On the morning of May 15, Rice left camp with Averill and 10 men of Troop E, 7th Cavalry, one enlisted man of Troop I, one of Troop C and 10 Indian scouts. John H. Slaughter, former Cochise County sheriff and now a prominent rancher, joined the group, as did other citizens, including Slaughter’s foreman at the San Bernardino Ranch, Jesse Fisher. Slaughter knew the region well and had joined Averill in his action against Apaches the previous week. During that scout, the troopers and citizens had attacked an Apache camp and captured a small Apache girl, who was subsequently taken to live with Slaughter at his ranch. This girl, who died a few years later in a fire, became known as Apache May.

Rice’s command found no signs of the bronco Apaches that day. Near dusk, the tired men moved into camp for the night. Rice, however, decided to send out the scouts right away to see if they could locate the Apache camp. The scouts departed, and early on the morning of the 16th, they spotted an Apache camp of two men and three women.

Among the scouts were several Western Apaches, including Sherman Curley, who, much later, told ethnographer Grenville Goodwin about the incident. Also on the trip, according to Curley, was the famous Apache scout, Merejildo Grijalva, who was 56 years old in 1896 and had been a scout since the 1860s. Grijalva’s advancing years may have explained Curley’s statement that Grijalva was ‘too fat to travel fast.’ Curley and another Apache scout went back to tell Rice about their discovery while Grijalva and the others stayed hidden.

Upon receiving Curley’s report, Rice had his men mount up and ride rapidly toward the Apache camp. They moved in as close as they dared and waited for the cover of darkness. Rice tried to surround the camp, which was not easy, he said, because the Apaches were located ‘in an exceedingly difficult position in a ledge of rock, or rather a pinnacle, about halfway up a very steep mountain.’ The May 22, 1896, issue of the Tombstone Prospector newspaper described the area as one of ‘precipitable character…the perpendicular or overhanging rocks and abrupt declivities making it an almost impossibility to get closer than long range shot.’

Averill, 12 troopers, three Indian scouts and the four civilians moved into position north of the Apache camp. Rice wanted them there in case the Apaches decided to flee in that direction. Averill and his men split off from Slaughter’s group at the base of the mountain, to cover the east and west canyons that fed off the mountainside where the Apaches were located. It would take Averill and his men nearly five hours to move into position.

After Averill’s party had slipped off into the darkness, Rice, one trooper and seven Apache scouts moved closer to the renegades’ camp. At 4 a.m. on May 17, Rice’s detachment reached a position only 250 yards above the Apache camp. They had a commanding view of the camp and waited to attack at sunrise.

The three Apache women below began moving about less than two hours after Rice and his men were in position. The women were easy targets, but Rice instructed his men to fire only in self-defense. The Apache scouts said that the women would most likely surrender if the two men were killed, so the wait continued. Finally, shortly before 7 a.m., one of the Indian men showed himself. This was Adelnietze, the warrior who had escaped nearly 10 years earlier, just before Geronimo and Naiche had surrendered. Adelnietze, now about 50 years old, was tall for an Apache, standing about 5 feet 10 inches. Rice reported that Adelnietze was apparently responding to an alarm call from one of the Apache women, who had detected Averill’s men below the camp at the foot of the mountain. The Tombstone Prospector, perhaps reflecting the fight as reported by its citizen informants, reported that a ‘warrior arose and sauntered forth….’

Averill had decided to move in closer to the enemy camp, though it was now almost dawn and not a good time to try approaching the Apaches unseen. The lieutenant sent a sergeant and two other soldiers to one canyon, and he took the other men behind a peak that he assumed lay on the back side of the Apache camp. In accordance with Rice’s plan, Averill deployed his men so as to catch anyone coming down the mountain. In the pre-dawn chill, they waited for daylight.

