Mangas Coloradas

An uneasy peace between the Apache and the United States lasted until an influx of gold miners into New Mexico's Pinos Altos Mountains led to open conflict.

Mangas Coloradas, like Cuchillo Negro, Delgadito, Ponce, Coleto Amarillo, and the most important Tchihende and Ndendahe chiefs, had to face new problems.

In June 1851 Mangas Coloradas, Delgadito, Ponce, and Coleto Amarillo met Bartlett in Santa Rita del Cobre; the discussions continued until the Apaches no longer felt disappointed and betrayed by the newcomers.

According to John C. Cremony's book, Life Among the Apaches, in 1861, near the Pinos Altos mining camp, Mangas Coloradas was attacked by a group of white miners who tied him to a tree and severely flogged him.

[3] Yet historian Edwin R. Sweeney finds issue with this claim in his biography of the chief: if it was true, Geronimo, who spent a great deal of time with Mangas Coloradas during the 1850s and 1860s, would have likely mentioned it to his biographer.

In early February 1861, U.S. Army Lieutenant George Nicholas Bascom, investigating the "Indian" kidnapping of a rancher's son, apparently without orders, lured an innocent Cochise, his family and several warriors into a trap at Apache Pass, southeastern Arizona.

Although the goal was never achieved, the White population in Apache territory was greatly reduced for a few years during the Civil War, after federal troops had been withdrawn to the east.

[5] Mangas arrived under a flag of truce to meet with Brigadier General Joseph R. West, an officer of the California militia and a future Reconstruction senator from Louisiana.

"[6] The following day, some soldiers who were fascinated by the size of the Apache (Mangas was 6 feet, 6 inches tall), cut off his head, boiled it, and sent the skull to Orson Squire Fowler, a phrenologist in New York City.

Mangas's descendants and sources based on their testimony may have confused the Smithsonian with Fowler's Phrenological Cabinet in New York, where the skull was on display, leading to the misattribution.