Today in Manhunting History -- January 11, 1886: The Death of Captain Crawford

A heavy fog sat upon Crawford’s camp the next morning, January 11. Just as the light of dawn made the terrain around them visible, the sentries reported a large body of troops approaching. One scout, believing the oncoming party to be Major Davis and his scouts, called to the approaching force in Apache.

But they were not Apache scouts.

At the sound of Apache voices, the force of 150 Mexican irregulars opened fire on Crawford’s camp. Bullets hissed through the air, driving the officers and scouts into the rocks for cover. Crawford ordered his men to hold their fire while he and the other officers shouted in Spanish, identifying themselves as American soldiers and waving handkerchiefs. After about 15 minutes there was a lull in the shooting. Crawford climbed atop a prominent rock in plain view of the Mexicans. Although his blue field uniform was in tatters, his brown beard ensured that he looked nothing like an Apache. Waving a handkerchief in each hand, he shouted: “No tiro! No tiro! Soldados Americanos!”

Twenty-five yards away, across a small ravine, a Mexican steadied his rifle against a pine tree and took aim. A shot rang out. Lieutenant Marion P. Maus, Crawford’s second-in-command, turned and “saw the Captain lying on the rocks with a wound in his head, and some of his brains lying upon the rocks.” 

Enraged, they immediately unleashed a furious fire upon the Nacionales. The battle raged for an hour as the Apaches and Mexicans blazed away at one another, while Crawford lay bleeding in the no-man’s-land between the combatants. Finally, the Mexicans raised their own white flag. Four on the American side were wounded, while the scouts killed four Mexicans and wounded five others. Crawford lingered in a coma for seven excruciating days, finally dying on January 18. General Crook maintained that had Crawford lived, the Apache War would have ended there beside the Aros River in January 1886.

On a hillside across the river, the renegades sat and watched the battle rage. A member of the band still recalled 70 years later how “Geronimo watched it and laughed.”

That afternoon, two squaws approached the American camp and reported that Geronimo still wished to hold a council. Maus agreed, and on January 13 he sat down with Geronimo and the other Apache leaders. Geronimo and Naiche said they wanted to talk about surrendering and would meet with General Crook “in two moons,” but only on the condition that they choose the site and that Crook come without soldiers. Maus had no option but to agree to these stipulations, and on the 16th began the long march north for the border.