Scarcely a month after the Chokonens had been settled near the San Carlos Agency, Juh sent Geronimo to scout the Ojo Caliente Reservation as a possible refuge. He discovered the agent scared of his charges and virtually powerless to do more than issue rations to them or any others on the reservation. Geronimo also had relatives at Ojo Caliente, and the place appealed to him. He could settle his family and his Bedonkohes here, draw rations, and use the reservation as a base for further raiding. Others who had fled the Chiricahua Reservation rather than move to San Carlos did the same. Returning to Mexico, Geronimo made his case to Juh. The Nednhi chief could not be persuaded.5
By November 1876 Geronimo had resolved to part with Juh and return to the United States—not to Ojo Caliente but to a small group of Chihennes and Bedonkohes who had been living in the Florida (Flor-ee-da) and Animas Mountains of southwestern New Mexico. In the summer of 1876 war parties from these people had carried out some minor depredations on ranches to the north as well as in Chihuahua. Both white posses and US cavalry pursued and skirmished with them. But they remained in their mountain hideaways. Geronimo and his family and small following took up residence with them.6
Geronimo lost no time reverting to old patterns. As early as December 1876, he had led a small party of Bedonkohes on a raid across southern Arizona to the Sonoita Valley, southeast of Tucson. Besides depredations earlier inflicted by Pionsenay, still living in Mexico and recovered from his gunshot wound, the Apaches had once more stirred up southern Arizona.
Geronimo and his followers and some Chokonens established a winter camp of sixteen lodges on the northern tip of the Animas Mountains, a range close to the territorial boundary on the New Mexico side. It numbered about thirty-five men with their families. At daybreak of January 9, 1877, the men were making their way back to their wickiups from an all-night dance when a burst of gunfire caught them by surprise. They raced to the nearest rocks and returned a brisk fire at their attackers. After two hours of firing, attacks came from two directions. The people hastily abandoned their stock and possessions and fled, leaving the bodies of ten men dead and fighting a stubborn rearguard action.
What surprised the Apaches almost as much as the attack was the attackers. Apache Indian scouts outnumbered the cavalry troopers. Even though recognized as White Mountain Apaches, for the first time Chiricahuas had been struck by a force composed of Apaches in alliance with soldiers.7
After this setback, angry and burning for revenge, Geronimo led his people to the Ojo Caliente Reservation. As he recalled, Victorio welcomed him and his people warmly and shared food with them. Not all the Warm Springs people thought this a good idea. The always peaceful Loco and old Nana warned Victorio that Geronimo’s presence, with loot from his raids, would inevitably cause trouble. Victorio’s response: “These people are not bothering us.”8
These people would soon bother Victorio. Geronimo remained only a short time before organizing an expedition to avenge his rout by the soldiers and their Apache scouts. He persuaded Gordo to join him with about forty or fifty Bedonkohe, Chihenne, and Chokonen raiders for a sweep through southern Arizona. Detouring through Mexico, where they picked up reinforcements under Juh and Pionsenay, they entered Arizona early in February 1877. Marauding through the Sonoita and Santa Cruz Valleys south of Tucson, in two days they killed nine men and captured about one hundred head of horses before quickly slipping back into Mexico.9
Back at Ojo Caliente with the stolen horses, Geronimo appeared on ration day to draw issues for the period he had been absent raiding in Arizona. The agent refused. Although angry, Geronimo remained near the agency as others left for thieving raids. On subsequent ration days, he received handouts for himself and his followers.
April 21, 1877, was ration day, and as Geronimo made ready to ride into the agency, he received a message inviting him to come for a talk with a government official. At daybreak, he and about fifty of his people arrived at the agency. Other Bedonkohes, including Gordo and his followers, accompanied the influx. Gathering his men in front of the agency porch, Geronimo faced San Carlos Agent John P. Clum, whom he had last met at Apache Pass during the Chiricahua removal. Twenty White Mountain Apache policemen backed him up. As soon as the Apaches had assembled, Clum gave a signal and eighty more Indian police, arms at the ready, filed out of the adjacent commissary building and surrounded them. Clum singled out Geronimo and accused him of breaking his promise, at Apache Pass, to take his people with Taza to San Carlos. Clum ordered him, together with recent raiders Gordo and Ponce, escorted to the blacksmith shop and placed in irons. Clum descended the steps and, after a few tense moments as Geronimo considered his predicament, took his rifle from him and several others. Next a policeman pulled Geronimo’s knife from his belt. He had reluctantly concluded that resistance was futile; the police would gun him down instantly.
