ON OCTOBER 9 Berle Kanseah loaded his pickup truck and
left the high country of the Mescalero Apache Reservation in western
New Mexico. In the next six and a half hours he drove south and
west 362 miles to Tucson, the first leg in a journey that would
take him 129 years back in time.
Kanseah is a Chiricahua Apache. Like all other Chiricahua Apaches
who were evicted from southern Arizona at the end of the Indian
wars in 1886, his ancestors were shipped to an overcrowded camp
in Florida as prisoners of war, later to Alabama and Fort Sill,
Oklahoma. In 1913, the U.S. government said the Chiricahuas were
no longer prisoners of war and gave them a choice of remaining
at Fort Sill or moving in with the Mescalero and Lipan Apaches
on the Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico. The majority, 181
of them, chose Mescalero, an area almost directly east of the
mountain ranges in eastern Arizona that had been their homeland.
Kanseah, 59, was born on the Mescalero Reservation. What he knew
about his ancestral past in Sonora and Arizona came from his grandparents
and other relatives who still had relatively fresh memories. Anthropologists
refer to many contemporary Indian groups as memory cultures, meaning
that while they may not live like their ancestors or practice
esoteric rituals, they share common memories and stories they've
all heard at family gatherings. For the most part, the stories
are the strongest link to their past and distinguish them from
other ethnic groups who, of course, have their own memories and
stories.
As a child, the stories Kanseah heard were about southern Arizona
and northern Sonora. What he knew of his ancestors came from the
stories of his grandparents who had warm memories of the terrain
that had been home to them and their ancestors.
"For years, our grandparents indicated they wanted to go
back to Mexico and eastern Arizona," he said over dinner
one night in Benson. "They mentioned the country was so beautiful,
and it had everything. They also missed relatives. As we grew
up, going back to Mexico was a foreign idea. It wasn't do-able.
We wouldn't know how to administrate the trip." Kanseah paused
and smiled, adding: "We needed someone who could say, 'It
can be done, Mr. Indian, and this is how we'll do it.' "
Over the last 20 years or so, two people have filled that role
to one degree or another. One was Neil Goodwin, of Massachusetts,
son of the famous anthropologist Grenville Goodwin, who took some
Chiricahua Apaches to Mexico for a documentary film he was making
in 1988; and the other was Alicia Delgadillo, who lived four years
near a national forest recreation area called Cochise Stronghold,
on the eastern slope of the Dragoon Mountains, and who now lives
in Tucson.
Delgadillo said she first met Kanseah and other Chiricahua Apaches
at a ceremony at Fort Bowie, in 1986, marking the centennial of
Geronimo's surrender, the capitulation that ended the Indian wars
of the last century.
"After that," she said, referring to the Chiricahuas,
"it just happened to us; we became interconnected, for whatever
reason. I always accepted what came my way insofar as being linked
to them and did not question why our paths seemed to keep crossing."
One of the reasons that relationship thrived, she speculated,
is that she is "not an anthropologist and they know I have
no personal agenda, such as publish or perish. All I can say is
that we just seemed to click. In the beginning I was involved
in just the nuts-and-bolts logistics, but over the years our relationship
became increasingly personal. I think I have a good understanding
of their goals and objectives about re-establishing their presence
here in Arizona. I believe the Chiricahua who participate in these
on-going public programs gain information to add to their oral
tradition. Also, they are reaching out to the non-Indian community
to educate them about Chiricahua philosophy."
The excursion to Arizona, which a dozen Chiricahua Apaches
made in October, was the kind of program to which she referred.
It began with a small gathering at the University of Arizona and
led, over a two-day period, to sites in the Chiricahua and Dragoon
Mountains where their ancestors had lived and fought, and had
the effect of converting stories and memories to palpable experiences.
There is, perhaps, some irony in the fact that non-Indians were
there to flesh out the picture for the visiting Apaches. History,
as it has often been noted, is written by the victors, and many
of the troopers who fought the Apaches kept journals which historians
and anthropologists have been sorting through for many years.
Over time, much of what was written by the troopers and their
officers has been scrutinized by scholars and writers less emotionally
involved in the actual events.
One of those is Edwin Sweeney, an amicable accountant who grew
up near Boston and now works as the comptroller of a company in
St. Louis. In recent years, following an interest he developed
as a child watching western movies, Sweeney wrote an award-winning
biography of Cochise, and most recently edited Making Peace
With Cochise, the 1872 Journal of Capt. Joseph Alton Sladen.
Sladen was one of the army officers present when Cochise agreed
to stop fighting.
ON A Sunday afternoon in October, Sweeney stood before
the small contingent of Apaches who had came to Arizona from the
Mescalero Reservation. Among the Indians was a gracious old man--Frank
Sladen, Lt. Sladen's grandson, who had come all the way from Michigan.
