Even though he now held four American captives, Cochise thought more could be taken from the eastbound stagecoach approaching in the hours of darkness after midnight. At the summit he opened fire from the hills on all sides. His men hit two of the mules and the driver. A passenger jumped from the coach, cut out the fallen mules, mounted the box, and whipped the remaining mules into a gallop, the Apaches in pursuit. They had destroyed a rude stone bridge that carried the road across a steep ravine. The mules hurtled across the ravine and, spurred by the momentum of the coach, clawed their way back to the road. The chase continued three miles to the stage station. Cochise still held but four hostages.
Sending his people back to their winter homes, Cochise resolved on one last effort to regain his family. On February 8 Chokonens and Bedonkohes attacked another detachment leading mules to the springs for water. This resulted in a desperate conflict with reinforcements sent from the stage station, but as the Apaches drew off, they stampeded all the mules and left the soldiers on foot.
The stalemate, however, had ended. Cochise gave up the fight and with some Chokonens embarked on a raid into Sonora. Mangas Coloradas, with Geronimo and the Bedonkohes, turned east toward their home on the upper Gila. Before parting, however, they tortured, killed, and mutilated their prisoners and left their remains near the summit of the pass.
Reinforcements arrived for the soldiers, who remained for more than a week scouring the country for Apaches. Finding none, they marched away on February 19, pausing at the summit of Apache Pass to hang Cochise’s brother and two nephews from the limbs of oak trees. (The wife and children were liberated.)
The standoff with the officer had been bad enough, but nothing could have stoked Cochise’s fury more than the wanton hanging of his family as the soldiers left.
None of the Apaches knew the officer or much of what animated the military in conducting this mission. The officer was Second Lieutenant George N. Bascom, and part of his regiment, the Seventh Infantry, garrisoned Fort Buchanan.
The Gadsden Purchase, ratified in 1854, had added southern Arizona to the Territory of New Mexico. With Americans already in the little adobe town of Tucson and prospecting for gold farther up the Santa Cruz River, the New Mexico civil and military systems had to be projected into Arizona. Late in 1856 Major Enoch Steen led two squadrons of the First Dragoons through Stein’s Pass and marched to Tucson. Finding it unsuited for a military post, early in 1857 Steen moved fifty miles to the southeast and established Fort Buchanan in the verdant Sonoita Valley. Michael Steck showed up to try to cement relations with the Apaches to the north and west. To the east, Chiricahuas gave little trouble, but others, chiefly Aravaipas, brought on dragoon campaigns that accomplished little. By 1860 a sister post, Fort Breckinridge, had risen on the lower San Pedro River to help guard the Butterfield coaches that began to appear in 1859. West of Cochise’s country, therefore, two forts established American military presence in southern Arizona, Forts Buchanan and Breckinridge.6
On January 27, 1861, Aravaipa Apaches raided the ranch of John Ward in the Sonoita Valley near Fort Buchanan. They ran off some oxen and took captive Ward’s stepson, mixed-blood offspring of an Apache and Ward’s Mexican wife, a former captive of the Apaches. (Sold to and reared by the White Mountain Apaches, the boy grew up to figure prominently in Apache history as Mickey Free, an interpreter widely distrusted by the Chiricahuas.) Ward trailed the raiders only as far as the San Pedro, then hastened to Fort Buchanan to tell his story to Lieutenant Colonel Pitcairn Morrison. The trail, Ward contended, showed that the culprits were Cochise’s Chiricahuas in Apache Pass.
Morrison assigned a company of the Seventh Infantry to take the field and try to recover the boy. With the company’s captain and first lieutenant absent, the mission fell to Second Lieutenant Bascom. Morrison instructed Bascom to march to Apache Pass and take any measures he thought needed, including force, to recover the boy. Leading fifty-four infantrymen on mules and accompanied by John Ward to act as interpreter, Bascom set forth for Apache Pass. His arrival on February 3 led to the “Cut the Tent” sequence that so infuriated Cochise.7
On his return to Fort Buchanan, Lieutenant Bascom submitted a self-serving report that by omission and commission portrayed his role in the fiasco as an exercise in sound judgment and competent command. Colonel Morrison, possibly aware of his own culpability in sending an inexperienced young officer lacking in judgment to act in any way his judgment dictated, accepted the report at face value.
