Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/500

 him, pending conferences between the Interior and War Departments with a view of harmonizing matters, "not to interfere with farming operations of Indians who are not considered as prisoners."

General Crook replied in these terms:

"I have the honor to say that the agreement of July 7, 1883, by which 'the War Department was intrusted with the entire police control of all the Indians on the San Carlos reservation,' was entered into upon my own expressed willingness to be personally responsible for the good conduct of all the Indians there congregated. My understanding then was, and still is, that I should put them to work and set them to raising corn instead of scalps. This right I have exercised for two years without a word of complaint from any source. During all this time not a single depredation of any kind has been committed. The whole country has looked to me individually for the preservation of order among the Apaches, and the prevention of the outrages from which the southwest frontier has suffered for so many years.

"In pursuance of this understanding, the Chiricahuas, although nominally prisoners, have been to a great extent scattered over the reservation and placed upon farms, the object being to quietly and gradually effect a tribal disintegration and lead them out from a life of vagabondage to one of peace and self-maintenance. They have ramified among the other Apaches to such an extent that it is impossible to exercise jurisdiction over them without exercising it over the others as well. At the same time trusted Indians of the peaceful bands are better enabled to keep the scattered Chiricahuas under constant surveillance, while the incentive to industry and good conduct which the material prosperity of the settled Apaches brings to the notice of the Chiricahuas is so palpable that it is hardly worth while to allude to it. As this right of control has now been withdrawn from me, I must respectfully decline to be any longer held responsible for the behavior of any of the Indians on that reservation. Further, I regret being compelled to say that in refusing to relieve me from this responsibility (as requested in my letter of January 20th), and at the same time taking from me the power by which these dangerous Indians have been controlled and managed and compelled to engage in industrial pursuits, the War Department destroys my influence and does an injustice to me and the service which I represent."

The indorsement of Major-General John Pope, the commander of the military division, was even more emphatic than the preceding one had been, but for reasons of brevity it is omitted excepting these words.

"If General Crook's authority over the Indians at San Carlos be curtailed or modified in any way, there are certain to follow very serious results, if not a renewal of Indian wars and depredations in Arizona."