The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 2, 1902, Page 8

UNCLE S/RM TRINKS THRY WILL NOW RR GOOD TNDIANS ERONIMO, the chief.of the Chiri. cahua Apaches, whose ngme brings up visions of & terrorized frontier, and g long and lurid trail of deeds of blood and pillage that marks him es the most treacherous and brutal of any of his red-skinned brethren, is to be given & chance to live like & land owner. Whether he will elect to do so remains to be seen. There are undoubtedly many people, who, in view of his past murderous rec- T say that he cannot do so. But sbout it for some years U m has decided to give the Indian who used to boast that he killed Mexican soldiers with rocks, having “no ammuni- tion to waste upon Mexicans,” a chance to spend the days of bis old age upon a ranch of his own. With this end in view General Frank Armstrong, &s an agent of the War Department, has been recentiy t Sill, Oklahoma, making ang: for the release of the old chief and v 1d for e 296 Apaches who haye been h the past twelve years by the Government as prisoners of war. These Indians will be scattered and allotted lands near some of the Government reservations where y raise crops. e chief of the worst, wildest and est of the tribes' of the Apache has set & good example to the band of followers who shared his captivity. five vears he has e dom itself meking the ways of 1 own. He is an e always has bey n, being worth probabl toa horse trade than his horse He took two years ok through into his doubtful prominence in 1576, when by the death of old Cochise, the former head chief, he became easily the leader of his tribe. Soon after this the murler of & ranchman named Rogers, because he refused to sell the Indians all the whisky they wanted, thoroughly aroused the whites and they clamored for the removal of the Chiricahuas to the San Carlos reservation, where the rest of the Apaches had been placed. Geronimo was much op+ posed to going, When it was decided to remove the Indlans he asked for time to bring in his family, who were scattered in the mountains. 'He disappeared and nothing more was seen of him until long afterward, when he was taken In New Mexico and brought to the Ban Carlos reservation. He escaped soon after that and was out until 1878, when he was captured in So- Tieutenant Haskell. He vamosed time in 1881 and was out in sses of the mountains that sgeemed his natural home until General Crook brought him back in 1884 Not a year after came the eutbreak of 183, when, fortified by tizwin, Geronimo left the Apache reservation, and accompanied by Chihuahua, a sub-chief, and a small but extremely devilish band of braves, {\rnr‘m‘»dm] to terrorize the white man. Under Geronimo's leadership this band kept some of the best Indian fighters in the United States hunting them across the arld plains and in the mountain fastnesses of Arizona for more than a vear. This band of Apaches descended upon Jittle settlements and lonely ranches and ran off the stock and put it to their own uses, massacred emigrants and pillaged their trains, stole everything that could be carried off and killed men, women and children who chanced to cross their path. At last the whites rose up and demanded that the War Department should wipe out Geronimo and all his band. General George Crook, one of the ablest Indian fighters the army has produced, was assigned to the task. He and his men suffered through a campaign that was full of peculiar difficulties. The horses of the cavalrymen often broke down in the midst of the waterless, tree- less, burning levels of rock-and sand. The mountain passes, little known to the whites, were homes to the red men, and there it was almost impossible to’ sur- prise them. They established their camps on high and almost inaccessible mountain spurs. Thelr sentinels were mounted and Supplied with good field glasses. _Many engagements took place beyond the Mex- ican horder, and as the Government of that country would not until some time later allow the United States to estab- lish any permanent camps in their coun- try it complicated the situation. ~The Apaches did mot fear the Mexican sol- diers, and they kept the country in a state of constant terror. They stole horses from Arizona ranches while the cowboys were at home and knew what was going on, but were afrald to stir from the houses. General Crook fought Indians with Indians, and tbe aif- ficulties of the desert were overcome in part by the employment of many of the same Chiricahua~Indians as scouts.” They were physically inferfor and the greater part of them of mixed Tace, but as war scouts they were ideal. Small of stature and apparently no match physically for the white man, yet when it came to climbing mountains ~or making long marches they were swift and tireless. One of the most famous of these scouts was “Dutchy,” in attendance upon Cap- tain Emmet Crawford, who met & tragio death—killed by Mexican troops whilg do- ing all in his power to help them. He was in the Mexican mountains in pursuit of Geronimo. one of the most desperate members of Geronimo’s band. Upon the surrender o the band in 1883 to General Crook he en- tered the United States Cavalry service He avenged Captain