onora,
saying: "If your excellency will put a few hundred men into the field on
the first day of next June, and keep them in hot pursuit of the Apaches of
Sonora, say for sixty or ninety days, we will either exterminate the
Indians or so diminish their numbers that they will cease their murdering
and robbing propensities and live at peace."

This request was met. The settlers in Arizona, under agreement, placed a
force in the field provisioned with army supplies. Several hundred Pima,
Papago, and Maricopa Indians also were supplied with guns, ammunition, and
clothing, and pressed into service; but a year's effort netted the
combined forces little gain. Although two hundred Apache were killed and
many head of stolen stock recovered, practically no advance toward the
termination of hostilities was accomplished.

In April, 1865, Inspector-General Davis arranged a conference at the
Copper Mines in New Mexico with Victorio, Nane, Acosta, and other chiefs,
among whom were Pasquin, Cassari, and Salvador, sons of Mangas Coloradas,
through which he learned of the existence of dire destitution among the
Apache and a desire for peace on condition that they be permitted to
occupy their native haunts. But the Government had adopted a policy of
removal by which the Arizona Apache desiring peace should join the
Mescaleros at the Bosque Redondo in New Mexico. To this they flatly
refused to agree, and the warfare continued.

[Illustration: The Bathing Pool - Apache]

The Bathing Pool - Apache

_From Copyright Photograph 1906 by E.S. Curtis_

Practically all the Apache were assembled in Arizona in 1865, and waged
hostilities with renewed energy for the next five years, being joined by
the Walapai in 1868. The close of this period found the situation quite as
unsettled as ever.

On June 4, 1871, General George Crook was placed in command. Crook was not
an exterminator. In the fall of the same year he said:

"I think that the Apache is painted in darker colors than he deserves, and
that his villainies arise more from a misconception of facts than from his
being worse than other Indians. Living in a country the natural products
of which will not support him, he has either to cultivate the soil or
steal, and as our vacillating policy satisfies him we are afraid of him,
he chooses the latter, also as requiring less labor and being more
congenial to his natural instincts. I am sati