The North American Indian | Page 7

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 José, 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, Nané, 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]

The Bathing Pool - Apache
From Copyright Photograph 1906 by E.S. Curtis
Practically all the Apache were assembled in Arizona in 1865, and waged hostilities with
renewed energy for the next five years, being joined by the Walapai in 1868. The close of
this period found the situation quite as unsettled as ever.
On June 4, 1871, General George Crook was placed in command. Crook was not an
exterminator. In the fall of the same year he said:
"I think that the Apache is painted in darker colors than he deserves, and that his
villainies arise more from a misconception of facts than from his being worse than other
Indians. Living in a country the natural products of which will not support him, he has
either to cultivate the soil or steal, and as our vacillating policy satisfies him we are afraid
of him, he chooses the latter, also as requiring less labor and being more congenial to his
natural instincts. I am satisfied that a sharp, active campaign against him would not only
make him one of the best Indians in the country, but it would also save millions of dollars
to the Treasury, and the lives of many innocent whites and Indians."
Crook's policy was one of peace, but he made it plain to the Indians that if they did not
agree to peace when liberal terms were offered, they could expect a campaign against
them hitherto unequalled in vigor. It was thus that by 1873 the Tontos, Coyoteros, and
Apache-Mohave were subdued and the backbone of Apache resistance broken.
The Apache-Mohave and the Tontos were placed on a reservation on the Rio Verde; the
Coyoteros were taken to the White Mountain district near