Sacrificial Shot

The Killing of a Farmer by an Apache Chief Spoke Volumes about the Desperate Times of 1871 UNFRIENDLY FIRE

After dinner, over coffee, rolled cigarettes and pleasant talk, an Aravaipa Apache chief drew his pistol and fired at eyeball range, killing a 35-year-old Irishman named Charles McKinney. The murder, one of the most chilling and complicated crimes in Arizona history, took place in a San Pedro Valley farmhouse the first week in June 1871. In the larger picture, the killing of an unknown farmer in southern Arizona hardly seems worthy of mention. But the event speaks volumes about the desperate times in which it occurred. The shooting was a result of the massacre of a large number of Aravaipa Apaches by a vigilante mob a month earlier. The leader of that slaughtered band, Eskiminzin, believed that by pulling the trigger on his friend McKinney, who had nothing to do with the so-called Camp Grant Massacre, he was teaching his people a hard lesson about never trusting Anglos. The prelude to McKinney's murder began in February 1871. Raids committed by Cochise's Chiricahua Apache band, among others, had inflamed the Territory's citizens against all Indians

and increased cries for the military to stop the attacks. Amid this climate of fear and mistrust, Lt. Royal Whitman, Camp Grant's commander, invited the Apache bands and their chiefs to the post for talks. They were hungry, sick and worn out from harassment by soldiers.

One chief, Eskiminzin, told Whitman he wished his small band could live in peace in their homeland along Aravaipa Creek. The 37-year-old Army officer from Maine told the chief he'd wire Arizona's commander, Gen. George Stoneman, and ask for permission to grant his request. Meanwhile, if the chief brought his people in to the post, Whitman would care for them.

Aravaipas began streaming in, and by early April, they numbered more than 400.

But other bands continued raiding south of the Gila River. For angry and fearful citizens of Tucson, the last straw was two attacks in mid-April on the Mission San Xavier del Bac and one near the San Pedro River a few days later in which four Americans died.

Early on April 30, a hastily formed posse of six Anglos, 92 Papagos and 42 Mexicans attacked Eskiminzin's band 5 miles up Aravaipa Creek from the post, where they had moved for the plentiful water. More than 100 Aravaipas died in the attack, many with their brains beaten out and their limbs hacked off. All but eight of the dead were women and children. The Papagos (known today as Tohono O'odhams) took 27 youngsters and sold them into slavery in Mexico.

Horrified by the brutality, Whitman personally led a burial detail, aware that others of the band were likely watching from the surrounding hills.

"I thought the act of caring for their dead would be an evidence to them of our sympathy at least," he wrote, "and the conjecture proved correct, for while at the work many of them came to the spot and indulged in their expressions of grief too wild and terrible to be described."

Eskiminzin was probably present that awful morning, although that remains uncertain. He lost two (four, by some accounts) wives and five chil-dren in the Camp Grant Massacre. By one estimate, 50 of his relatives were killed.

A few days afterward, Eskiminzin returned to Camp Grant carrying his only surviving daughter inhis arms. He pleaded with Whitman for help in obtaining the return of the stolen children. The lieutenant vowed to do what he could and convinced the chief not to go to war.

But hopes for peace ended in a blunder around June 2. A scouting party from Camp Apache rode into Aravaipa Canyon and stumbled upon some Aravapia Apaches, including Eskiminzin. In surprise and fear, the cavalry opened fire. No one was killed, but the chief had finally had enough.

"I have tried and my people have tried," he told Whitman. "But the peace you have promised to the Aravaipa has been broken, not one, but two times."

Eskiminzin angrily departed for the mountains, killing McKinney on the way, his first act of retaliation. On July 13, he attacked a wagon train en route from Camp Lowell to Camp Bowie, killing one sol-dier. The chief lost 13 of his warriors and was himself wounded.

In September 1871, Whitman sent word to Eskiminzin, still holed up in the mountains, that Vincent Colyer, a peace emissary sent by President Ulysses S. Grant, was coming to the Territory to establish a reservation for Apaches.

After meeting with White Mountain Apaches, Colyer went to Camp Grant and met with Eskiminzin on September 15 and again on September 17. Colyer told the chief he was creating a reservation for his band near Aravaipa Canyon and appointing Whitman as agent.

But peace again eluded Eskiminzin. On October 22, a federal grand jury indicted him for McKinney's murder. This caused the Arizona Citizen newspaper, which had been raging against Whitman and his peace plans, to intensify its attacks in print.

On October 28, anti-Apache editor John Wasson wrote: "Let the nation at large understand that an Indian chief of some note at the head of the peace-able and government-fed Indians at Camp Grant, did on or about June 1, 1871, unprovokedly kill Charles McKinney on his farm near Camp Grant."

The paper chided Colyer for receiving "this same murdering chief," for clothing and feeding him at public expense and for showing him high regard by putting "a showy sash on him."

The day before that editorial blast, deputy mar-shals departed for Camp Grant to arrest Eskiminzin. But he'd been tipped-almost certainly by Whit-man-that lawmen were coming and had left before they arrived.

