The Battle of Cibecue Creek was an engagement of the Apache Wars, fought in August 1881 between the United States and White Mountain Apaches in Arizona, at Cibecue Creek on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation. After an army expedition of scouts, U.S. Army soldiers 'arrested' a prominent Cibecue Apache medicine man named Nock-ay-det-klinne. The U.S. Army soldiers were taking Nock-ay-det-klinné back to the fort when they were ambushed by Apache warriors. During the conflict, the U.S. Army soldiers killed Nock-ay-det-klinné. Most of the 23 Apache scouts mutinied, in the largest such action of its kind in U.S. history. The soldiers retreated to Fort Apache. The following day, the White Mountain Apache mounted a counter-attack. The events sparked general unrest and led to White Mountain Apache warriors leaving the Fort Apache Indian Reservation to join forces with the Apache leader of the Bedonkohe band of Chiricahua Apache named Goyąąłé (Wise man), better known as Geronimo.
Background Nock-ay-det-klinne was a respected Cibecue Apache medicine man and was chief of the Cañon Creek band of the Cibecue Apache, a group of the Western Apache. He often counseled leading warriors such as Cochise and Geronimo. Due to corruption and unhealthy conditions at the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in eastern Arizona, Nock-ay-det-klinne began holding ceremonies known as ghost dances at the village of Cibecue. It was part of a late-19th-century spiritual revival among Native Americans struggling to deal with the disruption of their societies as they were pushed onto reservations. The ceremonies often included heavy drinking and the use of hallucinogenic plants, such as peyote. Through them, the Apache expressed and united under their discontent with conditions of reservation life. The American settlers of the region grew alarmed about the dances, which they thought were related to preparations for war. The Army came to investigate the situation and remove the medicine man from his followers.
The soldiers stationed at Fort Apache included Troops D and E, 6th Cavalry; Company D, 12th Infantry; and Company A, Indian scouts. Captain Edmund Clarence Hentig was transferred to Fort Apache in 1876. He was the captain and commanded company D.Captain Hentig's biography Second Lieutenant Thomas Cruse commanded Company A. Of his 25 scouts, 12 were from Chief Pedro's band and 13 were Cibecue Apache; Nock-ay-det-klinne was one of their own chiefs and medicine men. With the permission of the military, the scouts serving with the troops often attended Nock-ay-det-klinne's dances near Fort Apache.
Cruse later wrote,
After the medicine dances began around the post, I noticed a change. Generally, they [the scouts] are very ready to communicate anything they know or may have seen, but after these dances, they became very uncommunicative and would not tell anything that was going on among the other Indians or among themselves. One morning, the rumor was brought to me that they had told the engineer at the saw mill that they were going to clean out the post and have it for themselves. I could not find out who made the remark from the scouts on inquiry. Formerly, they had hung about the men's kitchens and quarters and would talk about themselves and their chiefs and all matters, but after these dances, they became changed to such an extent that all noticed it. On asking them, however, I could obtain no information.
Around August 10, Colonel Eugene Asa Carr asked Cruse for his opinion of the loyalty of the scouts. Cruse replied, "he entirely distrusted his scouts in event of the rising of the White Mountains [Apache] and believed all or nearly all would go with the enemy and recommended their discharge." Cruse had noticed their changes in attitude and conduct. He also told Carr that the main participants in any local uprising would be friends and relatives of the scouts, and even if the scouts did not turn against the military, they would be of no use in conflict. Most officers at the post and Sam Bowman had the same opinion.
On August 13, Carr telegraphed the departmental headquarters:
It is the general impression here that the men of the Indian scout company will go with their friends if they break out. Please give me authority to discharge them or such of them as I may believe unreliable and enlist reliable ones in their places.
Permission was granted for the discharge, but the telegraph line went down before Carr received it. He did not hear from the department for two and a half weeks, after his troops and he had returned from being ambushed at the Cibecue.
Routinely every Sunday morning, the officers inspected the scout company. Carr directed Cruse to take the scouts' guns after the August 14 inspection. Cruse was to tell the scouts that he would keep their arms in his office to protect them from the rain. The guns were regularly kept in the orderly room; the officers issued them only to men on herd duty, soldiers and scouts sent out on detached service, and to all men on Saturday evenings for Sunday morning inspections. The scouts took the removal of the guns as a sign of distrust, but Cruse tried to have the interpreter smooth the matter over, and thought they were satisfied.
Carr decided to take his cavalry and Cruse's scouts to the Cibecue and leave the infantry at Fort Apache. He did not feel comfortable bringing the scouts, but had little choice. Later, he said, "I had to take the chances. They were enlisted men of my command, for duty; and I could not have found the medicine man without them. I deemed it better also if they should prove unfaithful it should not occur at the post [where there were officers' families, white civilians, and government property]."
