A Journey into History at Cochise's Stronghold

SEARCHING FOR COCHISE

The rock turned under my foot, grated against the rough pink granite, clattered out over the ledge, and plunged into free-fall down the narrow gorge somewhere off the trail in the heart of the Dragoon Mountains. My hands rasped against the harsh granite, scraping loose a mottling of fluorescent green lichen. My other foot slipped, then caught on the textured rock surface. It took much longer for my heart to stop its slide toward the chasm. Feeling the trembling start in my knees, I decided this might be a good time to stop, take a sip from my canteen, and reconsider my search for Cochise's grave. I sat wearily on the ledge and picked a few stray bits of rock from my scraped hand as the silence closed in around me like a circle of wolves. The rocks seemed suddenly treacherous, silent sentinels waiting to gather me in. There was a time when it would have been worth my life to come alone into the heart of the Dragoons, a time when one of the greatest leaders of a warrior people dealt lingering death to trespassers. But that was more than 100 years ago. These sacred canyons, tumbled with ancient rocks and crowded with gnarled oaks, mostly sit empty now save for the mountain lions, the coyotes, the bears, and the occasional hiker. The Apaches were finally driven out of these jumbled ramparts of stone where the mountain spirits dwell. They had withstood the Spanish and the Mexicans for 300 years before they were overcome by thousands of American troops and settlers through the 1860s and into the 1880s. Cochise negotiated a treaty giving the Chiricahua Apaches a reservation on their (OPPOSITE PAGE) Now a recreation wonderland, the Dragoon Mountains were among the last sanctuaries of warring Chiricahua Apaches.

homeland in the southeastern corner of Arizona. Cochise's Anglo friend, Tom Jeffords, was named Indian agent. The agreement lasted only three years when the government abandoned its treaty obligations in an effort to cut costs. Legend has it that when this leader of the Apaches died, his warriors dressed him in his finest clothes, wrapped him in a splendid wool blanket, and lowered him into a great chasm with his horse, his dog, and his combination rifle shotgun with gold and silver inlay. Then they left his tomb with wild cries of grief, taking care to ride their horses back and forth across the trail they'd left so that no one could defile his resting place. I had come seeking their ghosts, a pasty-faced history buff unaccountably seized by a thirst for their tragic but proud story. Pulled by a strange tug of envy to the wilderness wrested from them, I was a rootless mod-

ern yearning to belong to a place as thoroughly as the Chiricahuas belonged to this mountain before they surrendered and the Army loaded them into railroad cars for their journey into exile in Florida, Alabama, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. The Dragoon Mountains were one of the last places they roamed as an independent people.

The Chiricahuas found the perfect natural fortress in these ancient roils and boulders of granite and igneous detritus thrust upward amidst layers of sedimentary rock, limestone, and quartzite. These mountains have drawn human beings for thousands of years, including Ice Age mammoth hunters and later people who left pottery shards and stone ruins. They even mined turquoise in the southern Dragoons, feeding that most prized of minerals into sprawling trade networks.

The mountains seemed a made-to-order sanctuary for the Chiricahuas. The 7,500-foot-high summit towers thousands of feet above the surrounding plains, offering ecological transitions from the agave and yucca of the high desert at the base, through groves of acorn-laden oaks, and into the forested upper slopes. Springs found throughout the mountains have helped support the diverse ecosystem, providing a bounty of year-round food supplies.

The Apaches discovered that those canyons and the armored front face of the Dragoons provided enormous tactical advantages. Their lookouts could see the dust clouds 40 miles away on the vast plains surrounding the Dragoons. That gave the waiting Apaches a full day to either prepare their defenses or dispatch raiding parties to ambush wagon trains, supply trains, or unwary travelers. They also could elude or ambush pursuers by making adroit use of the deep canyons that lead into the center of the range from both the east and the west.

Today Interstate 10 lies just north of the Dragoons. Meandering dirt roads lead to the mouths of those twin stronghold canyons, and the Forest Service maintains a beautiful oak-shaded campground in the West Stronghold, approached off U.S. Route 191. Middlemarch Road runs between the northern and southern portions of the Dragoons and includes several four-wheel-drive spurs such as Forest Service Road 345A and FR 697 to abandoned 20th-century mining works and to a peak.

SEARCHING FOR COCHISE

As Middlemarch Road leaves the Dragoons, FR 687 heads off to the north, skirting the western edge. The road leads across grassy slopes, through huddled oak groves, and along the base of spectacular rock formations to secluded campsites and trail-heads. It dead-ends at the mouth of West Stronghold Canyon. You also can drive down the west face by taking the sometimes rutted gravel FR 687 out of the town of Dragoon to visit the historic Butterfield stage stop and Dragoon Springs, now reduced to a stagnant well.

I had driven all those perimeter roads in an effort to brush against the ghosts of this place. I'd surveyed the stone-walled ruins of the Butterfield stage station, wandered around where a band of renegades stood off pursuing soldiers atop a granite peak, and sat beside what remains of Dragoon Springs, where soldiers rested before heading off to the battle of Apache Pass. This confrontation involving hundreds of warriors and a slightly smaller number of soldiers was decided by mountain howitzers and convinced Cochise to rely on guerrilla tactics instead of set-piece battles.

