Perilous Journey to Peace

guide, leaving Jeffords and Sladen camped with Cochise.

After spending a few weeks with Cochise's people, Sladen found them nothing like his fearful expectations. “The popular idea of the Indian is that he is phlegmatic in temperament, cold and reserved in disposition, lacking vivacity, and entirely without a sense of humor. These Indians were... always cheerful, demonstratively happy, and talkative; inquisitive beyond endurance; brim full of fun and joking, and ready to laugh heartily at the most trivial thing. They were especially fond of playing practical jokes of a harmless nature upon each other, and the objects of one of these jokes would laugh as heartily at his own discomfiture as would the bystanders.” Sladen also recorded fascinating encounters with Cochise, recalling one conversation, which was translated through Jeffords, that started with Cochise's trying to cheer him out of his apprehensive loneliness.

“What would you do,” asked the chief, “if soldiers came to us now to fight us?” “I would go out to meet them and tell them that we had made peace with you and they would listen to me and would not fight.” “But perhaps they would not listen to you. Would you fight them, or would you join them and fight us?” “But they would not fight,” Sladen responded, “when I told them my message.” “But,” Cochise persisted, “if they would not hear you, would you fight against them?” “No. I would not fight against my own people, but I'm sure they would not dare to fight after I had given them General Howard's orders.” Cochise laughed quietly to himself, and then said. “What would you do if some Mexican soldiers came to fight us?” “I would go and meet them and tell them that I was an officer in the United States Army, and that the Indians and our people were making peace, and that they must go back to Mexico.”

“But if they would not listen to

anyone trying to live in or cross southeast ern Arizona.

Prodded by hundreds of civilian deaths, President Ulysses S. Grant sought to settle the Apaches on reservations. He sent a peace commissioner, who moved many regional Apache bands away from their homelands onto newly created reservations. However, the wary Chiricahua Apaches refused to relocate to a reservation in New Mexico.

President Grant then dispatched Howard, who had lost his arm in the Civil War battle of Fair Oaks and distinguished himself at Bull Run, Antietam and Gettysburg. The fervently religious general, who had the disconcerting habit of falling to his knees in public prayer, threw himself into the task of fashioning peace with the Apaches. Sladen accompanied him, having been Howard's chief aide throughout the Civil War. Holding both a Medal of Honor and a medical degree, Sladen proved an insightful observer.

Three men guided Howard and Sladen. Lanky, red-haired Thomas Jeffords, a frontiersman, trader, mail rider and scout, was Cochise's friend and the only white man who Could ride safely into the Dragoon Mountains. The second guide, named Chie, was the son of Cochise's brother. Sladen wrote that Chie was a good-natured, good-looking “stalwart young fellow” who had acquired from the soldiers an extensive vocabulary of profanity that he used cheerfully “without the slightest idea of the meaning.” Their third guide was Ponce, a relative by marriage to Cochise, who “had a lazy, devil-may-care, good-natured look, and a longer acquaintance proved that his looks did not belie his character.” Their assorted adventures on the arduous journey To the Dragoons included Howard's facing down heavily armed settlers who wanted to execute his two Apache guides.

Once in the Dragoons, Chie went to find Cochise. He returned later with two Apache boys and word that Cochise had been notified of their mission. They then rode along the rugged flank of the mountains to a spring walled by giant rocks where part of Cochise's band was camped. Sladen and Howard spent an uneasy night, comforted by the appearance of several children who spent the night curled up under the blankets by them.

Cochise rode into camp the next morning. “He was a remarkably fine looking man, fully six feet tall, as straight as an arrow, and well proportioned, the typical Indian face, rather long, high cheekbones, clear keen eye, and a Roman nose. His cheeks were slightly painted with vermilion. A yellow silk handkerchief bound his hair, which was straight and black with just a touch of silver,” Sladen wrote. “He carried himself at all times with great dignity, and was always treated by those about him with the utmost respect and, at times, fear.” Jeffords, Ponce and Chie praised General Howard to the wary chief, opening the door to negotiations. Howard at first tried to convince Cochise to move to New Mexico, but then conceded to an Arizona reservation that would include their home range. Cochise explained that he could not make the decision alone, but would have to call together the 12 headmen of the scattered Chiricahua bands. Howard agreed to go to Fort Bowie to suspend the military campaign so that the Apaches could safely gather to discuss the treaty. Howard departed with Chie as his If you, and would fight us, would you fight against us?

"No," Sladen replied. "In that case I would fight with you against them for they are not my people."

Cochise smiled, appreciating Sladen's logic and honesty.

In the end, Cochise and Howard made peace. Howard established a reservation for the Chiricahua Apaches that included the Dragoon and Chiricahua mountains and appointed Jeffords as the agent. Cochise kept the peace, but after his death in 1874, the government tried to move the Chiricahua bands to the San Carlos reservation. This triggered renewed warfare and cost hundreds of lives.

Bilbrey and I camped for the night at the mouth of a canyon where Howard and Sladen had waited for Chie. At sunset, I climbed stiffly to the top of a spectacular outcropping. As the rocks turned pink, red and yellow in the last light, a dark, shambling shape moved through the oak trees below-probably an acorn-loving black bear. The Apaches revered these animals and believed that they sometimes held the spirits of vanished warriors. I imagined, for a moment, that this passing bear might somehow still carry the lingering spirit of a Chiricahua sentinel with no one left to warn.

We got up early the next day for the ride's final stretch along the front slope of the Dragoons. Hollis Cook, park manager for the Tombstone Courthouse State Historic Park, came to guide us to Council Rock, where most historians believe the conference took place.

We crossed a broad meadow, walked through a grove of oaks and scrambled up a daunting pile of rocks. We came at last to a small space in front of a huge, sloping boulder that formed the airy entrance to a cave. On the underside of the house-sized boulder, hands long ago had painted a series of stick figures in red ocher, including one multiarmed human figure that suggested a cornstalk. A farming people occupied these canyons for thousands of years before the Apaches arrived.

We dismounted, and I climbed to the top of a boulder for a sweeping view of the valley. Someone was driving along a dirt road, raising a cloud of dust that once would have sent the sentinels racing back to Cochise with their warning. But now I merely watched the smudge of dust, touched by an aching sense of loss, like a sentinel left behind. AH

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