A note on the title
The repeated word in the title is a quirk of how it was written. The subject is Cochise, a leader of the Chokonen band of the Chiricahua Apache, and this article is about something other than the facts of his life: how his memory has been shaped, and who has told his story. The outline of his life is covered elsewhere on the site, and only a short reminder is needed here. He led the Chokonen in southeastern Arizona, fought American forces after the events of 1861, and made a peace in 1872 that created a reservation around the Chiricahua Mountains. He died in June 1874.
The first tellers: soldiers and officials
Nearly everything written about Cochise in his own lifetime came from outsiders. Army officers wrote reports, newspapers repeated rumor, and a few Americans who met him wrote memoirs afterward. These sources are valuable but have limits. Reports often describe an Apache leader only when he was a military problem, and not as a husband, father or head of a community. Conversations were conducted through interpreters, so quoted speeches reflect the interpreter’s and recorder’s choices as much as Cochise’s own words.
Officers who met him in 1872 generally described a dignified man of strong presence. Those impressions were then retold many times, and each retelling made the portrait smoother. Readers who want to use these records should keep in mind how to read military sources critically.
From history to legend
By the late nineteenth century, writers on the frontier were fitting Cochise into a familiar story: the fierce enemy who becomes a noble friend. Twentieth-century novels, films and television added a romantic tone, often with invented dialogue and invented plots. The “noble” version is not much kinder than the “savage” one, because both treat him as a figure in a drama about someone else’s expansion. How Apache people have been portrayed in Hollywood film has often followed the same pattern.
A related habit is naming places after Cochise. A county in Arizona carries his name, which is a form of recognition, though it also shows how a person’s name can be taken over by those who displaced his people.
Descendants and Chiricahua memory
Chiricahua descendants hold their own accounts, passed down in families and shaped by the experience that followed 1886, when the Chiricahua as a whole were held as prisoners for decades. Those accounts are not a single voice, and they sometimes differ from each other and from the written record. Some family histories, for example, emphasize relationships and responsibilities rather than battles. They are not offered here in detail, since they belong to the families and nations who hold them, and some knowledge is not shared publicly. The Fort Sill Apache Tribe and the Mescalero Apache Tribe, both with Chiricahua descendants, publish their own information, and that is the place to look for how they choose to describe their history.
A point worth noting: the place where Cochise is buried has long been kept private. Many people see this as a mark of respect for the dead, and it is respectful to leave it that way.
What the 1872 agreement said, and what happened to it
The agreement of 1872 is the most concrete documented outcome of his later life. In outline, the Chokonen were to live on a reservation that included their homeland in the Chiricahua Mountains, and Tom Jeffords, a man Cochise reportedly trusted, was to serve as agent. In return, the Chokonen were to stop fighting. Much about the discussions is known only from American accounts, and the details of what each side understood are debated.
The reservation did not last. After Cochise’s death, the United States closed it in 1876 and moved the Chokonen to San Carlos, in a decision that ended the arrangement made at the table. Many treaties and agreements with Native nations suffered similar fates, a pattern covered in more detail in the discussion of Apache treaties. For the Chokonen, the loss of that homeland shaped what happened over the next decade.
Why the label matters
“Notorious” is an outsider’s word. A careful account would describe Cochise as a leader, a diplomat in his last years, and a person tied to a place and to relatives, and would be open about how many of the sources are one-sided. His descendants today are members of living nations, not characters from a vanished era.