: The dread Apache: That early-day scourge of the Southwest by Freeman Merrill Pingree - Indians of North America Southwest New; Apache Indians; Apache Kid approximately 1860-

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The Dread Apache--That Early-Day Scourge of the Southwest

Tucson, Arizona November 14 1915

The Dread Apache--That Early-Day Scourge of the Southwest

BY DR. M. P. FREEMAN

A short time ago, idling through a collection of early-day photographs, I came across two that vividly recalled the closing scenes in that bloody frontier drama in which the Apache was the chief actor. For many years the relentless foe of the pioneer, wary, tireless, cowardly and treacherous, he was the very incarnation of fiendishness, if possible, more pronounced in the squaw than in the man. Never meeting you in the open, always in ambush, concealed behind the big granite boulder, the point of a hill or a clump of brush, he and his fellows patiently awaited your solitary coming, all unconscious of danger, then--the crack of the rifle and it is all over. Today he might be a "sniper", but in the days of his hellish activities the word had not yet been given its more recently enlarged meaning.

How many breakers of the wilderness, hardy, fearless old-timers, were sent to their final rest by this early scourge of the desert, who can say! Some place their number at two thousand, some say more, others less. This does not include the soldier boy, whose profession it is to risk his life, and when necessary, his duty, its sacrifice. Of the number of these there is probably a record somewhere, but of the old pioneer, only an estimate. In the valley, on the mesa and the hillside, on the mountain-top and in the deep shadows of the canyon, everywhere this broad land is dotted with their unknown and unmarked graves.

Captain John G. Bourke, author of "On the Border with Crook," and "An Apache Campaign," who was with Gen. Crook, tells us that the Apache "is no coward, but that he has no false ideas about courage, that he would prefer to skulk like a coyote for hours and then kill his enemy, rather than by injudicious exposure receive a wound." May we not attribute to the chivalrous spirit of Capt. Bourke, not to criticize a foe, his delicate way of putting this?

No, I do not recall that this early plague of the old pioneer ever "injudiciously exposed" himself unless driven to it. "Skulking like the coyote," as Capt. Bourke so well expresses it, is my conception of his bravery. If forced to the open he would undoubtedly make a brave fight, but I have never heard of his voluntarily seeking that open, meeting his enemy on anything approaching equal terms.

Paris Adopts Name of Apache

Being over in Paris a few years ago, a friend who had lived there a number of years, and who was as familiar with Paris from basement to roof-garden, as I am with Congress street of our good old town of Tucson, suggested one evening that we visit the "Apaches". Expressing surprise that any of my people should have wandered so far from home, I suggested as a substitute the Moulin Rouge. However, the Apaches were agreed on, and in the evening, my friend, bringing a policeman with him, called for me at my hotel.

Arriving at the door of the Apache rendezvous in due course, we three--my friend, the policeman and myself--are readily admitted, the presence of our policeman assuring that, and we find ourselves in an underground dive, a large room with a low ceiling, barely furnished, dimly lighted, and reeking with the sour odor of stale beer. Looking about the room, by the dim light as it forces its way through the dense gloom of tobacco smoke, we are enabled to see two other policemen besides our own--there are two stationed there day and night--and a score or more of the toughest-looking lot of cut-throats I had ever had the pleasure of coming in contact with. This was the retreat, the gathering place, of as bad a lot of thieves, thugs, robbers, burglars and murderers as the world could boast of, and Paris, in seeking a name for them that would embody all of these characteristics, had searched the world over, and was almost in despair of finding a single word that would express all that is mean, wantonly cruel, murderous and cowardly, but at last attention was directed to the Apache of Arizona, and then it was discovered that the word which would embody all that and more had been found. And that was why I was enabled to find some of my own home people away off there in the world's center of fashion. Settling for a few bottles of the vilest beer possible to brew, as a tip to the house, I was soon ready to ask my friend to call his policeman and get us away from this vile den.

Judge McComas and Wife Murdered.

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