He was Brigadier General Oliver O. Howard, the one-armed “Christian general” known throughout the army for his deep piety. His recent assignment as head of the Freedmen’s Bureau, caring for freed slaves, had hardly covered him with glory. Yet he later told Crook “that he thought the Creator had placed him on earth to be the Moses to the Negro. Having accomplished that mission, he felt satisfied his next mission was with the Indians.” Howard’s main accomplishment during the four months he toured Arizona and conferred with Indians was to force Crook, once again, to call off military action against the Apaches. Back in Washington by June, Howard reported extensively on his peace efforts, which he viewed with as much optimism as had Colyer. He conceded, however, that he had not dealt with New Mexico or with Cochise and believed he should return and carry out that task.11
After conferring with the Navajos early in August 1872, Howard proceeded to Fort Apache, where he made some unsuccessful efforts to contact Cochise, then turned back to Fort Tularosa. There he found fewer than three hundred Indians, although more, including the principal chiefs, camped nearby. From various sources, both Indian and white, Howard had learned that the only white man who could take him to Cochise was Thomas J. Jeffords, then an Indian trader at Cañada Alamosa. Sent for, Jeffords arrived at Tularosa on September 7. He bluntly informed the general that Cochise would not come for talks, that Howard, accompanied only by his aide, Jeffords, and two Indian guides, would have to journey to Cochise and talk there. Howard agreed. The party was later enlarged to include a Spanish interpreter, a mule packer, and a cook.
Meantime, while awaiting Jeffords, Howard had been talking with Chihenne chiefs Victorio, Loco, Nana, and Chiva. All, especially Victorio and Nana, impressed the general. They poured forth their complaints about the awful conditions at Tularosa, the appeal of their home country, and the government’s betrayal in making them move after they thought the government would give them a reservation at Cañada Alamosa. Howard not only sympathized with the chiefs but had in mind the larger scheme of persuading Cochise to move his people to Cañada Alamosa and gathering all other Chiricahuas there. On September 12, with the agent and New Mexico superintendent of Indian affairs Nathaniel Pope sitting in, Howard and the chiefs met in a formal council that simply repeated the arguments already stated. The council ended with an agreement to inspect the Cañada Alamosa area. This occurred on September 16, when Howard promised the chiefs to recommend to the president that the Tularosa Reservation be abolished and the people there returned to their home in the Alamosa Valley below Ojo Caliente. So certain was he of the success of his larger plan that he appointed Tom Jeffords agent of the new “Cochise Reservation.”12
In his autobiography, Howard narrates his long journey across New Mexico and into Arizona as if fraught with high risk. Accompanied by Jeffords, Ponce, and Chie, however, and with Jeffords having already learned directly from Cochise of his desire for peace, the danger was considerably diminished. Howard did heed advice to reduce his party and sent his ambulance and driver, interpreter, and cook to wait at Fort Bowie. Nor does Howard hint of the earlier talks with Cochise or of his efforts to settle at Cañada Alamosa. Not that the mission lacked risk, and Howard did accomplish a significant feat in persuading Cochise to settle peaceably on the reservation of his own choice. Because of his autobiography, however, and the mythology that developed around Jeffords as he aged, history has tended to credit General Howard with a larger achievement than the facts warrant.
Because of his companions, Howard readily gained admission to the Dragoon Mountains and sat with Cochise in the West Stronghold. Although arguing for a “Cochise Reservation” in the Alamosa Valley around Ojo Caliente and Cañada Alamosa, he did not push this scheme very hard and easily acquiesced in Cochise’s demand for a reservation in his homeland. Yielding to his insistence that Tom Jeffords be appointed his agent posed no problem, since Howard had already appointed him agent of the “Cochise Reservation” at Cañada Alamosa. Omitted from any consideration was the understanding of Victorio and the other Chihenne chiefs that Tularosa would be abandoned and they could return to their homes around Ojo Caliente. In Howard’s mind, this depended on persuading Cochise to move there and make it a genuine “Cochise Reservation.” If he stated or implied such a condition to the Chihenne chiefs, they certainly gained no impression of it. Not surprisingly, they felt grievously betrayed when Tularosa remained in place and the government continued to argue over whether the reservation should be there or at Cañada Alamosa. Howard thus contributed to the mix that within seven years would lead to the bloody Victorio War.
