Читать книгу On The Border With Crook - John Gregory Bourke - Страница 9

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TUCSON INCIDENTS—THE “FIESTAS”—THE RUINED MISSION CHURCH OF SAN XAVIER DEL BAC—GOVERNOR SAFFORD—ARIZONA MINES—APACHE RAIDS—CAMP GRANT MASSACRE—THE KILLING OF LIEUTENANT CUSHING.

THE Feast of San Juan brought out some very curious customs. The Mexican gallants, mounted on the fieriest steeds they could procure, would call at the homes of their “dulcineas,” place the ladies on the saddle in front, and ride up and down the streets, while disappointed rivals threw fire-crackers under the horses’ feet. There would be not a little superb equestrianism displayed; the secret of the whole performance seeming to consist in the nearness one could attain to breaking his neck without doing so.

There is another sport of the Mexicans which has almost if not quite died out in the vicinity of Tucson, but is still maintained in full vigor on the Rio Grande: running the chicken—“correr el gallo.” In this fascinating sport, as it looked to be for the horsemen, there is or was an old hen buried to the neck in the sand, and made the target for each rushing rider as he swoops down and endeavors to seize the crouching fowl. If he succeed, he has to ride off at the fastest kind of a run to avoid the pursuit of his comrades, who follow and endeavor to wrest the prize from his hands, and the result, of course, is that the poor hen is pulled to pieces.

Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to describe for the benefit of my readers the scenes presenting themselves during the “Funccion of San Agostin” in Tucson, or that of San Francisco in the Mexican town of Madalena, a hundred and twenty-five miles, more or less, to the south; the music, the dancing, the gambling, the raffles, the drinking of all sorts of beverages strange to the palate of the American of the North; the dishes, hot and cold, of the Mexican cuisine, the trading going on in all kinds of truck brought from remote parts of the country, the religious ceremonial brilliant with lights and sweet with music and redolent with incense.

SPOTTED TAIL.

For one solid week these “funcciones lasted,” and during the whole time, from early morn till dewy eye, the thump, thump of the drum, the plinky, plink, plink of the harp, and the fluky-fluke of the flute accented the shuffling feet of the unwearied dancers. These and events like them deserve a volume by themselves. I hope that what has already been written may be taken as a series of views, but not the complete series of those upon which we looked from day to day. No perfect picture of early times in Arizona and New Mexico could be delineated upon my narrow canvas; the sight was distracted by strange scenes, the ears by strange sounds, many of each horrible beyond the wildest dreams. There was the ever-dreadful Apache on the one hand to terrify and torment, and the beautiful ruin of San Xavier on the other to bewilder and amaze.

Of all the mission churches within the present limits of the United States, stretching in the long line from San Antonio, Texas, to the presidio of San Francisco, and embracing such examples as San Gabriel, outside of Los Angeles, and the mission of San Diego, there is not one superior, and there are few equal, to San Xavier del Bac, the church of the Papago Indians, nine miles above Tucson, on the Santa Cruz. It needs to be seen to be appreciated, as no literal description, certainly none of which I am capable, can do justice to its merits and beauty. What I have written here is an epitome of the experience and knowledge acquired during years of service there and of familiarity with its people and the conditions in which they lived.

My readers should bear in mind that during the whole period of our stay in or near Tucson we were on the go constantly, moving from point to point, scouting after an enemy who had no rival on the continent in coolness, daring, and subtlety. To save repetition, I will say that the country covered by our movements comprehended the region between the Rio Azul in New Mexico, on the east, to Camp MacDowell, on the west; and from Camp Apache, on the north, to the Mexican pueblos of Santa Cruz and Madalena, far to the south. Of all this I wish to say the least possible, my intention being to give a clear picture of Arizona as it was before the arrival of General Crook, and not to enter into unnecessary details, in which undue reference must necessarily be had to my own experiences.

But I do wish to say that we were for a number of weeks accompanied by Governor Safford, at the head of a contingent of Mexican volunteers, who did very good service in the mountains on the international boundary, the Huachuca, and others. We made camp one night within rifle-shot of what has since been the flourishing, and is now the decayed, mining town of Tombstone. On still another evening, one of our Mexican guides—old Victor Ruiz, one of the best men that ever lived on the border—said that he was anxious to ascertain whether or not his grandfather’s memory was at fault in the description given of an abandoned silver mine, which Ruiz was certain could not be very far from where we were sitting. Naturally enough, we all volunteered to go with him in his search, and in less than ten minutes we had reached the spot where, under a mass of earth and stone, was hidden the shaft of which our guide had spoken.

