their own people who sided with the whites for pay. Without the
Pima scouts he never could have run down the Apaches as he did.
Perhaps these were the hardest of all the Plains Indians to find
and to fight. But in 1872 Crook subdued them and concentrated
them in reservations in Arizona. Ten years later, under Geronimo,
a tribe of the Apaches broke loose and yielded to General Crook
only after a prolonged war. Once again they raided New Mexico and
Arizona in 1885-6. This was the last raid of Geronimo. He was
forced by General Miles to surrender and, together with his chief
warriors, was deported to Fort Pickens in Florida.
In all these savage pitched battles and bloody skirmishes, the
surprises and murderous assaults all over the old range, there
were hundreds of settlers killed, hundreds also of our army men,
including some splendid officers. In the Custer fight alone, on
the Little Big Horn, the Army lost Custer himself, thirteen
commissioned officers, and two hundred and fifty-six enlisted men
killed, with two officers and fifty-one men wounded; a total of
three hundred and twenty-three killed and wounded in one battle.
Custer had in his full column about seven hundred men. The number
of the Indians has been variously estimated. They had perhaps
five thousand men in their villages when they met Custer in this,
the most historic and most ghastly battle of the Plains. It would
be bootless to revive any of the old discussions regarding Custer
and his rash courage. Whether in error or in wisdom, he died, and
gallantly. He and his men helped clear the frontier for those who
were to follow, and the task took its toll. Thus, slowly but
steadily, even though handicapped by a vacillating governmental
policy regarding the Indians, we muddled through these great
Indian wars of the frontier, our soldiers doing their work
splendidly and uncomplainingly, such work as no other body of