USA > Arizona > History of Arizona, Vol. III > Part 20
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"This massacre of the Yavapais was entirely without provocation, as they had never taken anything from the white men, nor had they killed or molested any white man. The beginning of it was that there was a party of soldiers camped near there. Three Indians were out on a hunt
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and happened to come across the soldiers' camp. Never thinking that the soldiers would do them any harm, they agreed to go with the soldiers to the main camp. When they were nearly to the main camp, other soldiers came out to meet them, but the three Indians kept on going to the camp. The soldiers shot the two last ones, but took the first one prisoner. Some time after that an In- dian party saw a camp of soldiers in the valley, and some of them went into the camp and saw this Indian who had been taken prisoner, and he told them that the soldiers wanted all the Indians to come in and have a talk with them. So the Indians went back into the mountains and went to where many Indians were camped and told them what they had heard, and also told them that they had seen one of the three men who were missing, and that he was with the soldiers, and that he was the party who told them that the soldiers wanted the Indians to come in and make a treaty, and that presents would be given them. So, many were anxious to go, especially to see if they could find relatives who had disappeared.
"Of the forty or fifty who rushed upon the sol- diers with their bare hands, none came out alive to tell the story. The only ones who escaped were those who ran away in the beginning or who hid under the wagons and then ran away. When they looked over the valley they could see many dead bodies for a long distance. The sol- diers have never told or written an account of that massacre. Many Indians were killed who had never seen a white man before. They never knew what kind of a human being a white man was, and, therefore, could not have molested them.
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"A few years afterwards the Tallaka-pai-ya, or the Yuma-Apaches, those who lived in the vicinity of Camp Date Creek, where there were about three troops of cavalry stationed, often came into the post, or, at least, their young men did, to work around the kitchens of the soldiers, or to chop wood for the soldiers' fires, for which services they used to receive food, clothing, etc., and in that way they learned the English lan- guage from the soldiers.
"About five or six miles down the creek there was a cabin kept by two men, who lived by them- selves, who sold whisky to the soldiers. Some of the soldiers would be absent from the post for two or three days from time to time, and the officers threatened to kill those Indians who were working around the post, thinking that the sol- diers had been killed by the Indians. The sol- diers, however, finally showed up, having simply strayed away on account of being too drunk to know the way home.
"Some of the Indians had seen some other Indians in the mountains dressed somewhat dif- ferently from the Indians around Camp Date Creek. The officer in command of the post told the Indians that they should head them off and bring them in, but the Indians were too foxy, they got away in the mountains before they could be headed off. The Yuma Indians, however, surrounded a small band of the raiding Apaches, killed four and brought their clothing to the post, but even then the soldiers did not believe that they had killed any of the Apaches, and the offi- cer in command threatened to round up those Indians who had been coming in to the post every day and put chains on them and lock them
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up. The Indians who lived in the vicinity of Camp Date Creek were inclined to be peaceable with the soldiers, but they could not tell the sol- diers so, as there was no good interpreter to be had in those days.
"At last those two men who had the whisky shop had a fire and their cabin was burned up and they were burned up in it. The soldiers got some of the Indians and went down there to try and find out who had done the killing and burn- ing. They could not find any tracks of men, or anything to show that it was done by a raiding party. The Indians scouted around far in the mountains, but could not see any tracks. The commanding officer, however, had a strong sus- picion that it had been done by the Yumas, and all the Indians were called together under the pretense that the soldiers wanted to make a treaty with them."
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CHAPTER XIII. INDIAN TROUBLES (Continued).
MIKE BURNS' STORY OF "THE PINOLE TREATY"_ PIMAS AND MARICOPAS DECEIVE THE WHITES -GIVE APACHES BAD NAME-APACHE BOW AND ARROW MAKING - FIGHT WITH SOL- DIERS BETWEEN FLORENCE AND MCDOWELL- INDIAN OPINION OF SOLDIERS AS FIGHTERS.
"This great treachery to the Mohave-Apaches was told me by an Indian by the name of Kwanga-cuma-ma, meaning 'Hitting Head,' or 'Chicken Neck,' which name he bears to this day.
