Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/471



CROOK RE-ASSIGNED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ARIZONA—ALL THE APACHES ON THE WAR-PATH—LIEUTENANTS MORGAN AND CONVERSE WOUNDED—CAPTAIN HENTIG KILLED—CROOK GOES ALONE TO SEE THE HOSTILES—CONFERENCES WITH THE APACHES—WHAT THE ARIZONA GRAND JURY SAID OF AN INDIAN AGENT—CONDITION OF AFFAIRS AT THE SAN CARLOS AGENCY—WHISKEY SOLD TO THE CHIRICAHUA APACHES—APACHE TRIALS BY JURY—ARIZONA IN 1882—PHŒNIX, PRESCOTT, AND TUCSON—INDIAN SCHOOLS.

Before the summer of 1882 had fairly begun, Indian affairs in Arizona had relapsed into such a deplorable condition that the President felt obliged to re-assign General Crook to the command. To the occurrences of the next four years I will devote very few paragraphs, because, although they formed an epoch of great importance in our Indo-military history and in General Crook's career, they have previously received a fair share of my attention in the volume, "An Apache Campaign," to which there is little to add. But for the sake of rounding out this narrative and supplying data to those who may not have seen the book in question, it may be stated that affairs had steadily degenerated from bad to worse, and that upon Crook's return to Prescott no military department could well have been in a more desperate plight. In one word, all the Apaches were again on the war-path or in such a sullen, distrustful state of mind that it would have been better in some sense had they all left the reservation and taken to the forests and mountains.

Crook was in the saddle in a day, and without even stopping to inquire into the details of the new command—with which, however, he was to a great extent familiar from his former experience—he left the arrangement of such matters to his Adjutant-General, Colonel James P. Martin, and started across the mountains