The Yavapai Trail of Tears

THE YAVAΡΑΙ TRAIL-TEARS

IN 1875 THE ARMY MARCHED 1,400 ΜΕΝ, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN 180 MILES THROUGH SWOLLEN STREAMS AND OVER MOUNTAINS. MORE THAN 200 DIDN'T MAKE IT.

STRAWBERRY CREEK IS USUALLY A LITTLE STREAM TRICKLING ALONG THE BOTTOM OF A STEEP CANYON OF THE SAME NAME IN CENTRAL ARIZONA. BUT IN MARCH OF 1875, MELTING SNOWS FROM THE FACE OF THE

Mogollon Rim turned the creek into a torrent of waist-high water.

Second Lt. George O. Eaton, an experienced soldier, and Al Sieber, chief of Indian scouts for the Army in Arizona, argued against forcing their 1,400 Yavapais and Apaches to cross the stream until it subsided. But L.E. Dudley, an Indian commissioner with orders from Washington, said Eaton and Sieber had already delayed the mission enough "with your silly fears." The stream would be crossed at any price.

And so 1,400 people - children, adults, the elderly were forced to cross Strawberry Creek while a handful of soldiers and Sieber's scouts tried to keep them from drowning.

Even Dudley wrote in his report, "The water was about waist deep to a tall man, and the crossing was a pitiful sight."

Indeed, the whole expedition was pitiful. In the 19th century, white Americans customarily wanted Native Americans to be somewhere other than where they were. The resulting dislocation of Indians led to some of the sadder chapters in American history.

One of the more brutal incidents was the forced march of those 1,400 Yavapai and Apache Indians halfway across Arizona Territory. Army Capt. John G. Bourke, an early advocate of the human rights of Native Americans, wrote that the march "was an outrageous proceeding, one for which I should still blush had I not long since gotten over blushing for anything the United States government did in Indian matters."

Bourke didn't witness the tragic march. Later regarded as one of America's foremost ethnologists, he was at that time aide to Gen. George Crook. And Crook, who had subjugated the Apaches and the Yavapais, was being reassigned to Nebraska to help conquer Plains Indians.

But Crook had played a large part in the destiny of the Apaches and Yavapais. While Crook's ideas about Indians would today be condemned as racist, in his time he was an enlightened American who considered Indians to be human and capable of being "civilized."

At the time, many whites thought the only good Indian was a dead Indian. Still others thought that the least Indians could do was stay put on the sorry reservations to which the white man had ordered them.

Crook had been assigned in 1871 to settle the "Indian problem" in Arizona Territory. He had done so, temporarily, using a number of native scouts to help soldiers defeat their own people.

More than 2,000 of those Indians had been consigned to a reservation in the Verde Valley, 14 miles upstream from the Army post at Camp Verde. An irrigation ditch was dug, and a series of Indian agents began to teach the Indians to farm. Several hundred of the Indians slipped away to their old haunts, or left to go raiding, but a core of about 1,400 seemed to settle into their new life. The Yavapais actually settled in well enough that they began irrigating and growing crops so successfully that Tucson businessmen feared the Indians would become self-sufficient, causing the white merchants to lose supply contracts.

But one of Crook's old foes, "The Tucson Ring" or "The Federal Ring," was at work. This was a group of federal officials, merchants, and contractors who had much to gain if Indian affairs were kept in turmoil. The businessmen profited by selling inferior food and supplies to the Indian reservations at inflated prices. And if unrest among Native Americans required the government to keep soldiers in the Territory, supplying the Army was another good source of income to be shared with federal officials.

Crook wrote in his autobiography, "As soon as the Indians were settled on the different reservations, gave up the warpath, and became harmless, the Indian agents, who had sought cover before, now came out as brave as sheep, and took charge of the agencies, and commenced their game of plundering."

The Tucson Ring persuaded Washington that the Indians in the Verde Valley should be moved to the San Carlos reservation, 180 miles across Arizona, where many of the Territory's other natives had already been herded together. Dudley, a heavy drinker with little insight into the people or the terrain, was assigned to direct the move to San Carlos.

When Dudley showed up at the Verde reservation, he was impatient, petulant, in his cups, and willing to listen to no one.

Many of the events that transpired after his arrival were recorded in a journal by Dr. William Henry Corbusier, an Army physician assigned to the Verde reservation. (Corbusier's son, William T., incorporated the journals into a 1971 book, Verde to San Carlos.) Dr. Corbusier devoted much of his time to befriending and helping the Indians.

Corbusier heard the rumors that began flying from Indian camp to Indian camp long before Dudley arrived: The Indians were to be moved against their will. Some of them began wearing war paint, prepar-ing to take arms against the whites. Others began to slip away into the mountains around the Verde Valley.