Bascom gained a commendation from the department commander and, with the outbreak of the Civil War, rose rapidly to captain. He was killed in the Battle of Valverde in 1862 and honored in the name of a short-lived military post, Fort Bascom.
Arizona paid a heavy price for Bascom’s blunder.
“After this trouble,” Geronimo recalled, “all the Indians agreed not to be friendly with the white men any more.”8
Although a significant understatement, the agreement did take place. It occurred after Mangas Coloradas, Geronimo, and the Bedonkohes had returned to their homes on the upper Gila following the “Cut the Tent” affair. They found conditions no better than when they had left, the Pinos Altos miners still making trouble for everyone—Apaches, the army at nearby Fort McLane, and freighters on the overland trail. The Bedonkohes began raiding far and wide. In April 1861 Mangas journeyed to Apache Pass for the war council with Cochise that Geronimo recalled.
The leaders agreed to strike in two groups of about sixty men each, Cochise in the area west of Stein’s Peak, Mangas the whites at Pinos Altos, the Santa Rita copper mines, and the Mimbres River. Freighters on the overland trail fell prey to the raiders and lost many mules. Farmers and ranchers on the Mimbres River fled their homes. Miners began to abandon Pinos Altos.
The Bedonkohes and Chihennes not only watched their victims yielding to their raids. They witnessed other strange happenings. For one, the Butterfield coaches disappeared from their accustomed passage on the overland trail. Even stranger, the soldiers began to march away from their forts, headed east. In New Mexico, the garrison of Fort McLane abandoned the post; in Arizona, the same occurred at Forts Buchanan and Breckinridge. They gathered at Fort Fillmore near Mesilla. Both Cochise and Mangas concluded they had driven the soldiers out of the country.
All that remained was to rid their homeland of all whites, and the war they agreed to in April continued through the summer into the fall without letup. The townsmen still clinging to Pinos Altos offered an especially tempting target.
Gradually, the Apaches learned that the soldiers had departed not because of Apache aggressions but because war had erupted in the East between North and South, and the soldiers in the West left to join in the fight of brother against brother. Some of these soldiers united with their southern brothers. Most remained in their blue uniforms to fight with their northern brothers.
A new era had dawned in the Apaches’ fight with the white people.9
SIX
RETURN OF THE BLUECOATS
AS MANGAS COLORADAS AND Cochise plotted further war on the Americans during the summer of 1861, they could not have been ignorant of events that drew more white men into the Chiricahua domain. They doubtless knew nothing of the conventions assembled in Mesilla and Tucson in March 1861 that voted to create a Confederate Territory of Arizona in southern New Mexico and Arizona. But they surely watched the military force that reached Mesilla from the south in July. They wore gray rather than blue uniforms (if they wore uniforms at all), and they forced the surrender of the bluecoats gathered from the abandoned posts at Fort Fillmore. These events did not affect the chiefs’ resolve to assail the closer enemies still living in Pinos Altos.
Geronimo took no part in these events. Increasingly he followed his own instincts rather than consistently join in the movements of Mangas Coloradas. During the summer of 1861, Geronimo set off with some Bedonkohes for a raid into Chihuahua in the vicinity of Casas Grandes. In a fierce battle with Mexican soldiers, he suffered a seriou
s wound. His comrades treated him and withdrew to the Santa Rita Mountains in Arizona, near Tucson, where they camped with their families as he healed. But Mexican troops had followed. In September, with many men absent hunting, the soldiers launched a surprise dawn attack. Geronimo succeeded in escaping with Chee-hash-kish, his second wife. But his third wife, Nana-tha-thithl, and their child died in the deadly fire that killed most of the women. The troops burned the camp and returned to Mexico with four women captives. Now Geronimo had lost two wives, four children, and his mother to Mexican troops. His rage at Mexicans is easily understood.1
As Geronimo fled the massacre of his people by Mexican soldiers far to the west, Cochise and Mangas assembled a large alliance of Chiricahuas to attack Pinos Altos. The force, several hundred strong, consisted of their own Bedonkohes and Chokonens as well as Chihennes. At daybreak on September 27 they surrounded the town and its satellite mining camps and attacked from all sides. The startled miners, isolated in scattered defenses, could not mount effective resistance. The battle raged all morning, with heavy casualties on both sides. Unknown to the Apaches, a small Confederate detachment was camped in the town. The officer organized his own men and the miners into a fighting force. Around noon they fired a small cannon filled with nails at the Apaches, then counterattacked. The Apaches gave way and fled the scene.2
The alliance attacked several freight trains on the overland road, but they found themselves now facing fresh soldiers. Mangas was now more than seventy years old; he tired easily and increasingly wanted peace. The younger Cochise, full of vigor, took the more active role in the warfare of the alliance. By the end of 1861 the two chiefs had parted, Cochise to strike into Mexico, Mangas to withdraw to his accustomed sanctuary on the upper Gila. Secure in his refuge, he may not have been fully aware of the actions of the new officers and troops at Mesilla. In February 1862 they sent a column west to take possession of Tucson. Also in the spring they sent more soldiers to occupy and defend Pinos Altos, and they tried to wage a war of extermination on the Chihennes.
