350 GOVERNMENT MEASURES. Book II. 
remained alone in captivity, and nothing has since been 
heard of him, although his family promised a reward of 
4000 dollars to any one who could effect his recovery. I 
made known the circumstance and the reward in Texas 
and other localities bordering on the United States, but 
with little chance of success, as years had already elapsed. 
Should the lad still be living, he must have become a 
savage, and has probably won his first laurels as a robber, 
if not near his birthplace yet with as much satisfaction as 
a real Comanche. It is generally asserted that boys cap- 
tured from a civilized race, and brought up by the Indians, 
become more dangerous robbers and greater enemies to 
civilized existence than the Indians themselves. 
The government of Chihuahua has put many plans into 
operation for combating these destructive wild Indians, and 
for getting rid of the Apaches from their territory. The 
history of these measures is not uninteresting, and I will 
relate what I have learned about them. 
About fifteen years since, an Irish adventurer, named 
James Kirker, who had become captain to a band of 
Shawnee Indians, came, I know not by what inducement, 
into this neighbourhood, and with his troops entered into 
the service of the State of Chihuahua under an engagement 
to carry on a war of extermination against the Apaches ; 
and they quite fulfilled their word, till their own lessened 
numbers made it impossible for them to cope with the 
stronger forces of their enemy. 
For a similar purpose, in 1850, the Government took 
into its service a dangerous desperado from Texas, named 
Glanton, who, with a similar band, had arrived at Chi- 
huahua on his way to California. These wretches, who 
had been promised a certain sum for every Indian scalp, 
found it easier to sell to the Government the scalps of its 
