JULY 15:

1870 Ottawa Ontario George-Etienne Cartier's Manitoba Act comes into effect; creates new bilingual province in West; recognizes Metis land claims by setting aside 566,000 hectares; gives English and French languages equal status; guarantees Protestant and Roman Catholic educational rights; Manitoba enters the Dominion as our fifth province; The North West Territories (Rupert's Land) officially transferred to Canada; Canada takes over all land between Ontario and British Columbia.

1978 NWT Ottawa offers $45 million to 2,500 Inuit in western Arctic from 1981 to 1994; to own surface rights; negotiations with Committee for Original Peoples' Entitlement (CORE).

1990 Oka Quebec John Caccia emerges after 3 days of meetings with Mohawk leaders on Kanesetake reserve with tentative agreement; Mohawks wants complete police withdrawal and amnesty.

1991 Ottawa Ontario Harry LaForme appointed head of federal commission to settle land claims from breaches of treaty; Indian Commissioner of Ontario.  

July 15, 1862: Mangas Colorado and Cochise, his son-in-law, have been harassing settlers, wagon trains and the Army since Cochise had been wrongly accused of kidnapping by Lt. George Bascom in 1861. This incident would lead to the killing of hostages on both sides. On this date, Mangas Colorado and Cochise have positioned 500 warriors on the bluffs overlooking the Apache Pass watering hole. When an Army company of about 300 soldiers approach the spring-fed watering hole, the Apachess attack. Captain Thomas Roberts, and his soldiers will be driven back, but they will return and capture the spring with the aid of cannon. Captain Roberts sends out five couriers to warn the next column of troops who were approaching the pass.

Mangas Colorado and four dozen Apaches take after the messengers. All five of the couriers are shot, and three go down when their horses are shot. Two of the downed soldiers ride out with the other two couriers. This leaves Private John Teal alone against the Apaches. Teal has a repeating rifle, which is new to the Apaches. They remain behind cover. Teal would eventually hit Mangas Colorado in the chest, with a rifle shot. This would effectively end the fighting, as the Apaches take their Chief away.
 

BACKGROUND:
 

Mangas Coloradas, 1791-January 18, 1863
 

Mangas Coloradas, Spanish for "Red Sleeves", emerged as the great Chief of the Beonkohes Apache in southwestern New Mexico after the Mexican-instigated massacre of many Apache Indians in 1837.

He sought friendly relations with the miners and the mining camp at Pinos Altos who were under constant threat from the Apaches and an occasional band of Navajos. The miners and the Indians were not good neighbors. In the spring of 1860 Chief Mangas Coloradas was invited for a "friendly" visit to the Pinos Altos mining camp. The treacherous miners tied him to a tree and lashed him unmercifully with their bullwhips. When the chief recovered from his wounds he enlisted his son-in-law's help. His son-in-law was Chief Cochise, and revenge was an important factor in Chiricahua Apache warfare.

Upon recovery, Mangas gathered his forces and drove the miners out. With his son-in-law, Cochise, he defended Apache Pass against Gen. James H. Carleton's California Column in 1862.

In a later skirmish Mangas, then in his seventies, was struck by a bullet in the chest. Surviving but in fragile health, Mangas sought to parley for peace. In January 1863 Mangas agreed to meet with an officer of the California militia. It turned out to be a trap!

Mangas was locked up at Ft. McLane. Some soldiers began to taunt him one night with heated bayonets, he rose to protect himself and was shot dead. The official report was that he was trying to escape. Because of its large size, his head was cut off, boiled, and sent back East to be exhibited as a curio at public lectures.  (Editor's Note:  And they referred to indians as "savages"??????  Words fail me.)

Most aficionados of New Mexico history are unaware that Mangas was a legend in his own time and a father-in-law of the famous Cochise. He was incredibly tall for an Apache (well over 6' 4") so made a visual impact where ever he appeared. He was a man at peace with himself and his domain. One of his favorite rancherias was Santa Rita del Cobre near Silver City. Ironically, it was close to this site that he was brutally murdered by a race he tried to befriend. Unfortunately, trying to make peace with the advancing horde of white settlers, ranchers and miners was like trying to swim against a rip tide. However, that was usually his stand, peace first, but when betrayed he turned on his tormentors and wreaked havoc on both sides of the border. Even in death this was true and his cruel betrayal by the military caused the Apache wars to continue their bloody swathe through settlements and lonely ranches for more than two decades as his people sought to prevent greedy encroachment into their territory.