"There were camps of all kinds of Apaches, some having just arrived from beyond where the Roosevelt Dam now is, from what is called by the Mexicans 'Sierra Anchas.' We Mohaves call those 'mountains 'Ewee-tha-quaw-wai,' which means 'Wide Ranges of Rocks.' These were Tonto-Mohaves, we being related to the Tontos, and their roaming ground was from Four Peaks along the Matazal ranges, the Tonto Basin in beyond Payson to the Sierra Anchas. When the tropical fruits ripen they come over to the Superstition Mountains, and along the Salt River Valley.
"They camped on the rim of a row of ranges between the Superstitions and what is called Fish Creek. The camps were in four distinct parts, a few miles from each other, but the mid- dle one contained the most in number, and above near to the top of a mountain was a large camp, that of the big chief, Delacha. Some parties were out hunting deer, and some were out catch- ing rabbits or rats. They were only armed with
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bows and arrows. They left their camps with- out fear of meeting enemies because they had never harmed anybody only once in a while some parties would go out to steal ponies which they needed for food.
"Some of the parties returned and said that they had seen some armed horsemen down the valley, and that they knew there were some Pimas and Maricopas with them because when they were in hearing distance some of the In- dians had called to them saying that they were out to make a treaty with all of the people in the country and that they need not be afraid; that they were to come to the camp without arms, and they were assured they would not be mo- lested ; that the soldiers had brought all sorts of articles to give the Indians as presents, so as to assure them of their friendship. When all of the hunting parties returned, word was sent around to the other camps. Some of the In- dians were in favor of going to make the treaty with the soldiers, saying that they were getting very tired of hiding out in the hills and always having to be on the watch lest their enemies jump them in their sleep, so they thought it was getting time when they could be at rest, and they did get rest, too. They said they wished to be at peace with everybody and get rest and quiet, and those men have never seen another day from that time.
"Some of the Indians went to the chief's camp and told him about the soldiers and the Pimas and Maricopas, who were also accompanied by two Yuma-Apaches. The Maricopas took the two Yuma-Apaches along in order to be able to pretend that all the other Indians had been
20
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treated all right, and these two Indians were used to persuade the Mohaves to come in and be good people, and have plenty to eat and all the clothing they needed. The Tonto-Apaches came to one of the camps and talked at length, and said that as they had been among the Mo- haves all their lives, they were willing to go and see what the soldiers and other Indians had to say to them; that even if it were a trap they were willing to take the punishment with the rest of the people. These Tonto-Apaches were two, father-in-law and son-in-law, and it is said that they both wore buckskin shirts and pants, decorated with brass buttons. Many of the men were willing to go down, but the big chief, Dela- Cha, stood over on a rocky point shouting to those who were already seated close to where the soldiers were, telling them that it was all foolish- ness to believe that those Pimas and Maricopas came to his country to meet them and make a treaty of friendship; that they had always been his enemies, and so had the soldiers, as they had never kept any of their promises, and he told these Indians that they would be lucky if any of them ever came out of there alive. He said : 'For me, where I am standing now, is close enough for me.'
"Just then an old man who had been away from the camp for a day or two came in, and noticed the excitement of everybody, old and young, in the camp, and asked them what the trouble was, and some one told him the news, and also told him that three of his sons had gone out with the parties to visit the soldiers. When he had learned all of the news the women asked him to rest a little and have something to eat. He said : 'I need nothing to eat now. I am go-
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ing down to where my sons are and will die with them before the sun goes over the hills, and there is no use to eat.' When he was told that those who went down to have the council with the sol- diers and the Pimas and Maricopas were told not to take with them any arms of any kind, he said: 'Those people are my enemies and I am going down there with my bow and arrows on me, and I am going to protect myself. Those who went down there without arms are foolish, as foolish as a child.'
