The Last Renegade

The Last Renegade APACHE WARRIOR MASSAI CROSSED HALF A CONTINENT TO WAGE HIS ONE-MAN WAR

A warm wind filters through the mingled oaks and pines at the base of the spec-- tacular spires of ancient ash turned to stone. I pause and listen for an odd echo of sound somewhere behind me. The sound stops immediately, the rustle of the leaves indistinguishable from the whisper of my imagination here among the cluster of stone pillars named for the last great Apache renegade. "Big Foot" Massai fought alongside Geronimo, escaped from a train carrying him to exile and staged one of the most astonishing cross-country escapes (Text continued on page 30(Continued from page 26) of all time to return to these haunted mountains and a one-man war for another 25 years. Now I'm walking near Massai Point in the Chiricahua Mountains, close to the place where Massai in 1892 stalked a rancher and his family. J. Hughes Stafford, a Civil War veteran and rancher, survived his encounter with Massai, unlike perhaps 100 other people who died at Massaï's hands during his quartercentury reign of terror as the last Apache "Wounded Warrior." Now I have come to this same place, seeking to understand the ferocity of Massai's long search for a warrior's death. Then the leaves rustle again and a shiver of understanding runs up my spine.

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Trained as a warrior from childhood, Massai learned to run all day with water held in his mouth to enforce proper breathing.

Massai's daughter, Alberta Begay, provided one of the few accounts of his early life in a 1959 article in True West magazine. Jason Betzinez, who rode with Geronimo, also recounts Massai's life in his 1959 book I Fought with Geronimo. I also unearthed an account by Morgan Miles in the 1953 issue of American Mercury titled "The Wounded Warrior," together with partial accounts in Dan Thrapp's biography of cavalry scout Al Sieber and Arizona's Names by Byrd H. Granger. Trained as a warrior from childhood, Massai learned to run all day with water held in his mouth to enforce proper breathing, with heavy burdens lashed to his back. Constantly in the company of his childhood friend Gray Lizard, Massai practiced his skills as a hunter. As a boy, he killed a charging bear. Because the Apaches hold bears sacred, the boy then hurried home for purifying rituals. Massai's training came just in time for the most intense period of the Apache Wars, as Gen. George Crook deployedthousands of cavalrymen and hundreds of Apache scouts, taking adroit advantage of the bitter divisions between different bands. The use of the Apache scouts proved crucial, since they alone could cling to the trail of a raiding party. Accounts differ as to what role Massai played in these early maneuvers as he moved from the warpath to the reservation and back again. Betzinez reports that Massai worked as an Army scout in the campaign against the Apache chief Victorio, but Massai's daughter seemed to counter that claim by describing his bitterness against the Apache scouts who hunted Geronimo. Massai left the reservation to join Betzinez and others in Mexico's Sierra Madre mountains,but then stole Betzinez' horse and returned quietly to the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona. Not long after, Geronimo recruited him for another breakout. "Who will join me in driving out the White Eye?" Geronimo asked the assembled group of warriors, according to the account of Massai's daughter. "We are a free people," said White Cloud. "Among the Apaches, there is no compulsory military service." "So be it," said Geronimo. "Let each man decide for himself." Massai and Gray Lizard immediately volunteered. Geronimo fled the reservation and returned to the warpath in 1885. Once more tiring of warfare after several months, Massai returned to his family on the reservation near Fort Apache.

By then, the Army had decided to relocate all of the Chiricahua Apaches to Florida, hoping to finally break the resistance of Geronimo's warriors, who had eluded roughly 10,000 Mexican and U.S. troops. When Geronimo learned all his family members left behind on the reservation had already been sent to Florida, he also surrendered to the Army. But as the Army prepared the captives for the trip east, Massai again reconsidered his surrender. First, he tried to stir up revolt among the dispirited prisoners at Holbrook, before they boarded the train for exile in Florida. "When he found no one was paying attention to him and that nobody would join him in an effort to escape, he quieted down and remained peaceable with the rest of us," wrote Betzinez. On the train, Massai and Gray Lizard spent three days loosening the bars on the cattle car in which they rode. Then, as the train slowed on a long incline outside of St. Louis, they pulled loose the bars and both men slipped through the window, dropped to the ground and rolled into a clump of bushes. So started an epic journey, across 1,500 miles of unknown, thickly populated territory.The pair traveled by night, guided by the stars. They stole supplies and guns from a group of prospectors, which enabled them to bring down a deer, supplying them with venison and water sacks fashioned from the deer's stomach. Each night, they covered about 30 miles until they arrived at last at their homeland in New Mexico where they parted company. Gray Lizard was a Tonkawa, and could return to his own people still living on a reservation in New Mexico. But Massai wouldn't risk returning to any of

side trips Soleful Sites by JoBeth Jamison and Clint Van Winkle

While working his way through southeastern Arizona, Massai was known to cover up to 70 miles a day. Perhaps you could, too, but with so much to see, we'd be willing to wager you'd get sidetracked.

the other non-Chiricahua Apache bands still living at the San Carlos Reservation, for fear the soldiers would again send him to Florida.

"To his bitter anger he found his people had been cowed by the government, and he wrathfully left them to declare war on the whites and redmen alike," Miles wrote. "He saw himself as the sole remaining true Apache. The rest of the tribe had deserted the faith of their fathers."

