost gone, Maus saw little choice but to retrace the path to Fort Bowie.
But the hostile leaders, their haven violated by both American and Mexican pursuers, still wanted to talk. They opened communication through two women, and on January 13, 1886, Maus sat down with Geronimo, Nachez, Chihuahua, and Nana. Geronimo said that he wanted to discuss the possibility of surrender with General Crook personally, and for that purpose would meet with him near San Bernardino in “two moons.” As earnest of good faith, he yielded nine people, including his own and Nachez’s wife and old Nana, to act as hostages. Leaving Crawford’s body in the care of the presidente of Nacori, Maus hurried north to report to Crook.32
On March 25, 1886, Crook and his staff seated themselves with Geronimo and his lieutenants in a wooded ravine at Cañon de los Embudos, twelve miles south of the border. The Apaches were “as fierce as so many tigers,” Crook wrote that night, and very independent and distrustful. He sought unconditional surrender. “If you stay out,” he warned, “I’ll keep after you and kill the last one, if it takes fifty years.” But he was bluffing, as Geronimo doubtless divined, and at last offered terms—confinement in the East with their families for two years, followed by return to the reservation. At night and between formal meetings trusted scouts worked on the hostiles; among the most effective was Kaytennae, “thoroughly reconstructed” by his two-year imprisonment at Alcatraz. At a second meeting, on March 27, Chihuahua, Nachez, and finally Geronimo made surrender speeches. Leaving Lieutenant Maus to escort the Indians, the general hastened to Fort Bowie to wire the good news to Sheridan. He was premature. With mescal obtained from an itinerant, trader, the Apaches drank themselves into a frenzy, and on the night of March 28 Geronimo and Nachez, with twenty men and thirteen women, scattered into the mountains. Chihuahua and Nana, with about a dozen men and forty-seven women and children, accompanied Maus to Fort Bowie.33
In Washington, Crook’s reputation plummeted. Even before word arrived of Geronimo’s escape, Crook’s terms were repudiated. President Cleveland refused to approve any arrangement short of unconditional surrender, and Sheridan wired Crook to go back and obtain it. “Take every precaution against the escape of the hostiles,” read the orders, and “insure against further hostilities by completing the destruction of the hostiles unless these terms are accepted.” Indians who had already surrendered on certain conditions were now to surrender without condition or be slaughtered—a proposition utterly repugnant to one who regarded honesty as the first principle of Indian relations. Then Sheridan learned of Geronimo’s flight. His answering dispatches, petulantly conveying his displeasure, questioned both the reliability and loyalty of the Chiricahua scouts and suggested the propriety of abandoning offensive operations altogether. With forty-six companies of infantry and forty troops of cavalry, Sheridan thought, Crook ought to be able to erect effective defenses against raids from Mexico. From hard experience, Crook knew that to be a vain hope. On April 1 he asked to be relieved from command. Sheridan reacted instantly. The next day orders sped to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, assigning Brig. Gen. Nelson A. Miles to command the Department of Arizona.34
Sheridan’s orders to Miles implicitly but emphatically discredited Crook’s basic approach to Apache warfare. After the death of Crawford, the lieutenant general wrote in his annual report, he concluded “that the Indian scouts could not be wholly depended upon to fight and kill their own people.”35 Thus, in charging Miles to mount a vigorous campaign to destroy or capture the hostiles, Sheridan advised “making active and prominent use of the Regular troops of your command.”36 Reliving a “very much worried and disappointed” Crook at Fort Bowie on April 12, 1886,37 Miles at once began plotting the new strategy.
