RAIDED
ONE day as Shoz-Dijiji squatted beside Geronimo listening to the great
chief’s tales of the war trail a runner came and stopped before them.
“Geronimo,” he said, “I am sent by the officers of the white soldiers.
They want you to come to their camp. They have sent a runner to Victorio
also, and he is coming.”
“What do the chiefs of the white soldiers want of Geronimo and
Victorio?” demanded the chief.
“I do not know,” replied the runner.
“Perhaps they are calling a council,” suggested Geronimo.
“Perhaps,” replied the runner, an Apache scout in the service of the
government.
“Tell them Geronimo will come,” said the chief, and the scout turned and
trotted away, disappearing among the trees below the camp.
“Fetch my pony, Shoz-Dijiji,” said Geronimo.
“And mine?” asked the youth.
Geronimo smiled and grunted an affirmative and the lad was gone after
the two ponies. When he returned Geronimo was ready and together they
rode down the mountainside in the direction of the little town near
which the soldiers were camped.
Early the following morning they saw a small band of Indians moving in
the same direction as were they, and evidently toward the camp of the
white soldiers which lay beside the village of Hot Springs which they
could already see in the distance.
“Victorio,” grunted Geronimo, nodding his head.
Shoz-Dijiji nodded. However the two approached the other party, as their
trails converged, with careful wariness, and it was not until they had
actually recognized individual members of the band and been recognized
in turn that they finally joined them.
The two chiefs rode together, exchanging occasional monosyllables, but
for the greater part of the time in silence. Shoz-Dijiji took the
station befitting a youth among warriors and rode in the rear and the
dust. At the edge of town the party was met by soldiers, two companies
of scouts, and before Geronimo or Victorio could realize their
intentions the party was surrounded, disarmed and arrested. Surprised,
chagrined and angry the Apaches were conducted to military headquarters,
and for the first time Shoz-Dijiji came into close contact with the
pindah lickoyee.
Closely surrounded by armed soldiers the Apaches were herded into a tent
where several officers were seated behind two camp tables. Ignoring his
guards Geronimo strode forward and faced the officers across the tables.
“Why have the soldiers done this to Geronimo and his friends?” he
demanded. “You sent for Geronimo as a friend and he came as a friend. Is
this the way to treat a friend?”
The senior officer turned to a Mexican standing near him. “What does he
say?” he demanded.
The Mexican, in turn, addressed a half-breed squatting at his side.
“What does he say?” he asked in Spanish. The half-breed translated
Geronimo’s words into Spanish and the Mexican translated them into
English for the senior officer.
“Tell him it is because he left Apache Pass without permission,” replied
the officer. “Ask him why he did this,” and again the Mexican translated
the officer’s words into Spanish and the half-breed translated them from
Spanish to Apache. Thus the entire proceedings were carried out. Perhaps
the translations were accurate—perhaps not. At any rate the principals
in the matter did not know.
Geronimo mused over the question before he replied. Then he addressed
himself directly to the senior officer, ignoring the interpreters. “I do
not think that I ever belonged to those soldiers at Apache Pass,” he
said, “or that I should have asked them where I might go. This is my
country. I have lived here all my life. It is the country that Usen gave
to the Apaches when he created them. It has always belonged to us. Why
should we ask the soldiers of the white-eyes for permission to go from
one part of our own country to another part?
“We have tried to live in peace with the white-eyes. We even tried to
stay at Apache Pass when they asked us to do so; but the white-eyes do
not know the ways of the Apaches as do the chiefs of the Apaches. They
did not know what they asked. The six tribes of the Apaches cannot all
live together in peace. The young men quarrel. This we knew would
happen, yet we tried to live together because we were told that it was
the wish of the Great White Chief.
“Some of the young men got drunk on whiskey that was sold to them by a
white-eyed man. They fought and some were killed. We, who are the chiefs
of our people, we, who are responsible for their welfare and happiness,
held a council and there we all agreed that the tribes could no longer
live in peace together.
“The Chi-hen-ne and Be-don-ko-he have always been friendly and so
Victorio and I quietly withdrew together with our people. We did not
think this was wrong. Our hearts were not wrong. That is all. Geronimo
has spoken. Now let us return to our homes.”
