THE CLOSING DAYS OF CROOK’S FIRST TOUR IN ARIZONA—VISIT TO THE MOQUI
VILLAGES—THE PAINTED DESERT—THE PETRIFIED FORESTS—THE GRAND
CAÑON—THE CATARACT CAÑON—BUILDING THE TELEGRAPH LINE—THE APACHES
USING THE TELEGRAPH LINE—MAPPING ARIZONA—AN HONEST INDIAN AGENT—THE
CHIRICAHUA APACHE CHIEF, COCHEIS—THE “HANGING” IN TUCSON—A FRONTIER
DANIEL—CROOK’S DEPARTURE FROM ARIZONA—DEATH VALLEY—THE FAIRY LAND OF
LOS ANGELES—ARRIVAL AT OMAHA.
In the fall and winter of 1874, General Crook made a final tour of
examination of his department and the Indian tribes therein. He found a
most satisfactory condition of affairs on the Apache reservation, with
the Indians working and in the best of spirits. On this trip he included
the villages of the Moquis living in houses of rock on perpendicular
mesas of sandstone, surrounded by dunes or “medanos” of sand, on the
northern side of the Colorado Chiquito. The Apaches who had come in from
the war-path had admitted that a great part of the arms and ammunition
coming into their hands had been obtained in trade with the Moquis, who
in turn had purchased from the Mormons or Utes. Crook passed some eight
or ten days among the Moquis during the season when the peaches were
lusciously ripe and being gathered by the squaws and children. These
peach orchards, with their flocks of sheep and goats, are evidences of
the earnest work among these Moquis of the Franciscan friars during the
last years of the sixteenth and the earlier ones of the seventeenth
centuries. Crook let the Moquis know that he did not intend to punish
them for what might have been the fault of their ignorance, but he
wished to impress upon them that in future they must in no manner aid or
abet tribes in hostility to the Government of the United States. This
advice the chiefs accepted in very good part, and I do not believe that
they have since been guilty of any misdemeanor of the same nature.
Of this trip among the Moquis, and of the Moquis themselves, volumes
might be written. There is no tribe of aborigines on the face of the
earth, there is no region in the world, better deserving of examination
and description than the Moquis and the country they inhabit. It is
unaccountable to me that so many of our own countrymen seem desirous of
taking a flying trip to Europe when at their feet, as it were, lies a
land as full of wonders as any depicted in the fairy tales of childhood.
Here, at the village of Hualpi, on the middle mesa, is where I saw the
repulsive rite of the Snake Dance, in which the chief “Medicine Men”
prance about among women and children, holding live and venomous
rattlesnakes in their mouths. Here, one sees the “Painted Desert,” with
its fantastic coloring of all varieties of marls and ochreous earths,
equalling the tints so lavishly scattered about in the Cañon of the
Yellowstone. Here, one begins his journey through the petrified forests,
wherein are to be seen the trunks of giant trees, over one hundred feet
long, turned into precious jasper, carnelian, and banded agate. Here,
one is within stone’s throw of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado and the
equally deep lateral cañons of the Cataract and the Colorado Chiquito,
on whose edge he may stand in perfect security and gaze upon the rushing
torrent of the mighty Colorado, over a mile beneath. Here is the great
Cohonino Forest, through which one may ride for five days without
finding a drop of water except during the rainy season. Truly, it is a
wonderland, and in the Grand Cañon one can think of nothing but the
Abomination of Desolation.
There is a trail descending the Cataract Cañon so narrow and dangerous
that pack trains rarely get to the bottom without accidents. When I went
down there with General Crook, we could hear the tinkling of the
pack-train bell far up in the cliffs above us, while the mules looked
like mice, then like rats, then like jack-rabbits, and finally like dogs
in size. One of our mules was pushed off the trail by another mule
crowding up against it, and was hurled over the precipice and dashed
into a pulp on the rocks a thousand feet below. There is no place in the
world at present so accessible, and at the same time so full of the most
romantic interest, as are the territories of Arizona and New Mexico: the
railroad companies have been derelict in presenting their attractions to
the travelling public, else I am sure that numbers of tourists would
long since have made explorations and written narratives of the wonders
to be seen.
