Mangas Coloradas, a formidable man well over six feet tall, was the Head chief of the eastern band of the Chiricahuas also know as the Mimreno Apaches. He gone on the 'warpath' when during a friendly visit to some Gold miners at Palos Altos in southwestern New Mexico he had been tied up and savagely whipped.
Joining forces with Cochise and his people in defense of their lands, he was wounded during a two day battle with American troops at Apache pass in 1862. He was subsequently carried back across the border to the Mexican town of Janos where his warriors informed the doctor that if he was allowed to die then the town would also die. Fortunately for the town he made a full recovery.
The following year however General James H. Carleton send a force of California volunteers led by General Joseph R. West to take care of him. Lured into their camp under a flag of truce the chief, now in his midsixties, was taken prisoner, bound in irons and tortured with red hot bayonets. Finally his guards shot him when he flinched pain, claiming that he had tried to escape and dumped his body in a ditch.
The following day they cut off his head and boiled in a large kettle to remove the flesh. Sent east to be examined by scientists it eventually ended up on display in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. To the Apache this mutilation of the body was much worse than death, since it meant that he must go through eternity in this condition.