The officer questioned Victorio and several other Indians. He asked
about each one present and Shoz-Dijiji heard himself mentioned, heard
the half-breed say that he was but a youth and not yet a warrior, for
Shoz-Dijiji understood some Spanish. Now he realized that it would be
advantageous to understand the language of the pindah lickoyee as well.
The proceedings did not last long. The officers issued some orders to
the soldiers and the Apaches were herded from the tent. Geronimo and
seven other Apaches were taken to the guardhouse and placed in chains.
Victorio and the others, including Shoz-Dijiji, were released; but the
youth did not wish to leave his father. With that mixture of timidity
and courage which often marks the actions of creatures of the wild in
the presence of white men, Shoz-Dijiji, keeping at a distance, followed
Geronimo to the guardhouse.
He saw the Indians disappear within, he saw the door closed. He wondered
what they were going to do with his father and his friends, these
white-eyed men whose actions he could no more understand than he could
their language. He crept to a window and looked in. His pupils dilated
with horror at the thing he saw; they were placing great chains upon
Geronimo, upon the chief of the Be-don-ko-he, upon the war chief of all
the Apaches, and fastening him to the wall like a wild beast.
Shoz-Dijiji shuddered. The humiliation of it! And the hideous injustice.
Savage that he was, Shoz-Dijiji sensed keenly and felt acutely the
injustice, for he knew that Geronimo did not know why he was being
punished. He knew that the soldiers had said that it was because he had
left Apache Pass, but to Shoz-Dijiji as well as to Geronimo, that was
worse than no reason at all since they both knew that it had been the
right thing to do.
Shoz-Dijiji, through the window, heard Geronimo ask the soldiers why he
was being chained in the guardhouse; but they did not understand him.
One, who was quite a joker, mimicked the old war chief, making the other
soldiers laugh, thus demonstrating beyond cavil the natural superiority
of the white race over these untutored children of the wild who sat now
in majestic silence, their immobile faces giving no hint of the thoughts
that passed within their savage brains, or the sorrows within their
hearts.
Doubtless, had their positions been reversed, the Apaches would have
tortured the soldiers; but it is a question as to whether they could
have inflicted upon the white men any suffering more real, more
terrible, than are imprisonment and ridicule to an Indian.
As Shoz-Dijiji watched through the guardhouse window, his whole being
was so occupied by the numbing terror of what he saw within that he did
not hear the approach of a white soldier from his rear, nor was he
conscious of any other presence about him until a heavy hand was laid
upon his shoulder and he was wheeled roughly about.
“What the hell are you doing here, you dirty Siwash?” demanded the
trooper, and at the same time he gave Shoz-Dijiji a shove that sent him
sprawling in the dust.
Shoz-Dijiji did not understand the white man’s words. He did not
understand why he had been attacked. All he knew was that, his heart
filled with sorrow, he had been watching the humiliation of his father;
but as he arose slowly from the dust he became conscious of a new force
within him that crowded sorrow into the background—a deep, implacable
hatred of the pindah lickoyee. Through level eyes, his face an
imperturbable mask, he looked at the white soldier and saw that he was
heavily armed. About the guardhouse were other armed soldiers.
Shoz-Dijiji turned and walked away. Apachelike he bided his time.
In the camp of his people Shoz-Dijiji took up again his accustomed life,
but he was not the same. The last vestige of youth had fallen from him.
Quiet, serious, even morose he was, and more and more often did he spend
nights and days upon end in the high places, praying and making big
medicine, that he might be strong against the enemies of his people.
He talked with Gian-nah-tah about the wrongs that the pindah lickoyee
would inflict upon the Shis-Inday. He visited Victorio and talked much
with that savage, terrible old warrior, for Shoz-Dijiji wanted to know
“why.” No one seemed to be able to enlighten him. Usen had made this
country for the Apaches, of that they were all quite sure; but why Usen
had sent the white-eyes, no one could tell him. Victorio thought that
Usen had nothing to do with it; but that some bad spirits who hated Usen
were really responsible.
“The bad spirits have sent the white-eyed men to kill the Apaches,” he
explained, “so that Usen will have no one to guard him. Then they will
be able to kill Usen.”
“Then we should kill the enemies of Usen,” said Shoz-Dijiji.
“It is right to kill them,” said Victorio. “Do they not kill us?”