Dudley learned that the Indians wouldn't talk to him unless Corbusier was present. That galled the Indian commissioner, but he had no choice. Corbusier detailed one meeting: "The commissioner read portions of his orders for the removal, and said he came from General Grant in Washington to take them to a much better place where they could be all together among their friends. Then he arose and, for no apparent reason, went into a tent. An Indian said, 'He has gone in to get a drink of whiskey.' Corbusier and Lt. Walter S. Schuyler, who was in charge of soldiers at the reservation, urged Dudley to make the trip around the rugged central Arizona

TRAIL-TEARS

It was that the Apaches and Yavapais were friendly to each other and that they consid-ered those Indians already at San Carlos to be their friends. In fact the Indian groups were frequently unfriendly to each other. Many white people, including Bourke and Corbusier, made little distinction between the Apaches, an Athapascan race relatively new to the region, and the Yavapais, related to the Colorado River tribes that had been in Arizona for thousands of years. More than half the Indians on the march were Yavapais, whose historic turf included the Verde Valley. The rest were Tonto Apaches, whose traditional domain began in the mountains at the valley's east bound-ary. On the reservation, they had been sep-arated by the Verde River, Apaches on the east bank, Yavapais on the west.

The white man was inclined to label all the Indians "Apache." Modern Yavapais have been busy reclaiming their history. To them, the march to San Carlos was "the Yavapai Trail of Tears."

Schuyler marched the Indians downriver to the post at Fort Verde, where Eaton and a small detachment of troops took over. By military protocol, Corbusier should have stayed on the reservation. But he went along because the Indians asked him to, and because Dudley wasn't sure he could get the Indians to move without the doctor.

They began the two-week march in a long single file: Apaches at the front with Sieber's scouts between them and the trail-ing Yavapais. Rations consisted of what a few pack mules could carry, plus beef cows herded along with the Indians. The beef soon ran out, and the Yavapais and Apa-ches subsisted on plants they found along the route.

The straggling, quarreling line of human-ity followed the Verde River south, past its confluence with West Clear Creek. Then they left the valley by climbing over Hack-berry Mountain.

Corbusier wrote, "New babies were to become a daily occurrence, and one day no less than two came into the world. When the urge came, the mother would simply retire into the bushes, or behind a rock, and, usually unattended, soon emerge with the naked baby. If it was born while on the march, the babe would remain naked until they reached the next camp, where it might be wrapped in a blanket, or anything available."

Twenty-five new babies were delivered to San Carlos. At the other end of the age spectrum, some older Indians were carried most of the way by relatives.

The forced march crossed Fossil Creek, which wasn't flooding, and then faced the torrent at Strawberry Creek. Corbusier noted the water was often higher than waist-deep as described by Dudley: "... de-bris and rocks would pile up and form a dam for a moment and then break loose with added fury. Ropes were passed across to assist somewhat those who were less able to withstand the force of the water."

The crossing continued through the afternoon and all through the night. Corbusier had to splint the broken leg of one Yavapai man who had been swept downstream by the rushing creek. Sieber and his scouts often had to keep Apaches and Yavapais from attacking each other. At one point, Yavapais stormed the mesa where Apaches were camped, killing several and wounding two dozen. Corbusier was told that seven had died, but he count-ed only four bodies. He observed that the Indians' hostility toward each other prob-ably kept them from massacring the whites.

Sieber and his scouts often had to keep Apaches and Yavapais from attacking each other. At one point, Yavapais stormed the mesa where Apaches were camped, killing several and wounding two dozen. Corbusier was told that seven had died, but he count-ed only four bodies. He observed that the Indians' hostility toward each other prob-ably kept them from massacring the whites.

The march continued over the Mazatzal Mountains, down along Tonto Creek (where Roosevelt Lake is located today), and across the Salt River. The Indians were marched past the site of present-day Globe, where another outbreak of intertribal war-fare threatened Dudley's mission. He sent ahead to San Carlos for wagons loaded with provisions. Indian agent John P. Clum met the In-dians in Pinal Canyon with food and es-corted them on to San Carlos. Death and defection had thinned their ranks to be-tween 1,100 and 1,200.

Indian agent John P. Clum met the In-dians in Pinal Canyon with food and es-corted them on to San Carlos. Death and defection had thinned their ranks to be-tween 1,100 and 1,200.

That San Carlos is not the one you see on today's road maps. The community was relocated in 1929 as water behind Coolidge Dam began to flood the original site.

The Yavapais stayed at San Carlos 25 years. Then they were allowed to return to their ancestral homes. Many of them had married members of other tribes by then, and their culture was in danger of being lost.

In recent years, they have reclaimed their history. The story of the Trail of Tears is told on two reservations in the Verde Valley, a reservation at Prescott and the Fort McDowell reservation near Phoenix.

At Fort McDowell, 20 years ago, Yavapai John Williams told me about the long march: "It was winter time, and there was lots of water in the river around Payson [Strawberry Creek]. But the soldiers made the people walk through the river. Then they take them straight over the mountains. Lots of them died on the way."