Apacheria - The Start of War in NM AZ circa 1830-1860
The North American Southwest
Introduction
Apache refers to the Athapaskan speaking peoples of the American southwest, in the present-day states of Arizona and New Mexico.
This series will explore the critical battles, wars and movements of Apacheria.
https://crackpot.substack.com/t/apacheria
Recap
[1] 1000-1500 A.D. Groups of the Athpaskan federation, a people who lived in Alaska and Canada, migrate south.
[2] By 1400 A.D. signs of Apache life appear in the southwest.
[3] The Spanish arrive in 1500s. Mexico is born in 1820.
[4] American settlers arrive in the 1850s, with the discovery of Gold, Silver, Iron and other precious metals the mountain ranges of the West.
The Apache bands viewed themselves as a single, related people. The Apache referred to themselves in terms derivative of tinneh, meaning ‘the people’ superior to all other humans, whom they regarded as members of an inferior species. - Melody pg. 20
Roughly where things stood in Apacheria with the Apache and other tribes in the 1800s when Anglo troubles began in the 1800s.
Apache historically clashed with (1) Pawnee (2) Yaqui & Tohono O’odham, also known as Papagos, and (3) Pima tribes.
- as well, of course, as Spanish and Mexican settlers in Sonora and Chihuahua.
Treachery & Betrayal
The scalp bounty laws, such as those established in 1835 by Sonora, were evil policy. How many Apache fell before the scalp hunters, and how many friendly dark-haired people fell to murderous opportunists that saw Indians and Mexicans heads of hair as less than human - as resources to be cease fully exploited like buffalo or beaver?
[1] James Johnson, a frontiers person with a shop in Sonora, offers to take a man named Eames and some Missouri citizens interested in purchasing mules to see Juan Jose Compa, a Mimbreno Apache. Johnson and Compa are friends. Johnson and Gleason offer the Mimbreno camp a gift of dinner, frijoles and corn plus some other stuffs, then open fire on them with a howitzer smuggled on a pack horse, killing a score of the Apache, including Juan Jose in a bloody melee. Some of the Missouri citizens, who were not aware of Johnson’s plans to kill and scalp Jose’s crew, are also killed in the fight.
[2] Apache retaliate by killing Charles Kemp and 22 trappers on the Gila some days later. James Johnson had first met and befriended Juan Jose on the Gila.
Business of War
In 1869, General Ord reported why Apache hostilities were kept alive even when the Indians were tired of fighting and wanted peace at any price. ‘Almost the only paying business the white inhabitants have in the territory is supplying the troops….” Anglos continually stirred up the Indians and then demanded more troops. The settlers also encouraged soldiers to desert, for each man took with him a good horse and a repeating rifle, which could sell on the black market for 1/3 of their value. - Worcester. pg. 113
Apache Pass Hanging
Cochise gave no trouble to North Americans until -
“We were once a large people covering these mountains. We lived well. We were at peace. One day a white officer seized my best friend and killed him…. the worst of all was Apache Pass. There five Indians, one my brother, were murdered. Their bodies were hung up and kept there till they were skeletons. Now Americans and Mexicans kill an Apache on sight. I have retaliated with all my might. I have killed ten white men for every Indian slain, but I know many whites remain. The Apache are fewer every day. We will make peace; we will keep the faith. But let us go around free as Americans. Let us go as we please.” - Cochise. Worcester pg. 139
[1] The Apache raid the Ward Ranch, taking a young boy named Felix.
Mr. Ward had come to the presidio of Tubac afoot in 1857. He has been described as ‘a castoff from … San Francisco… in all respects, a worthless character.’ - Thrapp. pg. 15
Felix Ward would later be known as Mickey Free.
Ward’s partner, a Mexican woman named Jesusa Martinez, had a colorful life in her own life and been mixed up in some strange affairs. Felix was the son of a former partner, a blue-eyed man named Tellez, likely Irish.
[2] Second Lieutenant George Nicholas Bascom sets up a meeting with Cochise at Apache Pass. Cochise denies having anything to do with the taking of Felix Ward. The meeting is a trap - Cochise fights his way out of a tent while the other six Apache with Cochise are taken prisoner.
[3] Cochise attacks a mail station, killing two.
[4] Cochise attacks a train west of the mail station, taking hostages to bargain for the captured Apache.
Cochise proposes a hostage exchange. Bascom demands the Ward boy be returned.
[5] More troops under Lt. Moore’s command arrive at Apache Pass with a surgeon (to operate on wounded men) and three Coyotero prisoners they caught en route.
