D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
August
2008
HIKING APACHERIA Tugging on Red Sleeve
Story and photos by Jerry Eagan |
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Red Sleeve, Tutor of Geronimo, To Be Chief Figure in New Novel
From the Silver City Independent, June 10, 1930:
Will Levington Comfort Visits Here to Study Places Where Indian Lived
"Silver City is a sanctuary, and it takes a Californian to know it," said Will Levington Comfort, author, to the Independent Wednesday night.
"After strolling around your city I get vibrations of real life here," he added. Mr. Comfort is working on a novel of Indian life in this section, which may appear in the fall. It will be called, Apache. "Red Sleeve (Mangas Coloradas) is one of the most living things I have ever handled as a writer.
"On this trip I wish to fix. . . the character of the country at the old copper mines where Mangas Colorado (sic) lived and Pinos Altos where he was whipped."
A friend recently asked, "How do you find the places you hike?" Read the history, I replied. Once I've got a "target area" in mind, I go. Once there, I ask the spirits of the Apache, Anglos and Hispanics who were there: Where do you want me to go? What do you want me to see? Find? Who are you? Reveal yourself to me. After I explained this process, my friend said, "Well, then, it seems the Spirits lead you." I don't take that lightly, and I feel grateful for those gifts from "them."
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View of Mangas Coloradas' homeland
from the Big Burro Mountains. |
Walking this land the last year has led me to learn about the figure Will Levington Comfort wrote about in his historical novel Apache. Lately, I've walked in ovals that Mangas Coloradas — Spanish for "Red Sleeve" — walked. In the last two years, I've hiked the Big Lues, Burros and Diablo Range Mountains more and more. In so doing, I believe, Mangas has "led me closer" to him.
My ovals are finely crosshatched now, and they're much smaller than his. Jesuit David Steindal Rast calls the phenomenon "centers everywhere, circumferences nowhere." These ovals, in Zen Buddhist terms, have "tathata — suchness — is-ness." The ovals are alive themselves. In its natural state, no lines divide the One Sacred Oval.
Prior to the Spanish, this land was all sacred circles or ovals. I read an anthropology text that posited that right angles signaled a new phase of human development, just as straight lines did before them. Right angles cut the ovals into more "efficient and specialized spaces."
From 1790 to 1863, Mangas Coloradas walked the ovals bounded by the Gila River and parts of the San Francisco and Blue Rivers, the Big and Little Burros, the lower reaches of the Mogollons, the area around Hurley and Santa Rita del Cobre, and as far east as the Mimbres River. Those who encroached on those Apache territories likely paid for their transgressions.
Mangas' ovals had already been diminished by Spanish, then Mexican, then Anglo property boundaries. In his day, few of those lines were marked yet with barbed wire. Mangas and his people, the Coppermine Apaches, were often shot at first, asked questions later, when they crossed those invisible lines.
Four years ago, I read Edwin Sweeney's Cochise: Chiricahua Apache Chief and Mangas Coloradas: Chief of the Chiricahua Apaches. One day last year, a colleague, Andrea Jaquez, asked if I'd like to know more about the place where Sweeney said Mangas Coloradas allegedly lived. On the earliest maps, the Spanish called the place Agua de Santa Lucia. Today, we call it Mangas Springs, and it lies near Hwy. 180 west midway between Silver City and Cliff. Sweeney believes Mangas was born near there. The place has been known as Mangas Creek Ranch, owned by the Metcalfes and Fosters.
As with so many other places of such significance, perennial waters defined the place. Mangas Creek, Agua de Santa Lucia and streams to the east all drain into the Gila River. Sweeney contends Mangas' homeland included Agua de Santa Lucia, but also a canyon the Apache named Teeguna, "Canyon Spreads Out." In all likelihood, that refers to the massive gash on the western side of the Mogollons we now call Greenwood Canyon.
By all accounts, Mangas was a truly giant figure. Many said he stood over six feet, five inches tall, and he may have weighed 225 pounds. His head size, which drove much speculation and an atrocious act, was supposedly huge. He towered physically over many, but he also towered over almost everyone else he met. Mangas cannot be sugar-coated: He was an insightful leader, but also a brutal, relentless murderer.
Over his many years, Mangas led his people endlessly, against the Spanish and Mexicans. He hated Sonorans and was only slightly more tolerant of Chihuahuans. Presidios such as Janos, established by the Spanish to convert, contain, subjugate or kill Apache, were taken over by the Mexicans, who often concluded short-lived truces with Mangas and his people.
