About the title
The repeated word in the title is a typing error, and “the Tribe” is too loose a phrase, because the people at the center of this story were one Chiricahua group, the Chokonen, led by Cochise, together with their relatives and neighbours. The subject here is a single episode from February 1861, known as the Bascom affair, and what it can show about how relations between Chiricahua bands and the United States broke down.
Before 1861
The Chokonen lived in the mountains of southeastern Arizona, including the country around Apache Pass, a gap between ranges on a route used by travelers. In the late 1850s a stage line crossed the pass, and a small station was built there. Accounts of the years before 1861 suggest that Cochise and the Americans in the area were not at open war. Some sources describe him as supplying wood to the station. Those accounts rest on a limited number of records, and historians interpret them with caution.
The accusation
In late January 1861 a raid took place on a ranch in the Sonoita Valley, and a boy, the stepson of the rancher John Ward, was taken. He is known today as Felix Ward, and later as Mickey Free. The Army at Fort Buchanan sent Lieutenant George Bascom, who was young and inexperienced, with roughly fifty to sixty soldiers to recover the boy. Local people had blamed Chiricahua Apache for the raid.
Bascom camped at Apache Pass and invited Cochise to a meeting in a tent in early February. Cochise came with several relatives. Bascom told him he was holding him until the boy was returned. Cochise denied involvement. He cut his way out of the tent and escaped, wounded, while some of those with him were held. Many later accounts concluded the raid was actually carried out by a Western Apache group, not by Cochise’s people. Historians still discuss the question of who was responsible, and the facts are not fully settled.
Hostages, killings and a rescue effort
After the escape, Cochise sought to exchange captives. His people seized several Americans, and Bascom refused a deal that did not include the boy, whom Cochise did not have. A surgeon, Bernard Irwin, led a party from another post to help. Days later the bodies of the American captives were found. In response, in mid-February 1861, the Army hanged six Apache men it was holding at Apache Pass, among them relatives of Cochise. Accounts of exactly who died, and in what order, differ slightly between sources.
Two features of the episode are worth noting. First, it began on a charge that the Army could not prove against the person it was aimed at. Second, a parley under what Cochise understood as peaceful terms turned into an attempted arrest. This is why many Chiricahua and later historians regard the event as a breach of faith, and why the Army’s version, which blamed Cochise for the deaths, has been questioned.
After 1861
The Civil War soon drew troops away from the Southwest, and Fort Buchanan was abandoned in the summer of 1861. In 1862 a column of California troops fought with Apache forces at Apache Pass and the Army established Fort Bowie to hold the place, a site covered in the history of Apache Pass and Fort Bowie. The Chokonen leader Cochise and his father-in-law, the Chihenne leader Mangas Coloradas, are generally described as having fought together during these years. Mangas Coloradas was seized and killed in Army custody in January 1863. These events strengthened the distrust created in 1861.
Fighting and raiding in southern Arizona continued for roughly a decade. Settler and Apache families on both sides lost relatives. In 1872 General Oliver O. Howard, working with Thomas Jeffords, a man whom Cochise respected, reached an agreement with Cochise for a reservation in the Chiricahua Mountains. Cochise died in 1874. The reservation was closed in 1876, and the Chiricahua were moved to San Carlos, a step that set up later conflicts.
Lessons historians draw
Scholars often point to the Bascom affair as an example of how local decisions by junior officers, based on rumor, could set off major consequences. It is also an example of how little the Americans understood the difference between Apache groups: the Chokonen, the Western Apache and others were separate, and punishing one for the acts of another was both unjust and likely to widen the conflict.
It is important not to treat the incident as the single cause of what followed. Pressure on land, mining, competition for water, earlier violence and relations with Mexico also shaped events. The Bascom affair is best understood as one decisive moment within a longer breakdown, which later became part of what is now called the Apache Wars.
Remembering the event
Descriptions of this episode in Army reports, newspapers and later memoirs often present only one side. Apache oral accounts and historical research by Apache scholars give a fuller picture. Anyone wishing to learn more can start with the websites and cultural programs of nations such as the Fort Sill Apache Tribe and the Mescalero Apache Tribe, along with the San Carlos and White Mountain Apache communities, which each speak about their own histories; Chiricahua descendants are citizens of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe and the Mescalero Apache Tribe, among others.