Page:Life among the Apaches.djvu/182

 order to give succor to so prominent a man as Mangas. He was carefully conveyed to Janos, in Chihuahua, where he received the enforced attendance and aid of a Mexican physician, who happened to be in that place at the time. It was a case of the practice of surgery under unique circumstances. If the patient survived, well and good; he would return to his native wilds to again renew his fearful devastations; but if he died, the doctor and all the inhabitants were assured they should visit the spirit land with him. The ball was extracted, Mangas recovered, and the people were saved; but his was a short lease of life, for he was soon afterward captured by Capt. E. D. Shirland, of the First California Volunteer Cavalry, and killed while attempting to effect his escape from the guard house. In this manner perished Mangas Colorado, the greatest and most talented Apache Indian of the nineteenth century. In truth, he was a wonderful man. His sagacious counsels partook more of the character of wide and enlarged statesmanship than those of any other Indian of modern times. His subtle and comprehensive intellect enrolled and united the three principal tribes of Arizona and New Mexico in one common cause. He found means to collect and keep together, for weeks at a time, large bodies of savages, such as none of his predecessors could assemble and feed. He quieted and allayed all jealousies and disagreements between different branches of the great Apache family, and taught them to comprehend the value of unity and collective strength. Although never remarkable for personal prowess and courage, he knew how to evoke those qualities in others, and appropriate the credit to himself. Crafty and skilled in human nature, he laid plans and devised schemes remarkable for their shrewdness of conception and success in execution. In council he was the