Steely-eyed Americans had little patience for truces. Their historical imperative was peripatetic movement. Americans, in their approach to life, approached the Apache like a D10 Caterpillar 'Dozer. They were totally uninterested in accommodating Apache rights.
Apache warriors loved to raid for horses, mules and anything else they wanted. Naively, they felt they could dash in and steal a man's livestock without penalty, as if in a game. Linear American thinkers had no time for such triflings. I think the more Mangas was around Americans, the more he grasped this way of life was dying for Apache. Initially, he had approached the Americans with the hope they would join him in killing Mexicans.
If we're uncertain whether Mangas was really born somewhere near Agua de Santa Lucia, we know certainly where he was killed. That location, too, is one we drive by often, if we're headed south, towards Deming. As you pass a place on mine property, look to the east, where an old, rusted-out sign arches over a gravel road. The bottom land is green with water-fed bosque. A bit farther to the west, the road to Grant County Airport leads west. The place was also named by the Spanish; locally, it's called Apache Tejo. By 1863, when Mangas was murdered at Apache Tejo, there was no more patience left for Mangas or his people.
For their part, how many men, women and children Mangas and his people killed is unknown. Add to that number those wounded and taken captive, and the toll probably still never went above 3,000 over 150 years. Apache likely never numbered more than 10,000 in all groups in Arizona and New Mexico combined.
The one American who knew more about Mangas than anyone else was Dr. Michael Steck, a Pennsylvanian. He was not only the Southern Apache Indian agent, but also, at times, superintendent of all New Mexico's Indian affairs. By 1857, he'd begun to lobby for a reservation that would incorporate the Gila, Mogollon, Coppermine and Mimbres Apaches "on waters of the Gila west of the 109th degree longitude" — an area he hoped "farming, grazing and hunting" could take place.
By 1859, Steck's efforts to stabilize Mangas' Apache had begun to take shape. Captain W. H. Gordon, captain of infantry from Fort Fillmore, near Mesilla, wrote: "I visited Mangus Colorado's [sic] camp located about a mile above the cornfields. Indians are peacefully disposed. I passed down the Gila, through their crops which went on three miles in length and are in fine condition. Mangus invited me to look at his fields and said this was his home and wanted peace."
In late 1859 and early 1860, however, Steck took a temporary leave from New Mexico Territory. His friend and Indian agent, Pinckney Tully, reported that during his absence, miners from Pinos Altos and Santa Rita del Cobre had attacked a Mimbreno encampment along the Mimbres River: "At the outset of the fight, the Indians, believing there must be some mistake, tried to get the Americans to hold fire a moment until reason could be had for this very unexpected attack, but it appears that these men went to kill Indians and did not care much who nor where so as they killed them. Elias, one of the Apache captains, and I believe the best Indian in that tribe, done all he could to get the Americans, to tell them who he was and ask them what they were killing his people for, but he could do nothing. He still kept going to the miners. . . until he was finally shot dead with the three others [Apaches known killed]."
While not directly Mangas' people, these Apache were nonetheless influenced by him. That incident, and another that historian Sweeney considers apocryphal, are cited as deal breakers for Mangas. That "incident," cited by many as "the last straw," was when Mangas was allegedly whipped by miners at Pinos Altos. Whether it really happened or not, Mangas had had enough.
On May 18, 1860, gold was discovered in Pinos Altos. Miners swarmed like African bees: aggressive, hostile, more than willing to kill any Apache who got in their way. Bear Creek, a principal drainage that heads in the Pinos Altos "mountains" and dumps into the Gila River two miles from the towns of Gila and Cliff, was a primary conduit for Apache travel. The reopening of Santa Rita del Cobre mine had also opened the area to Anglos and Mexicans.
When Steck returned in September 1860, he'd secured permission to have a reservation surveyed for Mangas' group. The reservation included Agua de Santa Lucia. Its dimensions were: "beginning one and a half miles southeast of Agua de Santa Lucia, ran 15 miles, beginning north, then west, then south, then east, from that corner. The corners [are] marked by large stone monuments, and stone mounds were placed at each intervening mile."
Miners protested to Steck, alleging the reservation encroached their mine lands. Steck challenged them, saying the reservation was 30 miles west of Pinos Altos.
Meanwhile, the Butterfield Stage Line had begun running, nearly parallel with today's I-10, in 1858 — through Mangas' Apacheria, from at least the Goodsight Mountains on the east, to the Burros and Peloncillos on the western New Mexico line. New Mexico had the greatest number of stage stations after Texas. Until February 1861, the Apaches — most notably, Mangas' son-in-law — allowed the stages to travel through Apache country. That delicate balance was upset when Lieutenant George N. Bascom captured several of Cochise's relatives and warriors, and ultimately hanged them. (See the May 2008 Desert Exposure.)
