Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee Read online

  Cochise knew that if Taglito was with the party coming into the mountains, they were searching for him. He sent his brother Juan to meet the white men, and then waited in concealment with his family until he was certain that everything was all right. Then he rode down with his son Naiche. Dismounting, he embraced Jeffords, who said in English to a white-bearded man in dusty clothing: "This is Cochise.” The right sleeve of the bearded man's coat was empty; he looked like an old warrior, and Cochise was not surprised when Taglito called him a general. He was Oliver Otis Howard. "Buenos dias, senor," Cochise said, and they shook hands.

  One by one Cochise's guard of warriors came in, and they formed a semicircle, sitting on blankets, for a council with the one-armed graybeard.

  "Will the general explain the object of his visit?" Cochise asked in Apache. Taglito translated the words.

  "The Great Father, President Grant, sent me to make peace between you and the white people," General Howard said.

  "Nobody wants peace more than I do," Cochise assured him. “Then," said Howard, "we can make peace."

  Cochise replied that the Chiricahuas had attacked no white men since their flight from Canada Alamosa. "My horses are poor and few," he added. "I might have brought in more by raiding the Tucson road, but I did not do it."

  Howard suggested that the Chiricahuas could live better if they would agree to move to a big reservation on the Rio Grande.

  "I have been there," Cochise said, "and I like the country.

  Rather than not have peace I will go and take such of my people as I can, but that move will break up my tribe. Why not give me Apache Pass? Give me that, and I will protect all the roads. I will see that nobody's property is taken by Indians."

  Howard was surprised. "Perhaps we could do that," he said, and then went on to point out the advantages of living on the Rio Grande.

  Cochise was no longer interested in the Rio Grande. "Why shut me up on a reservation?" he asked. "We will make peace. We will keep it faithfully. But let us go around free as Americans do. Let us go wherever we please."

  Howard tried to explain that the Chiricahua country did not belong to the Indians, that all Americans had an interest in it. "To keep the peace," he said, "we must fix metes and bounds."

  Cochise could not understand why boundaries could not be fixed around the Dragoon Mountains as well as on the Rio Grande. "How long, General, will you stay?" he asked'

  "Will you wait for my capitanes to come in and have a talk?"

  "I came from Washington to meet your people and make peace," Howard replied, "and will stay as long as necessary."

  General Oliver Otis Howard, straitlaced New Englander, graduate of West Point, hero of Gettysburg, loser of an arm in battle at Fair Oaks, Virginia, remained in the Apache camp for eleven days and was completely won over by the courtesy and direct simplicity of Cochise. He was charmed by the Chiricahua women and children.

  "I was forced to abandon the Alamosa scheme," he wrote afterward, "and to give them, as Cochise had suggested, a reservation embracing a part of the Chiricahua Mountains and of the valley adjoining on the west, which included the Big Sulphur Spring and Rodgers' ranch."

  One more matter had to be settled. By law a white man must be appointed agent for the new reservation. For Cochise this was no problem; there was only one white man that all the Chiricahuas trusted-Taglito, the red-bearded Tom Jeffords. At first Jeffords objected. He had no experience in that line, and besides, the pay was poor.

  Cochise insisted, until at last Jeffords gave in. After all, he owed the Chiricahuas his life and prosperity.

  Less fortunate were Delshay's Tonto Apaches and Eskiminzin's Aravaipas.

  After Delshay's offer to the big capitan at Camp McDowell to make a treaty if a Tonto agency was established in Sunflower Valley, the chief received no reply. Delshay accepted this as a refusal. "God made the white man and God made the Apache," he had said, "and the Apache has just as much right to the country as the white man." He had made no treaty and received no piece of paper so that he could travel over the country as a white man; therefore he and his warriors traveled over the country as Apaches. The white men did not like this, and late in 1872 the Gray Wolf sent soldiers hunting through the Tonto Basin for Delshay and his warrior band. Not until the Time of the Big Leaves (April, 1873) did the soldiers come in sufficient numbers to entrap Delshay and the Tontos. They were surrounded, with bullets flying among their women and children, and there was nothing to do but raise a white flag.

