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

7. Communities’ End: Persecution and Imprisonment, 1875–1910

In the last decades of the nineteenth century Chiricahua and Janos gradually ceased to interact with each other and ceased to be communities of violence. The state government of Chihuahua sought to defend itself from Apache raids, culminating in the battle at Tres Castillos, fought solely by armed civilian volunteers, including many from Janos, with no help from the national government . The Chiricahua survivors of Tres Castillos were soon joined by others who left reservations in the United States and would ultimately come under the influence of Geronimo. For several years Geronimo and Chiricahuas with him survived both American and Mexican attacks. Fearing treachery in Mexico they finally surrendered and accepted imprisonment away from the borderlands. The beginning of the end for Janos came with the end of the Apache wars. The Mexican national state now had the security to survey and sell “excess” lands, including those of Janos, threatening the survival of the community. Janos thus provided the “ideal recruits” to start the Mexican Revolution of 1910–20. They ultimately lost the revolution as the resulting Mexican state was finally able to make violence an unattractive strategy for survival, ending Janos as a community of violence. Chiricahua ended as a community of violence due to exile and imprisonment away from the borderlands. Chapter 7 Communities’ End Persecution and Imprisonment, 1875–1910 communities’ end 188 “Persecute the barbarians” Cochise never solved the dilemma of the border for Chiricahua, and Terrazas continued to face it with Janos. Although promoted to “Sub-Inspector of the Military Colonies of the State of Chihuahua ” in 1873, Terrazas still did not have enough forces at hand to prevent Apache violations of the border and continued to rely upon armed civilian volunteers. In the spring of 1873, per the governor’s orders, Terrazas placed a detachment in Janos before setting off on a campaign to “persecute the barbarians” through the cantons of Guerrero, Degollado, and Galeana, where Apaches continued to surprise “towns, ranches, and haciendas.” Every few months during this campaign Terrazas halted his troops near towns “where Apaches had killed or robbed, whose vecinos entered the service of the campaign.”1 In July of the next year Terrazas received an order from the minister of war in Mexico City ordering him to recruit a force, first to cover the town of Gallego and then to defend Janos. These troops were to continue to recruit and organize vecinos of the towns, haciendas , and ranches attacked by Apaches, paying them for their time on campaign with federal funds. By October Terrazas had a force of fifty men, mounted, with saddles and equipment. Their weapons and munitions, however, were of various classes and calibers . But these men were not in the field when Juh showed up at Janos in December 1874, having left Cochise’s reservation, and once again sounding out the possibility of peace in Mexico. The killing of one of Juh’s peace envoys by Sonorans ended this attempt. In February 1875 Terrazas received enough saddles and bridles, Remington rifles with twenty thousand cartridges, and uniforms to organize a hundred-man “Chihuahua Colony Squadron.” Terrazas based his new squadron in Carrizal in March and assigned detachments of likely no more than ten or fifteen men to four towns, including Janos. The rest of the squadron, augmented by armed civilians , “persecuted barbarians.”2 The detachment at Janos was authorized to call upon vecinos to augment the force for “prompt persecution” whenever Indians communities’ end 189 appeared in the area, either entering or leaving with their loot. For the rest of the year, “with the vecinos of the town and those in the area,” the Janos detachment frequently scouted the area for Apaches , who typically avoided them by crossing the border into the United States. But in June a party of armed civilians from Carrizal encountered Chiricahuas in the Sierra de Pilares and in the ensuring chase captured an Indian woman. In June 1876 Terrazas reunited his squadron to fight the rebellion of Porfirio Díaz. The Janos detachment did not join him until mid-July as it had been serving on a campaign. Mata Ortiz, now jefe político of Janos, accompanied the detachment, leading a party of armed civilians from the towns of his district.3 Terrazas and Mata Ortiz defeated the rebels at Avalos outside Chihuahua City in August, but the rebellion proved successful everywhere else in Mexico. When D...