We got small glory out of that war,
perhaps, but at last we hanged the ringleader of the murderers;
and the extreme Northwest remained free from that time on.
Far in the dry Southwest, where home-building man did not as yet
essay a general occupation of the soil, the blood-thirsty Apache
long waged a warfare which tried the mettle of our Army as
perhaps no other tribes ever have done. The Spaniards had fought
these Apaches for nearly three hundred years, and had not beaten
them. They offered three hundred dollars each for Apache scalps,
and took a certain number of them. But they left all the
remaining braves sworn to an eternal enmity. The Apaches became
mountain outlaws, whose blood-mad thirst for revenge never died.
No tribe ever fought more bitterly. Hemmed in and surrounded,
with no hope of escape, in some instances they perished literally
to the last man. General George Crook finished the work of
cleaning up the Apache outlaws only by use of the trailers of
their own people who sided with the whites for pay. Without the
Pima scouts he never could have run down the Apaches as he did.
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