Death of the West

Jagged Hideout

This view of the Peloncillo Mountains from the mouth of Gold Cave takes in a swath of rugged wilderness that sheltered Geronimo and other Apaches, by providing a protected route into Mexico. Ultimately, Geronimo surrendered for the last time in Skeleton Canyon in these mountains.

Death of the West SKELETON CANYON'S GHOSTS STILL SIGH WHERE OLD MAN CLANTON DIED AND GERONIMO SURRENDERED

have come seeking the place where the West died finally with a whimper after so much banging about. But the aptly named Skeleton Canyon yields no hint of what happened between its low walls, along this fitful creek, beneath these sinuous trees. Somewhere, just up-canyon, N.H. “Old Man” Clanton—famous for his family's feud with Wyatt Earp—slaughtered a party of Mexican smugglers in the aptly named Devil's Kitchen, a contortion of lichen-mottled volcanic rocks. Two weeks Later, Mexicans bent on revenge killed Clanton in nearby Guadalupe Canyon.

Near here, Geronimo finally yielded to Gen. Nelson Miles. He fell to false promises, not bullets, but Geronimo's surrender effectively ended the Indian Wars.

After years of imagining this remote canyon in the Peloncillo Mountains at the junction of Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico, I finally set out to find it and perhaps understand the terrible struggle for so harsh a place. I made the 300-mile drive from Phoenix out Interstate 10 into New Mexico, then south on State Route 80 back into Arizona before turning off the pavement at Skeleton Canyon Road and rattling 6.5 miles along the graded dirt road, past the stock tank and through an unlocked cattle fence across the public road near a ranch house and then into this haunted canyon.

The dirt road deteriorated into a jeep trail leading into Devil's Kitchen, a jagged stand of volcanic rocks near where the Clanton gang ambushed a band of Mexican smugglers. Clanton was the irascible head of a gang of rustlers known as the Cowboys, later made infamous by hating Wyatt Earp. Clanton's gang routinely used Skeleton Canyon as a route south into Mexico.

Mexican smugglers also used the canyon. In July 1881, Clanton's men ambushed one such smuggler pack train in Skeleton Canyon. Reportedly, Old Man Clanton and gunfighter "Curly Bill" Brocius set up the ambush, but Clanton's sons might have actually arranged it, according to Alden Hayes in his book Portal to Paradise. Some accounts say the robbers killed six to 19 Mexicans and made off with $765,000 in Mexican silver. Later, passing cowboys reportedly used the bleached skulls of the Mexicans as wash basins. However, The Tombstone Epitaph in August 1881 reported the haul at $4,000 and death toll at four. Hayes put the take at $700 and the death toll at four, plus one badly wounded man who fled with a load of silver. Treasure hunters have scoured the canyon ever since.

About two weeks later, Old Man Clanton and five cowboys camped with a herd of cattle in adjacent Guadalupe Canyon. Clanton was up at dawn, rattling about with the pots and pans to start breakfast, with the help of Harry Earnshaw and Billy Lang. As Charlie Snow, the night herder, rode up, Lang noted the restlessness of the cattle. "Charlie, get your gun," he said. "I think there's a bear out there."

Just then, a storm of gunfire broke over them. Old Man Clanton and several others died immediately. The wounded Snow rode half a mile down canyon before slipping from the saddle. Billy Beyers fled, but was hit a short distance up the canyon. Earnshaw and Lang got a little farther before Lang went down, shot in both legs. He provided enough covering fire for Earnshaw to flee with only the crease of a bullet across his nose. Lang killed one of the attackers and wounded another before they killed him.

The wounded Beyers rolled into some bushes and watched as the Mexican gunmen ran into camp to strip the bodies. Still half hidden, he stripped, tossed away his ring and lay face down on top of his clothes, playing dead. Assuming his body had already been plundered, the Mexicans ignored him. They were probably Sonoran militia, taking revenge for the smugglers' murders and rustling.

Earnshaw made it out of the canyon and hours later staggered into another ranch. A hastily assembled rescue party found Beyers barely alive and delirious.

I linger awhile in Devil's Kitchen, watching a gyre of vultures on the strengthening uplift. Skeleton Canyon has always been good to their kind.

After climbing back into my Jeep, I rattle another 4 miles down the canyon, until the trail dies in a barrier of bedrock. So I retrace my steps past Devil's Kitchen, seeking the real object of my quest-the place Geronimo surrendered.

At length, I find a previously overlooked sign marking the site of Geronimo's 1886 surrender. The soldiers had built a pile of stones to mark the spot, but the stones have long since been carried away-so I had missed it. Standing beneath the spindly sycamores, I picture that fall day when the mythic West gave way to the modern age.

