I Fought a Good Fight: A History of the Lipan Apaches

30. Prairie Apaches

299 The People returned to the Staked Plains. Comanches were settled on a reservation, and Apaches could roam freely. White men thought the Llano Estacado was dreary and monotonous, but Apaches knewwherewaterstoodingleamingplayas.Buffaloherdswerethin,but the short buffalo grass still supported antelope. A thousand Apaches who had never lived on a reservation were in their former home, and their camps drew restless young men from the reservations. Troops were rarely seen, but scouting parties were beginning to thread their way across grassland and desert to etch new trails in the dust. The No Water Lipans had been divided into small groups since the 1860s, when smallpox ravaged the tribes. Lipans suspected they got the disease from a shirt taken from a dead enemy along with his ammunition belt. They knew if they stayed together, more people would die. Chief Magoosh, who wore the scars of that epidemic the rest of his life, held a council and agreed to split up but rejoin when the sickness passed. Venego’s group settled in the mountains near Zaragosa, where they lived on good terms with the Mexicans. Chief Josefa and his people went to the Kickapoos near McAllen and then to Mexico. Magoosh took his people to live among the Naishans.2 30 CHAPTER Prairie Apaches Doubtless, the Indians that have left the Reservation are on the war path and driven to it by a class of outlaws whose highest aspiration is to pilfer and plunder. — F. C. Crothers, 18751 300 I FOUGHT A GOOD FIGHT An agent in 1869 recorded three hundred unidentified Apaches joining three hundred Kiowa Apaches on their two-year-old reservation at Fort Sill.3 In 1874 agents counted 602 Apaches: the resident Naishans and about 180 “Essaquetas” (Lipans), who were cultivating fields with their hosts. That year Lipans had just returned from Mexico when nearby Comanches and Kiowas fought with troops and tried to burn the Wichita Agency and the camps of peaceful Indians. The Lipans headed for the Pecos, but some stayed behind, including Magoosh’s sister, whose husband was Naishan. For years, Magoosh roamed from the plains near present Roswell, New Mexico, to the Guadalupe Mountains, to Mexico, to the Kiowa Agency, and to his good friends, the Mescaleros.4 Q R Through a window, Magoosh watched the Big Hat (the Lipans’ term for Texans) read a “talking paper.” The dog at Major Seth Mabre’s place set up a commotion, as Magoosh’s men rounded up horses that August evening in 1875. Magoosh took flight but fell into the well, fracturing his skull. He spent the rest of the night climbing out. From then on he wore a dent on the top of his bald head. Captain Dan Roberts and eight rangers picked up their trail where it crossed the Fort McKavett and Concho road. Rangers figured the Lipans would rest in the Lipan Mountains on the head of the South Concho, so they rounded the mountains and went on to Lipan Springs. Skirting the head brakes of the Concho, they reached the Staked Plains. Roberts wouldn’t let his men smoke that night for fear the light would betray their presence. The next day, the Lipans left their camp at a playa unknown to most white men (Big Lake, in the canyon country of Castle Gap). One warrior bragged that white men would never come there, and if they did, he could whip ten of them. As the sun rose high, Roberts ordered his men to form a line directly behind him so that only one man was visible from a distance. “They did and tracked as plumb as a new wagon,” he wrote. When the rangers were nearly in shooting range, the Lipans saw them. Two warriors, moving slowly behind the main group, warned the Prairie Apaches 301 Magoosh, 1913. Wanamaker Collection, Mathers Museum of World Cultures , University of Indiana others. “When Indians are driving a herd of stolen horses, they leave drag ropes to the best horses as an ‘emergency clause.’ In this case, they barely had time to jump down, grab ropes and change horses, which some of them did,” Roberts wrote. They formed a line. The rangers got close enough to fire, stopped and dismounted. “They stood one good round and began to smell blood and left there like a covey of quail.” One warrior riding ahead was still unaware of danger. When they reached him, “he rallied...