CAUTION OF THE APACHES. 359 



bands often join to form large ones; sometimes only 

 temporarily, sometimes amalgamating. Immemorially at 

 war with each other, but collectively in hostility to civili- 

 sation, ancient or modern, their hand has been against 

 every man, every man's hand against them ; and Indian 

 warfare being a succession of treacheries and surprises, the 

 Apache necessarily carries his life in his hand. Hence his 

 excessive caution ; but the very circumstances that have 

 made him careful have also rendered him constitutionally 

 brave. Always in a state of warfare, unprotected by walls, 

 by armour, by political combinations, the victory has been 

 to the daring and the brave. With these Indians defeat is 

 synonymous with extinction. The Israelite of old did not 

 more utterly destroy his vanquished foe than does the 

 Apache. The most courageous bands increased and mul- 

 tiplied, the least so were exterminated. The increased 

 bands inevitably broke up into small ones ; these quarrelled 

 with a like result. And besides the bravery that is consti- 

 tutional, the ever-present thought from childhood that their 

 life is in continual danger, that its preservation depends 

 entirely upon themselves, is to the Apache an education in 

 courage. It is as much to the high development of those 

 qualities, caution and courage, as to the inaccessibility of, 

 and difficulty to campaign in, the country ranged over by 

 the Apaches, that has enabled them not only to have 

 defied and held their own against one of the most powerful 

 military nations of the world, but to have besides utterly 

 destroyed the modern Mexican civilisation of a strip of 

 country six hundred miles long and two hundred wide. 



An instance of an Apache's cool calculating daring, of 



