USA > Arizona > Arizona, prehistoric, aboriginal, pioneer, modern; the nation's youngest commonwealth within a land of ancient culture, Vol. I > Part 31
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Southward from Camp Apache, Crook struck over to Old Camp Grant. There the plan of campaign was outlined. Practically the entire force of the Depart- ment of Arizona was put in the field. While the reins were retained by General Crook, who moved from point to point, a number of practically independent, though co-operating, commands were created, to the end that the Indians should not be permitted to escape, but should be given the alternative of fighting or surrendering, eventually to be penned within a cordon of troops in central Ari- zona. The center of operations was Tonto Basin, where the Indians had been supreme and where the surrounding mountains ever had proved a safe refuge for marauding hostiles.
The column from Camp Hualpais was under command of Col. J. W. Mason, Fifth Cavalry; from Fort Whipple of Maj. Alex McGregor, First Cavalry ; from MeDowell of Capt. James Burns, Fifth Cavalry. Col. C. C. C. Carr, First Cavalry, worked southward from Camp Verde. Maj. G. M. Randall, Twenty- third Infantry, started from the northeast, from Apache, including in his com- mand a large force of Indian scouts led by the famous C. E. Cooley. The westernmost force near the main theater of operations was commanded by Maj. Geo. S. Price, Fifth Cavalry, from Date Creek.
Possibly the most notable expedition was that from Old Camp Grant, led by
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Maj. Wm. H. Brown, Fifth Cavalry, with whom were two troops of the Fifth Cavalry and thirty Indian scouts. Major Brown's officers included Capt. Alfred B. Taylor and Lieutenants John G. Bourke, Jacob Almy and W. J. Ross. Bourke at that time was a young officer of the Third Cavalry on special duty, attached to the staff of the Department Commander. This expedition later was joined in the Superstition Mountains by Captain Burns and 100 Pima and Maricopa Indian scouts. With Burns' troop was First Lieut. Earl B. Thomas, who eventually was retired as commanding general of the Department of the Colorado, which embraced Arizona. Brown marched his command northward across the western point of the Pinal Range into Tonto Basin, the scouts working well in advance under the noted MacIntosh, Felmer and Becias. A rancheria was destroyed not far from Salt River and there was a brush with the enemy at Coon Creek in the southeastern Sierra Anchas. Thence the force marched into the Superstitions, where the guides said they would find plenty of Indians.
The Superstition Mountains are cut by Salt River and lie eastward, forty miles or more, from Phoenix. Their western face is square-cut and frowning and they have an uncanny appearance, rather suggestive of the outlines of a clump of ancient Rhine castles. Though the Pimas have a number of legends that center in these hills, the name probably came through the fact that the earliest of the pioneer whites were told by the valley-dwelling Indians that the eastern hills were "bad medicine" and that no stranger escaped after entering their fastnesses. The explanation simply was that the mountains were a favorite haunt of the Apaches, who, from the crags, marked all strangers, even before they had . entered the hills, and lay in ambush for the victims where their arrows could not fail.
The destination of the troops was a great cavern fortress, a short distance to the northward of Salt River at the end of the southern slope of the Mazatzal or Four Peaks Range. This range had just been crossed by Captain Burns, who had surprised an Indian village, killing half a dozen and incidentally making prisoner of a bright Indian boy about 7 years of age, son of the chief. The chief and a number of his followers succeeded in escaping and in reaching the Salt River cavern, there to meet death.
FIGHT OF THE SALT RIVER CAVES
December 27 the squadron camped at the mouth of Cottonwood Creek on Salt River, where Major Brown informed his officers that the attack on the Indians would be made before daylight. One of the leading Indian scouts, Natanje, once had had his home in the cave and knew the locality well. He assured the Major that he could lead the command there, though the journey must be made at night, as the Apaches were in such position that in daylight not one of the attackers could escape alive. All soldiers deemed incapable of making a severe march were ordered to remain at the camp, which was carefully fortified in the event of an attack by the hostiles. The march into the rugged hills was started before 8 o'clock. An advance party of twelve men under Lieutenant Ross unexpectedly found a band of Indians dancing around fires in a cañon in front of the cave. Only one thing was to be done, and that was the firing of a volley that laid low a half-dozen redskins and sent the others skurrying up the cliffs. Bourke was only a few minutes behind with about forty more men, who
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WHERE WAS FOUGHT THE "FIGHT OF THE CAVES" Photo taken forty years after
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were soon in a strong position behind boulders commanding the entrance of the cave.
