Mickey Free: Apache Captive, Interpreter, and Indian Scout / by Allan Radbourne; Additional Research by Joyce L
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data Radbourne, Allan Mickey Free: Apache captive, interpreter, and Indian Scout / by Allan Radbourne; additional research by Joyce L. Jauch. ache Captive, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. nterpreter, and ISBN 0-91003746-9 (alk . paper) 1. Free, Mickey, 1847- 1914. 2. Apache Indians-Biography. 3. Apache Indian Scout Indians- Wars, 1872-1873 . 4. Apache Indians-Wars, 1883-1886. S. Indian captivities-Arizona. 6. Indian scouts-Arizona-Biography. 7. Indian interpreters-Arizona- Biography. I. Jauch , Joyce L. II. Arizona Historical Society. III. Title. by ALLAN RADBOURNE E99.A6F747200S additional research 200504801 6 by JOYCE 1. JAUCH Copyright © 2005, The Arizona Historical Sociery 949 E. Second Street Tucson, Arizona 85719 • CONTENTS INTRODUCTION v-viii SANTA CRUZ TO CEDAR CREEK FOR MARION 2 MICKEY FREE 23 my wife, who for decades has accepted Mickey Free as an invisible lodger in our lives and who continues to support and 3 RIO VERDE TO SAN CARLOS 4S encourage everything I do. 4 INTERPRETER AND INDIAN POLICEMAN 6S S INDIAN SCOUT AND INTERPRETER 87 6 SCOUTING THE MOUNTAIN STRONGHOLDS 107 7 TURKEY CREEK AND FORT APACHE 129 8 THE LAST CAMPAIGN 1 S 1 9 FLORIDA VIA THE WHITE HOUSE 171 10 LAST DAYS OF AN APACHE 19S CAMPAIGNER AFTERWORD 219 NOTES 221 BIBLIOGRAPHY 263 INDEX 277 :.' Hopi Villages Miles F=~;=;~:::';=='=~~O ! I i 80 Kilometers Ft. Defiance· 1 1 • Ft. Wingate I ARIZONA • Holbrook 1 R'~e,. SANTA CRUZ 1 NEW Ft. Whipple. MEXICO to Prescon ° I CEDAR CREEK Ft.McDoweU 1 Phoenix I --(jio Silver City • • Ft. Bayard Willcox I ° I r Lordsburg ~Iv o;'~ ......f: D : ~, ·FL Bowie " f: ~r u"./o,GaleyviIle I C ...r c S Sonoda ".. C' ~ o ~ ~ Cr~.k - • I --......... • om tone ~ T bs I,II ~ ward'st: ~ ~ r Nogales -I Ft Huachuca Lake Santa Cruz...) - -+--lL....,-- Guzman T ~ SONORA Bacerac Casas° Grandes ~ HuactJera to Nacori I " \' Chico "" ,,"Q ~ • • ~ c...,~ Q:- ~ CHIH. ~' r Mop Drown By Ro nald J Beckwith '.j MICKEY FREE SANTA CRUZ TO CEDAR CREEK ickey Free" was the nickname bestowed upon Felix Telles, a By the end of 1858, John Ward had established a ranch (really M young Mexican from Sonora, when he was enlisted at Camp an all-purpose farm for raising stock and crops) in the Sonoita Val 'i; . I", Apache as an Indian Scout in 1872. A dozen years earlier, he had ley. He brought there from Santa Cruz, Jesus Maria Martinez, a been known in southern Arizona as Felix Ward. This transition twenty-eight-year-old single mother and her two children. Born in I of identities led some to believe that he was part Apache. Others 1830, Jesus Maria was the youngest child of Modesto and Car thought he was part Irish. men Martinez. As a sixteen-year-old girl, she had fallen in love with John A. Ward, Mickey's stepfather, was born in Ireland about Santiago Telles, a local boy of the same age, described as "a very 1806. He was one of the hundreds of thousands of Irish men and light Mexican ,vith blue eyes and brown hair." She became pregnant women who left for America in the 1840s and 1850s. Family tradi and gave birth to a son in 1847. Perhaps because of resistance from tion has it that Ward arrived in Arizona from Texas, which suggests Santiago's parents, Juan and Ciriaca Telles, the teenage lovers did not that he traveled over the established emigrant trail to California, marry. They subsequently named their son Felix Telles, demonstrat which passed just north of Santa Cruz, Sonora. ing that the father, whom Felix grew to resemble in appearance, It appears that Ward first went on to the gold country, drawn openly acknowledged his paternity. no doubt by the same dreams that attracted so many other emigrants. About two years later, Santiago Telles married another woman. Charles D. Poston recalled the "sombre colored son of Erin" turn The finality of his act may have led Jesus Maria into the embraces ing up at Tubac on foot from California, seeking food and shelter, of a Senor Rangel. In 1849, she gave birth to a baby girl. Although in the winter of 1857. Poston, who imagined his guest might be Felix's half-sister, Teodora, received Rangel's name, her father soon some sort of fugitive, cautiously extended his hospitality. After disappeared from the scene.4 breakfast the following morning, Poston advised Ward to push on to By this time, Jesus Maria, a nineteen-year-old single mother of Fort Buchanan and the Sonoita Valley, where he might find work. l two, must have been one of the most hard-pressed inhabitants of Evidently, the Irishman acted on Poston's suggestion. "My her crumbling, impoverished