The scene was Rucker Canyon on the west side of the Chiricahua
Mountains, a place which neither the modern Chiricahua Apaches
nor the elderly Frank Sladen had ever seen. Cedar-covered hills
rose up to a rocky promontory behind them as Sweeney and others
vividly unraveled a tale about how it happened that Apaches and
white men had gone at each others throats with a vengeance.
In a distinct Boston accent, Sweeney explained that the battle
that occurred in the hills behind him marked the beginning of
the end for Cochise. The old warrior had been fighting white men
for nine years. He was tired, outnumbered, out-gunned. He could
see that this was not going to end well for his people, but he
was not yet ready to give up. The date was Oct. 20, 1869. There
was a battle in those hills behind him, Sweeney said, that had
its roots some 50 miles to the west, near Dragoon Springs, at
the north end of the Dragoon Mountains.
On Oct. 5, 1869, a Col. John Finkle Stone, the 33-year-old president
of Apache Pass Mine, near Ft. Bowie, headed back to his home in
Tucson aboard a mail coach. He had an escort of four. When they
approached an abandoned stagecoach station at the north end of
the Dragoon Mountains, a bunch of Apaches camouflaged with weeds
jumped out of a gully and hit them fast and hard. Stone, the coach
driver, and all of the soldiers were killed. The news stunned
Tucson, where Stone--for whom Stone Avenue was later named--was
well-known and admired.
Within hours of this attack, Cochise and his band had encountered
a group of cowboys in the Sulphur Springs Valley. The men were
moving a herd of cattle from Texas to California when Cochise
and his band came upon them. The Apaches attacked, killing one
of the men and stealing the cattle.
One member of that group, named Scott, managed to escape and
fled to Ft. Bowie to ask for help.
Lt. William H. Winters and some 25 troopers left Bowie in pursuit
of the Apaches, but before they reached the site they encountered
another rider who told them of the attack on Stone and the mail
coach. Winters had to decide which way to head. Finally, he declared,
"I can't do anything for the dead, "but I sure can do
something for the living," and turned toward Dragoon Springs.
Horrified by the carnage he found there, Winters took off after
Cochise who, he knew, was driving his stolen cattle toward Mexico.
When Cochise saw Winters and his troopers in the distance, he
realized he'd never outrun them and make it across the border,
so he changed course and headed into Rucker Canyon...
IT IS 129 years later and the Apaches with their small
children are bunched together in rapt attention. "In the
1860s," said Sweeney, motioning to the pastoral wonderland
at his back, "this was Cochise's principal Stronghold."
This hideaway is not the same as today's Cochise Stronghold Campground.
That's many miles to the west, in the Dragoon Mountains, and was
where Cochise lived in old age.
In 1869, Sweeney said, Cochise fled into this earlier stronghold
between Red Rock and Turtle Mountain, above Rucker Canyon, and
the army followed. Lt. Winters was quickly joined by another contingent
from Ft. Bowie, led by Capt. Reuben Bernard, but the whole battle
was essentially a storm in a glass of water, doing very little
to advance the cause of peace or understanding.
Among the guests present to flesh out this picture for the
Apaches in 1998 was a tall and articulate man from Tucson named
Sandy Vandenberg. Sandy is more formally known as Hoyt S. Vandenberg,
Jr., a major general in the Air Force before his retirement. Vandenberg
Air Force Base in California is named for his father, who was
also a general and had been Air Force Chief of Staff. Sandy, a
West Point graduate, has a special interest in U.S. military history,
and specifically in military strategy.
The Apaches formed a caravan with their trucks and vans, following
Vandenberg up a torturous road to where the fighting had taken
place on a cold and rainy afternoon more than a hundred years
earlier.
The Apaches stood quietly, their faces concealing whatever they
might have been feeling. "I've been to this site at least
85 times, Vandenberg told them, "trying to recreate a map
of precisely what had happened in 1869." He said he found
shell casings which told him the Indians were much better armed
than anyone would have expected at the time. The soldiers had
Spencer carbines and revolvers. Under normal circumstances, most
Apaches carried bows and arrows and spears, but in this case some
also carried weapons stolen from the victims in the mail coach
massacre. These included single-shot Springfield rifles as well
as 7-shot Spencer repeating carbines and at least one Henry 16-shot
rifle. Vandenberg had found the evidence by walking the terrain
where the battle occurred.
The battle in Rucker was called The Campaign of the Rocky Mesa.
Two soldiers who tried to ascend the mesa in pursuit of Apaches
were killed immediately. Various attempts to ford the hill--even
placing sharpshooters on a nearby hill and trying to lob shells
on the Apaches--were fruitless. The Apaches suffered 18 casualties,
according to Bernard's account, but Bernard's credibility (as
we shall see) was questionable.
