Geronimo

by Robert M. Utley

  Early the next morning Geronimo tried again. Crook received him contemptuously and upbraided him for all the trouble and misery he had caused. Geronimo protested, but to no avail. Crook pointed out that he had allowed all the men to keep their rifles, to demonstrate that he had no fear of them. Now, he said, they wanted him to take them back to San Carlos and defend them against angry white people. At length, Geronimo resignedly concluded, “We give up, do with us as you please.”16

  How to account for Geronimo’s submissive behavior? Crook had resolved to take a hard line with the Chiricahuas. Chihuahua did not even give him the chance. But Geronimo seemed thoroughly cowed, perhaps because he was still shocked that his own people had led the general to one of his hiding places. Or it may have registered another of his mood swings, from aggressive to intimidated. Or the knowledge that he now had to elude Apache scouts led him to permit Crook to bully him simply to gain return to the safety of the reservation. Geronimo’s motives are rarely understandable.

  Crook had to begin the return march at once. His supplies ran low, and he could not feed even the Chiricahuas who went with him. Some stolen cattle, however, eased the shortage. On June 11, 1883, Crook crossed the boundary with 325 Chiricahuas—fifty-two men and 273 women and children. About two hundred remained behind, including most of the fighting men. Geronimo, Naiche, Chihuahua, Chatto, and others explained that they had to round up their scattered people. They promised to follow quickly. Geronimo even gave assurance that he would overtake Crook at the boundary—a blatant falsehood. Of the leaders, Crook had with him only old Nana, Loco, and Bonito. Whether or not he believed it, for the record Crook predicted that the rest of the Chiricahuas would soon arrive at San Carlos.

  Crook had barely crossed into Arizona when he confronted another crisis. On June 14, 1883, Secretary of the Interior Henry M. Teller informed Secretary of War Robert T. Lincoln that the Chiricahuas who had surrendered to Crook would not be received at San Carlos. They were a murderous crowd who would only make trouble with the peaceful Indians and eventually break out again. They ought to be turned over to civil authority and punished. Behind this emphatic decision lay the opposition of Agent Philip P. Wilcox. A Denver politician, he had received the San Carlos appointment solely because of his friendship with Secretary Teller (a former Colorado senator), and he made no secret of his motive: to enrich himself and his kin as fully as possible. He succeeded, even though the San Carlos summers drove him back to Denver for the season. He and his son-in-law, appointed agency trader and allied with corrupt contractors, harvested immense profits. Now Wilcox stirred up the reservation Indians with dire predictions of the trouble the returning Chiricahuas would cause. He refused to receive them, and Secretary Teller backed him.17

  Secretary Lincoln stalled, protesting that Crook had not yet been heard from and had to be consulted. Crook, however, had read about the issue in the newspapers and on June 20 telegraphed his division commander, Major General John M. Schofield, of the consequences if even word of the order leaked to the Indians. Already deeply suspicious and distrustful, they would stampede back to Mexico, and the ones who had remained behind would not come in. A flurry of telegrams followed as Crook continued his march. Sending the Chiricahuas forward under Captain Crawford, Crook returned to his headquarters in Prescott. Crawford took four troops of cavalry and the Indian scouts and carried orders to hold the Chiricahuas together with the scouts until a solution could be worked out. With Wilcox protesting mightily from Denver, Crawford reached San Carlos on June 23.18

  Summoned to Washington, on July 7, 1883, Crook sat at a table with the two cabinet secretaries and the commissioner of Indian affairs to work out an accommodation. Of course, no one dared challenge Crook. No ranking officer knew the Apaches as well, and none commanded their trust and respect. The entire army chain of command, especially General Schofield, solidly backed Crook. The conferees worked out a memorandum of agreement, which both Teller and Lincoln signed. All the Chiricahuas who came in with Crook, together with all who followed, would remain under control of the War Department and be placed on the White Mountain Reservation wherever Crook decided, except at the San Carlos Agency. This appeared to afford a workable solution, but the agreement went further. It also placed the police control of all the White Mountain Apaches under the War Department, which was also charged with protecting the agent in the discharge of all his usual duties except for police control. In other words, Crook would discipline, command, and punish the Indians while the agent would tend the books and take care of purely civil matters.19

  The memorandum of July 7 provided an immediate resolution of the controversy. In the long term, it laid the groundwork for a severe conflict of authority between Captain Crawford, Crook’s designee at San Carlos, and Wilcox and the agents who followed. Drawing a line between civil and military duties would prove impossible, especially when strong-minded men contended for supremacy.

