Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/262



THE CLOSING DAYS OF CROOK'S FIRST TOUR IN ARIZONA—VISIT TO THE MOQUI VILLAGES—THE PAINTED DESERT—THE PETRIFIED FORESTS—THE GRAND CAÑON—THE CATARACT CAÑON—BUILDING THE TELEGRAPH LINE—THE APACHES USING THE TELEGRAPH LINE—MAPPING ARIZONA—AN HONEST INDIAN AGENT—THE CHIRICAHUA APACHE CHIEF, COCHEIS—THE "HANGING" IN TUCSON—A FRONTIER DANIEL—CROOK'S DEPARTURE FROM ARIZONA—DEATH VALLEY—THE FAIRY LAND OF LOS ANGELES—ARRIVAL AT OMAHA.

In the fall and winter of 1874, General Crook made a final tour of examination of his department and the Indian tribes therein. He found a most satisfactory condition of affairs on the Apache reservation, with the Indians working and in the best of spirits. On this trip he included the villages of the Moquis living in houses of rock on perpendicular mesas of sandstone, surrounded by dunes or "medanos" of sand, on the northern side of the Colorado Chiquito. The Apaches who had come in from the war-path had admitted that a great part of the arms and ammunition coming into their hands had been obtained in trade with the Moquis, who in turn had purchased from the Mormons or Utes. Crook passed some eight or ten days among the Moquis during the season when the peaches were lusciously ripe and being gathered by the squaws and children. These peach orchards, with their flocks of sheep and goats, are evidences of the earnest work among these Moquis of the Franciscan friars during the last years of the sixteenth and the earlier ones of the seventeenth centuries. Crook let the Moquis know that he did not intend to punish them for what might have been the fault of their ignorance, but he wished to impress upon them that in future they must in no manner aid or abet tribes in hostility to the Government of the United States. This advice the chiefs accepted in very good