He had won his reputation as a warrior in battle with treacherous military leaders from Sonora who used just about every miserable and degrading trick to destroy all Apaches. For over four decades his tactics saved his people as they tried to co-exist with the Mexican.

(From http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Canopy/8494/mangas.html)

*****

Cochise ("Hardwood" in the language of the Chiracahua Apache), b. 1812, d. June 8, 1874

Cochise was a tall man, six feet, with broad shoulders and a commanding appearance. He never met a man his equal with a lance and, like Crazy Horse, was never photographed. They both were buried in secret locations on their homeland.

*****

Cochise had long worked as a woodcutter at the Apache Pass stagecoach station of the Butterfield Overland line until 1861, when a raiding party drove off cattle belonging to a white rancher and abducted the child of a ranch hand. An inexperienced Army officer, Lt. George Bascom, arrived and ordered Cochise and five other Apaches to appear for questioning. When they denied guilt or complicity, Bascom ordered his men to seize and arrest the Apaches. (Their claims of innocence were later substantiated.)

In the ensuing struggle, soldiers killed one Apache and subdued four others, but Cochise, suffering three bullets wounds, escaped by cutting through the side of a tent. He soon abducted a number of whites to exchange for the Apache captives, but Bascom retaliated by hanging six Apaches, including relatives of Cochise. This sequence of events is usually referred to as "The Bascom Affair."

Avenging these deaths, Cochise took to the warpath with his uncle, Mangas Coloradas. During the following year, warfare by Apache bands was so fierce that troops, settlers and traders all withdrew from the region. And upon the recall of army forces to fight in the U.S. Civil War in 1861, Arizona was practically abandoned to the Apaches.

In 1862, an army of 3,000 California volunteers under Gen. James Carleton marched to Apache Pass to prevent Confederate attacks and put the Apaches to flight with their howitzers. Although Mangas Coloradas was captured and killed the following year, Cochise and 200 followers eluded capture for more than ten years by hiding out in the Dragoon Mountains of Arizona, from which they continued their raids, always fading back into their mountain strongholds.

In 1871, command of the Department of Arizona was assumed by Gen. George Crook, who succeeded in winning the allegiance of a number of Apaches as scouts and bringing many others onto reservations. Cochise surrendered in September, but, resisting the transfer of his people to the Tularosa Reservation in New Mexico, escaped in the spring of 1872. He surrendered again when the Chiricahua Reservation was established that summer, and there he died on June 8, 1874. Today, the south-easternmost county of Arizona bears his name; it includes Tombstone, Douglas and Bisbee, the county seat.

(From http://www.desertusa.com/magfeb98/feb_pap/du_apache.html)

****

Words Spoken:  Cochise

"You must speak straight so that your words may go as sunlight into our hearts.  Speak, Americans ... I will not lie to you; do not lie to me."

"When I was young I walked all over this country, east and west, and saw no other people than the Apaches. After many summers I walked again and found another race of people had come to take it. How is it?"

"We were once a large people covering these mountains. We lived well: we were at peace. One day my best friend was seized by an officer of the white men and treacherously killed. At last your soldiers did me a very great wrong, and I and my people went to war with them."

"The worst place of all is Apache Pass. There my brother and nephews were murdered. Their bodies were hung up and kept there till they were skeletons. Now Americans and Mexicans kill an Apache on sight. I have retaliated with all my might."

"My people have killed Americans and Mexicans and taken their property. Their losses have been greater than mine. I have killed ten white men for every Indian slain, but I know that the whites are many and the Indians are few.  Apaches are growing less every day."

"Why is it that the Apaches wait to die -- that they carry their lives on their fingernails? They roam over the hills and plains and want the heavens to fall on them. The Apaches were once a great nation; they are now but few, and because of this they want to die and so carry their lives on their fingernails."

"I am alone in the world. I want to live in these mountains; I do not want to go to Tularosa. That is a long way off. I have drunk of the waters of the Dragoon Mountains and they have cooled me: I do not want to leave here. Nobody wants peace more than I do. Why shut me up on a reservation? We will make peace; we will keep it faithfully. But let us go around free as Americans do. Let us go wherever we please."