In ways which lay beyond Bascom’s comprehension, the dogs of war were about to slip their leashes.
Within an hour after his escape, said Sweeney, who gives the best account of the events over the next few days, Cochise appeared at the crest of a hill, asking about his warrior and relative Coyuntura. Apparently in a show of anger, Bascom responded with a volley of fire. Cochise disappeared. Bascom, sensing an impending siege, moved his force back to the stagecoach station, where he could capitalize on the protection of stone walls. Apache campfires burned on nearby peaks through the night.
Infamous Apache Pass, 1868
The next morning, Bascom and Cochise met on neutral ground to negotiate. The stubborn Bascom demanded the return of Mickey Free. Cochise demanded the release of his family. Gunfire ended the parley. Shooting from both sides would continue intermittently throughout the day. The Apaches captured the stagecoach driver Wallace. Darkness fell. Apaches campfires again burned through the night, this time to the accompaniment of the drums of war. Bascom sent for reinforcements from Fort Buchanan.
The next morning, Cochise made one more effort to keep the peace. He brought Wallace, arms bound, to the crest of a hill. Cochise asked for his family back in exchange for the stagecoach driver. The hard-headed Bascom, defying advice from his own troopers to make the trade, rejected the offer and again demanded the return of Mickey Free. After all, he had his orders from Lieutenant Colonel Morrison:
"pursue the Indians and recover a boy…, demand the immediate restoration of the stolen property…, and use the force under his orders…"
He meant to carry out those orders even if Mickey Free was 100 miles away, in the hands of another Apache band.
The next day, February 6, Cochise upped the ante. He captured a wagon train, which happened to be on the trail through the pass a couple of miles to the west of the stagecoach station. He stole the draft animals and burned the wagons. He tortured, then killed nine hated Mexicans. He captured three Americans, whom he meant to add to the offer he would exchange for his family. He sent Bascom a note, written by Wallace, with the new terms. Meanwhile, he sent his band’s women and children south, deep into the Chiricahua Mountains, out of harms way. He received reinforcements (including the warrior Geronimo) from other Chiricahua bands. The next evening, February 7, having gotten no response from Bascom to offers for exchange, Cochise tried but failed to capture a stagecoach and take still more captives. He had meant to up the ante again. He would have use the captives he had as collateral for negotiations. Deep into the night, while snow fell, the Apaches danced around their campfires and prepared for battle.
The next day, February 8, Cochise struck, first at Apache Springs, where several soldiers had been detailed to water the mounts. He drove off all of Bascom’s animals. Both sides inflicted several casualties. Cochise threatened the stagecoach station, but he could see that Bascom’s guns would inevitably kill many warriors. He learned that fresh troopers would soon reinforce Bascom. Seeing no hope for more negotiations and giving up on recovering his family, Cochise withdrew. He tortured and killed his four American captives, leaving their mutilated bodies to taunt Bascom and the Americans. He then dispersed his forces, though not his fury. There would be another day.
Bascom hunkered down, not even sending out scouts, while he awaited reinforcements. The new forces began arriving on St. Valentine’s Day, with one detachment bringing three Apache warriors (probably Coyoteros) captured en route. Bascom now held six warriors, including Cochise’s relatives, and he still held Cochise’s wife and children.
On February 16th and 17th, "…troops were sent out to search for us," said Geronimo, "but as we had disbanded, it was, of course, impossible for them to locate any hostile camp. …while they searched we watched them from our hiding places and laughed at their failures."
On February 18, troops saw circling turkey vultures, which led them to the bodies of Cochise’s four captives, "riddled with lance holes," according to an officer named Irwin. In anguish and fury, the soldiers buried their fellow Americans under four oak trees.
Realizing that Cochise had given up the fight and dispersed into the mountains, Bascom assigned a small detachment to guard the stagecoach station, and he and the other forces left, heading west, toward their home forts. He released Cochise’s wife and children, but at the urging of enraged soldiers and civilians, he hung the six captive warriors from the limbs of the four oak trees whose roots embraced the murdered Americans—grisly reminders of his conflict with Cochise at Apache Pass. The bodies swung on their ropes for months, decaying, unrecovered by their Apache brethren, who lived in terror of the dead.
