Apache Indians -- Fiction; Historical fiction; Western stories
“But there was a pindah lickoyee called Gal-lan-tin whose heart was very
bad. He was chief of a band of white-eyes so wicked that everyone feared
them. This Gal-lan-tin determined to become rich by killing Apaches and
taking their scalps to El Gobernador; but collecting the scalps of
Apaches is not either a safe or easy pastime.
“We drove Gal-lan-tin and his band from our country, but later we
learned that he was collecting much money for ‘Apache’ scalps. Then we
heard that we had been raiding the villages of the Papago, the Opatah
and the Yaqui, killing many, and that we had entered Mexico upon the war
trail and killed many Mexicans. All this time we had been in our own
country, not having made a raid into Mexico, or upon any other Indian
tribes. We were not at war. We were at peace.
“After a while Gal-lan-tin and his band were caught by Mexican troops in
the act of scalping some Mexicans they had killed, and then everyone
knew, what the Apaches had known for a long time, that it was
Gal-lan-tin who had killed the Papagos, the Opatahs, the Yaquis and the
Mexicans; and we laughed in our blankets when we thought of El
Gobernador del Chihuahua paying out good silver for the scalps of his
neighbors and his friends.
“Thus, by accident, was the truth learned in this case; but there were
many other murders committed by white-eyes and Mexicans that were blamed
upon the Apaches. That is the way of the pindah lickoyee. They are
fools. They find a dead man and they say he was killed by Apaches. The
Apaches find a dead man and they can read all about him the story of his
death. They do not have to guess. Not so the pindah lickoyee.”
“What became of Gal-lan-tin?” inquired Shoz-Dijiji.
“He escaped from the Mexican soldiers and brought his band to New
Mexico. There they bought some sheep and stole more than
nah-kee-go-nay-nan-too-ooh, making in all some twenty-five hundred head,
and with these they started for the country which the pindah lickoyee
call California.
“On the shores of a great river which separates that country from ours
the Yuma Indians fell upon them and killed them all. The Apaches were
sorry that it had not fallen to their lot to kill Gal-lan-tin and his
band, for they had many sheep.”
Shortly after daylight the Apaches camped while Geronimo, Shoz-Dijiji
and one other watched the trail behind. The Indians made no fire lest
pursuers might be attracted by the smoke. A few held the herd in a
grassy canyon while the others slept. Far to the south of them Geronimo
and the warrior dozed in the shade of a stunted cedar on a hillside
while Shoz-Dijiji watched with untiring eyes the rearward trail.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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