OUTDOOR SOUTHWEST - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

Dr. Tom-Tom-Beating-Thc-Wind
The strange story of an Apache Horatio Alger who rose to great
heights in the whiteman's world,
and then met heartbreak trying to help his fellow tribesmen
By OREN ARNOLD
INDIANS IN THE Southwest have
come a long way from the savagery
they once showed white pioneers;
and one of their own race set the main
pattern for this progress. Much of their
economic and social growth since 1940
has been exactly what a certain distinguished
Dr. Carlos Montezuma campaigned
for, without success, prior to his
death in 1923.
His story is unequalled for sheer incredibility
and excitement. It began
shortly before dawn in Arizona one
morning in 1871. Pima Indians, long
victims of the predatory Apaches,
swarmed down on an Apache camp
bent on revenge.
They got it. First step was to fire
the several dozen straw wickiups of the
Apaches. Then, jis the terrified villagers
came running through the flames, the
Pimas gleefully killed them. Only a few
escaped.
One six-year-old boy, named Wassaja
by his Apache mother, was screaming
and running down the slope when
a Pima warrior on horseback skidded
to a halt, snatched the lad up, then galloped
on with him.
By normal procedure this terrified boy
should have been taken to the victors'
camp and tortured for entertainment.
But his Pima captor felt he could be
sold for profit, so the lad was well fed
and groomed for a few weeks, then
taken to the white town of Florence,
Arizona.
"You want to sell this boy?" the
astonished whites asked. "Listen, you
ignorant heathen, slavery ended in this
country six years ago."
"Me sell," the Pima insisted.
It quickly became a town joke, with
many whites gathered around. Then
an itinerant photographer, a quiet-mannered
man named Carlos Gentile, drove
up the street in his wagon. A local
yokel hailed him.
"Hey, Gentile, whyn't you come buy
this 'Pache boy? He ain't got no family.
18 / Desert Magazine / October, 1961
He could be yore son." The crowd
burst into laughter.
Mr. Gentile saw no humor in the
situation. Rather, he was taken by the
trembling little captive. He stooped
over him, trying to communicate; they
had no words in common. But Gentile's
heart was touched. He emptied his
purse—thirty dollars. The Pima took it
and rode away.
Carlos Gentile, an Italian trekking
through the Wild West taking pictures
for a living, thus became Wassaja's first
personal contact with white civilization.
The boy could hardly have been more
fortunate. Not only was Gentile well
educated and cultured, he was a man
of high ideals. He immediately had his
"son" christened — Carlos for himself,
Montezuma for a renowned ruler in the
pre-history of the Southwest. Then to
get the boy out of frontier environment,
he put him in his wagon and headed
eastward.
Their adventure is a classic of manteaching-son.
Discovery was the main
part of it—the lad's first look at photos
and mistaking them for little live people;
his thinking window glass was ice; his
amazement at his first train—pulled by
an iron horse that ate live horses then
burned them for power, he decided.
But meanwhile he learned the strange
words and ways of the white people.
Upshot was that in barely two years
he was leading his class in a white school
in Chicago. He was expert in everything;
in 1961 we'd have classified him
as a "gifted child," which indeed he was.
He helped his new father open a fine
photo studio—"Large Photographs by a
Patented Process a Specialty." He went
to Sunday School. He sold newspapers.
He was on his way to becoming a Horatio
Alger paleface hero.
Then another critical change came
into his life; Carlos Gentile dropped
out of it. We do not know why. We
know only that Gentile boarded the
boy with a Baptist minister named Steadman,
then soon disappeared. Gentile
died in 1893 and was buried in Chicago's
Mount Hope Cemetery. He must
have enjoyed high status, for his portrait
hung on the wall of the important
Press Club in that era.
Young Carlos went on learning. Under
Mr. Steadman's guidance he got
help from the Urbana Y.M.C.A., entered
a university and was graduated
cum laude in 1884—just 13 years after
he had seen his first white man!
His Bachelor of Science degree led
him into an interest in medicine, so he
went on to become a doctor, and an
excellent one. Meanwhile, however, he
also had developed the instincts of a
crusader. He enjoyed much attention,
much acclaim from classmates, teachers,
even the public press, because of his
dark Indian color and background and
his outstanding scholarship. So he began
to capitalize on that.
"Yes, I am an Indian," he'd say in
a public address, "but I am no better
than any other Indian. I have risen
high, you say, and it is true. But any
other Indian could do the same thing,
given half a chance."
Was that fantastic? Too idealistic?
Dr. Carlos Montezuma didn't think so.
In fact the thought became an obsession
with him. And as he prospered in medicine,
he tried more and more to further
his crusade for helping the downtrodden
Indians of America.
He worked briefly for the U.S. Bureau
of Indian Affairs itself, but came
out of there embittered. He had seen
the crass misuse of public funds by that
agency, the graft and inefficiency. So he
began to campaign to the general public
•—against that Bureau. No less a personage
than President Theodore Roosevelt
listened. Teddy, in fact, called
Montezuma to Washington, interviewed
him, and offered him a job as head of
that very Bureau!
Montezuma had the good sense to
decline. He said he could do his people
more good as a free-lance campaigner.
So he worked at it with more enthu-