Shoz-Dijiji knew that they did. He knew that when he was hunting, deep
in his own country, he had ever to keep an alert eye open for wandering
white men—hunters, prospectors, cowboys, soldiers—scarce one of whom
but would shoot him first and inquire into his friendliness afterward,
if at all.
In primitive places news travels with a celerity little short of
miraculous. Thus it was that the day that Geronimo was transferred to
the guardhouse at San Carlos the fact was known to the Be-don-ko-he in
their hidden camp, deep in inaccessible mountains. Shoz-Dijiji spoke to
Morning Star, wife of Geronimo, the only mother he had ever known.
“Sons-ee-ah-ray,” he said, “I, Shoz-Dijiji, go to be near my father,
Geronimo. The hearts of the pindah lickoyee are bad. Perhaps they have
taken him away to kill him.”
“Go!” said Morning Star. “If the pindah lickoyee harm Geronimo return
quickly and bring the word. Then, if the hearts of the Apache braves
have not turned to water, they will go upon the war trail and drive the
white-eyed men from the land of the Shis-Inday forever. If they do not,
then the squaws will spit upon them and take their weapons from them and
go upon the war trail in their places.”
So Shoz-Dijiji set out alone and afoot for the fort at San Carlos. Deep
in his heart was a purpose that he had not confided to Morning Star or
to any other, not even to Ish-kay-nay when he had bid her farewell. In
the high places Shoz-Dijiji had had much opportunity for thought and for
reflection, and more and more during those solitary hours among the
silent rocks and the murmuring pines there had been borne into his
consciousness a realization of the fact that he had first vaguely
comprehended at the trial of Geronimo at Hot Springs, that his people
were handicapped in their struggle against the white-eyed oppressor by
their inability to understand his language.
Shoz-Dijiji had recalled the night that he had lain close beside the
parked wagon train of the Mexican freighters and overheard their plans
for the ensuing days, and because he knew their language it had been
possible for his people to profit by what he heard. How great might be
his advantage upon similar occasions in the conflict with the whites, if
he understood their tongue, he thoroughly realized. Imbued with this
thought as well as a desire to be near his father and learn more of what
the whites intended for Geronimo, the youth made his lonely way toward
San Carlos.
With a handful of parched corn, a few strips of jerked venison and a
primitive water bottle of horse gut, he trotted silently along his
untracked way. Always alert for signs of the enemy, no sound escaped his
trained ears; no broken twig, no down-pressed bunch of grass, no turned
stone escaped his watchful eyes; and all that he saw he read as quickly
and as accurately as we read the printed page; but with this difference,
possibly—Shoz-Dijiji understood what he read.
Here he saw where klij-litzogue, the yellow snake, had passed through
the dust of the way an hour before; there was the spoor of
shoz-lickoyee; and in the bottom of a parched canyon he saw signs of the
pindah lickoyee. Two days before a white man had ridden down this canyon
toward the plain upon the back of a mare with a white right hind foot
and a black tail. All this Shoz-Dijiji read quickly from a spoor so
faint that you or I would not have noticed it at all. But then, it was
Shoz-Dijiji’s business to know, as it is our business to know that if we
ignore certain traffic signals at a crowded corner we may land in the
receiving hospital.
On the second day Shoz-Dijiji crept to the summit of a low divide and
looked down upon the frontier post of San Carlos, upon the
straw-thatched buildings of adobe brick, upon the winding Gila and upon
the straggling villages of the reservation Indians, and that night he
slipped silently down among the shadows and merged with his people.
There were many tribes there, but among them were Apaches whom
Shoz-Dijiji knew, and these he sought, seeking word of Geronimo first.
They told him that the chief was still chained in a guardhouse, but that
he was well. What the white-eyes intended doing with him they did not
know.
Shoz-Dijiji asked many questions and learned many things that night.
With the braves he laughed at the white fools who fed the Apaches
between raids while the blood of other white men was scarce dry upon
them, and, who, while feeding them, sought to cheat them out of the bulk
of the rations the Great White Chief had sent them; thus increasing
their contempt for the whites, arousing their anger against them, and
spurring them on to further outbreaks.
“Our women and our children are hungry,” complained an old warrior, “and
yet they will neither give us passes to go out on the hunting trail or
issue us sufficient rations to sustain us. We see the agent growing rich
and fat upon the money that should buy us beef. We see our war chief and
our friends chained in prison. To make us content they wish to give us
shovels and hoes and make us do the work of squaws. They wish us to go
to school and learn the strange language of the white-eyes.