So began Massai's long, lonely war against whites, Indians and Mexicans alike. He hid in New Mexico and southeast Arizona where he stole horses, killed settlers and eluded posses.

His feats of endurance and cunning soon seemed superhuman. He could cover 70 miles in a single day, riding his horses to death, stopping to cut a meal from the warm carcass, then running on foot for hours. This enabled him to outdistance soldiers, who could hardly eat their governmentissued mounts. Once, he reportedly wiped out an entire unit of Mexican cavalry by luring them into a shallow gorge just in time to be swept away by flooding from a mountain cloudburst.

On another occasion, an Apache scout found Massai's camp and hurried back to report the find to Chief of Scouts Al Sieber. But Massai spotted the scout's tracks, followed him to the fort and dropped the scout with a single rifle shot as he stood in Sieber's doorway about to make his report.

Massai also turned his bitter rage on Apaches remaining on the reservations. Repeatedly, he kidnapped women from the reservation to share his exile. Some, he reportedly murdered. Others died simply trying to keep up with him as he fled his pursuers. One he came to love. When she became pregnant, he returned her to the reservation so that his child might survive.

On one of Massai's sweeping raids in 1892, he stalked Stafford and his family on a picnic in Bonita Canyon. After coming across Massai's distinctive moccasin print on the road, Stafford gathered up his family and fled. Stafford raised a posse that tracked Massai until his trail disappeared in a seemingly impenetrable wall of brush near the cluster of stone pillars that now bears his name.

Massai's ultimate fate remains a mystery. Betzinez said that Massai and his son were one day chasing a horse near the Mescalaro Reservation in New Mexico when a shot rang out, prompting the boy to flee without ever knowing if his father had been hit. But Massaï's family never heard from him again.

Of course, even if Massai eluded that bullet and fled with a flick of the reins, he would have died long ago. So why should I take fright at a rustling of leaves? Why did my heart hammer, as though I'd discovered a moccasin print stalking everything I hold dear?

Turning, I walked quickly back toward the sound, bursting through a screen of bushes and looking a trifle wildly around the small clearing.

Nothing. Only the wind. I walked around the edge of the clearing, groping for some sign. In the soft dirt, I found a single, scuffed print that appeared to belong to a bear.

Or something very much like a bear-now gone.

1 Chiricahua National Monument

Following Massai's "Big" footsteps.

Location: Southeast of Willcox.

Getting There: From Tucson, take Interstate 10 east 75 miles to Willcox and State Route 186. Follow State 186 south for 31 miles to State Route 181 and turn east to the monument.

What to See: Not so far away from the entrance, off Bonita Canyon Road, is the historic Faraway Ranch where Swedish pioneers settled after Geronimo surrendered. Stop for a walk through Echo Canyon where you can hear yourself think beneath mirroring rock formations. At the end of Bonita Canyon Road, find the 7,000-foot Massai Point and an uncanny view of Cochise Head rock. To learn about the monument and area history, visit the Chiricahua Ranger Station and Visitors Center located approximately 1.5 miles inside the monument.

Information: (520) 824-3560; www. nps.gov/chir/pphtml/contact.html.

2 Fort Apache Historic Park

See the site of the Massai family reunion.

Location: South of Pinetop.

Getting There: From Phoenix, take U.S. Route 60 145 miles northeast to State Route 73 at Carrizo. Drive south on State 73 approximately 23 miles to Fort Apache.

What to See: On a brief hiatus from the Apache warpath in 1885, Massai made his way to be with his family on the reservation near Fort Apache. This former army post comprises 288 acres and more than 20 buildings dating from the 1870s to the 1930s. Run by the White Mountain Apache Tribe, Fort Apache also houses the Apache Cultural Center, a re-created Apache village, a military cemetery and ancient ruins and petroglyphs.

Information: (928) 338-4625; www.wmonline.com/attract/ ftapache.htm; http://wmat.us//wmahistory.shtml.

3 Presidio Santa Cruz de Terrante

The 18th-century fortress looms as the most intact survivor of a network of defensive sites constructed by the Spanish. However, the structure was abandoned in 1780, because of numerous raids by Apache warriors. Now, visitors can imagine what it must've been like to live as a Spanish soldier at the fort as they view the ancient ruins.

Location: 100 miles southeast of Tucson on the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area.

Getting There: From Tucson, drive 40 miles east on Interstate 10 to State Route 90. Go south 20 miles to State Route 82. Turn left (east) onto State 82 and drive 9 miles to Kellar Road, then 2 miles north down the driveway to the parking lot.

What to See Nearby: Fairbank ghost town, Lehner Mammoth and Murray Springs Clovis Sites.

Information: (520) 439-6400; www.blm.gov/az/nca/spnca/spnca-info.htm. http://www.recreation.gov/detail.cfm?ID=2057.

Johnson Historical Museum of the Southwest

Formerly known as the Slaughter Ranch, this was the home of Texas Ranger and cattleman John Slaughter, who served two terms as the sheriff of Cochise County, which included the rough-and-tumble town of Tombstone. Registered as a National Historic Landmark, there are five fully restored buildings on this 144-acre spread. The historic ranch once served as the assembly area for troops ready to repel an attack led by Pancho Villa.