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THE BLACKEST LEGION
A True Story
by Aurum
Apache boys dressed in ritual Gan attire, about to undergo training in the Nah-deh-yah.
San Carlos circa 1882
Earlier this summer, on the San Carlos Apache reservation of Arizona, a frail woman in her late sixties, died alone and without fanfare in her run down trailer home in Gilson Wash on the sprawling 1.8 million acre Apache reservation. Margarite Faras was the epitome of the modern day Apache, descended from the great chief Cochise, she lived in abject poverty most of her life and died the same way. Marg was a past tribal councilwoman of the San Carlos Nation, and fought against extreme odds to try and improve the plight of the Apache people on her reservation. She became an outcast in her own community, was threatened with death, shot at, intimidated, had her home vandalized, was almost forced off the reservation and had her dogs and animals killed in the dead of night. Yet Margarite stood firm and continued her struggle against corruption and intimidation at San Carlos. Margarites story is a sad tale, and in that sad account the specter of what the so called Black Legion is, can be found. Of course there is no, "Black Legion". That is a white mans fantasy. But it represents a very real force that has operated at San Carlos and Whiteriver since the time the Apache were released from their captivity at Fort Sill in Oklahoma and allowed to move to Mescalero and ultimately San Carlos and Whiteriver.
Now, at last, that tale can be told.
Margarite Faras was born around 1940 on the San Carlos reservation. She was born in Gilson Wash, a desolate area of high rolling desert dotted by mesquite and pinion, leaking shacks and ramshackle trailers on cinder blocks sitting precariously in blowouts of sand and arroyos of baked clay. Some homes have no electricity or running water even to this day. In rain or snow, the roads there transform into quicksand and residents must hike to gravel or blacktop to hitch a ride into San Carlos proper.
Margs father built the home she grew up in from salvaged buckboard, scavenged 75 years ago when the original community of San Carlos was moved to make way for the reservoir behind Coolidge Dam. Her father hauled the wood from the flooding town and built the familys small home which today now hunches in the thick bramble and teetering and collapsing on the edge of Faras property.
In 1862, Margarites great-grandfather, George Stevens came to Arizona as part of the California Volunteers. He later served as Indian agent at San Carlos and in 1873, he helped consolidate the Apache tribes onto the San Carlos reservation. It was at San Carlos that he met Francesca, the daughter of a White Mountain Apache chief and the niece of the great warrior chief, Cochise. Stevens and Francesca married and raised four children. Margarites grandfather, James Stevens, married an apache girl and served as the interpreter for Geronimo and Naiche after their capture in 1886. But James loathed Geronimo. When James was a young boy, Geronimos band killed and ate James pony and burned down the family house. Before James would serve as Geronimos interpreter, he made Geronimo pay him $50 for his horse. Geronimo paid him because Stevens was the only man who Geronimo trusted who could help him. Margarites mother was James Stevens daughter, she married an Apache named Faras whose family had fought the US Army up until the bitter end.
I met Margarite Faras in the 1950s, became friends with her and her family while visiting my cousin who lived nearby on the reservation. The news of her passing shook me recently, I had a great respect and a great sadness for Marg, many good memories mixed with a sadness of what could have, and should have been.
In Margarites story can be told what the so called, Black Legion is, and is all about. The real forces that the white man has mistakenly called the Black Legion and attached their tales, stories and fantasies to.
I remember a day on the San Carlos reservation in 1999 as Margarite sat in a chair in the front room of her house in Gilson wash, a pistol in her lap, she would periodically get up and walk to the window and peer out into the darkness. Outside her home, across a road, Buck Kitcheyan, Earnest Victor Jr. and several dozen of their friends were gathered together as a mob, ready to try and drive Marg off the reservation. A single oil lamp dimly lit the front room, and in the darkness the phone rang. A man on the other end of the line told Marg that, "tomorrow you are going to die". People walk along the road in the darkness, behind her house in the trees and in the wash, like ghosts sliding silently by. Three young men are posted in front of Margs house with rifles and one out back. Ominous dark pickup trucks run up and down the dusty road outside the home. About midnight a shot is fired from the wash at the house and several shots are fired back, then all is quiet as everyone tensely awaits the first light of dawn.
For those who are unaware, the San Carlos reservation has been known nationally in the past, as the most corrupt, and dangerous reservation in the nation. How did the direct descendant of the great chief Cochise, come to be holed up in her home on the reservation , fighting off some of her own people from driving her off that reservation or maybe killing her ?
The answer goes to the core of what the white men mistakenly believe and sensationalize what they do not understand, to them, they call it the Black Legion.
Two years earlier, (1997) Margarite Faras became fed up with the corruption, violence and horrible poverty at San Carlos and decided to do something about it. She ran for and was elected to the tribal council. She fought hard for audits, accountability and overhauls of tribal administration.
Three years earlier, Buck Kitcheyan, the man who led the mob in front of Margs home that terrible night, had pleaded guilty in Federal Court to 14 counts of embezzlement of tribal funds estimated at $130,000 . Allegations of similar corruption continued to swirl around the tribe’s present leaders and administrators, many of whom had strong political ties to Kitchean.
