Upset by Cochise’s desire not to “come in”—vernacular for agreeing to life on a reservation—the U.S. Army begins a policy of total war on the Apache people.
Cochise will respond in kind.
* * *
The date is October 5, 1869. Apache scouts have spotted a mail coach traveling through Sulphur Springs, just a dozen miles from the mountain fortress commonly referred to as Cochise’s “eastern stronghold.” Night is falling. Four American soldiers ride as escorts. The driver and a portly, bearded man ride side by side in the buckboard’s seat.
Cochise positions his warriors for an ambush, instructing them to hide in a small wash next to the road, then conceal their bodies with grass and dry brush. As the coach draws near, the Apache open fire, killing the driver and three soldiers immediately with arrows and rifle fire. The bearded man, a local named John Finkle Stone, who has desecrated Apache Pass by opening a mine within Cochise’s favorite domain, grabs the reins and guides the panicked horses off the road. The nameless remaining soldier gallops after him.
Within seconds, both men come face-to-face with Cochise and other members of his band, who sit on their horses to block any chance of escape. The whites have no chance—they are executed on the spot.
In the two weeks that follow, the U.S. Army hunts Cochise, engaging him in battle on several occasions. Each time, it is the Apache who emerge victorious, leading American commander Captain Reuben F. Bernard to marvel that Cochise was “one of the most intelligent hostile Indians on the continent.”
However, the reality is that more than two dozen Apache warriors are killed in these skirmishes. The loss of even a single warrior impacts the tribe. Such brave men cannot be replaced. But the Americans will always have fresh blood arriving to reinforce army units.
It may take another decade, but it is only a matter of time and bullets before Cochise and the Chiricahua Apache are completely exterminated.
* * *
Three bloody years later, Cochise once again seeks peace.
The date is March 19, 1872. Mexican soldiers now routinely raid north into Arizona, crossing the American border with the sole intent of killing Cochise and other Apache. At the same time, five companies of U.S. Army cavalry under the command of General George Crook, whom the Apache have named Gray Wolf, relentlessly scour the same region, determined to take Cochise, dead or alive. So the Apache are caught in a classic pincer movement.
The chief is weary of fighting. The decade of war has slowly whittled away at his band, killing many and making it difficult to remain in one place for any length of time.
He has now led his followers to a remote corner of New Mexico Territory known as Canada Alamosa to meet with U.S. officials. Colonel Gordon Granger has ridden for six hours from his post at Fort Craig in a carriage drawn by six mules. He brings with him several other officials, two medical professionals, and an armed cavalry escort. Among the whites is the director of Indian Affairs for the region, Nathaniel Pope, to whom President Grant has personally given the task of conducting Cochise to Washington so the two leaders might meet in person.
To a man, the American group is eager to get a glimpse of Cochise. And yet, “when we reached the place of the conference, there were no Indians to be seen, so we dismounted and seated ourselves under the shade of a cottonwood tree to await developments,” assistant surgeon Henry Stuart Turrill will recall. “Soon from over the hill … Cochise approached. We all looked with much curiosity, as we believed ourselves the first white men that had seen him face-to-face and lived to tell of it.… He was rather tall, over six feet, with broad shoulders, and impressed me as a wonderfully strong man, of much endurance, accustomed to command and to expect instant and implicit obedience.… He seemed to me in this first meeting the greatest Indian I had ever seen.”
Cochise wears a buckskin hunting shirt, belt, leggings, moccasins, and Mexican poncho, “draped about him with a careless grace,” in the words of Dr. Turrill.
Colonel Granger begins the negotiations in a straightforward manner. The terms are simple: “The Great Father in Washington wants to live at peace with his red children. He is anxious to do what is right in the matter, but peace he must have. If he does not get it one way, he will have it in another.”
The fifty-year-old Granger, a balding and bearded veteran of the Mexican and Civil Wars, goes on to state that the U.S. government will give the valleys and mountains to Cochise as a reservation, “a home for him and his children for all time,” where “they should be fed for several years until they learned to work for themselves.”
The conditions are stark: if Cochise accepts these terms and makes peace, he can no longer raid away from the reservation or permit his warriors to leave its borders.
When Colonel Granger finishes speaking, the Apache contingent leaves for an hour to discuss the American offer. When they return, Cochise remains standing as the Indians take their place sitting in the circle on the ground with the whites.
The chief is urged by the Americans to go to Washington to meet with President Grant. He demurs. Cochise still feels the betrayal of the Bascom incident, and the hanging of his relatives that began this war. He tells the soldiers that he does not like the white men’s ways. In a passing reference to the food the army promises to provide for his tribe should they settle on the reservation, Cochise tells the soldiers that he does not care to “eat little fishes out of metal boxes.”
