Even so, Crook believed that the Chiricahua Reservation would cause constant trouble so long as Cochise was allowed to occupy it. Other reservations could easily accommodate the Chiricahuas, and they ought to be forced to move there. Crook’s opinion, shared by his chain of command, found agreement with the commissioner of Indian affairs, who received the same advice from Inspector Vandever, who visited the reservation and talked with Cochise in October 1873.9 Worse, the commissioner bore constant complaint from the State Department of the repeated demands of Mexico that the raids from the American sanctuary be halted. The commissioner’s pressure on Agent Jeffords explained his increasingly firm stance with Cochise.
In demanding that Cochise take decisive action or face the abolition of the reservation altogether, Jeffords anticipated the future actions of his superiors. At the council in Pinery Canyon in November 1873, Cochise ordered the raids stopped and decreed that all who would not comply leave the reservation. Geronimo and Juh left. Only a month later the expected order arrived from the commissioner. The army had demanded that the reservation be turned over to Crook. Unless depredations ceased, the request would be honored.10
Even though the raids had tapered off, Jeffords doubted that they would cease altogether. In May 1874 he officially conceded as much. General Howard, he thought, had made concessions to Cochise in the belief that the Chiricahuas would have to be moved elsewhere in the future, after they had learned how well the government treated them. Jeffords had tried and failed to stop the depredations. He did not believe they could be stopped as long as the Indians roamed freely. He thought that if confronted with orders to move elsewhere, about half would go and the rest remain.11
When Jeffords penned these words, he knew that Cochise lay dying in his Dragoon Mountain stronghold, probably of stomach cancer. His oldest son, Taza, had already begun to exert leadership over the reservation. Taza had been prepared for the chieftainship, but Jeffords knew he could never exert the strong governance of his father. He could not enforce the ban on raiding in Mexico and thus lift the peril to the Chiricahua Reservation.
The commissioner of Indian affairs instructed New Mexico’s superintendent of Indian affairs, Levi Dudley, to go to the Chiricahua Reservation and see if Cochise would agree to move his people back to New Mexico. With Jeffords, Dudley met with Cochise twice late in May 1874 but found him exhausted and barely rational. He did convey that for his part he preferred Arizona but would leave the final decision on New Mexico to his son Taza.12
On June 8, 1874, Cochise died in his East Stronghold.13
The venerable chief’s death left the reservation on the brink of turmoil, as several strong leaders resented the chieftainship falling to Taza, his tall, muscular eldest son who had been specially groomed by Cochise for leadership. At first they pledged loyalty, but within a few months they began to splinter into rival groups. Skinya, an older and experienced man with an outstanding war record, emerged as the most prominent, powerful, and demanding. Only about half of Cochise’s old following of Chokonens remained loyal to Taza, who in his mid-thirties was the youngest of the contenders. Juh and Geronimo with the Nednhis had been driven by Sonoran troops back onto the reservation, and Chihennes from Tularosa came and went or lived there. Without Cochise’s restraining influence, they all resumed raiding in Mexico. Geronimo and Juh, based in Mexico since rejecting Cochise’s demand for an end to raiding, had never ceased.14
In 1874 the government finally yielded to the demands of the Chihennes at Tularosa to be returned to Cañada Alamosa. Many had already gone anyway, and in September 1874 the agent at Tularosa moved the agency to Cañada Alamosa. The army gladly abandoned Fort Tularosa; it had proved a logistical nightmare because of its distance from transportation routes. Chihennes on the Chiricahua Reservation returned to their old homes, seven hundred square miles designated the “Hot Springs Reservation” but commonly known as the Ojo Caliente Reservation.15
The government still hoped to concentrate the Chihennes and Chokonens at Ojo Caliente, as General Howard had first proposed, and thus be rid of the Chiricahua Reservation. On April 16, 1875, Levi Dudley, now a special commissioner working out of Washington, conferred with the various leaders of the fractured band at the Chiricahua Agency, now located in Pinery Canyon, and proposed the move. None would have any part of it; they would fight rather than go there.16
By Dudley’s authority, on May 14, 1875, Jeffords moved the agency once more, this time to Apache Pass, near Fort Bowie. He reasoned that Pinery Canyon was too far from the traveled road for him to oversee relations between his charges and the whites and Mexicans who used the road. A lively trade had sprung up, the Apaches exchanging horses and mules for whiskey and guns and ammunition. Jeffords conceded that the trade tempted the Indians to steal but stopped short of admitting that it also disclosed the resumption of raids into Mexico.17
In the aftermath of Cochise’s death, the threat of the commissioner of Indian affairs to turn the Chiricahua Reservation over to General Crook if raids into Mexico did not stop held equal validity, for the raids had now resumed. But General Crook no longer commanded in Arizona; he had been moved north to command the Department of the Platte.
