Exploring the Superstitions by John Annerino

Author:John Annerino
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510723740
Publisher: Skyhorse
Published: 2017-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

When about two-thirds of the [Apache] band had been killed or maimed by the hail of bullets fired at them [by “the settlers”], the remainder became panic stricken and retreated in the only direction possible—toward the westerly edge of the mountain which on that side, broke off abruptly into sheer cliffs, hundreds of feet high.

Without a moment’s hesitation, the fleeing [Apache] . . . threw themselves over the towering cliffs, in the faint hope of escaping fatal injury. But the leap into space was too great . . . The entire Apache band—some 75 in number [“men, woman, and children”]—were wiped out . . . From that time the Big Picacho—grim and forbidding—has been known as Apache Leap—a most appropriate name, perpetuating, as it does, a tragic incident in the early history of Arizona,” wrote Barney, then recognized as the “unofficial historian for Arizona.”

Historians later scoffed at Barney’s story because there were no official military records, as was case for the April 30, 1871 Camp Grant Massacre when Tucson’s “Committee of Public Safety” killed, scalped, and burned 144 Apache elders, men, women, and children; and the December 28, 1872 Skeleton Cave Massacre when US Troops under the command of General George Crook cut down seventy-six to ninety-six Yavapai elders, men, women, and children cornered in a Salt River Canyon alcove. Moreover, Barney had also written in his Arizona Highways feature: “At daybreak, the settlers made a sudden and determined attack upon the surprised and bewildered Apaches, and wrought terrible havoc among them and their first volleys.” Given the record of Camp Grant, Skeleton Cave, and the 1866 planned “exterminate[ion]” of 123 distant Yavapai by the Arizona Volunteers on the Santa Maria River and Skull Valley, why would unaffiliated “settlers” provide a detailed account of the alleged slaughter of what one San Carlos Apache writer recently wrote was eighty people?

If the barbaric Apache Leap incident wasn’t reported by territorial newspapers, witnesses, and historians, it doesn’t mean the event did not happen. And, if it had been noted or reported, it does not mean it would have been told in the manner in which the incident unfolded. Based on the massacres at Camp Grant, Skeleton Cave, Skull Valley, and elsewhere throughout the territory where, in 1805, Spanish troops under the command of Lieutenant Antonio Narbona annihilated 115 Navajo elders, women, and children hiding in the Cañon del Muerto tributary of Canyon de Chelly, I’m convinced Apache Leap did occur. In the oral tradition of the San Carlos Apache, the tragic, but noble defeat of the Apache standing their ground against all odds is still passed down from one generation to the next 150 years later.

During San Carlos Apache Tribal Chairman Wendsler Nosie Sr.’s November 1, 2007 testimony before the US House Natural Resources Committee regarding “foreign owned mining giants” to open pit mine on sacred Apache ground, he testified: “The escarpment of Apache Leap, which towers above nearby Superior, is also sacred and consecrated ground for our People . . . You

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