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PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
all the ammunition they could carry. The clothing and other supplies lost
in the fight
with Crawford had been replaced by blankets and shirts obtained in Mexico.
Lieut.
Maus, with Apache scouts, was camped at the nearest point the hostiles would
agree to
their approaching.
   Even had I been disposed to betray the confidence they placed in me, it
would have
been simply an impossibility to get white troops to that point either by
day or by night
without their knowledge, and had I attempted to do this the whole band would
have
stampeded back to the mountains. So suspicious were they that never more
than from
five to eight of the men came into our camp at one time, and to have attempted
the
arrest of those would have stampeded the others to the mountains. Even after
the march to
Bowie began we were compelled to allow them to scatter. They would not march
in a body,
and had any efforts been made to keep them together they would have broken
for the
mountains. My only hope was to get their confidence on the march through
Kaetena
and other confidential Indians, and finally to put them on the cars, and
until this was done
it was impossible even to disarm them.
                                   GEORGE CROOK, Brigadier-General, Commanding.
                                               WASHINGTON, D. C., April 1,
1886.
GENERAL GEORGE CROOK, Fort Bowie, A. T.
   Your dispatch of March thirty-first received. I do not see what you can
now do
except to concentrate your troops at the best points and give protection
to the people.
Geronimo will undoubtedly enter upon other raids of murder and robbery, and
as the
offensive campaign against him with scouts has failed, would it not be best
to take up
the defensive and give protection to the people and business interests of
Arizona and
New Mexico. The infantry might be stationed by companies at certain points
requiring
protection, and the cavalry patrol between them. You have in your department
forty-
three companies of infantry and forty companies of cavalry, and ought to
be able to do
a good deal with such a force. Please send me a statement of what you contemplate
for
the future.                                         P. H. SHERIDAN, Lieut.-General.
                                                  FORT BOWIE, A. T., April
1, 1886.
LIEUT.-GENERAL P. H. SHERIDAN, Washington, D. C.
   Your dispatch of to-day received. It has been my aim throughout present
opera-
tions to afford the greatest amount of protection to life and property interests,
and
troops have been stationed accordingly. Troops cannot protect property beyond
a radius
of one-half mile from their camp. If offensive movements against the Indians
are not
resumed, they may remain quietly in the mountains for an indefinite time
without crossing
the line, and yet their very presence there will be a constant menace and
require the
troops in the department to be at all times in position to repress sudden
raids, and so
long as any remain out they will form a nucleus for disaffected Indians from
the different
agencies in Arizona and New Mexico to join. That the operations of the scouts
in Mexico
have not proven as successful as was hoped, is due to the enormous difficulties
they have
been compelled to encounter from the nature of the Indians they have been
hunting, and
the character of the country in which they have operated, and of which persons
not
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