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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings
At this site on July 17, 1882, a column of the 6th
Cavalry from Fort Whipple led by Capt. Adna R. Chaffee mauled a party of
54 White Mountain Apaches under Nantiatish. The warriors, aroused by the
death of their medicine man, Nakaidoklini, the year before in the Battle
of Cibecue Creek and resenting the intrusion of settlers and miners, had
fled the White Mountain (Fort Apache) Reservation. They raided the San
Carlos Agency, plundered settlements in the Tonto Basin, and for some
time evaded the 14 cavalry troops from various Arizona forts who were
giving pursuit. Spying Chaffee's force from the Mogollon Rim, the
Indians planned an ambush in a canyon 7 miles to the north. Chaffee,
forewarned by scouts, dismounted and formed a skirmish line with part of
his force at the brink of the canyon to pin down his opponents, on the
opposite rim. He then deployed two parties that surprised them on the
flanks.
The trail road from Mogollon Rim passes along
Chaffee's approach route and terminates at the canyon brink where the
fighting began. A stone monument at the southern edge of the canyon
describes the action and lists the names of the soldier participants.
The heavy pine forests and rugged canyon are unchanged from 1882. A
marker describing the battle is located at General Springs.
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Gen. George Crook, master
tactician and military innovator, wore down Arizona's Chiricahua Apaches
but was reassigned before their final surrender.
(Arizona Pioneers' Historical Society) |
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CAMP VERDE
Arizona
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Location: Yavapai County, town of Camp
Verde.
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Protector of settlers in the Verde Valley of central
Arizona, this fort (1866-91) was also Gen. George Crook's major base
during his Tonto Basin campaign (1872-73) against the Yavapais, or
Apache-Mojaves, and the scene of their formal surrender. In 1871, the
same year Crook arrived in Arizona to assume command of Army forces,
President Grant's peace representatives established a reservation for
the Yavapais near Camp Verde. But by the next year most of them had fled
into the mountains. Defeated by Crook in 1872-73, they returned to the
reservation for 2 years, and were then moved to the San Carlos
Reservation.
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Chiricahua leaders Geronimo and
Natchez (wearing hat) are on horseback in this photograph. Geronimo's
son stands by his side. (photo by C. S. Fly, Denver Public Library,
Western Collection) |
No remains are extant at the fort's first location,
on the east bank of the Verde River, but a few adobe buildings border
the parade ground at the second, on the west bank of the river in the
northern part of the town of Camp Verde. The Camp Verde Improvement
Association, a local civic group, owns and has restored two of the three
sets of officers quarters and the administration building. One of the
officers' quarters is a private residence. The administration building
houses a museum. When this volume went to press, plans were being made
to transfer the buildings and the entire fort site to the State for
historical park purposes (later established as Fort Verde State Historic
Park).
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The Southwest (1848-1861)
(click on image for an enlargement in a new
window) |
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CIBECUE CREEK BATTLEFIELD
Arizona
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Location: Navajo County, on an unimproved road,
about 2-1/2 miles south of Cibecue.
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Indicative of the strife that prevailed on Arizona
reservations in the 1870's and 1880's. The battle fought at this site in
1881 was fomented by Indian resentment at the invasion of settlers and
miners, aggravated by the doctrines of the medicine man Nakaidoklini.
His mystical teachings and prophecies, which blended Christian and
native elements and foreshadowed the Ghost Dance religion that was to
sweep through the western tribes in the years 1889-91, gained him many
adherents and stirred up the White Mountain (Fort Apache) Reservation.
The alarmed Indian agent appealed to the nearby fort for aid.
On August 30, 1881, Col. Eugene A. Carr, the
commander, and 85 men and 23 Apache scouts arrested the medicine man at
his camp on Cibecue Creek. They then moved 2-1/2 miles down the creek
and made camp. Late in the afternoon a hundred of Nakaidoklini's
followers attacked. Some of the Apache scouts, sympathetic with the new
religion, revolted, shot a captain and six men, and joined the
attackers. During the struggle, Nakaidoklini's guard killed him. Carr's
men repulsed the assailants but the next morning, while the troops were
still in the field warding off a force of about 500 Indians, they joined
other disaffected bands and assaulted Fort Apache. The garrison held
out, and the Indians later surrendered.
