The Diaries of John Gregory Bourke Volume 1: November 20, 1872--July 28, 1876

Chapter 4 • Reservation and Ruins

83 Chapter 4 ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ Reservation and Ruins On October 29, 1873, Lt. Col. Crook was jumped two grades and appointed to the active rank of brigadier general, at the behest of President Grant. Up until this time, he had held command by his Union Army brevet of major general, but with the active rank of lieutenant colonel of the 23rd Infantry. The appointment created hard feelings in the army because a large number of full colonels senior to him were passed over in what obviously was a case of presidential favoritism. Nevertheless, congress confirmed it. In later years, this would be used against Crook and, because of his association with Crook, would also work against Bourke. While it did not necessarily hinder Crook, in the long run Bourke’s career would suffer.1 Crook’s appointment is not mentioned in Bourke’s diaries because there is a gap of almost eighteen months from April 1873 until September 1874. Presumably Bourke continued his journals during that interval, but if so they are among the lost volumes. The extant narrative resumes on September 22, 1874, when Crook and Bourke embarked on an inspection tour of the military posts and reservations at Camp Verde, San Carlos, and Camp Apache. 1. Robinson, General Crook, 137-38; Porter, Paper Medicine Man, 301. 84 ARIZONA: 1872–1875 After leaving Camp Apache, they continued on to the pueblos of the Hopis, who at that time were called Moquis. This, as Bourke’s biographer, Joseph Porter, has pointed out, represented his first ethnographic notes of people other than Apaches.2 Bourke’s description of the Hopis shows them to be a commercially -minded people who, although they did not understand the value of paper money, nevertheless managed a trade network reaching as far as Santa Fe, New Mexico, and to various other tribes in the region including Apaches. In fact, Apache prisoners admitted they had obtained the bulk of their arms and ammunition from the Hopis who, in turn, had purchased them from Mormons and Utes. General Crook intended to end the trade.3 The expedition left Camp Verde on September 22, 1874, traveling to the pueblos via San Carlos and Camp Apache. En route to San Carlos, they passed the various prehistoric ruins between what is now Tonto National Monument and Besh Ba Gowah Archaeological Park in modern Globe. These ruins were left by the Hohokam and Salado cultures. Early Spanish explorers, however, assumed that they and other prehistoric structures of Arizona and New Mexico were built by the Aztecs, a belief that persisted in Bourke’s time. Consequently, his initial diary entry declared the ruins to be Aztec, although he later revised that to “so-called Aztec .” Among their guides was one who called himself Mickey Free, who was, in fact, the same Felix Ward whose kidnapping by Apaches fourteen years earlier had ignited the Cochise War.4 Bourke’s brief, but enthusiastic entry on the San Carlos Reservation is especially significant. This represented the first concerted attempt to “Americanize” the Apaches by instituting a wage-labor system. Beginning with the employement of Apache scouts by the army, wage-labor expanded into other areas. Although rations continued to be issued for the next twenty-five years, the government instituted agricultural programs to convert the Indians to farming. Likewise, construction and maintenance of the agency buildings and development of the reservation infrastructure pro2 . Porter, ibid., 24 3.Discussing the Hopi trade in guns and ammunition, Crook wrote, “I became satisfied that they had such a traffic, but the fright we gave them put an end to it.” Schmitt, General George Crook, 183. 4. Bourke, Diaries, 2:5, “so-called Aztec,” 2:97. This series of ruins is discussed in Noble, Ancient Ruins of the Southwest, 167-70. The Spanish impression that the ruins were Aztec is discussed in various places in Fontana, Entrada. RESERVATION AND RUINS 85 vided more or less steady employment, as did the military post attached to the reservation, although closure of the post later created some unemployment.5 Elaborating in On the Border With Crook, Bourke wrote: [T]he enlistment of a force of scouts who were paid the same salary as white soldiers, and at the same periods with them, introduced among the Apaches a small, but efficient working capital. . . .[Crook explained] that by investing their money in California horses and sheep, they would be gaining more money all the time...