Page 159 - Cooke's Peak - Pasaron Por Aqui

Altos, that the Apaches had killed nine Mexicans in the Canyon and that the Confederate’s had built a
rock fort to ambush the Federals. He probably was
erroneously describing the Freeman Thomas mas-
sacre. TheAkesdecidedthattheirgroupwaslarge enough and sufficiently armed to discourage the Indians. Theywerewrong.
The wagon train and accompanying herds of cattle and sheep had progressed part way through the canyon when the Apaches struck without warning. They managed to circle some of the wagons and most of the people made it inside the impromptu barricade. Manyofthewomenandchildrenhad been following the ox-drawn wagons in one pulled by mules and driven by a Black man. At the first sign of attack Houston and the driver managed to turn the wagon around and race toward the Mimbres River and safety, along with five other men. The fight, initiated shortly after sunup, continued until mid-afternoon. The Indians, having also suffered heavy casualties, pulled out with nearly all of the stock. The Apaches had killed or fatally wounded 16 men, burned several wagons, and taken 400 cattle and 900 sheep.
with them and buried them later. Apache losses were later reported as upward of 50, probably an
128
optimistic estimate.
Closely following the near massacre of the
emigrant train in Cooke’s Canyon, a second tragedy took place in the saddle below Massacre Peak. Anton Brewer, a butcher from Pinos Altos, had gone to the Rio Grande and was returning through the canyon with about 40 head of cattle and eight Mexican drovers. They had turned the cattle into a small canyon, probably Frying Pan Springs, and Brewer was watching over the stock while the drovers gathered to eat. The Apaches attacked, and Brewer, already mounted and at a distance, was the only one to escape. He made it to the mines without further encounter with the Indians, and about 15 men returned to determine if anything could be salvaged. The relief party found the men lying close together and horribly mutilated. They
. . . raked them together with poles as best we could and covered them with rocks as the ground was too rough and rocky to make any graves and not having tools to make them [the
129 graves] with
Several days later, the remainder of the Ake emigrant train was escorted safely to Mesilla by the Confederatesoldiers. Moregoodnewsoccurred when Major Daniel Hodges Stickney (a Tucson mer- chant), reported killed in the Ake party fight with the Apaches at Cooke’s Canyon, arrived in Mesilla with several arrow and bullet holes in his clothing andanarrowwoundinthehip. Duringthefrayhe had been roped from his horse by one of the Indians but had managed to cut the rope and escape in the
130
confusion of the fight.
The Arizona Guards’ services were soon in dire
need back at Pinos Altos because the Apaches con- tinued to stalk the community and to waylay small parties whenever the opportunity was presented. On August 17, four men reached Mesilla from the Pinos Altos mines by traveling at night and avoiding the main road. They brought news that on August 5 six men had left the Hanover copper mines to search for missing stock. Three were found murdered by theApaches,andtheotherthreeweremissing,in- cluding Jerome Ellsberg of the Ellsberg and Amberg freighting firm. Another 11 men had gone to search for them and had been gone 2 days when the infor-
The survivors, of whom only eight
unhurt, seized the chance to escape. They had traveled only about five miles back toward the Mimbres when they met a detachment of Arizona Guards, led by Mastin, from Pinos Altos and the seven men of their party who had initially escaped. They returned to the ambush scene and salvaged what they could, then went with the Guards to Pinos
1 97
Altos where they remained several days.
“Hank” Smith, Thomas Jefferson Helm, and the bulk of the Guards assumed correctly that the In- dians would head for the Florida Mountains and broke off near the Mimbres to try and intercept the Apaches. The following day they had a brief fire- fight in which Smith claimed they killed eight Indians and recovered about half the stock. They drove the rescued stock back to Cooke’s Canyon but did not arrive there until the following day. After watering the stock at the spring, they positioned eight flankers on each side of the drive and proceeded through the canyon. It was a wise precaution because they had hard skirmishes with the Apaches all the way throughthecanyon. Smithreportedseeingthe wreck of the train and men bloated beyond recogni- tion, but did not mention burying them. Jeff Ake, on
the other hand, claimed the travelers took their dead
of the men were
Chapter 5
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