by 1864-1898 Indian War Veterans: Memories of Army Life;Campaigns in the West
In my article, “Scouts Good and Bad,” published in the American Legion Monthly for August, 1928, I described the expedition, headed by Captain Crawford, which conducted the [1885-86] winter campaign that almost resulted in the capture of Geronimo…. [During this expedition, ] Captain Crawford was shot—perhaps by Dutchy, one of his own scouts—during an engagement with Mexican troops who attacked his Indians under the impression they were Geronimo’s own band. Geronimo’s braves, warned through treachery, had scattered before the Mexican attack took place. I rejoined Crawford’s command just after this episode. The unconscious captain was sheltered in the one “A” tent. I was alone at his side at two in the morning, the only white man awake. Presently I heard a low hum of voices and a padding of moccasined feet outside. The ashes of a fire were stirred into a small blaze. I peered out, and imagine my astonishment when the flickering light revealed the unmistakable countenance of Geronimo, talking and signing to some of our scouts. He was not alone. I recognized Naiche, Chihuahua, Josanna, and one or two others. It was a weird scene. A few yards away, rolled in their blankets, slumbered the few white men of our command. The Indians talked for a long time, one speaking at a time, Indian fashion. Now and then one would stand up, pull his calico blanket closer about him, and sit again. From signs and glances in the direction of the “A” tent, I learned that, among other things, Geronimo was inquiring as to the condition of Captain Crawford.
Just before dawn, the hostiles departed and when the camp was awake I informed First Lieutenant Marion P. Maus of what had happened. About noon, Geronimo and his chiefs reappeared and asked for a conference with the lieutenant. The result was an arrangement for a meeting between Geronimo and General Crook at the Canon de los Embudos, about twenty-five miles south of the border. Geronimo had become convinced that his position between the Mexican and American forces was untenable, and he chose to make terms with us. Five days later, Crawford breathed his last on the march, and three days after that we laid him to rest in the sun-baked little village graveyard at Nacori, Sonora, while a parcel of goats browsed among the wooden crosses. There was no service, and for the want of a bugle, no “Taps,” but we moistened the earth with our tears and, kneeling in the dust, repeated in unison “The Lord’s Prayer.” We moved on up toward the Canon de los Embudos and camped not far from the camp of Geronimo to await the coming of General Crook.
Matters were almost at the breaking point when on March 2, 1886, the scouts shouted news of the arrival of General Crook and party. On his saddle mule, Apache, the general rode at the head of the procession with his busy beard in two braids. The Gray Fox was the name the Apaches had given to General Crook, and when they saw him with his beard in braids they knew he meant business. A council ground was selected by representatives of both sides and the parties of General Crook and Geronimo took their places in a semi-circle. Squatting on the ground, Geronimo began his address. He spoke with fire and eloquence. I have never heard a trained orator make a more moving presentation of a case that rested on such flimsy foundations.
General Crook listened with impassive countenance and eyes fixed upon the ground. Amid perfect silence, General Crook spoke. He ridiculed the pretensions of Geronimo, which is the surest way to discountenance an Indian. He wound up by saying unconditional surrender was all that he would consider, and if Geronimo did not accept those terms, “I will keep after you until the last one of you is killed, if it takes fifty years.” Geronimo was bitter. An Indian dearly loves to parley for terms. For two days the Indians debated the situation among themselves, roaring drunk on mescal. Finally, Geronimo, with bad grace, and with a mind inflamed by cactus whiskey, decided to surrender. The terms were stiff and included two years of exile on the Atlantic seaboard before being allowed to return to Arizona.
When this was accomplished, General Crook returned to Fort Bowie, leaving Lieutenant Maus to bring in the prisoners. That night Geronimo got drunk. He was in no shape for the trail the next day. We covered little ground that day, but next morning got an early start with the prospect of reaching the border by nightfall. This hope, however, was promptly disappointed. Geronimo and his people were marching in front of us. In the mid-forenoon, they halted and prepared to camp, explaining that they were “tired.” Then and there, I made up my mind that Geronimo was playing a game and so informed Lieutenant Maus. The Chiricahuas were encamped in two parties—Geronimo on the top of a small mesa, and Chihuahua, his subordinate, at the foot of it. We packers made a camp about fifty yards from Chihuahua’s camp in such a way as to prevent a surprise or meet an attack. From my experience with Apache tactics, I did not like the look of things. That night I outlined a plan of resistance to the packers in case of attack.
