There was much that was new and interesting at the post. The Indians who lived on this reservation were the White Mountain Apaches, a fierce and cruel tribe, whose depredations and atrocities had been carried on for years, in and around, and, indeed, far away from their mountain homes. But this tribe was now under surveillance of the Government, and guarded by a strong garrison of cavalry and infantry at Camp Apache. They were divided into bands, under Chiefs Pedro, Diablo, Patone and Cibiano; they came into the post twice a week to be counted, and to receive their rations of beef, sugar, beans, and other staples, which Uncle Sam's commissary officer issued to them. In the absence of other amusement, the officers' wives walked over to witness this rather solemn ceremony. At least, the serious expression on the faces of the Indians, as they received their rations, gave an air of solemnity to the proceeding. Large stakes were driven into the ground; at each stake, sat or stood the leader of a band; a sort of father to his people; then the rest of them stretched out in several long lines, young bucks and old ones, squaws and pappooses, the families together, about seventeen hundred souls in all. I used to walk up and down between the lines, with the other women, and the squaws looked at our clothes and chuckled, and made some of their inarticulate remarks to each other. The bucks looked admiringly at the white women, especially at the cavalry beauty, Mrs. Montgomery, although I thought that Chief Diablo cast a special eye at our young Mrs. Bailey, of the infantry. Diablo was a handsome fellow. I was especially impressed by his extraordinary good looks. This tribe was quiet at that time, only a few renegades escaping into the hills on their wild adventures: but I never felt any confidence in them and was, on the whole, rather afraid of them. The squaws were shy, and seldom came near the officers' quarters. Some of the younger girls were extremely pretty; they had delicate hands, and small feet encased in well-shaped moccasins. They wore short skirts made of stripped bark, which hung gracefully about their bare knees and supple limbs, and usually a sort of low-necked camisa, made neatly of coarse, unbleached muslin, with a band around the neck and arms, and, in cold weather a pretty blanket was wrapped around their shoulders and fastened at the breast in front. In summer the blanket was replaced by a square of bright calico. Their coarse, black hair hung in long braids in front over each shoulder, and nearly all of them wore an even bang or fringe over the forehead. Of course hats were unheard of. The Apaches, both men and women, had not then departed from the customs of their ancestors, and still retained the extraordinary beauty and picturesqueness of their aboriginal dress. They wore sometimes a fine buckskin upper garment, and if of high standing in the tribe, necklaces of elks teeth.