"But one man came out of that massacre alive. He was living here until about three years ago, when he died, over a hundred years old. He received three bullet wounds in the massacre but recovered from them. He was the one who told me about the affair. His name was Way-ga-thy-match-jah, or 'Lean to him a woman,' but afterwards he was called Maw-wot- ta-ot-gau, 'A small round looking flour.' He was named that at the San Carlos Agency where many Indians came to receive rations of sugar, coffee, beef, beans and flour. He must have been given a very small sack of flour. He only drew rations for himself and wife, and many of the others drew for large families, so his rations were very small.
"Maw-wot-ta-ot-gau was in the first party which went to meet the soldiers and he was given two pails and shown down towards the creek, so that he understood that he was to get some water, so he went and brought in water twice. More Indians came in and then he noticed that the soldiers were going away in twos and threes, having their blankets under their arms, and then he heard from the hills that the soldiers were getting ready to surround the Indians, and
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he also noticed that the Pimas and Maricopas never had unsaddled their horses, so the next time he went down to the creek for water, he left the pails there, and went across the creek and stationed himself about a hundred and fifty yards from where the rest of the crowd were seated. Two long strips of white sheeting had been put down for the Indians to sit on. Some of the soldiers opened some packages of tobacco, and some calico, and had taken some of it out to give to the Indians. The Pimas and Mari- copas were closing in, pretending to be watching as the presents were given out. I was sitting on a rock on the other side of the creek, a rock about the size of the body of a man, and didn't know that there was anything hidden behind it, but there was a spear lying there. Just then an Indian left the row of Indians who were sitting on the ground and came across the creek. He started to climb over a rock to go towards the hills from where we came, but before he got over a soldier came to him and pulled him down from the rock, and the soldier reached behind him and pulled his pistol out, but before he could fire the Indian reached under his shirt and pulled out his long-bladed knife, at the same time tak- ing hold of the soldier's shoulder, and he struck the soldier right down the throat. The soldier fell backwards and the pistol was discharged as he fell. The Pimas and Maricopas and the sol- diers closed in upon the other Indians, who at- tempted to escape, but volleys of shot were poured into them so that hardly any of them escaped sound in body. It is strange that no notice was taken of me. I was sitting there on a little rock and the first thing I knew I was behind the rock and just had my head so that I
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could see across it. I noticed that an Indian had been shot down and that a Pima or a Mari- copa was hitting him on the head to finish him. Just then the Pima or Maricopa reached for an- other stone, and the other Indian grabbed the spear which was behind the rock I was behind, and thrust it right through the Pima or Mari- copa, and started to run away to the hills. The spear was shot out of his hand, but he got away into a little rocky, bushy ravine. I ran too, and fell under a bush and covered myself with leaves, and laid there as if I were dead, and stayed there until after it became dark.
"After I woke up I walked toward where I thought the camp was, but it was a hard trip. I did not see anybody, and the camp seemed de- serted, and someone had already destroyed the belongings of those whom they supposed to be dead. I finally came to our camp and found that my family had also destroyed the things which had belonged to those they thought dead, and had moved their camp farther up the moun- tains. I learned from other Indians that all the camps had banded together with the big chief, Dela-cha, intending to ambush the raiders down below where there was a deep gulch through which the road led. Dela-cha had some young men out watching the soldiers and the Pimas and Maricopas, with orders to let him know just when the soldiers started to move camp on their return homeward. Before mid- night the soldiers moved down the creek, and the Indians were all posted down at the deep gulch, where they could hear the horses' hoofs. Dela-cha told his men to creep up close to the road behind some bushes and rocks which were within a few yards of the road. Some of the
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warriors were posted at the end of the gulch to give the signal when the last of the party should have entered it, and it happened that the sol- diers were the rear guard of the party. The Apaches had only bows and arrows, but they made every shot count at that time; they never knew just how many they killed, but they cap- tured three, and must have killed and wounded a great many.
