According to Kaywaykla, “She could ride, shoot, and fight like a man, and I think she had more ability in planning military strategy than did Victorio.” He also remembers Victorio saying, “I depend upon Lozen as I do Nana”, Victorio’s uncle and patriarch of the band.
Young Apache Woman
In late 1880, Lozen leaves her band to escort a new mother and her newborn infant across the Chiricahua Desert in northern Mexico to the Mescalero Apache Reservation in western New Mexico to spare them the horrific hardships faced by their band as they flee before the well-equipped, fast-moving armies of Mexico and the United States.
Beginning the perilous journey on foot with only a rifle, a cartridge belt, a knife, and a meager three-day supply of food, she has to evade both the American and Mexican cavalry as well as Anglo and Mexican settlers.
In a few days, they need more food, but she is afraid to hunt because a gunshot would betray their presence. Ever resourceful, she uses her knife to kill and butcher a stray longhorn steer.
Soon thereafter, she steals a Mexican cavalry horse for the new mother, barely escaping through a volley of gunfire. Employing all her strength and cunning, she then steals a Mexican cowboy’s horse for herself and disappears before he can give chase. A few days later she steals a soldier’s saddle, rifle, ammunition, blanket, and canteen. After weeks of trudging, riding, and stealing their way through the most dangerous region for any Apache, she delivers the mother and child to the reservation.
It was there that she learns that Mexican soldiers and their Tarahumara scouts have ambushed Victorio and his band at Tres Castillos in northeastern Chihuahua. Read More
The Mexican Destruction of Victorio
On October 15th, the Mexican Commander Terrazas and his battle-hardened troops, surprise Victorio’s Apaches, and in the boulders of Tres Castillos, slaughter most of them. To this day, Apaches believe that Victorio fell on his own knife rather than die at the hands of the Mexicans, who almost certainly would have tortured him to death over many days.
Chief Nana In Old Age: A Prisoner of War.
Many Apache women die fighting. The older people are shot. Young Apache women captives are raped. Then they and the surviving Apache children are sold into slavery. Very few of Victorio’s Warm Springs Apaches escape.
Knowing the survivors would need her, Lozen immediately leaves the Mescalero Reservation to help her people. She rides alone south across the desert, somehow making her way undetected through U.S. and Mexican cavalries. She rejoins the decimated band, now led by the patriarch Nana, in the Sierra Madre Mountains in northwestern Chihuahua.
1881
Lozen fights alongside Nana and his few remaining warriors as they engage in a two-month-long bloody campaign across southwestern New Mexico to avenge Victorio’s death and the slaughter and enslavement of their people. Nana, the patriarch, says of Lozen, “Though she is a woman, there is no warrior more worthy than the sister of Victorio.” If you are interested in the story of Lozen, here is a book. Warrior Woman: The Story of Lozen, Apache Warrior and Shaman
Many say that the Mexican army never would have achieved their surprise ambush at Tres Castillos if Victorio’s younger sister had been there. Her people believed she had the power to know, not only when the enemy was near, but their strength and from which direction they would attack. After Victorio’s death, the crippled, half-blind 78-year-old Nana becomes leader of the few remaining Warm Springs Apaches. He and Geronimo will fight to the bitter end and receive the same fate at the treacherous hands of the United States government.
1881-August
Apache Ceremony
Battle of Cibecue (Northeast of present-day Globe on the White Mountain Apache Reservation)
The Battle of Cibecue is a consequence of the teachings of an influential Apache shaman, known as The Prophet. He preaches a faith that includes the resurrection of dead Apache warriors who will rise again and force all the white invaders from the Apache’s ancestral homeland. Whites are understandably alarmed and both the civilian and military authorities want him arrested and silenced.
White Mountain Apache Scouts poising for picture circa 1880
Following The Prophet’s arrest, a battle erupts along Cibecue Creek. The Prophet dies in the aftermath along with several soldiers. Even more alarming to the whites, most of the military casualties resulted from the mutiny of White Mountain Apache scouts.
The Battle of Cibecue touches off yet another Apache War in which Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apaches, including those lead by Naiche, youngest son of Cochise, Juh, and Geronimo, break out of their hated reservation and plunge Arizona, New Mexico, and northern Mexico into two years of terrible bloodshed. Cibecue battlefield is located in the village of Cibecue (a 2-hour drive north of Globe), but today there is no monument at the site.
1882
Geronimo and his lifelong friend, Juh, (pronounced Ho or sometimes Who) a bold, physically-imposing Chiricahua war chief, attack the San Carlos Reservation and force the peace-advocate Chief Loco and his followers to break out. Geronimo and Juh lead about 700 Apache men, women, and children back to the sanctuary of the Sierra Madre Mountains in Northern Mexico with the U.S. Army in hot pursuit. In years later, Geronimo will be blamed for the death of many of Loco’s people, killed by Mexican soldiers following the forced breakout.
1882-July
Mexico and the United States sign an accord by which the soldiers of either nation may cross the border when in close pursuit of hostile Indians. This will be the beginning of the end for those Apaches who choose a life off the reservation. The United States Army, led by General Crook, is now free to track the Chiricahuas to their sanctuary in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Sonora and Chihuahua.
1883-March Lordsburg Massacre
Chief Chatto was infamous for killing whites. Then he became a scout for General Crook and ran Geronimo to ground in 1885.
This incident, sometimes referred to as the McComas Massacre, occurs in southwestern New Mexico Territory on the afternoon of March 28. Former Union soldier and judge, Hamilton McComas, his wife Juniatta, and six-year-old son Charlie, are attacked by a Chiricahua war party led by Chatto (1860-1934) while on the road between Silver City and Lordsburg. McComas dies of gunshot wounds, his wife is killed by a blow to the head. Charlie is later killed by an Apache but no White Eyes know this for many years after the Lordsburg event. The incident makes national headlines all across the country. Whites demand revenge.
1883-Spring
General George Crook
General George Crook is put in charge of the Arizona and (eventually) New Mexico Indian reservations.
With 193 Apache scouts under Captain Crawford, and the approval of local and federal Mexican governments, Crook’s mighty army follows Chiefs Juh, Chihuahua, Naiche, Bonito, Loco, & Nana, their most trusted warriors, including Chatto & Geronimo, along with their women & children, across the International Border.
One by one, they surrender and return with their people to the dreaded San Carlos Reservation. Chiefs Bonito, Loco, and Nana come with Crook. Juh remains in Mexico, where he dies, perhaps of a heart attack, in November. Geronimo does not come to San Carlos until February 1884.
Crook institutes much needed reforms on the reservation, but local newspapers criticize him for being too lenient with the “savages”.
