D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
May
2009
HIKING APACHERIAFaces and Names
Putting names to the faces of the last Apache holdouts, who surrendered with Geronimo.
By Jerry Eagan
August 27, 1886. Northeast of Fronteras, Sonora: "In the afternoon Geronimo, Natchez (sic), and most of the outfit (Geronimo's band) came over (the Bavispe river). Natchez is hereditary chief and real leader. Geronimo is the man who always appears. Had a long talk, during which all arrangements for surrendering to us and going with us to Skeleton Canyon were gone over and agreed to. Geronimo stated: 'We have not slept for six months and are worn out.' and stated that he and his party are tired out and anxious to join their relatives in Florida. All they seemed to dread especially was falling into the hands of the civil authorities in Arizona. . . . The Indians are literally worn out with anxiety and hard traveling. They have constantly been on the watch, frequently attacked, and have again and again had close calls. Natchez looks thin, and has not entirely recovered from a wound received several weeks ago in a fight with some American ranchers near Cumpas. . . . They were told General Miles would use every possible effort to send them promptly out of Arizona and to save their lives."
— From the unpublished journal of General Leonard Wood, who was part of the group chasing Geronimo and his men into Mexico in 1886.
I'd guess regular readers of this series have spent more time than they care to admit reading about "the Apache Wars," fought predominantly by Americans and Apaches. Within a 36-year time frame, Americans who conquered much of the territory previously claimed by the Spanish Empire and the Mexican government, and who inherited "the Apache problem," more than once probably wished they could at least return the Apache peoples, who were so utterly belligerent and incorrigible, to the Mexicans.
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The famous track-side
photo taken on Sept. 10, 1886, near the Nueces River in Texas. (Photo
courtesy of the Arizona Historical Society / Tucson, http://arizonahistoricalsociety.org) |
A variety of "Apaches" inhabited southeastern Arizona and southwestern and southeastern New Mexico, after the defeat of Mexico in our war with them. Aravaipa, Coyotero, Jicarilla, Lipan, Mohave, San Carlos, Tontos, White Mountain and Mescalero Apaches were all more or less conquered and tamed by 1883. One by one, those various groups were sent off to reservations, and, having finally submitted to American authority, most got land near their normal traditional "homelands." The Eastern and Western Chiricahua, though, it seems accurate to say, would have been exactly whom American soldiers or Arizonans or New Mexicans meant when they said: "The only good Apache is a dead Apache."
By 1885, though, many Americans hoped the Apaches who'd been corralled onto the San Carlos or Fort Apache "agencies," in Arizona, had thrown in the towel. Among the Apaches on San Carlos and Fort Apache, both located less than 150 miles from Silver City, the Chiricahua had also been concentrated, very unwisely, with some of their former Apache enemies. Often, when not fighting Spanish, Mexicans or Americans, the Chiricahua had fought the White Mountain and Tonto Apaches.
The Western Chiricahua groups were most associated with Cochise and his band. The Eastern Chiricahua contained fragments of the Coppermine, Gila and Mimbres Apache, formerly under the leadership of Mangas Coloradas. They also included the Chihenne (Warm Spring and, some now say, Chi hen De) Apache of Victorio, Loco and Nana and the Ndenai of northern Mexico, headed by Juh. These Apaches were the ones people worried about.
This latter amalgamated group probably numbered only about 700 to 1,000 men, women and children by 1885. They were, however, the most dangerous thousand men, women and children who existed in the Southwest. In May 1885, when several hundred Chiricahuas "bolted" from the San Carlos Reservation, they left a trail of death and destruction behind them as they ran south for their haunts in northern Chihuahua and Sonora.
Hunting these Apaches down consumed the labors of up to 5,000 American and perhaps as many Mexican soldiers for 16 months. At the end of that period, the warrior and medicine man, Geronimo, and 12 other men, plus women and a half-dozen children, remained. It was this last group who surrendered, finally, on Sept. 4, 1886, in Skeleton Canyon, just on the Arizona side of the border. Skeleton Canyon's western side opens on the Arizona side of the line, but the eastern end comes out near Cloverdale, New Mexico. (Today, Skeleton Canyon is locked, due to very dangerous drug-traffic encounters.)
