If you were to survey our globe’s history and seek to select one nation of people to stand up as an absolutely astonishing icon of resolute defiance against daunting odds, well… you could hardly do better than naming the Apache.
That’s why I’m so pleased that, when I went to visit my sister in the Southwest, she suggested that we take a road trip to the Chiricahuas in eastern Arizona. This remote cluster of mountains formed a stronghold for legendary chiefs like Cochise, their warriors, and all the families that dwelt under their leadership and care.
We’ve been reliably informed that men and women who felt called upon to enter the Apache warrior class had to prove themselves able to run two full days without food or rest—and jaunts of a hundred miles or more were seen as no big deal. On our drive to the Chiricahuas, we could see why such athletic discipline might come in handy. Mountain ranges of this region are broken up by many wide bands of bleak desert. Transiting between them must’ve seemed like struggling to push a Mideast caravan from oasis to oasis back in olden times.
DIGS FOR THE INDIGENOUS
A homeland for the various Apache tribes and bands stretched from southern Colorado, past headwaters of the Gila River in New Mexico, all the way to the Sierra Madre range of Sonora and Chihuahua states in Mexico—a vast stomping ground more than 500 miles long.
When my sister Diana and I drove westward from Lordsburg on highway I-10, we saw a string of dusty brown hills ahead of us, lining the border between Arizona and New Mexico. We turned away from the Interstate’s heavy traffic to cruise southward on a quiet and empty stretch of two-lane blacktop, heading south to the burg of Rodeo. Just before we reached it, we made a stop at the Chiricahua Desert Museum—easily recognized by the giant metal sculpture of a rattlesnake’s tail poking up from the grounds outside.
For such a deep rural setting, it’s an amazingly professional facility. The place boasts astute informational exhibits, a botanical garden, and even a live herpetarium—in other words, it’s a spot where you can easily discover what might bite, sting, jab or stick you if you attempt to traipse through the desert. Especially, if one dares to bushwhack. (Which I only did a wee bit…)
But to me, even more interesting was another building that stood just to the north: the Geronimo Event Center. This had a great display of historic photos, a smart informational slideshow, and posters lining the event hall to guide a visitor through the entire indigenous history of the region. These exhibits did not present the whole story (how could it), yet it was a captivating place to start.
WANDERINGS OF A PEOPLE
The Apache, like the Navajo, were a Southern Athabascan people, derived from Mongolians who crossed the Bering Strain land bridge, then spread through Alaska and Canada. They began migrating southward around 1,000 A.D. to settle in the Southwest in a region hemmed in by terrain to the north and east where the Kiowa and Comanche already ruled. The word “Apache” supposedly derives from “ápachu,” a term used by the Zunis (a tribe of northwestern New Mexico) to describe dread enemies.
This might suggest what it was like to have Apache pass through your neighborhood. The Navajo and Apache settled more or less in the same general area, the Navajo somewhat further to the north and east. Their languages are similar and mutually intelligible. They did engage in some territorial competition. The Navajo dub themselves “Diné,” the Apache call themselves “Inde” or “Nende.” Both terms simply mean, The People.
Despite that fraternal jostling, the Apache were able to extend relatively peaceably through their chosen homeland for a few centuries. Then the Spanish conquest of Mexico started to squeeze them in a vise. From the east and south, from 1600 A.D. or so onward, an expansion of Mexican settlers steadily encroached on Apache turf. This meant not only the loss of an ancestral rhythm of living on desert plains in the winter and higher mountains in the summer, but outright exploitation—when captured natives were forced to work as slaves in Mexican silver mines, as well as to endure varied other humiliations. This prompted an evolution of the Apache into bands of skilled guerilla warriors who struck like lightning, then faded back into hidden mountain strongholds.
That severe and ongoing annoyance prompted Mexican officials to begin to put a bounty on Apache scalps in 1835.
THE EYES OF TEXIANS ARE UPON YOU
New players entered the game when Anglo settlers from the east moved into Texas, then kept on heading west. The battles of the Alamo and San Jacinto were fought in 1836, after which the Texians declared independence from Mexico. In 1845 the USA annexed Texas, a fresh insult that Mexico reviled. So, the USA declared war, invaded, and fought Mexico for two years, until this fracas was settled by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848—which established the Rio Grande River as a new border between the two nations.
Operating under the durable rubric, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” the Apache had allowed U.S. forces to transit their territory to more easily mount attacks on Mexico during the war. This did not further endear the Apache to Mexicans. Consequences may be illustrated by an attack the Mexican military made on an Apache camp to the east of the Sierra Madre in 1851. The camp, called Kaskiyeh, was assaulted by 400 troops while the Apache men went away to trade in the nearby town of Janos, in the state of Chihuahua.