At the formal councils on October 10 in the stronghold and the next day at Sulphur Springs, none of the whites knew or cared who Cochise’s Spanish interpreter was. Lieutenent Sladen, however, left compelling clues in his journal. Even though Geronimo was not yet known to the white world, Sladen’s description accurately portrays the man who would soon become known to the white world, an
old looking [nearly fifty], very dark complexioned, unprepossessing appearing Indian, who had returned to camp only the day before. His sensual, cruel, crafty face, as well as his dissatisfied manner had prejudiced me against him from the start. … He was short and stout, exceedingly dirty, and wore a white man’s shirt, loose like a blouse, and with little else beyond the usual breech cloth and moccasins. I thought nothing strange about this at first but, later, my interest was aroused in the garment by several unusual things about it.
For one thing, despite its filth, the shirt betrayed its origins as of white manufacture: eyelets substituted for buttons, which meant that it came from no trader’s store but had been purchased in the East. Mainly, however, Sladen got close enough to read a name embroidered on the shirt flap: “Cushing.” One of the army’s most aggressive Indian fighters, Lieutenant Howard B. Cushing had been slain in the Whetstone Mountains on May 5, 1871, a year and a half earlier. Sladen believed that this Indian had probably either killed Cushing or been a member of the war party.
The leader of the war party that had killed Cushing was recognized on a hilltop as Juh. Since Geronimo and Juh often rode and fought together, Geronimo may well have been the wearer of Cushing’s shirt. Moreover, at this time Geronimo and Juh camped with the Nednhis near Janos. Geronimo had come in the day before, according to Sladen. And he brought his people into the new reservation early in November 1872. The factors of time and distance are not inconsistent with his identity as the interpreter. Sladen continued:
I … had conceived the utmost dislike and repugnance of him. It was not entirely the incident of the shirt, though this intensified it much. But his crafty, cruel, vindictive looks; his seeming disinclination to treat with us at all made him an object of extreme dislike and suspicion to myself and others of our party. I think the General was inclined to share this dislike, but he thought him a man of importance in these consultations and attempted to win him over by every reasonable means in his power.13
In 1872 Sladen knew no more than the name Geronimo, and probably not even that. Neither did Captain Samuel Sumner, who was present at the Sulphur Springs council; but Sumner knew Geronimo later and recognized him as present at the Howard peace conference. Although the identity of Cochise’s interpreter cannot be proven, Sladen’s observations raise a strong presumption that he was Geronimo.
However flawed Howard’s agreement turned out to be, it left the Chiricahuas with a lasting memory of a rare friend among the military. As Geronimo would recall thirty years later, “He always kept his word with us and treated us as brothers. We never had so good a friend among the United States officers as General Howard. … If there is any pure, honest white man in the United States army, that man is General Howard.” No other American officer earned such an accolade. That Geronimo remembered his brief experience with Howard more than thirty years later reinforces the possibility that he was indeed Cochise’s interpreter.14
Howard’s peace mission had insulated Cochise from Crook’s military operations. Crook had la
unched small striking commands, composed of cavalry and Indian scouts, to follow and destroy the other Apache groups that had resumed old habits after Vincent Colyer had made peace with them. His tactics proved both innovative and effective and by the end of 1872 had subdued most of the recalcitrants. By February 1873, he had concentrated thirteen troops of cavalry near the new Cochise Reservation to enforce the general order that required all reservation Indians to submit to a daily roll call. He then learned that Howard had promised Cochise that no soldiers would go near the new reservation. “The whole peace system among the Apaches here has been a fraud,” he had declared. Now he wanted a copy of the treaty Howard had concluded with Cochise, only to discover that nothing had been set to paper.