  The Chiricahua problem had hardly been solved. The principal leaders and fighting men had not yet crossed into Arizona. Geronimo had humbled himself before Crook and begged to be allowed to return to the reservation. Like other leaders, he had abjectly promised to come in as soon as he gathered all his people and stock. The promise quickly faded as soon as Crook marched down the mountain.

  SEVENTEEN

  RETURN TO SAN CARLOS, 1883–84

  WHEN GENERAL CROOK LEFT Bugatseka early in June 1883 with Loco, Bonito, and their people, the chiefs who remained behind intended to keep their promise to follow. They had told the general they had to round up their scattered people before they could start, a sensible enough explanation. But they had other matters to attend to before the move to San Carlos, and that would take more time than simply gathering their people.1

  Most pressing was the need for more horses and mules. Chatto had lost his herd when Crawford’s scouts fell on his ranchería. “He knew it was hard to get stock at San Carlos,” Captain Emmet Crawford later recalled him saying, “so that is why he remained out so long and stole stock from the Mexicans.” Chatto’s explanation glossed over raids lasting two weeks in June and targeting villages and ranches the length of the eastern branch of the Bavispe River, including Bavispe itself. Shortly after Chatto’s return to Bugatseka, the Chiricahuas moved a short distance to the south and made camp. Here, late in June, Juh and his family appeared, thus uniting all the Chiricahuas in one place—190 people, including sixty fighting men.2

  All the chiefs, now including Juh, reaffirmed their commitment to go to San Carlos. But as Zele recalled, “He saw Juh and all the chiefs all get together and said they had better see about their people [held captive] before they started for San Carlos.” That meant another risky visit to Casas Grandes. First, though, they resolved on a sweeping raid into western Sonora, this time aiming at settlements on the Yaqui and Sonora Rivers. After days of summer storms, in July Geronimo, Chatto, Chihuahua, and Naiche led their men west. After crossing the Bavispe River, they divided into two parties. Geronimo led one. Moctezuma, Arispe, Nácori Chico, and other settlements bore the brunt of the rampage, taking Mexican lives as well as enough stock and plunder for the raiders to count the forays a resounding success. Reuniting, the two parties reached their base camp south of Bugatseka on August 9.3

  Confirming the decision to go to Casas Grandes, soon after the return of the raiders in August, a woman named Mañanita, one of Geronimo’s wives, appeared at the base camp. Taken prisoner by the Mexicans in the assault on Juh’s ranchería the previous January, she had escaped from Chihuahua City. She had walked a perilous forty days into the Sierra Madre until instinct led her to the Chiricahua camp. She told of thirty-five other captives held in Chihuahua City. They included Chatto’s wife and two children, Chihuahua’s brother, and two wives of Geronimo (probably the one seized at Alisos Creek and the other taken in the attack on Juh’s village). Bargaining with the Mexicans for the release of these people, hazardous as all knew it to be, had to be attempted before even thinking about San Carlos.4 />
  By the end of August 1883 the Chiricahuas had made camp about fifteen miles from Casas Grandes. Indian women bore a message to a Mexican army camp outside the city saying that Geronimo, Naiche, Chatto, and Juh had come to make a treaty. A Mexican officer and four soldiers met with the chiefs near their ranchería. Juh stated that he wanted the grant of a huge section of land on which to plant seeds the government would provide along with agricultural training. Whether Juh actually thought the Mexicans would take this seriously may be doubted, but the Mexicans wanted to keep the Apaches nearby because, as always, they plotted a massacre.

