Today in Manhunting History -- March 28, 1886: Geronimo Reneges

After the March 27 conference, General Crook left the Apaches under Lieutenant Maus’s supervision so he could hurry back to Fort Bowie to wire Sheridan the good news. His diary entry for March 28 reads: “Left camp early in the morning for San Bernardino. Met Geronimo and [Naiche] and other Chiricahuas coming from the San Bernardino direction quite drunk.”

Crook should have taken this as a sign of trouble, but in an uncharacteristic lapse of judgment, continued riding north for the border.

Depressed about their surrender and apprehensive regarding their impending exile, Geronimo, Naiche, and most of their band got drunk off of mescal purchased from Godfrey Tribolet, a trader contracted to sell beef to the Army. From the army camp two ravines away, Crook’s soldiers heard gunshots through the night. In the morning, Kaytennae reported that Naiche was so drunk he could not stand, and Bourke found Geronimo and four other warriors riding aimlessly – five men on a pair of mules – “all drunk as lords.” In their state of intoxication, the Apaches were only able to march a few miles toward the border on the 28th.

That night, in a cold, drizzly rain, the Chiricahuas drank again. This time not only did Tribolet sell them mescal, he filled their heads with horror stories of how they would be murdered as soon as they crossed the border. The Apaches argued amongst themselves, and when almost everyone else had fallen asleep, Geronimo, Naiche, 19 warriors, and 19 women and children quietly slipped away into the night.

Maus did not realize they had fled until the next morning. He immediately set out with his mounted scouts to catch Geronimo, whose band had only taken two horses with them. They followed Geronimo’s trail for 60 miles through “the most impassable mountains,” finding only one horse that had been stabbed to death en route. The old warrior used his usual tricks, changing direction abruptly when his trail vanished on solid rock. With little food, the fugitives ran and walked 60 miles without stopping. At last, his horses worn out and his rations dwindling, Maus gave up the chase and departed for Fort Bowie with Chihuahua and the 77 Apaches who had refused to join the new outbreak.

Geronimo and Naiche on horseback at Canon de los Embudos, prior to their surrender, drinking binge, and reneging.

Today in Manhunting History -- March 27, 1886: Geronimo's "Surrender"

Following the battles at The Devil's Backbone, General Crook could do nothing but await the passage of “two moons.” Finally, on March 16 Lieutenant Maus – who was encamped near the border – reported that four Chiricahua warriors had visited him and told him Geronimo and the renegades were ready to meet Crook at Canon de los Embudos, a short distance across the border in Mexico. Crook departed immediately. As agreed, he was escorted only by his aide Captain John G. Bourke, seven men who could serve as interpreters, and the newly reformed Kaytennae, recently released from Alcatraz.

When they arrived at Canon de los Embudos, they found Geronimo had set up his rancheria “in a lava bed, on top of a small conical hill surrounded by steep ravines, not five hundred yards in direct line from Maus, but having between the two positions two or three steep and rugged gulches which served as scarps and counter-scarps.” Bourke marveled that “A full brigade could not drive out that little garrison,” and Crook noted that Geronimo had selected such an impregnable defensive position “that a thousand men could not have surrounded them with any possibility of catching them.”

On March 25 Geronimo, Chihuahua, Naiche, and a few other Chiricahua approached the American camp. The rest of the warriors cautiously fanned out around them, watching for any sign of treachery. After Crook finished his lunch, they met under a stand of large cottonwood and sycamore trees, on the bank of a stream just west of the largest funnel. Geronimo sat across from Crook, wearing a simple shirt, vest, and breechcloth, with a bandanna about his head. Twenty-four warriors sat just beyond the inner circle. Crook observed that Geronimo and his men “were in superb physical condition, armed to the teeth, with all the ammunition they could carry.”

Crook opened the conference, tersely asking: “What have you to say? I have come all the way down from Bowie.” Geronimo responded by stating a long list of grievances to explain why he left the reservation. Crook had decided to assume a hard line in the negotiations, and listened quietly. His face betrayed no clue about his thoughts, and throughout Geronimo’s hour-long speech he stared at the ground, refusing to even look at the old warrior.