  The black-bearded soldier chief, Major George M. Randall, took the Tontos to Fort Apache on the White Mountain reservation. In those days the Gray Wolf preferred to use his soldier chiefs instead of civilians as reservation agents. They made the Apaches wear metal tags like dogs, and these tags had numbers on them so that it was impossible for anyone to slip away to the Tonto Basin even for a few days. Delshay and the others grew homesick for their timbered, snowy-topped mountains. On the reservation there was never enough of anything-food, or tools to work with-and they did not get along well with the Coyoteros, who looked upon them as intruders on their reservation. But it was lack of freedom to travel over the country that kept the Tontos miserable.

  At last, in the Time of Ripeness (July, 1873), Delshay decided he could no longer bear confinement at White Mountain, and one night he led his people in flight. To keep the Bluecoats from hunting them down again he decided to go to the reservation on Rio Verde. A civilian agent was in charge there, and he promised Delshay that the Tontos could live at Rio Verde if they made no trouble for him. If they ran away again, they would be hunted down and killed. And so Delshay and his people went to work building a rancheria on the river near Camp Verde.

  That summer there was an uprising at San Carlos agency in which a little soldier chief (Lieutenant Jacob Almy) was killed. The Apache leaders fled, some of them toward the Rio Verde and they camped near Delshay's rancherio.

  When the Gray Wolf heard of this, he accused Delshay of aiding the fugitives, and sent an order to Camp Verde to have the Tonto chief arrested. Forewarned, Delshay decided he would have to flee once again. He did not want to lose what little freedom he had left, to be locked in irons and shut into the sixteen-foot hole that the soldiers had dug out of the canyon side for Indian prisoners. With a few loyal followers he ran away to the Tonto Basin.

  He knew that the hunt would soon begin. The Gray Wolf would not rest until he had tracked Delshay down. For months Delshay and his men eluded the hunters. At last General Crook decided that he could not keep troops forever prowling through the Tonto Basin; only another Apache could find Delshay. And so the general announced that he would pay a reward for Delshay's head. In July, 1874, two mercenary Apaches reported separately to Crook's headquarters. Each presented a severed head, identified as Delshay's. "Being satisfied that both parties were earnest in their beliefs," Crook said, "and the bringing in of an extra head was not amiss, I paid both parties.” The heads, with those of other slain Apaches, were mounted on the parade grounds at Rio Verde and San Carlos.

  Eskiminzin and the Aravaipas also found it difficult to live in peace. After Commissioner Colyer's visit in 1871, Eskiminzin and his people started life anew at Camp Grant.

  They rebuilt their wickiup village and replanted their grain fields. Just as everything seemed to be going well, however, the government decided to move Camp Grant sixty miles to the southeast. Using this move as an excuse to clear the San Pedro Valley of Indians, the Army transferred the Aravaipas to San Carlos, a new agency on the Gila River.

  The move was made in February, 1878, and the Aravaipas were beginning to build a new rancheria and to plant new fields at San Carlos when the uprising occurred in which Lieutenant Almy was killed. Neither Eskiminzin nor any of the other Aravaipas had anything to do with the killing, but because Eskiminzin was a chief, the Gray Wolf ordered him arrested and confined as a "military precaution."

  He remained a prisoner until the night of January 4, 1874, when he escaped and led hi
s people away from the reservation. For four cold months they roamed the unfamiliar mountains in search of food and shelter. By April most of the Aravaipas were sick and hungry. To keep them from dying, Eskiminzin returned to San Carlos and sought out the agent.

  "We have done nothing wrong," he said. “But we are afraid.

  That is why we ran away. Now we come back. If we stay in the mountains, we will die of hunger and cold-sickness. If American soldiers kill us here, it will be just the same. We will not run away again."

  As soon as the agent reported the return of the Aravaipas, an order came from the Army to arrest Eskiminzin and his subchiefs, hobble them with chains so they could not escape, and transport them as prisoners of war to the new site of Camp Grant.

  "What have I done?" Eskiminzin asked the soldier chief who came to arrest him.

