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FORT SILL • CHIRICAHUA • WARM SPRINGS • APACHE TRIBE “That day they put us on the train at Bowie, Arizona would have been a good day to die. Banishment from our land and the bones or our ancestors was worse than death. Everybody must die sometime; we would have been lucky to go then. We knew that we were facing two years of slavery and degradation, but my father was willing to endure that for the sake of the future when we were to be free again. Chihuahua did not know, nor did anyone else, that we were to be prisoners for twenty-seven years.” Eugene Chihuahua mentioned this to Eve Ball in her book Indeh. In the year 1885, the Chiricahua Apaches (the “Tribe” or the “Chiricahua”) were living on the Western Apache Reservation. They had been forced to move there when the U.S. Government took away their own reservations several years earlier. Any Apaches who left the reservation were considered to be hostiles and were to be dealt with by the U.S. Military. Reservation conditions were very oppressive with much internal dissension among both Indians and Whites. On May 18th in 1885, amid misinformation and rumors of impending arrest, about 130 men, women and children left the reservation. By the time the misinformation was discovered, it was too late to return peacefully. Leaders of these people included Naiche, Geronimo, Mangas, Chihuahua, and Nana. The U.S. Military under General Crook pursued them but encounters were rare. Some were captured but few were killed. Desperate raids for ammunition and supplies were common. The military was frustrated and the insurgents were hard pressed. On March 27th of the next year, 1886, the insurgents were able to negotiate a surrender. As they were coming in, a group of 37 men, women and children led by Naiche, Geronimo, and Mangas returned to Mexico. They feared treachery and they may have been right. The U.S. refused to honor the surrender terms between General Crook and the Apaches. “To inform the Indians that the terms on which they surrendered are disapproved would, in my judgment, not only make it impossible to negotiate with them, but would result in their scattering to the mountains, and I can’t at present see any way to prevent it. He (Crook) allowed the seventy-five hostiles in Chihuahua’s band, who were still on their way to Fort Bowie, to continue to believe that his arrangements with them had been accepted in Washington.” Reservations were established by the United States for the Chiricahua Apaches during 1871 - 1875 within the aboriginal homelands in Arizona and New Mexico. In 1876, however, the government attempted to move all Chiricahua Apaches from their ancestral homelands and settle them on the San Carlos Reservation. Various parties of the Chiricahua Apaches fled from the San Carlos Reservation, returned to their homelands, and engaged in hostilities. The Government, determined to hold all members of the Tribe responsible for their hostile members, during 1885 and 1896 guarded the Chiricahua Apaches living on the San Carlos Reservation and waged war against the insurgent groups. The final surrender of a party of hostile Chiricahua Apaches under Geronimo as prisoners of war to an army in the field took place on September 4, 1886. This date constitutes the date of taking of the Tribe’s aboriginal lands by the United States. Upon surrender of Geronimo, some 381 Chiricahua Apaches, including those from the reservation, were transported as prisoners of war to Fort Marion and Fort Pickens, Florida. There they joined a group of Chiricahua Apache insurgents previously captured and transported here. In April, 1887, the entire group was transferred to the Mount Vernon Barracks in Alabama, where they remained until September, 1894. The Apache prisoners suffered severe hardships during their confinement in Alabama. The damp climate first encountered in Florida, and subsequently in Alabama, by a people accustomed to Arizona’s dry mountain air decimated Chiricahua ranks by nearly half. This situation, as well as a desire to make these Indians economically independent, promoted the War Department to decide that it was both humane and necessary to transfer the Apaches to a location more suitable for them as a permanent home, and in 1890 decided on the Fort Sill Military Reservation. Special legislation was necessary by the Congress to authorize this move. Since Fort Sill, at that time comprising 23,000 acres, was scheduled for abandonment, and because political exigencies made further removal West impossible, the Chiricahua were told that this installation was to be their permanent home upon which they would be allotted and freed. The original Fort Sill Military Reservation, comprising 23,040 acres, was created out of the Kiowa, Comanche and Apache