Crook’s intransigence was having its intended effect. Bourke observed that as Geronimo spoke, “perspiration, in great beads, rolled down his temples and over his hands; and he clutched from time to time at a buckskin thong which he held tightly in one hand.” The general and the warrior went over the same topics repeatedly, neither willing to yield, when finally Crook delivered his ultimatum: “You must make up your own mind whether you will stay out on the warpath or surrender unconditionally. If you stay out, I’ll keep after you and kill the last one, if it takes fifty years.”

In a sense, Crook was bluffing, as he knew Geronimo could escape into the mountains again at any time, and that the Americans would have to pay a high price to catch him by force. Thus he moderated his terms, shifting from unconditional surrender to confinement in the East with their families for two years, followed by a return to the reservation.

C.S. Fly's iconic photo of the Canon de los Embudos conference. 
Geronimo is seated, third from the left; General Crook is seated second from the right.

Crook and Geronimo agreed to adjourn for two days so the Apaches could debate the American offer amongst themselves. Upon returning to his tent, Crook summoned Alchise – another son of Cochise – and Kaytennae to him. Alchise was Crook’s staunch friend and supporter, and Kaytannae’s incarceration and tour of San Francisco had converted him to a pro-American outlook. No formal session was held the next day, but Crook sent these two men into Geronimo’s camp to stir dissent among the renegades and to influence them to thoughts of surrender if possible.

Crook’s gambit appeared to have paid off when on the morning of the 27th he received word from Chihuahua that he was willing to surrender his own band, regardless of what Geronimo did. But Crook wanted to bring in all the Chiricahuas, and recognized that Chihuahua’s submission could be used to demoralize Geronimo. At last, in the afternoon the conference continued. Sensing a change in mood, Geronimo kept to himself, sitting with another warrior under a mulberry tree, blackening his face with pounded galena while the others once again convened under the sycamores.

Chihuahua, whose speech to Lieutenant Davis ten months ago harkened the beginning of the outbreak, surrendered by declaring: “If you don’t let me go back to the Reservation, I would like you to send my family with me wherever you send me.”

Naiche followed: “What Chihuahua says I say. I surrender just the same as he did. . . . I throw myself at your feet. You now order and I obey. What you tell me to do I do.”

Finally, Geronimo rose to speak. “Two or three words are enough,” he said. “I have little to say. I surrender myself to you.” He paused to shake hands with Crook, then continued. “We are all comrades, all one family, all one band. What the others say I say also. I give myself up to you. Do with me what you please. I surrender. Once I moved about like the wind. Now I surrender to you and that is all.”

Today in Manhunting History -- March 4, 1905: "Hooray for Geronimo!"

In the years after his 1886 surrender, Geronimo began the transformation from monster to legend. During the relocation to Fort Sill crowds gathered at whistle-stops to cheer the celebrated warrior. Geronimo responded with savvy pragmatism, selling his block-lettered autograph for 25 cents a copy. With special permission from the War Department, Geronimo was allowed to travel as a side-show attraction. He attended the Omaha and Buffalo expositions (and was at the Pan-American Exposition in 1901 when President McKinley was assassinated) and the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. He spent a year with a “Wild West” show, and cashed in on his reputation by selling souvenir bows and arrows, autographed pictures of himself, even the buttons off his coat.

At the request of Theodore Roosevelt, Geronimo was brought to Washington to ride in the President’s inaugural parade on March 4, 1905 along with chieftains from other tribes. As Geronimo galloped down Pennyslvania Avenue, people in the dense crowd hollered “Hooray for Geronimo!” and tossed their hats in the air.