So I'd heard the whispers of the ghosts, but yearned for something more for some trace of Cochise himself, the embodiment of the Apaches' doomed but somehow triumphant defiance of the hopeless odds. Cochise initially sought to enforce peace. But in 1861, a young Army lieutenant searching for a kidnapped boy supposedly seized Cochise and six of his men under a flag of truce to force the Chiricahua leader to release the child. Cochise did not have the boy and refused to say which band did.

According to one story, Cochise escaped and captured several white prisoners to exchange for his warriors, but the Army refused the offer unless the kidnapped boy was released. Cochise, not knowing if his men were alive and fearing the buildup of American troops, killed his prisoners. He then ambushed and killed eight Mexican teamsters. The young lieutenant retaliated by hanging the six Apaches at the site where the Americans and Mexicans were killed, and the enraged Cochise responded by unleashing a decade of guerrilla warfare on southeastern Arizona.

Curiously, Cochise made one exception in his all-out war against the whites. He accepted as a lifelong friend a white man who rode fearlessly into the Dragoons to see if he could convince Cochise to stop killing his mail riders. Cochise was so impressed with Tom Jeffords' courage and honesty that he offered him virtual safe passage and halted attacks on the mail riders.

Finally, in 1872, the government sent Gen. O.O. Howard to make peace with Cochise. Howard, who had lost an arm in the Civil War, convinced Jeffords to lead him into Cochise's stronghold in October 1872. Howard left a compelling account of his journey into the Dragoons and his meeting with Cochise: "As I took his hand, I remembered my impression. A man fully six feet in height, well proportioned, large, dark eyes, face slightly painted with vermilion, unmistakably an Indian; hair straight and black with a few silver threads, touching the coat collar behind. He gave me a grasp of the hand and said very pleasantly, 'Buenos dias.' "His face was really pleasant to look upon, making me say to myself, 'How strange it is that such a man can be the robber and murderer so much complained of.'"

Cochise spoke eloquently of the struggle of his people, and bitterly of the Army treachery at Apache Pass: "We were once a numerous tribe, living well and at peace. But my best friends were taken by treachery and murdered.. The Mexicans and Americans kill an Apache whenever they see him. I have fought back with all my might. My people have killed many Mexicans and Americans and have captured much property. Their losses are greater than ours; yet I know we are all the time diminishing in numbers."

Howard initially tried to convince Cochise to move his band to a reservation in New Mexico. Cochise was willing, but his men stubbornly held out for a reservation that would include the Dragoons. Howard noted: "We then all mounted and rode through a canyon to the outside of our handsome prison, Cochise and several of his Indians accompanying us. The view from this point on the western foothills is grand; mountains and valleys, rivers and canyons lie beneath you in plain sight. I did not wonder that the Indians delighted in their magnificent home. We stopped by a large, flat stone under the shade of a tree. Cochise said: 'My home.'"

Cochise kept the peace he promised until his death in 1874, wracked with pain from what historians suspect was either stomach or colon cancer. But his sons could not maintain discipline and unity, and the U.S. government soon reneged on its promises. The Army rounded up the Chiricahuas and moved them to the malarial San Carlos reservation, prompting the later breakout of Geronimo, Juh, and others.

As I sat on the rock ledge, I thought of General Howard and Cochise and Jeffords and Geronimo, who had all traveled this way before me. I rose and inched on down the incline until it became obvious I could not reach the bottom from that point. But another crack opened to my right, and I dropped to hands and knees to crawl into a small cave. Groping through the sand, I discovered a large shard of pottery. I sat motionless in that cave for a long while, my back resting against the rough slab of ancient granite, wondering who else had sat here pondering the ways of rocks. Something Cochise said suddenly came back to me.

SEARCHING FOR COCHISE

The great Apache leader met in his stronghold with Arizona Territorial Governor A.P Safford soon after making peace with Howard. According to a newspaper article by Safford, Cochise told the governor he was determined now to maintain the peace with all the Americans. "He said that he liked General Howard because he had the heart to come and see him," wrote Safford, "but for a long time previous the only friends he had were the rocks, that behind them he had concealed himself and they had often protected him from death by warding off the bullets of his enemies." I emerged from the cave, strangely soothed. Dusk had infiltrated the Dragoons. The sun-warmed rocks glowed in the lengthening light, revealing hues of pink, blue, and purple. I made my way carefully back up the crack, stepping past the spot where the rock had turned under my foot. True enough, the pebble had betrayed me, but the rock had saved me. I decided then that I knew where Cochise's spirit rested after all. It rested in the secret embrace of his most faithful of friends who do not forget.

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We like them so much we sell them, the CD for $12.95 and the tape for $9, plus shipping and handling. Call us at (800) 543-5432 to order one, and get in touch with some of the old tunes again.