Part 2
We who are old have forgotten the paper covered stories we used to read surreptitiously {35} about the "Broncho Buster's Revenge," or "The Three-Fingered Might of the West." But we did read them and long for the great life of the plains. Even Jesse James was a hero to many of us.
But for a New Englander educated at Harvard to the practice of medicine to pick up his deeply driven stakes and actually go into this realm of romance was unusual in the extreme; and to be so well trained and in such good condition, with such high courage as to make good at once amongst those men who looked down on an Eastern tender-foot was sufficiently rare to promise much for the future.
The young man had the love of romance that all young lives have, but he had the unusual stimulus to it that led him to make it for the moment his actual life. And those who study his whole life will find again and again that when the parting of the ways came he invariably took the road of adventure, provided that it was always in the service of his country. Such then was the makeup and the condition of this young man when in the spring of 1886 Captain Lawton, having {36} received orders to assume command of the expedition into Mexico against the hostile Apache, included Wood as one of his four officers. The force consisted of forty-five troopers, twenty Indian scouts, thirty infantrymen and two pack trains. And thus began the two-thousand-mile chase into the fastnesses of Sonora and Chihuahua which ended with the surrender of Geronimo.
General Miles' campaign methods differed from those of General Crook in many ways. He always assumed the aggressive. His motto was, "Follow the Indian wherever he goes and strike him whenever you can. No matter how bad the country, go on." Under these instructions the troops went over the border and down into the depths of the Sonora, jumping the Indian whenever an opportunity offered, never giving him any rest. Wherever he went the troops followed. If he struck the border, a well arranged system of heliostat stations passed the word along to a body of waiting or passing scouts. General Miles' methods differed from those of General Crook also in the matter of the use of the heliostat, a system of signaling based on flashes of the sun's rays from {37} mirrors. He had used them experimentally while stationed in the Department of the Columbia, and now determined to make them of practical use at his new station. Over the vast tracts of rough, unpopulated land of Arizona and Mexico the signals flashed, keeping different detachments in touch with their immediate commands, and the campaign headquarters in touch with its base.
Even before Captain Lawton's command could be made ready the Indians themselves precipitated the fight. Instead of remaining in the Sierra Madres, where they were reasonably safe from assault, they commenced a campaign of violence south of the boundary. This gave both the American troops and the Mexicans who were operating in conjunction with them exact knowledge of their whereabouts. On the 27th of April they came northward, invading the United States. Innumerable outrages were committed by them which are now part of the history of that heart-breaking campaign. One, for example, typical of the rest was the case of the Peck family. Their ranch was surrounded, the family captured and a number of the ranch hands killed. The husband {38} was tied and compelled to witness the tortures to which his wife was submitted. His daughter, thirteen years old, was abducted by the band and carried nearly three hundred miles. In the meantime Captain Lawton's command with Wood in charge of the Apache scouts was pursuing them hotly. A short engagement between the Mexican troops and the Indians followed. On the heels of this the American troops came up and the little Peck girl was recaptured. Nightfall, however, prevented any decisive engagement, and before daybreak the Indians had, slipped away.
The Indians found it better to divide into two bands, one under Natchez, which turned to the north, and the other under Geronimo, which went to the west. The first band was intercepted by Lieutenant Brett of the Second Cavalry after a heartbreaking pursuit. At one time the pursuing party was on the trail for twenty-six hours without a halt, and eighteen hours without water. The men suffered so intensely from thirst that many of them opened their veins to moisten their lips with their own blood. But the Indians suffered far more. In Geronimo's story of those {39} days, published many years later, he wrote: "We killed cattle to eat whenever we were in need of food, but we frequently suffered greatly for need of water. At one time we had no water for two days and nights, and our horses almost died of thirst." Finally on the evening of June 6th the cavalry came into contact with Geronimo's band and the Indians were scattered.
For four months Captain Lawton and Leonard Wood pursued the savages over mountain ranges and through the canyons. During this time the troops marched 1,396 miles. The conditions under which they worked were cruel. The intense heat, the lack of water, and the desperately rough country covered with mountains and cactus hindered the command, but the men had the consolation of knowing that the Indians were in worse plight. Furthermore, the trustworthiness of the Indian scouts, a tattered, picturesque band of renegades, was coming under suspicion. Perhaps it was because of their unreliability that an attack made upon the 18th of July was not an entire success. The Indians escaped, but their most valued {40} possessions, food and horses, fell into the hands of our troopers.