“We are men, we are warriors; it is not fit that men and warriors should
do these things. It is our land, not theirs. Usen gave it to us and he
gave the white-eyes other lands. Why do they not stay in the land that
Usen gave them, as we have? We do not want them here.”
Shoz-Dijiji heard a great deal of such talk, for the Indians,
discontented, aired their grievances freely among themselves. They
talked of little else, and the young bucks spoke continually of war.
These matters did not, however, greatly excite Shoz-Dijiji. He knew that
when the time came there would be war. There always was. What interested
him more was the statement of the old warrior that the white-eyed men
wished his people to learn their language. He spoke often upon this
subject, asking many questions.
“You wish to learn the language of the pindah lickoyee?” demanded a
scarred warrior who talked the loudest and the longest about war.
“Yes,” admitted Shoz-Dijiji.
“That is labor,” sneered the warrior. “The men of the Apaches do not
labor. You should have been a squaw.”
“The men of the Apaches make their own weapons wherewith to fight the
enemies of their people, do they not?” inquired Shoz-Dijiji.
“That is the work of men, of warriors,” exclaimed the other.
“The language of the white-eyes can be turned into a weapon against them
if we understand it,” said the youth. “Now they use it against us. That
I saw at Hot Springs when Geronimo and the other warriors were made
prisoners. It was all done with the talk of the white-eyes; no other
weapon did they use. Had I known how to use that weapon—had Geronimo,
or any other of us known—we might have defeated them, for we had the
right upon our side.”
“Shoz-Dijiji makes good talk,” said an old man. “At the post they have a
school where they wish us to send our children and to come ourselves to
learn their language. There are but three children in this school and
they are all orphans. If they had had parents they would not have been
permitted to go. The pindah lickoyee will be glad to have you come.”
And so it was that Black Bear attended the school of the pindah lickoyee
and learned their strange language. He stayed and worked in the school
after the class was dismissed that he might ask questions of the teacher
and learn more rapidly. His teacher, the wife of an officer, pointed to
him with pride and told her friends that the example set by Black Bear
would probably do more toward pacifying and civilizing the Apaches than
all the soldiers in the United States Army could accomplish.
“If they understand us they will learn to respect and love us,” she
said; “and they cannot understand us until they understand our
language.”
And to his people Shoz-Dijiji said: “The pindah lickoyee are fools and
their tongue is the tongue of fools; but it is well to know it. Already
I have learned things about them that otherwise I could never have
known, and when I take the war trail against them as a man there will be
no arrow in my quiver with which I can inflict more harm upon them than
with this—my knowledge of their language.”
For three months Shoz-Dijiji attended school regularly, studied
diligently, learned quickly. His teacher was transported into raptures
whenever she had occasion to mention him in the presence of her friends,
and that was often, as the topics of conversation at a frontier army
post are meager at the best. Her husband was skeptical, as were all of
the older officers.
“He’s an Indian,” they said, “and the only good Indian is a dead
Indian.”
Thus understandingly, sympathetically, has the Indian question been
approached by many army men, and by practically all of the civilians of
the frontiers. To have said: “He is an Indian. He stands in the way of
our acquisition of his valuable possessions. Therefore, having no power
to enforce his rights and being in our way, we will destroy him,” would
have been no more ruthless than the policy we adopted and cloaked with
hypocrisy. It would have had the redeeming quality of honesty, and would
have been a policy that the Apaches could have understood and admired.
One morning Shoz-Dijiji did not come to school. He never came again. His
teacher made diligent inquiry which always ended against the dead wall
of an Indian, “No savvy.” She did not connect Black Bear’s disappearance
with the release of Geronimo from the guardhouse the previous afternoon,
because she did not know that Black Bear was Geronimo’s son.
She knew nothing about Black Bear. From her he had learned all that he
sought to learn; from him she had learned nothing; for which there is
just one good and sufficient reason—Black Bear was an Apache. Of all
the great Indian tribes that have roamed North America none has been in
contact with white men longer than the Apache, and of none is there less
known.
Ugly, morose, vengeful, Geronimo came back to his people, and that same
night they slipped away toward the south. Every member of the tribe was
mounted and their meager belongings, their store of provisions, were
packed upon the backs of spare ponies.
