“Lo! the poor Indian.”
Imperfect definition and classification, followed by hasty, inaccurate,
and unwarranted generalization, are fruitful sources of popular error.
To the misinformed or uninformed mind the Indian is a noble savage,
whose hunting-grounds and corn-fields have been taken from him by the
ruthless paleface, and who passes his time pensively leaning upon his
rifle, with his face to the setting sun, the while he makes touching
appeals to the Great Spirit, and mourns the disappearance of his race.
In the country west of the Rocky Mountains and south of Green River, the
sentimental Indian with whom Cooper doped American literature, has
absolutely no existence. Uncas and Chingachgook never journeyed so far
westward as the Rio Grande, and prosy old Leather Stocking, with his
Sunday-school soliloquies, and his alleged marvelous marksmanship on
knife blades at three hundred yards, would have been elected president
of the Arizona Lying Club by acclamation.
Many tribes of Indians in that section of the country have scarcely any
belief in a future state of existence, and no words in their jargons to
represent the ideas of gratitude, of female chastity, or of hospitality.
Their opportunities of obtaining food have been in nowise lessened by
white occupation of the land. There never were any buffalo there, they
never hunted bears or any combative animal, the fish and small game and
pine-nuts are nearly as plentiful as ever, and the bacon-rinds and
decayed vegetables to be found near every mining camp furnish the noble
reds with a food supply more agreeable to their indolent habits than the
hard-won trophies of the chase.
Yet there are Indians and Indians, as there are Christian bank
presidents and unsanctified bank robbers, and it is as incorrect to
class the devilish Chiricahua Apache with the dirty but gentle Yuma as
it would be to similarly couple a hook-nosed vender of Louisiana lottery
tickets with a blonde-haired solicitor for a church raffle.
In the mountains of Eastern Arizona and Western New Mexico, occupying a
country hundreds of miles in area, a country which, for their benefit,
has been reserved from miner, settler, and grazier, live the White
Mountain Apaches during the winter months, when they are not “on the war
path,” as their pillaging and murdering expeditions are somewhat
bombastically designated.
Whatever may be said of other savages in other localities, the Arizona
Apaches are without a single just cause of complaint against the
government, or against any of the Caucasian race. No cruel white men
have ever invaded their hunting-grounds, or given them high-priced
whisky in exchange for low-priced peltry. Red-handed and tangle-haired
have these marauders and their ancestors lived for centuries in their
mountain lair.
Since the United States of America became, forty years ago, the nominal
suzerain of the territory occupied by these peripatetic “vermin
ranches,” they have been unprovoked invaders, thieves, and assassins,
and their summer raids upon the miners, teamsters, and cattle ranchers
of Arizona and New Mexico, have been as regular as their winter
acceptance of the bacon and blankets with which a generous but mistaken
policy feeds and warms them, at a cost equal to that of providing each
savage with a suite of rooms at a fashionable hotel.
It is but a few years since a small party of the most vicious and
untamable of these bandits, who were captured with the scalps of their
victims at their belts, were declared by the authorities at Washington
to be not answerable to trial or punishment by the courts of the
Territory whose people they have robbed and murdered with impunity for
many years. But, partly in deference to outraged public sentiment, and
partly in apprehension of the acts of a possible committee of vigilance,
these Indians were condemned for their crimes to imprisonment in a
government fortress in Florida.
Unlike white prisoners who were condemned to labor and isolation, these
tawny murderers were allowed to be accompanied in their journey across
the country by their wives and concubines, who were transported, fed,
clothed, and made comfortable, at government cost. Arrived at their
destination, it was found, after a few months’ sojourn, that the humid
air, lower altitude, and uncongenial surroundings of Florida, and,
later, of North Carolina, disagreed with the digestion and disgruntled
the disposition of the noble reds, and, upon a proper showing that their
health demanded a return to their former homes, lest confirmed nostalgia
should set in, and possibly remove them permanently from the scene of
human activities, they were surreptitiously returned by the government
to their old reservation, where they promptly expressed their
appreciation of the clemency accorded them by breaking out once more and
heading for the Mexican Sierras, marking their track with burning ranch
houses and murdered settlers.