It was the beginning of the end. A month later they received word that the Indians were working towards Santa Teresa, and Captain Lawton moved forward to head them off. Leonard Wood's personal account of this engagement follows:
"On the 13th of July we effected the surprise of the camp of Geronimo and Natchez which eventually led to their surrender and resulted in the immediate capture of everything in their camps except themselves and the clothes they wore. It was our practice to keep two scouts two or three days in advance of the command, and between them and the main body four or five other scouts. The Indian scouts in advance would locate the camp of the hostiles and send back word to the next party, who in their turn would notify the main command; then a forced march would be made in order to surround and surprise the camp. On the day mentioned, following this method of procedure, we located the Indians on the Yaqui River in a section of the country almost impassable for man or beast and {41} in a position which the Indians evidently felt to be perfectly secure. The small tableland on which the camp was located bordered on the Yaqui River and was surrounded on all sides by high cliffs with practically only two points of entrance, one up the river and the other down. The officers were able to creep up and look down on the Indian camp which was about two thousand feet below their point of observation. All the fires were burning, the horses were grazing and the Indians were in the river swimming with evidently not the slightest apprehension of attack. Our plan was to send scouts to close the upper opening and then to send the infantry, of which I had the command, to attack the camp from below.
"Both the Indians and the infantry were in position and advanced on the hostile camp, which, situated as it was on this tableland covered with canebrake and boulders, formed an ideal position for Indian defense. As the infantry moved forward the firing of the scouts was heard, which led us to believe that the fight was on, and great, accordingly, was our disgust to find, on our arrival, that the firing was accounted for by the fact that {42} the scouts were killing the stock, the Apaches themselves having escaped through the northern exit just a few minutes before their arrival. It was a very narrow escape for the Indians, and was due to mere accident. One of their number, who had been out hunting, discovered the red headband of one of our scouts as he was crawling around into position. He immediately dropped his game and notified the Apaches, and they were able to get away just before the scouts closed up the exit. Some of these Indians were suffering from old wounds. Natchez himself was among this number, and their sufferings through the pursuit which followed led to their discouragement and, finally, to their surrender."
The persistent action of our troops was beginning to have its effect, and when the Indians ceased to commit depredations it was good evidence to those who knew Indians and Indian nature that they were beginning to think of surrender.
One night the troops ran into a Mexican pack-train, which brought the first reports that Indians were near Fronteras, a little village in Sonora. Two of their women had come into town to find the {43} wife of an old Mexican who was with the Americans as a guide, hoping, through her, to open up communications looking to a surrender. As soon as the report was received Captain Lawton sent Lieutenant Gatewood of the Sixth Cavalry, who had joined the command, with two friendly Apaches of the same tribe as those who were out on the warpath, to go ahead and send his men into the hostile camp and demand their surrender. This he eventually succeeded in doing, but the Indians refused to surrender, saying that they would talk only with Lawton, or, as they expressed it, "the officer who had followed them all summer." This eventually led to communication being opened and one morning at daybreak Geronimo, Natchez and twelve other Indians appeared, in camp. Their inclinations seemed at least to be peaceful enough to allow the entire body of Indians to come down and camp within two miles of the Americans. It was agreed that they should meet General Miles and formally surrender to him and that the Indians and the troops should move further north to a more convenient meeting place. To give confidence to the Indians in this new state {44} of affairs, Captain Lawton, Leonard Wood and two other officers agreed to travel with them. Due to a mistake in orders, the American troopers started off in the wrong direction, and Captain Lawton was obliged to leave in search of them. This left the three remaining officers practically as hostages in the Indian camp. Speaking of this incident. General Wood says:
"Instead of taking advantage of our position, they assured us that while we were in their camp it was our camp, and that as we had never lied to them they were going to keep faith with us. They gave us the best they had to eat and treated us as well as we could wish in every way. Just before giving us these assurances, Geronimo came to me and asked to see my rifle. It was a Hotchkiss and he had never seen its mechanism. When he asked me for the gun and some ammunition, I must confess I felt a little nervous, for I thought it might be a device to get hold of one of our weapons. I made no objection, however, but let him have it, showed him how to use it, and he fired at a mark, just missing one of his own men, which he regarded as a great joke, rolling on the {45} ground, laughing heartily and saying 'good gun.'
"Late the next afternoon we came up with our command, and we then proceeded toward the boundary line. The Indians were very watchful, and when we came near any of our troops we found the Indians were always aware of their presence before we knew of it ourselves."