"As I have said, there were two Tonto- Apaches with the party, who were dressed in buckskin shirts and pants. Both were killed and it was found afterwards that they had been stripped of their buckskin clothing and all they had on. The old man who went down there with his bow and arrows after having been told that his three sons had gone down, stood the soldiers and Pimas and Maricopas off for a long time, by shooting with his bow and arrows, He finally turned and ran up the hill, but a bul- let struck him in the back of his head when he reached the top of the hill. He seemed at that time to be out of reach of the bullets, but one reached him and killed him. He was criticized by some of the Indians afterwards for not stay- ing near his boys and trying to protect them, then if he had been killed with the boys, it would have been expected.
"Here, before these very Apaches had ever seen a white man, or had ever had any oppor- tunity to do him harm, they were set upon and massacred. The whites were misled by the Pimas and Maricopas who lived in the Gila and Salt River Valleys, and who were the deadly enemies of the Apaches. These Pimas and Maricopas led the white men to believe that the
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Apaches were a bad and bloodthirsty people who lived in the mountains and only came down from there when they wanted to steal or kill people. The Apaches and the Pimas and Mari- copas had been deadly enemies for years. The Pimas used to steal up on the Apaches in the night and mash their heads while they were asleep, men, women and children. Many were killed in this manner. The Pimas would also set fire to the camps of the Apaches after killing off the inhabitants in the middle of winter. One time the Maricopas killed a young couple who had just been married, and left the dead man and the dead woman together just as if they had been sleeping, with their arms around each other, after stripping them naked. Treat- ment like this will, of course, make any human being feel like getting even in some way. The Apaches, however, did not have many weapons to protect themselves; they only had bows and arrows. The arrows were made of sticks, with a little sharp stone in the end, and would not carry very far, the longest distance they would shoot being about a hundred and fifty yards, and they would do but little harm at that. Sometimes the arrows were made out of cane that grew along the river banks or around a spring of water. It took quite a lot of ingenu- ity to make them; they had to be of a certain length to fit the party who was going to use them, and also according to the size of the bow. The canes would first be cut and then dried, and then cut again to the proper length. Some men had long arms and some short, and it was usually the custom to measure the arrows ac- cording to the length of their arms. Then
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they would be taken to an old man who had a small blue stone, about four inches long, and one and a half to two inches thick, and having on each side a little hollow space, not very deep, but the size of an arrow and the whole length of the stone, with a little ridge in be- tween the two hollow spaces. This stone was put close to a fire to become heated, but was not overheated. It was then put on a larger stone and the old man would rub the stick along it lengthways, and whenever there was a knot to be straightened out, he would rub it crossways on the middle. He would look through often with one eye as if sighting, and would keep on with this process until the arrow would be as smooth and straight as could be. The owner of the arrows was supposed to have everything in readiness, lots of feathers, and so on. The feathers used were mostly black hawk feathers, but every man wanted eagle feathers if they could get them. It was hard to catch the eagles, however. About the only way was to find a nest and take out the young and keep them until they grew feathers, when they would pull the feathers out, and in course of time, the feath- ers would grow again. The same method had to be pursued with the hawks, and when a man owned some birds he would take good care of them, feed them well, etc., and the other In- dians would come to him and buy feathers. They valued the eagle feathers most, however, because there is a legend among the Indians that the eagle takes people and everything he comes across to his lair up in the mountains to feed his young with, and also that the great eagle commands the weather and the winds.
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It is said that if the great father eagle is seen coming down from the heights of the mountains or rocks that it will be black, misty weather on that day and he will be sure to catch a human being and take him home. Medicine men al- ways had eagle feathers on their persons if they could get them and they would give anything for a few white eagle feathers for dressing for their medicine sticks for spiritual help.
"No one would think that a small straight stick would hurt anything or kill anybody, or that a small flat white stone would be harmful, or that small green weeds grown under the shade of certain trees could be made into poison to put on the end of an arrow to kill. This is the way the arrows would be treated. If a quiver full of arrows was examined it would be found that the sharp stones at the end of the ar- row would be covered with a bluish-black sub- stance. This was the poison and I have often heard soldiers say that after a fight was over they would find that they had been struck or scratched with an arrow, and that that part of their body would swell up and blister as if they were burnt. This would finally result in death as they had no cure for it.