The Apaches did not expect a paper and had never been asked to sign one. Howard had promised the reservation, and therefore the reservation existed. Howard had promised that no soldiers would go near the reservation, and the Apaches expected to see none except those at Fort Bowie. From the white perspective, these promises should have been committed to paper, whether called a treaty or something else. How else for all to understand commitments both sides had made? Howard never explained why he failed this elementary requirement, the more important since he knew that Crook eagerly waited for him to leave so that the long-contemplated offensive could be launched. The incident dramatically illustrated the clash of the oral with the written, the Apaches’ concept and the whites’ concept.
By April 1873 Crook could issue a general order announcing the end of his Tonto Basin campaign and the surrender of all the Tonto, Pinal, and other Apache groups against which he had been campaigning.15
On October 29, 1873, President Grant again intervened in army affairs. Jumping all the colonels and senior lieutenant colonels, he promoted Lieutenant Colonel George Crook to brigadier general in the regular army.
NINE
THE CHIRICAHUA RESERVATION, 1872–76
WHETHER OR NOT GERONIMO acted as Cochise’s Spanish interpreter at the councils with General Howard in October 1872, he was present and observed what happened. He promptly returned to his ranchería near Janos, Chihuahua, where he had been living with Juh’s Nednhis since military forces drove them out of Sonora the previous summer. They hoped the Janos authorities could be persuaded to issue rations. On Geronimo’s heels, runners arrived bearing Cochise’s invitation to Juh and others near Janos to settle on the new reservation. Cochise’s Chokonens were already there, since it was their home country. If Juh had any doubts, Geronimo could have overcome them with appealing words about what he had seen and heard at the peace council, especially the promise of the rations, which the Janos authorities had not granted them. Moreover, both would have instantly appreciated the advantages of a secure base in the United States for raiding across the border into Mexico. Late in November 1872, Juh, Geronimo, and other leaders led several hundred Nednhis and Bedonkohes to Pinery Canyon, in the Chiricahua Mountains about fifteen miles south of Fort Bowie. There they met and conferred with Cochise and Agent Tom Jeffords, and there they settled their people on the new reservation.1
Red Beard Jeffords pursued a relaxed management style. Every week or two he distributed the rations and supplies Howard had promised and let the Apaches come and go as they pleased. Cochise kept his promise to Howard to restrain his young men from committing any depredations in Arizona. Travelers on the overland trail proceeded in complete safety. Ranchers and farmers worked their lands secure from the threat of an Indian attack.
Not so the Sonorans. The southern boundary of the Cochise Reservation coincided with the boundary between Arizona and Sonora. Now secure from retaliation, bands of raiders crossed repeatedly into Mexico and spread havoc across both Mexican states. Cochise himself never participated, but neither he nor Jeffords did much to interfere with plundering expeditions. Geronimo and Juh both indulged old habits repeatedly. In the months following the establishment of the reservation, Sonora suffered as grievously as in previous years.2
Word of the Chiricahua Reservation quickly spread to other Apache groups. Jeffords’s easygoing oversight contrasted with the strict agents elsewhere. Also, he issued the visitors rations the same as the resident Indians. A few White Mountain Apaches from the north appeared, together with a scattering of others from farther south. But the largest influx came from Tularosa, ever a hotbed of discontent. Some arrived in February 1873 and said more would be coming.
There were. With Tularosa as usual in an uproar, in May 1873 about two hundred Chihennes and Bedonkohes, led by Nana, Chie, and Gordo, a rising Bedonkohe subchief, left Tularosa and traveled to the new reservation. They had learned of a massive impending raid into Mexico, and some wanted to take part. Others simply wanted to visit with old friends.
All the Chiricahua bands—Cochise’s Chokonens, Juh’s Nednhis, Geronimo’s Bedonkohes, and many of the fugitives from Tularosa—joined in the foray into Mexico. For a month they ravaged the settlements of both Chihuahua and Sonora, returning in mid-June.
