EL PASO DEL NORTE. 387 
and the territory of New Mexico, to the confines of 
the Colorado of the West. ‘They are less nomadic 
in their habits than the Comanches, and have districts 
in which their families permanently reside. 
This tribe, from the time they are first mentioned 
by Father Kino, in the year 1694, have been a nation 
of robbers. Their hand is against every other tribe, 
and that of all others against them. It was they who 
drove out the peaceable people and semi-civilized 
tribes from the Gila, and destroyed the builders of the 
ancient edifices we have spoken of. Hvery account we 
have represents them as a treacherous and blood- 
thirsty people, living by plunder alone. They have 
made repeated treaties with the States of Sonora and 
Chihuahua, only to be broken on the first favorable 
opportunity ; and the treaties recently made with the 
United States have been as little regarded. 
I proposed to the principal chiefs that they should 
abandon cattle-stealing, and cultivate the ground; 
telling them if they would do so, the U. 8. government 
would instruct and protect them, giving them blankets 
and clothing besides. The old chiefs said they could 
not adopt this new fashion, although the boys and 
work, the Comanches are variously set down, from the year 1846 to 
1850, at from 12,000 to 20,000. The Apaches embrace so many bands, 
and are so widely scattered, that itis extremely difficult to enumerate them. 
Mr. Schoolcraft, from the latest authorities, puts the Apache bands in Texas 
at 3500 in New Mexico at 6000, and in the unexplored parts north of 
the Gila at 2000, making altogether 11,500; which I think too high. 
It is unusual to find 200 of them together; and throughout the States 
of Sonora and Chihuahua, I heard of the same chiefs that we met and 
with whom we kept up so long an intercourse at the Copper Mines, and 
who were, of course, accompanied by the same bands. 
