D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
April 2011
Hiking Apacheria
Chihuahua’s Journey
A warrior and stone-cold killer who also wanted "trees, good grass and water."
by Jerry Eagan
For the last three months, I’ve been "Hiking Apacheria" in what is now referred to as the Peloncillos (originally, the Steins Peak Range). Simultaneously, I’ve contacted author Ed Sweeney four or five times, by email and phone. I asked what his documentation was to suggest the Steins Peak local group of Chiricahua Apaches was led by Chihuahua. In his new book, From Cochise To Geronimo: The Chiricahua Apaches 1874-1886, Ed writes that on about Oct. 20, 1872, after negotiations between General Oliver O. Howard and Cochise settled on the establishment of the Southern Apache Reservation in southeastern Arizona, Indian Agent Tom Jeffords brought in to the reservation headquarters the Steins Peak local group, "which was probably under the leadership of Chihuahua, a 40-year-old self-assured chief who was the boldest Chokonen of his time."
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Rimrock to the west of Horseshoe Canyon. (Photos by Jerry Eagan) |
Chihuahua, whose Apache name was Kla-esch, was one of the most tenacious Chiricahua warriors to fight in the last 15 years of the American-Apache Wars. When I began reading Ed’s new book, I was surprised to learn Chihuahua may have led the Apache group based in these very mountains.
By now, I’ve hiked eight times in the Peloncillos, and consider them among the most breathtakingly rugged I’ve ever covered. I certainly wanted to learn more about this "local group." I’d thought of Chihuahua, who as a Bedonkohe Apache (the same as Chatto, Geronimo, Mangas Coloradas and Ulzana) was probably born somewhere in the Upper Gila/San Francisco/Blue River country, as more of a mountain man. But I believe his wife was a Chokonen more associated with one of Cochise’s group — hence their habitation in the Steins Peak Range.
Getting to know Ed Sweeney has been a serendipitous experience, as much of what I’ve done with "Hiking Apacheria" has been. One thing led to another. Ed has devoted 25 years of his life and thousands of dollars to understanding and writing about the Chiricahua Apache. With his latest book, he’s rightly nailed himself as THE authority on the Chiricahua Apache. I’d dare say, no other single person, even Chiricahua Apaches, know as much as Ed about their lineage and history.
Ed has done more with his books to bring the Chiricahua alive to readers, Apache and otherwise, than any other writer alive, period. He tells me he doesn’t necessarily see himself as a historian, per se; he writes a story in a historical narrative that carries his voice and his determination to absolutely document whatever he puts down in print. Ed’s a retired accountant, not a professional historian, but he is firmly established as a scholar in my book. No one has inspired me more with the need to read primary sources rather than to regurgitate what others have written about the mostly New Mexican bands of Chokonen-Chiricahua. That includes the Bedonkohe, Chihene N’de and Copper Mine or Gila Apaches. It’s primarily their country where I most often hike.
Regular readers will know that as I worked one article on Lt. John Lafferty (December 2009), I got to know Ed better. Finding out that I was working on a story not only about Lt. Lafferty, but also, his grandson, Fred Lafferty, Ed volunteered to take Fred, his wife and some family members — and me — to the location of the "Rocky Mesa" firefight in the southern Chiricahua Mountains where John Lafferty had half his jaw shot away by an Apache bullet. Talking about that firefight, I referred to a "map" or drawing a soldier had made of the battle. The only way one would have known about that was to have gone ponderously through the microfilm records written in 1869. I think both Ed and I understood, simultaneously, that bringing John Lafferty’s descendant to that place was a tremendous story, in and of itself. And so it was that with Ed’s help, I was able to go to Rucker and Red Canyons, with the Laffertys. Two weeks later, Dennis Jennings and I returned to that place and scaled the mesa, where we found signs of Apache habitation, there even today.
Hiking Apacheria, Ed has said, has set me apart from other writers of Apacheria. Others have also said, "You’re the only writer on these people and these wars who actually goes to the places where these things happened." And so I have, so I do. I’ve been fortunate enough to take at least one Apache with me on some of these places, and in fact, when we hiked together, we found several sites neither of us had known anything about until we discovered them!
My process has been to read primary source material, and then go where I think the Apache-American cultures came together — most often, with violence. If I read secondary material (books or published theses, papers, etc), I devoured the footnoted information. Dan Thrapp’s, Angie Debo’s and then later, Ed Sweeney’s footnoted information set me in motion to read more than a hundred rolls of National Archives microfilm and a hundred other sources of historic material. When I tapped into those sources, I read the reports of civilians, immigrants, reporters, scouts and soldiers. Putting together secondary sources, primary sources, period maps and newspaper articles, I’ve found the sites of firefights as well as probable Apache rancherias.
For at least two months, though, I’ve hiked on the wrong damned side of Peloncillo Massif as I searched for the location of the fight Loco fought with the US Cavalry on April 23, 1882. I was stubborn and ignored the information given to me by a man who essentially had no credibility in my eyes because he was an unabashed pot hunter/artifact plunderer/"treasure hunter." He’s not the first I’ve met who exploits places where Americans, Spanish and Apache coexisted. This braggart was stupid enough to tell Dennis and me all the things he’d stolen off public BLM land with historic, monetary value.