Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/495

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according to the crime they have committed." It is only just that the above should be inserted as a proof that there are many intelligent, fair-minded people on the frontier, who deprecate and discountenance anything like treachery towards Indians who are peaceably disposed.

By the terms of the conference entered into between the Secretary of the Interior, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the Secretary of War, and Brigadier-General Crook, on the 7th of July, 1883, it was stipulated that "the Apache Indians recently captured, and all such as may hereafter be captured or may surrender, shall be kept under the control of the War Department at such points on the San Carlos Reservation as may be determined by the War Department, but not at the agency without the consent of the Indian agent—to be fed and cared for by the War Department until further orders. . . . The War Department shall be intrusted with the entire police control of all the Indians on the San Carlos Reservation. The War Department shall protect the Indian agent in the discharge of his duties as agent, which shall include the ordinary duties of an Indian agent and remain as heretofore except as to keeping peace, administering justice, and punishing refractory Indians, all of which shall be done by the War Department."

In accordance with the terms of the above conference, five hundred and twelve of the Chiricahua Apaches—being the last man, woman, and child of the entire band—were taken to the country close to Camp Apache, near the head-waters of the Turkey Creek, where, as well as on a part of the White River, they were set to work upon small farms. Peace reigned in Arizona, and for two years her record of deaths by violence, at the hands of red men at least, would compare with the best record to be shown by any State in the East; in other words, there were no such deaths and no assaults. That Apaches will work may be shown by the subjoined extracts from the official reports, beginning with that of 1883, just one year after the re-assignment of General Crook to the command: "The increase of cultivation this year over last I believe has been tenfold. The Indians during the past year have raised a large amount of barley, which they have disposed of, the largest part of it being sold to the Government for the use of the animals in the public service here. Some has been sold to the Indian trader, and quite an amount to freighters passing