Who he was
Mangas Coloradas, a Spanish name usually translated as “red sleeves”, was a leader of the Chihenne (Warm Springs) people, a band of the Chiricahua Apache whose homeland lay in what is now southwestern New Mexico. Many sources also link him to the neighboring Bedonkohe band, and writers differ on how to describe his affiliation. His Apache name is rarely used in English sources.
His birth date is uncertain; he is generally described as an older man by the 1850s, and an estimate in the 1790s is common. He had no office, and his influence came from the respect of many families and from a network of marriages. Cochise is generally said to have married one of his daughters, which tied the Chokonen and Chihenne together.
The Santa Rita country
The copper mine at Santa Rita del Cobre, in the Chihenne homeland, was operated by Spanish and then Mexican interests, and local relations between miners and Apache people alternated between trade and violence. In 1837, according to widely repeated accounts, a trader named James Johnson invited Apache people to a feast near Santa Rita and then fired on them. The details and the number of dead are debated. The episode is often cited as a turning point in relations with Mexican settlements and a sign of how bounties on Apache scalps in Chihuahua affected the border. Mangas Coloradas is generally said to have become a leading figure around that period.
Treaties and the arrival of the United States
After the Mexican-American War of 1846 to 1848, the United States claimed the region. Mangas Coloradas met American officials, and in 1852 he is recorded as a signer of a treaty at Santa Fe that promised friendly relations. Like many treaties with Native nations, it did not settle the underlying question of land and protection, and later Apache treaties and negotiations show similar problems.
Pressure grew with the discovery of gold at Pinos Altos around 1860. Accounts describe miners assaulting Mangas Coloradas, an affront that, according to several sources, hardened relations. Those same sources should be read carefully, since they were written by outsiders later on.
War in the early 1860s
In 1861, after the Bascom affair at Apache Pass, Mangas Coloradas and Cochise joined forces in fighting that closed roads and mines for a time. When Union forces from California arrived in 1862, they set up Fort McLane in the area and began a campaign against Apache bands.
January 1863
In January 1863, Mangas Coloradas, then an old man, went to meet a party of American soldiers and miners under a flag of truce, apparently hoping to make peace. He was taken captive and delivered to Brigadier General Joseph West at Fort McLane. According to accounts that have been widely repeated, West made clear that the old leader should not leave alive. That night, soldiers guarding him killed him, and officers reported he had been shot while trying to escape. Later accounts say his body was mutilated, and that his skull was taken. Because the evidence for particular details is limited and comes from American sources, they are hard to verify, but the basic fact that he was killed while in custody after coming in under a flag of truce is widely accepted by historians.
His death outraged many Apache people and remained a grievance among the Chihenne and Chokonen. Cochise continued the fight, and Mangas Coloradas’s people later followed leaders such as Victorio.
Remembering him
Mangas Coloradas is often called “powerful”, but that adjective can obscure more than it explains. He was a diplomat, a husband and father, and a leader of a community whose way of life depended on a landscape that was being taken from them. His story also shows how little protection a flag of truce offered during this period, and how often Apache leaders were asked to trust promises that officials were unwilling or unable to keep.
Today his descendants and the descendants of the Chihenne are part of Chiricahua communities, including the Fort Sill Apache Tribe in Oklahoma and the Mescalero Apache Tribe in New Mexico. Their own official sources are the best place for current information.