The newcomers at Mesilla were a Texas regiment of Confederate troops under Lieutenant Colonel John R. Baylor. In February 1862 he sent a detachment under Captain Sherod Hunter to occupy Tucson. Soon a formidable brigade of Confederate Texans under Brigadier General Henry H. Sibley marched up the Rio Grande with the mission of conquering New Mexico and even Colorado for the Confederacy. While Baylor remained in Mesilla, Sibley defeated Union troops under Colonel Edward R. S. Canby in the Battle of Valverde, south of Socorro. Not until after seizing Santa Fe and advancing up the Santa Fe Trail toward Colorado did Sibley meet defeat. On March 26–28, 1862, at the Battle of Glorieta Pass, Colorado Volunteers turned back the Confederate invasion.
As Sibley’s battered, demoralized troops straggled down the Rio Grande and back to Texas, Baylor remained in Mesilla. He pursued a relentless campaign against the Chihennes. Alerted to the approach of a large Union force from the west, Baylor ordered Captain Hunter to withdraw his small force from Tucson. Cochise attacked them while they camped at Dragoon Springs, killed four men, and ran off thirty mules and twenty-five horses. Unmolested, the rest of the soldiers continued through Apache Pass and reached the Rio Grande in safety.
Cochise had also learned of the large column of bluecoats approaching Tucson from the west, marching across the desert in separate contingents because of the distance between water holes. He knew they entered Tucson and that some marched to reoccupy abandoned Forts Buchanan and Breckinridge. They then began to move eastward, again in separate detachments, toward the heart of Cochise’s homeland.
On June 25, 1862, Cochise looked down from the hills as 140 American soldiers camped at the abandoned Butterfield station in Apache Pass. With the execution of his brother and nephews by American soldiers still fresh in his memory, he did not greet these soldiers in friendship. From above Apache Springs, his men fired down at the troops watering their horses. They stopped, however, when a white flag appeared below. An hour later, backed by seventy-five men, Cochise ventured down to talk with the American officer. He assured the chief that they came in peace and wanted to be friends. He then handed over presents of tobacco and pemmican. After the meeting ended, the officer discovered that three of his soldiers had been shot, lanced, and stripped. A frantic pursuit of the culprits revealed only mocking Apaches watching from high hills and ridges. The soldiers moved two miles farther east and camped. During the night Apaches fired into the camp, wounding a soldier and killing a horse. The next morning the column formed and hastened east on the trail. The Apaches let them go.
From the officer’s revelations, Cochise quickly concluded that these American newcomers foreshadowed a fresh offensive into his country and that they numbered too many for him to contest without help. He sent out an appeal for another great alliance. Mangas Coloradas and his Bedonkohes responded. So did Chihennes of Victorio and Nana, and even Juh with a few Nednhis. Within hardly more than a week, they gathered at Apache Pass.