Geronimo (2nd from right) passing in review at Teddy Roosevelt Inauguration on March 4, 1905

Today in Manhunting History: February 17, 1909 -- The Death of Geronimo

After Geronimo's surrender to U.S. forces in September 1886, he and his band of Chiricahua Apaches were exiled first to Florida -- where the violent change in climate from the American Southwest caused an alarming number of deaths -- and later to Mount Vernon Barracks, Alabama, and finally, to Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

During his time in limbo, however, Geronimo began the transformation from monster to legend. During the relocation to Fort Sill crowds gathered at whistle-stops to cheer the celebrated warrior. Geronimo responded with savvy pragmatism, selling his block-lettered autograph for 25 cents a copy. With special permission from the War Department, Geronimo was allowed to travel as a side-show attraction. He attended the Omaha and Buffalo expositions (and was at the Pan-American Exposition in 1901 when President McKinley was assassinated) and the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. He spent a year with a “Wild West” show, and cashed in on his reputation by selling souvenir bows and arrows, autographed pictures of himself, even the buttons off his coat. At the request of Theodore Roosevelt, Geronimo was brought to Washington to ride in the President’s inaugural parade of March 1905 along with chieftains from other tribes. As Geronimo galloped down Pennsylvania Avenue, people in the dense crowd hollered “Hooray for Geronimo!” and tossed their hats in the air.

In February 1909, the octogenarian Geronimo got drunk and fell off his horse while riding home, spending the night injured and lying in a cold rain. Consequently, on February 17, the warrior who had survived innumerable battles with the U.S. cavalry died in his bed from pneumonia, eulogized by at least one contemporary writer as “the Napoleon of the Indian race.”

Geronimo's final resting place at Fort Sill, OK.

More Manhunting History . . .

I've belatedly posted the anniversaries of Marine 1LT Christian F. Schilt earning the Medal of Honor during the Sandino manhunt (January 6) and the account of how Geronimo barely escaped during the Battle at the Devil's Backbone in 1886 (January 10).

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.

Today in Manhunting History -- January 10, 1886: Battle on the Devil's Backbone

The unsuccessful summer campaign and subsequent raid by Josannie led to increasing political pressure on General Crook to produce results. The Commander of the United States Army, Lieutenant General Philip Sheridan, traveled all the way from Washington, D.C. to Fort Bowie to review the situation. He wanted Geronimo’s band destroyed, and on November 29 told Crook to go on the offensive.

Crook’s response was to take his previous innovations, already considered radical by many in the U.S. Army, to their logical conclusion. Although regular troops were supposed to provide rallying points for the scouts and protection for the pack trains, they also severely inhibited the scouts’ mobility. Crook was willing to forego the advantages offered by white soldiers and created a force comprised of 100 Indian scouts, a pack train, and only three officers. The model for this flying column had been suggested to him back in 1883 in the Sierra Madres campaign, when his scouts had begged to be allowed to go ahead of the main expedition.

The critical decision, therefore, was which American officer would lead this experimental unit. But in reality, the choice was obvious from the start. Captain Emmet Crawford had commanded the scouts in Crook’s 1883 expedition into Mexico, and upon the successful completion of that campaign was placed in charge of the San Carlos reservation where he oversaw the renegades now on the warpath until just two months prior to the outbreak. Six-foot-one, with gray eyes, a fellow officer described Crawford, saying: “Mentally, morally, and physically he would have been an ideal knight of King Arthur’s Court.” The Apaches alternately called him “Tall Chief” because of his height, and “Captain Coffee” because of his apparent addiction to the beverage. When reenlisting scouts in October and November for the expedition, Crawford chose only White Mountain and friendly Chiricahua Apaches – mountain Indians whom he knew were ideally suited for the arduous task of trailing Geronimo in the difficult Sierra Madres. These Indians joined the expedition not only because they hated the renegades, but also because they trusted Crawford, who was known for his concern for the scouts serving under him.


CPT Emmet Crawford, leader of General Crook's elite Apache scouts

 On November 29, Crook ordered Crawford’s company to the Dragoon Mountains to intercept Josannie’s band should they cross into Arizona from New Mexico, and then into Mexico, crossing the border once more on December 11. They moved steadily south in Sonora for three weeks, finding nothing.

