Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/480

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curtailments, as consummated or contemplated, had the interests or feelings of the Indians been consulted.

The rations doled out had shrunk to a surprising degree: one of the shoulders of the small cattle of that region was made to do twenty people for a week; one cup of flour was issued every seven days to each adult. As the Indians themselves said, they were compelled to eat every part of the animal, intestines, hoofs, and horns. Spies were set upon the agency, who followed the wagons laden with the Indian supplies to Globe and the other towns just named, to which they travelled by night, there to unload and transfer to the men who had purchased from the agent or his underlings. One of the Apaches who understood English and Spanish was deputed to speak to the agent upon the matter. It was the experience of Oliver Twist over again when he asked for more. The messenger was put in the guardhouse, where he remained for six months, and was then released without trial or knowing for what he had been imprisoned. In regard to the civilian agents, the Apaches said they ran from bad to worse, being dishonest, indifferent, tyrannical, and generally incompetent. Of Captain Chaffee, of the Sixth Cavalry, who had been for a while in charge at San Carlos, the Apaches spoke in terms of respect, saying that he was very severe in his notions, but a just and honest man, and disposed to be harsh only with those who persisted in making, selling, or drinking the native intoxicant, "tizwin." The rottenness of the San Carlos Agency extended all the way to Washington, and infolded in its meshes officials of high rank. It is to the lasting credit of Hon. Carl Schurz, then Secretary of the Interior, that when he learned of the delinquencies of certain of his subordinates, he swung his axe without fear or favor, and the heads of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the Inspector-General of the Indian Bureau, and the agent at San Carlos fell into the basket.

At the San Carlos Agency itself, Crook met such men as "Cha-lipun," "Chimahuevi-sal," "Navatane," "Nodikun," "Santos," "Skinospozi," "Pedilkun," "Binilke," "Captain Chiquito," "Eskiminzin," "Huan-klishe," and numbers of others; those who had always lived in the hills near the San Carlos were content to live in the country, but such of the number as had been pulled away from the cool climate and pure water of the Cibicu, Carrizo, and other cañons in the vicinity of Camp