The new features were less real than apparent. As in Crook’s time, mobile striking forces would probe the mountains of Mexico and try to dig out or wear down the hostiles. Although composed mainly of Regulars, they enjoyed the serv
ices of Apache scouts. Miles also reorganized the border defenses. The high mountains, bright sunlight, and clear atmosphere invited use of the heliograph. Manipulating mirrors mounted on a tripod, trained operators could flash messages as far as twenty-five or thirty miles. Establishing a series of “districts of observation,” he covered southern Arizona and New Mexico with a network of heliograph stations. In all, there were twenty-seven, connecting virtually all the high peaks of the region. To each district Miles assigned well-equipped mobile columns to intercept any marauding Indians sighted by observers at the heliograph stations.38
How effective this system might have proved is speculative, for the hostiles struck before it could be fully developed. Rampaging down the Santa Cruz Valley on April 27, they scattered in small raiding parties to the north and east. One party, tenaciously pursued by Capt. Thomas C. Lebo’s troop of the Tenth Cavalry, veered back into Mexico and, in the Pinito Mountains thirty miles south of the boundary, fought a brisk skirmish on May 3 with the black troopers. Another ran afoul of Capt. Charles A. P. Hatfield’s troop of the Fourth Cavalry near Santa Cruz, Sonora, on May 15 and lost their stock, only to regain it a few days later in an ambush of Hatfield’s command. After this foray, the Apaches dropped deep into Mexico and Miles’ elaborate defenses went untested.39
To conduct the operations in Mexico, Miles had turned to Capt. Henry W. Lawton, a big-framed, hard-bitten (and hard-drinking) veteran of Mackenzie’s campaigns. His medical officer was an equally athletic young surgeon with line-officer aspirations named Leonard Wood. Miles selected them because they believed, with him, that picked white troops could prevail over Apaches. The expedition, formed at Fort Huachuca, consisted of Lawton’s troop of the Fourth Cavalry, 35 strong, 20 picked infantrymen from the Eighth Regiment, 100 pack mules with 30 packers, and 20 White Mountain and San Carlos Apache scouts.40 On May 5 Lawton led his command into Mexico.41
For four months Lawton pursued the quarry from one mountain range to the next. The 2,000-mile trek took the command far southward, to the Sonora and Yaqui Rivers, and forms a record of hardship and perserverance notable in U.S. military annals. As Leonard Wood recalled the ordeal:
One who does not know this country cannot realize what this kind of service means—marching every day in the intense heat, the rocks and earth being so torrid that the feet are blistered and rifle-barrels and everything metallic being so hot that the hand cannot touch them without getting burnt. It is a country rough beyond description, covered everywhere with cactus and full of rattlesnakes and other undesirable companions of that sort. The rain, when it does come, comes as a tropical tempest, transforming the dry cañons into raging torrents in an instant…. We had no tents and little or no baggage of any kind except rations and ammunition. Suits of underclothing formed our uniform and moccasins covered our feet.42
They all walked; the horses broke down the first week. Lawton lost forty pounds, Wood thirty. Only one-third of the enlisted men made it to the end; the rest were replacements added during the march. Three sets of officers served. And for all the effort, only once did the expedition corner any Apaches. The Indian scouts discovered the camp and led the Regulars to it, but as they moved into position on July 14 the enemy took alarm and fled.
While Lawton’s men struggled in the Mexican wilds, General Miles pursued two other measures destined to prove consequential. One was the removal of all Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apaches from Arizona. Sooner or later, he believed, they would furnish ammunition and reinforcements to their kindred on the warpath. Already, Chihuahua, Nana, Josanie, and the people who had surrendered to Crook in March had been packed off to Fort Marion, Florida. On August 29, j 886, the reservation Chiricahuas were summoned to Fort Apache for a routine roll call, swiftly surrounded by an overwhelming force of cavalry, and marched off to the railroad at Holbrook. There, 382 Indians, including most of the scouts who had served Crook, boarded a train for Florida.43
The other measure was a peace overture—essentially a replay of the stratagem that had twice awarded success to Crook, and also an acknowledgment of the failure of offensive operations. At Fort Apache Miles selected two Chiricahuas, Kayitah and Marline, known to have influence with Geronimo and Nachez. With Crawford dead and Britton Davis out of the army, Lt. Charles B. Gatewood was the only remaining officer known and respected by Geronimo. Although in ill health, he heeded Miles’ summons and led the peace party into Mexico. After two weeks of fatiguing travel, Gatewood joined up with a disconsolate Lawton on the Aros River. Reports now placed the hostiles 200 miles to the north, not far from the Arizona border, directing peace feelers at Mexican authorities in Fronteras. Lawton and Gatewood hastened northward. Other U.S. commands converged on Fronteras.