  The soldier chief did not know. The arrest was a "military precaution."

  At the new Camp Grant, Eskiminzin and his subchiefs were kept chained together while they made adobe bricks for the new buildings at the post. At night they slept in their chains on the ground, and they ate food discarded by the soldiers.

  One day in that summer a young white man came to see Eskiminzin and told him that he was the new agent at San Carlos. He was John Clum. He said the Aravaipas at San Carlos needed their chief to lead them. "Why are you a prisoner?" Clum asked.

  "I have done nothing," Eskiminzin replied. "White men tell lies about me, maybe. I always try to do right."

  Clum said he would arrange his release if Eskiminzin would promise to help him improve conditions at San Carlos.

  Two months later Eskiminzin rejoined his people. Once again the future looked bright, but the Aravaipa chief was wise enough not to hope for too much. Since the coming of the white men, he was never sure of a place where he could spread his blanket; the future for any Apache was very uncertain.

  In the spring of 1874 Cochise became very ill from a debilitating disease. Tom Jeffords, the Chiricahua agent, brought the Army surgeon from Fort Bowie to examine his old friend, but the surgeon could not determine the ailment. His prescriptions brought no improvement, and the muscular body of the great Apache leader began wasting away.

  During this time the government decided that money could be saved by consolidating the Chiricahua agency with the new Hot Springs agency in New Mexico. When officials came to discuss the matter with Cochise, he told them the transfer was a matter of indifference to him, that he would be dead before he could be moved. His subchiefs and his sons objected strongly, however, declaring that if the agency was moved, they would not go. Not even the United States had enough troops to move them, they said, because they would rather die in their mountains than live at the Hot Springs.

  After the government officials departed, Cochise grew so weak and was suffering from such intense internal pain that Jeffords decided to ride to Fort Bowie for the surgeon.

  As he was preparing to leave, Cochise asked: "Do you think you will see me alive again?"

  Jeffords replied with the frankness of a brother: “No, I donot think I will."

  "I think I will die about ten o'clock tomorrow morning. Do you think we will see each other again?"

  Jeffords was silent for a moment. "I don't know. What do you think about it?"

  "I don't know," Cochise answered. "It is not clear to my mind, but I think we will, somewhere up there."

  Cochise was dead before Jeffords returned from Fort Bowie.

  After a few days the agent announced to the Chiricahuas that he felt it was time for him to leave. They would not hear of it. Cochise's sons, Taza and Naiche, were especially insistent that he remain. If Taglito deserted them, they said, the treaty and promises made between Cochise and the government would be worthless. Jeffords promised to stay.

  By the springtime of 1875 most of the Apache bands were either confined to reservations or had fled to Mexico. In March the Army transferred General Crook from Arizona to the Department of the Platte. The Sioux and Cheyennes, who had endured reservation life longer than the Apaches, were growing rebellious.

  A forced peace lay over the deserts, peaks, and mesas of the Apache country. Ironically, its continuance depended largely upon the patient efforts of two white men who had won the regard of Apaches simply by accepting them as human beings rather than as bloodthirsty savages. Tom Jeffords the agnostic and John Clum of the Dutch Reformed Church were optimistic, but they were wise enough not to expect too much. For any white man in the Southwest who defended the rights of Apaches, the future was very uncertain.

  Ten

  The 0rdeal of Captain Jack

  1873-January 6, U.S. Congress begins investigation of Credit Mobilier scandal. March 3, "Salary Grab" Act raises salaries of congressmen and government officials retroactively .

  May 7, U.S. Marines land in Panama to protect American lives and property. September 15, last units of German Army leave France. September 19, failure of Jay Cooke and Company, banking firm, precipitates financial panic.

  September 20, New York Stock Exchange closes for ten days; severe economic crisis spreads across nation and world. Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days and Mark Twain's The Gilded Age are published.

  I am but one man. I am the voice of my people. Whatever their hearts are, that I talk. I want no more war. I want to be a man. You deny me the right of a white man. My skin is red; my heart is a white man's heart; but I am a Modoc. I am not afraid to die. I will not fall on the rocks. When I die, my enemies will be under me. Your soldiers began on me when I was asleep on Lost River. They drove us to these rocks, like a wounded deer.