The next day, April 22, confined with the other prisoners in the agency jail, he observed cavalry arrive at the agency and later all the Indians called to a council. He may have suspected or been told that these Indians were to be removed to San Carlos. They were. By April 30, most of the Ojo Caliente Reservation Indians had been assembled and begun the journey to San Carlos. Clum’s seventeen prisoners, with Geronimo and three others in irons, climbed aboard army wagons and, escorted by cavalry, set forth on the road to the west. On May 20 they reached the San Carlos Agency, and Geronimo, still shackled, found himself once more behind bars.
The events of 1876–77 leading to Geronimo’s shackled removal to the Gila showed the civil and military establishments of Arizona at both their best and their worst. Their worst highlighted the perennial conflict between San Carlos Agent John P. Clum and General August Kautz. The best landed Geronimo in the San Carlos jail.
Clum’s animosity for all things military, and for Kautz in particular, spilled over into constant public feuding. It intensified as Clum enlisted Governor Anson P. K. Safford in his hostility to Kautz and succeeded in getting him to urge the War Department to relieve Kautz. Clum also fed venomous articles to Tucson newspapers attacking Kautz personally and extolling his own brilliance. In the autumn of 1876 Tucson merchants complained loudly of constant Apache raiding in the San Pedro and Sonoita Valleys, attributable to the Chokonens and Nednhis who had refused to move to San Carlos with Taza. Kautz sent commands under reliable officers to verify the complaints, but they discovered no evidence of trouble anywhere in the valleys southeast of Tucson. Their reports failed to still the charges of Kautz’s incompetence spewing from Tucson. Kautz attributed them to the anger of the “Tucson Ring” over his refusal to move the Department of Arizona headquarters from Prescott to Tucson.10
In December 1876, however, Geronimo’s raid as far west as the Sonoita Valley seemed to confirm the wrath of the Tucson citizens. Kautz took prompt action. He set high value on the White Mountain Apache scout companies General Crook had organized and employed so effectively in the Tonto Basin campaign. An exceptionally able cavalry officer, Lieutenant John A. (Tony) Rucker, commanded a company of scouts stationed at Fort Bowie. He promptly took the field with ten cavalrymen and thirty-four scouts. In the Sonoita Valley he picked up Geronimo’s trail leading east with a herd of stolen horses and followed it 130 miles to the Stein’s Peak Range on the New Mexico border. His animals and supplies exhausted, he returned to Fort Bowie to refit.11
On January 4, 1877, Rucker turned back to Stein’s Peak with his scouts, seventeen troopers, and a mule pack train. Here the trail veered to the southeast. Rucker sent Chief of Scouts Jack Dunn with the scouts to follow the trail, while he proceeded twenty miles farther and bivouacked. A courier from Dunn announced that he had found evidence of the Indians and asked Rucker to come forward. They met about 3:00 a.m. on January 9, 1877. Dunn indicated an Apache ranchería about four miles farther. Leaving the horses under guard, Rucker led the command to the objective. He sent Dunn to hide the scouts on a ridge line about 150 yards west of the camp, while he and the troopers headed for a hill about three hundred yard
s north of the camp. Both units were to attack at daybreak. The cavalry had not even reached their hill when Dunn’s Apaches opened fire and rushed the ranchería. The cavalry began firing at once, taking the enemy from the reverse direction. Dashing from their wickiups to rocky defenses, the surprised Chiricahuas opened such a brisk fire that they drove the scouts back twice. After exchanging fire with them for about two hours, Rucker and Dunn simultaneously charged into the ranchería and sent the occupants scattering.
Rucker counted sixteen lodges and estimated the foe at about thirty-five fighting men. Ten lay dead in the village, together with a large stock of weapons and ammunition and winter food provisions. The scouts captured forty-six horses. Although Rucker did not know whose camp he had struck, a small boy found in the village was later identified as a nephew of Geronimo.12
Rucker received high praise from General Kautz and could take satisfaction in achieving a rare surprise attack on a Chiricahua ranchería.