On Sunday morning, August 28, shortly after the scout Chapeau returned to Fort Apache without Nock-ay-det-klinne, Carr told Cruse to let the scouts keep their guns after their inspection and to prepare to leave the next morning to arrest the medicine man. John Byrnes, a Dublin-born Irishman assigned to Company A, knew of the respect the Apache scouts had for Nock-ay-det-klinne and was alarmed. Byrnes warned Cruse that the scouts should not be armed, as they could not be trusted. Byrnes had earlier counseled Carr against permitting the scouts to keep their guns. Cruse told Byrnes he was acting under Carr's orders.
Leaving Fort Apache About 10:00 am the next day, Carr left Fort Apache with five officers, 79 enlisted soldiers from Troops D and E, 6th Cavalry, and 23 scouts from Company A, to make the arrest. Cruse took Byrnes as his guide. Carr also took Charles Hurrle, interpreter; Charles "Nat" Nobles, chief packer; one cargador, the principal assistant to the chief packer; four packers; and Clark Carr the ten year old son of the commander. Sixty soldiers, mostly of Company D, 12th Infantry, and several civilians remained at Fort Apache, with Major Cochran in command of the post. Just before they left. Carr scribbled a message for General Willcox: "I sent word to Nock-ay-det-klinne that l wanted to see him. He does not seem likely to come and I am searching for his place on Cibicue to try to catch him." Because the telegraph line was down, Willcox did not receive the message until three days later. It was not generally known that an expedition to Nock-ay-det-klinne's camp was planned. Carr had been secretive about the purpose and destination of the march. The scouts were not told which way to go until the force was moving out. After they were notified they were going out on a march, the scouts suspected the destination was the Cibecue.
After the column crossed the White River, just outside Fort Apache, and reached the mesa on the other side, some Apaches living along the river rode up and spoke to the scouts. Carr called these natives and the scouts together and told them where the command was going and what he was going to do. He said he was not going to hurt Nock-ay-det-klinne, but wanted him to come in with him. He told the curious natives to go and tell their friends not to be alarmed, as he was not going to bother them and there would be no trouble. Stanton was ordered out on a scout under Colonel Eugene A. Carr, directed to go to Cibecue Creek and arrest the medicine man. The command arrested the Indian, then camped for the night on Cibecue Creek, despite the general excitement the operation had aroused among Apache followers of the medicine man.
Carr took the Verde Trail to the Cibecue. Although this was the shortest route, the trail was rough, passing through mountainous country covered mostly with timber. The trail may have been boggy at places, but the region was then in the third day of a nine-day period without rain. On the first day, Carr and his battalion traveled about 29 miles. They were winding through deep canyons with rocky sides. They camped for the night in a canyon where the trail crossed Carrizo Creek. That evening, after supper, Carr issued each scout 20 rounds of ammunition.
I called them around my tent and had a long talk with them. Told them I had sent for the medicine man to talk to him about the reports that he had said the whites would leave the country when the corn was ripe and etc. Mose [1st Sergeant of Company A] manfully defended his friend, but finally gave in to the idea that when there is a misunderstanding between friends they should talk it over. He then volunteered to go in advance and tell Nock-ay-det-klinne what was the object of the expedition. I told him he could do as he pleased; that I had sent once for the medicine man and he did not come, and now I was going to bring him; that I was not going to hurt him, but to show him that he must come when sent for. That if he had not said these things, he would be released at once; but that if he had, he and the Indians must be made to understand that they were not true – The whites were going to stay and etc. I then showed them the comet through my glass. Nock-ay-det-klinne had told me July 15th in reply to a question on the previous comet, that he had raised that comet. Perhaps these Indians thought that this was my comet. ... I had also told him [Mose] and all the scouts to tell all the Indians they should meet, that my only mission was to get Nock-ay-det-klinne and that he would not be hurt and no others would be interfered with.
Ambush avoided
About one and a half miles from the Cibecue and three miles from Nock-ay-det-klinne's village, a trail branched from the Verde Trail. This secondary trail ran diagonally up the valley, across high, open ground, through a grassy slope that stretched from the hills to the timber along the Cibecue. It was the shorter route to Nock-ay-det-klinne's village. From this fork, the Verde Trail crossed rocky and rolling country directly to Cibecue Creek. The place where it crossed the creek was known as the Verde Crossing.
On the other side of the creek, another secondary trail ran up the creek, just outside the bushes and undergrowth of the creek bottom, to Nock-ay-det-klinne's lodge. In this area, cornfields were scattered about in the creek bottom. Where the Indians had not cleared the bottom for cultivation, there was brush. In many places, it was thick. The banks of the creek, which were sometimes steep, extended 10 to 12 feet above the creek bottom, on top of which was an open plain with a scattering of junipers, but no heavy timber or thick bushes. Carr later described the creek as "a small mountain stream, across which you can jump in many places, and step in some; and the brushy bottom does not average one hundred yards in width."