With our entire camp asleep, I got the lead or bell horse of the pack train and quietly led him around in the rear of Geronimo’s camp and put him to graze. Pack loads are borne by mules, but the file is always led by a horse. A mule will follow a horse, but will not follow another mule. Any stir in Geronimo’s camp would send the bell horse trotting back to where I was and I would know that something was up. Having posted my bell horse, I lay down with rifle and ammunition handy, but purposely kept awake. At about three o’clock I thought I heard a faint tinkle of the horse bell. Placing the palm of one hand to the ground and pressing an ear to it, I could hear distinctly the bell and the trample of horses’ feet. The bell was drawing nearer. With rifle in hand, I aroused Lieutenant Maus. The bell horse was now coming our way as fast as he could travel. The packers were awake and one of my men, Willis Brown, came running in from a brief reconnaissance. “Geronimo’s gone!” he shouted. Geronimo and Naiche with seventeen braves, fourteen squaws, and four children had skipped toward the Sierra Madres. Chihuahua with something like eighty people of all ages remained.
Second Lieutenant Samson L. Faison, with a large part of our force, took Chihuahua into Fort Bowie while Lieutenant Maus led the pursuit of Geronimo. The chase was of short duration, as it was evident that he had made good his escape into the mountains. It would take another expedition to get him, and so we retraced our steps toward the line, arriving at Fort Bowie on April third [1886]. I shall pass over several painful incidents that happened after our return. Suffice to say that Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles succeeded Crook in command of the Arizona Department, and with great energy began assembling troops for the capture of Geronimo and his handful of followers. The intrepid Apache gave the new commander a warm reception. Leaving his squaw camp in charge of one or two bucks, with seventeen fighting men he made two remarkable forays into Arizona. Slipping from mountain range to plain and from plain to range, making unbelievable marches, passing in front of, behind, and between pursuing forces, he fought two skirmishes with regular troops, one with the Tucson Rangers, and after keeping our entire army in that part of the world and a large part of the citizenry on the run for forty days, retired back into Mexico with the loss of but one man, and he a deserter.
On June sixth, Geronimo re-crossed into Mexico for the last time. The principal force of pursuit consisted of infantry, and what was more helpless than infantry, dismounted cavalry, under command of Captain Henry W. Lawton, Fourth Cavalry. They had with them a few Indian scouts, ably directed by Tom Horn. The wisdom of sending a force of this character into a difficult and unfamiliar country to pursue the Bedouins of Geronimo is obscure to me to this day. In company with First Lieutenant Abiel L. Smith and Billing Long, a dispatch rider, I was ordered to join this command. On July 29th, we met up with it in camp about a hundred miles, as a bird flies, below the border and fifteen miles south of the lonely hamlet of Nacori, where we had buried Captain Crawford. The force was in a sorry condition. Captain Lawton immediately summoned me to his tent where he spread his maps on a blanket. Explaining what had taken place in my absence, he asked the opinion of Tom Horn and myself as to where the hostiles might be. As it developed, we were both wrong—not that that made any great difference. With the command at his disposal, pursuit of Geronimo in force wou
ld have been futile no matter where he was.
On my arrival at Lawton’s camp, I was suffering greatly from sciatica, due to sleeping in wet clothing and blankets. The pain was so intense that Dr. Leonard Wood gave me a dose of morphine and said I would have to return to Arizona, as campaigning would aggravate the trouble. I started back that day, Captain Lawton jokingly telling me to inform General Miles not to send him any more soldiers, as one might as well try to hunt Geronimo with a brass band. On my return march I met a troop of the Fourth Cavalry under, if I am not mistaken in the name of the officer, First Lieutenant James Parker. I directed him to Captain Lawton’s camp. I was feeling so badly that I did not recognize First Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood, Sixth Cavalry, who was with the party. Had I done so I would have entertained higher expectations for the success of the expedition than then filled my mind. The death of Captain Crawford left Gatewood the best versed officer of our army in the subtleties of Apache diplomacy. His selection to join Lawton meant a radical change in the Miles policy of all force and no parley with the hostiles.