Meantime, worried about the prospect of another
general Apache war, the Army rushed in reinforcements. This caused the
Chiricahuas residing on the reservation, innocent of any wrongdoing, to
grow apprehensive. They became thoroughly frightened when the agency
police began to arrest the leaders of the Cibecue revolt. On September
30 Geronimo and Natchez and 75 of the Chiricahuas fled the reservation
to the Sierra Madre of Mexico. There they joined Nana and the remnants
of Victorio's Warm Springs band. Hostilities did not end until Geronimo
gave up in 1886.
The battle site is on the Fort Apache Indian
Reservation. The wide and open creek valley, through which Cibecue Creek
meanders, contrasts with the broken, wooded terrain on both sides.
Except for an occasional Indian cornfield and scattered Apache
dwellings, neither of which is out of character, the natural scene is
unimpaired.
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Col. Eugene A. Carr, commander
of Fort Apache, fought the Battle of Cibecue Creek and other engagements
in the Indian wars. (National Archives) |
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FORT APACHE
Arizona
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Location: Navajo County, at the Fort Apache Indian
Reservation headquarters, adjacent to the town of Fort Apache.
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From its founding in 1870 until the capitulation of
Geronimo in 1886, this fort was closely involved in the Apache wars
(1861-86). Gen. George Crook, arriving in Arizona for his first tour of
duty in 1871, organized there his first company of Apache scouts, one of
his tactical innovations, before moving on to Camp Verde to conduct his
Tonto Basin campaign.
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Fort Apache in 1883. (Denver
Public Library, Western Collection) |
Situated on the White Mountain (Fort Apache)
Reservation, which adjoined the San Carlos Reservation, the fort guarded
the Fort Apache Agency, while Fort Thomas watched over the San Carlos
Agency. The two reservations were the focus of Apache unrest, especially
after troops moved the troublesome Chiricahuas in 1876 from Fort Bowie
to the White Mountain Reservation. In constant turmoil, the reservations
were noted for their unhealthful location, overcrowded conditions, and
dissatisfied inhabitants. Sparking the discontent were inefficient and
corrupt agents, friction between civil and military authorities, feeble
attempts to make farmers of the nomadic Indians, and encroachment on the
reservations by settlers and miners.
For a decade, until Geronimo laid down his arms, the
resentful Apaches alternately fled into Mexico, returned to the
reservations to enlist recruits, and raided along the Mexican boundary.
Fort Apache troops spent much of their time in pursuit. In 1881, at the
Battle of Cibecue Creek, a group of White Mountain Apaches defeated a
force from the fort and then besieged it for a while before they
surrendered. After 1886 Fort Apache ceased to be a significant frontier
post, but it remained active until 1924.
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Lt. Charles B. Gatewood and
company of Apache scouts at Fort Apache in 1880, at the end of the
Victorio campaign. Sam Bowman, civilian scout, stands behind Gatewood.
(Arizona Pioneer's Historical Society) |
Many fort buildings remain. The Fort Apache post
office occupies the adobe adjutant's building. A log building, one of
the oldest structures and reputedly the residence of General Crook, as
well as the stone officers' quarters, are today the residences of
teachers and other Bureau of Indian Affairs employees. The sutler's
store and commissary building, cavalry barns, and guard house have not
been significantly altered. One of the original four barracks, an adobe
building in bad disrepair, houses the farm shop for the Indian school.
The parade ground provides a recreational area. The cemetery no longer
contains soldier dead, but does contain the bodies of Indian scouts.
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FORT BRECKINRIDGE (Old Camp Grant)
Arizona
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Location: Pinal County, just southeast of the
junction of Ariz. 77 and an unimproved road, about 10 miles north of
Mammoth.
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This was the second military post in the area of the
Gadsden Purchase (1853). Troops from Fort Buchanan, the first, founded
it in 1860 to assist in watching over emigrants and settlers. The next
February the garrison reinforced Fort Buchanan troops during the
hostilities associated with the Bascom Affair. In July, faced by a
Confederate invasion of New Mexico from Texas, the Army abandoned Fort
Breckinridge, as well as other posts in southern Arizona, and put it to
the torch. In 1862 California Volunteers temporarily occupied the site,
known as Fort Stanford. Five years later Regulars built a new post, Camp
Grant.
