Brothers Chihuahua and Ulzana took the lead in their Chokonen community in the most difficult and tragic for all Chiricahua Apaches period, when traditional way of life was collapsing at catastrophic speed, and habitual sources of subsistence and nomadic paths were disappearing. Transition to reservation way of life was fatally inevitable. But the chiefs who understood that still could not give up the usual way of thinking and willy-nilly rushed from side to side under conditions of the most contradicting information and constantly changing circumstances of period of change. Pride of the leaders of great warriors who terrified population of the whole South-West of the United States and North-West of Mexico came into irreconcilable conflict with necessity to yield to methodical unstoppable dominance of "white-eyed" newcomers for the sake of saving lives of their people in the new and unfamiliar world. In such circumstances, these natural born warriors sometimes decide to abandon their habitual life and enlist to American army, and sometimes they give under the new conditions and burden of threats (either real or false), and try to escape looking for a nook where they can live a "normal" life. They do not know yet that they have no place to go, and any escape is the beginning of hopeless bloodletting war, and they cannot win this war despite their fantastic war mastery allowing them to inflict losses on the enemy dozens times more than their own losses.
Chain of circumstances (which mainly were beyond their control) led them to the catastrophe — to loss of all tribal lands, total eviction to the East of the US, and death of the majority of fellow tribesmen from new unknown diseases. But they were fighting as long as they could bring themselves to believe that they can preserve their own world and way of life.
At the same time, these leaders bore the heaviest load on their shoulders: responsibility for the dozens of their people and their future ancestors whose destiny was in their hands. Having lost the last hope, they resolutely resigned to their fate, accepted quarter-century captivity and brought their people through it doing everything they could to relieve their suffering and to enable the fastest transition to the farmers' way of life that was absolutely new for them.
Scrupulous analysis of the events of the last Apache war which, owing to mass media, was called "Geronimo's Campaign" shows that the major part of the most dramatic events is linked to names of Chihuahua and Ulzana-Josanie. That is how actions of these chiefs and their warriors were evaluated by Henry W. Daly who personally took part in the events of 1885-86:
«I suppose I do not exaggerate at all when I say that 95 per cent of the people killed during "Geronimo's Campaign" met their death from Chihuahua and two dozens of his "Cossacks of the Sierra Madre" [8, 470].And no matter that their names are not even mentioned in many famous dictionaries and encyclopedias dedicated to American Indians; they forever remain in the memory of their descendants, which is clearly seen from the books of the researchers of the 20th Century based on memoirs of Apaches themselves.
Chief Chihuahua portrait
Bibliography
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Additional Materials:
Sweeney E.R. Chuhuahua of the Chiricahuas. — Wild West, Aug. 2000
Aranda D.D. Josanie – Apache Warrior. — True West, June 1976