hometown, situated on one of the tra father was ... one of the first settlers," Santiago Ward recalled. "He ditional Apache plunder trails at the neglected edge of Sonora's came before the Civil War and hauled lumber from a sawmill in the northern frontier. She had, nevertheless, managed to hold on and to Santa Rita Mountains to the forts and to Tucson. He brought down somehow feed and clothe her children until the opportunity for a the lumber for the old San Augustine church."2 better life appeared in the shape ofJohn Ward. 5 Quite possibly, Ward's employers were the group from Maine While it is almost certain that Jesus Maria and John shared the who Poston reported had begun a lumbering operation in 1857 from same Catholic faith, it is unclear whether they ever had a ceremonial their headquarters at the Canoa ranch on the Santa Cruz River. John wedding. In any event, by living together and declaring themselves Ward's experiences were so similar to other pioneer settlers who man and wife they would have been readily accepted as married in arrived in Arizona after having first tried California that the daughter common law, as were many others in that time and place. Certainly, of one of them could almost be speaking ofWard when she recalled the two children were known by Ward's name, and he and their that her father "first started a ranch." She added that, "he had no cat mother remained together until death parted them.6 tle on the ranch but brought most of them and most of his supplies Over the next couple ofyears , Jesus Maria and her two children from Santa Cruz .... It was while on one of those trips that he met settled comfortably into their new life with John Ward. There was [my mother] ... who lived in Santa Cruz, and he married her."3 plenty to keep them busy, as Teodora helped her mother with the 3 MICKEY FREE SANTA CRUZ TO CEDAR CREEK endless round of household chores that constituted domestic life on toward the Santa Cruz. Next west lay the substantial farm ofWilliam the frontier and Felix worked alongside his stepfather tending the C. Wordsworth, who had come from California with the Ake party stock and crops. Felix had by now grown into a skinny, fair-com and whose 1858 crop of barley, alone, was valued at $5,000. Beyond plexioned' auburn-haired teenager. His appearance, however, was the Wordsworth farm lay B.C. Marshall's 160-acre ranch, previously marred by a blind left eye, probably from an infection in infancy. owned by Texan William R. Thompson. Two miles below Marshall's Ward probably had use for a spare pair of hands when he went for place, Elias Green Peunington ofVirginia farmed with help from his supplies. This gave Felix the opportunity to see Fort Buchanan, dozen sons and daughters. At the point where the creek went under established in 1857, where White & Grainger's, the area's largest ground, New Yorker William Findlay operated a 200-acre ranch, general store, was located. The army post at the head of the valley upon which he and Tennessee native Nathanial Sharp were erecting was only nominally a "fort." In fact, Indians had stolen cattle and a two-story grist mil1.9 horses from the post herd three times between January 13 and 20, John Ward's 160-acre ranch surrounded by oak, willow, and 1859. Nevertheless, its presence was a major factor in attracting cottonwood, and "abundantly supplied with water," stood at the settlers.7 heart of this community. In common with his neighbors, the fifty The Sonoita settlement, the only American farming community three-year Irishman raised two crops a year, barley and then corn in the region, was located along a narrow, wooded valley, watered (maize). He no doubt grew some vegetables, and evidently had an by a shallow creek that rose on the southeastern slope of the Santa orchard, although a much smaller one than that of his neighbor, Rita Mountains and descended southwest from Fort Buchanan to Marshall. Ward ran a small herd of cattle, and apparently raised some the Santa Cruz River. Despite a seasonal tendency to dry up, the sheep or goats. After White & Grainger's store, the nearest sources creek provided a persistent water supply that had attracted Sobaipuri of supply were at Tubac and at Santa Cruz, Sonora, both roughly Indian settlement as far back as the seventeenth century. "The total thirty miles distant by road. length of the Sonoita valley is about 11 miles, its breadth from 50 Ward built his house at the foot of a low hill, on a bluff over feet to half a mile; the sides precipitous and very rough. The road looking the creek. The northwest-facing structure was a substantial winds along the bed of the stream most of the way, between tall cliffs one for its time and place.