A Dog's History of America: How Our Best Friend Explored, Conquered, and Settled a Continent by Mark Derr
Author:Mark Derr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bisac Code: HIS000000; HIS029000; HIS036000; PET004000; PET000000; PET010000
ISBN: 9781468309102
Publisher: The Overlook Press
Published: 2013-12-20T00:00:00+00:00
In 1886, his name synonymous with butchery on both sides of the border, Geronimo was tracked down for the last time in Mexico and persuaded to trust his fate to the notorious Indian fighter Bear Coat Miles. Miles had made his reputation hounding Chief Joseph and the Nez Percé with such tenacity that they had to surrender or die of exhaustion and hunger, and tracking down Sitting Bull and his Sioux following Little Bighorn, and he was ambitious for higher command. He had been ordered to Arizona specifically to run Geronimo and other Apache warriors to ground.
Bear Coat Miles did save Geronimo from hanging, a fate demanded by Americans, including President Grover Cleveland, frightened out of their wits by tales of his depredations. Miles ordered him sent with his small band from Fort Bowie—the bulk of Chiricahua and other Apaches were shipped from Fort Apache at Holbrook, Arizona—into exile in Florida, the men to Fort Pickens in Pensacola, the women and children to the sixteenth-century Fort Marion in St. Augustine. They were separated for more than a year before being reunited. Both forts were hot, dank, mosquito-infested places antipodal to the arid mountains the tribe had called home for more than a thousand years.
Several months after Geronimo’s surrender, Mangas, son of the great chief Mangas Coloradas—sometimes spelled “Mangus”—and the last free Chiricahua followed suit and were soon sent into exile from Fort Apache. Anglo-American soldiers and civilians there and in Holbrook considered the thousands of dogs of the 382 Indians major pests. The dogs regularly invaded the telegraph office and other buildings, stole food, and marauded around town. In the fort, they disrupted the evening dress parade with their play and noise. Disgruntled soldiers and citizens finally adopted the tactic of tying tin cans on their tails, so they would know of their approach. Judging from the New York model, the cans were also intended to embarrass the dogs enough to make them behave. The dogs were distressed, as were the people, both sides knowing they were to be split apart forever, and nothing could be done.
The late Ed Dorn, in his epic comic-book poem Recollections of Gran Apacheria, vividly captured the grief of the Chiricahua Apache dogs when their people were loaded into a train bound for exile and death.
As the train moves off at the first turn of the wheel
With its cargo of florida bound exiles
Most all of whom had been put bodily
Into the coaches, their 3,000 dogs,
Who had followed them like a grand party
To the railhead at Holbrook Began to cry
When they saw the smoking creature resonate
With their masters,
And as the máquina acquired speed they howled and moaned
A frightening noise from their great mass
And some of them followed the cars
For forty miles
Before they fell away in exhaustion 12
A hint of what happened next comes from Charles Fletcher Lummis, an editor for the Los Angeles Daily Times, covering the hunt for Geronimo in 1885 –86, which had become a national obsession. Lummis described the departure of Geronimo’s wife,
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