Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/481

 Apache, and had seen their fields of corn tramped down at the orders of the agent, were full of grievous complaint. The Apache-Yumas and the Apaches are an entirely different people, speaking different languages and resembling each other only in the bitter hostility with which they had waged war against the whites. The young men of the Apache-Yuma bands who attended the conferences, were in full toilet—that is, they were naked from shoulders to waist, had their faces painted with deer's blood or mescal, their heads done up in a plaster of mud three inches thick, and pendent from the cartilage of the nose wore a ring with a fragment of nacreous shell. General Crook's own estimate of the results of these conferences, which are entirely too long to be inserted here, is expressed in the following General Orders (Number 43), issued from his headquarters at Fort Whipple on the 5th of October, 1882.

"The commanding general, after making a thorough and exhaustive examination among the Indians of the eastern and southern part of this Territory, regrets to say that he finds among them a general feeling of distrust and want of confidence in the whites, especially the soldiery; and also that much dissatisfaction, dangerous to the peace of the country, exists among them. Officers and soldiers serving in this department are reminded that one of the fundamental principles of the military character is justice to all—Indians as well as white men—and that a disregard of this principle is likely to bring about hostilities, and cause the death of the very persons they are sent here to protect. In all their dealings with the Indians, officers must be careful not only to observe the strictest fidelity, but to make no promises not in their power to carry out; all grievances arising within their jurisdiction should be redressed, so that an accumulation of them may not cause an outbreak.

"Grievances, however petty, if permitted to accumulate, will be like embers that smoulder and eventually break into flame. When officers are applied to for the employment of force against Indians, they should thoroughly satisfy themselves of the necessity for the application, and of the legality of compliance therewith, in order that they may not, through the inexperience of others, or through their own hastiness, allow the troops under them to become the instruments of oppression. There must be no division of responsibility in this matter; each officer will be held to a strict accountability that his actions have been fully authorized by law and justice, and that Indians evincing a desire to enter upon a career of peace shall have no cause for complaint through hasty or injudicious acts of the military."

Crook's management of the Department of Arizona was conducted on the same lines as during his previous administration: he rode on mule-back all over it, and met and understood each and