Shortly after Gatewood reached Lawton, a report was received at the camp of Geronimo’s presence in the vicinity of Fronteras, seventy miles to the northward. With his chief of scouts contending that Geronimo could be found south of the camp, with me contending for the east and now with this report from the north, Captain Lawton was in a quandary such as had been responsible for the indecision of more than one pursuer of the slippery Apache. Taking Tom Horn and six Indian scouts, Gatewood set out for Fronteras. After long marches and a series of skillful maneuvers which included the outwitting of Mexican officials, Lieutenant Gatewood finally achieved a meeting with Naiche and Geronimo. He said that General Miles’s terms were unconditional surrender and exile in Florida. Geronimo said he would fight to the last rather than accept, but Naiche was not so belligerent. Gatewood had made effective use of the fact that the mother and daughter of Naiche were already in Florida. This fact resulted in a second parley at which Geronimo capitulated, one of the stipulations being that Gatewood should march, eat, and sleep with the hostiles until they reached Arizona. He did this, and twice forestalled attempts by men of Troop B, Sixth Cavalry, to kill Geronimo in revenge for a defeat the year before. These circumstances and others caused strained relations between Gatewood and Captain Lawton.
On August 31, 1886, Lawton’s command and the hostiles reached Skeleton Cañon, in Arizona. On the evening of September 3rd, General Miles and escort arrived and went into camp. Geronimo mounted his horse and presented himself at the tent of the American commander. A lengthy conference took place, and on the following day Naiche, as the titular head of the Chiricahua Apaches, formally surrendered his band, which, if I remember rightly, numbered twenty-seven persons of both sexes, including three papooses. Thus ended the last of the Apache campaigns, sixteen months in duration, and requiring the entire military forces of Arizona, New Mexico, and western Texas to overcome a foe which never numbered as many as eighty fighting men. In a plentiful distribution of honors among the victors, it is a matter of regret to record that Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood received no recognition, though it must be that there are men now living who will agree with me that no one did more than he to bring Geronimo in.
The Fight in Guadaloupe Canyon, 1885 (By Emil Pauly, formerly sergeant, Troop I, Fourth U. S. Cavalry. From Winners of the West, September,1938)
According to a memorandum in my possession, the fight at Guadaloupe Canyon[, Arizona Territory, ] occurred on June 8, 1885. On that day our squadron, consisting of Troop B—Captain Henry W. Lawton; Troop D, Captain Charles A. P. Hatfield; and Troop I, Captain Abram E. Wood, were camped at Cloverdale Ranch. By direction of Captain Lawton, who was the senior officer commanding the squadron, Troop I, of which I was a member, was ordered to scout the San Simon Valley, as there were reports of an Indian raid in that region. We picked up the trail that afternoon and as it seemed to point towards our supply camp, we rode at a trot and gallop until dark. Resuming our march the following morning, we entered Guadaloupe Canyon at about 8 o’clock a.m., and as we came around a bend of the canyon a gruesome sight met our eyes. Not a vestige was left of the wagon train, excepting the tires, bolts, and nuts. The grass had caught fire and burned over a great part of the canyon. Blue dots near the canyon walls indicated the location of our slain comrades, whom we buried with military honors.
After the surrender of Geronimo at Skeleton Canyon, September, 1886, we escorted him and his band to Fort Bowie, Arizona. It was there I met Private John Schnitzer. I asked him to give me the details of this affair, and after a lapse of over half a century I will try and be as accurate as my memory will permit. Quote: “It was about noontime when Cook Oscar Niehouse, Troop D, Fourth Cavalry, called out, ‘Come and get it!’ Everyone got their mess kits and started for the cook tent to get their dinner, including the man on picket duty on the north wall of the canyon, leaving no one on guard. I was about half way to the cook tent when the firing started and of course we all rushed back to our tents to get our guns. The only protection we had were the covered army wagons, from behind which we fired, and they soon caught fire when someone evidently fired two close to the wagon cover of one of the wagons.
“About this time I thought of Sergeant Peter Munich, Troop G, Fourth Cavalry, who was very sick with pneumonia. I called Private William B. Jett to help me get the sick sergeant up the north side of the canyon, as he had already been wounded and was unable to walk. We got him nearly to the top when a bullet struck him in the back and he expired in my arms. Private Jett, George J. Schillinger, and I then got behind some rocks and started firing at the Indians, when the ammunition wagons exploded with terrific force. We held our position till late in the evening and then decided to take a chance and get into Cloverdale, which we reached late that night, pretty well exhausted.”
