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 Part VII   ---   Peace

     Formalities took place on October 12 at Dragoon Springs, when Captain S. S. Sumner arrived with a contingent of uniformed troops from Fort Bowie as "requested" by Cochise.  The men had had a hard ride, starting out from the fort around midnight and traveling virtually all night to arrive in the morning at the designated spot.  Their discomfort and anxiety must have shown because Cochise, after greeting Sumner with a formal embrace, asked why he and his men looked sad.  He was concerned that they did not laugh and act cheerful.  General Howard, in his newspaper article, quotes "an officer who was present at the council" in providing us with this information.  The officer in question was almost certainly Captain Joseph T. Haskell.
The extract below is borrowed from Howard's article.  It provides an unusually clear view of what went on during that historical day at Dragoon Springs, and sheds some light on the differences in thinking between the whites and the Apaches:
 

"He [Cochise] wanted to hear us tell the truth, and nothing but the truth.  He had never lied to a white man, but the white man had lied to him.  He told how he had been deceived by those in command at Bowie, and how they had decieved him by lying at other times; how the whites hunted the Indian the same as they did deer or other wild game; how they seemed pleased and laughed when they killed an Indian.  He wanted to know why we came among them with such fine clothes (I had a pair of altered soldier pantaloons, as well as an altered coat with straps, and my cap with bugle and number; the rest of us were dressed about the same). and referred to the way the Apaches were dressed.  He wanted to know why the troops at Apache Pass were so down on him and his people; what had his people done to us that we should hate him so.  He said, 'You have good clothes; when the Apache kills the white man he gets something, but why does the white man kill the Apache?  The Apache has no clothes or anything else that the white man wants.'

"Of course we had to listen to all this, and to tell him that we were not the troops that deceived him; that he had not committed any depredation at the post since we came here, and that we had not killed an Indian with the troops that are here now; but at the same time we would tell him the truth that was our business, so long as he was at war with us, but as soon as he was willing to make peace, we were willing to do all we could to show him we wanted peace, and we would not be the first to break it.

"He wanted us removed from the pass, said the troops should all be taken away, that the land was his; the mountains belonged to his people; the game, the mines, the timber, and the water, and, in fact, everything; that if we would go away and leave him in undisturbed possession he would guard the road from Rio Membres, New Mexico, to Tucson; keep all bad Indians away, and not allow any depredations to be committed.  He wanted to come into the pass and pick or dig up the bones of his people and burn them, to make a lasting peace with us, and to let by-gones be forgotten, and live in harmony, and peace the remainder of his life.  He said that years ago their tribe was very large and powerful, but that the whites have hunted them from place to place; that they are now very much reduced, and that he is getting old and would like to live at peace from this time on; but that if the white man would not let him do it he would go away from here and fight him.

"They generally wear a handerchief - a piece of muslin tied about their heads like a turban - necklace, shirt, piece of muslin around their waist, breech cloth, and boots made of buckskin; the legs turn over double, so that they reach only to their calves, but when pulled up will go above their knees.  The soles are made quite thick, and in front of the big toe they have a big piece turned up about two inches round to protect the toe when running.  The stocks of their guns they scrape, and also cut and file down the barrels very small.  I think this is done to make them light.  The lances are made out of the blades of swords or sabers stuck in poles ten or twenty feet long.  The arrows are about three feet long with steel points.

"One of the captains, the only one who spoke bes ides Cochise, wanted to know why we wore such clothes.  When told that the President ordered us to, he wanted to know how we got them, where they were made, and on this point he could not be satisfied; so last of all he asked when the idea originated, and where and by whom, to make such clothes, and to make cloth.

"These questions were preliminary to the statement of God's special favor to us, enabling us to make nice clothing while the Apaches had other special abilities. 