"The poisons are made from all kinds of poison insects. The Indians would even catch snakes and cut off their heads and use their poison fangs. Lots of spiders were poisonous and a good many of the weeds which grew around. They would put them with a fresh deer gall, fasten it with a little stick, and bury it under the ground and build a fire over it, and do this sometimes for two or three days, when it would be so rotten that it would smell
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bad, and the Indians would not dare to touch it, but would pick it up with small sticks and tie it to the limb of a tree some distance from camp. Everybody would be warned not to go near it or touch it. In the course of a few weeks it would be dry and hard, just like a blackened coal, and it was then wrapped up in a piece of rag. When they wanted to use it. it was rubbed on a stone with a little water, and the tips of the arrows would be dipped in this and laid away to dry. The arrow heads were made of a hard flint, which would be put close to a fire to make it chip easy, and then it would be worked down to the shape and size desired.
"The bow was made from a mulberry tree which is cut down at certain seasons of the year, and it must be free from knots. To make it hard and springy it has to be buried under a fire in shallow dirt which is wet. It is then taken out to a tree and bent between two limbs and then whittled into the size and shape which its owner desires it to be. It is then strung with the sinews of some animal, a deer, horse or steer, anything large enough to furnish a sinew long enough and strong enough for the string. This string has to be twisted very tight and strong, and a careful Indian would carry along with him a spare string coiled around his waist, and would also have an extra stick for a bow. These they carried to use in case of an emergency when they were out on raids or on the warpath against other Indians. They did not go on the warpath against the whites as they had no ill feelings against them at first, but the treatment they received, par- ticularly the massacre near the foothills of the
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Superstition Mountains, turned them into hostiles against the whites and others. Before that the Apaches lived in the mountains and in the valleys between them, frequently visiting other camps of Indians, crossing the Verde River to the western slopes without fear of being molested, by other Indians or white men. They only killed wild game and small game, and the women folks would gather the fruits from the trees and everything they could find to eat from the different kinds of plants, such as the century plant. They would get it and cook it at special times during the year, and it would be prepared and put away for future use where the wet weather could not harm it, for if it were wet it would melt or get stringy and weedy and have no taste.
"After that massacre, and for several years afterwards, the Indians got together and had councils of war, and decided that it was time to make war on the whites. At times some of the Indian men would drop into Fort McDowell after that place had been firmly established by the soldiers as a post. They used to go in there to pick up things which were thrown away, such as clothing which was partly worn out and which would be lying around the post, or rags, and when the soldiers saw those Indians coming, they would go out with their guns and herd them in and lock them in the guard-house. If the Indians started to run the soldiers would shoot them, and sometimes they would kill all of them, and their people who were left behind in the camp would wonder what had become of them, because sometimes none of the party escaped alive to return home to tell them. After
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the government established McDowell and sta- tioned the military there, the Indians could not go across from their own camps without danger of being attacked by the Pimas and Maricopas and being wiped out.
"A small band of Indians went to the camp of some soldiers just below where the mining camp of Superior is. This party walked right into the soldiers' camp, not expecting that any- thing would happen to them, but the soldiers saw that there were but a few Indians, and they grabbed hold of the men and cut their heads off and burnt the corpses. Some other Indians happened to see the occurrence from a distance, and after the soldiers had left the camp they went there to see if they could find the bodies of their relatives, but could only find small pieces of bone in the ashes. So they went to the Pinal mountains to tell the news, went up the head of the Salt River near where the Roosevelt Dam now is, and also to the Tonto Basin, and called a council of war to be held near the Superstition Mountains. There was a camp there containing a great number of warriors, practically the only remnants of the Indians from the massacres which had occurred to their people during the previous years. They held the council and made up their minds to war on anybody they might meet, Pimas, Maricopas, or white men and soldiers. There must have been about thirty-five men under Dela-cha. They started out and came to a road running from Florence to Fort McDowell. Some of the young men were out on a hill towards Flor- ence, and two or three of them came and said that there were three wagons coming with
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