Massai and The Apache Kid
©Lee Paul

They were not close friends, these sons of the Apache Nation, yet they knew each other well…at times, banding together for survival. Trapped in a white man’s world they came to hate, each lived a lifestyle which had been his heritage for centuries. Hunted and pursued, they left death and despair wherever they went. Travelers and ranchers lived in fear of their names, and the United States Army did everything it could to track them down. It was to no avail. No one really knows their true fate, but there are rumors galore. Perhaps each died as he was born…free, a warrior to his last breath.

In 1942, George David Hendricks undertook a project to catalogue all the major outlaws of the West. By his estimation, there were some two hundred fifty with a median birth date at about 1850. Nearly all were veterans of the Civil War, having enlisted as teenagers, and ninety-five percent of them were ex-Confederate soldiers. All came West because they could not cope with peacetime. Although Hendricks’s study concentrated on the white population, it is interesting to note that much of his hypothesis holds true for the renegade Apaches who inhabited the giant chunk of Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico known as Apacheria.

History records the first people in Arizona to be as early as 15,000 years ago. They came from a hunting culture that extended across the Great Plains and moved in seasonal migrations according to the food chain. Somewhere between 1300 - 1500, the Athabaskan culture from west-central Canada arrived. They were never a unified group, but they did follow the nomadic lifestyle of their predecessors. The group that stayed along the Colorado Plateau became classified as "Apaches de Navabu," and those to the south and east became the "Apaches," after a Zuni word meaning "enemies." These two groups had tribal distinctions, but they shared a common trait, so the early Spanish called their lands "Apacheria." It was not until the early 1800’s that these two mortal enemies of each other received the designations by which they are known today.

In 1736, a fantastic silver strike drew thousands of Spaniards to an area near Nogales, which the Indians called Arizonac. It got shortened around 1850 to Arizona, and when the Gadsden Purchase set the international boundary with Mexico in 1854, politicians chose the name "Arizona" for the name of the territory. Throughout the 1840’s, most visitors to the land just thought of it as something to cross to get to California. The Indians were hostile, but not totally at war. Most Apaches did not like the Anglos trespassing in their hunting grounds, but they would tolerate it to a degree. Cochise even supplied wood for the white man. It all began to change in 1849.

The California Gold Rush brought thousands of people to Apacheria on their way to the gold fields. Some stayed to prospect in Arizona, tolerated only with increasing hostility by the natives who lived there. By the mid-1850’s, with the California gold boom winding down, tens of thousands of prospectors turned their sights on Arizona, each determined to seek their fortune. Farmers and ranchers followed to cash in on the market provided by the new mining camps and Army posts springing up everywhere. The Apaches revolted, and atrocities resulted on both sides, as each tried to drive out the other. With the betrayal of Cochise in February 1861, and the murder of his father-in-law, Mangas Coloradas, in January 1863, Cochise went on the war path. Geronimo, who had joined with Cochise upon the death of Mangas Coloradas, would soon become the most famous renegade in Southwest history.

Cochise used the distraction caused by the Civil War to invade and destroy whole towns and settlements. Nothing escaped his vengeance. At one point, he even burned Tubac to the ground. His war lasted twelve years. During that time, he tortured his captives to death by slow fire, scalped and mutilated others, and stole women and children for slaves. By the end of the Civil War, he had southeast Arizona in such an uproar that control of the hostile Apaches proved to be the new territory’s most serious problem.

The Apaches took every means possible to defend their lands from encroachment, and it was not long before they had a reputation as the most fierce tribe in the entire Southwest. By 1870, the United States government finally realized that a military solution was not going to work, that the only way to control the Apaches was to move them all to one place where rules could be enforced. They decide to round up all the Indians and place them on reservations, attempting to teach them to farm and raise livestock. Even after a peace was established with Cochise in 1873, the Army continued to press for the reservation system. What they forgot, or conveniently ignored, was that the Apaches were traditional enemies with many tribes, even with other bands of Apaches. The situation was intolerable, and many warriors broke out. Chihuahua, Loco, Geronimo [pictured, photo taken in 1885], Naiche, Mangus, Victorio, and Nana were only a few to leave for the freedom they cherished, and all but Victorio, who was killed, ended up prisoners of war. But there were two skilled warriors who sought freedom and were never caught. Called renegade and hostile by the Army, these "bronco Apaches" were Ma-Si and Haskay-Bay-Nay-Ntayl, alias The Apache Kid.

