Indians and Boundaries

Up until 1876 most of Cochise County was occupied by the Chiricahua Indian Reservation which was established in

1872 as part of a peace agreement with the Chiricahua Apaches led by Cochise. They had been battling United States soldiers and settlers since 1861 and this agreement ceded a great deal to them in order to quell the hostilities. This peace agreement was not a signed treaty however like those which had been negotiated with other tribes in previous years. In 1871 Congress enacted legislation that stripped the sovereignty from all Indian nations, recognizing individual Indians, not Tribes, as "wards" of the United States with no power to negotiate treaties. Instead of a reservation being approved by the Senate like a foreign treaty as it had been done in the part, the Chiricahua reservation was enacted by an executive order of President Ulysses S. Grant. Very soon the legal distinctions were apparent. Rather than continually negotiate with the Indian tribes for changes in the reservations, the President could alter the agreements at will. Four years after the Cochise peace settlement, President Grant issued another executive order transferring the reservation into public domain. The Chiricahuas were moved to join four other Apache tribes on a much smaller reservation to the north.

This resettlement in 1876 again stirred up hostilities. Over the next ten years, Geronimo led several Chiricahua escapes from that reservation. In his final campaign in 1885 he left the reservation with a small band of 134 men, women and children. This led to an extensive manhunt by the U.S. Army. After over a year living on the run, Geronimo and his remaining band of 16 men with 17 women and children surrendered. At which time the entire tribe along with the Army's Apache scouts, who had aided in the capture of Geronimo, were loaded into boxcars and sent east to be imprisoned first in Florida, then Alabama and finally Oklahoma. The removal of the Chiricahuas essentially ended the last active Native American “insurrection” in the country. It allowed for the unimpeded settlement and economic development of the area.

The boundaries of the Chiricahua Indian Reservation must have disturbed those who wanted to square the land, put it into the grid township system that was being run across the United States. Looking at the reservation boundaries on a map we see a jarring shape, showing no logical pattern, but looking like a thing of nature, more like a mountain range or a river, rather than a sign of settlement and civilization. Since the reservation boundaries were not marked or fenced, they had to follow natural landmarks so that the Indians and, to a lesser extent the settlers, would know where the boundaries were without consulting a survey map. Visually the appearance of a jagged boundary on a map symbolized what was wild, untamed and uncivilized. Man-made culture was one of straight lines and rectangles. Land maps thus echoed the metaphorical division between the 18th century concept of wilderness (and the Indian) and the straight lines concept of civilization. Maps helped define this opposition, made it look more rational.

During this era in the West boundaries had a certain legal reality. If you were obtaining or settling land then they were important. For the most part however, boundaries did not have a physical importance. You could cross them at will; you transported and grazed your cattle on open lands. This was even true between countries. People flowed back and forth between Mexico and the United States with little thought to international borders. Thus, the grid system could work because it regulated land ownership, not traffic. Only when fences came to be erected were grid boundaries meaningful.

The reservation boundaries were essentially of a different order than other boundary lines at that time. They were extremely important boundaries because they had a disciplinary purpose. Settlers and the railroad were free to cross these borders but for the Indians there could be dire consequences of crossing. William T. Sherman, the Secretary of War, in endorsing the Arizona reservations warned that "if they [the Indians] wander outside they at once become objects of suspicion, liable to be attacked by the troops as hostile."[2]

One possible reason why the Apaches were moved from this reservation is that since it bordered with Mexico it allowed the Apaches to move unchecked across the border and thus it did not have a complete disciplinary boundary.

The county's name makes one ponder the odd incorporation of Indian emblems just as the Indians themselves are removed from the landscape. Cochise had come to a peaceful settlement with the government only a decade before this naming and had died only seven years before. While the names of other Counties in Arizona are, in a number of cases, based on the names of Indian tribes, Cochise is the only county named for an individual. Was this naming to honor an opponent who had killed hundreds of soldiers and settlers? Was it to honor his last few years at peace? Perhaps it was some sort of incorporation of the Indians into society. Or, what seems more likely is that it was chosen as if one chose to name a street Pine Street (often after all the pines are chopped down); the Indians were simply a part of the wild landscape and their names had a detached presence that could be appropriated for symbolic purposes like any other natural elements.

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Footnotes

1. Geronimo: His Own Story. Online at http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/B/geronimo/geroni12.htm (viewed 6/12/2002), p. 12.

2. Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, vol. I, Laws (Compiled to December 1, 1902), Compiled and edited by Charles J. Kappler. (Washington : Government Printing Office, 1904), p. 812. Published online (image of original plus transcript) by the Oklahoma State University Edmon Low Library at http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol1/HTML_files
/ARI0801.html.