Apache Raid 3 The white army of the United States is a much better body of officers and men than a critical and censorious public gives it credit for being. It represents intelligence of a high order, and a spirit of devotion to duty worthy of unbounded praise; but it does not represent the acuteness of the savage races. It cannot follow the trail like a dog on the scent. It may be brave and well-disciplined, but its members cannot tramp or ride, as the case may be, from forty to seventy-five miles in a day, without water, under a burning sun. No civilized army can do that. It is one of the defects of civilized training that man develops new wants, awakens new necessities, becomes, in a word, more and more a creature of luxury. Take the Apache Indian under the glaring sun of Mexico. He quietly peels off all his clothing and enjoys the fervor of the day more than otherwise. He may not be a great military genius, but he is inured to all sorts of fatigue, and will be hilarious and jovial when the civilized man is about to die of thirst. Prominent among these scouts was of course first of all Peaches/ the captive guide. He was one of the handsomest men, physically, to be found in the world. He never knew what it was to be tired, cross, or out of humour. His knowledge of the topography of Northern Sonora was remarkable, and his absolute veracity and fidelity in all bis dealings a notable feature in his character. With him might be mentioned Alchise, Mickey Free/ Severiano, Nockie- cholli, Nott, and dozens of others, all tried and true men, experienced in warfare and de voted to the general whose standard they fol lowed. TKOM Willcox to San Bernardino Springs, by the road the wagons followed, is an even 100 miles. The march thither, through a most excellent grazing country, was made in five days, by which time the command was joined by Captain Emmet Crawford, Third Cavalry, with more than 100 additional Apache scouts and several trains of pack-mules. San Bernardino Springs break out from the ground upon the Boundary Line and flow south into the Yaqui River, of which the San Bernardino River is the extreme head. These springs yielded an abundance of water for all our needs, and at one time had refreshed thousands of head of cattle, which have since disappeared under the attrition of constant warfare with the Apaches. The few days spent at San Bernardino were days of constant toil and labor; from the first streak of dawn until far into the night the task of organizing and arranging went on. Telegrams were dispatched to the Mexican generals notifying them that the American troops would eave promptly by the date agreed upon, and at last the Indian scouts began their war- dances, and continued them without respite from each sunset until the next sunrise. In a conference with General Crook they informed him of their anxiety to put an end to the war and bring peace to Arizona, so that the white men and Apaches could live and work side by side. By the 29th of April all preparations were complete. Baggage had been cut down to a minimum. Every officer and man was allowed to carry the clothes on his back, one blanket and forty rounds of ammunition. Officers were ordered to mess with the packers and on the same food issued to soldiers and Indian scouts. One hundred and sixty rounds of extra ammunition and rations of hard-bread, coffee and bacon, for sixty days, were carried on pack- mules. At this moment General Sherman tele graphed to General Crook that he must not cross the Mexican boundary in pursuit of Indians, except in strict accord with the terms of the treaty, without defining exactly what those terms meant. Crook replied, acknowledging receipt of these instructions and saying that he would respect treaty stipulations. On Tuesday, May 1st, 1883, the expedition crossed the boundary into Mexico. Its exact composition was as follows: General George Crook in command; Captain John G. Bourke, Third Cavalry, acting adjutant-general; Lieu enant G. S. Febiger, engineer officer, aide-de camp; Captain Chaffee, Sixth Cavalry, with Lieutenants West and Forsyth, and forty-two enlisted men of I company of that regiment; Doctor Andrews, Private A. F. Harmer of the General Service, and 193 Indian scouts, under Captain Emmet Crawford, Third Cavalry, Lieutenant Mackey, Third Cavalry, and Gate- wood, Sixth Cavalry, with whom were Al. Zeiber, Mclntosh, Mickey Free, Severiano, and Sam Bowman, as interpreters. The pack-mules, for purposes of efficient management, were divided into five trains, each with its complement of skilled packers. These trains were under charge of Monach, Hopkins, Stanfield, Long Jim Cook, and Short Jim Cook. Each packer was armed with carbine and revolver, for self -protection, but nothing could be expected of them, in the event of an attack, beyond looking out for the animals. Consequently the effective fighting strength of the command was a little over fifty white men officers and soldiers and not quite 200 Apache scouts, representing the various bands, Chiricahua, WhiteMountain, Yuma, Mojave, and Tonto. The first rays of the sun were beaming upon the Eastern hills as we swung into our saddles, and, amid a chorus of goodbyes and God-blessyous from those left behind, pushed down the hot and sandy valley of the San Bernardino, past the mouth of Guadalupe canon, to near the confluence of Elias Creek, some twenty miles. Here camp was made on the banks of a pellucid stream, under the shadow of graceful walnut and ash trees. The Apache scouts had scoured the country to the front and on both flanks, and returned loaded with deer and wild turkeys, the latter being run down and caught in the bushes. One escaped from its captors and started through camp on a full jump, pursued by the Apaches, who, upon re-catching it,promptly