In 1886, much of America couldn't have cared less what happened in Arizona and New Mexico territories. Neither was yet a state, and the nation was largely focused on becoming an emerging giant of industry, with a healthy dose of political and military power. Nonetheless, President Grover Cleveland would have preferred the Apache men be hanged for their "depredations" against American citizens.
Initially told they would be sent to Florida, where many of Apache families had already been exiled, Geronimo and his band got on board a train leaving from Bowie Station, Arizona Territory, under the guard of soldiers of the cavalry. En route to their exile, though, the train was stopped, most likely to allow everyone to go "to the bathroom." On Sept. 10, at one such stop, a photographer named A.J. McDonald collected one of the most famous photos associated with the Apache surrender.
In my ongoing researching of Apacheria, I visited the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives in Santa Fe. There, I perused the enormous file of Albert Schroeder, an archaeologist, anthropologist and ethnologist for the US Forest Service in New Mexico. For my money, Schroeder is the most meticulous and detail-oriented historian of the Apaches as they existed in New Mexico: His archives run to 75 cubic feet of material. Before heading to Santa Fe, I examined the index online and planned what files I wanted to inspect. Upon arrival, noting the hours of operation and my own checkbook, I determined it was best to simply copy and read later. That was an effective tactic, although I could easily return, and spend days reading and copying his files.
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An Apache cairn at Canada Alamosa. (Photo by Jerry Eagan) |
Among all the various hundreds of pages I copied, one set of a hundred-plus pages provided me with tremendous insight into those Apaches in that famous photograph taken as they rested along a train track. Because Schroeder was involved heavily in Indian land and water claims issues, he needed to know as much as possible about the heritage of the largest number of Apaches who lived either at Fort Sill, Okla., or Mescalero, NM. In a letter prepared by Gillett Griswold and sent to Schroeder, Griswold detailed perhaps the finest, most thorough descriptions of the Apache in that photograph.
Griswold was the director of the US Army Artillery and Missile Museum at Fort Sill. Sometime in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Griswold had asked one elderly surviving Chihenne Apache — Jason Betzinez (Beet ZEE-nes) — to try to identify the Apaches in that photograph; he'd asked not once, but twice. Betzinez wrote I Fought With Geronimo, a comprehensive history of growing up in a war environment. While, despite the title, he's not thought to have actually fought with Geronimo, Betzinez had many valuable insights into the life of the people around Geronimo.
I'd always wondered who those men and women were who chose to stay "out" with Geronimo to the bitter end. Griswold's letter to Schroeder stated that much work had been done to seal the names of "Geronimo's last band comprising those who surrendered with him in September, 1886, a subject of much confusion." He wrote that a photograph was taken of the captives in Texas, as they were seated along the Southern Pacific Railroad track bed near the Nueces River, en route from Fort Bowie to San Antonio, Texas, on Sept. 10, 1886. Rather than proceed directly to Fort Pickens in Pensacola, Fla., where the men were to be exiled (the women and children went to Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Fla.), the Apaches were detrained at San Antonio. There they awaited President Cleveland's decision on whether the men should be punished by hanging for their "crimes."
Prior to 1962, Griswold said generally, no more than four or five of the 20 individuals in the picture had been identified: "In order to correct this situation before the passages of time made it impossible, the Director of the Fort Sill Museum. . . obtained in 1959 from the oldest and most knowledgeable Fort Sill informant, Jason Betzinez, a Warm Spring-Bedonkohe, identification and relationships of all the individuals who appear in the 1886 group photograph, as well as several others who were with the group but not in the photograph. These identities were secured without reference to the census (previously conducted). Betzinez readily recognized all of the individuals, and on several subsequent occasions, at intervals of several months. . . re-identified those in the picture. He was related to some of them, and had known all of them well. Geronimo was his 2d cousin. . . He [Betzinez] ,Fun, Tsisnah, Perico and Chappo, and Ahnandia had been raised together like brothers."