"This affair changed a prominent, highly-thought-of chief and his band from Indians who had been friendly and cooperative with the Government to a bitterly hostile group," said Betzinez.
Apache Pass Stage Station
The dogs of war were now on the loose, and at the worst possible time. The military forces would soon be withdrawn from Arizona and redeployed to fight in the great war between the states. The civilian population would be left at the mercy of Cochise and the Apaches.
Cochise, "incomparable as a leader and a strategist," according to Frank C. Lockwood in his book The Apache Indians, struck back swiftly, setting the stage for a decade of conflict. "From his impregnable strongholds," said Lockwood, "he dispatched far and wide small bands of his picked warriors to plunder wagon trains, stampede cattle and horses, and murder unprotected settlers." In Conquest of Apacheria, Dan L. Thrapp said that "Within sixty days one hundred and fifty whites were killed…"
"This was the beginning of the first drama of blood and rapine which devastated Southern Arizona," according to a manuscript, "Bascom, George Nicholas," in the Manual Gandara file in the archives of the Arizona Pioneers Historical Society.
In Explorations and Adventures in Arizona & New Mexico, Samuel W. Cozzens, an early historian of the Apache wars said, "There is scarcely a mile on any road in the Territory where the traveler is not pointed out some spot which the Apaches have consecrated with the blood of a victim; nor is there a family that has not suffered in some manner from the depredations."
Son of Cochise,Taza
The Apaches, Cozzens said, "…have desolated Sonora and Arizona, which latter place, in 1860, had a population of thirty-four thousand, while in 1870 it had less than ten thousand."
In Adventures in the Apache Country, John R. Browne, who crossed southern Arizona in 1864, said, "Tubac is now a city of ruins—ruin and desolation wherever the eye rests."
"Gravestones, or rather head-boards, stand by the road-side like sentinels," said Cozzens, "bearing the invariable inscription,—
Chiricahua Apache
Na-chez (Nai-chi-ti), son of Cochise
ca. 1885
Cochise's youngest son, said to look like his father
Photo by Ben Wittick
In Once They Moved Like the Wind, David Roberts said that one of Arizona’s "first historians claimed, ‘Bascom’s stupidity and ignorance probably cost five thousand American lives and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of property.’" Almost certainly the historian exaggerated, but his estimates give a sense of the suffering and devastation which Bascom and his forces triggered during those cold winter days at Apache Pass in 1861.
Mickey Free, the unwitting pawn in the drama which led to war, never saw John Ward nor his mother again. He grew to adulthood among the Coyotero Apaches. One of few in the territory who could speak Spanish, English and Apache fluently, he became a valued scout for the army, although some believed he was a psychotic killer. He died in 1915, on the Apache reservation in southeastern Arizona.
Cochise’s health failed him in the early 1870’s, as a peace of sorts finally settled over Apache country. He died on June 8, 1874, in his mid-60’s. His closest relatives dressed his body and painted his face for war. His Chonoken band carried his body in procession to a remote crevice in the Dragoon Mountains, west of the Chiricahuas, and they buried him in secrecy with his horse and dog and weapons. Across their range, the Chiricahua people – "The deadliest Fighting Handful in the calendar of Man" – cried.
Cochise's Mountain Stronghold
Second Lieutenant George N. Bascom, the "fine looking fool," transferred to the Union force at Fort Craig in central New Mexico, where he led Company C of the Seventh United States Infantry against Confederates in the vicious Civil War Battle of Valverde on the banks of the Rio Grande on February 21, 1862. He died that day on a sandbar in the middle of the stream. No one ever accused George Bascom of cowardice. (By coincidence, my wife’s great grandfather, 18-year old private Thomas Ed Jackson, fought in the same battle, on the side of the Confederates, with Company I, Seventh Regiment – Texas Mounted Volunteers.)
Jay W. Sharp
Additional Sources:
www.desertusa.com
www.weeklywire.com
www.indians.org
americanhistory.about.com
www.powersource.com
members.aol.com/foxybarks
www.militaryhistoryonline.com
homepages.tesco.net
jeff.scott.tripod.com
216.110.159.47/naturalamerica/_borders
www.americanindians.com
www.santafestation.com
www.crawfordart.com
www.indianer-web.de
www.gocornerstore.com
www.wilder-westen-web.de
