Yet all the while that this black cloud hung over the fair face of nature—raiding, killing, robbing, carrying women and children into captivity—Jesuit and Franciscan vied with each other in schemes for getting these savages under their control.
Father Eusebio Kino, of whom I have already spoken, formulated a plan in or about 1710 for establishing, or re-establishing, a mission in the villages of the Moquis, from which the Franciscans had been driven in the great revolt and to which they had never permanently returned. Questions of ecclesiastical jurisdiction seem to have had something to do with delaying the execution of the plan, which was really one for the spiritual and temporal conquest of the Apache, by moving out against him from all sides, and which would doubtless have met with good results had not Kino died at the mission of Madalena a few months after. Father Sotomayor, another Jesuit, one of Kino's companions, advanced from the "Pimeria," or country of the Pimas, in which Tucson has since grown up, to and across the Salt River on the north, in an unsuccessful attempt to begin negotiations with the Apaches.
The overthrow of the Spanish power afforded another opportunity to the Apache to play his cards for all they were worth; and for fully fifty years he was undisputed master of Northwestern Mexico—the disturbed condition of public affairs south of the Rio Grande, the war between the United States and the Mexican Republic, and our own Civil War, being additional factors in the equation from which the Apache reaped the fullest possible benefit.
It is difficult to give a fair description of the personal appearance of the Apaches, because there is no uniform type to which reference can be made; both in physique and in facial lineaments there seem to be two distinct classes among them. Many of the tribes are scarcely above medium size, although they look to be still smaller from their great girth of chest and width of shoulders. Many others are tall, well-made, and straight as arrows. There are long-headed men, with fine brows, aquiline noses, well-chiselled lips and chins, and flashing eyes; and there are others with the flat occiput, flat nose, open nostrils, thin, everted lips, and projecting chins.
One general rule may be laid down: the Apache, to whichever
