George Crook: Indian Fighter

 | Wild West  | 0 comments  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

Crook believed it would take Apaches to find Apaches, so he hired those who wanted peace to find those who wanted war. He paid them the same wages he paid the whites and sent word around to explain what he was doing. Many whites opposed his policy, including some of his own superiors, but it was a master stroke.

Crook’s plan was to hit hard, saturating the area with columns of troops. Each column was self-sufficient, with its own scouts and its own pack train, and with a highly capable officer in command. The colonel gave few orders, but he let his officers know what was expected of them. They were to use their initiative to carry out his policy. They were to fight until every hostile male Indian had either surrendered or been killed. If the Indians retreated, the troops must pursue relentlessly. If the horses gave out, the pursuit must be continued on foot. His orders included the stipulation that no woman or child was ever to be harmed and no prisoner was to be mistreated.

The target area was the Tonto Basin. Some Western Apache bands–as well asYavapais, who mingled with the Tonto Apaches–in that mountainous area had been raiding and eluding troops for several years. Crook dispatched his columns so that there was no place the bands could go to escape the relentless pressure. His Apache scouts always found them. Crook was right–it took an Apache to find an Apache. Within weeks, bands began to come in to surrender. Those that did not surrender were hunted and found. They either gave up or were killed.

Chief Chalipan (often called Charlie Pan) came to make peace for 2,300 Western Apaches. He said they were sick of war. They could not cook because the Apache scouts saw the smoke, and they could not sleep because they feared surprise attacks. The chief said the Indians could not fight the soldiers and their own people at the same time.

If Chalipan kept the peace, Crook said he would be the best friend the chief ever had. The Indian must work like the white man worked and he would be treated exactly like the white man. The work would start right away on an irrigation project for the farms. The colonel would find markets for their crops, and they would be paid directly. No middleman would siphon off profits. The Apaches would have their own police force, paid for by the Army. Thieves and drunkards would be jailed if found guilty by Apache juries.

Crook knew he could not wait for Washington to send tools, so he collected every old shovel, spade and pick from all the camps and forts. Work began immediately. The men did the digging, and the women carried the dirt in their handwoven baskets. They had soon dug a ditch 4 feet wide, 3 feet deep and 5 miles long. They planted 57 acres of melons and other truck garden produce they liked.

Crook emphasized the individual, not the traditional communal philosophy of tribes and bands. An individual cut hay, sold it himself and collected the money. An individual was paid to cut wood. An individual was responsible for his own actions and was rewarded or punished. Apache juries were respected, and if they had a fault, it was in being too severe.

Crook tried hard but was not successful in establishing schools on all the reservations. He believed the Indians could only be assimilated into white society if they had an education. He believed it was wrong to send children off to boarding schools in the East, then have them return to a society that resented their superior knowledge and skills. They would be accepted in neither the white nor the Indian culture.

In most of his efforts, Colonel Crook was opposed by many ordinary citizens who hated the Apaches for the burning and killing of the past 10 years and wanted them all exterminated. His greatest problem, however, was the infamous, corrupt Tucson Ring–a group of Arizona businessmen who wanted Indians on the warpath. War in the territory meant these wheeler-dealers could sell supplies to the Army and guns and ammunition to the Indians. If the Ring members could not have war, they wanted the Indians to be on reservations, where the Ring could sell supplies to the often corrupt Indian agents. Putting rocks in bags of flour and sugar and selling cattle that were meant for the reservations were just two of the ways the Ring men cheated the Indians. The Ring knew that self-sufficient Indians would bring an end to swollen profits from government contracts.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to

Tags: 19th Century, American Indian Wars, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures, The Wild West, Wild West

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.