loyalties. The most important bond led from an Apache mother to her children and on to her grandchildren....Beyond this code of propriety and family obligations, the Apache shared a rich oral history of myths and legends and a legacy of intense religious devotion that touched virtually every aspect of their lives. Cochise assumed leadership of the hostiles. From his stronghold in the Dragoon Mountains of sourthern Arizona, he and about 200 warriors renewed their attacks on white settlements. At this point another US commander, Gen. George Crook, tried a strategy that proved more effective than any firearm-using Apache scouts as diplomats who traveled from band to band, cajoling their kinsmen to move onto federal reservations. Reassured that his people would not be forced to relocate to the dreaded Ft. Tularosa in western New Mexico, but instead could retain their ancestral lands on a reservation in the Chiricahua mountains, Cochise and his followers relented in the fall of 1872. A peaceful interlude for the Apache held until 1875, when the government sought to consolidate all the Apache bands on the San Carlos Reservation along the Gila River. Many independent-minded fighters among the Warm Springs and Chiricahua groups balked at the idea. Leading the Warm Springs renegades was Victorio who fled from San Carlos in September 1877 with more than 300 folowers. Recaptured a month later, he staged another breakout with 80 warriors within a year. Victorio's swift-moving bands crossed the Rio Grande repeatedly-until a sharpshooter killed him in Chihuahua, Mexico in October 1880. Shortly after Victorio's death the appalling conditions on the...