For eleven days Captain Lawton's command moved north, with Geronimo's and Natchez's camps moving in a parallel course. During these last days of Geronimo's leadership his greatest concern was for the welfare of his people. The most urgent request that he had to make of Captain Lawton was to ask repeatedly for the assurance that his people would not be murdered.
Captain Lawton in his official report says of Wood's work in the campaign:
"No officer of infantry having been sent with the detachment ... Assistant Surgeon Wood was, at his own request, given command of the infantry. The work during June having been done by the cavalry, they were too much exhausted to be used again without rest, and they were left in camp at Oposura to recuperate.
{46}
"During this short campaign, the suffering was intense. The country was indescribably rough and the weather swelteringly hot, with heavy rains for day or night. The endurance of the men was tried to the utmost limit. Disabilities resulting from excessive fatigue reduced the infantry to fourteen men, and as they were worn out and without shoes when the new supplies reached me July 29th, they were returned to the supply camp for rest, and the cavalry under Lieutenant A. L. Smith, who had just joined his troop, continued the campaign. Heavy rains having set in, the trail of the hostiles, who were all on foot, was entirely obliterated.
"I desire particularly to invite the attention of the Department Commander to Assistant Surgeon Leonard Wood, the only officer who has been with me through the whole campaign. His courage, energy and loyal support during the whole time; his encouraging example to the command when work was the hardest and prospects darkest; his thorough confidence and belief in the final successes of the expedition, and his untiring efforts to make {47} it so, have placed me under obligations so great that I cannot even express them."
Through the formal language of a military report crops out the respect of a commanding officer who knew whereof he spoke, the acknowledgment that here was a young subordinate who never despaired, never gave up, who always did his part and more than his part, and who placed his commanding officer under obligations which he was unable "even to express." That was a great deal for any young man to secure. To-day, after the Great War, there are many such extracts from official reports and all are unquestionably deserved. But they are the result of a nation awakened to patriotism when all went in together. In 1886, when the nation was at peace, when commercial pursuits were calling all young men to make their fortune, young Leonard Wood answered a much less universal call to do his work in a fight that had none of the flare or glory of the front line trench in Flanders.
Out of it all came to him at a very early age practice in handling men in rough country in rough times--men who were not puppets even {48} though they were regular army privates. They had to be handled at times with an iron hand, at times with the softest of gloves; and an officer to gain their confidence and respect had to show them that he could beat them at their own game and be one of them--and still command.
The Congressional Medal of Honor awarded him years later for this Indian work is a fair return of what he accomplished, for this Medal of Honor, the then only prize for personal bravery and high fighting qualities which his country could give him, has always been the rare and much coveted award of army men.
It was in Wood's case the mark of conspicuous fighting qualities, conspicuous bravery and marked attention to duty--a sign of success of a high order for a New England doctor of twenty-five.
{49}
THE OFFICIAL
{50}
{51}
III
THE OFFICIAL
Chance no doubt at times plays an important part in the making of a man. Yet perhaps Cassias' remark, through the medium of Shakespeare, that "The fault is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings," has the truer ring. Chance no doubt comes to all of us again and again, but it is the brain that takes the chance which deserves the credit and not the accidental event, opportunity or occasion offering.
It was not chance that sent Leonard Wood to Arizona to fight Indians. It was the result of long hours of meditation in Boston when, as a young doctor, he decided finally to leave the usual routine of a physician's career and strike out in another and less main-traveled road. There was nothing of luck or chance in this decision, the carrying out of which taught him something that he used later to the advantage of himself and his country.
Out of the Indian experiences came to him in {62} the most vigorous possible way through actual observation the necessity for bodily health. No man could ride or walk day in and day out across waterless deserts and keep his courage and determination, to say nothing of his good common sense, without being in the best of physical condition. No man could get up in the morning after a terrific night's march, and collect his men and cheer and encourage them unless he was absolutely fit and in better condition than they.
He learned, too, that all matters of outfit, care of person, of equipment, of horses required the most constant attention day by day, hour by hour. He had to deal with an enemy who belonged to this country, who knew and was accustomed to its climatic conditions as well as its topography, and he had to beat him at his own game, or fail.
He learned that preparation, while it should never delay action, can never be overdone. This must have been drilled into the young man by the hardest and most grueling experiences, because it has been one of the gospels of his creed {53} since that time and is to this day his text upon all occasions.
He learned, too, something deeper than even these basic essentials of the fighting creed. He developed what has always been a part of himself--the conviction that authority is to be respected, that allegiance to superior officers and government is the first essential of success, that organization is the basis of smoothly running machinery of any kind, and that any weakening of these principles is the sign of decay, of failure, and of disintegration.