General Crook did not limit his attentions to the improvement of the
Indians alone. There was a wide field of usefulness open to him in other
directions, and he occupied it and made it his own. He broke up every
one of the old sickly posts, which had been hotbeds of fever and
pestilence, and transferred the garrisons to elevated situations like
Camp Grant, whose beautiful situation has been alluded to in a previous
chapter. He connected every post in the department with every other post
by first-class roads over which wagons and ambulances of all kinds could
journey without being dashed to pieces. In several cases, roads were
already in existence, but he devoted so much care to reducing the length
and to perfecting the carriage-way that they became entirely new
pathways, as in the case of the new road between Camps Whipple and
Verde. The quarters occupied by officers and men were made habitable by
repairs or replaced by new and convenient houses. The best possible
attention was given to the important matter of providing good, pure,
cool water at every camp. The military telegraph line was built from San
Diego, California, to Fort Yuma, California, thence to Maricopa Wells,
Arizona, where it bifurcated, one line going on to Prescott and Fort
Whipple, the other continuing eastward to Tucson, and thence to San
Carlos and Camp Apache, or rather to the crossing of the Gila River,
fifteen miles from San Carlos.
For this work, the most important ever undertaken in Arizona up to that
time, Congress appropriated something like the sum of fifty-seven
thousand dollars, upon motion of Hon. Richard C. McCormick, then
Delegate; the work of construction was superintended by General James J.
Dana, Chief Quartermaster of the Department of Arizona, who managed the
matter with such care and economy that the cost was some ten or eleven
thousand dollars less than the appropriation. The citizens of Arizona
living nearest the line supplied all the poles required at the lowest
possible charge. When it is understood that the total length of wire
stretched was over seven hundred miles, the price paid (less than
forty-seven thousand dollars) will show that there was very little room
for excessive profit for anybody in a country where all transportation
was by wagon or on the backs of mules across burning deserts and over
lofty mountains. The great task of building this line was carried out
successfully by Major George F. Price, Fifth Cavalry, since dead, and by
Lieutenant John F. Trout, Twenty-third Infantry.
One of the first messages transmitted over the wire from Prescott to
Camp Apache was sent by an Apache Indian, to apprise his family that he
and the rest of the detachment with him would reach home on a certain
day. To use a Hibernicism, the wire to Apache did not go to Apache, but
stopped at Grant, at the time of which I am writing. General Crook sent
a message to the commanding officer at Camp Grant, directing him to use
every endeavor to have the message sent by the Apache reach its
destination, carrying it with the official dispatches forwarded by
courier to Camp Apache. The family and friends of the scout were
surprised and bewildered at receiving a communication sent over the
white man’s talking wire (Pesh-bi-yalti), of which they had lately been
hearing so much; but on the day appointed they all put on their thickest
coats of face paint, and donned their best bibs and tuckers, and sallied
out on foot and horseback to meet the incoming party, who were soon
descried descending the flank of an adjacent steep mountain. That was a
great day for Arizona; it impressed upon the minds of the savages the
fact that the white man’s arts were superior to those which their own
“Medicine Men” pretended to possess, and made them see that it would be
a good thing for their own interests to remain our friends.
The Apaches made frequent use of the wire. A most amusing thing occurred
at Crook’s headquarters, when the Apache chief “Pitone,” who had just
come up from a mission of peace to the Yumas, on the Colorado, and who
had a grievance against “Pascual,” the chief of the latter tribe, had
the operator, Mr. Strauchon, inform “Pascual” that if he did not do a
certain thing which he had promised to do, the Apaches would go on the
war-path, and fairly wipe the ground with the Yumas. There couldn’t have
been a quainter antithesis of the elements of savagery and enlightenment
than the presence of that chief in the telegraph office on such a
mission. The Apaches learned after a while how to stop the communication
by telegraph, which they did very adroitly by pulling down the wire,
cutting it in two, and tying the ends together with a rubber band,
completely breaking the circuit. The linemen would have to keep their
eyes open to detect just where such breaks existed.
General Crook held that it was the height of folly for the troops of the
United States to attempt to carry on an offensive campaign against an
enemy whose habits and usages were a mystery to them, and whose
territory was a sealed book. Therefore, he directed that each scouting
party should map out its own trail, and send the result on to the
headquarters, to be incorporated in the general map of the territory
which was to be made by the engineer officers in San Francisco. Arizona
was previously unknown, and much of its area had never been mapped. He
encouraged his officers by every means in his power to acquire a
knowledge of the rites and ceremonies, the ideas and feelings, of the
Indians under their charge; he believed, as did the late General P. H.
