every Indian with whom he might have to deal as friend or enemy; he reorganized his pack-trains and the Indian scouts, put the control of military affairs at the San Carlos under charge of Captain Emmet Crawford, Third Cavalry, a most intelligent and conscientious officer, encouraged the Indians to prepare for planting good crops the next spring, and made ready to meet the Chiricahuas. These Indians, for whom a reservation had been laid out with its southern line the boundary between the United States and the Mexican Republic, had been dealing heavily at the ranch of Rogers and Spence, at Sulphur Springs, where they were able to buy all the vile whiskey they needed. In a row over the sale of liquor both Rogers and Spence were killed, and the Apaches, fearing punishment, fled to the mountains of Mexico—the Sierra Madre. From that on, for six long years, the history of the Chiricahuas was one of blood: a repetition of the long series of massacres which, under "Cocheis," they had perpetrated in the old days.
On several occasions a number of them returned to the San Carlos, or pretended to do so, but the recesses of the Sierra Madre always afforded shelter to small bands of renegades of the type of "Ka-e-tan-ne," who despised the white man as a liar and scorned him as a foe. The unfortunate policy adopted by the Government towards the "Warm Springs" Apaches of New Mexico, who were closely related to the Chiricahuas, had an unhealthy effect upon the latter and upon all the other bands. The "Warm Springs" Apaches were peremptorily deprived of their little fields and driven away from their crops, half-ripened, and ordered to tramp to the San Carlos; when the band reached there the fighting men had disappeared, and only decrepit warriors, little boys and girls, and old women remained. "Victorio" went on the war-path with every effective man, and fairly deluged New Mexico and Chihuahua with blood.
General Crook felt that the Chiricahua Apache problem was a burning shame and disgrace, inasmuch as the property and lives not only of our own citizens but of those of a friendly nation, were constantly menaced. He had not been at San Carlos twenty-four hours before he had a party of Apaches out in the ranges to the south looking for trails or signs; this little party penetrated down into the northern end of the Sierra Madre below Camp Price, and saw some of the Mexican irregular troops, but found no fresh
