Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/213

 mess—Father Antonio Jouvenceau—who had been sent out from Tucson to try and establish a mission among the bands living in the vicinity of Camp Apache. There wasn't anything in the shape of supplies in the country outside of the army stores, and of these the missionary desired permission to buy enough to keep himself alive until he could make other arrangements, or become accustomed to the wild food of such friends as he might make among the savages. Every request he made was refused on the ground that there was no precedent. I know that there was "no precedent" for doing anything to bring savages to a condition of peace, but I have never ceased to regret that there was not, because I feel sure that had the slightest encouragement been given to Father Antonio or to a handful of men like him, the wildest of the Apaches might have been induced to listen to reason, and there would have been no such expensive wars. A missionary could not well be expected to load himself down with supplies and carry them on his own back while he was hunting favorable specimens of the Indians upon whom to make an impression. There were numbers of Mexican prisoners among the Apaches who retained enough respect for the religion of their childhood to be from first acquaintance the firm and devoted friends of the new-comer, and once set on a good basis in the Apache villages, the rest would have been easy. This, however, is merely conjecture on my part.

The new recruits from among the Apaches were under the command of a chief responding to the name of "Esquinosquizn," meaning "Bocon" or Big Mouth. He was crafty, cruel, daring, and ambitious; he indulged whenever he could in the intoxicant "Tizwin," made of fermented corn and really nothing but a sour beer which will not intoxicate unless the drinker subject himself, as the Apache does, to a preliminary fast of from two to four days. This indulgence led to his death at San Carlos some months later. The personnel of Brown's command was excellent; it represented soldiers of considerable experience and inured to all the climatic variations to be expected in Arizona, and nowhere else in greater degree. There were two companies of the Fifth Cavalry, and a detachment of thirty Apache scouts, that being as many as could be apportioned to each command in the initial stages of the campaign. Captain Alfred B. Taylor, Lieutenant Jacob Almy, Lieutenant William J. Ross, and myself constituted