Sheridan, that the greater part of our troubles with the aborigines
arose from our ignorance of their character and wants, their
aspirations, doubts, and fears. It was much easier and very much cheaper
to stifle and prevent an outbreak than it was to suppress one which had
gained complete headway. These opinions would not be worthy of note had
not Crook and his friend and superior, Sheridan, been officers of the
American army; the English—in Canada, in New Zealand, in Australia, in
India—have found out the truth of this statement; the French have been
led to perceive it in their relations with the nomadic tribes of
Algeria; and the Spaniards, to a less extent perhaps, have practised the
same thing in America. But to Americans generally, the aborigine is a
nonentity except when he is upon the war-path. The moment he concludes
to live at peace with the whites, that moment all his troubles begin.
Never was there a truer remark than that made by Crook: “The American
Indian commands respect for his rights only so long as he inspires
terror for his rifle.” Finally Crook was anxious to obtain for Arizona,
and set out in the different military posts, such fruits and vines as
might be best adapted to the climate. This project was never carried
out, as the orders transferring the General to another department
arrived, and prevented, but it is worth while to know that several of
the springs in northern Arizona were planted with watercress by Mrs.
Crook, the General’s wife, who had followed him to Arizona, and remained
there until his transfer to another field.
Only two clouds, neither bigger than a man’s hand, but each fraught with
mischief to the territory and the whole country, appeared above
Arizona’s horizon—the Indian ring and the Chiricahuas. The Indian ring
was getting in its work, and had already been remarkably successful in
some of its manipulations of contracts. The Indian Agent, Dr. Williams,
in charge of the Apache-Yumas and Apache-Mojaves, had refused to receive
certain sugar on account of the presence of great boulders in each sack.
Peremptory orders for the immediate receipt of the sugar were received
in due time from Washington. Williams placed one of these immense lumps
of stone on a table in his office, labelled “Sample of sugar received at
this agency under contract of ——.” Williams was a very honest,
high-minded gentleman, and deserved something better than to be hounded
into an insane asylum, which fate he suffered. I will concede, to save
argument, that an official who really desires to treat Indians fairly
and honestly must be out of his head, but this form of lunacy is
harmless, and does not call for such rigorous measures.
The case of the Chiricahua Apaches was a peculiar one: they had been
specially exempted from General Crook’s jurisdiction, and in his plans
for the reduction of the other bands in hostility they had not been
considered. General O. O. Howard had gone out on a special mission to
see the great chief “Cocheis,” and, at great personal discomfort and no
little personal risk, had effected his purpose. They were congregated at
the “Stronghold,” in the Dragoon Mountains, at the same spot where they
had had a fight with Gerald Russell a few months previously. Their
chief, “Cocheis,” was no doubt sincere in his determination to leave the
war-path for good, and to eat the bread of peace. Such, at least, was
the opinion I formed when I went in to see him, as a member of Major
Brown’s party, in the month of February, 1873.
“Cocheis” was a tall, stately, finely built Indian, who seemed to be
rather past middle life, but still full of power and vigor, both
physical and mental. He received us urbanely, and showed us every
attention possible. I remember, and it shows what a deep impression
trivial circumstances will sometimes make, that his right hand was badly
burned in two circular holes, and that he explained to me that they had
been made by his younger wife, who was jealous of the older and had
bitten him, and that the wounds had been burned out with a kind of
“moxa” with which the savages of this continent are familiar. Trouble
arose on account of this treaty from a combination of causes of no
consequence when taken singly, but of great importance in the aggregate.
The separation of the tribe into two sections, and giving one kind of
treatment to one and another to another, had a very bad effect: some of
the Chiricahuas called their brethren at the San Carlos “squaws,”
because they had to work; on their side, a great many of the Apaches at
the San Carlos and Camp Apache, feeling that the Chiricahuas deserved a
whipping fully as much as they did, were extremely rancorous towards
them, and never tired of inventing stories to the disparagement of their
rivals or an exaggeration of what was truth. There were no troops
stationed on the Chiricahua reservation to keep the unruly young bucks
in order, or protect the honest and well-meaning savages from the
rapacity of the white vultures who flocked around them, selling vile
whiskey in open day. All the troubles of the Chiricahuas can be traced
to this sale of intoxicating fluids to them by worthless white men.
