No Indian has more virtues and none has been more truly ferocious when aroused. He was the first of the native Americans to defeat in battle or outwit in diplomacy the all-conquering, smooth-tongued Spaniard, with whom and his Mexican-mongrel descendants he has waged cold-blooded, heart-sickening war since the days of Cortés. When the Spaniard had fire-arms and corselet of steel he was unable to push back this fierce, astute aborigine, provided simply with lance and bow. The past fifty years have seen the Apache provided with arms of precision, and, especially since the introduction of magazine breech-loaders, the Mexican has not only ceased to be an intruder upon the Apache, but has trembled for the security of life and property in the squalid hamlets of the States of Chihuahua and Sonora. In 1871 the War Department confided to General George Crook the task of whipping into submission all the bands of the Apache nation living in Arizona. How thoroughly that duty was accomplished is now a matter of history. But at the last moment one band--the Chiricahuas--was especially exempted from Crook’s jurisdiction. They were not attacked by troops, and for years led a Jack-in-the-box sort of an existence, now popping into an agency and now popping out, anxious, if their own story is to be credited, to live at peace with the whites, but unable to do so from lack of nourishment. When they went upon the reservation, rations in abundance were promised for themselves and families. A difference of opinion soon arose with the agent as to what constituted a ration, the wicked Indians laboring under the delusion that it was enough food to keep the recipient from starving to death, and objecting to an issue of supplies based upon the principle according to which grumbling Jack-tars used to say that prize-money was formerly apportioned,--that is, by being thrown through the rungs of a ladder--what stuck being the share of the Indian, and what fell to the ground being the share of the agent. To the credit of the agent it must be said that he made a praiseworthy but ineffectual effort to alleviate the pangs of hunger by a liberal distribution of hymn-books among his wards. The perverse Chiricahuas, not being able to digest works of that nature, and unwilling to acknowledge the correctness of the agent’s arithmetic, made up their minds to sally out from San Carlos and take refuge in the more hospitable wilderness of the Sierra Madre. Their discontent was not allayed by rumors whispered about of the intention of the agent to have the whole tribe removed bodily to the Indian Territory. Coal had been discovered on the reservation, and speculators clamored that the land involved be thrown open for development, regardless of the rights of the Indians. But, so the story goes, matters suddenly reached a focus when the agent one day sent his chief of police to arrest a Chiricahua charged with some offense deemed worthy of punishment in the guard-house.