By the summer of 1861, all this was moot: Confederates had invaded New Mexico Territory, and Unionists, including Steck, were fleeing from Franklin, Texas (El Paso). By July, Mangas had decided to join forces with Cochise, and agreed to interdict the stage line by cutting it through southern New Mexico and Arizona. No more Americans would travel that route, if it were up to Cochise and Mangas.
On July 20, 1861, seven gallant Unionists, some of whom had also been associated with the Overland stage (formerly the Butterfield Stage), took the last Celerity coach out of Franklin. George H. Giddings had taken over the stage line and renamed it the San Antonio & San Diego Mail Line. Its route, too, went through Cooke's Canyon and on to Tucson. The seven Unionists had decided to get out of Franklin before they were arrested as Union spies; Tucson was safely in federal hands.
The Mesilla Times of July 27, 1861, contains a detailed account: "An express from Pino Alto [sic] brings the intelligence that the Mail bound for Los Angeles, California, which left Mesilla on the 20th July, had been taken near Cook's [sic] Springs by the Apaches, and the guard murdered. The Express passed the Cook's Springs on the 27th July, and found six [sic] bodies in the canyon; three were scalped. The coach had been destroyed.
"The following persons left Mesilla with the coach and are supposed to have been murdered: Conductor Free Thomas, Joe Roacher, M. Champion, John Portell, Robt. Avlin, Emmett Mills, and John Wilson. They were experienced frontiersmen, picked for the dangerous duty they had to perform, and undoubtedly gave the Indians a most desperate struggle.
"From Messrs. Daguerre and Thibault, who last week passed the scene of the late massacre at Cook's Springs, of the San Antonio & San Diego Mail party, we have received further particulars of that terrible deed. These gentlemen buried the bodies. They described the encounter as having evidently been a most desperate struggle. It had occurred several days before they passed. It would seem that the Indians succeeded in stampeding the mules, the coach was upset and the pole broken. The Indians probably followed the mules, giving the mail party time to secure their arms and retreat to a hill where they built a small rock wall. The fight appeared to have lasted two days. All about this wall the ground was strewed with battered bullets. Every rock and stone within many yards, which could have partially secreted an Indian, had bullets lying near. One small tree, some 150 yards from the wall, had the marks of 11 bullets on it. Nearly all had their arms broken — all were wounded in the arms and had been shot through the head. Four of the bodies were found within the wall, one in front of it, and two some 50 yards to the rear. It is supposed that the Indians numbered at least a hundred."
Having been in Cooke's Canyon in June, I can only guess how it felt in July. The fact that several bodies were found 150 yards away from their parapet led me to believe the last two had said to one another: "Might as well die trying for a drink of water!" After several days of fighting, with several men already dead, their bodies reeking in the heat, vultures circling like black shiny pinwheels overhead, the last two must have tried to run for it.
Normally, stage drivers drove their coaches through Cooke's Canyon at night. Unfortunately, some speculate that Freeman Thomas' mules needed to be re-shod. They had to have worked at night to shoe the mules, and likely left the corral as soon as possible. The Apaches who survived the fight — and later talked about it in Janos — passed on enough detail to provide a decent account of the incident.
Apaches told how they'd begun the ambush in the "narrows," a gap no more than 50 feet wide, bordered by rock walls on the east and west sides of the canyon. It's likely Thomas and some of the other stage employees knew where trouble might begin.
Recently, my writer/historian friend Neta Pope and I stopped so I could take photographs of that section of the defile. At its narrowest, the canyon is no more than 150 feet in width, with the roadbed no more than 30 feet wide. Steep rocky slopes are on both sides, and I've found likely firing positions on both slopes.
It's believed the coach was driven hard out of the narrows and onto "the flats," that spread the west of the defile. Likely, Thomas had long before reconnoitered places he'd drive to if ever ambushed. The coach was turned on its side and the mules cut loose, as a sacrifice to the Apache. The men must have gathered weapons, water, food and any other supplies they felt were needed to fight off the Apache and made their run up that "small hill or ridge."
Of all the supplies gathered, after guns and ammo, water would have been the most precious. Cooke's Canyon in July is a blast furnace, crawling with rattlesnakes, tarantulas and ants. The Giddings Station was unmanned; employees had left at the announcement of the Civil War's eruption. Cooke's Spring, undoubtedly with plenty of water and a bare two or two and a half miles east, might as well have been on the Moon.