A warrior named Goyaaté or Gokhlayeh returned to that camp to find his mother, his wife and all of his three children were among the numerous noncombatants slain by Mexican soldiers. You might better know this particular warrior by a nickname he soon acquired: “Geronimo.”
WILDERNESS BORN AND BORNE
Geronimo was born around 1829 to the Bedonkohe band on a tributary of the Gila River, about 35 miles north of the current town of Silver City, New Mexico and 100 miles or so northeast of the Chiricahuas. At age 16, he was initiated into his tribe’s cult of warriors. Despite a clutch of careless legends, Geronimo was never appointed chief, not even a war chief. Forrest Carter, who wrote lyrically about Geronimo in his 1978 novel, “Watch for Me on the Mountain,” perhaps comes nearest the mark when he dubs him a war shaman.
There’s no doubt Geronimo had big medicine visited upon him. The power came in visions—like the one that informed him he’d never die in battle, and couldn’t be slain by a gun. This sure knowledge bestowed confidence and courage. His endurance was off the charts, even for an Apache. His skills for persuading warriors, for devising actions and then slipping away like a ghost afterwards, were unmatched. His medicine was devoted to resistance, revenge, rebellion, and performance of raids. Due to relentless loss of lands and their traditional ways of life, thefts of goods, weapons and livestock became a matter of survival for the Apache bands.
And Geronimo’s name became one to conjure with—literally. He was the bogeyman of all the desert mountains to Mexicans, the shadow behind every cactus, shouldering most of the blame for any military mishaps—of which there were a great many. That, of course, only made his legend grow. And soon the Mexicans won help in fostering the dark, frontier PR campaign against Geronimo when Americans signed on to it.
INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Whether it was an error for the Apache to allow U.S. troops to traverse their territory amid the Mexican-American War, history must judge. However, once our army’s mule poked his muzzle under the rim of the Apache wickiup, he just kept a-hoofin’ it further on inside. All of the Southwest was American now, Manifest Destiny was on the march, and “them pesky redskins” who imagined the land they’d lived on for centuries was theirs, well, they stood blocking the road of progress. Sorry ‘bout that!
Forrest Carter, among other students of the topic, alleges that the Apache may have been clever and sly about mounting ambushes, but in the main were people who kept their word. Examples exist where they made promises of peace to certain settlers that held, no matter what.
On the other hand, the “white man speaks with forked tongue” cliché is simply that—an overworked trope. By examining every race, on every continent and in every era, instances can be found and cited of flags-of-truce betrayed, as well as other obnoxious and deceptive stratagems. It seems that people everywhere commonly attempt to lie their way to victory.
That said, certain acts by the bluecoats seemed perfectly engineered to inspire enduring Apache rage. One was the Bascom Affair of 1861, wherein a Lt. George Bascom was ordered to avenge a livestock raid and rescue a kidnapped youth. His force persuaded a Chiricahua chief named Cochise to parlay, and he arrived with his brother, nephews, wife and children to explain that a much different band had conducted the raid in question. Bascom imprisoned them all anyway. Cochise escaped by slashing through a tent wall with his knife, and then took American and Mexican hostages of his own to force the return of his relatives. Instead, the bluecoats demanded return of the abducted youth and cattle, even though Cochise didn’t have them. Cochise then killed his captives, whereupon the bluecoats slew the brother, nephews and other warriors by hanging.
This launched another 15 years of intense, episodic battles that only ended with Geronimo’s ultimate surrender in 1886. En route to that finale, the war’s carousel of brutal assault and revenge got another hearty spin in 1863 with the torture and murder of Mangas Coloradas, the father-in-law of Cochise and a principal chief of the Mimbreño Apache band, occupying lands north of the Chiricahuas.
Mangas came to Fort McLane under a flag of truce to negotiate for peace with General West, an officer of the California Militia. Instead, West took Mangas captive and ordered his death. Soldiers staked the 70-year-old chief to the ground, tortured him with red-hot bayonets, then shot him and chopped off his head.
Lest we imagine such brutality was a one-way street, a legendary mode of bad treatment the Apache deployed was tying a victim upside down to a wagon wheel, kindling a small fire under his head, and boiling the brains inside his skull. Now imagine yourself as an army scout, coming upon such a scene not long afterward. It might exert some degree of influence upon your subsequent policy.
