Chief Victorio of the Chiricahua Apache: The Lone Wolf
Chief Victorio chief of the Chihenne band of the Chiricahua Apaches was known as one of the fiercest of the Apache fighters in the late 1800s. Known as Bidu-ya or Beduiat by the Apache, and Lone Wolf by many of the soldiers who fought against him, Victorio was born in 1825 in the Black Range of New Mexico. There were rumors that he was part Mexican, but no written or oral record exists to support them.
As a young man in the 1850s, he rode with Nana and Geronimo on raids into northern Mexico. He joined Mangas Colorado, and in 1863, after Mangas was betrayed and executed by the white authorities, became leader of the eastern Chiricahua and Mescaleros.
San Carlos Indian Reservation
When the government ordered Apaches to move to the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona in 1877 to make room for expanding white settlements, Victoria at first complied. Continued broken government promises and refusal to allow his people access to their ancestral lands caused Victorio to take some 300 warriors and bolt the reservation in April 1877 and flee to Mexico. From his ‘refuge’ in Mexico’s Chihuahua State, Victoria conducted deadly raids into the United States, killing many white settlers as well as US cavalry soldiers stationed in the area to protect the settlers.
Victorio’s War
Many of his battles were with the black soldiers of the US 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments, stationed along the border in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona to control raiding Apache and Comanche bands, and protect the white settlements in the region. They were also skirmishes with groups of Texas Rangers in the border region. In his anger against the whites, Victorio and his warriors often mutilated the soldiers they killed in battle, In one incident, the bodies of 9th Cavalry troopers were staked out and scalped.
While the mutilations were gruesome, the treatment of the native tribes was strong provocation. Local whites often killed Apaches to collect and sell their scalps to Mexican traders. The scalp of a child, for instance, sold for $15. In addition, the Indians were prohibited from carrying weapons on the reservation and were not allowed to hunt in their traditional manner, because whites objected to having armed Indians around.
Conditions on the San Carlos Reservation were bleak. Food was scarce, and disease was common. Having been deported from their traditional lands, the Apache were basically penned up like animals in a zoo, without the level of treatment and kindness normally shown zoo animals. This treatment, along with the repeated repudiation of treaties by the government sent many Apaches, including Cochise and Victorio, on the path of war.
Victorio and his warriors met their fate in the mountainous haven in Chihuahua, when Colonel Joaquin Terrazas, leader of Chihuahua’s militia and his men surrounded and slaughtered them. Only the women and children survived the attack, and were captured and held prisoner in Chihuahua City for several years; some of them were subsequently exiled to Florida along with Geronimo.
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