Part I: After the Civil War
Editor’s Note. It’s not like the Apache Wars are ancient history. When my father was born in Tucson in 1919, Geronimo had been dead for only 10 years. Moreover, we have excellent contemporary accounts from participants on all sides of these brutal conflicts. They include Captain John Bourke’s insightful On the Border with Crook: General George Crook, the American Indian Wars, and Life on the American Frontier; Eve Ball’s oral histories of the Apaches conducted over 3 decades, Apache Voices: Their Stories of Survival as Told to Eve Ball; and even the old warrior’s Autobiography by Geronimo, in his own words. They are like reading accounts written only yesterday. Today, the descendants of the hostile Apaches struggle daily with the consequences of these wars in which their grandparents fought bravely, suffered terribly, and died violently.
Given the brutality … the massacres, atrocities, treacheries and injustices … I have often wondered if any of this misery and terror could have been avoided. So I sat down recently to see if I could get my mind around that intriguing question. What follows is my attempt to account for the powerful forces that drove mid-19th century events in the American Southwest and bring the bigger picture into focus. It will surprise many locals that Tucson played a starring role.
This is Part I of a Three Part series.
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No American Indians resisted White expansion more fiercely or paid a heavier price for that resistance than the Apaches of Arizona and New Mexico Territories. In an all out rebellion to drive the foreign invaders from their ancestral homeland, and avoid being forced into life-draining, soul-deadening concentration camps, Apaches fought the armies of the United States and the Republic of Mexico and myriad civilian militias from the beginning of Cochise’s War in1861 to the end of Geronimo’s War in 1886.
Considering the scope of suffering and death as a result of these violent clashes, it seems appropriate to ask ourselves, “Who the hell was in charge?”
To the extent anyone was in charge of warfare on American soil it was the President of the United States. What was he thinking? Why did he do as he did? Given what we know today, what would we have done differently … and why?
Post-Civil War Reconstruction
In 1869, Ulysses S. Grant became the 18th President of the United States. He was elected to a second term and served until March 1877. His administration’s priority was reconstructing the Union following a savage civil war. This arduous process involved re-admitting the Southern States that had rebelled and secured the civil rights of the newly freed African Americans. Given the circumstances, including the rebels’ hatred of all things Yankee and vicious bigotry toward Negros, Grant and his appointees did an admirable job.
For example, the Congress enacted and Grant signed legislation that defined the Klu Klux Klan as an illegal terrorist organization (Third Force Act of 1871). It authorized the president to declare martial law, impose heavy penalties, and use military force to suppress Klan violence against Blacks. The newly formed Justice Department vigorously enforced this and related laws and prosecuted thousands of Klan members.
President Grant also supported the passage of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States that prohibits the federal and state governments from denying citizens the right to vote based on their “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”.
Unfortunately, later administrations and legislatures nullified most of the enlightened progress achieved under Grant’s leadership.
Post-Civil War Westward Expansion
These were also the years after the American Civil War when Anglo-American expansion into the American West led to so many wars, atrocities, and injustices visited upon the American Indian tribes west of the Mississippi River: Sioux; Modoc; Nez Perce; Comanche; Cheyenne; Piute; Shoshone; Blackfoot; Ute; Arapaho; Hopi; Navajo; Crow; Shoshoni; Tillamook; Washoo; Mojave; Chechen (Yuman); Zuni; Kiowa; Omaha; Pawnee; and dozens of others.
Were these wars and injustices necessary? And if so, necessary for what purpose? Were they avoidable? Was Grant complicit? Let’s consider it.
Much of this misery and death was the result of greed, arrogance, and racial bigotry on the part of U.S. civilians and government officials alike. These common human attributes were augmented by incompetence and corruption at the highest levels of the United States Government, including the Grant Administration in general and the United States War and Interior Departments and Office of Indian Affairs in particular.
Grant’s Surrender Policy
As a Union general in the American Civil War, Grant had been extraordinarily successful. As a military strategist, he was at least as brilliant as the Confederate’s best. Plus he commanded an army vastly superior to the Confederate forces in both manpower and matériel. He knew that all he had to do was (a) destroy the enemy’s means to continue the rebellion and (b) keep engaging the enemy until they ran out of ammunition, food, and fight.
As importantly, Grant could stomach the industrial-scale slaughter that his bulldog strategy required. At Appomattox, Grants terms of surrender (which were also Lincoln’s) seemed generous, even enlightened … at least to Northerners.
“Surrender. Go home and take care of your family. Swear loyalty to the United States Government and no one will be punished for treason.”
Yet all knew the Confederate’s alternative. Death was imminent … on the battlefield or by infection from wounds, or dysentery, or starvation.
Five years later, Grant’s mindset regarding hostile Indians was very much the same.
“Surrender. Live peacefully on a reservation and grow your own food. The Government will provide rations for a couple of years until you can become self-sufficient.”
Given the times, Grant’s Peace Policy seemed generous, even enlightened … at least to most Eastern Whites.
Fiscal Responsibility
Moreover, Grant’s Peace Policy was fiscally responsible. Maintaining an army in the field so far from civilization was enormously expensive. It was far less costly to provide the Indians with rations until their farming and herding efforts produced for them sufficient food into the future.
If Grant’s Peace Policy was successful, the soldiers could be taken out of the field; the number of soldiers in the Army could be drastically reduced; the unprecedented national debt, incurred during the Civil War, more than 30% of GDP, could be paid down, and all would be well with the nation. (As of 2017, the U.S. National Debt is 106% of GDP.)
Only it wasn’t to be. But why?
Imagine that you are President Grant. Given what you know today, what if anything would you do differently? Let’s lay out the reality in the field.
NEXT: Part II : The Subjugation of the American Indian
