ALL WHO WANDER

A Bolt of Courage

TOO OFTEN, HISTORY IS A DARK, towering monsoon storm of heartbreak and tragedy. But sometimes if you're lucky, a shaft of sunlight will lance the thunderheads.

Consider the singular friendship of 1st Lt. Royal Emerson Whitman and Apache Chief Eskiminzin, a gleam of light in the otherwise dispiriting tale of the Camp Grant Massacre.

Whitman, a Civil War hero and a principled abolitionist, was a descendant of Mayflower pilgrims. As a first lieutenant in the regular Army after the war, he was dispatched to the remote Camp Grant, an outpost at the junction of the San Pedro River and the paradise of Aravaipa Canyon.

That canyon was the homeland of a band of Apaches led by Eskiminzin, who clung to their land for decades in the face of pressure from incoming whites and other raiding bands. But in February 1871, five hungry, ragged women from Eskiminzin's band cautiously approached Whitman's outpost, searching for a boy taken prisoner by soldiers. Whitman, an idealistic, educated, compassionate man, treated them kindly, fed them and urged them to bring in Eskiminzin for peace talks.

A week later, Eskiminzin and 25 of his people arrived at the fort, proud but starving. His once-numerous band had dwindled to 150 starving survivors. Whitman advised him to move his band to the distant White Mountain Apache Reservation, but Eskiminzin pleaded for permission to settle near Camp Grant. Moved, Whitman took a career gamble and allowed them to settle nearby in hopes he could talk Gen. George Stoneman, based in San Francisco, into establishing a reservation.

The Apaches flocked to the camp, their numbers growing to perhaps 500. When Whitman offered to buy hay harvested from local meadows, the Apaches quickly cut 300,000 pounds. And when summer dried up the San Pedro and the lower reaches of Aravaipa Creek, he allowed the bands to move 5 miles up the canyon. Tragically, Whitman's urgent appeal to establish a reservation was returned unopened six weeks later because a clerk noted he had failed to attach a required summary of the contents.

By then, raids by other bands of Indians had enraged the population of nearby Tucson, prompting many newspapers and citizens to call for the extermination of the Apaches. When raiders killed several local citizens, many insisted on flimsy evidence that the culprits had come from Eskiminzin's band.

Indian fighter William Ouray raised a mixed group consisting of about 50 settlers and 92 Tohono O'odham Indians (then called Papago), longtime enemies of the Apaches. They marched through the night and fell upon Eskiminzin's camp at dawn, quickly slaughtering more than 140 people-almost all of them women and children because the warriors were off hunting. Ouray's group sold 27 children taken prisoner as slaves in Mexico.

When Whitman learned of the attack, he rushed to Eskiminzin's camp, where he found a scene of devastation. He tended the wounded and oversaw burial details, hoping Eskiminzin would bring in his warriors. When the warriors filtered into the camp, they "... indulged in their expressions of grief, too wild and terrible to be described," wrote Whitman. Only Eskiminzin's friendship with Whitman now prevented the grief-crazed warriors from extracting a bloody revenge.

When news of the attack reached Washington, President Ulysses S. Grant threatened to impose martial law unless Tucson authorities tried Ouray and his group. A jury acquitted the raiders after 19 minutes of deliberation.

The Tucson newspapers howled for Whitman's dismissal, but he spoke out courageously against the slaughter. His reward? Three court-martial trials on trumped-up charges and an early retirement. He moved to Washington, D.C., invented the popular Whitman saddle, lost his fortune and died of cancer at the age of 80 in 1913.

Eskiminzin moved his shattered band to the White Mountain Reservation and started a successful ranch, but jealous settlers soon seized his land. After Geronimo and the last of the Chiricahua Apache holdouts surrendered in 1886, Eskiminzin was arrested and sent off with Geronimo to exile in Florida. Eskiminzin was eventually released to return to the reservation in Arizona.

I return to Aravaipa Canyon whenever I can, in part to recall the life of Royal Whitman. He remains my hero, less for his courage in battle than for his moral courage. Perhaps if I can keep him present in my mind, I will have the courage to do the right, yet futile thing when the time comes.

That is why I go to where the storm of history broke in all its fury. For there, the story of Eskiminzin and Whitman lingers, like the pungent, cleansing smell of wet creosote.