Native Chiefs & Leaders: Cochise

Published May 20, 2014    By Partnership

I think a lot about what Cochise had to absorb as a Native American… the deceit and mistrust, the treachery by both the U.S.  and Mexico at the time.  I think about how his family members were killed with seeming impunity. There was violence from all sides – but it seemed to start with Cochise feeling that his people were not considered equals or deserving to share this world equally as co-habitants with other human beings, including the whites.  I think too about something Cochise said later in life:

Nobody wants peace more than I do. Why shut me up on a reservation? We will make peace; we will keep it faithfully. But let us go around free as Americans do. Let us go wherever we please.

These words resounded with me. They speak to the notion of freedom… the freedom to live as you please… the freedom to flourish and share in the same privileges enjoyed by others.  They speak to simply being human and wanting to be treated as such. And what a great irony that the very troops who sparked the violence against Cochise and his family and denied their freedom left to fight against slavery for the Union.

It has been stated that Apache do not choose their leaders. They recognize them for their leadership traits – and it seems evident that Cochise possessed every valuable trait for leadership. A Chiricahua Apache chief, Cochise lived in what is now southern Arizona and New Mexico.  It is unclear when he was born, but by most accounts it was sometime between 1812-1815. Described as physically well built and standing roughly 6 feet tall, Cochise was taller than most other Apache and this too attributed to his becoming a leader among his people.

Little is known about his early life, but in 1861 a pivotal event occurred that would make Cochise very well-known among his contemporaries and to history. That February Apache raided a farm, took some cattle and kidnapped a young boy. Cochise and his band of Chiricahuas were blamed, and wrongly. When Cochise went to meet with the commanding officer Lieutenant George Bascom, he took members with him as a sign of trust members of his own family. But, Lieutenant Bascom still believed Cochise was responsible and held Cochise and his family hostage pending an admission of guilt. Cochise escaped by cutting through the tent with his knife.  Ultimately, Cochise’s brother and three other relatives were hung; his wife and son were spared.

This incident left Cochise with a bitter hatred for the Americans.  He could not understand why they thought he was lying and why they were so quick to react with grisly violence rather than diplomacy. It sparked many years of conflict with the United States.  When U.S. troops abandoned the military posts in Cochise’s territory to fight in the Civil War , Cochise fought to keep whites from entering his homelands.  He felt that only trouble could come from allowing whites to occupy the land the Apache called home.

In 1865 after the war, the violence escalated and the U.S. and Mexico, both trying to decimate the Apache, hunted them down.  It was a war of extermination to dispossess the Apache homelands in the Southwest. Not until 1871 did Cochise surrender, and only then when told the Apache could remain on their homeland. The Chiracahua Apache reservation was formed in 1872 and Cochise lived there for two years until his death in June 1874.