LAND SALVATION IN PRESERVATION
The Chiricahua National Monument was established by President Coolidge in 1924 and expanded by FDR in 1938 to its current size of 12,025 acres, of which 85% is declared wilderness. This Monument is bracketed by the nearly two million acres of the Coronado National Forest, which holds 12 desert mountain ranges—dubbed “sky islands”—of which the Chiricahua Range is a primary one.
An access road into the Chiricahuas arrows due west from the Desert Museum, and it takes you through barren plains dotted with beargrass and spiny brush to a soaring array of taffy-colored peaks. Soon, you can take a left and drive along Cave Creek through a surprisingly lush valley, with a riparian forest peopled with cottonwoods and willows, Arizona sycamores, Emory oaks and junipers. Here, my sister and I took up lodging for a few days, staying in a cottage at Cave Creek Ranch. It’s one of the top birding destinations in North America, with 40 resident species and many dozens of feathered migrants.
My favorite times here were dewy mornings, when bird calls echoed through the stillness while sunrise gilded nearby bluffs and peaks, and deer wandered in to dip their heads down and sip from the spring. It was easy to imagine Apache life in this canyon way back when, with The People arising from their wickiups, fanning fires to a warming glow, the women grinding acorns or mesquite bean pods into flour with their pestles and metates, the men flaking spearheads and fletching arrows for their bows.
However, all too soon a sentinel could sprint in to warn of approaching adversaries, making them all flee up into the highlands to hide in caves or prepare for battle.
OVER THE RIVER & THROUGH THE WOODS
My sister and I drove over the spine of the Chiricahuas to reach the Monument’s main entrance on its west side. This route is not for the faint of heart or for vehicles feeble in suspension. Much of it is extremely rough and ungraded, and we had to creep along at 5-10 mph in order to keep from shaking the fenders off our rental car. Our drive might’ve been short in miles but seemed quite long in hours. Fortunately, it was also supreme in beauty. We ascended past steep slopes clothed in juniper and pinyon, then Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir, and descended a valley cloaked in a unique, desert alpine splendor.
The west side has a visitor center and an eight-mile paved drive that rises to nearly 7,000 feet at Masai Point. This area boasts many pinnacles of volcanic rhyolite, or balancing rocks, colloquially known as “hoodoos.” And I found the region haunted by more than these. I could not shed the notion that I strolled right over Apache graves. Not merely of their bodies, but also of long-buried hopes. How joyous it would be, I thought, to run a hundred miles across the desert and discover such an unlikely paradise. And how sad, after dwelling here for centuries, to be driven out.
Humans have inflicted similar tragedies upon one another throughout history, in glaring instances that range from Scotland’s Highland Clearances to the present bitter conflicts in the Mideast. There are plenty of other examples, of course. Why, one ponders, can’t generosity and justice and accommodation triumph as our species’ most durable policies, rather than hatred, exclusion and brutal conflict? Must life forever be reduced to a zero-sum game?
GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG FOR GOKHLAYEH
In their long twilight as a free and unconquered people, the Apache were guided by such legendary figures as Mangus—the son of Mangas Coloradas, Naiche—the son of Cochise, and equally illustrious but lesser known figures such as Victorio, who perished bravely in battle, precisely as so many of his fellows had. Throughout, Geronimo remained the obstinate one whom reservations never seemed capable of confining. He led his last breakout with a small band of 38, including 16 warriors, in 1885. They fled into Chihuahua State, then returned. Hounded into utter weariness on both sides of the border, he and his tiny band finally surrendered to General Miles in 1886.
After short periods of imprisonment in Texas, Florida, Alabama, then a far lengthier one at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, Geronimo was thrown from his horse in February of 1909. He lay all night in the cold before he was found, and soon after died of pneumonia at the age of 79. According to a nephew who was with him, his final words were, “I never should have surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive.”
DANCE WITH A VIBRANT SPECTER
I didn’t carry much away from the Chiricahua. When I’m out in the wilds, by inclination and by intuition, I find myself to be a devoted practitioner of the rule, “Take only photographs, leave only footprints.” Mostly. But I must declare that I did bear off with me one large, ephemeral thing: a fresh appreciation of the Apache in general and Gokhlayeh in particular. It’s never been my intent to imitate Geronimo’s methods. But! Do I feel inspired by that warrior shaman’s dauntless resolve? Absolutely, yes. However, not only that. I now grasp that, in some arcane manner, during my life I’ve continually felt this way. And just maybe, I’m not the only one who has.
