ljwrites@writeout.inkOld Nana, the wise Chihenne war leader, had held forth two coins, one of gold and the other of silver, and offered a solemn prophecy: “The Mexicans and the greedy White Eyes [Anglo Americans] are superstitious about this stuff. The love of life is strong in all people, but to them it is not so strong as their greed for gold. For it, they risk their lives.”
– THE APACHE WARS by Paul Andrew Hutton, Chapter 3: The Lost Boy
@bookstodon More from THE APACHE WARS:
Chokonen leader Cochise, on being treacherously attacked over a meal by U.S. Lieutenant Bascom whose camp he had entered as a guest, cut the tent open with his knife, was shot in a leg, and “scrambled up the side of the canyon wall, trailing blood as he dodged back and forth from boulder to boulder.“
After escaping alone, the warriors and family members who had accompanied him having been killed or captured: “From the ridgetop Cochise looked down on the soldier camp. Only then did he realize that he had been wounded in the leg and that, inexplicably, he still carried a tin coffee cup in his hand.”
Cochise’s father-in-law, the Chiricahua leader Mangas Coloradas (Red Sleeves), gave up on 15 years of peace efforts with the Americans after gold miners bound him to a tree and whipped him for telling them about richer veins to the west. Mangas agreed to join Cochise in vengeance against the White Eyes.
The Apaches, having started the war of vengeance, tortured American and Hispanic prisoners to death with fire and lance, while the Americans hanged their Apache warrior prisoners so high even leaping wolves and coyotes could not reach the bodies. Cochise's wife and son, who had been forced to watch the execution, were released because soldiers did not realize who they were and later rejoined Cochise in Mexico.