Fort Worth Daily Gazette

Gen. Crook Describes Them as the Best Fighters in the World.
[From a New York Herald Interview.]

There is a great difference in fighting Indians and fighting white men. The savages always get in a position where they will be shielded and only fight when they want to, and our soldiers are forced to fight whether they want to or not, and these scouts knew better how to surprise them than our soldiers, for they are intelligent warriors and take advantage of every little circumstance. Every Indian is a general and knows what to do under any circumstances. He knows which is the best position for him and how to take the enemy at a disadvantage. He is always under all conditions perfectly self-possessed, and there is an individuality about him at all times. The soldier is mechanical and part of a great machine and thereby loses his individuality.

If there is a weak point in our line and a lot of Indian boys are in front of us they will drop on that point and make as much out of it as a Caesar, Napoleon or Hannibal could do, for they will do exactly right, and that is all the best generals in the world could do. The Apaches are the shrewdest and best fighters in the world. They will strip themselves and ascend a precipice like a cat, and they will do all this after making "a day's march. During this expedition they danced through one night, to the discomfort of our soldiers, who were trying to sleep, marched all day, and climbed places where a coyote would not. I have known them to run suddenly on a quail and kill it with a stone and run down a wounded antelope. They are just as much smarter than any other Indian as anybody could be. They have wonderfully good eyesight, being able to follow a trail on a starlight night as well as I could in daylight. Evidences of their prowess are visible all through that country, and they and the Mexicans have been fighting for hundreds of years, and upon every hand are to be seen the remains of Pueblo settlements which have evidently been wiped out by these Indians, and it is a tradition among the people of that section that the Apache is unconquerable. Yet they have wiped out every band of Pueblo Indians, except the Moquis and Zunis, whom I am satisfied are the same class of people. I have seen these fellows ambuscade in a place as level as a floor. There was a wagon train in 1871 going out of Arizona into California, with an escort in advance. The Indians saw them coming and ambuscaded in the road, which was perfectly level, with here and there a clump of grass. The Apaches lay upon their stomachs, threw dust over themselves and tied grass in their hair and were passed by their escort unnoticed. After the escort was some distance off, the Indians jumped up and captured the wagons in the rear and killed the teamsters. These fellows take all the chances, whereas other Indians seek a place where they will be safe and shoot the enemy.

Peaches, our principal Apache guide, knows that whole country, and we left everything to him. I was not afraid to trust him, and I believe I am the only man who has used these Indians against each other. I do not know how to describe the way it is done, but I have never met a case of treachery. I have taken these same Indians in a battle who were in open arms against me, and have had them to turn around immediately against their own people. Peaches came in on that raiding party that killed McComas and his wife and took their little boy a prisoner. Just before the expedition started he was brought to me in irons. I took the irons off and he accompanied us and did the most valuable service, for he was the only man who knew the strongholds of the hostiles, and he led us directly into them. Peaches is a full-blooded Apache Indian, and a member of the Chiricahuas band. He had two wives among the Chiricahuas. Peaches did not, of course, know the names of the mountains, and, like all Indians, has no idea of distance as to miles. He computes distance by the day's travel, and that is very uncertain, so that we could not form any idea of how far down we had to go when he put it upon the basis of number of days' travel it would require to bring us to the objective point, as some days we traveled farther than on other days.