Apache Campaigns - Fort Huachuca - U.S. Army

Then it settled down to a steady fight. You wouldn’t see a hostile, but show your head and you
heard one. We tried to run them out of the rocks but it wouldn’t work without our losing more
men than would pay. We had sixty white men and forty-three Indians and had jumped a party
of about 100 bucks besides squaws and children. Our ammunition was running short, we
were a hundred miles from any command so far as we knew and didn’t know what was behind
us. We concluded to get away from there. So we drew off slowly and quietly. We know of
sixteen Indians we killed, twelve bucks, three squaws and one child. We went back eleven
miles and into camp. I don’t think I was ever before in my life so tired as when I unsaddled in
camp that afternoon. We got dinner and then I went to sleep. About sundown Gen. Forsyth
with his command came into camp. They had been on our trail three days trying to catch us
but we travelled too fast for them. Next morning the united comrades took the trail, made
some thirty miles and then camped. Next day we met Col. Garcia of the Mexican army who
had struck the Indians on an open flat and in an almost hand-to-hand fight had twenty of his
men killed and sixteen wounded, but killed all seventy eight Indians and captured thirty-three.
Comparisons and the trail showed that after our fight those Indians who had stock pulled for
the Sierra Madre mountains in hot haste, the ones on foot followed as best they could and had
just reached water when Garcia struck them. The Warm Springs tribe is practically exterminated.
Our command took them out of Arizona across New Mexico, into Old Mexico,
surprised them where they thought themselves safe, captured and killed most of their stock,
demoralized them so they ran into the hands of the Mexicans in open counry and they finished
the job. It’s the best piece of Indian work that has been undertaken in the southwest for many
years and I think we have a right to feel proud of it.
Gen. Forsyth, who after his fight on the 23d, did nothing but follow our trail, seems to be
getting all the credit. I see he says we killed seven Indians, I know positively of sixteen. His
dispatches as also Sheridan’s congratulating him would make it appear that Tupper’s command
was part of Forsyth’s and under his orders. When as a fact we were entirely independent,
twenty four hours in advance of him, and did not know he was on our trail at all. For
his pursuit of the hostile up to and his fight on the 23d let him have all credit, but after that it
was our circus and to Major Tupper alone belongs the praise. Its a great pity I think, they
can’t get along without stealing somebody else’s thunder. 94
A MAGAZINE OF THE FORT HUACHUCA MUSEUM
“Writing Home,” Frederic Remington.
121