Page 192 - Cooke's Peak - Pasaron Por Aqui

proximately 40 miles from Fort Cummings.81
On April 19 the army took action that significantly enhanced the ability of the Indian-fighting army to engage its opponents. General Order 56 established regulations for the 1,000 Indian Scouts authorized under legislation passed the previous July to in- crease the army’s strength and Indian fighting capability. The scouts were to enlist for no more than six months at a time, furnish their own horses and equipment, and, in return, they were paid 40 cents a day. Unfortunately, it would be a long time before Fort Cummings was able to make use of the scouts’ services. Captain Foutts was authorized to hire a civilian scout, but his pay was to be $2.50 per day, or if hired by the month, $45 plus an army ration
each day.
Although there was no military report, it may have
been at this time that two Apache boys surreptitious- ly entered the Fort Cummings compound. Asa Da- klugie and Frank, the grandson of Mangas Coloradas, used a weighted rope to saw a notch in the fort wall. When the cut was sufficiently deep, they used the rock as an anchor and climbed over the wall. Daklugie claimed they stole some weapons and ammunition from one of the rooms, but Frank’s father, Mangas, chastised them when they returned to camp because the “rifle” was a shotgun and the
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pistol was of very small caliber.
In 1867, stage transportation returned to the old
Butterfield Trail. The Kerns and Mitchell Company took over the abandoned line, repaired many of the old stations, and built some new ones. A few minor changes to the specific route were made to ensure better protection, but these changes were not close to Cooke’s Spring. At least one author has indicated that the station at Fort Cummings was relocated from the hill next to the cemetery to a new site closer to the fort. In all likelihood, this was at Robert V. Newsham’s sutler building.
Reestablishment of the stage line created two new tasks for the soldiers at Fort Cummings. During later times, when the Apache threat was more severe, the military provided either mounted escorts or men to ride in the stage through the more dangerous areas. Of more immediate concern, at least to the civilian passengers, were several human skeletons lying in Cooke’s Canyon in plain view of anyone traveling the road. In response to their com- plaints a detail was sent to gather the bones and
These were the first of many burials that would remain recorded as “unknown.”
It was during this period that Hospital Steward (not Doctor) William Thornton Parker arrived on the scene. His less than three-month sojourn at the post went unrecorded, at least as far as anything
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This was not so for Parker. Unfortunately, the good “Doctor’s” memoirs, used by many writers, are at best either
imaginative or the product of a poor memory. Most of Captain Foutts’ reports during the first- half of 1867 were either routine or complained mild- ly of either personnel and commissary problems, or of minor thefts from the post. In a three-week mid- summer period, however, three separate small emigrant groups appealed to the fort for much needed assistance. On August 21, a family of 10 persons arrived at the fort on their way to California. They were completely destitute, and had neither money, property, nor provisions. Foutts directed Captain Joseph A. Corbett, in charge of the post commissary, to issue them six days rations of bacon,
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flour, and coffee.
Closely following this family came another in worse
straits. A woman, whose husband had been killed on the road near Fort Davis, arrived at the fort with her children (no number stated) and without property or subsistence of any kind. Captain Foutts again directed the issuance of six days rations of bacon, flour, and coffee. Perhaps the captain was somewhat tired of being asked for free supplies, because he later supplied two families with the same
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kinds of rations, but only for five days.
Another traveler, however, was able to purchase
the supplies needed by his group. Doctor William Abraham Bell, an adventurous English physician, was employed as a photographer on a surveying expedition that had been funded by the Kansas
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Bell’s party, one of five survey groups, had traveled south from Santa Fe, picked up a heavier escort at Fort Craig, then proceeded downstream to Santa Barbara. On Oc- tober 14, 1867, they left the Rio Grande led by a man named Eicholtz. They watered at La Tenaja (Foster’s Hole) and camped at Mule Spring. While the surveyors ran a line west through a gap, between the spring and Cooke’s Canyon, which they named Palmer’s Pass, Bell went to Fort Cummings (Figure
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45) to secure additional supplies
In October, Captain Foutts’ command was or-
transfer them to the post cemetery for burial.
Indian Fighting and Post War Emigration
oc
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significant in the official records.
Pacific Railway Company.