The legend surrounding Massai is truly strange. History records one version; his daughter tells another. There is no way to know which is correct, if either. That he was a true son of Geronimo’s way of thinking is probably true, and recorded history is hard to ignore. He did raid in and around the San Carlos area, yet his daughter would later claim the facts to be all wrong. There is no real way to establish the truth.

It is believed that Massai was born just over the Arizona border in New Mexico, since he frequented that area when he was loose, and his birth date can be estimated anywhere from 1850-1860. He certainly knew the great leaders of Victorio, Nana, and Mangas Coloradas, and he also knew Cochise, Geronimo, and other leaders in the Arizona bands. His legend claims he did not trust the white man, and he particularly abhorred anything to do with the reservation system, especially those Apaches who seemed to think it was a good idea. It was no surprise to find him among the missing warriors in May 1885 when Geronimo fled San Carlos for Mexico. For the next sixteen months, he raided on both sides of the border as a trusted lieutenant in Geronimo’s army. Whether or not he was with Josanie (Ulzana) on the Great Raid of November 1885 is cause for conjecture. By the end of December, Josanie and his band had killed about forty people, many of them Apaches still on the reservation. They also wore out about two hundred and fifty horses and mules and, although Josanie was twice dismounted and several times near capture, they all escaped back into Mexico to rejoin Geronimo, with the loss of only one man, who had been wounded and abandoned along the trail to fend for himself. It would ultimately take some five thousand troops, five hundred Indian auxiliaries, and an unknown number of civilians to effect Geronimo’s surrender. Five days after the 3 September 1886 surrender, Massai was among the Chiricahua Apaches put on the train to Florida.

Massai had other plans. He was bitterly opposed at being shipped out of the land of his birth, and even as the train pulled away from Fort Bowie Station, he was already formulating his escape. On the train was a young woman about to give birth. Massai reasoned that if the child could be born along the journey, he could gain freedom, as the head tally would then match when the train reached its destination.

Luckily for Massai, travel was slow. The train was often shunted to sidings to allow for the passage of other trains, and after several days, the careful watch of the guards relaxed. The guards still took a head tally every few hours, but the unpleasant conditions in the cars caused them to be less than thorough. When the young mother gave birth, she was able to hide her child, and the guards did not notice.

Somewhere near Springfield, Missouri, Massai saw his chance. The train was once again detoured to a siding, allowing a circus train to pass, and as all the Apaches and guards went to one side to see the brightly colored circus cars and the animals, Massai slipped unnoticed from the other side of the train. He crawled off into the weeds and hid until the train resumed its journey. When the guards once again took a head count, the tally still matched. No one missed Massai, except the Apaches, and they did not tell. When the train reached Florida, the head tally matched, but the warrior tally did not. The hunt began for Massai, but it was too late. Massai was loose.

Haskay-Bay-Nay-Ntayl was born around 1860 in the wilderness near present-day Globe, Arizona. A White Mountain Apache, his family were members of Capitan Chiquito’s band, all closely related to and friendly with Eskiminzin, chief of the Pinal and Aravaipa Apache. They all lived in the wild and ruggedly beautiful country along the Gila River known as the Aravaipa Canyon. It had running springs and streams, wooded canyons, lush grazing, plentiful game, and awe-inspiring sandstone cliffs…a virtual paradise on earth to all who called it home. No one ever expected it to end like the biblical Garden of Eden, but no one reckoned on the snake, either, otherwise known as the white man.

In December 1872, President Ulysses Grant established the San Carlos Indian Reservation northeast of Globe. Globe would come into prominence as a mining camp in 1873, when a prospector would find a globe-shaped boulder of almost pure silver weighing in excess of seventy pounds. The establishment of San Carlos was meant to keep the Apaches under control, while the whites went about "civilizing" the countryside. Lieutenant Britton Davis, upon seeing San Carlos for the first time, called it "Hell’s Forty Acres." He described it as "a gravelly flat in the confluence of the Gila and San Carlos Rivers." The land "rose thirty feet above the river bottoms and was dotted here and there by the drab adobe buildings of the Agency. Scrawny, dejected lines of scattered cottonwoods, shrunken, almost leafless, marked the course of the stream. Rain was so infrequent that it took on the semblance of a phenomenon when it came at all. Almost continuously dry, hot, dusty and gravel-laden winds swept the plain, denuding it of every vestige of vegetation. In summer a temperature of 110 degrees in the shade was cool weather." On his first night at San Carlos, Davis had to sleep on the ground without a tent, and when rolling up his bedding in the morning, he discovered a ten-inch centipede had been sleeping with him.