The Apaches' hiding place was a natural fortress, with a single opening upon the lip of an abysmal gorge, which was almost part of the great Salt River cañon. The only approach was a narrow trail where one man might have held back a host. Though the cavern was of no great depth, within it about 150 Apaches had found fairly comfortable, though contracted quarters as well as room for quantities of provisions. On a rock ledge in front, where they had fallen from the lip of a cliff 500 feet above, were a number of large boulders, that afforded a natural breastwork for the defenders. From the cañon slope to the floor of the cave was a smooth rock wall, not less than ten feet in height at any point. The troopers and scouts from every position of advantage along the gorge opened fire, but at first with little result. To a summons to surrender was returned only jeering defiance. One Apache, probably sent out to summon rein- forcements, could not deprive himself of the pleasure of a yell of derision as he mounted the last rocks to the cañon lip above. But for this he might have escaped, but his body, sharply silhouetted against the sky, was a fair mark and he dropped to his death with a crack of a rifle in the hands of Trooper Cahill. Another Indian slipped through the first line of troops, not knowing there was a reserve. Jumping on a boulder, he started a war song before he discovered that at least twenty carbines were trained upon him. The next moment he died.
Shortly before daylight it was discovered that a sloping granite slab over- hung the entrance of the cave, and a moment later a perfect hail of 50-caliber bullets was being deflected back of the boulder bulwark into the cave. The resultant execution was terrible, as the tumbling pellets of lead tore through almost every part of the cavern. Major Brown again ordered "cease firing," but to his repeated demand for surrender the Apaches yelled back that they would fight where they were till they died.
The Indians, beside firearms, were provided with many arrows and lances, which were thrown high up in the air in the hope of striking and inflicting damage, but there were few casualties in the attacking force. One Pima Indian was killed, while exposing himself in disregard of orders. There was one counter attack when ten of the warriors ran out on the rampart armed with rifles, while an equal number slipped through the rocks to the right as a flanking party, covered by the fire of their comrades. But nearly all the flankers were killed and the rest driven back into the cave.
The end came soon after the arrival on the scene of Burns and his command, sent during the night to follow a trail of Apache tracks in the vicinity. Burns returned over the hill back of the caves, and, peering over the crest, appreciated the situation fully. In a few moments down the cliff dropped an avalanche of boulders, striking on the ledge in front of the cave and splintering into thou- sands of pieces. According to Captain Bourke, "the destruction was sickening ; the air was filled with the bounding, plunging fragments of stone; no human voice could be heard in such a cyclone of wrath; the volumne of dust was so dense that no eye could pierce it." Under the boulders died the virtual leader of the band, an old medicine man, clad in the feathered panoply of his office. Yet with all the carnage it was noon before the cavalrymen could rush the rocky fortress. Within was a charnel house, men, women and children killed by
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bullets or by the falling rocks. The Apache-Mojave Indians tell that within the cave died seventy-six of their people. Eighteen captives were taken, women and children, most of them wounded, saved by hiding behind or under flat rocks on the floor of the cave. Only one of the warriors found was conscious and he, an old man, died within a few minutes after he had seen a flood of foes pour into the aboriginal fortress.
What happened thereafter is not pleasant telling, and no stress has been laid upon it by any of the soldiers present. It is understood that there was some difficulty in restraining the Maricopas and Pimas from killing the wounded that were left, possibly thirty-five in number, but, after all, that procedure might have been the more merciful in the end, for Major Brown had to leave at once, for there were other Indian camps in the Tonto Basin section that had to be reached forthwith if the plans of the "Old Gray Fox" were to be carried out in their fullness. There was a hurried heaping up of everything in the way of provisions, guns, ammunition, bows and arrows, lances, war clubs, baskets, etc., that might be valuable to hostile Indians, and these were destroyed by fire, save only as much as the Indian scouts wished to pack off. The dead Pima was given decent burial on the spot, but the Apaches, dead and living, were left in the cave. There was no way by which the wounded could be helped, and there were no medical stores with the party. One Indian escaped. Wounded in the leg, he had lain down behind a slab of rock near the wall and there was covered beneath a pile of the slain. He waited until the soldiers left and then, with lances for crutches, he made his way up Tonto Creek in time to turn back a large band of Apaches who otherwise would have run into Major Brown's force. This band, however, later was annihilated on the summit of Turret Butte, where they were surprised by the command of Major Randall.
