THE APACHES.

Bruce Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 1759, 18 June 1886, Page 5

THE APACHES.

THE IDEAL SCOUTS OF THE WORLD. The Apaches and kindred tribes are among the most cautious fighters on earth, and also ameng the most desperate, Near the close of last year a band of Chiricahus numbering eleven killed twenty-one friendly Apaches living on the reservation, and twenty- five white men, women, and children. Their superiors as prowlers in war never existed. The army officers in Arizona declare that the Apaches are the ideal scouts of the world, with their hawk eyes, Btealthy motion, and sensitive ears. Though under-sized, they have broad, deep chests, muscular limbs, and small, wiry hands and feet. They march about four miles an hour, halting after a few hours' tramp long enough |to smoke cigarettes. If no matches are at hand they bring fire in from eight to forty-five seconds by rapidly twirling between the palms a hard, round stick fitting into a circular hole in another stick of a softer fibre. They will march forty miles a day on foot across dry plains and precipitous mountains, regardless of the fiercest heat. The Apaches would find food where Caucasians would starve. He can catch turkeys, quails, rabbits, doves, field mice, and prairie dogs; feast off a dead horse; gather acorns from the stunted mountain oak ; roast the Spanish bayonet or century plant, and strip the fruit and seed from the cactus ; dig the wild potato or bulb of the rule; raid the nest of the groundbee ; or, if driven to it, keep down the pangs of hunger with the inner bark of the pine or the roots of wild plants. With the rifle and bow he has a life training. "Every track in the trail, mark in the grass, and scratch on the bark of a tree explains itself to the Apache. He can tell to an hour almost when the man or animal making them passed by, and, like a hound, will keep on the scent until be catches up with the object of his pursuit."