When the army under General Crook began to round up the scattered Apache tribes and locate them at San Carlos, the Apaches took off like quail in the brush. One sergeant, Clay Beauford, had the unpleasant task of bringing in the band of Capitan Chiquito. Has-kay-bay-nay-ntayl, finding himself stuck on a desolate reservation for the first time in his life, after living a free and wild existence in the Aravaipa, had to find other means of self-fulfillment. By 1875, he had turned toward more rewarding pursuits by hanging around Globe and the Agency, doing all sorts of odd jobs, as he adjusted to his new life.

By all accounts, Has-kay-bay-nay-ntayl was friendly and trustworthy, even claiming that one day he would be chief. The cowboys, miners, and military people took a great liking to him, and unable to pronounce his Apache name, called him simply "the Apache kid." He even adopted the white man’s style of dress, preferring jeans and boots over the more traditional Apache breech-clout and moccasins. It seems ironic that this highly-thought-of young man would achieve the most notoriety as one of the greatest enigmas in United States history.

Kid took a great liking to the flamboyant Clay Beauford, an ex-Confederate soldier who had resigned from the Army to become chief of the San Carlos police. Beauford was kind and gentle, having a great capacity for laughter and patience. He was also nobody’s fool. Recognizing Kid’s eagerness to learn to be an advantage to the Army, Beauford allowed the youth to tag along everywhere. He taught the boy English and made him the camp mascot. Everyone knew and liked Kid.

It is not known exactly when the Kid became a scout for the Army, but it must have been when he was still a teenager. Al Sieber, Chief of Scouts, took a great interest in him. Sieber was Apache smart, and he recognized in Kid the qualities of a natural-born leader. Ensuring that Kid’s leadership qualities would benefit the Army and not someone like Geronimo, he hired Kid as a scout, and for the next few years, Kid excelled in that capacity. In 1883, Sergeant Kid accompanied General Crook into the Sierra Madres, and he was again with the General in the 1886 campaign against the notorious Geronimo. By the time of the Battle of Big Dry Wash in July 1882, he was known as First Sergeant Kid, Indian Scout. This would be the last major battle between the Apaches and the United States on Arizona soil.

Kid seemed to have it made. Everyone liked him, and by becoming an Army scout, he seemed to have found a way to fit into the white society while still maintaining his position among his own people. Al Sieber even thought of him as one of his most trusted scouts, but Al Sieber, like other Anglos, forgot the Apache laws of Kid’s heritage. Simple in theory, but rigid in practice, these laws allowed for every Apache to be governed fairly by his own people. According to Apache law, a wronged person had the right to settle the matter on a personal basis, and Kid’s personal basis was the death of his father, Toga-de-Chuz. It was to be the linchpin in an otherwise promising career.

According to the writings of Lt. Britton Davis, Toga-de-Chuz was an Apache "secret scout," one of seven scouts enlisted for "intelligence work." Such a job was considered dangerous, as it could go badly for secret scouts if the wrong people found out. It was the job of the secret scout to report to the Army of any indication of discontent among the Indians living on the reservation. Since it could be difficult to know whom to trust, the secret scouts would often report directly to an Army officer, rather than go through an interpreter. In 1883, Chato and Benito were on a killing spree, and rumor had spread to San Carlos that they were planning an attack on the reservation. Under cover of darkness, Toga-de-Chuz sought out Davis, already in bed, announced himself as a secret scout and reported that Chiricahuas were in the camp about twelve miles upriver from the Agency. Davis promptly mustered his men and investigated.

The intruder turned out to be Tzoe, a White Mountain Apache married to a Chiricahua woman, who had sneaked into camp to check on his family. Although it was not the dreaded attack expected from Chato or Bonito, it is no less important for the role Toga-de-Chuz played that night. Indeed, it seems to reinforce that Kid’s father was a secret scout for the Army, and this may be another reason why Kid was eager to become a scout himself. After Davis captured Tzoe, the Indian would agree to scout for the Army rather than serve a term in the guardhouse. He became famous as "Peaches," so-called because of his fair complexion.

