By Jeff Burgess © 2005
In November of 1872 U.S. General George Crook launched a military offensive to conquer the hostile Yavapais and Tonto Apaches of central Arizona. Troops went out from the area's military forts with orders to "hunt them down until the last hostile is killed or captured." A year earlier he had ordered all the local Indians to report to a reservation or be considered hostile and "punished accordingly." He had made sure the message had been widely delivered, but there had been little response. The troops assigned to finally inflict the punishment were told, "no excuse will be accepted for abandoning a trail; if the horses play out, follow the enemy afoot as long as your men can stand."
General George Crook
The first major success of the campaign occurred in December, when Crook's troops discovered a Yavapai stronghold consisting of a large cave in the depths of the Salt River Canyon. They took up positions around the mouth of the cave, and when its occupants refused to surrender, they poured in a heavy fire. When it was over, they found the bodies of 57 warriors inside, along with a smaller number of dead women and children. The handful of survivors, most of them wounded, were taken to Fort McDowell. The chief of this band, Nanni-chaddi, was among the dead. He had bragged that no soldiers would ever find his camp.
West Side of Turret Peak, Yavapai County, Arizona
The second major success of this campaign occurred on the morning of March 27, 1873, at Turret Peak. This lone mountain was also a Yavapai stronghold. It had been the destination, in fact, of a wounded brave who had escaped from the battle of the Salt River Cave.
North end of Turret Peak's summit.
Members of the Turret Peak band tortured and killed three white men on March 11th. Crook's troops made a big effort to track down the killers but had no success until his Indian scouts captured a Yavapai woman they "intimidated" into showing them the way. The soldiers crept up the sides of Turret Peak during the night and at dawn they rushed the hostile camp on top, achieving complete surprise. At least two dozen Indians were killed and the survivors were taken captive.
South end of Turret Peak's summit.
These two defeats, at strongholds long thought impregnable, broke the back of Yavapai resistance in central Arizona. In April a Yavapai chief named Cha-lipun appeared at Fort Verde and unconditionally surrendered to Crook. He explained in Spanish* that Crook had, "too many cartridges of copper." He was accompanied by 300 of his tribe, but represented about 2,300 in the region.
* Spanish was the language most Indians used to communicate with white people in Arizona at this time. The Indians had been in contact with Spanish-speaking whites for a couple of centuries, while English-speaking Americans had only been in Arizona for a couple of decades.
View west from Turret Peak's summit.
NOTE: Most of the historical accounts of these events refer to the Indians involved as being Apaches because, at that time, all hostile Indians in central Arizona were called Apaches. Still, some Anglos knew the Yavapais were different and called them Mohave-Apaches, because their language was similar to that spoken by the Mohave tribe. The Yavapai were indeed Yuman speaking people, like their cousins the Mohave, Hualapai, Havasupai, Maricopa, Cocopah, and Yumas. The Yavapai were the easternmost tribe of Yuman speakers and the harsh climate and rugged topography of central Arizona dictated their culture. The westernmost Apache tribe, the Tonto Apaches, had also learned to survive in this place and so the two groups found much in common, despite their different languages. Yavapais and Tonto Apaches cooperated, intermarried and shared the land, the general dividing line between the two being the Mazatzal Mountains. The Tontos were given their nickname by other Western Apaches, because the word "tonto" means fool in Spanish and the other Apaches considered the Tontos fools for cooperating with the Yavapais.
View east from Turret Peak's summit.
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References
Bourke, John: On the Border with Crook, Time Life Education, 1982.
Goodwin, Grenville: Western Apache Raiding and Warfare, University of Arizona Press, 1994.
Thrapp, Dan: The Conquest of Apacheria, University of Oklahoma Press, 1979.