A warrant for Eskiminzin's arrest was never served, though his guilt was all but certain-and by his own admission, according to Jeanie Marion, author of an unpublished biography of the Aravaipa leader.

In his meetings with Colyer, Eskiminzin said, "I was angry and killed the first white citizen. After that I wish to confess I went on a raid against the Papago to recover my children."

Author Marion says both these remarks are noted in Colyer's original handwritten report to the Secre-tary of the Interior, dated September 18, 1871. But they were deleted from his final published report.

'I did it to teach my people that there must be no friendship between them and the white man. Anyone can kill an enemy, but it takes a strong man to kill a friend.' "It's not clear who deleted them," she stated. "I assume it was Colyer, but it's possible that someone in Washington did it. There was so much upset over the massacre, and officials in Washington really wanted to maintain peace as long as possible."

Much later, Eskiminzin also admitted his guilt to Army scout Sam Bowman. His quote has echoed through the decades: "I did it to teach my people that there must be no friendship between them and the white man. Anyone can kill an enemy, but it takes a strong man to kill a friend."

Even though he never stood trial, the murder haunted Eskiminzin the remainder of his days, during which he was repeatedly harassed and accused of whatever crime could be laid at his door.

When John P. Clum arrived in Arizona in June 1874 to begin his tenure as Indian agent at the San Carlos reservation, he found Eskiminzin wearing shackles as he made adobe bricks at Camp Grant.

For a number of reasons, including leading his band and six others in an escape from the guardhouse in January 1874, he'd fallen into disfavor with the post commander, who considered him a "bad Indian."

After his release, the chief joined Clum at San Carlos, and for three years he proved invaluable in helping manage the Apaches there. The two became close friends.

Eskiminzin departed San Carlos in 1877 and tried farming and ranching along the San Pedro River. The chief led a prosperous colony of families and even had lines of credit with Tucson merchants, probaBut trouble was never far off. In 1887, while liv-ing peacefully near the San Pedro, Eskiminzin found himself in a dispute with the Pinal County sheriff over cattle supposedly rustled by one of his band.

The chief refused to surrender any of his men, no doubt believing they'd be murdered, yet he still made honest efforts to resolve the matter. Nevertheless, the confrontation escalated until Eskiminzin had no choice but to move with his men to the San Carlos reservation to avoid arrest. Assuming his women and children were safe, he left them behind.

In his absence, a mob of 35, part of the sheriff's posse, trashed his home and took it over. "They came the next day after I left my ranch," Eskiminzin told Clum, "and they shot at my women, putting bullets through skirts, and drove them off."

In 1891, while living at San Carlos, the chief was arrested-with scant evidence-for abetting the Apache Kid, a murderer and the chief's relative who'd fled the reservation four years earlier.

Clum, Eskiminzin's passionate defender, wrote that without trial, and without the benefit of a single witness to his supposed wrongdoing, the chief was sent "as a military precaution" to Mount Vernon, Alabama, home to other imprisoned Apaches.

When Clum, founder of the Tombstone Epitaph, reunited with Eskiminzin in Alabama in 1894, he asked the chief why he was there. After stuttering furiously-Eskiminzin's habit when excited-he said, "Great lies! You know!"

The remark was a fitting summation of his dealing with the Anglos.

Eskiminzin and his Aravaipas were released from Mount Vernon in 1894 and sent back to San Carlos, the only Apache band allowed to return to Arizona. They did so quietly and amid tight security, fearing assassination of their chief.

But death took Eskiminzin before the Territory's citizens could. In December of 1895, the Aravaipa leader died of stomach trouble, at about age 67, without ever standing before a bar of justice for murdering Charles McKinney.

Clum, believing Eskiminzin's action at least had to be judged in context, wrote: "Is it not strange that we can pass lightly over the 128 treacherous and cowardly murders instigated by white men [Camp Grant], while we carefully treasure the memory of a single killing by an Indian, and-after a lapse of 23 years-point to him and say, 'This man murdered his friend' without even giving him the benefit of the circumstances which instigated the crime?"

Vincent Colyer wrote that the massacre of Apaches opened a condition of war between the whites and Apaches and that Eskiminzin's killing of McKinney was "an incident in that war," not murder.

Certainly the vigilantes responsible for the Camp Grant Massacre were not held to answer, except by a five-day trial that ended in acquittal after 19 minutes of deliberation.

And it is highly likely that the Aravaipas had not committed the raids for which they were blamed, according to historian Dan Thrapp. He believed that Eskiminzin's people were merely convenient targets, "the easiest collection of Apaches to kill."

ADDITIONAL READING: For more vividly true stories from the tumult of the Apache Wars, we suggest Leo W. Banks' book, Double Cross: Treachery in the Apache Wars, from our Wild West Collection. Riveting accounts and historical photographs put faces on the devious dealings on both sides. To order, call toll-free (800) 543-5432 or visit our Web site at arizonahighways.com.