This report had first reached Gen. Crook at Fort Yuma, and he had
dispatched the news to Lieut. Jackson. This being a strange
country to the Lieutenant, having never been over it and knowing
that I had been through it twice, once with Uncle Kit Carson and
another time in company with Jim Beckwith, he insisted on my going
out in that section to investigate the matter and see whether or
not the report was true.
The day following George and I started with four assistants for
the settlement. Each of us took two saddle horses and one pack
animal for each two men, with ten days' rations. From there to the
settlement was about seventy-five miles.
Knowing just where the majority of the Apache force was
concentrated, we took rather a circuitous route in-stead of going
direct to the settlement in order to ascertain whether the
depredations were committed by Apaches or Pimas.
The fifth day out we struck the settlement, but did not cross the
Indian trail, which led me to think that the work was done by
Pimas and not Apaches.
When we arrived there no one could tell us how many Indians there
were nor what they looked like, but when I came to find out the
truth of the matter there had been no families massacred, nor had
the two girls been taken prisoners, but there had been two boys
killed that were herding stock.
We remained there one day in order to learn what we could in
regard to the trouble and then struck the trail of the Indians and
followed it two days, but it was so old that we gave it up, as it
was then twelve days since the depredations were committed and we
knew that the Indians were a long ways off by that time.
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