"This warrior said the spirits had visited him the night before, and that they told him that this council would take place today, and that it would be a good one, and that a lasting peace would be made, one that would do away with bloodshed.  He said that he had been to the bad place for the last year, meaning that he had been away committing depredations, but that he had now returned and would be good - that during that time he had committed a great many depredations, and that now he should stop short; that in the past they had been to war with the whites; that when the wind blew in a certain direction that they had to go on the war path because the spirit told them to, but that in the future they would keep peace with the whites.  He said that there was one Indian Apache and one white man who were devils, and that they two made all the trouble between the Apaches and whites.

"This was kept up until 3 o'clock, when we commenced to talk about the reservation.  It had all been settled, General Howard thought, before we came there, and that all that was necessary to do was to repeat it over to us, but when it came to that, Cochise wanted about four times as much as the General thought he did, and it finally resulted in giving him the country between Penoueillo [Peloncillo] mountains and Dragoon Springs.  This includes two ranges of mountains and two valleys - San Simon and Sulphur Springs - about fifty-five miles square, reaching to the Sonora line.

"After sitting down until 4 o'clock, being exactly four hours, we got matters all right, and broke up and started for our camp.  The Indians gathered around our abulance, and laughed and talked as though they were highly pleased with matters and things.  Arrangements were made for supplying them with rations at once, and until the Indian agent could make his arragements for supplying them direct from his agency, which will be established down in Sulphur Springs Flat, we asked Cochise how we should know his Indians when we saw them.  He said if they were off the road, they would have a flag (white) otherwise they would meet us on the road."

     The ceremony ended after a lunch was served (I have not been able to determine which side provided the repast) and immediately General Howard, Sladen and the rest of the party (except for Jeffords, who would stay behind with Cochise until an agency could be set up) prepared to travel on to Tucson where the wheels would be set in motion to begin managing the new reservation.  Cochise was nearly disconsolate at the prospect of Howard's leaving.  He tried in vain to persuade the General to stay with him at least until it could be determined for certain that the peace would take hold (the entertaining mechanism of stacking stone upon stone, one for each day of peace, as depicted in "Broken Arrow" is, alas, fiction).  He had seemingly formed a deep fondness for General Howard, whom he would always think of in the most affectionate terms.  Cochise possessed the ability to read a man's character in quick order and he was impressed by Howard's sincerity and love of truth -- not to mention the man's incredible courage in coming to Cochise's stronghold without invitation.

     In the article written a month after the fact by General Howard we find a moment worthy of any Hollywood production as Cochise bid the General farewell.   When Howard had finally convinced the chief that he must leave, "He looked at me a moment kindly, and then stepped forward and pressed me in his arms, saying 'good-bye' in English."
 


THE RESERVATION YEARS


 


     The peace treaty was never formally signed -- but Cochise was a man of his word and such was well known and respected.  Still, General Howard came under fire almost immediately for having given Cochise so much and then only on the strength of the word of an Indian.  The general public was skeptical.  Tucson newspapers hinted that Cochise would likely behave for a time and then all hell would break loose.  General Crook took it upon himself early the following year to send an emissary to Cochise to try and determine if the terms of the treaty were being faithfully met (there was great controversy almost immediately due to the the fact that Cochise's men refused to stop raiding below the border).  When questioned by Crook's representatives, Cochise truthfully responded that his agreement for peace was with the Americans, not with the Mexicans -- and while he would try to disuade his followers from raiding there, he could not stop those who would not listen.  This may have sounded odd to Americans who assumed that any chief would have the last say over any one of his followers.  They were to learn that in the Apache world each man retained his right to follow whomever he wished, and he remained in good standing with the chief (or, in Apache language, "nantan") so long as he did not violate any of the chief's specific directives.  Because Cochise had never promised the whites that his men would not carry on their traditional raids into Mexico, those warriors who chose to do so were not strictly guilty of disobedience, and Cochise was not about to voluntarily give up more to the Americans by altering what he saw as a just and acceptable treaty.  Crook had to grudgingly agree that no cause existed that would justify challenging Howard's results.

      
BOOKSTORE
THE LAND
THE PEOPLE
COCHISE
BROKEN ARROW
COCHISE IN
THE MOVIES
VIDEOS
COCHISE'S CAMP
REDISCOVERED

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