Averill then noticed a person on a high pinnacle on the next ridge. According to Averill, one of the scouts informed him that it was an Apache woman — the first solid confirmation the lieutenant had that the Apache camp was actually there. Scouring the mountainside with his field glasses, Averill noticed people he assumed were Rice and his men. He decided to move toward the next ridge. Averill chose a trooper to come with him and then crept off in the direction of the Apache woman. The other men had orders to hold their fire, so as not to alert the enemy.

Rice, though, was ready for action, and his men opened fire. Adelnietze took a bullet, but with characteristic Apache strength and endurance, he ran down the mountain through a narrow opening in the rocks, followed by one or more of the Apache women. Massai also made a hasty retreat from the camp, as the troopers’ bullets ricocheted harmlessly off the rocks that provided him with cover.

Rice assumed that the renegades would flee right into Averill and his men, as he had planned. But Rice did not know that Averill and Slaughter had separated upon reaching the base of the mountain and that many in Averill’s force were not in a good position to stop a flight.

Averill later said that he could not get the scouts to move closer to the camp. In his report, he quoted his scouts as saying, ‘Camp right here, we sit down, Chericahuas [sic] hear us….’ According to Averill, he forced one scout (Curley) to continue on, but reported that the scout ‘moved very slowly and finally refused to go any further, either through fear for himself or through fear of alarming the renegades.’ Curley provided a slightly different account; he reported the difficulty of following the trail: ‘Just by myself, without the help of another scout, it was slow trailing. They ought to have sent two or three scouts along with me to help.’

Averill and the trooper he had taken with him had barely made the bottom of the canyon when they heard Rice’s shots from above. The shots chased the three Apache women directly toward Averill, but they were scared off, according to Averill, by the firing of a rifle ‘into the air’ by Curley. The scout saw things differently. He reported that as the renegade Indians ran toward the bottom of the hill, he tried to point them out to Averill, but the lieutenant could not spot them. Therefore, it was up to only Curley to fire at them. In any case, the women took cover in the rocky formations. In his official report, Averill blamed Curley for failing to get him into the right position and for warning the Apaches by firing his rifle. He also expressed dissatisfaction with the scout who went with Slaughter and his men.

While Averill was watching the Apaches run down the mountain, Rice and his men were in hot pursuit. The renegades escaped into side canyons, and the soldiers and scouts could only pick up one trail — the very bloody trail left by Adelnietze. The Apache scouts came across Adelnietze’s rifle, an 1873 Springfield with a shortened barrel, and also a pair of field glasses, bows and arrows, moccasins and some clothing. The Tombstone Prospector reported that these items were found in the camp where Adelnietze was first shot, and that the soldiers and scouts followed his trail to a spot where the ‘ground was saturated with blood’ and there were Apache leggings ‘filled with blood.’

Although Adelneitze was not found, the scouts assured Rice that he was dead or would soon be so, since an Apache would never discard his all-important leggings. Averill kept the leggings and later presented one of them, along with an arrow recovered from the camp, to the editor of the Prospector.

The search for the wounded Adelneitze was finally called off, the scouts having traveled continuously for 48 hours without rest or much food or water. The troopers and civilians were on the move for 20 of those hours. At the Apache camp, the soldiers found two stolen horses, one of which belonged to John Slaughter. They also recovered clothing that they suspected had belonged to Elizabeth Merrill, the woman killed in December 1895.

Rice and his men returned to their horses and packs, left in a canyon several miles away the night before. They then went to Lieutenant Bullock’s Guadalupe Canyon camp for the night. Rice instructed Averill to continue the search for the wounded Apache (Adelneitze) as well as for the Apache Averill’s command had reported shooting earlier. Averill and his men, according to newspaper reports, did eventually find Adelneitze, who was indeed dead, as the scouts had predicted. They also found the body of the Apache man killed in the earlier May fight.