In 1886, Togo-de-Chuz was murdered by Gon-zizzie. Although his friends had immediately caught and killed Gon-zizzie, there was still the problem of Rip, Gon-zizzie’s brother. Rip and Toga-de-Chuz had been rivals for the same Indian girl, Kid’s mother, and when Toga-de-Chuz had won her heart and hand, Rip had carried a hatred ever after. Kid was one of many who suspected Rip had put Gon-zizzie up to killing his father, and tribal law, which carried with it the mandate of a religious duty, required a son to exact blood vengeance for his father’s death. Kid had already asked for permission to leave the reservation to pursue the killer and had been denied. When Al Sieber left Kid in charge of the guardhouse at San Carlos in late May 1887, Kid seized the opportunity to exact Apache justice on Rip with one shot through the heart.

What followed was predictable pandemonium. Returning to San Carlos, Sieber found Kid and four other scouts missing. He ordered them to come in, and when they were sentenced to the guardhouse, all hell broke loose. Someone in the crowd fired a shot, and Kid, the four friends, and twelve others fled under a barrage of lead. Sieber himself said that Kid had not fired a weapon. Neither did the other four scouts. During the foray, however, Sieber’s left ankle was shattered, and when he realized he would be crippled for the rest of his life, his tune changed.

A few weeks later, Kid and his band peacefully surrendered, but during the court martial which followed, Kid and the four scouts, two of whom were his half-brothers Margy and As-ki-say-la-ha, were found guilty of "Mutiny, in violation of the 22^nd Article of War" and "Desertion in violation of the 47^th Article of War." They received death sentences. General Nelson Miles intervened, later writing in his memoirs that Kid and the others did not fully understand the seriousness of their deed in relation to their enlistment in the Army, that according to Apache custom, the Kid’s vengeance on the enemy was not important. General Miles got the sentences reduced. Kid drew ten years in federal prison, and he and the four others were escorted to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where they were then transferred to Alcatraz in San Francisco, California.

A military review of the case occurred in April 1888. By this time, Kid and his friends had been incarcerated almost a year and were mighty displeased with white laws. The review board decided the jurors at Kid’s trial had been prejudiced against the Apaches, and in October, Kid and the four scouts were back at San Carlos. Kid was no longer his exuberant self, however. He was now wary and distrustful and took to living on the outer fringes of the reservation where he kept to himself. When the Supreme Court decision known as the United States vs. Captain Jack further decreed that Indians convicted in the territories should serve their sentences in territorial prisons instead of federal prisons, and which caused an Apache named Nah-Deiz-Az, otherwise known as the Carlisle Kid, who had killed an Army officer on San Carlos in March 1887, to be returned to San Carlos from federal prison in Illinois, the civilian and military authorities decided to round up all the Indians accused of crimes and retry all of them in territorial court. By today’s standards, this would be highly illegal.

At the time of the roundup of all Indians accused of crimes, Al Sieber had been on crutches a year. He held Kid responsible, even though Kid was not the one who had shot him. Furthermore, Kid was now living a peaceful existence, minding his own business, being what the Army referred to as a "good reservation Indian." Nevertheless, Sieber made sure Apache Kid was on the list. Kid went to trial for "attempting to kill Al Sieber." He drew seven years in the territorial prison in Yuma. Nah-Deiz-Az, often confused with the Apache Kid, probably because they were both called "Kid," received the death sentence.

Al Sieber was a strange man, but one of the best "Apache men" among the whites. He was born in Germany in 1844, emigrating to Lancaster, Pennsylvania with his family. By the time he was seventeen, the family was farming in Minnesota. He enlisted in the 1st Minnesota Volunteer Infantry and participated in many of the principal battles of the Civil War, including Gettysburg, where he was wounded.

Sieber thrived in the dangerous life of the military. When mustered out at the end of the War in 1865, he headed west. Known to be hard-drinking with a fierce temper, he was also known to be generous and highly thought of by the early Arizona pioneers, perhaps in part because of his efficient and quick way of handling Indian problems. He thought nothing of killing any Indian who got in his way, and anyone who served under him soon came to do as he did without any hesitations. He was a man of great bravery and physical endurance, and he easily spoke the language of the several Apache tribes. When Crook began organizing against the Apaches, Sieber quickly gained the reputation of being the best chief of scouts who ever served in Arizona. Why he went after Kid with such vengeance is a complete mystery, but there is little doubt that it was his persecution which turned Kid into one of the West’s most notorious outlaws.

After the territorial retrial, eight Indian convicts and one Mexican horse thief were summarily put on the stage from Globe to the Southern Pacific railroad station at Casa Grande, bound for Yuma. On the second day out, a few miles out from Riverside at the steep Kelvin Grade, Sheriff Glenn Reynolds ordered everyone out of the coach, except Kid and one other whom he considered too dangerous. Trudging up the hill, the Apache prisoners slowly managed to encircle the sheriff and Deputy William "Hunkydory" Holmes. Since Holmes had heart trouble, Sheriff Reynolds stood little chance against the desperate prisoners. He was quickly overpowered and shot dead with his own weapon, and Holmes apparently died of a heart attack after a short struggle before he, too, was shot.