It is obvious to the Americans that Cochise is a man of great physical strength, and his tactical genius on the battlefield is beyond dispute. Less known is the chief’s ability to inspire his band through the use of the spoken word. Now, addressing the assembled circle of whites and Apache, he delivers an astounding summation of current relations between his people and the Americans.
“The sun has been very hot on my head and made me as in a fire,” Cochise begins, speaking the Apache language. “My blood was on fire but now I have come into this valley and drunk of these waters 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.”
In his long military career, from which he will one day emerge a general, Dr. Turrill will spend years among the Indians. He will encounter not just the Apache, but also the great tribes of the plains, such the Cheyenne and Sioux. He will take part in many a council between whites and Indians and listen to speeches from both sides. But he will describe today’s impassioned speech by Cochise as “the finest bit of Indian oratory that I ever listened to.”
Cochise continues speaking: “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?”
Cochise lapses from Apache into Spanish, simultaneously using his hands to add sign language. “Now that I am to speak, the sun, the moon, the earth, the air, the waters, the birds and beasts shall, 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 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 to rob and steal. If I had things such 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 my clouds, and the air, when God spoke to my thoughts and told me to come in here and be at peace with all. He said the world was for us all. How was it…?
�
�I have no father or 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.”
* * *
Cochise agrees to peace but balks when the Americans attempt to dictate the location of the Chiricahua Reservation. Colonel Granger wishes the tribe to relocate to the Mogollon Mountains, here in New Mexico. Cochise insists that his people be allowed to return to his homeland at Apache Pass, there to be left alone by the whites.
Granger reluctantly agrees.
Eight months later, the Great Father in Washington makes it official. Despite having signed into law the Indian Appropriations Act of 1871, which ceased the practice of recognizing tribes as sovereign nations and brokering treaties with Native Americans to settle disputes, the president acknowledges the new treaty between the Chiricahua and the United States.
President Grant orders that a tract of land approximately one hundred miles square be granted to the Apache as a sanctuary.
Cochise, it seems, has won the negotiation.
* * *
The Apache, however, are still at war with Mexico. Thus, raids south of the border continue with unabated ferocity. “About the 15th of January,” the New York Times reports in its March 8 edition, “Apaches killed Don Leopoldo Valencia, a member of the Supreme Court of Sonora … about the same time a train was attacked near there, two men killed, and the mules all taken. About the same time, they stole a lot of fine horses from the Pozos ranch. A few men followed the Apaches two days and nights, but being poorly armed compared with their foes, and so many less in number, they gave up the chase while the trail was leading directly into the Huachuca Mountains not far from the Cochise reserve.”
Cochise himself does not take part in these raids. He now prefers a quiet life on his reservation, spending his days relaxing and drinking tiswin, a mild alcohol made by fermenting corn provided to the Indians by the United States. Cochise refuses to eat food rations provided by the Americans, believing they may be poisoned. Instead, he prefers the taste of fresh deer and antelope young warriors hunt in the wild. But his distaste for tinned American beef and his growing dependence upon tiswin belie a darker truth about Cochise: the great chief is dying. Those close to him know that stomach cancer now makes it hard for him to digest meat.
But while he does not accompany his young warriors on their raids into Mexico, Cochise sanctions the incursions. Though in his early sixties and dying, Cochise can never forget that it was the Mexicans who killed his father. Also, his warriors are restless, unwilling to adopt the sedentary lifestyle of reservation living. The raids keep these young men fit and prosperous because of the many horses they steal. Cochise revels in the full knowledge that the terms of his peace treaty mean there is nothing the U.S. Army can do to halt the aggression.
“The Mexican troops do not feel at liberty to direct troops to operate in the United States, and according to the terms of the peace with Cochise, his tribes are not to be interfered with by United States troops,” the Times article explains. “The ‘peace’ made with Cochise bids fair to be the most costly yet indulged in on the part of the government … Mexico cannot endure it and General Crook has no authority to stop it on behalf of the United States.”
But Crook is not as passive as the Times suggests. The veteran Indian fighter is determined to confine the Chiricahua to their reservation and put an end to their murderous raids south. Throughout his career, General Crook has displayed a flair for ingenuity—defeating Indian opponents in the Pacific Northwest and now Arizona. Crook prefers to attack during winter, when least expected, and pays Native Americans from other tribes to serve as scouts to track and find his enemies. In the case of Cochise and the raids into Mexico, Crook does not put pressure on Cochise, over whom he has little authority. Instead, the general makes life very difficult for Tom Jeffords, the white man handpicked by Cochise to serve as the liaison between the Apache and the Americans. The red-haired, bearded Jeffords is widely considered to be the only white man Cochise has ever trusted. Five years ago, when Jeffords managed a mail concession through Cochise’s lands, the Chiricahua would routinely attack his carriers. Fed up with the loss of the mail and his men, Jeffords boldly risked his life by marching into Cochise’s camp to demand that the Apache leave his riders alone. A stunned Cochise was so impressed by Jeffords’s brazen courage that he agreed. In time, Jeffords becomes Cochise’s most trusted adviser.