Crawford set up a base camp in Nacori, on the western edge of the Sierra Madres, and from there deployed his scouting parties. Finally, in early January, one of these parties came across a Chiricahua trail near the Aros River. The scouts reported that it led to Geronimo’s band, holed up in a range known to the Mexicans as “Espina del Diablo,” or “Backbone of the Devil.” Upon the discovery of this fresh “sign” on January 8, 1886, Crawford pushed his men 48 hours without sleep in a desperate attempt to find and attack the hostile village. His party was now more than 150 miles south of the border, farther south in Mexico than any U.S. command had ever chased Apaches.

Just before daylight on the 10th, Crawford’s scouts drew near the high, rocky point where Geronimo’s camp was suspected to be. Crawford divided his force, hoping to surround the Rancheria. Slowly, carefully, the scouts crept forward, “scarcely breathing as we moved.”

Suddenly, the braying of the hostiles’ burros shook the stillness of the cold, mountain dawn, and alerted Geronimo to the scouts’ presence. Geronimo jumped up on a rock and yelled: “Look out for the horses!”

Chiricahua warriors ran out and tried to secure their mounts, but the scouts opened fire, shrieking cries of defiance from the surrounding rocks. Geronimo’s men took cover and returned fire from a nearby cluster of rocks that formed a stronghold.

After a minute, Geronimo’s voice was heard once again: “Let the horses go and break toward the river on foot! Scatter and go as you can!”

Although a rush into the camp would have ensured the capture of at least the women and children, the scouts remained pinned down by the hostiles’ fusillade, deaf to the appeals of their officers to advance. The hostiles escaped into the darkness, and daylight revealed they had once again left behind all their stock, provisions, and blankets. The scouts, exhausted by the forced march that made the skirmish possible, collapsed on any level ground they could find to sleep upon, unable to exploit their victory.

While the scouts’ bullets did not find their marks, the capture of Geronimo’s supplies was a terrible blow in the harsh winter conditions of the Sierra Madres. Toward the middle of the afternoon, as Crawford and his men were still recuperating, a squaw came into the camp. She said that Geronimo and his followers were camped a few miles away and wished to talk to Crawford about surrendering. Crawford agreed to meet with Geronimo, Chihuahua, and Naiche the next day, and a place for the conference was arranged. Crawford was overjoyed as the squaw departed, as the message seemed tantamount to an offer of surrender, and everyone in the American camp seemed to collectively exhale, believing the Geronimo campaign was about to end.

Today in Manhunting History -- November 24, 1885: Josannie's Raid

As historian Robert Utley summarized the first six months of the Geronimo Campaign: “The Sierra Madre campaign of 1885 was an exhausting and profitless struggle against heat, insects, hunger, thirst, and fatigue.” General George Crook had nothing to show for his troops’ exertions, and decided to give them some much needed rest and to prepare for a more extended campaign in Mexico than originally anticipated. In October he summoned Captain Emmet Crawford and Major Wirt Davis back to Fort Bowie to refit and prepare for another assault on the Sierra Madres.

The Army resupplied by making purchases. The Apaches resupplied by making raids. By November 1885, the fugitives were woefully short of cartridges for their Winchester and Springfield rifles, ammunition that could not be found in Mexico. Moreover, the poverty stricken Mexican peasants in Sonora had little left to steal. Thus, in early November Josannie, Chihuahua's brother and a war leader who had once served as an Army scout, reentered the United States and began a raid in the Florida Mountains of New Mexico with 10-12 warriors. The raiders killed three scouts and two civilians before seeming to disappear across the border. A semblance of tranquility began to return to the Territory after three weeks of silence. Then on November 23, the officer in charge of Fort Apache, Lieutenant James Lockett, reported to Crook that hostiles had been seen within four miles of the outpost. He stated that was going in pursuit.

Then the telegraph went dead.

Crook waited impatiently for reports, yet when they arrived, they reported disaster. On November 24 Josannie’s war party killed two civilians who managed the reservation’s beef herd. Their wrath next fell upon the reservation itself, where they killed 20 White Mountain Apaches, sparing only the women and children, whom they abducted.

[And yes, I recognize this post doesn't necessarily fit with the spirit of Thanksgiving.  Sorry, I can't help the date.  Have a Happy Thanksgiving!]

