Page 230 - Cooke's Peak - Pasaron Por Aqui

Figure 55. Poe Family. Photo courtesy of the Deming-Luna Mimbres Museum.
A New Communication System and an End to Fort Cummings
After the last detachment of caretaker-soldiers left for Fort Selden in 1885, only a few citizens remained at Cooke’s Spring. Carpenter apparently had partnered with a man named Stanley, and they con- tinued to use the rangeland on and around the military reservation for their cattle. The still stand- ing walls of the first period fort made an excellent cattle corral. It was claimed that the cattle company leased the site, but in view of previous performance^ this was unlikely and has not been substantiated.
After only a year, however, the fort was again the scene of military operations, if only for a brief period. In the spring of 1886, General George Crook was attempting to negotiate yet another sur- render with Geronimo (Figure 58) and the last of the free Apaches. When General Crook was negotiat- ing with the Apaches he had told them:
I want to have all that you say here to be [put] down on paper, because what goes down on paper never lies. A man's memory may fail him, but what a paper holds will be fresh and
149 tmelongafterwearealldeadandforgotten.
No doubt Crook believed what he espoused, but under the circumstances that followed, perhaps an old Apache’s query was more appropriate when he asked “What good is the president’s writing if his
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word is not good?”
Miles replaced Crook in April 1886 after Crook asked to be relieved when the government would not make good on his promises to Geronimo.
Miles decided that the keys to securing Geronimo’s surrender were tough negotiation and containment. To accomplish the containment portion of his plans,
A New Communication System and an End to Fort Cummings
Figure 56. Cooks miners #1. Photo courtesy of the Deming-Luna Mimbres Museum.
Figure 57. Cooks miners #2. Photo courtesy of the Deming-Luna Mimbres Museum.
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Perhaps the dis- turbance was the result of Orr’s and Irington’s pre- vious labor, because the measurements were similar. Poe believed that their ore would average about $8 per ton in silver and contain about 40 to 50 percent lead. McDanielwasworkingtheSurpriseMineand opened up “an immense body of fine ore of the same
worked by Indians or Mexicans.
character
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General Nelson Appleton