CHIRICAHUA APACHE 1850-1906

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• published: 14 Apr 2012
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Cochise, Eskiminzin, Eskiminzin's wife, Mickey Free's daughter, Pacer,Victorio, Taza, Alchise, Naiche, Chato, Loco, loco's son Mangas Coloradas, Nana, Geronimo, Ulzana, Geronimo's wifes and children, and General Crook. Although they had lived peaceably with most Americans in the New Mexico Territory up to about 1860, the Chiricahua became increasingly hostile to American encroachment in the Southwest after a number of provocations had occurred between them. In 1835, Mexico had placed a bounty on Apache scalps which further inflamed the situation. In 1837, the American John (aka James) Johnson invited the Chihenne in the area to trade with his party (near the mines at Santa Rita del Cobre, New Mexico). When they gathered around a blanket on which pinole (a ground corn flour) had been placed for them, Johnson and his men opened fire on the Chihenne with rifles and a concealed cannon loaded with scrap iron, glass, and a length of chain). They killed about 20 Apache, including the chief Juan José Compá. Mangas Coloradas is said to have witnessed this attack, which inflamed his and other Apache warriors' desires for vengeance for many years. The historian Rex W. Strickland argued that the Apache had come to the meeting with their own intentions of attacking Johnson's party, but were taken by surprise. After the conclusion of the US/Mexican War and the Gadsden Purchase in the late 1840s, Americans began to enter the territory in greater numbers. This increased the opportunities for incidents and misunderstandings. In 1851, miners tied Mangas Coloradas to a tree and whipped him after he tried to convince them to move away from the Pinos Altos, New Mexico area he loved.[10] His followers and related Chiricahua bands were incensed by the treatment of their respected chief. Mangas had been just as great a chief in his prime (during the 1830s and 1840s) as Cochise was then becoming. A few years later, in 1861 the US Army killed some of Cochise's relatives near Apache Pass, in what became known as the Bascom Affair. The Chiricahua called the incident "cut the tent." In 1863, American soldiers killed Mangas Colorados as he entered their camp to negotiate a peace. His body was mutilated by the soldiers, and his people were enraged by his murder. The Chiricahua began to consider the Americans as "enemies we go against them." From that time, they waged almost constant war against US settlers and the Army for the next 23 years. In 1872, General Oliver O. Howard, with the help of Thomas Jeffords, succeeded in negotiating a peace with Cochise. The US established a Chiricahua Apache Reservation with Jeffords as US Agent, near Fort Bowie, Arizona Territory. It remained open for about 4 years, during which the chief Cochise died (from natural causes). In 1877, about three years after Cochise's death, the US moved the Chiricahua and some other Apache bands to the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation, still in Arizona. They made a stronghold in the Chiricahua Mountains, part of which is now inside Chiricahua National Monument, and across the intervening Willcox Playa to the northeast, in the Dragoon Mountains (all in southeastern Arizona). In late frontier times, the Chiricahua ranged from San Carlos and the White Mountains of Arizona, to the adjacent mountains of southwestern New Mexico around what is now Silver City, and down into the mountain sanctuaries of the Sierra Madre (of northern Mexico). There they often joined with their Nednai Apache kin. General George Crook, then General Miles' troops, aided by Apache scouts from other groups, pursued the exiles until they gave up. Mexico and the United States had negotiated an agreement allowing their troops in pursuit of the Apache to continue into each other's territories. The final 34 hold-outs, including Geronimo and Naiche, surrendered to units of General Miles' forces in September 1886. From Bowie Station, Arizona, they were entrained, along with most of the other remaining Chiricahua (as well as the Army's Apache scouts), and exiled to Fort Marion, Florida. After a number of deaths of Chiricahua at the Fort Marion prison near St. Augustine, Florida, the survivors were moved, first to Alabama, and later to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Geronimo's surrender ended the Indian Wars in the United States. Eventually, the surviving Chiricahua prisoners were moved to the Fort Sill military reservation in Oklahoma. In August 1912, by an act of the U.S. Congress, they were released from their prisoner of war status after they were thought to be no further threat. Although promised land at Fort Sill, they met resistance from local non-Apache. They were given the choice to remain at Fort Sill or to relocate to the Mescalero reservation near Ruidoso, New Mexico. Two-thirds of the group, 183 people, elected to go to New Mexico, while 78 remained in Oklahoma. Frederico Custodio Ribeiro