Kelly Martindale’s voice imposed itself on Jenny’s mental images of home. “Now, just suppose,” she said, “that one morning someone showed up at your house and said that what you had always thought of as yours wasn’t yours at all. Supposing they said you couldn’t live there anymore because someone else wanted to live there instead. Supposing they said you’d have to pack up and go live somewhere else. What would you think then?”
In times past, Jenny would have been the first to raise her hand, the first to answer. But she had found that being the sheriff’s daughter came with a downside. Other kids had begun to tease her, telling her she thought she was smart and a show-off all because her mother was sheriff. Now, in hopes of fitting in and going unnoticed, she tended to wait to be called on rather than volunteering. Cassie Parks suffered no such qualms.
“It sounds like what the Germans did to the Jews,” she said with a shudder.
Kelly nodded. “It does, doesn’t it? But it’s also what the United States government did to Indian tribes all over this country. And the reason I know about it, is that very thing happened to my great, great, grandmother when she was just a little girl—about your age. Her people—the Apaches—had lived here for generations—right here in the Chiricahuas, the Dos Cabezas Mountains, and in the surrounding valleys. When the Whites came and the Apaches tried to defend their lands, there was a war. The Apaches lost that war and they were shipped off to a place called Fort Sill, Oklahoma. My great, great grandmother was sent there, too. Although she and her family were prisoners, she somehow fell in love with one of the soldiers guarding the camp. They got married, and she went to live with him back east in Arkansas. But that’s why I’m here in Arizona. It’s also why I’m a history major. I’m trying to find out more about my people—about who they were, where they came from, and what happened to them.”
“For example, this place.” Kelly raised her hand and swept it around the tree-dotted basin where they were camped. “During the Apache Wars, this place was the site of a good deal of fighting mostly because up there—in the canyon—there’s a spring. Wagon trains came through here for that very reason—because of the availability of water. In the 1850’s Nachi, Cochise’s father, attacked one of those trains. Thirty people were killed and/or mutilated. Two of the women were sold down in Mexico. But you have to remember, as far as the Apaches were concerned, they were defending their homeland from unwelcome invaders.
“In later years, the dirt road we followed coming up here from the highway was the route for the Butterfield Stage Line. There were several fierce battles waged around the Apache Pass Stage Stop. During one of those battles, Mangas Coloradas, another Apache chief whose name in English means Red Sleeves, was shot and seriously wounded. In the next few days, as we explore this area, I want you to remember that, to some of us, Apache Pass is just as much a sacred battlefield as places like Gettysburg in Pennsylvania or the Normandy beaches in France are to other people.”
“Will we find arrowheads?” Dawn Gaxiola asked.
“Possibly,” Kelly replied. “But arrowheads won’t necessarily be from the time of the Apache Wars. By then, bows and arrows were pretty much passé. The U.S. soldiers had access to guns and gunpowder, and so did the Indians.”
“What about scalping?” Dora Matthews asked. For the first time she seemed somewhat interested in what was being said. “Did the Indians do a lot of that?”
“There was cruelty and mutilation on both sides,” Kelly answered. “A few minutes ago, I mentioned Mangas Coloradas. When Red Sleeves was finally captured, the soldiers who were supposedly guarding him tortured him and then shot him in cold blood. Mangas was big—six foot six. After he was dead, the soldiers scalped him, cut off his head, and then boiled it so they could send his skull to a phrenologist back east who claimed his head was bigger than Daniel Webster’s.
“Yuck!” Dawn said with a shudder. “And what about that other thing you said earlier—a friendologist or something. What’s that?”
“Phrenologist, not friend,” Kelly corrected. “Phrenology was a supposed science that’s now considered bogus. During the 1880s, phrenologists believed they could tell how people would behave by studying the size and shape of their heads.
“But getting back to the Apaches, you have to remember that history books are usually written by the winners. That’s why Indians always end up being the bad guys while the U.S. soldiers who turned the various tribes out of their native lands are regarded as heroes or martyrs.”
“You mean like General Custer?” Cassie asked.