Despite the forceful measures of the California
Volunteers, when the Civil War ended Arizona Territory was still
besieged by Apaches. Arizonans frantically petitioned the U.S.
Government for more troops. Incensed at all Indians and embittered at
governmental neglect, a mob of 54 Tucson citizens, aided by 92 Papago
Indians, old enemies of the Apaches, took matters into their own hands.
They blamed raids in the vicinity on a group of 300 Aravaipa Apaches,
led by Eskiminzin, who had surrendered at Camp Grant and were residing
about 4 miles away under its protection. On April 30, 1871, the mob
descended on them; killed 118 people, mostly women; and captured 27
children, some of whom be came slaves of the Papagos or servants in
Tucson homes.
The massacre and the acquittal in December of 108
persons charged with being involved, though receiving the approbation of
many westerners, created indignation in the East and did much to hamper
Grant's Peace Policy in Arizona. The desert tribes soon learned of it,
and peace emissaries found them more reluctant than ever to trade their
freedom for the apparent insecurity of reservation life. Gen. George
Crook, who had taken over the Department of Arizona in June 1871, soon
led expeditions against the Apaches out of Old Camp Grant and Forts
McDowell and Apache in his Tonto Basin campaign (1872-73). Late in 1872
Camp Grant was relocated 50 miles to the southeast and became known as
Fort Grant (New Camp Grant).
The barren site of Fort Breckinridge (Old Camp
Grant), on privately owned land, is covered with mesquite and cactus
and a scattering of rubble and ruins.
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FORT BUCHANAN (Camp Crittenden)
Arizona
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Location: Santa Cruz County, just west of Ariz.
82, about 1 mile west of Sonoita.
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Supplementing a number of other military posts
established in the territory acquired from Mexico in 1848, Fort Buchanan
(1856-61) was the first within the bounds of the Gadsden Purchase
(1853). About 22 miles east of Tubac, it protected settlers and stages
from Chiricahua Apaches. A detachment from the post, led by Lt. George
N. Bascom, was involved in the episode with Cochise at Apache Pass that
precipitated the Apache wars (1861-86). At the beginning of the Civil
War, Regulars evacuated and destroyed it. The following year, General
Carleton's California Volunteers occasionally camped at the site. To aid
in the renewed effort against the Apaches, the post was reactivated as
Camp Crittenden (1868-73) on a hill about one-half mile to the east.
The privately owned sites of Fort Buchanan and Camp
Crittenden are used for grazing. The only remains are scattered rocks.
mounds of earth, and fragmented adobe ruins.
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FORT DEFIANCE
Arizona
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Location: Apache County, town of Fort
Defiance.
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The name of this fort (1851-61) typifies the attitude
of its garrison and that of the Navajos it sought to control. Only 3
miles west of the Arizona-New Mexico boundary, it was the first Army
post in Arizona and one of many established within the Mexican Cession
(1848). After the failure of several treaties with the restive Navajos,
who had terrorized residents of the Southwest since Spanish times, Fort
Defiance was founded to quiet them. In 1858, until which time only
intermittent skirmishing had occurred, hostilities became intense. Two
years later 1,000 Navajos besieged the fort but were unable to capture
it.
In 1868 Fort Defiance became the Navajo Indian
Agency, today at Window Rock. A Navajo tribal school and hospital,
around which the town of Fort Defiance has grown up, now occupies the
fort site. Modern construction has altered it considerably, but the fort
outlines are visible.
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Fort Defiance in 1852, the year
after its founding. (National Archives) |
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FORT GRANT (New Camp Grant)
Arizona
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Location: Graham County, town of Fort Grant.
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The successor of Old Camp Grant, this fort
(1872-1905) was founded along a route employed by Apaches fleeing into
Mexico from the San Carlos Reservation. Until the surrender of Geronimo
in 1886, its troops and those from other forts in the region tried to
intercept these roving bands and pursued raiding parties along the
international boundary. In 1911 the State acquired the fort for use as a
reform school, today called the State Industrial School.
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Bands boosted troop morale.
First Infantry band at Fort Grant in 1882. (National
Archives) |
An extensive construction program has destroyed much
of the historic setting, and a large swimming pool takes up part of the
old parade ground. Several of the original adobe officers' quarters,
most of which have been modernized, are still used.
