Colonel George Crook was on the stagecoach that approached Tucson from the west. The old walled city was a welcome sight for the colonel and the other passengers who looked forward to relief from the stifling heat, the bouncing and jolting, the enveloping dust and the constant tension of traveling through the hostile deserts of Apachería.

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For many days Crook had endured the rigors of the 1,000-mile journey from San Francisco, but none of the passengers knew who he was. At the stage stations they had not seen him drink tea, coffee or any alcoholic beverage. He had not smoked, uttered any profanity or chewed tobacco. Despite the absence of those male habits common in that era, there was no doubt he was a man’s man, and he sat with a shotgun across his knees. He was not wearing his uniform. He never wore it when he did not have to.

Although more than 6 feet tall, Crook was not big, but rather spare, athletic and sinewy. He wore his fair hair close-cropped. His beard parted at the point of his chin and his blue-grey eyes were always alert.

He had orders to assume command of the U.S. Army’s Arizona Department. His mission was to end the fighting between the Apaches and the whites–peacefully if possible. The ‘dark and bloody ground’ of Kentucky in Daniel Boone’s time had never even begun to approach the blood and terror of Apachería for the past 10 years. Crook’s job was to round up the Indians and put them on reservations.

Others had tried. All had failed. But the man who arrived in Tucson in early July 1871, so unassuming that even the stage driver did not know who he was, had different ideas about how to deal with Indians. As a young lieutenant in California in the early 1850s, he had been dismayed at how the Indians were treated when the U.S. Senate rejected the 18 treaties negotiated with 139 bands and tribes, leaving them with no rights. He stated, ‘When they were pushed beyond endurance and would go on the warpath we had to fight when our sympathies were with the Indians.’ Nevertheless, he led successful campaigns against them in Washington, Oregon and California, and proved to be very effective in dealing with the Shoshones and the Nez Perce Indians. He believed that Indians were human beings and deserved to be treated as such. That was a very unpopular idea among the whites in Arizona in the 1870s, and he would find his philosophy nearly impossible to implement.

After serving the Union well during the Civil War, Crook had been awarded the regular rank of lieutenant colonel and sent to the Northwest again. He was assigned the tough task of subduing the ferocious Shoshones, who possessed some of the finest light cavalry units the world has ever seen. He conducted a tough, successful campaign and then tried to obtain a fair deal for them. They were grateful and respected him for his honesty.

Ten years later, Shoshone warriors would help him in his battles with Cheyenne and Sioux hostiles. But first, Crook had to confront the Apaches. When ordered to Arizona Territory, he went down to San Francisco and left from there to tackle what he knew would be a major undertaking.

The colonel may have arrived in Tucson in anonymity, but he was immediately the man in charge. Before the end of his first day there, he had sent orders to all of his unit commanders in forts and camps to report without delay to Tucson. As each man reported to him, Crook learned everything that man knew about the territory–the rivers, the fords, the trails, the soil and the climate. He found out about the troopers each commanded, the state of their morale and their experience.

Crook stressed the importance of having healthy pack mules and horses, and he asked detailed questions about the animals. He had a passionate interest in the mules because he knew the success of any campaign, to a large extent, depended on them. He made it a point to know about the mules on every expedition, about their health and their eccentricities. The best men available were assigned to them.

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