Josannie, an Apache war captain in Geronimo's renegade band.

Today in Manhunting History -- September 5, 1885: Geronimo Literally Runs Davis Out of the Army

Recognizing the futility of hunting the Apaches with cavalry and a pack train, in August 1885 Captain Emmet Crawford ordered Lieutenant Britton Davis and Chief of Scouts Al Sieber to pursue Geronimo with about 40 handpicked scouts. Geronimo led this detachment on a long chase, crossing the Sierras into Chihuahua before turning north to slip across the boundary into New Mexico, eluding the soldiers stationed there and disappearing into the interior of the Territory. Davis and the scouts had to pursue every lead while avoiding the natural barriers ripe for ambush in the mountainous terrain, and thus traveled “a hundred and forty or fifty miles to cover a hundred as the crow flies.” Davis’s detachment was given provisions for three days, which they made last for six. When their rations gave out, they kept on Geronimo’s trail, living “on the flesh of the ponies the hostiles had killed and such roots, berries, etc., as the country afforded and the scouts knew to be edible.” Lieutenant Davis’s men rode and walked 500 miles through the mountains and deserts before finally limping back across the border at Texas and reaching Fort Bliss on September 5.

Filthy, exhausted, and sick of the war, Davis resigned his commission and set off to manage the ranch of a family friend in Mexico.

Today in Manhunting History -- August 7, 1885: "Geronimo!!!"

On August 7, Major Wirt Davis’ 4th U.S. Cavalry Apache scouts attacked Geronimo’s camp west of Casas Grandes, Chihuahua. The renegades were caught by surprise, and the warriors were forced to jump over a steep bluff in order to avoid capture. Although Geronimo personally escaped, he lost 13 horses and mules – along with saddles, blankets, and dried meat – in the attack. More devastatingly for the old warrior, two of his wives and five children from his family were among the Chiricahuas captured.

This small tactical success had little strategic impact on the Geronimo Campaign, but is possibly the origin of U.S. World War II paratroopers screaming “Geronimo!” as they leaped from airplanes.

Today in Manhunting History -- June 23, 1885: The Capture of Chihuahua's Family

At about 9AM, June 23, 1885, Captain Emmett Crawford’s scouts found Chihuahua’s camp* in the Bavispe Mountains northeast of Opunto. The leader of his scouts deemed it impossible to surround the camp without being seen, thus making it impossible to capture any of the hostiles. Once the scouts moved into the best position possible, they opened fire. As with previous engagements during the Geronimo Campaign, rather than hold their position to defend their supplies, the Apache fled, escaping with their women and children through several deep canyons that joined near the camp. The scouts pursued them as quickly as the rough terrain would allow, and for several miles a running battle continued between the scouts and the fleeing braves. Although all eight warriors of the hostile band escaped – along with four boys and three women – Crawford’s scouts returned to camp with 15 women and children captured, including Chihuahua’s entire family.

*Chihuahua and his followers had briefly separated from Geronimo, partly out of anger that Geronimo had lied to get them to flee San Carlos, partly because it was harder for the Cavalry to track multiple, smaller bands than all 120 escaped Chiricahua together.



Chihuahua



Today in Manhunting History -- June 11: Into Mexico

Upon learning of Geronimo’s escape, General George Crook set in motion a three-tiered strategy to track down Geronimo. First, 100 scouts under First Lieutenants Charles B. Gatewood and James Parker were sent eastward to patrol the Mogollon and Black Mountains, after which they were to report to Fort Apache.

Once it was clear there were no Chiricahuas lagging behind north of the border, Crook intended to seal the border to catch any renegades trying to return to the United States. From the Rio Grande almost to the mouth of the Colorado River, Crook placed elements of the 10th Cavalry – the famed “Buffalo Soldiers” – at all known watering holes and points of entry. Each troop was accompanied by five Apache scouts who rode out daily to search for signs of the fugitives. Behind this skirmish line Crook posted units at key points along the Southern Pacific Railroad to act as a mobile reserve in case any Chiricahuas broached the defensive line and reentered Arizona Territory. Altogether, roughly 3,000 soldiers, three-quarters of them cavalry, patrolled the border region. To monitor the campaign, Crook moved his own headquarters forward to Fort Bowie in strategic Apache Pass at the northern end of the Chiricahua Mountains.