The stories that have always circulated in Arizona about the fabulous wealth of her mineral leads as known to the Spaniards have been of such a character as to turn the brain of the most conservative. The Plancha de la Plata, where a lump of virgin silver weighing over two thousand pounds was exhumed; the “Thorn Mine,” or the “Lost Cabin Mine,” in the Tonto Basin; the “Salero,” where the padre in charge, wishing to entertain his bishop in proper style, and finding that he had no salt-cellars ready, ordered certain of the Indians to dig out enough ore to make a solid silver basin, which was placed in all its crudity before the superior—all these were ringing in our ears, and made our task of moving the rocks and débris a very light one.

Disappointment attended our discovery; the assays of the ore forwarded to San Francisco were not such as to stimulate the work of development; the rock was not worth more than seventeen dollars a ton, which in those years would not half pay the cost of reduction of silver.

We were among the very first to come upon the rich ledges of copper which have since furnished the mainstay to the prosperity of the town of Clifton, on the border of New Mexico, and we knocked off pieces of pure metal, and brought them back to Tucson to show to the people there, on returning from our scouts in the upper Gila.

On one occasion the Apaches ran off the herd of sheep belonging to Tully, Ochoa & DeLong, which were grazing in the foot-hills of the Santa Teresa not two miles from town. The young Mexican who was on duty as “pastor” kept his ears open for the tinkle of the bell, and every now and then would rouse himself from his doze to look around the mesquite under which he sat, to ascertain that his flock was all right. Gradually, the heat of the day became more and more oppressive, and the poor boy, still hearing the tintinnabulation, was in a delightful day-dream, thinking of his supper, perhaps, when he half-opened his eyes, and saw leering at him a full-grown Apache, who had all the while been gently shaking the bell taken an hour or two before from the neck of the wether which, with the rest of the flock, was a good long distance out of sight behind the hills, near the “Punta del Agua.” The boy, frightened out of his wits, screamed lustily, and the Apache, delighted by his terror, flung the bell at his head, and then set off at a run to gain the hills where his comrades were. The alarm soon reached town, and the sheep were recovered before midnight, and by dawn the next day were back on their old pasturage, excepting the foot-sore and the weary, too weak to travel.

Our scouting had its share of incidents grave, gay, melancholy, ludicrous; men killed and wounded; Apaches ditto; and the usual amount of hard climbing by day, or marching by night upon trails which sometimes led us upon the enemy, and very often did not.

There was one very good man, Moore, if I remember his name correctly, who died of the “fever”—malaria—and was carried from the “Grassy Plain” into old Camp Goodwin, on the Gila, near the Warm Spring. No sooner had we arrived at Goodwin than one of the men—soldier or civilian employee, I do not know now—attempted to commit suicide, driven to despair by the utter isolation of his position; and two of our own company—Sergeant John Mott and one other, both excellent men—dropped down, broken up with the “fever,” which would yield to nothing but the most heroic treatment with quinine.

In a skirmish-with the Apaches near the head of Deer Creek, one of our men, named Shire, was struck by a rifle ball in the knee-cap, the ball ranging downward, and lodging in the lower leg near the ankle bone. We were sore distressed. There was no doctor with the little command, a criminal neglect for which Cushing was not responsible, and there was no guide, as Manuel Duran, who generally went out with us, was lying in Tucson seriously ill. No one was hurt badly enough to excite apprehension excepting Shire, whose wound was not bleeding at all, the hemorrhage being on the inside.

Sergeant Warfield, Cushing, and I stayed up all night talking over the situation, and doing so in a low tone, lest Shire should suspect that we had not been telling the truth when we persuaded him to believe that he had been hit by a glancing bullet, which had benumbed the whole leg but had not inflicted a very serious wound.

Our Mexican packers were called into consultation, and the result was that by four in the morning, as soon as a cup of coffee could be made, I was on my way over to the Aravaypa Cañon at the head of a small detachment in charge of the wounded man, who was firmly strapped to his saddle. We got along very well so long as we were on the high hills and mountains, where the horse of the sufferer could be led, and he himself supported by friendly hands on each side. To get down into the chasm of the Aravaypa was a horse of altogether a different color. The trail was extremely steep, stony, and slippery, and the soldier, heroic as he was, could not repress a groan as his horse jarred him by slipping under his weight on the wretched path. At the foot of the descent it was evident that something else in the way of transportation would have to be provided, as the man’s strength was failing rapidly and he could no longer sit up.

