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

32. Victorio!

322 Apaches still weren’t safe at Mescalero. “[T]he organized band of desperados who infest this vicinity” continued their attacks, and soldiers couldn’t apprehend them, agent Godfroy wrote. The reservation , “situated in the most lawless county of the Territory” was “perfectly defenseless.” Magoosh’s grandson Richard said some white men “would come to the reservation and help themselves . . . to the horses. They would wait ‘til the Indians had tamed the wild horses and then steal them.”2 Despite signs of an approaching hard winter, the government withheld blankets and clothing. On September 30, 1877, Natzili, and fifty or sixty armed warriors rode in and demanded more beef and passes for hunting on the Staked Plains and in the Burro and Eagle Mountains . They needed buffalo robes to keep warm. If the agent could provide blankets and clothing, they would stay, Natzili said. If not, they had no choice but to provide for themselves. Godfroy stalled. While he waited for instructions from Washington, seven people froze to death, and twenty-seven young men left to hunt on the Staked Plains. To keep more Apaches from leaving, he bought blankets and muslin without permission.3 32 CHAPTER Victorio! [T]here were fully 150 bucks against us, being recruited from renegade Navajos, Mescaleros, Comanches and Lapans. — Lieutenant Charles Gatewood, 18791 Victorio! 323 Throughout 1878 Apaches were often off the reservation. Authorities wrote it down to intransigence, but the challenges of their daily life were staggering. The Lincoln County War erupted in gunplay and bloodshed that spilled over to the agency. Delivery of supplies grew erratic because freighters were afraid to enter the county, and food from local sources was foul. Many reservation Apaches were afraid to leave the mountains because of armed white men roaming the area. Only 373 camped near the agency; in the Guadalupe Mountains were the groups of Natzili, Blanco (a Lipan), Patos Chiquito (Natzili’s brother) and three Mescalero chiefs. Captain George Purington estimated the number of absent Apaches at 1,259, about half of them Mescaleros.4 Alexander McSween, a pivotal player in the Lincoln County War, informed the Interior Secretary in June 1878 that for the previous two years, Godfroy had purchased sick cattle and flour made of half rotten wheat from Lawrence Murphy’s successors, James Dolan and John Riley. They inflated the number of people they claimed to feed and often received wagonloads of “surplus” Indian supplies. “The Indians are continually depredating on citizens,” McSween said, “owing to the fact that the agent fails to give them what the Government has allotted them.”5 On August 2, the president suspended Godfroy after an investigation found that he had appropriated goods for exaggerated numbers of Indians and sold “vast quantities of government property” for his own gain. Three days later Godfroy’s clerk was murdered by partisans of the Lincoln County War, and more Apaches fled to the mountains.6 Q R Chief Victorio took the war path on August 21, 1879. He and his Warm Springs (Gileño) Apaches had earlier slipped from their reservation in Arizona and reappeared at Mescalero, where they had many friends and relatives. Agent Samuel A. Russell allowed them to stay, but the chance appearance of law enforcement officers caused the edgy chief to flee. For the next year, he led two armies on a bloody chase through 324 I FOUGHT A GOOD FIGHT southern New Mexico, West Texas and northern Chihuahua. Apaches from the Mescalero reservation, Mexico and the Davis Mountains joined.7 Lipans rode with Victorio. They also scouted against him for both the Americans and the Mexicans, an indication of how fragmented the tribe had become. Victorio was still at the Mescalero reservation in late May 1879, when Lipans began trickling in. Ten weeks later, when the Lipans’ presence became pronounced, Russell ordered them arrested. On July 24, an issue day, soldiers surrounded three men, a boy, four women, and two infants and removed them to Fort Stanton; another twenty Lipans were camped nearby. Agitated Mescaleros ran for the hills, but Victorio remained. Russell was sure the arrests would “have a good effect upon my Indians,” and expected any excitement to be temporary. “I have improved the opportunity to lecture them on the importance of staying on the reservation and to warn them that by leaving it they may be liable to like treatment.” The Commissioner of Indian Affairs scolded Russell for not...