twisted its head off. The Apaches were in excellent spirits, the medicine men having repeated with emphasis the prediction that the expedition was to be a grand success. One of the most influential of them a mere boy, who carried the most sacred medicine was especially positive in his views, and, unlike most prophets,backed them up with a bet of $40. On May 2, 1883, breakfasted at 4 A.M. The train Monachs with which we took meals was composed equally of Americans and Mexicans. So, when the cook spread his canvas on the ground, one heard such expressions as Tantito* zucarito quiero; Sirve pasar el jdrdbe; Pose rebanada de pan; Otra gotita mas de cafe, quite as frequently as their English equivalents, Id like a little more sugar/ Please pass the sirup/ Hand me a slice of bread/ A little drop of coffee. Close by, the scouts consumed their meals, and with more silence, yet not so silently but that their calls for inchi (salt), ikon (flour), pezd-a (frying-pan), and other articles, could be plainly heard. Martin, the cook, deserves some notice. He was not, as he himself admitted, a French cook by profession. His early life had been passed in the more romantic occupation of driving an ore-wagon between Willcox and Globe, and, to quote his own proud boast, he could hold down a sixteen-mule team with any outfit this side the Rio Grande. But what he lacked in culinary knowledge he more than made up in strength and agility. He was not less than six feet two in his socks, and built like a young Hercules. He was gentle- natured, too, and averse to fighting. Such, at least, was the opinion I gathered from a remark he made the first evening I was thrown into his society. His eyes somehow were fixed on mine, while he said quietly, If theres anybody here dont like the grub, Ill kick a lung out of him! I was just about suggesting that a couple of pounds less saleratus in the bread and a couple of gallons less water in the coffee would be grateful to my sybarite palate; but, after this conversation, I reflected that the fewer remarks I made the better would be the chances of my enjoying the rest of the trip; so I said nothing. Martin, I believe, is now in Chihuahua, and I assert from the depths of an outraged stomach, that a better man or a worse cook never thumped a mule or turned a flapjack. The march was continued down the San Bernardino until we reached its important affluent, the Bavispe, up which we made our way until the first signs of habitancy were encountered in the squalid villages of Bavispe, Basaraca, and Huachinera. The whole country was a desert. On each hand were the ruins of depopulated and aban doned hamlets, destroyed by the Apaches. The bottom-lands of the San Bernardino, once smil ing with crops of wheat and barley, were now covered with a thickly-matted jungle of semi- tropical vegetation. The river banks were choked by dense brakes of cane of great size and thickness. The narrow valley was hemmed in by rugged and forbidding mountains, gashed and slashed with a thousand ravines, to cross which exhausted both strength and patience. The foot-hills were covered with chevaux defrise of Spanish bayonet, mescal, and cactus. The lignum-vitse flaunted its plumage of crim son flowers, much like the fuchsia, but growing in clusters. The grease-wood, ordinarily so homely, here assumed a garniture of creamy blossoms, rivaling the gaudy dahlia-like cups upon the nopal, and putting to shame the modest tendrils pendent from the branches of the mesquite. The sun glared down pitilessly, wearing out the poor mules, which had as much as they could do to scramble over the steep hills, com posed of a nondescript accumulation of lava, sandstone, porphyry, and limestone, half- rounded by the action of water, and so loosely held together as to slip apart and roll away the instant the feet of animals or men touched them. When they were not slipping over loose stones or climbing rugged hills, they were breaking their way through jungles of thorny vegetation, which tore their quivering flesh. One of the mules, falling from the rocks, im paled itself upon a mesquite branch, and had to be killed. Through all this the Apache scouts trudged without a complaint, and with many a laugh and jest. Each time camp was reached they showed themselves masters of the situation. they would gather the saponaceous roots of the yucca and Spanish bayonet, to make use of them in cleaning their long, black hair, or cut sections of the bamboo-like cane and make pipes for smoking, or four-holed flutes, which emitted a weird, Chinese sort of music, responded to with melodious chatter by countless birds perched in the shady seclusion of ash and cotton-wood. Those scouts who were not on watch gave themselves up to the luxury of the ta-a-chi, or sweat-bath. To construct these baths, a dozen willow or cotton-wood branches are stuck in the ground and the upper extremities, united to form a dome-shaped framework, upon which are laid blankets to prevent the escape of heat Three or four large rocks are heated and placed in the centre, the Indians arranging themselves around these rocks and bending over them. Silicious boulders are invariably selected, and not calcareous the Apaches being sufficiently familiar with rudimentary mineralogy to know that the latter will frequently crack and explode under intense heat. When it came to my time to enter the sweat- lodge I could see nothing but a network of arms and legs, packed like sardines. An extended experience with Broadway omnibuses assured me that there must always be room for one more. The smile of the medicine-man the master of ceremonies encouraged me to push in first an arm, then a leg, and, finally, my whole body. Thump! sounded the damp blanket as it fell against the frame-work and shut out all light and