  I have always told the white man heretofore to come and settle in my country; that it was his country and Captain Jack's country. That they could come and live there with me and that I was not mad with them. I have never received anything from anybody, only what I bought and paid for myself . I have always lived like a white man, and wanted to live so. I have always tried to live peaceably and never asked any man for anything I have always lived on what I could kill and shoot with my gun, and catch in my trap.

  -Kintpuash (Captain Jack) of the Modocs

  California Indians were gentle as the climate in which they lived. The Spaniards gave them names, established missions for them, converted and debauched them. Tribal organizations were undeveloped among the California Indians; each village had its leaders, but there were no great war chiefs among these unwarlike people. After the discovery of gold in 1848, white men from all over the world poured into California by the thousands, taking what they wanted from the submissive Indians, debasing those whom the Spaniards had not already debased, and then systematically exterminating whole populations now long forgotten. No one remembers the Chilulas, Chimarikos, Urebures, Nipewais, Alonas, or a hundred other bands whose bones have been sealed under a million miles of freeways, parking lots, and slabs of tract housing.

  One exception to the nonresistant Indians of California were the Modocs, who lived in the harsher climate of Tule Lake along the border of Oregon. Until the 1850's, white men were almost unknown to the Modocs; then settlers began coming in droves, seizing the best lands and expecting the Modocs to submit meekly. When the Modocs showed fight, the white invaders attempted extermination.

  The Modocs retaliated with ambushes.

  During this time a young Modoc named Kintpuash was coming to manhood, and he could not understand why Modocs and white people could not live together without trying to kill each other. The Tule Lake country was limitless as the sky, with enough deer, antelope, ducks, geese, fish, and camas roots for everybody. Kintpuash scolded his father for not making peace with the white men. His father, who was a chief, told Kintpuash that the white men were treacherous and would have to be driven out before there could be peace. Not long afterward the chief was killed in a fight with white settlers, and Kintpuash became chief of the Modocs.

  Kintpuash went into the settlements to find white men he could trust, so that he could make peace with them. At Yreka
he met some good men, and soon all the Modocs were coming there to trade. "I have always told white men when they came to my country," Kintpuash said, "that if they wanted a home to live there they could have it; and I never asked them for any pay for living there as my people lived. I liked to have them come there and live. I liked to be with white people.” The young chief also liked the clothes they wore, their houses, wagons, and fine livestock.

  The white men around Yreka gave these visiting Indians new names, which the Modocs found amusing, and they often used these names among themselves. Kintpuash was Captain Jack. Some of the others were Hooker Jim, Steamboat Frank, Searfaced Charley, Boston Charley, Curly Headed Doctor, Shacknasty Jim, Schonchin John, and Ellen's Man.

  During the time of the white man's Civil War, troubles arose between the Modocs and the settlers. If a Modoc could not find a deer to kill for his family, he would sometimes kill a rancher's cow; or if he needed a horse he would borrow one out of a settler's pasture. The Modocs' white friends excused this as a “tax” the Indians were levying on the settlers for use of their lands, but most settlers did not like this and through their politicians arranged for a treaty to remove the Modocs from the TuIe Lake country.

  The treaty commissioners promised Captain Jack and the other head men that if they would move north to a reservation in Oregon every family would have its own land, teams of horses, wagons, farming implements, tools, clothing, and food-all provided by the government. Captain Jack wanted to have his land near Tule Lake, but the commissioners would not agree to this. Somewhat reluctantly Jack signed the treaty, and the Modocs went north to the Klamath reservation. From the very beginning there was trouble. The reservation was on territory that had belonged to Klamath Indians, and the Klamaths treated the Modocs as intruders. When the Modocs cut rails to fence their assigned farmlands, the Klamaths would come and steal the rails. Supplies promised by the government never arrived; the reservation agent issued food and clothing to the Klamaths, but there never seemed to be any for the Modocs. (The Great Council in Washington did not vote any money to buy supplies for the Modocs.)