During February 1877 depredations once more scourged southern Arizona. Lieutenant Rucker again took the field, heading directly east this time. He failed to overtake the raiders but noted that their trail led toward the Ojo Caliente Reservation. General Kautz had other reports that the culprits were mainly Chiricahuas and Nednhis, refugees from the old Chiricahua Reservation, based at Ojo Caliente and led by Geronimo, Juh, Nolgee, and Gordo. Furthermore, Victorio’s men often joined in these forays.13
Kautz therefore dispatched a command from Fort Bowie to reconnoiter the Rio Grande country and ascertain the validity of the reports. Lieutenant Austin Henely, another able young officer and brother-in-law of Rucker, led the scouting party. Near Ojo Caliente Henely observed a raiding party driving a herd of stolen horses and recognized one of the men as Geronimo. A few days later, at the agency, he again spotted Geronimo, incensed at the agent because he could not draw rations for the period of his absence. The lieutenant concluded that the Ojo Caliente Reservation provided shelter and rations for unruly Apaches from elsewhere who used the cover of Victorio for sporadic raiding.14
Henely’s report of sighting Geronimo led to uncharacteristically swift decision in Washington. Alerted by the War Department, the commissioner of Indian affairs on March 20, 1877, telegraphed Agent Clum: “If practicable take Indian police and arrest renegade Chiricahuas at Southern Apache Agency. Seize stolen horses in their possession. Restore property to rightful owners. Remove renegades to San Carlos and hold them in confinement for murder and robbery. Call on military for aid if needed.”15
Clum lost little time in responding. His police captain, Clay Beauford, was in Tucson with eighty police. Clum took twenty-two of the San Carlos police and arranged for Beauford to meet him at Fort Bayard, New Mexico, near Silver City, with the other eighty. Relying on a trivial pretext, Clum had refused to ask General Kautz for military support but instead arranged for cavalry from New Mexico to arrive on April 21. On April 20 the police approached the reservation. Clum left Beauford and his men about ten miles out and proceeded with his small contingent to the agency. During the night Beauford quietly moved his police into the agency and concealed them in a storehouse next to agency headquarters.
Early on April 21, even though the New Mexico cavalry had been delayed a day, Clum summoned Geronimo and other chiefs with about one hundred people for a talk. The small number of police visible appeared to pose no threat, so they came. As Clum confronted Geronimo, Beauford led his police from concealment and surrounded the Apaches. The showdown between the agent and a defiant Geronimo proceeded tensely but ended quietly because of the overwhelming strength of Beauford’s police. He took Geronimo and two “renegades” into custody and had them escorted to the blacksmith shop, where they were ironed, then jailed. By the end of the day Clum had seventeen prisoners in the guardhouse, four of them shackled.16
Clum dispatched Beauford and his police back to Arizona, and the next day, April 22, Major James F. Wade arrived with three troops of the Ninth Cavalry. Already, on April 15, Clum had wired the commissioner of Indian affairs from Fort Bayard advising that all the Ojo Caliente Indians be moved to the San Carlos Agency so that the Ojo Caliente Reservation, like the Chiricahua Reservation, could be abolished. Two days later he received permission, provided the military agreed. Wiring Major Wade of his intent, on April 24 Clum called together the principal reservation chiefs, and after a “short talk” they all agreed to move to San Carlos. Doubtless Wade’s cavalry and Clum’s San Carlos police had a bearing on their ready consent.
On April 30, under charge of Clum’s chief clerk, a cavalcade of 435 reservation Indians got under way, cavalry escorting. Clum and the seventeen prisoners boarded army wagons and traveled by road to unite with the others at Silver City. The procession numbered about 300 Chihennes and 153 Bedonkohes and Chokonens. Reluctantly, Victorio went, too, although about 150 Chokonens and Nednhis slipped away. Clum’s new charges reached San Carlos on May 20, and Geronimo, still ironed, was locked in the agency guardhouse.17
San Carlos would be Geronimo’s home for two years, until again Mexico beckoned.