air. The conductor of affairs inside threw a handful of water on the hot rocks, and steam, on the instant, filled every crevice of the den. The heat was that of a bake-oven; breathing was well-nigh impossible. Sing/ said in English the Apache boy, Keet, whose legs and arms were sinuously intertwined with mine; sing heap; sleep moocho to-night; eat plenny dinna to-mollo/ The other bathers said that everybody must sing. I had to yield. My repertoire consists of but one song the lovely ditty Owe captains name is Murphy/* I gave them this with all the lung- power I had left, and was heartily encored; but I was too much exhausted to respond, and rushed out, dripping with perspiration, to plunge with my dusky comrades into the refreshing waters of the Bavispe, which had worn out for themselves tanks three to twenty feet deep. The effects of the bath were all that the Apaches had predicted a sound, refreshing sleep and increased appetite. The farther we got into Mexico the greater the desolation. The valley of the Bavispe, like that of the San Bernardino, had once been thickly populated; now all was wild and gloomy. Foot-prints indeed were plenty, but they were the fresh moccasin-tracks of Chiri-cahuas, who apparently roamed with immunity over all this solitude. There were signs, too, of Mexican travel; but in every case these were conductor* of pack-mules, guarded by companies of soldiers. Rattlesnakes were encountered with greater frequency both in camp and on the march. When found in camp the Apaches, from superstitious reasons, refrained from killing them, but let the white men do it. The vegetation remained much the same as that of Southern Arizona, only denser and larger. The cactus began to bear odorous flowers a species of night-blooming cereus and parrots of gaudy plumage flitted about camp, to the great joy of the scouts, who, catching two or three, tore the feathers from their bodies and tied them in their inky locks. Queenly humming-birds of sapphire hue darted from bush to bush and tree to tree. Every one felt that we were advancing into more torrid regions. However, by this were finely tanned and blistered, and the fervor of the sun was disregarded. The nights remained cool and refreshing throughout the trip, and, after the daily march or climb, soothed to the calmest rest On the 5th of May the column reached the feeble, broken-down towns of Bavispe and Basaraca. The condition of the inhabitants was deplorable. Superstition, illiteracy, and bad government had done their worst, and, even had not the Chiricahuas kept them in mortal terror, it is doubtful whether they would have had energy enough to profit by the natural ad vantages, mineral and agricultural, of their im mediate vicinity. The land appeared to be fertile and was well watered. Horses, cattle, and chickens throve; the cereals yielded an abundant return; and scarlet blossoms blushed in the waxy-green foliage of the pomegranate. Every man, woman, and child had gathered in the streets or squatted on the flat roofs of the adobe houses to welcome our approach with cordial acclamations. They looked like a grand national convention of scarecrows and rag pickers, their garments old and dingy, but no man so poor that he didnt own a gorgeous sombrero, with a snake-band of silver, or display a flaming sash of cheap red silk and wool. Those who had them displayed rainbow-hued serapes flung over the shoulders; those who had none went in their shirt-sleeves. The children were bright, dirty, and pretty; die women so closely enveloped in their rebozos that only one eye could be seen. They greeted our people with warmth, and offered to go with us to the mountains. With the volubility of parrots they began to describe a most blood thirsty fight recently had with the Chiricahuas, in which, of course, the Apaches had been completely and ignominiously routed, each Mexican having performed prodigies of valor on a par with those of Ajax. But at the same time they wouldnt go alone into their fields, only a quarter of a mile off, which were con stantly patroled by a detachment of twenty- five or thirty men of what was grandiloquently styled the National Guard. Peaches/* the guide, smiled quietly, but said nothing, when told of this latest annihilation of the Chiricahuas. General Crook, without a moments hesitancy, determined to keep on the trail farther into the Sierra Madre. The food of these wretched Mexicans was mainly atole, a weak flour-gruel resembling the paste used by our paper-hangers. Books they had none, and newspapers had not yet been heard of. Their only recreation was in religious festivals, occurring with commendable frequency. The churches themselves were in the last stages of dilapidation; the adobe exteriors showed dangerous indications of approaching dissolution, while the tawdry ornaments of the inside were foul and black with age, smoke, dust, and rain. I asked a small, open-mouthed boy to hold my horse for a moment until I had examined one of these edifices, which bore the elaborate title of the Temple of the Holy Sepulchre and our Lady of the Trance. This action evoked a eulogy from one of the bystanders: Thisman cant be an American, he must be a Christian, he sagely remarked; Tie speaks Castilian, and goes to church the first thing. It goes without saying that they have no mails in that country. What they call the post- office of Basaraca is in the store of the town. The store had no goods for sale, and the post- office had no stamps. The postmaster didnt know when the mail would go; it used to go every eight days, but now quien sabe? Yes, he would send our letters the first opportunity. The price? Oh! the price? did the caballeros want to know how much? Well, for Mexican
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 15:55:41 +0000