  Formal negotiations occurred twice during September. Geronimo spoke for the chiefs, demanding the return of their captives. The Mexicans stalled and tried to get all the leaders together at one time and place so they could spring an ambush. Meantime, the Apaches came and went in small groups or individually into the town to trade and usually to return with bottles of mescal generously provided by the Mexican officers.

  The negotiations faltered because of Juh’s sudden death. He drank copiously. As Zele recalled, “Juh was all the time drunk, and while on a spree ran his horse over a high bank and was killed.” With slight variation, this is how all the Chiricahuas remembered it, although his son Daklugie later tried to revise the scene. Plainly, on September 21, 1883, a drunken Juh ran his horse off a steep trail and fell to his death in the Casas Grandes River. He either drowned or died in the fall.

  The great Nednhi chief Juh, friend of Geronimo since youth and partner in war and peace since early manhood, had lost most of his influence after the Mexican troops surprised his ranchería in January 1883. He had been increasingly despondent ever since and drank more and more heavily. Some believed that he plotted his own death. Nonetheless, all the Chiricahuas mourned his passing.

  Early in October the chiefs met a third time with Mexican officers. The officers had come prepared to exchange three Chiricahua captives for three Mexican captives. But the Mexicans had grown too impatient, and the Apaches, always suspicious, picked up on it at once. As Naiche remembered, “We found that about sixty soldiers had changed from their uniforms and put on old civilian citizens’ clothes and had their guns hidden under their clothes.” As they drifted in two bunches as if to surround the Indians, Geronimo turned to Kayatena and said, “We might as well go back, there are too many soldiers.” He abruptly broke off the talks and, promising to return for another session in ten days, hastily withdrew. Although the Chiricahuas had no intention of returning, the Mexican commander still hoped at the next meeting to surround and wipe out the Apaches.5

  Back at their camp after this near disaster, the chiefs to their surprise discovered Bonito and another man. After anxiously waiting for more than two months for the Chiricahuas who had remained in Mexico to show up at San Carlos, Captain Crawford obtained Crook’s authorization to send Bonito and a companion to look for their tribesmen and find out why they had not come in. They left on August 25, 1883, and it was five weeks before they located their people near Casas Grandes. Bonito explained his mission to Naiche, who at once agreed to lead the way. About one hundred followed, including Chihuahua and Kayatena, while Ulzana (Chihuahua’s brother), Chatto, and Zele hung back. That Geronimo sent his son Chappo to investigate conditions at San Carlos indicates that he was having second thoughts about honoring his promise to General Crook.6

  Making their way through the Sierra Madre into Sonora, the group paused for long rests and headed toward San Bernardino Springs, where Bonito said soldiers would meet them with rations and provisions. Bonito sent his comrade forward to make contact. He found no soldiers there and made his way northwest to Fort Bowie, where he arrived on October 22. The next morning a troop of cavalry bearing rations rode out of Fort Bowie. On October 26, with troopers and scouts gathered from other points on the border, Lieutenant Britton Davis met the Chiricahuas at a designated rendezvous point ten miles north of the border. He counted seventy-nine men, women, and children. Others would follow in a few days, explained Naiche, especially Kayatena. In fact, Kayatena had joined Geronimo in another raid into Sonora. On November 16, the cavalry escort brought the people into San Carlos and turned them over to Captain Crawford. Two days later Kayatena crossed the border with a woman and ten men.7

  Second Lieutenant Britton Davis, Third Cavalry, had graduated from West Point in 1881 and had already won the confidence of General Crook. He had not ranked high at the academy, but he had performed so admirably filling in for Captain Crawford at San Carlos during Crook’s Mexican campaign that the general himself penned a special commendation. As commander of an Apache scout company at Fort Apache, he had learned quickly from the experienced Lieutenant Gatewood how to fit the mold artist Frederic Remington described as less “Indian fighter” than “Indian thinker.” The epitome of a handsome, freshly commissioned young officer, Davis would serve Crook efficiently until, still a second lieutenant, he decided not to make a career in the army.8

  None of the returning groups Davis met “surrendered.” They had not surrendered to Crook, and now they retained their arms, traveled apart from the cavalry, and remained wary of treachery. Nor did they lay down their arms once arriving at San Carlos. As Crook and Crawford knew, these people had to be treated with respect and great caution.