When I came back to Arizona last year [1937], I intended to locate the graves of those slain in that fight. However, I was informed by [NIWV] Comrade William H. Kane, who served in Troop D, Fourth Cavalry, that the bodies were disinterred and shipped to Sawtelle, California, and buried in the national cemetery….
After the Apaches, 1885-1886 (By Clarence B. Chrisman, formerly of Company F, Thirteenth U. S. Infantry. From Winners of the West, March 30, April 30, May 30, June 30, and July 30, 1927)
On September 22, 1885, three companies of the Thirteenth U. S. Infantry—F, D, and H, —and the regimental band, assembled in front of their quarters at Fort Wingate, New Mexico. The band was at the farther end of the row of quarters, and as it struck up an air and came marching by, the three companies fell in behind in their turn and were off to the time of a lively quickstep amid the cheers of the women and children and the remaining soldiers of the garrison. Little did we dream at that time that we were entering upon what would prove to be the longest, most exciting, and most arduous campaign that the white man ever carried on against his perpetual foe—the red man. Yet this turned out to be the case, for this campaign, from start to finish, lasted well over a year—almost two. And before it was over, two great Indian war generals were in command of it, and under these generals were thousands of the best soldiers of Uncle Sam’s army, which is to say, the best soldiers the world ever saw.
That such soldiers were needed goes without saying, for they had to march hundreds of miles over hot and desolate sandy plains, almost utterly devoid of vegetation and water, and across ranges of mountains that seemed to pierce the very sky itself, often in midwinter through almost impenetrable drifts of snow and sheets of ice. And always with death hovering over, for no one knew at what moment he would fall the victim of an ambuscade, perhaps sent to his eternal rest by the noiseless arrow of his foe. Soon after the band had turned to one side and made its way back to its quarters, our real work began. For just back of Fort Wingate rises the range of the Zuni Mountains, and we found ourselves marching on the upgrade almost from the moment of leaving the fort. And I must say we were all rather soft at that time.
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p; For a while there was some joking and talking, but soon it ceased, and the only sounds to be heard were the creaking of the wagon wheels of the supply train, the cracking of an occasional whip and the shuffle of our feet as we toiled wearily up this steep incline. The day was hot and the sun caught us fairly on that side of the mountain, and by the time we had reached a level place on the top of that immense plateau it seemed as though we had traveled a thousand miles. After a short rest the march was resumed, every one being cheered by the thought that we would soon be on the downgrade on the other side of the mountain and that would be easier. So it was, in a way, for we could have easily rolled down. But that would not have been very dignified. So we marched like the true soldiers we were, but every step on that steep declivity, weighted as we were with rifles and ammunition, seemed to drive our knee joints right up into our hips. But everything comes to an end, and finally we reached our first camp….
I wish to call particular attention to the group of noncoms of Company F, … for all of these men are to play an important part in the events which follow. All of this group were comparatively young men, the only one along in years being First Sergeant Downs, and next to him in point of age and service being Sergeant Maguire. This Maguire was a wonderful soldier, hardy as an oak, one of the best shots in the army and a man withal who held in contempt any sort of weakness. When he spoke, which was none too often, he drew down one corner of his mouth, and the words emanating from that particular corner sounded as though coming through exceedingly thick flannel. More about him later….
On the particular campaign about which I am writing, I carried with me a little leather-backed notebook about four-by-six, and in this precious little volume I have a record of every march and every camp we made on that memorable campaign. And besides, as I was handy with a pencil, I made sketches of many of the camps and of scenes in the vicinity. It is doubtful if this had ever been done before on an Indian campaign, and at that time I had no idea in the world that many years later I would be consulting this little book for data concerning our trip. On the first page I find entered, “Camp 1, on the Nutri. Sept. 22, 1885.” And under this heading, in part, appears the following: “Left Wingate about 11 a.m., marched to the beautiful valley of the Nutri and went into camp at 5:30 p.m. Our camp is beautifully situated at the foot of a high, rocky bluff, and nearby is a running stream of clear, cold spring water. This is what is called Nutri River, but it is nothing more or less than a babbling, rippling brook. I am on guard tonight, and it is 1:40 a.m. I am writing this by the light of our campfire, assisted by a full, bright moon. The coyotes are giving a serenade while I write, and their distant howl and grating yelp lend a dreariness to the lonely hour.”
