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Texas | Columns | "Texas Tales"

Indian Incidents
in West Texas

by Mike Cox
Mike Cox

Towering above the surrounding Chihuahua Desert, the Guadalupe Mountains mark the highest point in Texas. And McKittrick Canyon, dissected by a spring-fed, trout-filled creek flanked with pines and Douglas firs, is one of the state's most remote and attractive landscapes.

It's no wonder that the Mescalero Apaches viewed the rugged but beautiful mountain range as their holiest of places. Indeed, they considered it the land of their origin. Ultimately, as their nomadic lifestyle neared its end, they looked on that high ground as their final refuge.

But while the Mescaleros still ranged free in New Mexico and Texas, with the opening of the Butterfield Overland Mail in 1858, the Indians began using the mountains as a base for attacking the stagecoaches. The route, which stretched from St. Louis to California, passed just below 8,749-foot Guadalupe Peak.

"They owned nothing and everything," historian C. L. Sonnichsen wrote of the Mescalero. "They did as they pleased and bowed to no man."

The mail operation shut down at the start of the Civil War and the U.S. Army pulled its troops out of Texas. For all practical purposes, that returned the Trans-Pecos to the Mescalero. The Indians raided in New Mexico, Texas and down into Northern Mexico, often returning to the sanctuary of their sacred mountains.

Following the war, federal forces reoccupied Texas and New Mexico and soon began dealing with the Mescaleros. Still, the formidable Guadalupes loomed as a virtually impenetrable stronghold. Pursuing the Apaches to a remote, rugged landscape they knew well took courage bordering on foolhardiness. That pretty well described Howard Bass Cushing, only he also had a mean streak and a demonstrated propensity to do things the way he thought they should be done, regardless of regulation or even the law.

A native of Wisconsin who grew up in Illinois, Cushing joined a volunteer artillery regiment early in the Civil War. Later assigned to a regular Army artillery unit, he survived the bloody Battle of Shiloh and other engagements as well as a court martial for drunkenly springing his commander from jail in Washington, DC. In 1868, he transferred to the Third Cavalry and took station in New Mexico.

Thin and only 5 feet, 7 inches tall, Cushing had penetrating blue-gray eyes and light-brown hair. He wore a goatee and kept his cap jauntily cocked on the side of his head.

"His bravery was beyond question, his judgment, as I had good reason afterwards to learn, was not always to be trusted," fellow officer John G. Bourke later wrote of Cushing. "He would hazard everything on the turn of the card."

In the late fall of 1869, Lt. Cushing, in command of 32 men in Co. F, rode from Fort Stanton, NM in search of Apaches who had stolen some 300 head of cattle from a ranch only a few miles from the military garrison. On November 18, Cushing and his men found the Apaches and the stolen livestock in the northern portion of the Guadalupe Mountains in what is now known as Last Chance Canyon. Killing two warriors, the soldiers recovered most of the stolen cattle and captured the Indians' horses and mules.

A month later, Cushing -- his force augmented by a body of civilian volunteers -- marched again from Fort Stanton to the Guadalupes. On the day after Christmas, the soldiers attacked a large Mescalero village. As the lieutenant later reported, they killed "a good many Indians" and made "no particular effort to take any prisoners." Four days later, he led an attack on another village in the Indians' mountain sanctuary, seizing or destroying the Apaches' food and possessions.

Cushing and his troopers had prevailed in the Guadalupe Mountains campaign, but the bold young officer would not live to old age.

Three years later, by then stationed at Camp Lowell near Tucson in Arizona Territory, the 32-year-old Cushing once again rode out in search of hostile Apaches. That happened in the spring of 1871, when a Chiricahua Apache headman named Cochise left the reservation.

On May 5, about 15 miles northwest of Fort Huachuca near Bear Spring in the Whetstone Mountains, Cushing's small command found the trail of one Apache leading an un-mounted pony. The lieutenant dispatched Sgt. John Mott and two privates to follow the tracks, which Mott soon realized were way too easy to read. Clearly, the Indians hoped to led the soldiers into a trap.

About the time Mott realized this and started to pull back, the Apaches opened fire. Hearing the shots, Cushing and the rest of his men galloped to the rescue of the sergeant and the other cavalrymen. At this point, the lieutenant might still have been able to extract his men from the situation and lived to fight another day. Instead, with only eight men, he ordered a charge even though outnumbered 15 to 1.

As Cushing and his troopers rushed forward afoot, the Apaches fired a volley. The lieutenant suddenly grabbed his chest and yelled, "Sergeant, I am killed!" Soon, a second bullet to his head finished the job. One private and a civilian who handled the company's pack mules also died in the ambush. The rest of the company managed to escape.

Initially buried at Camp Lowell near Tucson, Cushing’s remains later were reinterred in the National Cemetery at San Francisco.

Though the Army record reflects that the lieutenant died "while gallantly leading his command in an attack against...Indians," Cushing came to be remembered less flatteringly as “the Custer of Arizona.”



© Mike Cox
"Texas Tales" - December 16, 2015 Column

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