Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/248

 Apache or any other Indian see that the moment he went on the war-path two white men would go out also; and make him see that patient industry produces wealth, fame, and distinction of a much more permanent and a securer kind than those derived from a state of war, and the Indian would acquiesce gladly in the change. But neither red man nor white would submit peaceably to any change in his mode of life which was not apparently to his advantage.

The way the great irrigating ditch at Camp Verde was dug was this. All the Apaches were made to camp along the line of the proposed canal, each band under its own chiefs. Everything in the shape of a tool which could be found at the military post of Camp Verde or in those of Whipple and Hualpai was sent down to Mason. There were quantities of old and worn-out spades, shovels, picks, hatchets, axes, hammers, files, rasps, and camp kettles awaiting the action of an inspector prior to being thrown away and dropped from the returns as "worn out in service." With these and with sticks hardened in the fire, the Apaches dug a ditch five miles long, and of an average cross-*section of four feet wide by three deep, although there were places where the width of the upper line was more than five feet, and that of the bottom four, with a depth of more than five. The men did the excavating; the women carried off the earth in the conical baskets which they make of wicker-work. As soon as the ditch was ready, General Crook took some of the chiefs up to his headquarters at Fort Whipple, and there had them meet deputations from all the other tribes living within the territory of Arizona, with whom they had been at war—the Pimas, Papagoes, Maricopas, Yumas, Cocopahs, Hualpais, Mojaves, Chimahuevis—and with them peace was also formally made.

Mason and Schuyler labored assiduously with the Apaches, and soon had not less than fifty-seven acres of land planted with melons and other garden truck, of which the Indians are fond, and every preparation made for planting corn and barley on a large scale. A large water-wheel was constructed out of packing-boxes, and at a cost to the Government, including all labor and material, of not quite thirty-six dollars. The prospects of the Apaches looked especially bright, and there was hope that they might soon be self-sustaining; but it was not to be. A "ring" of Federal officials, contractors, and others was formed