[6] Alarmed at the increase troop presence and preparation for battle, Cochise kills his prisoners and disappears into the mountains.
[7] Bascom hangs the prisoners after superior officer Irwin orders all Apache prisoners, both his and Bascom’s, three Coyotero and three Chiricahua, hanged.
Cochise’s fury was enhanced because three of those hanged were his close relatives. Within sixty days one 150 whites were killed, and it has been estimated the series of blunders that turned Cochise against the whites eventually cost ‘five thousand American lives and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of property. - Thrapp. pg. 18
South of Tuscon, AZ
“The warriors fired volley after volley into the thicket. Bullets and arrows coursed within inches of his head, snipping of twigs that showered down upon him and sent up little puffs of dirt as they chunked into the ground. Miraculously they all missed him.” - Thrapp. pg. 4
[1] Bill Rood and a companion set out to Rood’s Ranch about 18 miles north of Tubac, Arizona. The two stop at Canoa Inn to eat.
[2] Rood and companion leave Canoa and continue onto Rood’s ranch. They gather Rood’s stock and drive back to Canoa.
[3] In the hour since they had left, Apache had visited the place - killing two occupants and wrecked the inn.
Rood sees Apache in the brush and he and his companion clap spurs fleeing back to Tubac.
[4] Rood’s horse plays out and Rood, with an arrow through his left arm, veers off from his companion toward mountains. Rood takes cover in a mudhole surrounded by a thicket. Rood can’t miss on this day. Rood brings down the first eight Apache that charge him while the warriors miss with all their attacks. The Apache pull out with Rood down to his last bullet.
‘Typical’ Battles
“We are dreaming of a golden age - a future empire - and fifty dirty, lousy Indians have us in a state of siege.” - Silver City Daily Southwest newspaper March 1880.
[1] Several hundred warriors under Cochise attack a group of six experienced frontierspersons heading to California in Doubtful Canyon pass.
[2]
“Whoever was driving the stage sized up the situation at the outset and swung his teams off the road and whipped them cross-country to the only possible site for defense, a small mound where the party hastily threw up a stone breastwork. The fight lasted three days, the man ran out of water and food…. The last survivor scrambled over the mound for elevation, while wounded and dying, firing shots to his last breath.“ - Thrapp pg. 20
Betrayal
Mangas Coloradas was a huge man, six foot six inches, with a proportionate intelligence. His fame and the terror of his name reverberated from Durango in the south to the Navajo in the north, from the Davis Mountains of West Texas to the Santa Ritas below Tuscon….
U.S. Major John Greiner asked Mangas why he fought so savagely with the Mexicans. Mangas explained,
“Some time ago my people were invited to a feast; my people drank and became drunk, and were lying asleep, when a party of Mexicans came in and beat out their brains with clubs. Another time a trader was sent among us from Chihuahua. While innocently engaged in trading… a cannon concealed behind the goods was fired upon my people, and quite a number were killed. How can we make peace with such people?” - Thrapp pg.13
Mangas obliquely referencing the Johnson massacre of 1837.
Some frontier persons known as the Walker Party invited Mangas into their mining camp under a friendly pretense, took him prisoner, and then U.S. military got involved. One night while Mangas was held prisoner soldiers heated their bayonets in the campfires and burned Mangas’ feet, then they shot Mangas dead when he protested. Mangas was about seventy years old.
General Sheridan ordered Crook to obtain unconditional surrender of the Apache or to “insure against further hostilities by completing the destruction of the hostiles…”
This meant Crook, who had above all others dealt squarely with the Apache, now was expected to resort to treachery… It may be that the famed “Apache Telegraph” again mysteriously alerted the Apache to impending troubles. The night after Crook left their camp, the Apache, Geronimo, Nachez, twenty men, thirteen women and six children, disappeared back into the Sierre Madre before Crook could put in place any plan. - Worcester pg. 298
In this case - the famed meeting between Geronimo and General Crook in 1886 - I wonder if rather than the Apache telegraph, it was Crook himself who tipped off the Apache not to trust him and clear out.
References
Gwynne, S. C. (2010). Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history.
Cornelius C. Smith, Jr. Fort HuaChuca The story of a frontier post.
Thrapp, D. L. (1975). The conquest of Apacheria. University of Oklahoma Press.
Worcester, D. E. (1979). The Apaches Eagles of the Southwest. University of Oklahoma Press.
Melody, M. E. (1989). The Apaches. Chelsea House Publishers.