He learned that a few men, well trained, thoroughly organized, fit and ready, can beat a host of individualists though each of the latter may excel in ability any of the former, and there is in this connection a curiously interesting significance in the man's passionate fondness throughout his whole life for the game of football. At Middleboro, in California, in service in the South and in Washington, he was at every opportunity playing football, because in addition to its physical qualities, this game above all others depends for {54} its success upon organization, preparation and what is called "team play."
Through these early days it is to be noted, therefore, as a help in understanding his great work for his country which came later that his sense of the value of organization grew constantly stronger and stronger along with a solid belief in the necessity for subordination to his superior officers and through them to his state and his flag. The respect which he acquired for the agile Indians went hand in hand with the knowledge that in the end they could not fail to be captured and defeated, because they had neither the sense of organization, nor the intelligence to accept and respect authority which not only would have given them success, but would in reality have made the whole campaign unnecessary, had the Indian mind been able to conceive them in their true light and the Indian character been willing to observe their never-changing laws.
The result, however, was that the spirit of the Indians was broken by the white man's relentless determination.
The hostile Apaches were finally disposed of by {55} sending them out of the territory. They were treated as prisoners of war and the guarantees that General Miles had given them as conditions of surrender were respected by the Government, although there was a great feeing in favor of making them pay the full penalty for their outrages. President Grover Cleveland expressed himself as hoping that "nothing will be done with Geronimo which will prevent our treating him as a prisoner of war, if we cannot hang him, which I would much prefer."
At the end of the campaign General Miles set about reorganizing his command. For several months Wood was engaged in practice maneuvers. The General wished to expand his heliographic system of signaling, and to that end commenced an extensive survey of the vast unpopulated tracts of Arizona, which his troops might have to cover in time of action. Wood was one of the General's chief assistants in this survey, and in 1889, when he was ordered away, he probably knew as much of Arizona and the southwestern life as any man ever stationed there.
The orders which took him from the border {56} country made him one of the staff surgeons at Headquarters in Los Angeles. This post promised to be inactive and uninteresting but Captain Wood managed to distinguish himself in two respects, first as a surgeon and second as an athlete. This period of his life varied from month to month in some instances, but in the main it was the usual existence of an army official in the capacity of military surgeon. It extended over a period of eleven years, from 1887 to 1898. These were the eleven years between the ages of twenty-seven and thirty-seven--very critical years in the existence of a man. It was during these years that he met Miss Louise A. Condit Smith, a niece of Chief Justice Field, who afterwards became his wife and began with him a singularly simple and homelike family life that is the second of his vital interests in this world. He has never allowed his family life to interfere with his service to his country. And, paradoxical as it may seem, he has never allowed his lifework for his state to interfere with the happy and even tenor of his home existence. Children came in due course and the family unit became complete--that quiet, straightforward {57} existence of the family which is the characteristic of American life to-day, as it is of any other well-organized civilized nation.
In the practice of his profession he was able to do a lasting service to his commanding officer. General Miles suffered a grave accident to his leg when a horse fell upon it. It was the opinion of the surgeon who attended him that amputation would be necessary. But the General was of no mind to beat a one-legged retreat in the midst of a highly interesting and successful career. Captain Wood had inspired confidence in him as an Indian fighter--a confidence so strong that he thought it might not be misplaced if it became confidence in him as a doctor--and so Wood was summoned.
"They say they will have to cut off this leg, but they are not going to do it," said the General. "I am going to leave it up to you. You'll have to save it."
A few weeks later General Miles was up and about, and under his young surgeon's care the wound healed and the leg was saved.
While stationed at Los Angeles headquarters {68} Wood found himself with enough time for much hard sport. It was a satisfying kind of life after the strenuous months of border service.
In 1888 he was ordered back to the border where he served with the 10th Cavalry in the Apache Kid outbreak. After a few months of active service, he was ordered to Fort McDowell and then, in 1889, to California again.
From California he was ordered to Fort McPherson, near Atlanta, Georgia, where he again distinguished himself at football. He trained the first team in the Georgia Institute of Technology, became its Captain and during the two years of his Captaincy lost but one game and defeated the champion team of the University of Georgia.
An incident has been told by his fellow players at Fort McPherson which shows exceedingly well a certain Spartan side to Wood's nature. One afternoon at a football game he received a deep cut over one eye. He returned to his office after the game and, after coolly sterilizing his instrument and washing the wound, stood before a mirror and calmly took four stitches in his eyelid.