Lieutenant Cushing’s orders were for me to leave the party just as soon as I thought I could do so safely, and then ride as fast as the trail would permit to Camp Grant, and there get all the aid possible. It seemed to me that there could be no better time for hurrying to the post than the present, which found the detachment at a point where it could defend itself from the attack of any roving party of the enemy, and supplied with grass for the animals and fuel and water for the men.

Shire had fainted as I mounted and started with one of the men, Corporal Harrington, for the post, some twelve miles away. We did not have much more of the cañon to bother us, and made good speed all the way down the Aravaypa and into the post, where I hurriedly explained the situation and had an ambulance start up the cañon with blankets and other comforts, while in the post itself everything was made ready for the amputation in the hospital, which all knew to be a foregone conclusion, and a mounted party was sent to Tucson to summon Dr. Durant to assist in the operation.

Having done all this, I started back up the cañon and came upon my own detachment slowly making its way down. In another hour the ambulance had rolled up to the door of the hospital, and the wounded man was on a cot under the influence of anaesthetics. The amputation was made at the upper third of the thigh, and resulted happily, and the patient in due time recovered, although he had a close call for his life.

The winter of 1870 and the spring of 1871 saw no let up in the amount of scouting which was conducted against the Apaches. The enemy resorted to a system of tactics which had often been tried in the past and always with success. A number of simultaneous attacks were made at points widely separated, thus confusing both troops and settlers, spreading a vague sense of fear over all the territory infested, and imposing upon the soldiery an exceptional amount of work of the hardest conceivable kind.

Attacks were made in southern Arizona upon the stage stations at the San Pedro, and the Cienaga, as well as the one near the Picacho, and upon the ranchos in the Barbacomori valley, and in the San Pedro, near Tres Alamos. Then came the news of a fight at Pete Kitchen’s, and finally, growing bolder, the enemy drove off a herd of cattle from Tucson itself, some of them beeves, and others work-oxen belonging to a wagon-train from Texas. Lastly came the killing of the stage mail-rider, between the town and the Mission church of San Xavier, and the massacre of the party of Mexicans going down to Sonora, which occurred not far from the Sonoita.

One of the members of this last party was a beautiful young Mexican lady—Doña Trinidad Aguirre—who belonged to a very respectable family in the Mexican Republic, and was on her way back from a visit to relatives in Tucson.

That one so young, so beautiful and bright, should have been snatched away by a most cruel death at the hands of savages, aroused the people of all the country south of the Gila, and nothing was talked of, nothing was thought of, but vengeance upon the Apaches.

Cushing all this time had kept our troop moving without respite. There were fights, and ambuscades, and attacks upon “rancherias,” and night-marches without number, several resulting in the greatest success. I am not going to waste any space upon these, because there is much of the same sort to come, and I am afraid of tiring out the patience of my readers before reaching portions of this book where there are to be found descriptions of very spirited engagements.

The trail of the raiders upon the ranch at the “Cienaga” (now called “Pantano” by the Southern Pacific Railroad people) took down into the “Mestinez,” or Mustang Mountains, so called from the fact that a herd of wild ponies were to be found there or not far off. They did not number more than sixty all told when I last saw them in 1870, and were in all probability the last herd of wild horses within the limits of the United States. In this range, called also the “Whetstone” Mountains, because there exists a deposit or ledge of the rock known as “novaculite” or whetstone of the finest quality, we came upon the half calcined bones of two men burned to death by the Apaches; and after marching out into the open valley of the San Pedro, and crossing a broad expanse covered with yucca and sage-brush, we came to a secluded spot close to the San José range, where the savages had been tearing up the letters contained in one of Uncle Sam’s mail-bags, parts of which lay scattered about.

