“SHADOWS AT DAWN: AN
APACHE MASSACRE AND THE VIOLENCE OF HISTORY” BY KARL JACOBY
This is a mind-opening book which, for the first time in my life,
provides me with some understanding of the complexity—and the horror—of what
went on in the borderlands of the Southwest in the late 19th century
following the annexation of the significant lands captured from Mexico as a
result of the Mexican-American War and the subsequent Gadsden Purchase.
The story is centered on the massacre of 140 Apache Indians in the
Aravaiba Canyon on April 30, 1871 by a combined force of Americans, Mexicans
(Los Vecinos) and other Indian tribes known by a variety of names, including
most simply, the O’odham People.
Jacoby’s history tells the story from the vantage point of each of
these four groups. It tells the
story of development of this Southwestern Territory: the Indian tribes that were there first, hunting and
trapping, sometimes fighting among themselves; their raiding south into
northern Mexico for horses and other livestock; the intrusion of Mexicans into
the Indian lands; the sometimes fighting and the sometimes coming together,
varying over time and by individual; the incursion of the Americans very slowly
but relentlessly; the entry of the Army during the Civil War period and then
its withdrawal and return again; and the emerging and varying Indian policy of
the federal government.
Leading up to this massacre was a “violent vortex of raids and
counter-raids” between the Americans and Apaches. There was the classic disagreement as to whether this
conflict was an inevitable outgrowth of the collision between “civilization”
and “savagery” or could be traced to unfortunate and ultimately avoidable misunderstandings
between Americans and Apaches.
For many, probably the majority of, Americans, there was a view of the
Apaches as savages, unworthy of consideration. A writer for the Arizona
Miner wrote: “Extermination is
our only hope and the sooner the better.”
Another writer: “They must
be surrounded, starved into coming in, surprised or inveigled—by white flags or
any other method, human or divine—and then put to death.”
During the period of the Civil War, the primary conflict in Arizona was
not the North against the South but rather of the Anglos and their Papago/the
People tribes and Mexican allies against Apache peoples. Much of the combat was prosecuted by
civilian groups, sometimes working in concert with whatever Union or
Confederate forces happened to be in power. A visitor to Arizona in the early 1860s was Connecticut-born
Joseph Pratt Allyn. President
Lincoln had nominated him to serve as one of the territory’s first federal
judges. Shortly after his arrival,
he noted the harsh measures of Arizona’s white population toward the Apaches. “(A) war of extermination has in fact
already begun.” A number of Anglos
told Allyn how they had recently invited a group of Apaches to a party. As the Indians were enjoying the food
their host provided, the Americans each fired on a pre-selected member of the
band, killing some 30 Apaches.
Some settlers contributed toward a bounty “for Indian scalps.” The Governor of the territory, John
Goodwin, who had attended Dartmouth College, ironically a school founded to
educate Indian youth, assembled a group with a speech that in Allyn’s words,
“took hold by storm through its powerful advocation of ‘the extermination of
the Indians.’”
There were actions taken following this to move the Apaches to
reservations. That was President
Grant’s policy. But there was the
proviso: Indians who weren’t
prepared to do that were subject to reprisal, clearly including as far as many
Anglos were concerned, their death.
They could find justification for this, as morally corrupt as it is in
hindsight. This became a case
of “tit for tat” though nobody back then would have used those words. Over simplified, Native Americans were
being deprived of land where they had grown food and hunted livestock. Many believed that livestock on the plains
was free to all. So they continued
to claim it even as Anglos saw it as theirs. Confrontation and violence
followed. From incidents like that
came the “rationalization” that the Apaches were, indeed, “savage” and that
firm reprisals against them, up to and including their extermination in the
name of “progress and civilization,” was justified.
The history of the massacre, as it always is, was initially written by
those with social power—the Anglos. An organization (“The Pioneers”) was created
among many of the Anglos who had actually participated in the massacre. It
described it in all-too-predictable way:
“The Apaches had gotten what they deserved”--this even though the camp
was attacked at dawn, with people asleep, and that women and children were
intentionally slaughtered and some taken into captivity.
As time went on, the true story emerged. The history could not be hidden. And there is a small museum that has been created to
commemorate the history of the Apaches and this horrible incident.
There were some Americans who opposed this dehumanization of the Indian
at the time, but they were in the distinct minority, just as was the case with
blacks during the era of slavery—and after—just as was the case with Jews in
Germany, Poland and many other countries where people had been dehumanized and come
to be seen as the “other” to the extent that they could be exterminated without
remorse.
I appreciate how Karl Jacoby ends his book. He writes that “to collapse the stories running through the
Camp Grant Massacre into a single tale of genocide possesses its own
perils. Not because such an
account misstates the violence directed against the Apache, but because it
risks reducing the stories about (the event) into a narrative solely about the
actions and intentions of the incident’s perpetrators. The ability of many of the Apaches to
elude the exterminatory violence directed toward them from the 17th
century onwards and to undertake raids, war parties and peace negotiations of
their own is a no less important story—indeed for the Apache, this tale of
survival is arguably the preeminent narrative to be told about their
past.” While I wouldn’t go as far
as saying that the ability of blacks who were brought to this country as slaves
to have achieved all they have in our country, through courage and sacrifice
and sheer persistence, is the uniquely “preeminent narrative to be told about
their past,” it is one from which to take glory.
Hearkening to the history of slavery in our nation, I’d close with the
closing words of this fine book as Jacoby writes: “What this past asks of us is a willingness to recount ‘all’
our stories—our darkest tales as well as our most inspiring ones—and to ponder
those stories that violence has silenced forever. For until we recognize our shared capacity for inhumanity,
how can we ever hope to tell stories of our mutual humanity?”
Indeed, that is what all the peoples and nations of the world must do;
be honest about its history, its dark moments and its bright moments, to
recognize that no peoples or nation has been perfect; indeed, all of us are
flawed by the flaws of humanity.
From this honest perspective hopefully can come the humility and the
shared recognition of our common humanity that can bring us to live in accord
with our better natures, helping one another, living in peace.
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