Craw- ford’s death by shooting on the spot the Mexican who killed hi The expedition under Lieutenant Maus into Sonora In the fall and winter of 1885 resulted in the agreement of Geronimo to One night when they within sight of the rocky position occu- pled by the hostiles came into the camp and sald that Ger- onimo wanted to talk. went the next day and met Geronimo, Natchez, Nana and Chihuahua, with fours They were suspicious, but to_ surrender as a scout. Indian woman The lieutenant teen bucks. Geronimo promised his own wife and nine Indians in all an omised to meet General Crook near San ernardino in about two rgoons to con- sider surrendering. He did surrender the prisoners as promised. A few days after General Crook arrived and the conference then held resulted in the promise of onimo to surrender. and camped about half a mile above Crook and his men. It was belleved then that they wbuld certainly surrender. began trouble among the Indians, caused by liquor fur- nished them by & ranchman, who also told them stories of awful punishments awaiting them in case they d{d surrender. it was discovered that : tv-ive of his dminahtzd uletly out of camp and fled to DD wteins, (This was a shock fo the soldiers, who had gone to sleep feeling confident that the long and harassing campaign was over. General Crooks’ dis- tch announcing the escape of Geronimo, atchez and_ a party of so many oc- casioned much disappointment at Wash- ington _and resulted in correspondence rep- rimanding General Crook in such terms that he asked to be relleved. General Nelson A. Miles was sent The hostiles came The next mornin Geronimo and th! the mountains. and made the in Geronimo, _to_take his_ditlon of his first surrender, being com~ engulf them for 50 many years to come. TO BE TRIRD AT FARMING, BUT MUST SCRLP NC MCRE elled to give himself up. General Miles tvided Arizona into districts for patrol. The entire Apache hunting column was a scouting party. In this last month or & of this world-famous campa Generd| Leonard R. Wood, now in Cuba, then first lleutenant and assistant surgeon in the United States army, saw his first active fighting. The hallo(}?h stem was oyed by Gemeral o8 ith such effect In the Apache campaign 88 to make it an im- ortant factor in the forced surrender of ronimo and was the means of that warrior sending for Natchez to come in and give himself up. Through the hello- stat Geronimo’s brother, whom he had left at Fort Bowle as a guarantee of good faith, was communicated with, and when the answer came nyth that Natches was altve and well and walting for Geronimo to come to him, the chief was so struck with awe that he sent a warrior to_tell his brother that “‘there was a power here which he could not understand, and to come in, and come quick.” In a few hours Natchez came into camp with his band of warriors and their families, Lieutenant A. M. Fuller of the Secon: Cavalry, now Captain Fuller, station: at Alcatras, was placed in charge of the thiMeen heliograph stations in Arizon reaching over a district of 375 miles. A each of these stations an operator duty as long as the sh his troops hidden, but th through this of any new art of the hostiles within one or two gfiurs One station sent 000 words dur- ing the t‘a.mtgl.lxn. Dispatches could be signaled at the rate of fifteen words per minute. During the last part of the campaign feutenant Fuller was in California on of thirty days for the purpose of married, the exigencies of wgr postponed _his From Bowle, Ariz., every mornim; Taph immediately flashes 1 over the dis While he was came to him Geronimo had sur- er took place in h of August, 1386, , just on the d Mexico. D! they wor had been she dled. The terrible ordeal rendered him tem- gorlr(ly insane, and this condition saved is life, for the Apaches, having great awe of an insane person, set him free, All this time the troops against imo were as 100 to 1. It was only thos: nearest to h needed to hole in Art dren in a secret stro ains, and then warriors he trgveled ‘at night ove ridges of the iountains. In many cases the troops would come upon the deserted camps of the Indians with the campfires still burning, showing how recently the savages had left. At length combined forces drove the Apaches into Sonora, and thers Lawton ave them little rest. In the meantime leutenant Gatewood of the Sixth Cav- alry, now dead, was sent with two I dians to the hostile camp to discover th state of mind of the hostiles. Geronimo had a great respect for Ga.ewood. The next day at daybreak Geronimq an number of warriors, including ches, came Into camp and Geronimo rushed up Lawton, sald: "“You are J vant to talk with.” Finally y agreed to accompany Lawton to here they could meet General Mi} Y Later, after a lengthy fter going back to n which practically he troops no control over him but fidence they wers obliged to place Geronimo, this chief who years s died by the peasants in a_as “‘a devil sent "to punish their sins” surrendered uncom- to General Miles. On the Sth of September following '3 special train bearing the captured chly and his women and warriors steamed out fiom i ona, on the line t which re- of the Southern mrvummt‘ o to Florida and prisons which were to