Complaints came up without cease from the people of Sonora, of raids
alleged to have been made upon their exposed hamlets nearest the Sierra
Madre; Governor Pesquiera and General Crook were in correspondence upon
this subject, but nothing could be done by the latter because the
Chiricahuas were not under his jurisdiction. How much of this raiding
was fairly attributable to the Chiricahuas who had come in upon the
reservation assigned them in the Dragoon Mountains, and how much was
chargeable to the account of small parties which still clung to the old
fastnesses in the main range of the Sierra Madre will never be known;
but the fact that the Chiricahuas were not under military surveillance
while all the other bands were, gave point to the insinuations and
emphasis to the stories circulated to their disparagement.
Shortly after the Apaches had been put upon the various reservations
assigned them, it occurred to the people of Tucson that they were
spending a great deal of money for the trials, re-trials, and
maintenance of murderers who killed whom they pleased, passed their days
pleasantly enough in jail, were defended by shrewd “Jack lawyers,” as
they were called, and under one pretest or another escaped scot free.
There had never been a judicial execution in the territory, and, under
the technicalities of law, there did not appear much chance of any being
recorded for at least a generation. It needed no argument to make plain
to the dullest comprehension that that sort of thing would do good to no
one; that it would end in perpetuating a bad name for the town; and
destroy all hope of its becoming prosperous and populous with the advent
of the railroads of which mention was now frequently made. The more the
matter was talked over, the more did it seem that something must be done
to free Tucson from the stigma of being the refuge of murderers of every
degree.
One of the best citizens of the place, a Mexican gentleman named
Fernandez, I think, who kept a _monte pio_, or pawnbroker’s shop, in the
centre of the town not a block from the post-office, was found dead in
his bed one morning, and alongside of him his wife and baby, all three
with skulls crushed by the blow of bludgeons or some heavy instrument.
All persons—Mexicans and Americans—joined in the hunt for the assassins,
who were at last run to the ground, and proved to be three Mexicans,
members of a gang of bandits who had terrorized the northern portions of
Sonora for many years. They were tracked by a most curious chain of
circumstances, the clue being given by a very intelligent Mexican, and
after being run down one of their number confessed the whole affair, and
showed where the stolen jewellery had been buried under a mesquite bush,
in plain sight of, and close to, the house of the Governor. I have
already written a description of this incident, and do not care to
reproduce it here, on account of lack of space, but may say that the
determination to lynch them was at once formed and carried into effect,
under the superintendence of the most prominent citizens, on the “Plaza”
in front of the cathedral. There was another murderer confined in the
jail for killing a Mexican “to see him wriggle.” This wretch, an
American tramp, was led out to his death along with the others, and in
less than ten minutes four human forms were writhing on the hastily
constructed gallows. Whatever censure might be levelled against this
high-handed proceeding on the score of illegality was rebutted by the
citizens on the ground of necessity and the evident improvement of the
public morals which followed, apparently as a sequence of these drastic
methods.
Greater authority was conferred upon the worthy Teutonic apothecary who
had been acting as probate judge, or rather much of the authority which
he had been exercising was confirmed, and the day of evil-doers began to
be a hard and dismal one. The old judge was ordinarily a pharmacist, and
did not pretend to know anything of law, but his character for probity
and honesty was so well established that the people, who were tired of
lawyers, voted to put in place a man who would deal out justice,
regardless of personal consequences. The blind goddess had no worthier
representative than this frontier Hippocrates, in whose august presence
the most hardened delinquents trembled. Blackstone and Coke and
Littleton and Kent were not often quoted in the dingy halls of justice
where the “Jedge” sat, flanked and backed by shelves of bottles bearing
the cabalistic legends, “Syr. Zarzæ Comp.,” “Tinc. Op. Camphor,” “Syr.
Simpl.,”and others equally inspiring, and faced by the small row of
books, frequently consulted in the knottier and more important cases,
which bore the titles “Materia Medica,” “Household Medicine,” and others
of the same tenor. Testimony was never required unless it would serve to
convict, and then only a small quantity was needed, because the man who
entered within the portals of this abode of Esculapius and of Justice
left all hope behind. Every criminal arraigned before this tribunal was
already convicted; there remained only the formality of passing
sentence, and of determining just how many weeks to affix as the
punishment in the “shane gang.” An adjustment of his spectacles, an
examination of the “Materia Medica,” and the Judge was ready for
business. Pointing his long finger at the criminal, he would thunder:
“Tu eres vagabundo” (thou art a tramp), and then proceed to sentence the
delinquent on his face to the chain-gang for one week, or two, or three,
as the conditions of his physiognomy demanded.