Many years thereafter there was excitement in Phoenix over the report of a cowboy, Jeff Adams, later sheriff of Maricopa County, that in a cavern in the most inaccessible part of the Salt River canon there had been found the bones of seventy-five persons, for the fight of the Salt River cavern had been forgotten locally. The bones are there yet, strewn over the rocky cavern floor, for the Apache acknowledges that the spot holds "bad medicine."
The boy captured in the Mazatzals by Captain Burns and orphaned a few hours later in the caves, was adopted by the troop, and rechristened Mike Burns. Within a few years brave Captain Burns died. Then Mike became a charge upon Wesley Merritt, then a dashing officer of cavalry, who sent him to common schools in New York and Pennsylvania. Thereafter he graduated from an Indian school and returned to Arizona. He is now a resident of Mayer, where he is rated as a rancher of intelligence and of reasonable industry.
Back in the cave, under the protecting body of his dead mother, was found a lusty little Indian babe, only a year old. The child was picked up by a Pima squaw and taken back to her wattled teepee on the Gila River. A few years later, in the old town of Adamsville, the boy was purchased by an eastern visitor from the squaw, who appears to have been a good foster mother. He was taken east and educated, finally graduating from medical college under the name of Carlos Montezuma. He is now a practicing physician in Chicago, occasionally called by the Government to assist in work looking toward the bet- terment of the Indians in general. A few years ago he revisited for the first
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time the old home of his family, finding relatives near MeDowell and also near San Carlos, and experiencing little difficulty, with the aid of an interpreter, in re-establishing family ties. Instances of advances among the Indians such as these are by no means isolated ones, and they serve to encourage the Govern- ment in efforts toward the betterment of the mental and moral attributes of the Nation's red wards.
CROOK OFFICIALLY THANKED
According to army records, in the nine years immediately following the Civil War 1,500 Apaches were killed in Arizona by American troops and it is believed that something like that average had been kept up for many years before. Yet the Indians seemed undaunted and even cheerfully kept up a war- fare that could have but one ending.
Within the army the broadest of credit always has been given the work of General Crook. Major Eben Smith of the Twelfth Cavalry in 1902 wrote:
Crook grasped the question with a broader view and deeper thought than any man before or since. His methods were simple. A dyak of Borneo would not be more inflexible in his punishment, no Prince of Peace could have more patiently examined all their complaints or treated them more honestly and squarely. Unconscious of danger, unmindful of treachery, never misled by deceit, not disturbed by failure, the strongest of them found their wills bend to his. He discovered the possibilities of Indians as soldiers and scouts against their own people and he was never betrayed. A few months after the first campaign 2,500 hostiles acknowledged themselves beaten and went to work on their reservations to make a living for themselves and he had them raising good crops of grain in a short time. It was a wonderful sight, for they were warriors from immemorial tradition and very well satisfied with them- selves in that line. As well might we expect to see a brace of tigers hitched to a bull cart as one of these fellows hoeing corn, but the experiment was working perfectly when the Indians were returned to the Indian Department.
General Crook was given the thanks of the people of Arizona by the Seventh Legislative Assembly in 1873. Officially, credit was given him for the gallant and efficient manner in which the war against the Apaches was being prosecuted, permitting, for the first time since the organization of the territorial govern- ment, enjoyment of comparative immunity from the attacks of the savage foes. It was therefore resolved, "That we cordially endorse and approve the course of General Crook toward the Apaches; that we believe him to be eminently quali- fied to command the Department of Arizona during the existence of the savage warfare and that, if not again interfered with, he will bring our Indian war to an early and successful termination and secure a lasting peace with the Apaches."