Shoz-Dijiji was happy. The three months spent at San Carlos under the
petty restrictions of a semi-military regime had seemed an eternity of
bondage to his free, wild nature. Now again he could breathe, out in the
open where there were no fences, no walls, as far as the eye could
reach, and the air was untainted by the odor of white men.
He looked up at the moon-silvered mountains and out across the dim,
mysterious distance of the plain. He heard the old, familiar voices of
the night, and her perfumes were sweet in his nostrils. He drank deep of
it, filling his lungs. He wanted to leap into the air and dance and
shout; but he only sat stolidly astride his pony, his face reflecting
nothing of all that filled his heart.
Travelling by night, hiding by day, Geronimo led his people to a hidden
valley, deep in the mountains, far from the trails and settlements of
the pindah lickoyee. There they lived in peace and security for a long
time, making occasional journeys into Mexico to trade, or to neighboring
Indian tribes for the same purpose.
Shoz-Dijiji grew taller, stronger. Few warriors of the Be-don-ko-he
could hurl a lance as far as he, and none could send an arrow with
greater accuracy to its goal; he could out-run and out-jump them all,
and his horsemanship brought a gleam of pride to the cruel, blue eyes of
Geronimo.
The long period of peace broke down the discipline of the tribe and even
astute old Geronimo nodded. An individualist in the extreme sense of the
word, an Apache takes orders from no one except as it suits him to do
so. Their chiefs are counsellors; they may not command. Only the war
chiefs in time of battle or upon the war trail are vouchsafed anything
approaching absolute authority. It is the ambition of every youth to
become a warrior so that he may do whatever he wishes to do, without let
or hindrance.
Thus lived the tribe in the dangerous insecurity and laxity of peace. No
longer did the keen eyes of scouts watch the trails leading away into
the lands of their enemies. For days at a time the ponies pastured
without a guard.
It was upon such a day, following a successful hunt, that the warriors
were dozing about the camp. Gian-nah-tah and Shoz-Dijiji, tiring of the
monotony, had wandered away into the hills. They were moving quietly
along, seeing everything, hearing everything, when the son of Geronimo
stopped suddenly and raised his hand. Like a golden bronze by a master
hand they stood motionless and silent. Faintly from afar came the
rolling of distant thunder, scarcely heard. But Shoz-Dijiji and
Gian-nah-tah knew that it was not thunder. Just for an instant they
stood there listening and then both dropped almost simultaneously to the
ground, pressing ears against the turf.
Shoz-Dijiji was the first to leap to his feet. “Return to camp,
Gian-nah-tah,” he said, “and tell Geronimo what we have heard.”
“What is it, Shoz-Dijiji?” asked the other.
“The herd has been stampeded. They are running away from camp—south,
toward Chihuahua. Only enemies would run it off. Tell Geronimo that the
Mexicans have raided us.”
Gian-nah-tah wheeled about and raced down the mountainside, while
Shoz-Dijiji clambered straight up toward a lofty point that would afford
him a wide view of the country toward the south. His ear had told him
that the ponies were running wildly; therefore they must be frightened.
Nothing in these hills could so frighten those ponies as could mounted
men urging them rapidly from the rear—that Shoz-Dijiji knew. The
diminishing volume of the sound had told him that the ponies were moving
away from him, toward the south. The rest was, of course, but shrewd
inference.
From the summit he sought he could see nothing but a cloud of dust
receding down a canyon, and so he moved on after the retreating herd.
For three hours he followed without catching a glimpse of ponies or
thieves until he came out into the foothills and overlooked the plain
beyond. Far out toward the south he saw just what he had expected to
see, all the ponies and mules of the Be-don-ko-he. Driving them was a
detachment of Mexican troopers and in their rear rode the balance of the
company.
To follow was useless. He turned and trotted back toward camp. Halfway
up the canyon he met Geronimo and some twenty braves already on the
trail. Gian-nah-tah was with them. Shoz-Dijiji told Geronimo what he had
seen, and when the party resumed the pursuit, not being forbidden, he
fell in behind with Gian-nah-tah.
“Two more battles and we shall be warriors,” whispered Shoz-Dijiji.
Far behind the mounted troopers, dogged, determined, trailed the
twenty—grim and terrible.