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Officers and wives at Fort Grant
officers' quarters in 1885. (Library of Congress) |
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Military officials often had
disciplinary problems. Guardhouse prisoners laboring at Fort Grant in
the mid-1880's. Target range and Graham Mountains in background.
(Arizona Pioneers' Historical Society) |
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FORT LOWELL
Arizona
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Location: Pima County, on Craycroft Road, in the
north eastern part of Tucson.
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A part of the system of forts guarding southern
Arizona during the years of Apache hostilities, this one served more as
a supply depot and administrative center than as a combat base. It
occupied two sites. The first post, essentially a tent city, was
established in May 1862 just east of Tucson by California Volunteers who
had captured the town from the Confederates. In 1873 the post was
relocated 7 miles northeast of town, where permanent adobe construction
began. The garrison remained until 1891.
The Santa Rita Hotel is located on the first site.
The extensive surviving adobe ruins at the second, standing 7 feet high,
represent an excellent specimen of the typical southwestern fort of the
19th century. Pima County owns the eastern part of the fort grounds and
commemorates them in Fort Lowell Park. Noteworthy remains are those of
the hospital and one cavalry and two infantry barracks. These have been
stabilized by the Arizona Pioneers' Historical Society. It has also
reconstructed the commanding officer's house and furnished it in period
style, and plans to restore the hospital and establish there a museum on
Army medical history in the Southwest. Outside the park, about 200 yards
to the west on Fort Lowell Road, is the sutler's store, now a private
residence; and three officers' quarters, in varying condition, on
privately owned land. Immediately to the east are the ruins of the
guardhouse.
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Column leaving an unidentified
southwestern post, probably in Arizona sometime in the 1880's. (photo
by Baker and Johnston, National Archives) |
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FORT MCDOWELL
Arizona
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Location: Maricopa County, town of Fort
McDowell.
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Founded by California Volunteers on the west bank of
the Verde River in the midst of Indian country and along travel routes,
this isolated post (1865-91) was ever on the alert for the Apaches who
roamed the Salt and Gila River Valleys and was a key base in General
Crook's Tonto Basin campaign. Columns from Fort McDowell and Old Camp
Grant won the Battle of Salt River Canyon, Ariz., instrumental in
bringing that campaign to a close.
The site of the fort, just west of the Fort McDowell
Indian Agency, is overgrown with vegetation. The only original building
is the officers' quarters. Low earth mounds and adobe remnants mark the
location of other structures.
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The Southwest and the Southern
Plains (1862-1890) (click on imaqe for an enlargement in a new
window) |
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FORT MOHAVE
Arizona
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Location: Mohave County, on the west fork of an
unimproved road, about 5 miles south of Roger's Landing.
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Active in the years 1859-90, this hardship post was
founded near the head of the Mohave Valley on the east bank of the
Colorado River at Beale's Crossing, which had been forded in 1857 by
Edward F. Beale's camel caravan en route to California. The destruction
by the Mohave Indians of an emigrant train trying Beale's route the next
spring resulted in the activation of the fort by an expedition that came
up the Colorado from Fort Yuma, Calif., and faced immediate Indian
attacks. Until the garrison burned the post and departed at the
beginning of the Civil War, it kept watch over the restless Indians and
protected stages and the seldom-used emigrant road. The clamor of
settlers for security from hostile Mohaves and Paiutes resulted in the
reactivation of the fort in 1863.
The site, on the Fort Mohave Indian Reservation, is
privately owned. The only recognizable remains are sidewalks; remnants
of drainage ditches and the water system; and the littered cemetery,
which no longer contains soldier burials.
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Apache scouts, somewhere in
Arizona. Date unknown. (Smithsonian Institution) |
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FORT WHIPPLE
Arizona
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Location: Yavapai County, at the junction of U.s.
89 and Ariz. 69, about 1 mile east of Prescott.
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Centrally located in Arizona, this fort was the nerve
center of the early campaigns that sought to quell the Apaches. It
served as the residence and main headquarters of department commanders
George Crook and George Stoneman, who maintained field headquarters
nearer the scene of the action. The garrison's outstanding achievement
was its victory in the Battle of the Big Dry Wash (1882). Occupying two
different sites, the post was known at various times and sometimes
simultaneously as Camp and Fort Whipple, Camp Clark, Whipple Depot,
Prescott Barracks, and Whipple Barracks. In December 1863 California
Volunteers founded it as Fort Whipple, 24 miles northeast of the site of
Prescott, to protect miners. The following month, when governmental
officials arrived, it became the temporary capital of newly created
Arizona Territory.
