Manipulated Into His Own Death

Solving the mystery behind an Apache hunters death overturns assumptions about Apache battlefield behavior.

- Deni J. Seymour

On May 5, 1871, Sgt. John Mott and three others followed Apache footprints, tracking what they thought were the incautious wanderings of an inattentive Apache woman and her mount toward an unsuspecting ranchería. The rocky fringe of the mountainous heights and the boulder-strewn canyon lay before them. These did not register as warning signs because this was a few years before the U.S. Cavalry had learned to fight Chiricahua Apaches.

Scouting across a portion of southeastern Arizona Territory from Camp Lowell, this detachment from Troop F, 3rd Cavalry was searching for Apache trails under the leadership of Lt. Howard B. Cushing.

“He was considered the most successful Indian fighter in the army; brave, energetic and tireless, he followed the foe to their strongholds and there attacked them with vigor and spirit, dealing them blows the savages could not withstand,” Thomas Edwin Farish reported of Cushing in History of Arizona.

Little did Cushing and his men know that they themselves were being stalked by their foe, who were more formidable than this storied Apache hunter had previously encountered.

Heading north from the Huachuca Mountains, the cavalry intended to stay over at the decommissioned Camp Wallen along the Babocomari River. The Apaches, however, had burned the grass, requiring, as intended, that the troops head 12 miles north to Bear Springs in the Whetstone Mountains, the next-nearest reliable water source. Just north of Camp Wallen, seemingly fortuitously, they encountered Apache footprints.

Mott’s small detachment recognized the pending ambush just as they entered a wash. This prematurely snapped trap was followed by an advance of eight men, including Cushing, who found his way into herodom, falling in battle with civilian packer William H. Simpson and Pvt. Martin Green.