Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/523

 and to have their wives sent to join them. For "Geronimo" and those with him any punishment that could be inflicted without incurring the imputation of treachery would not be too severe; but the incarceration of "Chato" and the three-fourths of the band who had remained faithful for three years and had rendered such signal service in the pursuit of the renegades, can never meet with the approval of honorable soldiers and gentlemen.

Not a single Chiricahua had been killed, captured, or wounded throughout the entire campaign—with two exceptions—unless by Chiricahua-Apache scouts who, like "Chato," had kept the pledges given to General Crook in the Sierra Madre in 1883. The exceptions were: one killed by the White Mountain Apaches near Fort Apache, and one killed by a white man in northern Mexico. Yet every one of those faithful scouts—especially the two, "Ki-e-ta" and "Martinez," who had at imminent personal peril gone into the Sierra Madre to hunt up "Geronimo" and induce him to surrender—were transplanted to Florida and there subjected to the same punishment as had been meted out to "Geronimo." And with them were sent men like "Goth-kli" and "To-klanni," who were not Chiricahuas at all, but had only lately married wives of that band, who had never been on the war-path in any capacity except as soldiers of the Government, and had devoted years to its service. There is no more disgraceful page in the history of our relations with the American Indians than that which conceals the treachery visited upon the Chiricahuas who remained faithful in their allegiance to our people. An examination of the documents cited will show that I have used extremely mild language in alluding to this affair.