Shanahan’s story is that a short time after leaving the house, being
totally unconscious of any danger, he was suddenly shot by an Indian,
whom he then saw only about thirty feet away. Picking up a rock and
starting for the Indian, Shanahan received another shot from behind
that knocked him down, but he was immediately up again and ran back
for the house, Bartlett meeting and assisting him in. Shanahan saw but
two Indians, and said he could have killed both if he had had a gun.
During the time Bartlett was keeping the Indians at bay, realizing the
danger of Mrs. Shanahan and her two young daughters, at their home
three miles away, he told Phil, Shanahan’s little son, to steal out of
the house by a back way and go to his home and notify his mother of
their danger and of the shooting of his father. Phil demurred at first,
wanting to stay with his father, who was suffering intensely, but being
told that unless he went his mother and little sisters would surely
be killed, the little fellow courageously said he would try to get to
them, and good fortune favoring him, he succeeded in doing so. Finding
them in the garden, they all, including Phil, immediately started for
the mountains, where they concealed themselves until the following
day. In the meantime the Indians had come to the house and carried off
or wrecked everything in it, and would undoubtedly have killed Mrs.
Shanahan and the two little girls had not brave little Phil, at the
risk of his life, warned them of the danger.
Brave Little Johnnie Bartlett.
Bartlett kept the Indians off until dark, when it is probable they
left, as they were not seen again. Soon after dark, Bartlett told
Johnnie that he must go to Oro Blanco and notify the people of the
shooting of Shanahan and himself, and that Shanahan was probably dying.
When little Johnnie was told that he must do this, like the little hero
he was, he simply said: “All right, papa,” and immediately started,
first taking off his shoes and going barefoot the first mile or two,
to avoid making any sound. Johnnie, on foot, reached Oro Blanco, eight
miles away, about two o’clock in the morning and gave the alarm.
A posse was immediately made up and started for the scene of the
troubles, where they found Shanahan dead and Bartlett wounded, and the
Indians evidently gone.
General Crook Relieved.
Gen. George Crook came to Arizona in 1870, remaining in command of the
department here until 1875, when he was transferred to the department
of the Platte, and was reassigned and returned to Arizona in 1882.
In 1886, evidently taking exception to an implied criticism from the
Department at Washington, and, as he expressed it, “having spent nearly
eight years of the hardest work of his life in this department”, he
asked to be relieved. Crook was criticized in Arizona at the time for
a too abiding faith in the loyalty of his Indian scouts, and many of
us believed this criticism to be fully justified. There is hardly a
doubt that much of the ammunition used by the renegades was supplied
them by these same scouts. It was but a few months prior to Crook’s
being relieved that Capt. Crawford, a zealous and gallant officer,
while engaged in his thankless task of ridding their own country of
these pests, was treacherously killed by Mexican irregular troops in
the Sierra Madre mountains. It is true that these irregular troops were
Tarahumari Indians, possibly as wild and uncontrollable as the Apaches
themselves, and that may extenuate the treachery to some extent, but
the fact remains that the officers in command were not Indians, but
Mexicans.
Geronimo Surrenders to General Miles.
On April 2, 1886, Gen. Miles, superseding Crook, took command of the
Department of Arizona, and in his “Personal Recollections” he speaks
of finding here, stationed at Fort Huachuca, a “fair-haired, blue-eyed
young man of great intellect, manly qualities and resolute spirit, a
splendid type of American manhood”. This “fair-haired, blue-eyed young
man” of 1886 was at the time Assistant Surgeon in the Army. He is now
Major General Leonard Wood, late Chief of Staff, U. S. Army.
On the 4th of September following Miles’s assuming command, Geronimo
and his band surrendered to him, and on September 8th they left Fort
Bowie for Fort Marion, Florida. The point of surrender to Miles was
at Skeleton canyon, in Mexico, about 65 miles south of Fort Bowie.
The surrender of Geronimo may be fixed as the date of the termination
of the many years of warfare between the whites and the Apaches as
a tribe, a warfare marked with a cruelty on the part of the Apaches
probably unparalleled in the history of the four hundred years of
strife between the whites on the one side and the redman on the other.
Apache Kid Begins Bloody Career.
I have said that the surrender of Geronimo terminated the many years
of bloody warfare with the Apaches as a tribe, but the Indian tribes
may, and do, have outlaws in their own tribe, outlaws for whom as a
tribe they are in no way responsible, and for whose acts the individual
and not the tribe should alone be held amenable. Even the white tribe
is not altogether immune from this infliction. In this class, among
others, was the “Apache Kid”, who, following the surrender of Geronimo,
with a few lawless followers made independent warfare on isolated,
helpless settlers, leaving the footprints of his bloody work wherever
he went. The Kid, sometimes called the Apache Kid, and at others simply
Kid, was an Apache scout occupying the position of sergeant under Al
Sieber, chief of scouts. On June 1, 1887, the Kid shot Sieber on the
San Carlos reservation, wounding but not killing him, and this marks
the beginning of Kid’s series of bloody crimes.
Immediately following the shooting of Sieber, Kid, his squaw and
sixteen other Indians, left the reservation.