Chasing Cochise

COCHISE COUNTRY

Dawn creeps over the rugged granite spires of Cochise Stronghold in southeastern Arizona's Dragoon Mountains. The mountain range's chasms provided the perfect hiding spots for Cochise and his people. To order a print of this photograph, see inside front cover.

An Arizona white oak tree stretches over a streambed lined with massive granite boulders at the eastern end of Cochise Stronghold.

rise with the purple-pink dawn, brisk among the oaks and sycamores that once sheltered and shaded the Apache leader Cochise, in the long years of his doomed war against the end of the world. I busy myself for my hike through the heart of the Dragoon Mountains to the place where the United States yielded, finally, to this old man with a fierce power and a wary will. I feel Cochise hovering, as he must have felt the spirits that inhabited every crook of the stream and odd scatter of rocks.

The stream coming down off the 7,500-foot-high peaks of the Dragoons runs lightly through Cochise Stronghold, the beautiful Forest Service campground on the east side of the mountains where Cochise also sometimes camped. Many of the springs and streams that sustained Cochise and his Chiricahua Apaches have turned to ghosts in the past century due to ecological changes and a decade of drought. I am reminded of an Apache story, recounted in Myths and Tales of the Chiricahua Apache Indians by Morris Edward Opler, about the end of the world: The old people used to tell us that when the end of the Earth is coming, all the water will begin to dry up. For a long time there will be no rain. There will be only a few places, about three places, where there will be springs. At those three places the water will be dammed up and all the people will come in to those places and start fighting over the water. They said that in this way most of the people will kill each other off. Maybe there will be a few good people left. When the new world comes after that the white people will be Indians and the Indians will be white people.

I stand in the place Cochise loved best, the Dragoon Mountains, with its extravagance of limestone and granite. The limestone was laid down on a sea bottom just as the dinosaurs got going and granite was forged 75 million years ago, before the mammals displaced the dinosaurs. The peaks of the Dragoons rear up above the scrubby brushland and high desert on either side. The Sulphur Springs Valley lies to the east, between the Dragoon and Chiricahua mountain ranges. The San Pedro River meanders to the west. This north-south striping of towering mountains separated by low grasslands all arose from the same stretching and lifting of the Earth's crust that created the Sea of Cortes, the San Andreas Fault and much of the topography of the western United States.

In the case of the Dragoons, the lifting created an ecological storehouse for the huntergatherer Apache people. The Apaches moved with the seasons around these mountain ranges, which rise from a sea of desert. This terrain has blessed southeast Arizona with a great diversity of plants and animals.

The Dragoons also provided a ready-made fortress. From its high places, Apache

The Apaches believe a spirit runs through all things, especially rocks.

Today, I will hike 7 miles through the heart of that history, starting from Cochise Stronghold at 5,000 feet on the east side of the range, up and over a 5,900-foot saddle between peaks that rise to more than 7,000 feet, then on switchbacks down to the west side of the range to where Cochise negotiated his decadelong war that cost thousands of lives.

The trail rises steadily through an extrusion of granite that glimmers with quartz and mica crystallized deep beneath the earth's surface. Granite erodes and chips and resists and rears up, at once malleable and indestructible, ancient and fresh-minted. In the Dragoons, granite runs riot-taking strange, soothing, ominous shapes, inspiring myths. The Apaches believe a spirit runs through all things, especially rocks. Cochise said that as the warriors he led dwindled from 1,000 to 100, it sometimes Seemed these rocks were his only friends. As I toil years later on up the steepening trail through this profusion of boulders, I attempt to feel their animate spirits.

The trail levels out in a riotous wonderland of tumbled boulders in the broad pass between two high points. Seeing the peaks rising to each side reminds me of the story from Keith H. Basso's wonderful book, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache, which tells the stories the White Mountain Apaches attached to every small feature of their landscape. The story that went with Gizhyaa'itine ("Trail Goes Down Between Two Hills") said that two beautiful sisters saw the lustful, powerful and foolish Old Man Owl coming up that trail and decided to play a trick on him. The girls each went to the top of a different hill. When Old Man Owl was just between them, one sister stood on her hill and called out ardently to Owl. Excited, he ran up the hill toward her. But when he was halfway up that hill, she disappeared and her sister stood up on top of the hill across the way. She called out to him in her most seductive way, so the foolish old man turned and ran back toward her. But when he was halfway up the other side, the other sister reappeared on her hill and called out to him. So the old man without wisdom ran back and forth, back and forth, four times-the sacred number. Seeing he was exhausted, the beautiful young girls went on their way, laughing.

I pause to catch my breath on the high saddle. I can imagine Cochise all around in the rocks that sheltered him so faithfully.

'I am getting old and would like to live in peace from this time on,' Cochise said.

This very pass provided an easy way for war parties to move through the mountains. The soldiers chasing Cochise made the mistake of pursuing him into the rocks just a few times before they learned their bloody and arduous lesson. After that, the soldiers usually gave up the chase when the warriors reached the mountains.

I come finally to the crest of the saddle, which offers a sweeping view of the San Pedro River Valley. Perhaps 40 miles out on the valley floor, a vehicle trundles along a dirt road, raising a tracery of dust. Cochise's lookouts had no doubt stood in this very spot and watched the dust raised by the Butterfield Overland Stage as they planned their ambush.