The "pacification" of the Date Creek Apaches did not finish, however, the Indian troubles in west-central Arizona. In May, 1873, a large number of Apache- Mojaves went on the warpath down the Hassayampa, below Wickenburg. They robbed the ranches, stole or killed all the cattle and horses and incidentally mur- dered a few people in peculiarly atrocious manner. The first was Guy Swain, who, in unintended merey, received a bullet in his heart as he drove his mules up the Hassayampa canon. A few hours later the Indians captured George Taylor, the 18-year-old son of the superintendent of Smith's mill, who had gone to attend to work on the mill fiume. Ed Lambley at the river, five miles from the mill, urged the lad to spend the night, but he explained that, "Mother will be anxious if I do not get back before dark. She will think of Indians and every-
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thing under the sun." The next morning the two bodies were found. That of the boy showed that death had come on after fiendish tortures had been inflicted. He had been rolled in cactus, for the body was covered with thorns from head to foot. The eyelids and ears were cut away and there were dreadful mutilations all over the body. Apparently the end had been in the course of target practice, for there was a row of twelve arrows in a straight line down the center of the body. These tortures usually were the pleasant pastime of the squaws, the bucks furnishing an interested and applauding audience.
QUICK VENGEANCE INFLICTED
The Indians, about 125 in number, loaded with plunder, struck eastward at once across the Verde below their own reservation over into the upper Tonto Basin, where they considered themselves safe from pursuit. Couriers had been dispatched at once to Date Creek and other posts and the soldiers started on the trail within three days with columns from Camp Verde, Date Creek and Mc- Dowell, of the First and Fifth Cavalry and Twenty-third Infantry. Randall, with his infantrymen, crept upon the Indians at their stronghold on the summit of Turret Butte. The soldiers crawled up the face of the mountain and by mid- night were posted in a cordon around the Indian camp fires. At daylight a few volleys were fired and then there was a charge.
Again there is lack of detail in the record. It is only satisfactorily noted that the band practically was annihilated. Some of the fiends who had tortured young Taylor, in terror sprang to their deaths down the precipice and among the slain were scores of females of the tribe, who never again would thrust fire- brands into the flesh of a quivering white victim. If for nothing else, the mem- ory of the soldiers should be blessed in Arizona for the work that was done in the days of Crook on the Santa Maria, in the Salt River caves, at Turret Butte and later in the final big fight at the Big Dry Wash.
This final campaign left the Apaches well whipped and thoroughly appre- ciative of the fact, even eager to surrender to avoid further hardship and loss of life. Three hundred Mojave-Apaches under Chalepan surrendered at Fort Grant, April 6. Altogether about 2,300 Apaches "came in."
Tamaspies' band of Hualpais surrendered to Captain McGregor in the Santa Maria Mountains in June. In July, still another large band surrendered to Captain Burns. The Hualpais had been ordered moved to a reservation on the Colorado River, but the hot climate proved unendurable and most of the tribe fled into the mountains.
A very large share of the credit for the good work belongs to the Fifth Cav- alry, a regiment shifted to Arizona from San Francisco just in time to partici- pate. General Sherman, commanding the army, soon thereafter announced his belief that the regiment's service in Arizona "was unequalled by that of any other cavalry regiment during the War of the Rebellion."
DEL SHAY AND HIS TONTOS
One of the most notable of the historic Tonto-Apache chiefs was Del-shay, whose name is borne by a valley in the northern Sierra Ancha Mountains. Ac- cording to Banta, his name was De-che-ye. Banta had rather an interesting experience with the chief when the white man, in 1869, was making a lonely
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and very dangerous ride from Wingate to McDowell, a bearer of military dis- patches, convoyed from point to point by Apaches, who made smokes on the hills to indicate the coming of a peaceful stranger. But Del-shay was little above the generality of his kind and he and his band were the especial cause for the estab- lishment of Camp Reno, on the western edge of Tonto Basin.
Some evidence concerning Del-shay is found in the report of Commissioner Vincent Colyer, who, in September, 1871, wrote: "I am informed that Del-shay, the able chief of the Tontos, has been in McDowell several times during the past few years and that on two occasions has been dealt with very treacherously; at one time shot in the back and at another time attempted to be poisoned by a post doctor."
