Chiricahua and Janos: Communities of Violence in the Southwestern Borderlands, 1680-1880

3. Fierce Dancing and the Muster Roll: Campaigns, Raids, and Wives, 1750–1785

The men of both Chiricahua and Janos used violence to establish themselves as married adults. A round of campaigns, raids, and Apache requests for peace in the 1750s only led to temporary respites from the cycle of violence, which continued through the next decade. From the 1770s to 1785 Janos’s muster roll steadily grew from around 50 men to nearly 150. Men were continually willing to join the garrison in the face of potential death, as enlistment was closely linked to marriage. Chiricahua used “fierce dancing” to mobilize its men for violence in raids or revenge. These raids turned boys into men via the novice complex. When raiders returned, the community welcomed them back with more dances. These allowed interaction between the newly adult men and unmarried women, often turning the celebration into “marrying time.” This period climaxed with a late fall campaign in 1785 carried out by Janeros and other soldiers who sought Chiricahuas in their winter encampments on the lower slopes of the sierras. For two months both sides skirmished; they ambushed, fled, and pursued one another as the weather grew colder and the snows began. Men from both communities were willing to endure such misery and risk death since they used violence in campaigns and raids to secure their place in the community as adults in order to secure wives. Chapter 3 Fierce Dancing and the Muster Roll Campaigns, Raids, and Wives, 1750–1785 fierce dancing and the muster roll 56 A Black Wooden Cross An exhausted horse and rider stumbled into Janos early one February day in 1757, giving the alarm. The day prior, Apaches, probably from the loose confederation of families under the headman Chafalote, struck at the Valle de San Buenaventura, taking cattle and horses from the spread of Hispanic settlements along the river of the same name southeast of Janos. At the command of Capitán (Captain) Santiago Ruiz de Ael thirty-two soldiers saddled up, cut a spare horse out of the presidial herd, received bags of provisions from their wives or mothers at their doorsteps, and rode out of Janos , the setting sun illuminating the trail. Through the long winter night they traversed the path past the abandoned settlement at Casas Grandes, across the river, and down into the Valle de San Buenaventura . Cabo (Corporal) Marcelino Antonio de Herrero, a native of the Valle and a fifteen-year veteran of the war between Chiricahua and Janos in the Southwestern Borderlands, likely led the way. Pausing long enough to mount fresh horses, the soldiers pushed on into the rising sun. With the early morning light to guide them, the Janos troop found the raiders’ trail and followed it south and east to the Corral de Piedra. At midmorning they caught up with the Apaches, initiating a day-long battle. As the fighting surged back and forth across the boulder-strewn slopes, costing Bacilio Pacheco his life, a few of the Apaches managed to drive off most of the pilfered herd before the rest escaped in the coming darkness. The soldiers returned to Janos apparently with only an emptied saddle to show for their efforts.1 The fight at the Corral de Piedra was the first of several seemingly fruitless operations carried out by Herrero and his fellow soldiers in the first months of 1757. A campaña (patrol) scoured the sierras of Doña María and La Laguna to the spring of Ojo Hediondo north of Janos in March and found nothing. Another patrol in April searched the Sierra del Carcay southwest of the presidio , where Apaches were reported, but came up empty-handed, as did a concurrent campaña that patrolled the Sierra de la Escondida 57 Map 8. Campaigns from Janos, 1757 San Buenaventura to Corral de Piedra Casas Grandes Janos Casa de Janos Lago de Guzmán R í o d e J a n o s R í o d e C a s a s G r a n d e s R í o d e S a n t a M a r í a S I E R R A M A D R E SIERRA DE ANIMAS SIERRA DE ENMEDIO ALAMO HUECO SIERRA DE LA BOCA GRANDE SIERRA DEL CARCAY SIERRA DE LA ESCONDIDA SIERRA DEL HACHA O C C I D E N T A L F e b . F e b . M a r . M a r . M a r . Apr...