When the work-oxen of the Texans were run off, the Apaches took them over the steepest, highest and rockiest part of the Sierra Santa Catalina, where one would not believe that a bird would dare to fly. We followed closely, guided by Manuel Duran and others, but progress was difficult and slow, on account of the nature of the trail. As we picked our way, foot by foot, we could discern the faintest sort of a mark, showing that a trail had run across there and had lately been used by the Apaches. But all the good done by that hard march was the getting back of the meat of the stock which the Apaches killed just the moment they reached the cañons under the Trumbull Peak. Two or three of the oxen were still alive, but so nearly run to death that we killed them as an act of mercy.

Three of our party were hurt in the mêlée, and we scored three hits, one a beautiful shot by Manuel, who killed his man the moment he exposed himself to his aim, and two wounded, how seriously we could not tell, as by the time we had made our way to the top of the, rocks the enemy had gone with their wounded, leaving only two pools of blood to show where the bullets had taken effect.

The trail leading to the place where the Apaches had taken refuge was so narrow that one of our pack-mules lost his footing and fell down the precipice, landing upon the top of a tree below and staying there for a full minute, when the branches broke under him and let him have another fall, breaking his back and making it necessary to blow his brains out as soon as the action was over and we could take time to breathe.

Then followed the fearful scene of bloodshed known as the “Camp Grant Massacre,” which can only be referred to—a full description would require a volume of its own. A small party of Apaches had presented themselves at Camp Grant, and made known to the commanding officer that they and their friends up in the Aravaypa Cañon were willing and anxious to make peace and to stay near the post, provided they could get food and clothing. They were told to return with their whole tribe, which they soon did, and there is no good reason for supposing that the greater portion of them were not honest in their professions and purposes. The blame of what was to follow could not be laid at the doors of the local military authorities, who exerted themselves in every way to convey information of what had happened to the Department headquarters, then at Los Angeles. As previously stated, there was no mode of communication in Arizona save the stage, which took five days to make the trip from Tucson to Los Angeles, and as many more for a return trip, there being no telegraph in existence.

Weeks and weeks were frittered away in making reports which should have reached headquarters at once and should have been acted upon without the delay of a second. The story was circulated and generally believed, that the first report was returned to the officer sending it, with instructions to return it to Department headquarters “properly briefed,” that is, with a synopsis of its contents properly written on the outer flap of the communication when folded. There was no effort made, as there should have been made, to separate the peaceably disposed Indians from those who still preferred to remain out on the warpath, and as a direct consequence of this neglect ensued one of the worst blots in the history of American civilization, the “Camp Grant Massacre.”

A party of more than one hundred Papago Indians, from the village of San Xavier, led by a small detachment of whites and half-breed Mexicans from Tucson, took up the trail of one of the parties of raiders which had lately attacked the settlers and the peaceable Indians in the valley of the Santa Cruz. What followed is matter of history. The pursuing party claimed that the trails led straight to the place occupied by the Apaches who had surrendered at Camp Grant, and it is likely that this is so, since one of the main trails leading to the country of the Aravaypa and Gila bands passed under the Sierra Pinaleno, near the point in question. It was claimed further that a horse belonging to Don Leopoldo Carrillo was found in the possession of one of the young boys coming out of the village, and that some of the clothing of Doña Trinidad Aguirre was also found.

These stories may be true, and they may be after-thoughts to cover up and extenuate the ferocity of the massacre which spared neither age nor sex in its wrath, but filled the valley of the Aravaypa with dead and dying. The incident, one of the saddest and most terrible in our annals, is one over which I would gladly draw a veil. To my mind it indicated the weak spot in all our dealings with the aborigines, a defective point never repaired and never likely to be. According to our system of settling up the public lands, there are no such things as colonies properly so called. Each settler is free to go where he pleases, to take up such area as the law permits, and to protect himself as best he can. The army has always been too small to afford all the protection the frontier needed, and affairs have been permitted to drift along in a happy-go-lucky sort of a way indicative rather of a sublime faith in divine providence than of common sense and good judgment.

The settlers, in all sections of the West, have been representative of the best elements of the older States from which they set forth, but it is a well-known fact that among them have been a fair, possibly more than a fair, share of the reckless, the idle and the dissolute. On the other hand, among the savages, there have been as many young bloods anxious to win renown in battle as there have been old wise-heads desirous of preserving the best feeling with the new neighbors. The worst members of the two races are brought into contact, and the usual results follow; trouble springs up, and it is not the bad who suffer, but the peaceably disposed on each side.