Eugene Middleton, the coach driver, had no inkling of trouble, until he heard the shots. He turned to the side. The Mexican prisoner raced along the coach and shouted a warning, but unable to speak much English, he finally darted into the bushes to save himself. Middleton looked back over his shoulder, down the hill, and was horrified to see the Apaches loose. He took a bullet through his cheek, which exited out his neck, leaving a horrible wound. Stunned and temporarily paralyzed, he fell to the ground and watched helplessly as two Apaches approached, one with a big rock and the other with a gun. Until his death in 1929, Middleton would insist that it was the Apache Kid who saved his life, that Kid called off the attack.

Throughout the massacre, Kid had remained in the coach. It was his companions who did the actual killing, but after the way he had been treated by the white man, he had every reason to suspect he would be blamed. He scattered into the brush with the others.

The Mexican horse thief managed to snag one of the coach horses, and he rode furiously to Florence, Arizona, to summon help. He would receive a pardon for his reward. The seriously wounded Middleton recovered from his paralysis and somehow managed to stagger back to Riverside Station to sound the alarm. The largest manhunt in the history of Arizona had now begun.

Unknown to the citizens of Arizona, they now had two renegade and very dangerous Apaches on the loose, Massai and the Apache Kid. Massai had managed to elude the roundup of renegades in 1889, so he was never tried and sentenced to Yuma prison, but he was still in the area and raiding randomly for his supplies. Kid, having scouted all over the territory during his years with the Army, was most adept at avoiding recapture. The legends surrounding these two Apaches would mingle from this point forward, their lives and stories intertwining, often making it impossible to separate the facts. It is known that both of them stayed for a number of years in the general vicinity of the San Carlos reservation, each having family members there, but when pursued, they always headed into the rugged wilderness of the mountains.

Massai, once he escaped from the train taking the Apaches to prison in Florida, somehow managed to travel the 1,500 miles back to his homeland. His daughter, Alberta Begay, would claim that he was a peaceful man, a Chiricahua Apache, son of White Cloud and Little Star, born at Mescal Mountain, somewhere west of the Mescalero Apache country in New Mexico. Where exactly that this is located is not known, but it most probably lies west of San Andreas Mountains, as she mentions this mountain range in her writings, and possibly in the San Mateo range, as this is where Massai would later roam. She got this information from her mother, who was Massai’s second wife, a Mescalero Apache girl named Zanagoliche. Although there is no reason to deny any part of the story Alberta tells, some of her narrative contradicts some established facts.

According to Alberta Begay, Massai’s best friend was a Tonkawa lad named Gray Lizard, and the two trained together to become warriors. Sometime after the death of Cochise, Geronimo visited the village, recruiting warriors to join with him. The two youths wanted to join Geronimo, but the old warrior wanted two years to gather and store food for the fighting he knew would come.

Massai and Gray Lizard began to prepare as Geronimo ordered. They obtained pack animals and journeyed west, eventually reaching a high range where they could look out and see the ocean. They found a cave and began to hunt, preparing the meat and hides for the journey home. When they returned to the village, they learned that Geronimo had gone to Ojo Caliente, where he had been arrested and taken to San Carlos. The two youths also were arrested and sent to San Carlos.

At San Carlos, Massai married a Chiricahua girl and had two children, paying for his wife with horses in the Apache custom. When Geronimo took his warriors and left camp, Massai remained with his family. It was customary for a member of each family to visit the Agency each week for supplies. When orders demanded that everybody come to the Agency, the Indians became suspicious, but they did as directed. They were herded like cattle into a corral, and then put into wagons and hauled north to Holbrook, in Navajo country. There, there were driven onto the train and shipped to Florida.

Massai and Gray Lizard were in the same car. Massai’s wife knew she could not escape with them because of the children, but she urged Massai to try it. For three days, the two men worked to loosen the bars, and on the fourth day, they made good their escape. It is not known how long it took them to get back to the Rio Pecos, but it was a long journey filled with almost constant hunger and thirst. When they crossed Capitan Gap and saw Sierra Blanca, they knew they were almost home. Several days later, the two parted at Three Rivers, never to see each other again.

