Chiricahua Chief Cochise

In early 1865 the Chihenne band in New Mexico, under Victorio, discussed terms with Americans, but Cochise refused, declaring that he would never make peace. He still feared Anglo treachery. In fact, 1865 was destined to be one of his most active years in Arizona. He attacked ranches, travelers and troops on both sides of the border. Yet with the Civil War winding down, military affairs in Arizona were changing, and Cochise soon learned that American troops and citizens were more determined and better armed than their counterparts below the border. Therefore, from 1866 through 1868 he was forced to adopt guerilla warfare against Americans and Mexicans. By late 1868, however, Mexican campaigns had pushed him northward into Arizona, and now, for the first time, he reluctantly considered the prospect of making peace with the Americans.

Over the next four years (18691872), Cochise came to understand clearly the inevitability of peace. Yet he was fighting his own inner battle. He had never been a reservation Indian, and he still distrusted Americans. His first meeting with Americans since the Bascom Affair occurred in his beloved Dragoon Mountains in early February 1869. He wanted peace, but he refused to go near a military post to consummate a treaty. That fall his people fought two major battles in the Chiricahua Mountains against troops from Fort Bowie that cost the lives of several Chokonens. Soon after, Cochise sent word to the Apache Indian agent in New Mexico that he would discuss a truce once he was convinced of the Americans' good faith.

In the summer of 1870 he visited Camp Mogollon in Arizona and admitted to an American officer there that he had killed 'about as many as he had lost' and that he was now 'about even.' Two months later he joined his Chihenne relatives at Cañada Alamosa, near today's Monticello, and held talks with William Arny, special Indian agent for New Mexico. Cochise reiterated his desire for a truce with the Americans, declaring, 'If the government talks straight I want a good peace.' Yet he also revealed his contempt for reservation life by declaring his people's desire 'to run around like a coyote; they don't want to be put in a corral.' The idea of a reservation, with its inherent restrictions, was completely alien to an Apache warrior's view of his universe.

After remaining a month, Cochise left Cañada Alamosa in November 1870, ostensibly to round up more members of his band. However, while he was absent, Washington assigned a new agent, and Cochise heard rumors that officials were planning to consolidate the Chiricahuas with the Mescaleros east of the Rio Grande. He therefore remained in Arizona, where, during the spring and summer of 1871, the troops allowed him, in his words, 'no rest, no peace.' In late September he returned to Cañada Alamosa and stayed until late March 1872, when the government relocated the agency to Tularosa, north of the Mogollons. At that point he returned to the Dragoon Mountains in Arizona, where in October 1872 General Howard met him and consummated a treaty, one that Cochise kept until his death in those same Dragoon Mountains on June 8, 1874.

In his day, Cochise embodied the essence of Apache warfare. But he was more than just a warrior–much more. He was an Indian who so loved his family, his people and the mountains in which he was reared that he would fight fiercely to protect and preserve all that was Apache. There can be no question that he was capable of unspeakable cruelties and violent acts of revenge upon innocent whites. The fact that Cochise was terribly wronged and misunderstood and forced to witness the disappearance of his homeland and his people perhaps cannot, in the view of history, justify everything that he did. Still he represents, probably as well as any single figure, a people's natural resistance to the invasion of their land.

The warrior known as Cochise will enjoy forever a giant place in the history of the American Southwest. In consistently heroic fashion, he occupied his place at the head of his threatened people through the violent years. His physical skills were so extraordinary that those skills alone would have conducted him to the head of his Chokonen band. One American frontiersman who knew him well insisted that Cochise 'never met his equal with a lance'; another frontiersman claimed that no Apache 'can draw an arrow to the head and send it farther with more ease than him.' And we have many eyewitness accounts to testify to Cochise's prowess as a horseman. During one furious encounter on horseback, an American scout tried over and over again to dispatch Cochise, but his efforts were all in vain, for the Indian 'would slip over to the side of his horse, hanging on the horse's neck.'

Yet it was more than his strength and physical skills that inspired the warriors of Cochise. The Chiricahua chief had often expressed his great regard for those who displayed two attributes: courage and devotion to the truth. Nobody exhibited both more persistently and dramatically than did Cochise himself. His courage in skirmishes and battles is now legendary. He always led his men into combat and was frequently the central figure throughout the fight. One American officer reported that 'many efforts were made to kill Cochise who [led] his mounted warriors' in several charges.

Always during an engagement, no matter how chaotic and confused, Cochise managed complete control of his men. 'A private soldier would as soon think of disobeying a direct order of the President as would a Chiricahua Apache a command of Cochise,' one observer declared.

The warrior-chief also respected and much admired bravery when it appeared in his enemies. One reason that his friendship with General Howard and Lieutenant Sladen developed so quickly and so firmly was that they had the 'courage to visit him when to do so [might] have caused their death.'

And Cochise scorned a liar. He held to a simple philosophy about the truth: 'A man has only one mouth and if he won't tell the truth he [should be] put out of

the way.' He clearly had a great instinct for the truth and a keen capacity for distinguishing deceit and falsehood. All Americans, with but a few notable exceptions, he distrusted out of both instinct and experience. This distrust of Americans prevented him from revealing much of his career to inquisitive whites. He remained honest to his creed as he steadfastly refused to discuss the past. If pressured, he would simply say, 'I don't want to talk about that.'

In the end, Cochise came to the best terms ever really possible for him. His last years were a time of peace in America, the kind of peace that came only because the struggle was over. He obtained a reservation in his ancestral homeland, an agent in whom he could repose absolute and complete trust, and the promise of freedom from military interference. Today, he enjoys a hallowed place in the history of the great American Southwest: Cochise, the Chiricahua Apache, the leader of his people.

This article was written by Edwin R. Sweeney and originally appeared Wild West magazine.

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