In the summer of 1893 a party of about forty of these Apaches, headed by
the most cruel, malignant, and treacherous of savages—the
thrice-pardoned and faith-breaking Geronimo—left the reservation for
their annual raid. The military post at Fort Lowell having been
abandoned and the troops removed in the interest of government
parsimony, the savages found it convenient to make a detour by the
valley of the Santa Cruz, so as to cross the railroad track in the
vicinity of Tucson, and reach their mountain fastnesses in Sonora by the
Arivaca Pass.
It chanced that David Morning, on his departure from Waterspout for New
York, while riding from the Rillito station into Tucson, and riding by
night, to avoid the heat of an Arizona sun, was seen by the Indians,
who, having emerged from a defile in which they had been concealed
during the day, were now stealthily and swiftly journeying in the same
direction. The opportunity to murder a white man was one not to be
neglected, but the report of a rifle might attract attention and
instigate speedy pursuit, so two of Geronimo’s followers were detailed,
armed only with bows and arrows, to follow the wayfarer through the
dusk, and bring back a scalp, that might be obtained without danger and
without noise.
If Morning had been riding a horse, this tale might have had sudden
ending, but he had found for his necessarily frequent journeys between
the mine and Tucson no such convenient and comfortable mode of
transportation as a seat upon the back of Julia. The equine in question
was a large jet black saddle mule bred at the ranch of Señor Don Pedro
Gonzales, which was situated at the foot of the mountain, on the
opposite side of the Rillito Valley, about three miles from the road.
The mule, as an animal, is often both misrepresented and misunderstood.
No creature tamed by man has keener instincts or greater sagacity, or is
governed to so great an extent by intelligent self-interest. A mule is
always logical. His ordinary reasoning is a syllogism without a flaw. A
horse impelled by high spirit, and patient even unto death, will travel
until he drops from exhaustion, and will pull or carry without complaint
a load that causes his every muscle to pulse with the pain of weariness.
But where lives the man who was ever able to impose upon a mule? Strap
an unaccustomed or unjust load upon the back of this animal of
unillustrious paternity, and he will not move except in the direction of
lying down. Attempt to ride or drive him past his rightful and usual
resting-place, and there may be retrogression, and there may be a
circus, but there will be no advance.
In addition to his other virtues a mule has an exceedingly keen scent.
He seeks no close acquaintance with either grizzly bears or Indians. He
will get the wind of either of his aversions as quickly as a hound will
whiff a deer, and, like the hound, he will give his knowledge to the
world, in a voice that is resonant, magnetic, and—on the whole—musical.
The bray of an earnest mule is not after the Italian but the Wagnerian
school. It is not the sweet, tender tenor of Manrico, it is Lohengrin
sounding his note of power. It is not, perhaps, equal to an orchestra of
nightingales, but it has a rhythm, and passion, and power, and
sweetness, nevertheless.
The quick instinct of Julia caught the scent of the Apache assassins,
and as they crept up she was engaged in a struggle with her rider, who,
with voice and spur, was vainly endeavoring to induce and compel her to
proceed along the usual road.
“Why, Julia,” soliloquized Morning, “you must have been browsing on
rattle-weed! What is the matter with you?”—and he tugged vainly at her
bridle.
Whizz! whizz! went the arrows. With one shaft quivering in her flank,
the mule fairly sprang into the air, while the other transfixed the left
arm of David Morning, and pinned it to his side.
And then his question was answered, and he knew what was the matter with
Julia.
The frenzied animal leaped the Rillito at a bound, and swept across the
valley to the corral adjoining the Gonzales ranch house. Once within the
inclosure, she stopped and uttered her most melodious notes of delight.
With a crescendo of welcome a dozen of her kindred greeted Julia, and
the swarthy major-domo of the ranch, accompanied by half a dozen
vaqueros with lights, rushed out, and Morning, weak from pain and loss
of blood, was half-led and half-carried into the ranch house.
The Señor Don Pedro Gonzales a year before had journeyed into Paradise,
from the effects of an attack of mountain fever, aggravated by too
copious use of mescal, and left his ranch houses and corral, his two
hundred mules and horses, his two thousand cattle, his brand of G on a
triangle, and his rancho Santa Ysbel to his señora, the Donna Maria,
who, with her family, continued to occupy the place.
Messengers dispatched to Tucson returned with physicians, who cut out
the arrow and found that the wound was severe, and its result might be
fatal. They agreed that for Morning to endeavor to travel with such a
wound would be simply suicide, and that he must not attempt to leave the
shelter and care which the hospitable Gonzales family were glad to
accord him.