The North American Indian, Vol. 1Curtis, Edward S.
History
The North American Indian, Vol. 1
Curtis, Edward S.
Indians of North America
hundred Chiricahua who had left San Carlos surrendered at Fort Wingate,
New Mexico, shortly before. All these were taken to the Mescalero
reservation in New Mexico.
Haunted by the dread of removal to San Carlos, the appearance of a party
of Grant County officials at the Mescalero agency on a hunting tour a few
months later caused Victorio and his band to flee with a number of
Chiricahua and Mescaleros to the mountains of southern New Mexico.
For two years, until he met his death at the hands of Mexican troops in
the fall of 1880, Victorio spread carnage throughout the southern portions
of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, and the northern states of Mexico,
enlisting the aid of every willing renegade or refugee of whatever band or
tribe in that section. After him Nané, Chato, Juh, Geronimo, and other
doughty hostiles carried the fighting and raiding along until June, 1883,
when Crook, reassigned to the Arizona district, followed the Chiricahua
band under Geronimo into the Sierra Madre in Chihuahua, whence he brought
them back whipped and ready to accept offers of peace. The captives were
placed upon the San Carlos and White Mountain reservations, where, with
the various other Apache bands under military surveillance, and with Crook
in control, they took up agriculture with alacrity. But in 1885 Crook’s
authority was curtailed, and through some cause, never quite clear,
Geronimo with many Chiricahua followers again took the warpath. Crook
being relieved at his own request, Gen. Nelson A. Miles was assigned the
task of finally subduing the Apache, which was consummated by the
recapture of Geronimo and his band in the Sierra Madre in September, 1886.
These hostiles were taken as prisoners to Florida, later to Alabama, and
thence to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where, numbering 298, they still are,
living as farmers in peace and quiet, but still under the control of the
military authorities.
[Illustration: _Alchĭsé_ - Apache]
_Alchĭsé_ - Apache
_From Copyright Photograph 1906 by E.S. Curtis_
One of the last hostile movements of note was the so-called Cibicu fight
in 1882. In the spring of that year an old medicine-man, Nabakéltĭ,
Attacking The Enemy, better known as Doklínĭ, started a "medicine" craze
in the valley of the Cibicu on the White Mountain reservation. He had
already a considerable following, and now claimed divine revelation and
dictated forms of procedure in bringing the dead to life. As medicine
paraphernalia he made sixty large wheels of wood, painted symbolically,
and twelve sacred sticks, one of which, in the form of a cross, he
designated "chief of sticks." Then with sixty men he commenced his dance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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