Cochise was born approximately 1815 and died on a reservation in 1874.
He was a chief of the Chiricahua Apache, a tribe of southwestern Indians. He
was peaceful until wrongfully seized by Lt. George N. Bascom, over stolen
livestock in 1862. He escaped, was wounded in the leg by gunfire, only to have
six of his tribe captured and hanged, including his brother and two nephews.
The wrongful execution of his tribe members by U. S. troops lead him to war.
Over the next ten years he led attacks on white settlements in the Arizona territory.
Many of his attacks were brilliantly conceived but brutal.
Coshise's father-in-law was
Mangas Coloradas, chief of the eastern band of
Chiricahuas known as Mimbreno Apaches. The Apaches killed two of Col. James H. Carlton's
couriers and later attacked his wagon train where Mangas was wounded and taken
to a Mexican town where he recovered. In 1863 Carleton sent General Joseph West,
an Indian hater, to get Mangas who was now in his mid 60's. West's guard killed
Mangas by torturing him with heated bayonets and then shooting him. They cut off
his head and boiled it and the skull ended up in a cabinet at the Smithsonian Institute.
Mutilation was worse than death to an Apache. West invited a group of Mangas's
tribe to a feast and slaughered them as they ate.
Cochise evaded capture for
10 years in the mountains of southeastern Arizona, while conducting hit and run
attacks. After the civil war ended U.S. troops moved against the Apaches warriors
and Cochise was forced to surrender in 1871. He was orderd to take his tribe to
a reservation in the New Mexico Territory. He refused the order and escaped with
several hundred of his tribe. A peace conference was arranged with Commissioner
Oliver Howard of the Freedom's bureau in 1872. See Photo
Cochise who was fatally ill, agreed to remain with his people on a Chiricahua reservation
in southern Arizona where he lived the rest of his life. Cochise told Howard that
he did not think the white man would keep the peace. At Coshise's death in 1874
his son Taza became chief. Later after his death, his brother Naiche became chief
and was with Geronimo when when he surrendered in 1886 and was imprisoned. Naiche
was released in 1894 to the Indian territory and later allowed to return home to
Arizona where he died 8 years later.
Sons of Cochise,Taza and Naiche
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