Camp Grant Massacre

If it had not been for the massacre, there would have been a great many more people here now; but, after that massacre, who could have stood it?... When I made peace with Lieutenant Whitman my heart was very big and happy. The people of Tucson and San Xavier must be crazy. They acted as though they had neither heads nor hearts... [they] just have a thirst for our blood... these Tucson people write for the papers and tell their own story, The Apaches have no one to tell their story....
Eskiminzin, Aravaipa Apache

I no longer want to live; my women and children have been killed before my face, and I have been unable to defend them. Most Indians in my place would take a knife and cut his throat, but I will live to show these people all that they have done.
Anon, Aravaipa Apache

Many of the men, whose families had all been killed, when I spoke to them and expressed sympathy for them, were obliged to turn away, unable to speak... The women whose children had been killed or stolen were convulsed with grief... Children who two days before had been full of fun and frolic kept at a distance, expressing wondering horror.
Lieutenant Royal E. Whitman, United States Army

And the story that "the Apaches were treacherous and cruel" went forth into all the land, but nothing of the wrongs they had received... The killing of... Mangas Coloradas. The equally treacherous attempt to kill... Cochise, by inviting him in under a flag of truce... And more recently the massacre at Camp Grant... Events like these and many others would seem to be quite sufficient to have made these Apaches the "blood-thirsty and relentless savages" they are now reported to be.
J. H. Lyman, United States Indian agent

An account of the Camp Grant Massacre