While scourging Chihuahua, Geronimo seized a young boy and took him as prisoner back to the reservation. Cochise disapproved, and Jeffords tried to get the boy back. For an Apache, however, a captive was valuable property, to be ransomed, traded, or reared as a member of the band. Mexican captives had even higher value, for the Mexicans held so many Apache captives. Now fifty, Geronimo had nurtured the independent streak that began with the death of Mangas Coloradas. He defiantly turned down Jeffords’s request even at the risk of offending Cochise. At a stormy council, other tribesmen backed Geronimo but eventually agreed to turn over the boy if a Chokonen captive seized by Mexicans more than a year earlier were freed. Jeffords promised to investigate, but he also presented a small gift to Geronimo. Even though investigation held almost no promise and the gift amounted to empty appeasement, further resistance could alienate Cochise. Geronimo turned the boy over to the agent. A month later, Jeffords discovered that the boy’s parents were then living in New Mexico. He put the boy on a stage, and the contentious dispute faded.3
Although the raids involving both Chokonens and Tularosa Indians continued throughout the summer of 1873, both Cochise and Jeffords suddenly began to try to stop the forays. The people would not be persuaded; they hated the Mexicans too intensely, and they afforded a source of valuable plunder. In October an important government officer from Washington, Indian inspector William Vandever, arrived to talk with Cochise, who came in from his Dragoon Mountain stronghold. They met at Sulphur Springs, in the Sulphur Springs Valley west of Fort Bowie. The talk centered on the continuing depredations in Mexico. Cochise declared that in making peace with the Americans, he had not made peace with Mexico. He himself wanted peace with everyone and contended that his people crossed into Mexico without his knowledge or approval. He also asked that the Tularosa Indians on his reservation, drawing rations from Jeffords, be sent back home; they might get his own people into trouble. Vandever strongly urged Jeffords to quit feeding these people and send them back home, which Jeffords promised to do.4
By August 1873, Jeffords had convinced Cochise that he must intervene to prevent the raids. Cochise made a few half-hearted gestures to demonstrate that he understood. He did not. In October Jeffords flatly informed him that unless the raids ceased, the reservation itself stood in jeopardy. It could well be abolished and Jeffords relieved. Cochise had a hard time believing that the Americans would break General Howard’s promises, but he finally took decisive action. In November, with the agency in the process of being relocated to Pinery Canyon in the Chiricahua Mountains south of Fort Bowie, he summoned all his headmen to a formal council. There he declared that he ruled this country and that all who wanted to remain must quit their incursions into Mexico or leave the reservation altogether.
Geronimo and Juh promptly gathered their people and moved back to Mexico. Raiding was their way of life.5
Cochise must have sensed that outside pressures pushed Jeffords into his increasingly firm leadership, especially his insistence t
hat raiding in Mexico stop. Neither he nor any Apaches, however, could have been remotely aware of the complexity and confusion of the Great Father’s “Peace Policy” in Arizona and New Mexico.
They could not have known, for example, that their own reservation enjoyed a special status compared with the others laid out by Vincent Colyer and later revised by General Howard. Howard had exempted the Chiricahuas from any military action and little civilian oversight except for their agent, Tom Jeffords. By contrast, the Chihenne “reservation” Colyer defined at Tularosa was never officially established, although a new military installation, Fort Tularosa, rose nearby.
Most important for the future of the Chiricahuas, among the changes made by Howard, was the expansion of the White Mountain Reservation south to embrace the Gila River. It was established mainly for the Aravaipa and Pinal Apaches of the Camp Grant Reservation, which Howard had abolished. These and other smaller groups of Apaches gradually merged into what came to be known as the San Carlos Apaches. The reservation remained the White Mountain Reservation, administered by the San Carlos Agency, on the Gila River at the mouth of the San Carlos River (see the map of the White Mountain Reservation).6
Discovering no document that recorded the establishment of the Chiricahua Reservation, General Crook felt that he had no choice but to leave it free of military interference.7 Probably unknown to Crook, a presidential executive order of December 14, 1872, established and precisely defined the reservation—essentially the lands embracing the Chiricahua and Dragoon Mountains as far east as the New Mexico boundary. Howard had undoubtedly dictated these boundaries for the president’s signature.8
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