The general’s plans had apparently worked out all right, when for no especial reason, as far as Arizona could understand, the management of the reservations was changed from the Military Department of Arizona to the civilian agents appointed by the Indian Bureau at Washington. The soldiers were to be retained only as guards and not as instructors.
The Indian Bureau started in to move the Apaches about. That had been tried two years before, when in New Mexico Chief Victorio’s Warm Spring Apaches had been ordered from the Cañada Alamosa to the hated Tularosa tract. But General Howard had obtained from the President permission for them to live again at their beloved Cottonwood Canyon.
In the summer of 1874 it was reported that the Camp Verde Indians were to be taken over to the San Carlos reservation. The Camp Verde lands were desired by the white people.
General Crook had much opposed this scheme. He was powerless, but he sent a protest to the War Department, saying:
There are now on the Verde reservation about fifteen hundred Indians; they have been among the worst in Arizona; but if the Government keeps its promise to them that it shall be their home for all time, there will be no difficulty in keeping them at peace, and engaged in peaceful pursuits. I sincerely hope that the interests that are now at work to deprive these Indians of this reservation will be defeated; but if they succeed, the responsibility of turning these fifteen hundred Apaches loose upon the settlers of Arizona should rest where it belongs.
All that winter of 1874–1875 the general (who had given his word) and Chief Chalipun strove against the threatened change to the San Carlos reservation. But it was of no avail.
In the spring of 1875 the general had been transferred to the Department of the Platte, with headquarters at Omaha, Nebraska. He had pacified the Snakes in the Northwest and the Apaches in the Southwest; now he was needed to subdue the bold-riding Sioux and Cheyennes of the great northern plains.
He took with him Lieutenant John G. Bourke, chief of staff, and other officers whom Jimmie so well knew. Tom Moore, chief packer, was to follow with the best of the pack-trains. The Third Cavalry already was in the north; and the Fifth Cavalry was soon to go.
“Cluke has been sent away. The Apaches have lost their best friend,” mourned Chief Chalipun; and submitted to being removed. So the Yavapais and the Apache-Yumas at Camp Verde left their ditch and fields, and went to a strange region—that of San Carlos.
Young Second Lieutenant George O. Eaton, of the Fifth Cavalry, was the only man whom they would trust, to take them over. Even at that, on the way they had a fight among themselves, and eighteen were killed and fifty wounded.
The White Mountains were moved, next, down to the San Carlos. Their reservation was to be closed.
Whatever the reasons of the Indian Bureau, Chiefs Pedro, Pi-to-ne and others objected bitterly.
“These are our lands,” asserted Chief Pedro. “They were promised to us by the great one-armed soldier-captain, Howard. When I went to Washington, our White Father there told me again that if we were good, these should be our lands forever. We have been good. We have done as we were asked to do. We have raised more crops than all the other Apaches put together. We have helped the soldiers fight our brothers. We are contented here. But we are mountain Indians and we cannot live down there in the low country where the water is bad and the air is hot. The Pinals and the Arivaipas are not friendly to us, and the Yavapai ways are not our ways.”
Finally eighteen hundred of them were herded down to the San Carlos. Some hid out, and after a time many stole back from the San Carlos. The soldiers at Camp Apache permitted them to stay.
The next year, 1876, the Chiricahua reservation was broken up. It had no soldiers and no Indian police, and was too near the border. Whiskey-sellers and outlaw Apaches sneaked in, but Taza said that if the American government would help him he could keep the bad people out.
“Why does Washington punish good people on account of bad people?” he asked, when told that the Chiricahuas must go.
At last, with about three hundred of his Chiricahuas, he went to the San Carlos. Geronimo agreed to go, too; but he and Chief Whoa, who had come in from Mexico, and old Nana, and Nah-che, and four hundred others, ran off into Mexico.
The next spring they returned to visit Victorio’s Warm Spring band at the Cottonwood Canyon reservation. Because of this, Chiefs Victorio and Geronimo were arrested, and all the Indians were started, under guard, for the San Carlos.
On the way Chief Victorio escaped, with forty warriors. After this he made war on the Americans until he was killed in 1880. He claimed that he had done no wrong, and that he never could trust the Americans again.
“The policy of concentration,” was what the Indian Bureau called its scheme to place all the Apaches upon the San Carlos reservation. “A policy of concentrated trouble,” Al Sieber said.
And that proved true.
Soon the San Carlos reservation contained about five thousand Indians, good and bad; some working, some lazy. There were Yavapais, Tontos, Coyotes, Apache-Yumas, Chiricahuas, Pinals, Arivaipas, Sierra Blanca (White Mountains), and even a few Hualpais. They had different habits. The Indian Bureau seemed to think that one Apache was just like another Apache, but General Crook had known better.