Although the Freeman Thomas fight was well known along the border, its location was soon lost to memory. Unfortunately, contemporary accounts do not provide specific descriptions of the battleground. Various accounts by the men who buried the party — recorded in newspapers later — point to a ridge or hill about a half-mile south of the road. Later studies seem to favor the west canyon as the most likely location of the last stand. A recent examination of the high ground south of the road uncovered the foundation of a small rock enclosure that may have been related to the fight. No graves or other relics, however, have been found to corroborate the site.
One witness who surveyed the battlefield later said it appeared the Unionists had built one small rock enclosure and something more formidable, for protection at "advantageous points" along the small ridge they took their stand. The largest of these structures, variously described as a rock wall or parapet, "measured 10 to 12 feet square, and two to three feet high," wrote one newspaper report. The same report said the defenders eventually congregated at this point, where "they erected a sort of arbor across one end of the enclosure to protect the wounded driver from the direct rays of the sun." The Apaches, meanwhile, occupied the surrounding terrain, including the ridge south of and above the ground held by Thomas' men.
The Americans had plenty of guns, knives and ammunition. The Apache wouldn't have had as many guns. Muskets, lances, spears and bows and arrows would have been their weapons. I've found debris of various kinds on both sides of the road. (No, I don't use a metal detector — it's illegal on government land). I've also found what appears to be a shrine of sorts, prepared, I'd guess, by Native Americans near the spot where several massacres occurred, and I've found a half-dozen partially made and discarded arrowheads there. The Apaches surrounding the men from the stage would have had time to make new arrowheads.
Within 700 yards north of the road are two peaked hills. Rock breastworks or cairns are atop each. One was likely for Cochise; the other, Mangas. The rocks were likely command posts from which the two leaders gave flag, hand or vocal instructions. They would have had superior views of the fight scene at all times, from either place.
No one knows how many Apaches were killed in the fight. Supposedly, the bodies were dumped, Apache style, in crags and crevices nearby. That would have made sense. The battle was so riveting to the Apache that both leaders suggested with either 30 or 100 such men, they could clear the entire New Mexico Territory of Anglos and Mexicans, for good.
Mangas would die a year and a half after the Thomas massacre. If he'd had enough of Anglos and Mexicans, they, too, had had enough of him. Perhaps discouraged by his losses, Mangas allegedly left the fight after two days. I believe that, older than 70, he was just burned out on vengeance and death. Cochise and his men wanted revenge; they fought it out to the end
In 1862, several regiments of California (Union) Volunteers, known as "The California Column," marched east from San Diego. They fought battles with the Apache, several with the Confederates, and set up a number of forts, several locally. One was Fort Bowie, in Arizona. Another, Fort West, was situated on the south side of the Gila River, north of Agua de Santa Lucia.
Fort McClane, also known as Fort Floyd, had been established earlier, at or near Apache Tejo. It was there that Mangas finally met his demise.
On Jan. 22, 1863, Brigadier Gen. Joseph Rodman West, who had arrived with the California Column, resorted to a deceitful plan. West used a man who was supposedly a "friend" of Mangas to lure him into Pinos Altos. Once there, miners tied up Mangas and took him to Fort McLane. West reportedly told several of his soldiers, "Men, that old murderer has got away from every soldier command and has left a trail of blood for 500 miles on the old stage line. I want him dead or alive tomorrow morning, do you understand? I want him dead!"
By morning, Mangas had been assassinated. His large head, such a object of fascination, was later severed from the body. It was boiled to make it easier to remove the flesh and brains, and sent east, for "examination." For many years, legend had it Mangas' skull was ensconced at the Smithsonian, in Washington, DC; in the 1990s, the Smithsonian reported a search had not located the skull.
In my experience, the universe can still be a multi-dimensional oval, unfortunately slashed apart with millions of lines. I believe Mangas has led me to intersect with the ovals he once walked. As fish swim in the Gila River, I hike Apacheria.
This is the 12th in Jerry Eagan's series of articles about hiking Apacheria; the next will cover the Mangas Creek Ranch. To read all the previous stories, see www.desertexposure.com/apacheria
Jerry Eagan can be reached at Zennhead@zianet.com He will teach a four-session class for the Western Institute of Lifelong Learning (WILL) in Silver City, beginning Wednesday, Sept. 24, from 6-7:30 p.m. A field trip is planned, as is another possible session, if interest is shown in the topic. Those who wish to participate on the field trip should attend the three previous class sessions. Weather permitting, the field trip will be Oct. 11, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. See www.will-learning.com for registration information.