Massai was now a loner. He had been welcomed at the Mescalero Reservation, as was Apache custom, but he trusted no one, not even his fellow Apaches. He was soon raiding against the white man, for whom he had a great hatred. He roamed over New Mexico, Arizona, and into the Sierra Madres of Mexico. No one in his path was safe. Although he had managed to elude the Apache renegade roundup in 1889, he was plunged into the aftermath by virtue of remaining free. At one point, craving female companionship, he stole a young Apache woman from San Carlos by killing her mother. He then fled into the Chiricahua Mountains. A detachment of troops led by the famous scout Mickey Free were soon in pursuit, but the hunt was in vain. Massai crossed the Chiricahua mountain range on a trail which had been unknown to the white man at that time. The place where he crossed has since been known as Massai Point. He later released the girl, and she returned to her family.

Massai remained in the area straddling the Arizona - New Mexico border, hunting with bow and arrow to conceal his presence. When he could bear the loneliness no longer, he stole a Mescalero girl, Zanagoliche, crossed the Malpais, and headed into the San Andreas Mountains. After a week of travel, he reached his village at Mescal Mountain and married her, a ceremony unopposed by the Apache because it was presumed he would never see his prisoner wife and children again.

By October 1890, all fugitives from the Kelvin Grade Massacre were either captured or dead, except the Apache Kid. He roamed alone and sometimes with Massai. Every murder, ambush, and rape in Arizona Territory was blamed on them, and rewards totaling $5,000 were offered on Apache Kid alone, dead or alive.

Of the two, Massai has been touted as the most dangerous. Having a sort of Jekyll and Hyde personality, he was totally unpredictable. He let his first kidnapped victim go, snatched another, and killed her when he found himself trapped by twenty Apache scouts. He raided on both sides of the border and up into the Mogollon and Black Range of New Mexico. Always, he killed on sight and took what provisions he wanted.

Between the years of 1890 - 1906, numerous reports circulated that both Massai and the Apache Kid were dead. John Horton Slaughter, Wallapai Clark, Jack Ganzhorn, and Mickey Free all claimed to have killed the Kid, while a New Mexico posse said they got Massai. One or the other of the two renegades was said to have been found dead in a cave, killed in a cornfield, ambushed at a waterhole, shot off his horse, or brought down by Mexican rurales, yet no one ever produced a body or collected a reward.

What really happened to these two sons of the Apache Nation? No one is really sure. Between 1887 and 1889, a renegade Apache killed one Apache woman, wounded two others, stole a young squaw off the San Carlos reservation, and killed a Mexican woodcutter near Globe. He is presumed to be Massai. Between 1890 and 1900, this same Indian is credited with all sorts of depredations on the white man, mostly along the Arizona - New Mexico corridor. In 1901, the Apache Kid was credited for the death of a prospector in Deep Creek north of Mogollon in New Mexico, but this is most probably Massai. More raids followed in the same general area in 1902, 1903, and 1905, again probably masterminded by Massai.

In early September 1906, a New Mexico posse determined to put an end to the depredations. They followed a trail of stolen horses along the north rim of Wild Horse Canyon, across Alamosa Creek, and up a canyon that headed northeast up the San Mateo Divide. On the morning of 6 September 1906, they ambushed two Indians at the head of San Juan Canyon. The first Indian fell to the ground with three bullet holes over his heart, and the second escaped, although there were blood splatters on the rocks. Later, a skeleton was found in an aspen thicket less than a half mile away and was presumed to be the other Indian, but no one could be really sure. In searching for the Indians’ camp, the posse discovered the tracks of one adult. They also uncovered evidence of children. They presumed the adult to be female, and although they followed the tracks, they were never able to catch the person. Two days later, they abandoned the chase.

Later in the afternoon of the first day, a line rider for the Red River Land and Cattle Company received an unexpected visitor. An Apache woman appeared, pointing at the cold biscuits on the stove. The rider let her have them, and the next morning the posse appeared. They searched all around the cabin and found where children had been hidden in a pinon thicket, but they could not catch her. Several days later, she was spotted raiding the garbage behind a hotel in San Marcial. The Army was notified and they finally captured the woman, who said she was the wife of Massai. She said white men had killed Massai at the head of San Juan Canyon in the San Mateo Mountains and that she was trying to obtain food for herself and her children. She claimed the white men had chased her for two days, and she was very tired and hungry. Placed under guard, she somehow managed to escape and make her way to the Mescalero Reservation, where she told the agent her story. The agent sent an officer to San Marcial to retrieve her children.

