WHEN WAR SWEPT THE DESERT

NA remote ranch in the foothills of the Mimbres range, the writer was recently chatting with the rancher who was plowing a patch of corn. Resting on his plow handles the rancher, looking far across the mesa, pointed his finger at a hill and said, “See that roundtopped juniper over there? Well, under that tree old Geronimo killed a boy. He was sitting there herding sheep when the Indians came. His grave is down yonder in the canyon under a big cottonwood. They didn't kill his brother. They carried him away captive.” Such murders and raids explain the slow economic development of the Southwest in the nineteenth century. And any historical study of the mining, ranching and farming in the region must take into account the retarding influence of the Apache peoples, or else the omission will leave the story of small value.

But at the outset it must be realized calmly that most of the contacts between Apache and white man from the year 1886 backward to a time when memory runneth not to the contrary were those of war. To condemn the Apache as a fiend incarnate, deficient in all human attributes, is to forget the difference between war and peace. And modern wars afford parallels, alas, to all that happened in the long-drawn combat between the Stone Age and civilization.

The crescendo of high-pitched fury in which it finally culminated began originally in nothing more heinous than theft -probably the theft of horses, when the savage learned that horses were not maneaters, as he had been led to believe. But theft led to punishment and punishment led to retaliation. Perfidy did the rest.

There was, furthermore, another distinction in the specialized Apache brand of ferocity. It alone remained to the end untinctured by any humanizing influence of the Christian religion. Although Father Benavides stated in his Relacion (1630) that he had visited the Gila Apaches and that a missionary was then ministering among them, this was the first and so far as the present writer knows the last mention of any missionary until the end of hos tilities more than two hundred and fifty years later. Along the Rio Grande the early Franciscans had made bell and cross familiar symbols, and in the farther Southwest the Jesuits had done the same among the sedentary tribes of southern Arizona, but Apacheria continued unsurveyed and unknown, a dark spot on the religious map. And all the while there kept sallying therefrom-like sinister horsemen of the Apocalypse the authentic savagery of the Stone Age, equipped at last with horseflesh, knives of steel and magazine rifles.

Furnished with some understanding of Apache character, and knowledge of their forbidding country, one could have predicted with certainty, therefore, the nature of their retarding impact on the white man's economic development. Indeed in the whole extent of their vast domain, not a patch of corn nor a herd of cattle, nor even a prospect hole could escape scrutiny, and only forces of armed men could venture into it with any assurance of safety. Thus for generations the loss of any labor or money invested there was not merely a possibility-it was a certainty.

In the earlier chapters of the conflict the Apaches conducted their forays chiefly southward. Back in aboriginal time, they had been accustomed to raid the sedentary villages of the Pimas, but when Sonora came to be developed by Mexican ranchmen, they found in that unhappy province hunting of a superior sortcattle which could be driven away on hoof and eaten at leisure; horses which could be ridden; mules which could ultimately be traded; and captives which could be redeemed for money.

By 1735 civilization in northern Mexico had gone into reverse, thanks to efforts of the Apaches. Then later, about the time of the American Revolution, the Mexican government launched a series of large-scale offensives against them. Yet in the decade from 1775-1785, all of the armed forces succeeded in killing but 276 tribesmen including, by their own figures, women and children. It looked as if the pacification of the region by the Mexicans would be postponed until doomsday. All of which goes to indicate the mettle and character of the adversary The brilliant author of that excellent interpretation of the southwest, "Sky Determines," gives an account of the Apache wars and their historical significance in the settling of the west.

whom the American settler would have to dislodge.

During the Mexican War, Lieutenant Emory, attached as observer to General Kearny's Army of the West, depicted some of the savages whom his party encountered in their native fastnesses. The American cavalryman was particularly impressed by their horsemanship, and he noted that their wardrobe consisted mainly of trophies which evidenced their 'prowess in arms. Mexican dress and sad dles predominated and several of the braves wore helmets decked with black feathers, which, taken with waist belt and buckskins, gave them in the officer's eyes the appearance of antique Greek warriors. He obviously thought them ugly customers. Al though they professed friendship for the Americans, Kit Carson, who was guiding the expedition, remarked to Emory, "I wouldn't trust one of them."

After the war, when the Americans came as settlers, the same sequence of raids, thefts and massacres involved them, as it had done the Mexicans, in hostilities with the Apaches. For such things an Indian defense league would nowadays erect a water-tight defense by saying that they occurred during a state of war; that the red man forcibly took herds from the interloper to provide food for himself and his family, counting the toll as fair remuneration. But, in addition, there was an offense for which not even an apologist could find a defense, the sale of captives. And if all motives could be known, it is possible that the Apaches came to be hated as much for their cupidity as for their cruelty.

A single illustration will suffice. While Commissioner Bartlett of the Boundary Survey was encamped at Santa Rita of the Copper in 1851, some nondescript American traders came to his camp offering for sale horses, mules, and a captive girl whom they had bought from the Apaches. The girl was Senorita Inez Gonzales who had been taken captive eight months before near Tucson with two other women and a boy when their escort was exterminated. In the eight months during which she had been held prisoner, she learned of twelve other female and numerous male captives. On the day following the girl's deliverance, Indians brought to the Copper Mine two boys for sale, who were also rescued by Bart lett. The great chieftain Mangas Coloradas came to protest in person, saying that his warriors were entirely within their rights in selling prisoners of war. And so successful were his representations that he obtained a ransom of two hundred and fifty dollars in merchandise. Bartlett stated that the Indians were very willing to sell, "that being their object in making the captures." By the long series of such outrages the government in Sonora was goaded into a form of retaliation in which the Americans also became involved at length.