The Murder of Mangas Coloradas
Date: January 18, 1863
Location: Fort McLane, New Mexico Territory
Prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War, the US and the Native tribes of the Southwest had a tumultuous relationship. Thousands of people from the eastern US had begun pouring into the Southwest and into ancestral tribal lands in increasing numbers every year after the Republic of Mexico ceded to the US the territories that made up the American Southwest following the conclusion of the Mexican-American War in 1848. After gold was discovered in 1860 in the Pinos Altos Mountains, an ancestral homeland of the Apache, followed by the horrifically botched Bascom Affair in early 1861, tensions reached a tipping point. The Apache, Comanche, Kiowa, and other tribes began retaliating by attacking forts, army patrols, towns, and wagon trains on their land after enduring years of the killing and enslavement of their people, theft of their livestock and game, and colonizers illegally encroaching on their land. This conflict initially consisted of small ambushes, quick raids, and other elements of guerilla warfare, but grew in size, scale, and regularity following the outbreak of the American Civil War. Among these tribes were the Eastern Chiricahua Apaches, led by their Chief, Mangas Coloradas.
Mangas Coloradas' son (no known photographs exist of Mangas Coloradas)
Born sometime in the 1790's, Mangas had since borne witness to the massive changes the Southwest experienced. He stood about 6 feet and 6 inches tall, which alone was enough to make him a formidable figure, but he was also an extraordinarily gifted warrior, tactician, diplomat, and leader. With enough foresight to realize that individual tribes would not be enough to fight the American incursions into their homeland, he unified the various Apache tribes to drive them out once and for all.
By 1863, Mangas Coloradas and his son-in-law Cochise had won many impressive victories across New Mexico and Arizona, but at a great cost. Many of their warriors and members of the families had died in the fierce fighting against the Confederate Army, the Union Army, and the Mexican Army. Mangas himself was severely wounded fighting against Union forces earlier in July 1862 at Apache Pass. Having fought for so long and having lost so much, Mangas decided to enter into peace talks with the Union Army to finally put an end to the conflict.
Military Governor James Henry Carleton
Military Governor James Henry Carleton, the General of the California Column that defeated the Confederates in Arizona, and now governor of New Mexico, had been informed of Mangas' attempts at peace. He harbored a deep hatred of the Apaches, especially after the Union fiasco at Apache Pass in 1862. In response, he sent General Joseph Rodman West, who also loathed the Apaches, to Fort McLane, not to negotiate, but to capture Mangas and brutally punish the Apaches.
General Joseph Rodman West
On January 17, 1863, Mangas and an escort of 12 warriors arrived at Pinos Altos under the white banner of truce, hopeful that this bloodshed would finally end. As he entered the town, Union soldiers arose from hiding, guns drawn, and surrounded them. Mangas' warriors were allowed to leave to inform the Chiricahuas that Mangas had been captured. They then forced the betrayed old chief to walk 15 miles to Fort McLane. Upon his arrival, he was thrown into an improvised adobe cell with nothing but a blanket to keep him warm on that cold winter night.
Fort McLane/Apache Tejo, c. 1894
West told his guards “Men, that old murderer has got away from every soldier command and has left a trail of blood for 500 miles on the old stage line. I want him dead tomorrow morning. Do you understand? I want him dead.”
The guards obliged. That night, they amused themselves by torturing him, heating up bayonets in a campfire and burning his feet and legs with them. Finally, they shot him to death, under the false pretense that he had tried to escape, and buried him in a shallow grave. West and the soldiers in the fort had been astonished with how tall and built Mangas was, so the next day they dug up his body, cut his head off, boiled the flesh off, and sent his skull to a phrenologist in New York for study.
The Apaches were enraged. Their revered chief went to Pinos Altos in good faith, and he had been betrayed, tortured, murdered, and desecrated. The most unforgivable action, however, was his head being cut off which, according to Apache beliefs, condemned him to wander for eternity in the afterlife without his head.
Geronimo, c. 1886
Carleton's plan to rapidly end the war with the Apache by murdering Mangas and initiating a scorched earth campaign against them had failed. Carleton's controversial administration as Military Governor of the New Mexico Territory ended in 1867, but the long, bitter, and bloody guerilla war he left behind as his legacy continued for decades to come, until Geronimo surrendered to the US Army in 1886.