As odd as this story is, it does not end here. At the death of the Indian killed at the head of San Juan Canyon, the raiding, which had been ongoing through the Mogollon, Black Range, and San Mateo Mountains for seventeen years, suddenly stopped. It was also claimed that the head of the Indian was brought in and cleaned for a journey to the Fraternal Hall of Skull and Bones at Yale University, rather than collect any reward. It is supposed to have finally ended up at the Smithsonian Institution. It was so identified because the skull contained a gold tooth Massai was supposed to have obtained as a student at Carlisle Barracks Indian School in Pennsylvania. The real problem with this is that Massai never went to school in Pennsylvania…or anywhere else, for that matter. Neither did the Apache Kid, and this same story has been attached to his legend. However, the Carlisle Kid, Nah-Deiz-Az, did go to school at the Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania, only he had been tried and convicted and hanged in the 1889 roundup of the renegades.

If Massai was not the Indian killed by the sheriff’s posse in 1906, how does one explain the complete disappearance of Massai after that date? Alberta Begay said the family fled Mescal Mountain and camped in the back country, as Massai was fearful that they might soon be discovered. He had killed a man two days earlier, only he had failed to capture the man’s horse, and knowing the riderless animal would set a posse on his trail, he had taken his family and fled. He issued instructions that if anything should happen to him, the family was to go to the Mescalero Reservation, which was the home of Zanagoliche. The next morning when he and his son Albert went to check on the horses, shots rang out. Massai was never seen alive again by his family.

Albert saw his father fall and heard him cry out, telling him to run. He skirted the hillside, staying to the rocks so the white man could not trail him, and returned to his family with the news that Massai was dead. Before Zanagoliche would agree to leave, she insisted on making sure. She and Albert waited until the white men were gone, and when it was deemed safe enough, they visited the site where Albert said Massai had been shot. She found the remains of a big campfire, and upon stirring the ashes, she unearthed several pieces of bone and a charred belt buckle, which she recognized as belonging to her husband. She and Albert dug a small hole and buried the bones, and then the family made their way to San Marcial, where they were eventually taken into custody by the Army and sent to the Mescalero Reservation.

As for the Apache Kid, he got accused of every murder, rape, and robbery in Arizona Territory between 1889 and 1894. Even his detractors admitted that he would have been some kind of miracle man to be in all those places at once. He certainly knew the country, and he had a large network of friends and family to help keep him supplied. An Apache woman who joined him for a brief time later reported that he traveled mostly at night, preferring to hole up during daylight to scan the countryside through binoculars.

Mickey Free admitted to trailing Kid for three months, and brought back a piece of decomposed skin to Al Sieber as proof the Kid was dead. The skin bore the mark of a faint "W," which had been tattooed on the forehead of all San Carlos warriors before the identification tag system took effect. Approximately one hundred young warriors had this done before the practice was discontinued, yet every photograph of the Kid does not show this mark. Further, none of his scout enlistment records have been filled in, indicating if there were any "Scars or Marks found upon the person of a Recruit will be here noted." Nevertheless, Mickey Free, who knew the Kid personally, said he had a tattoo, and several others also mentioned it, even if the Army did not consider it a "scar or mark" to be noted. It can only be presumed that the blue reservation tannin ink did not show up well in the photographic processing.

John Horton Slaughter also claimed he killed the Kid. He said he shot the Apache in the Sierra Madres, but kept quiet because he had crossed the international boundary and did not want to get himself into trouble with authorities. Wallapai Clark insisted he killed Kid at his corral. Bloody tracks led away from the scene, and Clark was convinced Kid had crawled away to die. The claim from the Mexican rurales stems from the death of three renegade Apaches in 1899 in which Sheriff Glenn Reynolds’ pistol and watch were recovered from one of the bodies. Since it was presumed the Kid would have kept these items from the Kelvin Grade Massacre, rumors circulated that the Kid was dead. The fact that the dead Indian was an old man with long white hair was conveniently omitted in the translation.

By 1893, the reward for the Kid was up to $5,000. That summer, he revealed his presence on the San Carlos reservation by stealing the youngest wife of Tonto Bill. He was positively identified by the children of the captive woman, who knew Kid well. They reported him armed with a Winchester, having two belts of cartridges, and he was also equipped with field glasses. Although Tonto Bill and several other men took to Kid’s trail, they never caught up with him. Kid was known to return frequently to the reservation for recruits, and often he would steal young women, who would later be returned after they wore out. The long and tiresome travel was most fatiguing, and along with normal camp duties, the women were also compelled to stand guard at night while the Kid and his companions slept. With long days filled with travel and chores and short nights filled with standing watch and little sleep, the intolerable work necessitated women of unusual physical endurance. Kid had to changed them out frequently.

