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Show INDIAN CAMPAIGNS 441 Victorio had been killed, his band had been decimated; and yet the southern portions of the territory were again raided by the murderous Apaches in the spring of CONQUEST OF THE CHIRICAHUAS— 1883. General George Crook, GENERAL GEORGE CROOK who ten years before had subjugated the Apaches, was recalled to the command of the government forces in Arizona. The Chiricahuas, disturbed on account of the occupation of the country by mining men and cattle raisers, left the reservation and went on the war-path, killing the chief of the Indian police before leaving. Seven hundred and ten members of the tribe thus made their escape. They were pursued to the Mexican boundary, but they left a trail of murder and death behind them, killing every settler, miner, and ranchman whom they met en route. The presence of these hostile Indians in Chihuahua and Sonora *** was a menace to the lives and property of the inhabitants of southern New Mexico, whose only protection was a small body of troops commanded by Captain Emmet Crawford, aided by a body of 150 Apache scouts. The troops and scouts patrolled over two hundred miles of the Mexican frontier. In the month of March, 1883, twenty-six Chiricahuas, led by a celebrated chief, Chato, broke through the American patrol and Swept over that portion of Grant county in the vicinity of Silver City. On the main road to Silver City, this band met Judge H. C. McComas, wife, and child, a boy, six years of age. The parents were murdered and horribly mutilated and the boy carried into captivity. The fate of Judge McComas roused the inhabitants of the southern counties of the territory. Chato and his band of warriors had passed by the Mexican troops and the American patrol, had ridden eight hundred miles into American territory, and were now murdering and pillaging almost within sight of the principal city in Grant county. 861 In In a few days twenty-five Americans and Mexicans had the state of Sonora these hostiles were attacked Who killed eighty-five and captured thirty of the Indians; by Mexican troops of those captured there were only fifteen warriors. About 650 Chiricahuas, 150 Warriors, reached the Sierra Madre fastnesses. From secure of whom were strongholds in the mountains they raided the ranches of the Mexicans, attacked the small Settlements, making captives, and driving to the mountains great numbers of horses and other live stock. The bodies of Judge McComas and wife were found by John A. Moore. McComas was a native of Virginia and came to Silver City in 1880. His wife was a sister of Eugene Ware, deceased, the Kansas poet, known under the nom de plume of ‘‘Ironquill.’’ |