On March 22, 1875, Colonel August V. Kautz assumed command of the Department of Arizona in his brevet grade of major general. A stolid German with a mediocre record and no understanding of Indians, he found himself at once embroiled with an infuriatingly bombastic young man of immense self-importance and limitless certitude. He was John P. Clum, agent at the White Mountain Reservation, enlarged by General Howard in 1872. On August 8, 1874, at the age of twenty-two, Clum took office at the San Carlos Agency of the White Mountain Reservation.
The government’s original plan for the Chiricahuas aimed at concentrating all the Chiricahuas at Cañada Alamosa, thus freeing the Chiricahua Reservation for return to the public domain. All the other Arizona Apaches, who had been living on the Colyer-Howard reservations under the jurisdiction of Crook’s officers pending appointment of civilian agents, would be concentrated on the White Mountain Reservation.
Clum detested the army and feuded with its officers incessantly. He recruited his own Indian police force, captained by former army scout Clay Beauford, to avoid calling for military help in moving the Apaches. By the middle of 1875 Clum had completed the removal, although only part of the White Mountain Apaches succumbed to his bullying and moved south to the Gila.18
Early in 1876, the Chiricahua Reservation boiled with unrest. Taza still stirred resentment from leaders who thought they should be the Chokonen chief. Skinya, backed by his turbulent half-brother Pionsenay, grew bolder in his opposition to Taza, who was backed by his younger brother Naiche, only twenty. Skinya and Pionsenay had settled about sixty Chokonens in the Dragoon Mountains. Tension rose when Taza and Naiche also took up residence in the Dragoons with about 180 Chokonens. Skinya tried to persuade Naiche, his son-in-law, to free himself of Taza and lead their followers in a breakout to Mexico. Naiche refused.
Unlike other Apache agents, Jeffords had never tried to ban tiswin, and both resident and visiting Chiricahuas often participated in tiswin drunks. During one such drunk, the inevitable quarrel broke out. The exchange of fire killed a man of each group as well as Cochise’s grandchild. Taza immediately moved his people back to Apache Pass.19
Geronimo, a Bedonkohe with close ties to the Nednhis, held aloof from the Chokonen conflicts. Since driven back to the reservation by Sonoran troops, he kept a ranchería at the western base of the Chiricahua Mountains but raided widely, both in Mexico and New Mexico.
As Skinya’s people grew ever more confident and successful in raids into Mexico, in March 1876 they learned that Nicholas Rogers, who ranched and maintained the mail station at Sulphur Springs, had bought a keg of whiskey in Tucson and installed it at his ranch. On April 6 Pionesenay and a companion rode to Rogers’s ranch and, with gold dust stolen in Mexico, bought several bottles for ten dollars each. The next day Pionsenay returned with his nephew a
nd bought more whiskey. Back in the Dragoons, drunk, he picked a fight with Skinya. When their two sisters tried to interpose, Pionesenay shot and killed both women. He and his nephew promptly left for Sulphur Springs, where they found Rogers and his partner, Orizoba Spence, sitting in chairs in front of their ranch. Pionsenay demanded more whiskey. Rogers refused. Both he and his partner died in a hail of gunfire. The two Indians ransacked the house and left for the Dragoons leading a horse laden with whiskey, cartridges, and food.20
Alarmed by Pionsenay’s actions, Skinya sent a runner to alert Taza. Jeffords asked for a troop of cavalry from Fort Bowie to take up the trail. Taza accompanied it as guide. Lieutenant Austin Henely commanded. They bivouacked that night, April 8, at Sulphur Springs. The next morning a messenger reported that Pionsenay and his companion had killed a man, Gideon Lewis, and committed other depredations on the San Pedro River west of the Dragoons. Back in the Dragoons, Pionsenay took refuge with Skinya, who immediately led his people south toward Mexico. Henely caught up, but the Apaches barricaded themselves behind rocks high in the mountains. After an exchange of gunfire, Henely wisely concluded the defenses so impregnable that, rejecting Taza’s urgings, he withdrew his troop to Fort Bowie.21
As so often happened, the Tucson newspaper used vague reports of the disturbances on the reservation to stoke Arizonans’ fears by proclaiming a full-scale Chiricahua uprising. Reflecting public opinion, the editor wrote:
We heard a man say today, and he was of the opinion that he was endorsed by 999 out of 1000 people that the kind of war needed against the Chiricahuas was steady, unrelenting, hopeless and undiscriminating war slaying men, women, and children … and no relenting until every valley and crest and crag and fastness shall send to the high heavens the grateful incense of festering and rotting Chiricahua Indians, down to the last one of the guilty and their elders and abettors.22
Stirred by such news but motivated by the murder of Rogers, Spence, and Lewis, Washington reacted differently to the need of the hour. On May 1, 1876, Congress enacted legislation mandating the removal of the Indians on the Chiricahua Reservation to the White Mountain Reservation.