Reservation by the Executive Order of October 7, 1871. The Fort Sill Wood Reserve, comprising 26,880 acres, was established out of the Kiowa, Comanche and Apache Reservation by Executive Order of March 2, 1892. The Apache prisoners arrived at Fort Sill in October, 1894, where they were quartered in tents until houses could be constructed. Within three years of their arrival at this post, the Chiricahua Apaches made sufficient progress as agriculturists and cattle growers that the military, deciding the time had come for their release, requested the Interior Department retake custody of them. So that their cattle herd could expand and serve as their economic mainstay, the military, in 1897, also added, for the Chiricahua’ permanent settlement, by Executive Order nearly 27,000 acres to Fort Sill. Prior to 1903, the military planned to give them the entire post of Fort Sill, now comprising approximately 50,000 acres. Due to political expediency, the Interior Department in 1897, and again in 1902, refused to retake custody of them. This inaction by the Interior Department precluded the possibility that the Chiricahua would ever receive Fort Sill. In 1903, notwithstanding a legal and moral obligation to allot the Chiricahua at this installation, the War Department, taking out of its original context the meaning and intent behind the 1897 Executive Order which procured the East and Western Additions to Fort Sill, decided to retain this post for field artillery training. This development caused a sufficient amount of discouragement within the Chiricahua ranks such that many of them petitioned for removal to the West. Ensuing events demonstrate that the military effectively played on these feelings of disaffection to good advantage. After 1903, the War Department was willing, albeit quite grudgingly, to permit the Chiricahua’ permanent settlement on approximately 23,000 acres of Fort Sill’s far eastern fringe. But because Geronimo’s demise in 1909 eliminated the one obstacle that prevented any relocation to the West, the military eventually succeeded in removing all of them from this post. In 1913 those Chiricahua so desiring were removed to New Mexico. Those remaining in Oklahoma were placed on deceased Kiowa and Comanche allotments in 1914. Denied a viable land base upon which to conduct their cattle industry, the Chiricahua became destitute. Also, their tribal identity obliterated, they were the victims of cultural disintegration. Ironically, not even the most belligerent of tribes received such treatment as had the Chiricahua. None received such an unconscionable period of confinement. All either retained their lands or were given new reservations. In all the history of federal government-American Indian relations, the situation which confronted the Chiricahua represents a most unprecedented case of injustice. From 1913 to approximately 1943 the Fort Sill Apaches made good progress toward independence and the assumption of full citizenship responsibilities through their efforts in agriculture. However, during the 1950’s there was retrogression in that the younger people did not strive as their parents did toward complete independence. In 1933 the Fort Sill Apaches organized informally for the welfare and education of their members and for the purpose of prosecuting their claims against the United States Government. During the 1950’s, because more complex matters required tribal action, a Fort Sill Apache Tribal Committee was selected. Among the items which the Tribe addressed during this period was consideration of a proposal from the Federal Government to terminate recognition of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe. This proposal, and the Tribe’s response to it, sparked increased interest in a sense of Tribal identity and resulted in greater participation on the part of the Tribal members in Tribal meetings and discussion. During the early 1970’s
the Federal programs which would benefit Tribal members proliferated. The desire
to become eligible for these plus the recognition of the need for an organized,
stable Tribal government with recognized tribal membership overcame the Fort Sill
Apache’s previous reluctance which was based in part upon a historical distrust
of the Federal Government. The Fort Sill Apaches’ first contact with the Bureau
of Indian Affairs for the implementation of a Tribal Government Development Program
was signed on July 18, 1975. On October 30, 1976, a Constitution and Bylaws were
ratified. The Tribal Roll was established in 1977; total membership is currently
560. The Tribe today is a well organized and well led tribe with able representation
embarked on a program of reacquisition of Sacred Grounds, Cultural preservation
and Economic Development. |
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