General George Crook, Commander of the Department of Arizona

Finally, acting under the provisions of the July 1882 agreement between the United States and Mexico that allowed the troops of one country to cross into the other “if in close pursuit of a band of savage Indians,” he deployed two columns south of the border. The first, a combined force of 92 scouts and Troop A of the 6th Cavalry under Captain Emmet Crawford, was to go down the western flank of the Sierra Madres in Sonora province. This force would be paralleled on the eastern flank in Chihuahua by a troop of the 4th Cavalry under Major Wirt Davis.

On June 11, Crook ordered Crawford’s command to enter Mexico, to be followed a month later by Major Davis’s expedition.



Today in Manhunting History -- June 8, 1885: Massacre at Guadelope Canyon

On June 8, a company of the 4th Cavalry taking part in the pursuit of Geronimo was camped in Guadalupe Canyon when a courier arrived with news that the Apaches were heading in the direction of Cloverdale and Skeleton Canyon, and with instructions to proceed at once to intercept them. A nine-man detail was left behind to guard the camp and supply train. With the officers departed, the discipline of the remaining soldiers dissipated, and they withdrew the picket on an adjacent hill that provided a commanding view of the area.

At noon, as lunch was being served, the soldiers “were surprised by a thundering volley from the hills nearby.” Sergeant Neihaus, the detail's NCO, was immediately felled by a bullet in his forehead as he ate his biscuit and bacon. A soldier who came upon the scene later described what he found: “Poor old Sergeant Neihaus was propped up against a tree, the scalp ripped off his head, and two or three chunks of bacon gripped tight between his teeth – a gory, grinning satyr of what had been a kindly, lovable man. Moriarty, a recruit, lay on his back with his abdomen slashed open and bunches of hay stuck in the cuts.”

In all, the Apache killed five soldiers and made off with two horses and five mules, along with the camp stores the soldiers were guarding.

Today in Manhunting History -- May 22, 1885: Battle at Devil's River Canyon

After separating from Lieutenant Davis’s scouts at Eagle Creek, Captain Allen Smith led two companies of the 4th Cavalry in pursuit of the Chiricahuas, accompanied by Gatewood and his scouts. As the command approached the settlements near the San Francisco River and the New Mexico border, they found signs that Geronimo had begun killing settlers. On May 22, the scouts found a trail believed to be Geronimo’s, and followed it 25 miles to Devil’s River, a canyon that opened into a small valley 600 feet below the rim of the Mogollons. As they entered a narrow valley, some 40 feet wide, Smith called a halt and ordered his men to make camp. At about 2PM, the canyon suddenly echoed with gunfire, as the Indians attacked from four directions; up and down the canyon, and from both canyon walls. First Lieutenant James Parker rallied his men and led them into the hail of fire coming from up the canyon. First Lieutenant Charles Gatewood followed, and led his scouts in a charge to the summit.

The Apaches dispersed, and as quickly as the action had begun, it was over. Gatewood and Parker had captured the enemy position at the crest of the canyon, and 500 yards further they took the renegades’ now-abandoned camp. Seventeen fires were still either burning or filled with live or hot coals, and the hostiles left behind some horses, various items of clothing and equipment, and a lot of beef. These possessions were gained at the cost of two soldiers and an Indian scout wounded.

Today in Manhunting History -- May 17, 1885: Geronimo Escapes

The two days after the confronation at Turkey Creek passed without word from Crook.  The Apaches grew increasingly apprehensive, assuming the worst as each hour passed.

On Sunday, May 17, Lieutenant Davis was umpiring a baseball game at Fort Apache while awaiting the response from Crook that would never come.  At about 4PM, his interpreter and a scout interrupted to report that Geronimo and an unknown number of Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apaches had fled the reservation in the middle of the night.  Davis attempted to send another telegram to Captain Pierce, but was unable to get a message through.  It was not until noon the next day that a break in the line was discovered – the fleeing Apaches had cut the line where it passed through the foliage of a tree and cleverly tied the ends tautly together with a leather thong to hide the break – and repaired.