On the 5th day of May, 1871, Lieutenant Howard B. Cushing, Third Cavalry, with several civilians and three soldiers, was killed by the Chiricahua Apaches, under their famous chief “Cocheis,” at the Bear Springs, in the Whetstone Mountains, about thirty-five miles from Tucson and about the same distance to the east of old Camp Crittenden. Cushing’s whole force numbered twenty-two men, the larger part of whom were led into an ambuscade in the cañon containing the spring. The fight was a desperate one, and fought with courage and great skill on both sides. Our forces were surrounded before a shot had been fired; and it was while Cushing was endeavoring to lead his men back that he received the wounds which killed him. Had it not been for the courage and good judgment displayed by Sergeant John Mott, who had seen a great amount of service against the Apaches, not one of the command would have escaped alive out of the cañon.

Mott was in command of the rear-guard, and, in coming up to the assistance of Lieutenant Cushing, detected the Apaches moving behind a low range of hills to gain Cushing’s rear. He sent word ahead, and that induced Lieutenant Cushing to fall back.

After Cushing dropped, the Apaches made a determined charge and came upon our men hand to hand. The little detachment could save only those horses and mules which were ridden at the moment the enemy made the attack, because the men who had dismounted to fight on foot were unable to remount, such was the impetuosity of the rush made by the Chiricahuas. There were enough animals to “ride and tie,” and Mott, by keeping up on the backbone of the hills running along the Barbacomori Valley, was enabled to reach Camp Crittenden without being surrounded or ambuscaded.

Inside of forty-eight hours there were three troops of cavalry en route to Crittenden, and in pursuit of the Apaches, but no good could be effected. Major William J. Ross, at that time in command of Camp Crittenden, was most energetic in getting word to the various military commands in the southern part of the country, as well as in extending every aid and kindness to the wounded brought in by Mott.

When the combined force had arrived at Bear Spring, there was to be seen every evidence of a most bloody struggle. The bodies of Lieutenant Cushing and comrades lay where they had fallen, stripped of clothing, which the Apaches always carried off from their victims. In all parts of the narrow little cañon were the carcasses of ponies and horses half-eaten by the coyotes and buzzards; broken saddles, saddle-bags, canteens with bullet-holes in them, pieces of harness and shreds of clothing scattered about, charred to a crisp in the flames which the savages had ignited in the grass to conceal their line of retreat.

Of how many Apaches had been killed, there was not the remotest suggestion to be obtained. That there had been a heavy loss among the Indians could be suspected from the signs of bodies having been dragged to certain points, and there, apparently, put on pony-back.

The Chiricahuas seemed to have ascended the cañon until they had attained the crest of the range in a fringe of pine timber; but no sooner did they pass over into the northern foot-hills than they broke in every direction, and did not re-unite until near our boundary line with Mexico, where their trail was struck and followed for several days by Major Gerald Russell of the Third Cavalry. They never halted until they had regained the depths of the Sierra Madre, their chosen haunt, and towards which Russell followed them so long as his broken-down animals could travel.

Of the distinguished services rendered to Arizona by Lieutenant Cushing, a book might well be written. It is not intended to disparage anybody when I say that he had performed herculean and more notable work, perhaps, than had been performed by any other officer of corresponding rank either before or since. Southern Arizona owed much to the gallant officers who wore out strength and freely risked life and limb in her defence—men of the stamp of Devin, C. C. Carr, Sanford, Gerald Russell, Winters, Harris, Almy, Carroll, McCleave, Kelly, and many others. They were all good men and true; but if there were any choice among them I am sure that the verdict, if left to those soldiers themselves, would be in favor of Cushing.

Standing on the summit of the Whetstone Range, which has no great height, one can see the places, or the hills overlooking them, where several other officers met their death at the hands of the same foe. To the west is Davidson’s Cañon, where the Apaches ambushed and killed Lieutenant Reid T. Stewart and Corporal Black; on the north, the cone of Trumbull overlooks the San Carlos Agency, where the brave Almy fell; to the northwest are the Tortolita hills, near which Miller and Tappan were killed in ambuscade, as already narrated; and to the east are the Chiricahua Mountains, in whose bosom rests Fort Bowie with its grewsome graveyard filled with such inscriptions as “Killed by the Apaches,” “Met his death at the hands of the Apaches,” “Died of wounds inflicted by Apache Indians,” and at times “Tortured and killed by Apaches.” One visit to that cemetery was warranted to furnish the most callous with nightmares for a month.