ELEVEN
GERONIMO’S FIRST BREAKOUT, 1878
ON MAY 20, 1877, the day Agent John P. Clum reached San Carlos Agency with the people from Ojo Caliente, the shackled Geronimo and his “renegade” cohorts had been thrown in the agency jail. There they remained week after week. Years later Geronimo recalled only that he was tried or perhaps only heard that he was tried. More likely, he picked up occasional tidings of the administrative turmoil afflicting San Carlos, the departure of Clum, and the long-delayed arrival of a new agent. After three months of this infuriating humiliation, the prisoners were set free and, without explanation, walked out to become reservation Indians. Clum had notified the sheriff in Tucson to come get Geronimo, but he had not. So he had been released. He joined Taza’s Chokonens fifteen miles up the Gila from the agency, where Clum had placed them more than a year earlier. He discovered, if he did not already know, that a major change had occurred in the Chokonen leadership.
Clum was to blame. Shortly after locating Taza’s Chokonens in the Gila lowlands upriver from San Carlos, he had decided to take a leave of absence and travel to Ohio, where a young lady waited to wed him. He had the temerity to request the Indian Bureau to pay his way, which met with blunt refusal. Clum therefore conceived the scheme of organizing a band of Apache “thespians” to stage dramas at large cities en route displaying the wild ways of the Apaches. Bankrolled by some friends, he organized a troupe of twenty-two, mostly Chokonens, and including Taza. On July 29, 1876, little more than a month after the Chokonen removal, the entourage loaded on three wagons and set forth for the nearest railroad depot, a monthlong journey to El Moro, Colorado.
Three performances in Saint Louis in early September convinced the theater owner, if not the impresario, that the Apaches failed as “thespians.” Clum took the delegation on to Washington, DC, where he treated them to the usual attractions of the capital. After a violent rainstorm, however, Taza fell ill with pneumonia and on September 26 died. In the medical efforts to save the chief, together with an impressive burial in the congressional cemetery—General Howard attended—the irrepressible agent discerned a bright side: “They afforded the Indians of our party an opportunity to observe the civilized methods and customs of caring for the sick and preparing the dead for burial, as well as our funeral rites and ceremonies.”1
The commissioner of Indian affairs paid the fare for the Apache delegation to return to San Carlos. Clum tarried in the East for his wedding and did not reach San Carlos until late December 1876.
The young chief’s tragic death elevated his younger brother Naiche to the chieftainship. Tall, handsome, and well liked by all, he lacked even the leadership skills of Taza. He had not been schooled by his father in the duties of the chieftainship. This was the change in leadership Geronimo noted when released from jail.
Clum had returned triumphantly from Ojo Caliente with his “renegades” and as many of the Chihenn
es as he could round up, including Victorio. The day after his arrival, May 21, 1876, Lieutenant Lemuel A. Abbott appeared with a detachment of soldiers, sent by General Kautz, he explained, to inspect agency issues to ensure their honesty. Although San Carlos had reeked with the corruption of contractors and agency employees from the beginning, Clum had tried to conduct an honest administration. His lengthy absences, however, made that impossible. Confronting an army inspector at San Carlos, Clum erupted with protest and refused to have anything to do with him. Finally, making no headway in Washington, he launched a proposal: raise his salary, give him two more companies of Indian police, and he would manage all the Indians of Arizona, allowing the army to withdraw altogether. When the Indian Bureau rejected this wild scheme, Clum resigned and on July 1 rode away from San Carlos.2
Indian inspector William Vandever had been at San Carlos most of the summer of 1876. With Clum’s departure, he informally took over the agency, although he elevated the agency clerk, Martin Sweeney, to acting agent pending the arrival of a new agent. Throughout the summer, beginning with Clum’s return from Ojo Caliente, angry disputes flared between the civil officials and Lieutenant Abbott, backed vociferously by General Kautz. Abbott’s reports persuasively indict Vandever of swindling the Indians, whose ration issues fell so precipitously that they had to take to the mountains to look for subsistence.3
Vandever did understand the resentments caused by the continued incarceration of Geronimo and the others in the agency jail. Since the sheriff in Tucson had failed to come for Geronimo, late in July Vandever sought permission to release the prisoners. Mortified and burning with a hatred of whites that would last for years, Geronimo and his friends walked free.4 He joined the Chokonens upriver from San Carlos and, with Taza dead, immediately attached himself to Naiche. Always respectful, he nonetheless quietly counseled the new chief. The two remained close for the rest of their lives.
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