On June 5, 1876, John P. Clum, backed by General Kautz and half a regiment of the cavalry Clum so detested, arrived at Apache Pass to carry out the intent of Congress.
By executive order of October 30, 1876, the Chiricahua Reservation reverted to the public domain.
TEN
REMOVAL TO THE GILA RIVER
WITH GENERAL KAUTZ’S TROOPS strategically placed to head off trouble, John P. Clum’s removal of the Chiricahuas from their reservation went relatively smoothly despite the monthlong rift between Taza and Skinya. All the reservation leaders had vowed to die rather than move, but they either fled or accommodated.
Most of Cochise’s people had remained loyal to Taza. But Skinya formed a militant group under his own leadership and late in 1875 took sixty Chokonens to settle in the Dragoon Mountains. They included fourteen men, of whom one was his notorious half-brother Pionsenay.
Early in 1876 word reached the Indians that smallpox had appeared among whites in New Mexico. To escape the scourge, Juh (and probably Geronimo) led a raiding party of Nednhis and Bedonkohes into Chihuahua, while Taza and Naiche moved their 180 Chokonens back to the Dragoons.
Skinya and his men were raiding in Mexico. They returned to the Dragoons with ample spoils and in high spirits, only to find Taza and his people there, too. Skinya approached Naiche, his son-in-law, with a proposal that all unite in a breakout to Mexico and resume hostilities. If Naiche agreed, Skinya knew Taza would follow. On his deathbed, however, Cochise had admonished his sons to remain at peace and obey Jeffords, and they flatly refused Skinya’s idea.
During a tiswin drunk a quarrel broke out. The exchange of fire killed one man on each side and left a grandson of Cochise dead. Taza and Naiche at once took their people back to Apache Pass. To keep them distant from Skinya, Jeffords moved them to the eastern side of Apache Pass.
Skinya’s group still lived in the Dragoon Mountains in April 1876, when Pionsenay and his comrade murdered Rogers and Spence and committed depredations on the San Pedro. Lieutenant Henely’s pursuit and exchange of gunfire with Skinya’s barricaded fighters followed. Wild talk of a general Indian war rolled across Arizona, and rumors of impending abolition of the Chiricahua Reservation further disturbed the Apaches.
Alarmed by the uncertainties, particularly that the army might seek to capture Pionsenay, Skinya decided that his followers would be safer near Taza. Early in May he approached Jeffords to talk over the matter. The talks ended abruptly when Pionsenay and his backers sought to kill Jeffords but were prevented by Skinya. The next day Skinya and his people appeared at the agency, without Pionsenay and his friends, and said he and his people would place themselves under Taza’s leadership. Jeffords located them near Taza’s ranchería in Bonita Canyon on the eastern side of the mountains.1
As Skinya may have feared, the murder of Rogers, Spence, and Lewis set off the chain of events that led to the appearance of John Clum on June 5 with a telegram ordering him to move the Chiricahuas to the Gila. He showed it to Jeffords, who had heard rumors of the impending move but received no official word.
