A very characteristic tragedy was perpetrated at Fort Bowie while I was there, by Cachees's band of Chi-ri-ca-hui Apaches.
It is only necessary here to say a few words about the remaining subtribes -- the Coyoteros, Pinals, and Tontos. Very little is known about themselves, far too much about their ravages. Their numbers are variously estimated; but the general belief is that they are not numerous. They occupy the centre of the Apache country, and the few attempts as yet made to "clear them out" have resulted in complete failure. The commander at Camp Grant told me that two years ago he made a raid into their country, but before he had gone many miles he found that his enemies were gathering around him in such numbers that his small force of fifty soldiers had to beat a rapid retreat. One of our parties had a terrible fight with the Tonto Apaches in Northern Arizona.
The favourite field for plunder during the last century has been Northern Sonora. The Apaches seem never to have lived there; bat their custom was to descend in bands along the whole length of the Pina-leno and Chi-ri-ca-hui Mountains, which, so to speak, form a bridge 200 miles long across the Madre plateau from the mountains north of the Rio Gila to the Sierra Madre of Mexico.
The Spaniards protected their outlying provinces from these hordes by a complete system of military posts from San Antonio, in Texas, to the Pacific. These were : -- along the Rio Grande, the Presidio de Rio Grande, San Carlos, Presidio deiNorte, and San Eleazario; across the state of Chihuahua, Carrizal, Cayome, Galeana, and Janos; and across Northern Sonora followed, in close succession, the Presidios of Babispe, Fronteras, Bacuachi, Santa Cruz, and Tubac, reaching to the outskirts of Papago country and the Sonora desert. Thus the Spanish miners and rancheros were protected, and the country south of these limits became rich in flocks, herds, and productive mines, while the population increased with great rapidity. But as the power of Spain declined, and the central government at the city of Mexico degenerated into a chaos of contending factions, the troops which garrisoned these frontier stations were gradually withdrawn, the grand military system, which had so effectually done its work, was allowed to fall into decay, and most of the presidios were relinquished altogether.
The Apaches were not long in discovering the weakness of their wealthy neighbours, and year by year their raids became more numerous, and their ravages more destructive. At first the stock of the outlying rancheros fell a prey to the enemy; and although probably but a small proportion of the vast herds which formerly occupied the rich grazing-regions of North-eastern Sonora and Northern Chihuahua were really carried off by the red men, the rancheros had to fly for their lives, and leave their cattle to their fate. This accounts for the herds of wild cattle and horses which are still to be found in those districts. Then the miners began to be molested, their stock, chiefly mules, driven off, and they themselves so terrified that they could not been induced to remain. When the country districts were cleared, the little towns next formed the chief object for attack. The Apaches would lie concealed for days, until an opportune moment had arrived* for capturing the cattle and plundering the place. The people at last became so terrified that, if they heard of a band of Apaches fifty miles off, they very frequently left everything and fled. Against such an enemy they were almost powerless; for the mountain-fastnesses from which he came lay far away to the north, and anything approaching an open fight was always avoided by him.
This state of things, in fine, going on year after year, has entirely depopulated that country. Its ruin was almost complete before the treaty of 1854 had finally settled the question of boundary-line between Mexico and the United States; but one of the chief stipulations of the treaty was that the latter government should keep the Apaches in their own country, and prevent them from making any more raids into Mexican territory. Although this was promised, it could not be accomplished; for the United States military have, up to the present time, been almost powerless in their attempts either to " wipe out" or to restrain these marauding hordes. They have, as we shall see in many of the incidents to be related, neither protected their own subjects on their own soil, nor sheltered the helpless Mexicans across the border.
But the Apaches do not lay waste Northern Sonora as they formerly did, chiefly because there is now nothing to plunder ; all is desolation. Destiny, however, seems to be doing what the government has failed to do; it is destroying the Apache nation. Although very few are yearly killed in fight, and the white man has not as yet penetrated into the heart of their country, still they are dying out fast ; already the total population, as far as it can be estimated, is so small as to appear at first to be beneath our notice; but the scalp of many a brave settler will yet be taken before these blood-thirsty savages are crushed.
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adapted from A. W. Bell
"On the Native Races of New Mexico"
1869 (Journal of the Ethnological Society of London)
