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18 4 I must now go back to the time of the founding of the San Carlos Agency. There were no houses, only tents, and a large corral made of canvas, where rations were issued to the Indians. There were many different bands of Apaches there, and some were still slowly coming down to settle on the bottomland and had to draw rations. After Captain Burns and Captain Price settled the troubles, they went down to their camp, close to the river. Often Indians came there who knew me. Some were related to me. They asked me to steal ammunition for them, but I told them I couldn’t get it any more than they could, because the soldiers wouldn’t trust me with any and would know that I would just give it away to the hostiles. I had no ammunition of my own to give them, and I told them that it was best just not to ask me. They replied that I should run away from the camp, and that they would take me so far away that the soldiers would never know where to look for me. I was so bold as to answer that I had no near relatives living nearby, nobody I was anxious to see. But more Indians came around and insisted that I ought to leave, saying that a lonely cousin of mine had been crying because I was in the soldiers’ camp. When I reached their camp, they said, then we would all move back toward the Superstition Mountains and Four Peaks, back to our old tramping grounds. I told them that they ought to know that I had no father, no mother, no aunt, no uncle, and that my little brother and my baby sister, whom I loved so much, had been killed; there were no living beings for me to be with after reaching the country where my people used to live. A few weeks later the soldiers were ordered to move up to a camp headed by Eskiminzin and Captain Chicatto at Aravaipa Canyon. A few families of Pinal and Apache Mojaves were there. The soldiers went to the mountains and found an Indian camp, and they made their own camp within half a mile of it. They stayed there nearly two Chapter Four 19 months. Again, every day, Indians came and talked with me, and they urged me to leave the soldiers. Some said that the soldiers were going to sell me off to the Pimas, and some said that the soldiers were going to kill me. Clearly it was time for me to join them. So one night I left the camp. I always slept with Captain Burns, who made me lie next to the wall of the tent so that he would be in front of me. But no one noticed that I loosened the tent pegs right behind where I lay. About midnight the whole camp was quiet, and Captain Burns was sound asleep. I had gotten a blanket to use as a pillow, and I stuck it through one of the tent corners and then quietly moved under it. I stepped out into the darkness and ran off to the nearest Apache camp, listening at the door to see what people they were. I passed several camps until I came to one where I could clearly understand every word that was spoken by the people inside, but I also knew that these were not the people I was looking for. The man I was looking for was named Matawaha, Wind, who was my cousin. He lived with us until my mother was killed; then he went off and got married and lived among the Indians in the Pinal Mountains. He was the one who begged me to leave the soldiers’ camp to come to his place, and the next day, he said, he would take me away up to the top of a mountain to hide until nightfall. At last I came to Wind’s tepee. It wasn’t much of a tepee, because it was just hastily thrown together. My cousin took me to the chief, who was another cousin of mine, but the chief was afraid of the other Apaches, who were more numerous than the Pinal Apaches. So, he said, if the other Apaches gave him away for hiding a captive from the soldiers, then the chief would be liable to be put to death. He thought it best for...

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