Apache Campaigns - Fort Huachuca - U.S. Army

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Apache Campaigns: Cibecu
The unbearable conditions on the San Carlos reservation had been somewhat alleviated
between 1879 and 1880 when control reverted temporarily to the military and Capt. Adna R.
Chaffee brought honest administration back. But it was still overcrowded with tribes, bands and
factions within them nursing age-old grudges. They had plenty of time on their hands to do so,
and enough tiswin, an Apache drink made from corn, to refire fading passions for revenge.
From 1880-82 Arizona’s population doubled and the white man began to encroach upon
reservation lands, lured by mining and agricultural pursuits. As 1880 began, General Willcox
had in the Arizona department two full regiments, the Sixth Cavalry and the Twelfth Infantry, two
companies of the Eighth Infantry, and four companies of Indian Scouts. Companies under Lieut.
Gatewood, Maj. Anson Mills, and Capt. Curwen B. McLellan would be absent during the year,
reinforcing the beleagured Ninth Cavalry in New Mexico where Victorio was on the loose.
The situation was explosive and the man to ignite it was a White Mountain Apache shaman
named Nakaidoklini who introduced a mystical religion that envisioned a time when the Apache
dead would rise and the whites would be exterminated. It was a vision that excited the White
Mountain Apaches in the summer of 1881 and brought them together to dance and listen to the
promises of Nakaidoklini.
It was a vision, however, which was only threatening to San Carlos agent J. C. Tiffany
who ordered Col. Eugene A. Carr, commanding the Sixth Cavalry, out of Fort Apache, to arrest
the medicine man. Carr, called “War Eagle” by the Indians, carried a scar from a Mescalero
Apache arrow dating from 1854 service in Texas. Artist Frederic Remington said that “Carr
would rather be a Colonel of Cavalry than Czar of Russia.”
HUACHUCA ILLUSTRATED