Victorio was a chief of the Warm Springs, or Ojo Caliente, local group of the Chihennes. Born about 1820, he rapidly became a conspicuous fighter. Shorter than Mangas Coloradas, he nevertheless boasted the usual powerful Apache physique and a potential for leadership that elevated him to chief. The less warlike Loco, also competent and respected, inherited a chieftainship at the same time as Victorio. When Chihenne war parties took the field, however, Victorio rather than Loco rode in the lead. Thus his speedy response to Cochise’s call for help at Apache Pass.3
Nana, a tall Warm Springs Chihenne with a decided limp, never attained a chieftainship. But he rode as a highly effective war leader for decades. He married Geronimo’s sister, Nah-dos-te (his one full sister, not a cousin). Staunchly loyal to Victorio, he could usually be found in any war expedition led by Victorio, such as the impending conflict at Apache Pass in 1862.4
Whether Geronimo and his followers, who had been struck by Mexicans in September 1861, participated in Cochise’s effort to fight off the return of the Americans is unrecorded. He dictated nothing of these significant events for his autobiography. Never, in fact, would he talk to whites about conflict with white soldiers. But he had participated in every previous important occasion that brought Mangas and Cochise together for war or raid, and so formidable and organized was the enterprise at Apache Pass that he must be assumed to have taken part.5
Late on July 14, 1862, Mangas and Cochise spotted a large dust cloud rising from Dragoon Springs, forty miles west of Apache Pass. From what Cochise had learned in his recent talk with the soldier chief at Apache Springs, they knew that another force of American soldiers advanced on the old stage road. They would march all night and into the next day, reaching Apache Pass exhausted and in dire want of water. The chiefs hid fighting men on the slopes shouldering both sides of the trail as it approached the abandoned stage station.
Aware of how the sweltering heat of July 15 would affect the soldiers, Mangas and Cochise let them straggle down the trail. Horsemen arrived at the stage station about noon and began to unsaddle. The footmen soon followed. Twenty men and two supply wagons, with two wheeled vehicles that the Apaches later called “wagon guns,” brought up the rear. The chiefs signaled the attack. From the hillsides, a deadly fusillade tore into these men, killing a soldier and wounding a teamster. From the rear, the Apaches then descended in force and charged the outnumbered rear guard. Soldiers from the station hastened back to the fray, fighting in hand-to-hand combat until the Apaches withdrew into the hills, hastened by rounds from the “wagon guns” bursting among them.
The soldiers still had not reached Apache Springs, some six hundred yards beyond the station in a narrow gorge dominated by steep, rock-strewn slopes on both sides. The Apaches had already studded the slopes with rock breastworks and commanded a field of fire that could sweep the springs below.
Even so, the soldiers had to have water. In the afternoon they deployed and worked carefully up the ravine toward the water. The barricaded Apaches opened fi
re, secure behind breastworks from any return fire. They had not reckoned, however, on the wagon guns. The soldiers sought to bombard them in their improvised forts. Bursting rounds, however, sprayed the deadly fragments of iron not on them but on the other side of the ridge. Soldiers fanned out in skirmish lines and charged up the slopes. Even though unharmed by the exploding shells, they frightened the defenders into hastily scattering from their defenses.
Amid the confusion, six horsemen galloped west up the trail. Mangas and about twenty men took up the chase. Beyond the summit of the pass, they caught up with the soldiers, wounded one, and hit two horses. One soldier had paused to rest his horse and found himself cut off. Quickly mounting, he expertly maneuvered his horse and avoided the Apaches closing in. He had a repeating carbine, which may have taken them off guard. One of his shots struck Mangas Coloradas in the chest and knocked him from his horse. Quickly his men bore their wounded chieftain to safety, and the soldier escaped.
As the Bedonkohes carried Mangas south to Janos for medical treatment, Cochise and the Chokonens, and any other warriors who had not yet left, reoccupied the breastworks above Apache Springs. Late that afternoon the soldiers marched out of the pass to the west but returned the next morning, July 16, with even more men. At the springs they formed on horseback and foot and advanced with military precision. The wagon guns barked again, the soldiers fired their weapons at the defenders, and then charged. Cochise’s men again scattered as the shells burst above them.
The Apaches had lost the two-day battle, and the soldiers commanded the springs.
Many more soldiers than Cochise had confronted were on the way. California had responded vigorously to the outbreak of the Civil War, raising more volunteer regiments than any other western state or territory. A full brigade of California Volunteers, more than two thousand strong, set forth in early 1862 to span the Southwest and help Colonel Canby fend off the invasion of New Mexico by Confederate general Sibley. Colonel James H. Carleton raised the force, receiving a brigadier’s star while en route. Part of his command defeated some of Captain Sherod Hunter’s Confederates in a brief skirmish at Picacho Peak, north of Tucson, and hastened his return to New Mexico.
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