The True Story of Chief Cochise Hollywood Never Dared to Tell You

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By the late 1860s, the war had reached a grinding stalemate. The army held the forts, but Cochise controlled the open country. Between 1867 and 1869, mail carrier and frontiersman Tom Jeffords was losing dozens of riders to Apache attacks along the Tucson-to-Camp Bowie route. Recognizing that military escorts were useless, Jeffords rode alone into the Dragoon Mountains to meet Cochise face to face.

Jeffords laid down his weapons and demanded an audience. Impressed by his audacity and direct speech, Cochise spoke with him for days. The two men formed an enduring alliance grounded in mutual respect and strict adherence to their word. Cochise agreed to let Jeffords' mail riders pass unmolested, provided military couriers were not disguised among them. Jeffords kept his promises; Cochise kept his. For years, the mail passed safely through Apache territory while army columns were ambushed on adjacent roads.

The situation changed in June 1871 when General George Crook assumed command of the Department of Arizona. Crook abandoned traditional cavalry maneuvers. He recruited Apache scouts from other bands, deployed mule pack trains capable of crossing steep mountains, and planned to hunt Cochise during the winter months. Cochise recognized the danger of Crook's methods. The Chiricahua population had dwindled after a decade of continuous combat, and disease was taking its toll.

President Ulysses S. Grant sent Peace Commissioner General Oliver Otis Howard to Arizona in 1872 with authority to end the fighting. Howard contacted Jeffords, who agreed to guide the general directly to Cochise's stronghold on one condition: no armed military escorts. In October 1872, Cochise and Howard met in the Dragoon Mountains. Cochise negotiated from a position of authority. He rejected any proposal to move his band to the dry, malarial flats of the Bosque Redondo or San Carlos. He demanded his ancestral homeland, the Chiricahua Mountains and Sulphur Springs Valley, as an official Chiricahua Reservation, and insisted that Tom Jeffords serve as the sole federal agent. Howard agreed to every term.