_From Copyright Photograph 1903 by E.S. Curtis_
Since known to history, the many bands of Apache have occupied the
mountains and plains of southern Arizona and New Mexico, northern Sonora
and Chihuahua, and western Texas--an area greater than that of the states
of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts,
Vermont, Maine, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, and West Virginia.
They were always known as "wild" Indians, and indeed their early warfare
with all neighboring tribes, as well as their recent persistent hostility
toward our Government, which precipitated a "war of extermination," bear
out the appropriateness of the designation. An admission of fear of
anything is hard to elicit from the weakest of Indian tribes, but all who
lived within raiding distance of the Apache, save the Navaho, their
Athapascan cousins, freely admit that for generations before their
subjugation the Apache were constantly held in mortal terror.
Through the constant depredations carried on against the Mexican
settlements in northern Sonora and Chihuahua, under the leadership of Juan
Jose, an Apache chief educated among the Mexicans, those two states were
led, in 1837, to offer a bounty for Apache scalps. The horror of this
policy lay in the fact that the scalp of a friendly Indian brought the
same reward as that of the fiercest warrior, and worse still, no exception
was made of women or children. Nothing could have been more effective than
this scalp bounty in arousing all the savagery in these untamed denizens
of the mountains, and both Mexico and the United States paid dearly in
lives for every Apache scalp taken under this barbarous system. Predatory
warfare continued unabated during the next forty years in spite of all the
Mexican government could do. With the consummation of the treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo, in 1848, the Apache problem became one to be solved by
the United States as well.
In 1864, under General James H. Carleton, the "war of extermination" was
begun in a most systematic manner. On April 20 this officer communicated a
proposal of co-operation to Don Ignacio Pesqueira, Governor of Sonora,
saying: "If your excellency will put a few hundred men into the field on
the first day of next June, and keep them in hot pursuit of the Apaches of
Sonora, say for sixty or ninety days, we will either exterminate the
Indians or so diminish their numbers that they will cease their murdering
and robbing propensities and live at peace."
This request was met. The settlers in Arizona, under agreement, placed a
force in the field provisioned with army supplies. Several hundred Pima,
Papago, and Maricopa Indians also were supplied with guns, ammunition, and
clothing, and pressed into service; but a year's effort netted the
combined forces little gain. Although two hundred Apache were killed and
many head of stolen stock recovered, practically no advance toward the
termination of hostilities was accomplished.
In April, 1865, Inspector-General Davis arranged a conference at the
Copper Mines in New Mexico with Victorio, Nane, Acosta, and other chiefs,
among whom were Pasquin, Cassari, and Salvador, sons of Mangas Coloradas,
through which he learned of the existence of dire destitution among the
Apache and a desire for peace on condition that they be permitted to
occupy their native haunts. But the Government had adopted a policy of
removal by which the Arizona Apache desiring peace should join the
Mescaleros at the Bosque Redondo in New Mexico. To this they flatly
refused to agree, and the warfare continued.
[Illustration: The Bathing Pool - Apache]