Brief though the battle was, it was a miserable confrontation
for all involved. It was cold, rainy, and the light was fading
fast. In the skirmishes that followed over the next week or so,
Apache scouts assisting the Army and various Apache warriors were
shouting to each other in their native language, the Indians inquiring
about the possibility of coming to some kind of peaceful settlement,
the Army officers responding through the scouts that the Apaches
had to put down their arms and come in before any talks could
begin.
Nothing was accomplished. Bernard, who, according to Vandenberg,
clearly stayed with the horses while ordering his men to the dangerous
battle on the hill above him, later recommended that 31 men be
awarded the Medal of Honor. "These are the men," Bernard
wrote, " who went up the rocky mesa with me."
"Hell," Vandenberg declared, "he never went up
the mesa." But, Washington was a long way off, so who would
know the difference? The medals were awarded. They constituted,
said Bill Gillespie, an archaeologist with the Coronado National
Forest, "the most medals awarded at any single battle during
the Indian wars."
As Vandenberg held forth, creating a vivid picture of the battle,
Chiricahua Apache toddlers--no doubt distant descendants of some
of the Indians who fought 129 years ago--sat on the ground gathering
twigs. They stuck them in the ground like candles, and sang "Happy
Birthday"...
IT WAS a bright morning in West Stronghold Canyon in the
Dragoon Mountains near St. David. Some 24 hours had passed since
the Chiricahua Apache visitors had left the battlefield at Rucker.
There was a hint of excitement in the air as the Apaches approached
the jumble of huge granite boulders, perhaps because they knew
that in that idyllic settling Cochise was not only a fighter but
a leader of a community, someone with a family. Kanseah said his
grandfather remembered seeing Cochise when he was a child. Perhaps
these modern Apaches remembered a description of Cochise left
behind by an Army doctor, Anderson Nelson Ellis, who had been
an eyewitness to a meeting in 1871 between Cochise and Gen. Gordon
Granger.
"While he was talking," Ellis wrote of the 56-year-old
Apache chief, "we had a fine opportunity to study this most
remarkable man...His height, five feet ten inches; in person lithe
and wiry, every muscle being well-rounded and firm. A silver thread
was now and then visible in his otherwise black hair, which he
wore cut straight around his head about on a level with his chin.
His countenance displayed great force."
Cochise spoke through an interpreter. He spoke in his language
to one of his warriors who also spoke Spanish. The warrior repeated
the words in Spanish to a Spanish speaker in Gen. Granger's contingent,
who then translated them into English for the general. Cochise
declared:
"When I was young, I walked all over this country, east
and west, and saw no other people than the Apaches. After many
summers I walked again and found another race of people had come
to take it.
"How is it? Why is it that the Apaches wait to die, that
they carry their lives on their fingernails? They roam over the
hills and the plains and want the heavens to fall on them. The
Apaches were once a great nation. They are now but a few, and
because of this they want to die, and so carry their lives on
their fingernails."
Nobody present among the modern Chiricahuas Apaches had heard
those sad and lyrical words, and yet still there was a sense of
wonder and wistfulness as they meandered into the thick tangle
of boulders where Cochise had lived with his family and the warriors
he commanded.
At noon, Sweeney and Gillespie again faced the dozen Chiricahua
Apaches in a clearing near the mouth of the canyon. It was on
this spot, they said, that Cochise met with Gen. Oliver Otis Howard
and agreed to make peace. Not only was it the same spot, it was
the same day, October 12, only 126 years later.
About a half hour earlier, as Kanseah stood in a shallow cave
that was covered with petroglyphs, he had paused in his speculations
to remark, "I wonder what it all means. If only the rocks
could talk!"
Now we are in the middle of other rocks where lions and snakes
lie hidden and--for all we know, because no one knows--Cochise
may lie buried, and the air is pregnant with possibilities. Standing
in the group are a handful of Chiricahua Apaches who have heard
stories about this place from their grandparents. Sitting next
to one of the Apaches is 78-year-old Frank Sladen, who had grown
up hearing another version of the same stories (During final peace
negotiations, his grandfather had been kept as a sort of hostage
by Cochise for 13 days, an incident which increased his respect
and admiration for the Apache leader he'd originally regarded
as "a bloodthirsty chief.")
Time may not heal all wounds, but it seems sometimes to have
an uneasy leveling effect. In that particular spot on Oct. 12,
1998, the progeny of the Indian wars emerged from an abstraction
as a handful of aging people looking for connections that might
link the past with the present in some meaningful way. Kanseah's
words came to mind once again, resonant and full of wonder:
"If only the rocks could talk."
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