The two fights in May were the main confrontations of the 1896 Apache campaign. Following the May 17 fight, the U.S. Army strengthened its forces along the border, signed a border-crossing agreement with Mexico, and sent patrols into Mexico in June, July and August. The only thing close to another fight came in June when soldiers operating below the border burst into an Apache camp and captured a few camp stragglers. No Apaches were wounded or killed, and apparently no shots were fired. According to newspaper reports, the Apache scouts gave a warning call that allowed the Apache adults to flee the camp right before the attack began. Since that June attack did not lead to any shootings, Guadalupe Canyon can be seen as the last fight between the U.S. Army and the free-roaming Apaches. Subsequent hunts for renegade Apaches over the years would involve civilians out of Mexico or civilian authorities north of the border.

Major General Nelson Miles approved of what occurred in the Guadalupe Canyon fight. In a telegraphic dispatch dated June 6, 1896, Miles’ adjutant general wrote on behalf of his boss: ‘The major-general commanding the army appreciates very highly the skill, fortitude, and perseverance of the troops…and the success so far achieved….First Lieutenant Sedgwick Rice and Second Lieutenant N.K. Averill, Seventh Cavalry, and the non-commissioned officers, guides and Indian scouts under their command are highly commended.’ Miles’ praise for members of the 7th Cavalry came 20 years after the unit’s monumental defeat against the northern Plains Indians at the Little Bighorn, and six years after the 7th Cavalry’s so-called revenge at Wounded Knee.

John Slaughter was elected to the Arizona Legislature 11 years after the 1896 Apache campaign. He was also named deputy sheriff, and he held that honorary title until his death in 1922. Slaughter is buried in Douglas, Ariz., and his Slaughter Ranch (San Bernardino Ranch) is a National Historic Landmark. His foreman, Jesse Fisher, was killed on the Slaughter Ranch in 1921 by a Mexican bandit. Jesse’s son, Edward Fisher, still lives in Douglas and remembers sitting on John Slaughter’s lap as a young boy.

Lieutenant Averill served in Arizona Territory through 1898, and then participated in the Spanish-American War, during which he was mentioned for gallantry and recommended for a brevet. Averill married Mary B. Bradley on July 23, 1901, in New York and had five children. After serving in the Philippines in 1905-06, he was appointed military attaché to the Russian Court at St. Petersburg. Averill died in Albany, N.Y., in October 1947. His grandson, Michael Crimmins, is a Catholic priest in New York who, as a young boy, vaguely remembers his grandfather. Averill’s granddaughter, Catherine Sims, lives in Connecticut.

Lieutenant Rice remained for a while in Arizona Territory and was serving as the acting Indian agent at the San Carlos Reservation in 1898. He became a major in the 48th U.S. Volunteer Infantry in 1899 and was honorably mustered out in 1901. After that, he became a captain in the 3rd Cavalry and served in the Philippines and at Fort Leavenworth. He died at Fort Brown, Texas, on February 15, 1925.

Massai, the Apache warrior who survived the Guadalupe Canyon attack unhurt, epitomized the plight of the free Apaches after the end of the Apache wars, continuing the old ways until a group of cowboys killed him near Chloride, New Mexico Territory, in September 1906. Because people thought it was the Apache Kid who died that day, that area became known as the Apache Kid Wilderness. Merejildo Grijalva, the old Apache scout, seemed to lapse into obscurity after the turn of the century. He died on April 5, 1912, at his Arizona ranch near Solomonville. Scout Sherman Curley died in January 1934.

The May 17, 1896, fight at Guadalupe Canyon was a fairly nondramatic end to the Apache wars, but it had many of the elements that were standard during those wars — the use of Apache scouts, the all-day fruitless searches, the nighttime approach to the Apaches’ camp and the attack at dawn. Furthermore, the 7th Cavalry had fought again, had inflicted the only casualty (Adelneitze) and had performed well — at least in the eyes of General Miles. What Massai thought about it all is not known.

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This article was written by Britt W. Wilson and originally appeared in the October 2001 issue of Wild West.

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