Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/636

628 was engaged in an insectivorous hunt in the hair of her neighbor, that required not only good eyesight but deft fingers. They seemed to enjoy the cool rooms of their prison, which opened into a clean patio, shaded by fig-trees; and one of them, who had recently given birth to an infant, seemed an object of solicitude to her companions. This babe, then about three weeks old, was very light in color, had a thick head of jet black hair, and, as it lay sleeping on the stone floor, looked the picture of health and innocence.

My acquaintance with the Apaches began in the first week in June, at which time there were some two thousand Mexican troops in the Sierras and on their skirts, with headquarters at Casas Grandes and Corallitos, in the northwestern part of the State. They were honestly endeavoring to co-operate with General Crook, who had then been absent, and unheard from, in the mountains of the Apache region, for quite a month. It had been reported that intense feeling existed in Mexico against the United States government, on account of the passage of the Border by our troops; but this I found not to be the case. There was a feeling, it is true,—but also shared in by all sensible residents of the Southwest,—that the United States troops were but carrying out a false mid mistaken policy; that they were in Mexico, not for the purpose of meting out justice to murderers who had perpetrated atrocities without a parallel in Indian warfare, but to cajole them into returning to the flesh-pots of the reservation, with all their plunder stolen from Mexican haciendas, their herds of cattle and horses, there to recruit for fresh forays into Mexican territory.

The Mexicans know, through two hundred years and more of bitter experience, that the caustic remark, usually attributed to General Sheridan, that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian," is perfectly true as applied to the Apache. Hence it is that the grim humor of the farce enacted by our government was hardly appreciated, in view of the tragedy that they knew was sure to follow!

Coming down from Santa Fé, New Mexico, on the 16th of June, on my way to the Gulf of California, I learned, at the little