Whiskey was being smuggled in or manufactured; white miners and ranchers and prospectors were trespassing, and large sections of the reservation had been lopped off for other uses; the agents were accused of selling the Indians’ supplies outside, instead of distributing them properly or storing them; the Indians quarreled among themselves, and even some of the White Mountains had revolted.
So in the early morning of April, 1882, Jimmie Dunn, riding telegraph line up along the Gila River from Camp Thomas, had plenty to think about. Jimmie was a young man, now, with a limp (an honorable limp) but with a good hard head.
Camp Thomas had been established just at the southeast corner of the San Carlos reservation, or thirty-two miles up the Gila from the agency quarters. Jimmie’s business as line-man was to ride between Thomas and the second Camp Grant, and to see that the line was in order.
There was still constant trouble at San Carlos. The Apaches there had no faith in the Government. The good ones saw little reason in remaining good. Their only reward had been San Carlos, and they hated San Carlos. The Chiricahuas especially were restive. A long time ago Taza had died, while in Washington trying to talk for his people. Geronimo was head chief, and Nah-che was his partner in everything.
Parties frequently broke away from the reservation, for Mexico. At this very moment Chief Whoa and Nah-che were out again, with a band. They had fled to join old Nana, who at almost ninety years was living wild!
Geronimo and two hundred of his Chiricahuas, and Loco and the Warm Spring Apaches, were at the San Carlos, but likely enough they would run away, too, whenever they took the notion. They despised the Taza people as “squaws” and cowards; the other Indians, in turn, despised them as trouble-makers.
General Crook was in the north. He had conquered the Sioux and the Cheyennes, and was busy keeping them at peace.
General O. B. Willcox, of the Twelfth Infantry, commanded in Arizona. The Sixth Cavalry had replaced the Fifth Cavalry. But there were not enough soldiers, most of the white interpreters and scouts had been discharged, and the Apache police were supposed to maintain order upon the reservation.
The military telegraph had connected all the army posts. There was a civil telegraph, also—for the railroad had arrived.
The Southern Pacific Railroad crossed the southern part of the Territory, about by the old stage route. Through the northern part of the Territory the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad was crossing the great Mogollon Plateau, where General Crook had broken a trail in the campaign of ten years ago.
The telegraph line had puzzled the Apaches very much, as “big medicine.” They called it “pesh-bi-yal-ti”—“the talking wire.” But they were learning to interfere with it by cutting it, and inserting a little piece of rubber. Then the wire quit “talking.”
A sharp eye was required to see such a break, which usually was near a pole or tree up which the Indians had shinned. Jimmie had the eye. Also, he was not afraid. He was accustomed to the country, and to the Apaches.
Sometimes he saw parties of them. If they were running away, they were in too much of a hurry to stop. If they were hunting, they were friendly. However, the run-aways did not cross hereabouts. They took another route, further east, along the New Mexico western border.
As a rule, Jimmie rode with a partner; but to-day his partner was ill. Jimmie felt capable of repairing any break by himself, whether the Indians had made it, or whether the limb of a tree had fallen. The line had to be ridden, anyway.
The military road was very quiet. It stretched on, up hill and down, through timber and open parks, with the Gila River on the left, and far on the right, or the south, the dark Pinaleno Mountains, beyond which lay Camp Grant. Pretty soon the telegraph line would head down there. He would ride on until he met another rider, coming from Grant.
The San Carlos reservation was behind, to the northwest, on the other side of the Gila; and away in the north, beyond a high ridge, was the White Mountain reservation, with old Camp Apache that was now Fort Apache.
He was about ten miles out of Camp Thomas, and jogging easily. The only moving things that he had sighted were rabbits and squirrels, and once or twice a deer. But now when from a rise he looked across the Gila, he saw, in the distance to the north, a great cloud of dust.
That froze him. It appeared mighty suspicious. Many people, and horses or cattle, would stir up such a dust. In that case, Indians! This was not white man’s country.
If they were Indians, they were moving very fast, and striking east, like run-aways from San Carlos. Or was it cavalry, riding hard? But if it was cavalry, that meant Indians, too.
Well, he’d soon find out. The Gila, running bank full, was some distance below; the country beyond, approached by the dust, was open and rolling. He had a fine view. So sitting his horse, Jimmie whipped off his field-glasses and leveled them. Ash Flats sprang into the field; and here surged the brown dust, and under it, into the clear of a little swale, streamed a mass of hastily scurrying figures.
Indians, sure!