CHAPTER XV.
Apache Signals.—Mode of Marching through Arizona and New Mexico.—Apache Watchfulness and Caution.—The Gila Country.—Grama Grass.—The Information Indispensable for a Successful Campaign against Apaches.—The Smoke Columns.—Pressed Grass.—Bent and Broken Twigs.—Blazed Trees.—Mounted Parties.—The Stone Signals.—Kit Carson.—Comparison between White Men's and Apache Philosophy.—The Present Condition of Apache Armament.—Their Knowledge of Colors, and the Use they make of It.—Their Hatred of all Other Races.—Proofs of their Good Breeding.—Our Indian Policy Discussed.—Apache Want of Sympathy.—How they Obtain their Guns and Ammunition—Extent of their Ravages in Northern Mexico.—Monuments of Apache Massacres in Arizona.—Mines of Arizona.
The experiences of several years had not been ignored. The time which had elapsed between my first and second appearance upon the stage of Indian action had given me opportunity to reflect upon many events, and study their causes, characters, and mechanism of production. Reposing in the midst of civilized security, and altogether freed from the excitement of unseen, deadly perils to which life in the Apache countries is invariably subject, I was enabled to draw more correct conclusions than could have been arrived at on the ground, while compelled to regard personal safety as the first necessity. In this calm and undisturbed survey of the field many circumstances were accounted for which at the time appeared more the result of untoward accident than of well laid schemes founded upon a shrewd knowledge of natural instincts. The pyramidal columns of smoke, so often seen to ascend from mountain heights, had appeared to me as merely warnings of our presence in the
