A leader of the Chokonen
Cochise was a leader of the Chokonen, the Chiricahua Apache band whose country centered on the Chiricahua Mountains and nearby ranges of what is now southeastern Arizona. The Chiricahua are one of several Apache peoples, and the Chokonen were one of their four bands.
The title calls him “notorious”, a word that mostly reflects how nineteenth-century newspapers and army officers saw him. This article leaves that label aside and sets out what is reasonably well documented. His birth date is not known with confidence, and sources generally place his early life in the 1800s without giving a firm year. Cochise had no formal office; people followed him because of his judgment and reputation. He was also connected by marriage to Mangas Coloradas, whose daughter he is generally said to have married.
Before 1861
For several years in the late 1850s, accounts describe Cochise’s people as living near the Butterfield Overland Mail route through Apache Pass and as having a workable, if wary, relationship with Americans, with some trade in firewood and other goods. Such accounts come largely from American sources, and they describe a time when the border region was changing quickly as the United States took over from Mexico after the 1848 war and the Gadsden Purchase of 1853.
The Bascom affair
The turning point came in February 1861. A young army officer, Lieutenant George Bascom, was sent to Apache Pass after a raid on a ranch in which a boy, later known as Mickey Free, was taken. Bascom blamed Cochise, invited him to a tent for talks, and then tried to hold him. Cochise cut his way out and escaped. Over the following days both sides seized hostages, and the Americans in Cochise’s hands were killed. The army then hanged several Apache men it was holding, some of them Cochise’s relatives.
Historians generally agree that Cochise was not responsible for the raid that started it, and that the army’s response turned a local misunderstanding into open conflict. This is also why Apache Pass and Fort Bowie, where the army later built a post, are remembered as a landscape of conflict.
Years of war
From 1861 into the early 1870s, Cochise and the Chokonen fought American soldiers and settlers, and were themselves targets of campaigns. Their ties to Chihenne relatives like Mangas Coloradas drew them into wider fighting. Details of specific skirmishes vary between accounts, and many were recorded only from one side. Violence also fell on civilians of several communities, and it is wise to be cautious about claims of exact numbers.
Cochise and his people also moved between the mountains of Arizona and the Sierra Madre of Mexico, and Mexican communities faced raids as well, which is part of the history of Sonora and Chihuahua raids.
The 1872 peace
In 1872 General Oliver O. Howard was sent by President Grant’s administration to negotiate. With help from Tom Jeffords, a man Cochise reportedly trusted, Howard met Cochise in the Dragoon Mountains in the fall of 1872. The agreement created a reservation for the Chokonen that included their homeland in the Chiricahua Mountains, with Jeffords as agent. Accounts of the talks come largely from Howard and others on the American side, so the exact words attributed to Cochise should be treated carefully.
Death and what followed
Cochise died in June 1874. He was reportedly buried in a hidden place in the Dragoon Mountains, and the location has been kept private. His son Taza succeeded him but died in Washington in 1876. In the same year, the government closed the Chiricahua reservation and moved the Chokonen to San Carlos, in a decision made without regard for the 1872 agreement. Cochise’s younger son Naiche later fought alongside Geronimo.
Beyond the label
The picture of Cochise as a fierce enemy who became an honorable friend is a common frame in Westerns and popular histories. A fairer picture is of a leader working in a dangerous and rapidly changing situation, responsible for the safety of his family and band. Today Chiricahua descendants live in the Fort Sill Apache Tribe in Oklahoma and the Mescalero Apache Tribe in New Mexico, and their own official sources are the best place for how they tell this history. Anyone reading older books about him should also keep in mind the problems of reading army reports critically.