The next May the fort, along with the Territorial
government, moved southward to Granite Creek, east of future Prescott,
which grew up as the Territorial capital. In 1870 Whipple Depot, a
quartermaster installation that had been established adjacent to the
fort, became a separate command. In 1879 Fort Whipple was redesignated
as Whipple Barracks, which was garrisoned until 1898 and in the 1902-22
period. The Public Health Service then acquired it for hospital
purposes.
A Veterans' Administration hospital today, Fort
Whipple consists of a large number of brick and stone buildings, most
dating from 1904, that are used as stall residences, offices, and
patients quarters. The site of the original stockade is marked.
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SALT RIVER CANYON (Skeleton Cave) BATTLEFIELD
Arizona
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Location: Maricopa County, in Salt River Canyon,
near Horse Mesa Dam. The dam is bounded on the east by Apache Lake and
on the southwest by Canyon Lake (Salt River). The site is accessible
only with great difficulty and the aid of guides, by boat from Canyon
Lake or by unimproved road from the town of Horse Mesa.
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The Army won its most striking victory in the long
history of Apache warfare at this site, where Gen. George Crook also
tasted triumph in his Tonto Basin campaign. At dawn on December 28,
1872, a 130-man force, consisting of about two companies of the 5th
Cavalry from Fort McDowell and Old Camp Grant and 30 Apache scouts under
the command of Capt. William H. Brown, surprised a band of more than a
hundred Yavapais as they tried to emerge from a cave deep in the
recesses of Salt River Canyon. The trapped Indians refused to surrender.
Some of Brown's men shot at the roof of the cave and deflected a deadly
fire into the defenders. Other soldiers completed the destruction by
rolling boulders over the cliffs above. About 75 Indians died, and most
of the rest were captured. This victory, along with Crook's other
aggressive measures, so lowered the morale of the Yavapais that on April
6, 1873, they made peace at Camp Verde.
The natural setting is unimpaired. The cave lies on
the north wall of the canyon in the angle of a sharp turn to the south.
Access is gained by climbing a steep mountainside, crossing a lava bed,
and descending from the rim of the gorge by a trail on the face of the
cliff. The cave is an elliptical undercut about 65 by 25 feet, situated
at the base of a cliff 170 feet high and at the top of a steep slope
falling away some 1,200 feet to the water below. The cave's ceiling is
blackened from the smoke of Indian fires and scarred by carbine bullets.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has jurisdiction over the site.
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SKELETON CANYON
Arizona
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Location: Cochise County, on an unimproved road,
about 8 miles southeast of the hamlet of Apache.
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In this canyon, a favorite Apache haunt in
southeastern Arizona, the Chiricahuas Geronimo and Natchez, son of
Cochise and hereditary chief of the tribe, surrendered to Gen. Nelson A.
Miles on September 3, 1886. Lasting peace had come to the Southwest. For
all practical purposes the Apache wars had ended and, except for the
Sioux outbreak of 1890, so had the Indian wars. The weary warriors,
after being harried throughout the Sierra Madre all summer by Capt.
Henry W. Lawton's picked troops, were receptive to peace overtures. Lt.
Charles B. Gatewood, who had befriended Geronimo, and two Chiricahua
Apache scouts set out from Fort Bowie. Meeting with Geronimo and Natchez
near Fronteras, Mexico, they induced them to surrender to General Miles.
Lawton's command escorted them northward to Skeleton Canyon, 35 miles
southeast of Fort Bowie, where the ceremony occurred. Lawton then took
the captives to the fort, from where they were shipped to Florida for
imprisonment.
A cairn of rocks, 6 feet high, overgrown with
mesquite, marks the surrender site. The cairn stands on a bench just
south of the creek that flows out of Skeleton Canyon, 100 yards east of
a privately owned ranch and barn and immediately above a stock pond and
corral. The ranch facilities constitute a minor intrusion, but the
desert character of the terrain is little changed from the historic
period. A large stone monument on U.S. 80 at Apache commemorates the
site.
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/soldier-brave/sitec1.htm
Last Updated: 19-Aug-2005
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