About an hour before midnight on the day before Clum’s arrival, another disaster had further ruptured the Chiricahuas. Upset over the convergence of soldiers on Apache Pass, Skinya had entered Taza’s camp with Pionsenay and about a dozen of his most committed followers. With the rancor that had boiled between Skinya and Taza for months inflaming both groups, Skinya exhorted Taza to join him in a breakout of all the Chiricahuas in a flight to Mexico. Faithful to his father’s dying admonition to keep the peace, Taza refused. The volatile Skinya pushed the issue until a melee broke out. Both sides opened fire. The young Naiche, only twenty, raised his rifle and aimed at Skinya. The bullet hit Skinya in the head and killed him, removing from Chokonen chaos the leading agitator. At the same time, Taza singled out Pionsenay, the second-ranking agitator. A second bullet lodged in Pionsenay’s shoulder joint, inflicting a wound severe enough to convince him that he would die. The encounter ended as Skinya’s people scattered. Jeffords and a troop of cavalry rode out to bring Taza and his remaining people to the Chiricahua Agency in Apache Pass. They arrived just before Clum on June 5.2
In a parley with Clum at the agency on June 6, Taza consented to take those people camped with him to the new reservation. None of the Chiricahuas wanted to go, and Taza could not bind all of them. In fact, most of the leaders had said they would fight rather than move. Taza agreed only because he had promised his father always to obey Jeffords, who counseled him not to resist.
Not content with having the Chokonen chief Taza talk for them, the Nednhis and Bedonkohes had insisted on their own parley with Clum. On June 8 three came in: Juh, Geronimo, and a rising Nednhi chief named Nolgee. Geronimo spoke for the others, probably because he was the only one who had been present at the Howard councils in 1872, and in part because Juh stuttered badly. His people and the Nednhis had joined in the Howard treaty, he said, and now that the rest of the reservation people had agreed to go with Clum, the Nednhis and Bedonkohes would go, too. But they would need twenty days to round up their people and bring them in. Although suspicious, Clum granted four days. The next day an emissary from Skinya’s old camp came in and said that Pionsenay wanted to come in “to die of his wounds.” A detachment of Clum’s police accompanied the man back to camp and brought in the wounded Pionsenay, together with an old man and thirty-eight women and children.
But the police also reported that the Nednhi rancherías, only ten miles from the agency, had been hastily abandoned. Once more, when perceiving a threat, Geronimo had heeded his own instincts—get back to Mexico. He got there before General Kautz’s soldiers could catch him.
On June 12 a caravan of army wagons, loaded with three hundred Chokonens and twenty-two Bedonkohes, left Apache Pass. Only forty-two men rode the wagons, the rest women and children. Among t
he leaders were Taza, Naiche, and Chihuahua, who had his own band of Chokonens separate from Taza’s. Jeffords accompanied Clum and his fifty-four Apache policemen, all escorted by three troops of cavalry. Twenty men and their families of Taza’s following had remained behind, scattering into Mexico or heading for New Mexico. People who had moved from Ojo Caliente to Jeffords’s reservation, about two hundred Chihennes and Bedonkohes, had already gone back.
The Fort Bowie surgeon had dressed Pionsenay’s wound, and Clum intended to turn him over to Tucson civil officials to be tried for the murder of Rogers and Spence. En route, however, the sheriff and a deputy from Tucson met the caravan and relieved Clum of Pionsenay. Although securely bound in the bed of a wagon, as the lawmen drove toward Tucson he freed himself and vanished without even alerting them. He snuck into Clum’s procession and persuaded two men, four women, and a boy to leave for Mexico with him. Pionsenay had not ceased to make trouble for the Chiricahuas.3
On June 18, 1876, the procession reached the Gila. Taza had agreed to locate on the Gila about two miles below abandoned Fort Goodwin. The Indians crawled from the wagons at their new home on the Gila River extension of the White Mountain Reservation.4
It probably was the only choice offered. This extension of the reservation, however, tortured anyone who lived there. Summer sun scorched the desert valley, spotted with cactus and crawling with spiders, tarantulas, scorpions, centipedes, Gila monsters, and a variety of other unfriendly creatures. Where water gathered in stagnant pools, mosquitoes swarmed to infect humans with malaria. The Gila Valley lay at the southern base of the forested ridges rising to the White Mountains, a friendly land and climate that the White Mountain Apaches called home.
Geronimo and Juh would have nothing to do with this environment— yet. They and their people had escaped safely into Mexico. The canyons and caverns of the Sierra Madre afforded the only place Juh ever felt safe. But unless rationed, they had to rely on raids for subsistence.
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