I follow a steep trail on the west side of the range down the mountain, rejoining a spring-fed creek that threads through the pastel boulders Cochise knew by name. The Apaches believe you gain wisdom only by sitting in those places and letting them smooth your mind as the wind, rain and ice had smoothed even stone.

Down off the mountain, the trail winds along the front face of the Dragoons. The pines of the saddle give way to sycamores along the now-dry creek bed. The accounts of the soldiers who hunted Cochise describe a vigorous stream, but now it is a sandy ghost winding among giant trees that were sprouts when Cochise made his peace. I recall the Apache tale of the end of the world, when the few remaining whites and the Indians would trade places.

Along the thread of a side trail I search for Council Rocks, where Cochise made peace with the one-armed general and Civil War hero, Oliver Otis Howard. Cochise stubbornly refused Howard's offer of a reservation in New Mexico with other bands, unwilling to let go of the boulders of the Dragoons and the Chiricahuas.

"I am getting old and would like to live in peace from this time on," Cochise said. "But if the white man will not let me do it, I will go away from here and fight again.... My people have killed Americans and Mexicans and taken their property. Their losses have been greater than mine. I have killed ten white men for every Indian slain, but I know that the whites are many and the Indians are few. So why shut me up on a reservation? We will make peace. We will keep it faithful. But let us go around free as Americans do."

In the end, it was Howard who yielded-giving Cochise the mountains he loved. That made Cochise the only Apache Indian leader to win his war against the U.S. Army, although the government took it all away again after Cochise died of what might have been stomach cancer. Cochise was buried with his horse, his dog and his rifle in some still-hidden place in the Dragoon range.

I sit on Council Rocks at the end of my trek through myth and history. Some of the rocks are marked by 1,000-year-old petroglyphs, offerings from the people who came before the Apaches. I gaze out on this still achingly empty space and remember another story the Apache people tell about foolish Coyote and clever Turkey: Coyote saw Turkey in some pine trees. It was high up there in a tree. We don't know where he got the ax, but he got an ax, and he began to chop on that tree. Just about the time the tree started to fall, Turkey flew to another one. Coyote went to that tree and tried to chop it down. He just kept doing that all day long until he was tired out. He kept chopping and Turkey kept flying to the next tree until Coyote was worn out.

Similarly, the soldiers grew tired of "chopping," and let Cochise have this one "tree" that he loved best.

Dusk gathers on the pink glitter of granite as I sit where Cochise might have sat, pondering the strange ways of fate. At first, I feel inexpressibly sad, wondering whether these rocks feel the absence of the people who thought of them as living things. But then I smile to remember the stories of foolish Old Man Owl running from hill to hill, and Coyote with his ax running from tree to tree.

As the rocks catch the lengthening light and hold it as it turns from yellow to pink to red, I feel oddly comforted. We frail humans must come and go-warriors, one-armed generals and weary writers-clinging to our little time. But the rocks remain, still willing to impart wisdom to those who linger to listen. Aleshire Photographer Randy Prentice of Tucson rates the Dragoon Mountains as one of the most beautiful and interesting ranges in the state.

ROCK REFUGE Discovered in a shallow cave near Council Rocks, grinding holes (above) offer a clue about the Mogollon culture that inhabited this area 1,000 years ago.

DESERT REFUGE Early morning light casts shadows on the rock formations that harbored the Chiricahua Apache Indians, when Cochise ruled the tribe and the landscape.

Location: Cochise Stronghold is just west of Pearce/ Sunsites on the east side of the Dragoon Mountains in the Coronado National Forest in southeast Arizona. Getting There: From Tucson, drive east 70 miles on Interstate 10 to State Route 191 at Exit 331. Drive south on State 191 to Sunsites. From Sunsites, drive west on Ironwood Road 9.1 miles to the campground entrance. When inside the national forest, Ironwood Road become Forest Service Road 84, a rough, rocky dirt road, requiring five stream crossings. Cochise Stronghold West: A good, high-clearance road comes off Middle March Road just outside of Tombstone and threads along the west face of the Dragoon Mountains. It leads past Council Rocks and ends at the trailhead leading back over the pass to Cochise Stronghold. Travel Advisory: A high-clearance, four-wheel-drive vehicle is recommended. Wear good hiking shoes that you don't mind getting wet. Warning: Don't cross the stream during heavy rains in the summer monsoon season. Lodging: Campsites are available at Cochise Stronghold, (520) 388-8300; www.fs.fed.us/r3/coronado/forest/contact/contact.shtml. Nearby Tombstone and Benson offer lodging at area guest ranches, hotels or bed and breakfasts. Information: Benson Chamber of Commerce, (520) 586-2842; www.bensonchamberaz.com; Tombstone Chamber of Commerce, toll free, (888) 457-3929; www.tombstone.org. Things to Do: Tombstone Near Cochise Stronghold, Tombstone, "the town too tough to die," is alive and well thanks to its historic character. Toll free, (888) 457-3929; www.cityoftombstone.com. Holy Trinity Monastery After Tombstone's wild and woolly Old West ways, retreat to this monastery at St. David and enjoy the museum, art gallery, conservatory and library run by Benedictine monks. (520) 720-4016; www.personal.riverusers.com/-trinitylib. Kartchner Caverns State Park A few miles to the southwest, this state park offers tours of one of the world's top 10 caves. (520) 586-2283; www.pr.state.az.us/Parks/parkhtml/kartchner.html. Additional Information: Coronado National Forest, Douglas Ranger District, (520) 364-3468; www.fs.fed.us/r3/coronado.