Once higher headquarters was informed of the Apaches’ flight Davis began preparing his scouts for the pursuit.  Speed was essential, for if Geronimo and his band made it to the Mexican frontier, he would be nearly impossible to corner.  They left with a detachment of regular troops from Fort Apache in the afternoon, but as daylight faded and dusk transformed the desert sky into darkness, the advance slowed to a crawl lest they stumble into an ambush while following an uncertain trail. 

They marched through the night.  At dawn the detachment reached a ridge above the valley of Eagle Creek.  The scouts pointed to the opposite side of the valley, and looking through their field glasses, Davis and the other officers could see the dust raised by the fugitives’ ponies ascending a ridge some 15-20 miles ahead.

Geronimo had escaped. 

Realizing that further pursuit was useless – it was later discovered that the hostiles had traveled 90 miles without halting – Lieutenant Davis turned back.  A long campaign in Mexico lay ahead, and he needed to wire General Crook for instructions.

Over the days to come, as news spread that 120 Apaches under Geronimo were on the loose, “something like mass hysteria gripped the citizens of Arizona and New Mexico,”  and America's first strategic manhunt would commence.

Today in Manhunting History -- May 15, 1885: Showdown at Turkey Creek

The American Southwest, in the words of an army officer stationed there in the 19^th Century, is “a region in which not only purgatory and hell, but heaven likewise, had combined to produce a bewildering kaleidoscope of all that is wonderful, weird, terrible, and awe-inspiring, with not a little that was beautiful and romantic.”

The sun had barely risen over this Dantesque landscape on May 15, 1886, when Lieutenant Britton Davis realized his day would be closer to the inferno than to paradise.

As he stepped out of his tent at Turkey Creek on the San Carlos Reservation, home to 5,000 Apache Indians, the dawn illuminated the stern faces of all the major Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apache chieftains: Naiche – son of the legendary Cochise, Mangus, Chihuahua, Loco, and the aged Nana.  Most ominously, Davis saw Geronimo, whom he knew as “a thoroughly vicious, intractable, and treacherous man” whose “word, no matter how earnestly pledged, was worthless.”  Geronimo stood only five-foot-eight inches, but was still powerfully built at age 61, and his countenance bespoke “a look of unspeakable savagery, or fierceness.”  Thirty warriors, all armed, stood behind the chiefs.  Worse, not a single woman or child was in sight, “a sure sign of something serious in the air.” 

They said they wanted to talk.  Davis sent for his interpreter, then invited the leaders into his tent.  Once inside, the chiefs squatted in a semicircle.  Loco began to speak, but was interrupted by a visibly agitated Chihuahua. 

We are not children, Chihuahua said.  When the Apaches had agreed to return to the reservation after the last outbreak in 1883, he argued, We agreed on a peace with Americans, Mexicans, and other Indian tribes. We said nothing about conduct among ourselves. 

The Apaches had many reasons to be discontented with their life at San Carlos.  No Apaches were more independent or warlike than the Chiricahuas and Warm Springs under Davis’s supervision.  While some Apaches made great strides in their new life as farmers, none of the Chiricahua “were making anything more than a bluff at farming,” letting their women tend the fields while the warriors scoffed at performing such unmanly tasks.  San Carlos itself was a perpetually hot and dry, gravelly flat between the Gila and San Carlos rivers that earned the appellation of “Hell’s Forty Acres” from the officers who served there.  In addition to facing the slow encroachment upon their lands by miners and farmers, the Apaches were subjected to an extraordinary level of corruption at the hands of the civilian Indian Agents assigned to San Carlos through patronage politics.  Davis noted that the weekly ration of flour “would hardly suffice for one day,” and the beef cows issued to the Indians were little more than walking skeletons.