The hostiles had let the Mexicans believe that a surrender might be arranged, but only to gain time to rest and reprovision. Through Kayitah and Martine, however, Gatewood secured an audience with Geronimo. On August 24, five days before the Chiricahua removal from Fort Apache, the meeting took place in a bed of the Bavispe River. Gatewood delivered Miles’ ultimatum: “Surrender, and you will be sent with your families to Florida, there to await the decision of the President as to your final disposition.” Geronimo was willing to surrender if he could return to the reservation, but not if he had to go to Florida. Only after Gatewood dropped the disconcerting news that all the other Chiricahuas were even then being moved to Florida did Geronimo weaken. He would surrender—but only to General Miles in person.
Preoccupied with the seizure of the reservation Indians, Miles tried to avoid such a meeting. His insistence that the Apaches surrender to Lawton almost wrecked the shaky accord Gatewood had arranged. Retaining their arms—and Gatewood—they moved nervously northward as Lawton and other units trailed at a respectful distance. The slightest threat, real or imagined, would have stampeded them, as the approach of a Mexican force almost did. At last, the reservation Indians securely en route to the railroad, Miles gave in. The surrender took place at Skeleton Canyon, sixty-five miles southeast of Fort Bowie, on September 4, 1886. Four days later the prisoners were assembled on the parade ground at Fort Bowie and, as the Fourth Cavalry band played “Auld Lang Syne,” were escorted to Bowie Station and loaded on a train for Florida.44
Elated, President Cleveland wired Miles to hold the Apaches at Fort Bowie until they could be turned over to Territorial officials for criminal trial. Like Crook, however, Miles had accepted a surrender that was not wholly without conditions. The Indians had been promised that their lives would be spared and that they would be held in Florida with their families as prisoners of war until the President decided what to do with them. Gatewood had promised this on Miles’ authority in Mexico, and Miles himself had repeated it at Skeleton Canyon. To hand them over to civil authority would certainly violate the latter condition and almost certainly the former. Moreover, the prisoners had already been entrained for Florida. The President ordered them stopped in Texas until he could learn just what terms had been granted. Miles evaded the issue and wrote wordy dispatches that explained little. After a month of voluminous correspondence, the President decided that the terms were such that the prisoners could not honorably be relinquished to civil authority and directed that they resume the journey to Florida.45
The surrender of Geronimo and the exile of the Chiricahuas ended for all time the Apache threat to Arizona and New Mexico and their Mexican neighbors. A bloody warfare that began when the first European set foot on Apache domain came to a bloodless close—but not in Skeleton Canyon or even in the Bavispe cane-brakes where Gatewood conferred with Geronimo. The Apaches had capitulated in such surroundings before. Rather, the Apache wars ended in the railroad coaches rattling across Texas en route to Florida. It was the removal of the Chiricahuas, hostile and neutral alike, that brought peace to the Southwest.
The morality of the removal precipitated a heated controversy, especially as the victims, lifted from their natural environment and set down in a hostile one, began to die in disconcerting n
umbers. The exile of the men who had loyally served Crook as scouts, and even Kayitah and Martine, who had led Gatewood into Geronimo’s lair, struck many as particularly reprehensible, although it is unlikely that they cared to stay in Arizona when all their people had gone to Florida. Also, despite Miles’ promise, the men were confined at Fort Marion and their families at Fort Pickens. Generals Crook and Howard joined the Indian Rights Association in a crusade for justice to the Apaches. Miles, supported by vocal western interests, resisted. The battle abated only slightly when Crook died in 1890. The effort on behalf of the Indians brought the reunion of the men with their families in 1887 and their removal, a year later, to a more healthful location in Alabama. In 1894, again over Miles’ opposition, they were sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where Geronimo died in 1909. In 1913, 187 Chiricahuas were allowed to transfer to the Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico. The rest remained at Fort Sill.46
The dispute over the Chiricahua removal was part of a larger controversy that marked the aftermath of Geronimo’s surrender and that troubled the army well into the twentieth century. Even in the final stages of the campaign, after the change of command, tension between a Crook faction and a Miles faction sprang up in the Department of Arizona, the product both of the long personal rivalry between the two generals and of genuine differences of opinion over method. After the surrender the controversy intensified and broadened to embrace, besides the removal issue, an unseemly quarrel over who deserved the credit for ending hostilities.
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