Now, in his role as “reservation agent,” Tom Jeffords is pressured into counseling Cochise to end the Mexican raids. General Crook is prepared to violate the treaty with Cochise by putting his soldiers directly on the Apache reservation. Each warrior will be expected to report each morning for a daily roll call to ensure they have not gone off the reservation. Furthermore, Jeffords is warned that the Chiricahua may also be removed entirely from Apache Pass and relocated to New Mexico, far from the temptation of raiding into Sonora.
Upon the advice of Tom Jeffords, Cochise agrees to end the raids.
Shortly afterward, Cochise anoints his son Taza as his successor.
With the death of Cochise imminent, the Chiricahua Apache have a new leader.
* * *
The date is June 7, 1874. Cochise has been in and out of consciousness for the last six weeks. Apache Pass resounds with singing and drumming as the Apache medicine men try to drive out the demons bewitching their leader. The noise continues day and night as the Apache war chiefs drum on beef hides stretched over sticks. Cochise believes that a fellow Apache with whom he has had a disagreement has cast a spell on him.
It is Sunday evening when Tom Jeffords comes to pay his final respects. Cochise rests facing east, atop a high bluff, “and commanded a view of the surrounding mountain valley as far as the Chiricahua Mountains to the east and as far as the eye could reach to the north and south,” writes an American who accompanies Jeffords.
“The old chief was suffering greatly.”
Cochise asks Jeffords to take care of the remaining 375 members of the Chiricahua band and continue providing advice to Taza, the new chief. When Jeffords expresses doubt that the new leadership will listen to him, Cochise responds: “We will fix that.”
Immediately, Taza and the other tribal leaders are summoned and instructed to heed Jeffords’s opinions.
“Do you think you will ever see me alive again?” Cochise asks Jeffords after the group is dismissed.
“I do not know,” Jeffords responds. “I think by tomorrow night you will be dead.”
Cochise nods. “Do you think we will ever meet again?”
“I don’t know,” replies Jeffords. “What do you think of it?”
“I have been giving it a good deal of thought since I have been sick here,” says Cochise. He points to the sky. “I think we will … somewhere up yonder. Good friends will meet again.”
* * *
As Tom Jeffords predicts, Cochise dies the next morning, June 8, 1874. His wife, Dos-teh-seh, begins the burial preparation by bathing his body. Cochise’s illness has robbed him of his athletic appearance, so his corpse is skeletal as she carefully washes the dirt from his skin. She combs and braids the hair that Cochise always kept meticulously groomed. His face is painted, as if he is off to war. His body is wrapped in new deerskin, then placed in a thick red wool blanket into which his name has been woven.
Finally, in a manner eerily reminiscent of burial rituals of the Ancient Egyptian pharaohs and Norse Vikings, Cochise is equipped for his journey to the afterlife. The chief is armed with a gun belt containing a hunting knife and revolver. A loaded Springfield rifle is slipped under his left arm. Cochise is then placed in a litter, to be dragged to th
e grave site by his favorite horse.
Two riderless horses also make the journey. One is shot two miles from the grave site, the other just one mile distant. In this way, Cochise will always have a horse when he needs one in the afterlife.
In the words of Tom Jeffords, the horse pulling Cochise “was guided to a rough and lonely place among the rocks and chasms in the stronghold, where there was a deep fissure in the cliff. The horse was killed and dropped into the depths. Also [killed], Cochise’s favorite dog. His gun and other arms were thrown in [to the crevice]. And last, Cochise was lowered with lariats into the rocky sepulcher, deep in the gorge.”
Mesquite branches are laid upon the body, then the grave filled in. Horses are ridden over the site to tamp down the earth, then cactus planted to disguise the spot.
So it is that the location of Cochise’s burial site becomes a secret known only to the handful of Chiricahua present for the ceremony, and to Tom Jeffords, who was not present but told of the funeral afterward.
That secret has never been told. To this day, the burial site of the great Chiricahua Apache chief Cochise remains a mystery.
Chapter Nineteen
JUNE 27, 1874
ADOBE WALLS, TEXAS
DAWN
The ferocious Comanche tribe is in trouble. Tribal leader Quanah, the son of the white kidnapping victim Cynthia Parker and Comanche chief Peta Nocona, is now himself the supreme Comanche warlord. The passionate and focused twenty-six-year-old sits astride his pony on a bluff just south of the Canadian River. The first morning light illuminates the darkened prairie, and the air smells of dew and sweet green grass. Quanah is tall and muscular, like his father, but has his mother’s straight nose, rounded chin, and high cheekbones. His hair is dark black, his eyes gray. Though a time will come when Quanah will adopt Cynthia Parker’s last name, the war chief currently has no interest in flaunting his white blood.
Killing Crazy Horse Page 16