In 1894, Kid appeared to a former scout named Montgomery at a place called Cherry Creek near San Carlos and asked if there was still a reward out for him. He also asked about Al Sieber. When told that he was still wanted, he mounted his horse and rode south. He was described as being "stout, five feet eight or nine inches in height; has shrunken very much in flesh and had lost his erect carriage formerly so noticeable; his eyes are deep-sunken…he wears his hair cut short-cropped off just below the ears. He was dressed in a pair of gray overalls, a dirty woolen shirt, wore a hat, and shoes instead of moccasins. Anyone not well acquainted with the notorious outlaw, meeting him on the trail, would be apt to pass him by with only casual notice, taking him for a Mexican."

In 1924, Kid’s nephew, Private Joe Adley, who was assigned to a detachment of Indian scouts at Fort Huachuca, confided to John H. Healy, then a lieutenant in the Tenth Cavalry, that Apache Kid was still alive in Mexico. This was pretty much substantiated by Guadalupe Fimbres Muñoz, who was captured when she was fifteen in a surprise attack on Apache Juan’s stronghold in the Sierra Madres in 1915. She had been one of the trail guards for the Apaches and had sounded the warning which had allowed the other members of the band to escape. Initially, many thought she was the granddaughter of Geronimo, yet others said her father was Apache Juan, but Lupe, as she was called, would claim that her father was the Apache Kid. This was years later, after she had learned the Mexican language and had learned to trust her adopted family. She had no reason to lie about her identity. She was born in the Sierra Madres after her mother came across the line with Apache Juan’s band. The Kid did prefer to spend most of his time in the San Carlos area where most of his family, friends, and his first wife and family resided, but after the encounter with Montgomery, he ceased to be seen around the reservation any longer. Shortly before the turn of the century, reports placed him in various places, either in Sonora or in Arizona, but mostly in the Yaqui Valley of the Sierra Madres in Mexico. Colonel Kosterlitsky of the Mexican rurales declared the Kid to be the leader of a small settlement of well-behaved Apaches, renegades from the United States, in the Sierra Madres in Chihuahua.

What really happened to the Apache Kid? No one knows. Did he go into Mexico where he either joined a few remnants of Geronimo’s band, who were never captured, or where he might have become part of the Cochise Apaches led by Niño Cochise, grandson of Cochise? It would appear so.  He very probably died in Mexico with these last few holdouts of the old, free Apache way of life. Oddly, Niño Cochise, born in 1874, son of Taza, and who fled as a two-year-old into Mexico with his mother during the roundup to place all Apaches on the reservation at San Carlos, and who became chief of the Cochise Apaches when he was sixteen, did not like the Apache Kid, but he did trust him. Niño died in 1972, and in chronicling his life’s story, he admitted that he did not want any bronco Apaches to become part of the band because he feared retribution from authorities on both sides of the border, who would stop at nothing to hunt the renegades down. But Niño did trust the Kid enough to provide for him each time he came into camp. Niño’s mother was well acquainted with the Kid, and although Mickey Free came into camp several times seeking the Kid, no one ever revealed that the Kid had been there or where he had gone. On the other hand, Niño never really trusted Mickey Free.

What did Al Sieber really think of the Kid? It’s hard to say. He knew the Kid had not tried to kill him, yet he swore out a complaint to have the Kid bound over for territorial trial. The question is why? Was the Kid wrongly framed? Almost certainly he was. He had already served a sentence in Alcatraz and been set free, so he would not have understood why he was again put on trial. The betrayal he must have felt would have been deep, yet he was still not like the bloodthirsty Massai, or he would not have spared Eugene Middleton’s life. Did he become part of the "Nameless Ones," as Niño Cochise said his people referred to themselves? Probably. He is known to have gone into the Sierra Madres and disappeared. Whatever his fate, he is a legend now.

Massai and the Apache Kid are enigmas in the history of the Old West. When the white man’s law said each should not take retribution into his own hands, each embarked on a one-man reign of terror throughout Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico, running up a total of killings that has not been fully reckoned to this day. Who did what atrocity? No one knows, but they are forever linked by their time and their culture as true sons of an Apache Nation no white man has ever really come to understand.

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