“Jedge, isn’t thet a r-a-a-ther tough dose to give t’ a poor fellow what
knowed your grandfadder?” asked one American prisoner who had received
an especially gratifying assurance of the Judge’s opinion of his moral
turpitude.
“Ha! you knowed my grandfaddy; vere abouts, mine frient, you know him?”
queried the legal functionary.
“Wa’al, Jedge, it’s jest like this. Th’ las’ time I seed the ole gent
was on th’ Isthmus o’ Panama; he war a-swingin’ by his tail from th’
limbs of a cocoanut tree, a-gatherin’ o’ cocoanuts, ’n——”
“Dare; dat vill do, mine frient, dat vill do. I gifs you anodder two
viks mit der shane-gang fur gontembt ov goort; how you like dat?”
Many sly jokes were cracked at the old judge’s expense, and many
side-splitting stories narrated of his eccentricities and curious legal
interpretations; but it was noticed that the supply of tramps was
steadily diminishing, and the town improving in every essential. If the
Judge ever made a mistake on the side of mercy I never happened to hear
of it, although I do not attempt to say that he may not, at some time in
his legal career, have shown tenderness unrecorded. He certainly did
heroic work for the advancement of the best interests of Tucson and a
good part of southern Arizona.
The orders of the War Department transferring General Crook to the
command of the Department of the Platte arrived in the middle of March,
and by the 25th of that month, 1875, he, with his personal staff, had
started for the new post of duty. A banquet and reception were tendered
by the citizens of Prescott and northern Arizona, which were attended by
the best people of that section. The names of the Butlers, Bashfords,
Marions, Heads, Brooks, Marks, Bowers, Buffums, Hendersons, Bigelows,
Richards, and others having charge of the ceremonies, showed how
thoroughly Americanized that part of Arizona had become. Hundreds walked
or rode out to the “Burnt Ranch” to say the last farewell, or listen to
the few heartfelt words of kindness with which General Kautz, the new
commander, wished Crook godspeed and good luck in his new field of
labor. Crook bade farewell to the people for whom he had done so much,
and whom he always held so warmly in his heart; he looked for the last
time, it might be, upon the snowy peak of the San Francisco, and then
headed westward, leaving behind him the Wonderland of the Southwest,
with its fathomless cañons, its dizzy crags, its snow-mantled sierras,
its vast deserts, its blooming oases—its vast array of all the
contradictions possible in topography. The self-lacerating Mexican
_penitente_, and the self-asserting American prospector, were to fade
from the sight, perhaps from the memory; but the acts of kindness
received and exchanged between man and man of whatever rank and whatever
condition of life were to last until memory itself should depart.
The journey from Whipple or Prescott to Los Angeles was in those days
over five hundred miles in length, and took at least eleven days under
the most favorable conditions; it obliged one to pass through the
territory of the Hualpais and the Mojaves, to cross the Colorado River
at the fort of the same name, and drive across the extreme southern
point of Nevada, and then into California in the country of the
Chimahuevis; to drag along over the weary expanse of the “Soda Lake,”
where for seven miles the wheels of the wagons cut their way into the
purest baking soda, and the eyes grew weak with gazing out upon a snowy
area of dazzling whiteness, the extreme end of the celebrated “Death
Valley.” After reaching San Bernardino, the aspect changed completely:
the country became a fairyland, filled with grapes and figs and oranges,
merry with the music of birds, bright with the bloom of flowers. Lowing
herds and buzzing bees attested that this was indeed a land of milk and
honey, beautiful to the eye, gladsome to every sense. The railroad had
not yet reached Los Angeles, so that to get to San Francisco, travellers
who did not care to wait for the weekly steamer were obliged to secure
seats in the “Telegraph” stage line. This ran to Bakersfield in the San
Joaquin Valley, the then terminus of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and
through some of the country where the Franciscans had wrought such
wonderful results among the savages whom they had induced to live in the
“Missions.” In due course of time Crook arrived at Omaha, Nebraska, his
new headquarters, where the citizens tendered him a banquet and
reception, as had those of the California metropolis—San Francisco.
[Illustration: GENERAL CROOK AND THE FRIENDLY APACHE, ALCHISAY.]