Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/642

634 The end, if I may judge from the tone of the Western press, is not yet, nor likely to be, until the last Apache "buck" is sent to happier hunting-grounds than the Sierra Madres. We should not forget, in our spasms of sympathy with the redskin, that the white man also has claims upon our humanity.

The Apaches, it is well known, are divided into several different tribes, so widely separated that they have different dialects. In 1876 their number was estimated at 10,000, but at present it is not much over 6,000. They are probably of Mexican stock, descendants of those fierce Chichimecs, who have remained nomads and barbarians from time immemorial. Nearly all the tribes have been brought into the United States reservations except the Chiricahuas, whose haunts were the almost inaccessible fastnesses of the Sierra Madre Mountains in Northwestern Chihuahua and Northeastern Sonora, where rocky gorges, deep canons, and pine-crested heights gave them ample security. With their homes in this vast wilderness, whose solitudes were ever penetrated by whites or Mexicans until last year, they have ravaged the territory on both sides the border line ever since it was first inhabited by a Christian population.

The records of the Spanish missionaries, who were the first to establish settlements in Northern Mexico, one of which was the Presidio of Fronteras, in 1690, show that they were constantly carrying on an unequal struggle with their savage neighbors, whom they could neither subjugate nor civilize. From a collection of notes written by one of these missionaries in 1762, we learn that there were then, in the province of Sonora alone, inclusive of the five presidios, twenty-two inhabited and forty-eight depopulated Spanish settlements and mining towns, and but two occupied ranchos, while there were one hundred and twenty-six devastated.

This condition of affairs has not been improved by the lapse of time, nor have any of the settlements thus destroyed by Indians or abandoned through fear of them, ever been rebuilt. To one unacquainted with the country which borders the Sierra Madres it would be difficult to picture its desolation and wretchedness. Though it has a fine climate, fertile valleys, and