Del-shay reported October 31 to Capt. W. McC. Netterville of the Twenty- first Infantry, at a camp in Sunflower valley on the western slope of the Mazatzal Mountains. The chief was hungry and cold, and, after being mollified by much of the white man's food, expressed a desire for peace, and offered to "put a rock down to show that when it melts the treaty is to be broken." He said he was not afraid of the white man or the Mexican, but of the Pimas and Maricopas, "who steal into my camp at night and kill my women and children with clubs." A few days later, Del-shay, with eighty warriors, came into McDowell, where his men were clothed and fed, and where the chief demanded more blankets and more provisions than the Government allowance as the price of getting off the war- path. The Indians built fires and began cooking beef for their evening meal, when they suddenly sprang to their arms and vanished into the darkness, con- sidered very strange in that they did not wait for their food. According to Colyer, the sudden exodus was upon receiving news that "a party of Pimas and Maricopas, hearing that the warriors were all at Camp MeDowell, had gone up to Reno and killed thirty-two defenseless women and children of the Tontos."
Following a long series of isolated outrages, Del-shay and his band were captured by Captain Randall in their Sierra Ancha stronghold, April 22, 1873, and herded upon a reservation. There has been found a tale to the effect that in 1874 Del-shay defied Lieutenant Schuyler on the Verde reservation ; that Schuyler tried to shoot the savage, but found his rifle had been unloaded by a treacherous interpreter ; that the Indian thereupon escaped, with a reward of $50 offered for him by Schuyler; and that in July a young Mojave (Apache) killed the old chief and brought in the scalp.
KING'S ESCAPE AT SUNSET PASS
Charles King, broadly known as a writer of fiction, in 1874 was a first lieu- tenant of the Fifth Cavalry. In October of that year, with twenty-five men from Troops A and K of the regiment and some Yuma-Apache scouts, he was dis- patched from Camp Verde to recapture some stolen cattle and if possible to pun- ish the Indians, who were Tontos. Though the scouts proved undependable, the stolen cattle were recaptured and dispatched westward under a small guard, while King pushed on, following the trial. At evening he reached Sunset Pass in the Mogollons, where plain signs were found of the Tontos, though the Yuma-Apaches scouts declared to the contrary. Early on the following morning Licutenant King took a sergeant and a dozen scouts and started to climb a mountain side south of the pass. The scouts came most unwillingly and when at last, near the crest of the
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hill, a sudden volley was poured in from ambush on the advancing party, the Yumas broke and ran and the Lieutenant and Sergeant Taylor were left alone, the former badly wounded by a smashing bullet that went through his arm just below the shoulder. Lieutenant Eaton, who had been left below with most of the soldiers, heard the firing and charged promptly to the rescue, but for a few min- utes the sergeant alone bravely held off the advancing redskins and saved the lives of his commander and himself. Then came a deed about as gallant. A courier bore word of the affray to Camp Verde, eighty miles distant and in forty- eight hours, through the snow, Dr. J. A. Day, the post surgeon, made the perilous ride through the Apache-infested wilderness and reached the officer, made splints out of a cigar box and returned with his patient to the post. On account of the wound, King had to be retired, but not till eight years thereafter. Within that period he took part in a Sioux campaign and in one against the Nez Perces and he was able to take the field again in the war with Spain, when, as a brigadier-gen- eral of volunteers he participated in several of the actions about Manila early in 1899.
VERDE APACHES TAKEN TO SAN CARLOS
In 1875 the agency at Camp Verde was abandoned and the Indians were driven upon the White Mountain reservation, where they better could be watched and where they were supplied with rations for years thereafter. This order was said to have been absolutely at variance with an agreement made by Crook with that particular band. The army had started the Indians in the ways of peace and the tribe already had become half-supporting, under the instruction of Lieutenant Schuyler. Dr. J. A. Day, who was surgeon at Fort Verde, states a belief that a pool of $20,000 had been subscribed at Tucson to move the northern Apaches southward, merely in order that Tucson merchants might profit by the trade thus directed. The Indians became rebellious and threatened the life of Brevet General Dudley, the officer who had been appointed special commissioner to oversee the removal.
About 800 Indians were herded up and started southward under charge of Lieut. G. O. Eaton and a Fifth Cavalry detail. The officer had much trouble en route. Forty Apaches broke away at Fossil Creek and struck northward into the Hell Canon country. A number of Indian scouts were sent after them, accompanied by Al. Sieber and Dan O'Leary. They brought back only one cap- tive and reported the balance were "in the hills." It was generally understood that this was a typically frontier method of stating that all the rest were killed. At any event, the thirty-nine gave no trouble to the settlers thereafter. Indeed that was the last Apache trouble ever known in north-central Arizona.
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