By the time Geronimo surrendered here on September 3, 1886, he was the most infamous outlaw in America. A war shaman who believed himself immune to bullets, Geronimo spent his whole life at war, mostly in Mexico, where he extracted his insatiable revenge for the treacherous killing of his wife, mother and children.

At one point, a quarter of the U.S. Army and a similar number of Mexican troops chased him back and forth across the border-with Skeleton and Guadalupe canyons among his favored escape routes and ambush sites.

Eventually, the vainglorious General Miles realized he could not catch the wind in his hands, and so sent a single officer and relatives of Geronimo's tightly knit band into Mexico to convince the renegades to surrender. Geronimo yielded reluctantly to the longing of his warriors for their families and agreed to meet with General Miles in Skeleton Canyon.

side trips

Dragoon Mountains

By Clint Van Winkle Part of the "sky islands," the Dragoon Mountains guard the secrets to some of Arizona's most interesting history. From Apache warrior sites to ghost towns, the Dragoons offer an enticing look into Arizona's past.

Cochise Stronghold

The rugged, boulder-strewn Dragoon Mountains provided Cochise and the Chiricahua Apaches with a natural fortress, from which they resisted the U.S. Cavalry for 15 years. After Cochise's death in 1874, his men secretly buried him somewhere Geronimo camped high in the rocks near where I now stand, where he could still escape the approach of treachery. Miles hesitated in an agony of indecision, hoping the soldiers would kill Geronimo and relieve him of the politically risky task of negotiating the surrender. But the wary war shaman gave the soldiers no opening, so Miles eventually rode into Skeleton Canyon for the fateful meeting.

Miles noted that Geronimo was "one of the brightest, most resolute, determined-looking men that I have ever encountered. He had the clearest, sharpest, dark eyes I think I have ever seen."

Geronimo rode down alone and unarmed to meet with Miles. The warrior listened carefully to the interpreter who said, "General Miles is your friend."

"I never saw him, but I have been in need of friends," said Geronimo. "Why has he not been with me?"

Bitter laughter sounded among the watching officers, drawing a puzzled look from Geronimo.

Miles stated his terms, which he would soon violate. He arranged stones on the ground to illustrate that Geronimo would go to join the other Chiricahua Apaches, whom Miles had already removed to a disease-ridden camp in Florida. After two years, they could return to Arizona.

Geronimo and Miles met again in the same spot the next day, this time with the other warriors and Naiche, the son of Cochise and the real leader of the band. As Geronimo related years later, "We stood between his troopers and my warriors. We placed a large stone on the blanket before us. Our treaty was made by this stone and it was to last till the stone should crumble to dust; so we made the treaty, and bound each other with an oath. We raised our hands to heaven and took an oath not to do any wrong to each other or to scheme against each other."

Miles quickly discarded his politically unpalatable promises, although he did stave off voracious demands to simply hang Geronimo. The Chiricahua Apaches-the Army scouts and children born on the reservation along with Geronimo's few renegades were loaded onto cattle cars and spent the next 27 years in exile. The survivors were finally allowed to settle on the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico after Geronimo died of pneumonia, drunk in a ditch, for his "Power" had promised that no bullet could kill him.

I wander aimlessly among the grove of bone-white sycamores growing in the intermittent creek where Geronimo met with Miles. I stoop to examine a once-molten ooze of quartz and granite and wonder if it might be the rock by which Geronimo swore his oath. The sycamores seem slender, too young to have witnessed that shattered promise. But then my eye goes to the massive stump of a piñon on the bluff overlooking the stream. Surely that tree stood and swayed as Geronimo decided, at last, to trust a general.

The Apaches believed that the life force pervades all things. They say a man gains insight by "sitting in wisdom," meditating on the lessons the trees and rocks and wind of a certain place have to offer. So I make my small, silent camp nearby, where I can listen to the rocks of the place where the Old West died in a flurry of gunfire and broken promises.

I wake in the night. Somewhere a whippoorwill mourns. Then I hear an owl calling, calling, calling.

Biologists will tell you that owls call in the mournful darkness to make a listening rabbit lose its nerve and betray its position. Geronimo would have said that owls call out from the spirit world, telling secrets about death.

I only know that I lie very still for a while, listening. Peter Aleshire is editor of Arizona Highways and author of four books about the Apache Wars, including The Fox and the Whirlwind, the paired biography of Geronimo and Gen. George Crook. He also wrote "The Last Renegade" beginning on page 26.

Clay Martin has been exploring the empty spots on the Arizona map for 25 years, first as a field geologist and more recently as a landscape photographer. He lives in Westminster, Colorado.

Raiders' Highway

After Geronimo surrendered near here, the Peloncillos became much safer for smugglers and rustlers like the Clanton Gang, which reportedly traveled through the canyons of these mountains to steal cattle from Mexican ranches before their face-off with the Earp brothers made them infamous. To order a print, call (866) 9621191 or visit arizonahighways.com.