On this day, however, Chihuahua was referring to the regulations regarding the treatment of women and Tizwin.  The Apaches claimed the right of a husband to beat his wife as an ancient and accepted tribal custom, as well as the right of a husband to cut off the nose of an adulterous squaw, often by biting it off.  Among the Indians of the reservation there were “about a score of women so disfigured,” and some of the beatings, typically with a heavy stick, were too brutal for the U.S. Army officers in charge of the reservation to ignore.  Consequently, General Crook had prohibited these practices.

Additionally, the brewing and drinking of tizwin (a fermented corn mash) was banned due to the Apaches’ proclivity for violence when intoxicated.  One such drinking spree the previous year led to a failed ambush of Lieutenant Davis.  The leader of the assassination plot, the warrior-chief Kaytennae, was subsequently arrested, exiled, and imprisoned in Alcatraz.

Davis had served in the Arizona Territory for seven years and understood his wards as well as any American officer.  He tried to placate the chiefs, but they responded with jeers and veiled threats.  Chihuahua taunted Davis through the interpreter: Tell Fat Boy that I and all the other chiefs and their men have been drinking Tizwin the night before and now we want to know what he is going to do about it – whether or not he is going to put us all in jail.  He added that he did not think the soldiers had a jail big enough to hold all the Indians who violated the prohibition.

Davis had no option but to play for time.  He explained that a problem this serious must be submitted to General Crook for a decision, that he would telegram Crook and notify them as soon as he received a reply.  Davis made sure they understood an answer might take several days before riding to Fort Apache to send the message.

Lt. Britton Davis

The telegram from Fort Apache to Crook’s headquarters at Fort Bowie had to pass through civilian hands.  In order to avoid leaks, messages were kept simple and cryptic.  Moreover, before reaching the General, Davis’s telegram also had to pass through Captain Francis E. Pierce.  Pierce had only been in Arizona for two months, and so decided to wake the veteran Chief of Scouts Al Seiber for advice.  Unfortunately, Sieber was sleeping off his own whiskey drunk.  Through bleary eyes and an addled mind, he read the telegram.

“It’s nothing but a tizwin drink,” Sieber muttered.  “Don’t pay any attention to it.  Davis will handle it.” 

As Sieber returned to sleeping off his hangover, Pierce filed away the seemingly inconsequential note.

“I am firmly convinced,” Crook would later write, “that, had I known of the occurrences reported in Lieutenant Davis’s telegram of May 15, 1885, which I did not see until months afterwards, the outbreak of Mangus and Geronimo a few days later would not have occurred.”

Today in Manhunting History -- May 3, 1886: Wanted Dead or Alive

More than a century before a $25 million reward was offered for information on Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts -- and almost 125 years to the day before the terrorist mastermind was killed in a raid by SEAL Team Six -- on May 3, 1886 the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a joint resolution “Authorizing the President to offer a reward of twenty-five thousand dollars for the killing or capture of Geronimo.” 

U.S. forces had already been hunting the Apache war captain for nearly a year by the time of the resolution, and by May 1886 five thousand troops -- a quarter of the entire U.S. army -- were deployed in pursuit of Geronimo throughout the American Southwest and northern Mexico.  It was the first of almost a dozen such campaigns in U.S. military history, the most recent and longest of which ended dramatically Sunday in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

This web log, drawn from my book "Wanted Dead or Alive: Manhunts from Geronimo to bin Laden" (forthcoming in July from Palgrave Macmillan) is a history of these strategic manhunts (defined as military campaigns in which U.S. forces are deployed abroad with the operational objective of killing one man).  I'll provide links to and non-partisan commentary (okay, 99.9% non-partisan) ongoing operations in the War on Terror.  I will also post photos from my travel to the dangerous and exotic places (alas, not Vegas) that my day job takes me to periodically.

For now, I'm happy to allow comments on posts, as I enjoy good debates about military history, and believe that people on all sides of the political spectrum can contribute to discussions on national security.  All I ask is that if people engage with others through comments they remain civil.

To quote Patrick Swayze/"Dalton" in that immortal classic of the modern cinema, "Road House": "Be nice."