  Only the appearance of Geronimo and Chatto could quiet the scorn Crook continued to endure throughout Arizona or the impatience of his superiors in San Francisco and Washington. A report of the arrival of the two at the border turned out to be a mistake; it was Zele and his small following. Chatto would come soon and Geronimo would follow. For Chatto, “soon” turned out to be more than six weeks. On February 7, 1884, trailing a herd of eighty-nine stolen horses and mules, Chatto and fifteen men met Lieutenant Davis at San Bernardino Springs.9

  Geronimo later declared that “he had remained in the mountains so long because he wanted to get some horses and cattle to bring here [San Carlos].” Although reports from Sonora in December and January confirmed this motive, it probably was not the principal reason. He had sent his son Chappo to see if he would be treated fairly at San Carlos and not, as Chappo expressed it to Crawford, “put in the calaboose.” John P. Clum had done that to him, and he never forgot the humiliation. Almost certainly, Geronimo would return to San Carlos only if Chappo assured him he would be treated fairly. On December 11, 1883, Crawford dispatched Chappo with Chief Chihuahua to find Geronimo and bring him in.10

  Finally, on February 26, 1884, Geronimo met Lieutenant Davis in New Mexico’s Animas Valley, just east of Skeleton Canyon. He had left Bugatseka on January 26. Davis reported eight men and twenty-two women and children, with two more men expected the next day. Also with the party were Chihuahua, Chappo, and the other man who had been sent from San Carlos to look up Geronimo. His son’s assurance that he would be well treated at San Carlos seems to have persuaded Geronimo to reach the difficult decision.

  Like Chatto, Zele, and others who had already crossed the border, Geronimo trailed a herd of a hundred horses and mules. But he also herded 133 cattle stolen from Casa de Janos. Geronimo divided them among his men. Anxious to get back to San Carlos, Davis had planned a short route that could be traveled quickly. But the cattle needed grasslands, and Davis had to settle for a longer route around the southern tip of the Chiricahua Mountains and down the Sulphur Springs Valley. He made long daily marches. Geronimo protested that such haste wore fat off the cattle; he wanted to go slower. Since the abolition of the Chiricahua Reservation, the country had been occupied by ranchers, and Davis knew the journey to be full of risk.11

  It was. The caravan—Davis’s scouts and pack train, Geronimo’s stock and cattle—reached Sulphur Springs Ranch on March 4. Davis’s friend and West Point classmate, Lieutenant William “Bo” Blake, arrived from Fort Bowie with fifteen cavalrymen to help escort Geronimo to San Carlos. All made separate camps around the ranch building and the springs. Two civilians lingering at the ranch engaged Davis in friendly conversation, then revealed who they
were and what they intended. John E. Clark, deputy collector of customs, and William P. Howard, special inspector of customs, had come to seize Geronimo’s cattle, which they said had been illegally brought into the United States without paying duty. They had no official paper but had scribbled an explanation of how the law had been violated on a piece of note-paper.

  Davis countered that Geronimo would fight before he would surrender the cattle. The customs officers stood firm, threatening to send to Willcox for a posse. Davis persuaded them to wait until the next day while he dispatched a courier to Willcox to telegraph for General Crook’s instructions. Lieutenant Blake produced a quart of Scotch whiskey, and the military and civil officers spent a convivial evening until the customs agents walked off for a sound night’s sleep.

  Blake and Davis had already hatched a scheme for dealing with the crisis. They walked over to the Apache camp and tried to persuade Geronimo to steal away with his stock. No, he would fight, responded Geronimo. Davis observed that his plan probably would not work anyway, for the Apaches could not sneak away with the herd without waking the customs officers. What a great joke it would be if they could, though, he added. When Geronimo “almost smiled,” the officers knew they had succeeded. Blake had a year’s seniority on Davis, so he assumed command. Davis remained at the ranch to confront the civilians when they awoke. Blake and his cavalry accompanied Geronimo.