The audits, implemented by Faras found fraud and incompetence and the resulting changes shook the tribal administration. Faras helped pull the tribe from the brink of bankruptcy, cutting the tribes debt from $8 million to below $1 million. She pushed for more accountability and an overhaul of the tribal police. As Marg made gains and improvements, she made enemies. And enemies on the San Carlos reservation are a very dangerous thing. Apache vengeance and revenge can be violent and brutal. Apache hatred is a fierce and terrible thing. So is Apache jealousy and exclusivity. And some at San Carlos have the terrible habit of blaming others for the problems they have caused themselves. Rightly or wrongly, all these forces come together, focused on one individual, the person who will bear the brunt of their anger and violence. There is a group of individuals at San Carlos who have perfected this art. They inherit and carry on the old code of the Apache : vengeance, revenge and retribution. They are a very small minority of the many thousands who inhabit the reservation, but they are the most militant, most dedicated to the old ways and the most violent. These are the individuals who the white man has labeled, the Black Legion. They are however no legion, or any organized group. In fact in most cases, individuals or families will carry out their personal wars with someone else and recruit anyone else they can sway over to their side to aid them in their vengeance. In sacred matters, a certain individual or individuals will pick up the cause against the targeted person and will carry that vengeance with them until that vengeance is satisfied, or they are dead. And even then, sometimes beyond.
This so called Black Legion has no name that white men would recognize or identify with. But it is real just the same. To understand and explain what motivates these individuals would take years of study of a culture almost now lost to the Apache themselves. The so called Black Legion is not a force against just the white man as has been assumed by numerous white storytellers, it is a force against all enemies of the Apache, white and indian.
In July 1998, Faras had ran afoul of the tribal administration for turning the heat up on corruption. She was ousted from her tribal seat by then tribal vice chairman Marvin Mull in a move that violated tribal laws. In the heat of the ouster, tribe general finance manager Jim Burns, son of Mike Burns was also fired for helping Faras. Faras seat was filled ,without vote, by Anson Sneezy, the brother of Margarites chief rival, Velesquez Sneezy. Later, tribal chairman Raymond Stanley was ousted by the now one sided council because Stanley backed Margarites efforts for reform. The San Carlos tribal council was now squarely back in the hands of the very people Faras had worked so hard to overcome.
Soon after, a long standing militant group at San Carlos, Call to Action, became involved. But their actions were self serving in their own right and it was a toss up which group could do more to harm San Carlos. Call to action leader, Gail Haozouas eventually became an ally of Buck Kitchean and an enemy of Margarite. Toward the end of the year, Anson Sneezy inserted another ally onto the tribal council, again apparent violation of tribal law. Verna Cassa was appointed the tribes treasurer. Sneezy called it an emergency appointment which he said, didn’t need council approval. Two days later, Sneezy and Cassa went to Healys Auto Center in Globe and bought a $24,000 Chrysler Concorde for Sneezy using tribal funds. As treasurer, Cassa signed off on the expenditure. The auto had not been approved by the tribal council. Because of the tribes shaky financial standing, the Globe bank refused to give the tribe the loan on the car, but the dealership allowed Sneezy to take the car anyway. The tribe later got a call from the owner of Healy Auto who said they wanted their money or the car back, and charged the tribe $5,000 for use of the vehicle. But Sneezy refused to give up the car. Marg Faras sent tribal police to pick up the car and return it after having a conversation with Healys owner.
Faras accused Sneezy and Cassa of attempting to defraud the Globe dealership and Community First Bank of Globe out of $24,000.
Over the next months the fight between Sneezy and his supporters and Marg Faras heated up. On June 14, a group of militant tribal members met at the home of Buck Kitcheyan and planned how they would deal with Faras. Kitcheyan, Sneezy and Verna Cassa led the rally to turn tribal sentiment against Faras. On the evening of July 11, Kitcheyan and the others, after assembling a large mob, held their rally to drive Margarite off the reservation across from Margs home. The rally and late night death threat and the shootings put Margarite on the verge of a breakdown. Her hands were shaking, she was sobbing and she felt like vomiting. She could not believe what other reformers before her had come to believe, that the San Carlos people, the descendants of Cochise and Mangas and Victorio, could not save their reservation from themselves.
That is how Margarite Faras, descendant of the great Cochise, came to sit in the dark in her home in Gilson Wash with a loaded pistol in her hand one hot and stormy night in July. Margarite was a true victim of the so called Black Legion. But the so called Black Legion does not confine itself to the reservation. Wherever these militants have a bond, or a tie or a sacred interest, they will be there, and their vengeance will precede them. They will be relentless once they settle on who stands in their way, or have identified the individual who will pay the price for their own mistakes. The San Carlos reservation has improved some since the years 1997-2000, but by only modest gains. It is still a corrupt, intimidating and dangerous place. As long as you go no farther than the visitor center and the tourist shop at the historical building you will have an enjoyable time. But beyond there, out at Gilson Wash, and at Sawmill and Dehorn, or along the Nantanes Rim and up to the Black river, there are places it is not safe for even some Apache to wander. The so called Black Legion is alive and well. They can be as conspicuous, or as silent as they want and need to be.
Some years ago, while the Apache were about to leave Oklahoma and captivity, Jason Betzinez confronted some of the Apache who stubbornly refused to give up the old ways, and the old religion. Betzinez hated Geronimo and the warriors because he blamed them for the Apache troubles. In a particular confrontation with a certain warrior who vowed vengeance and retribution on all white men, Betzinez in a fit of anger said, .. your heart is black, your blood is black, nothing you do can stand the light of day. .. It was from that time on that the following of this vengeance code came to be known to the Apache as something dark or black. The white man, not understanding the true meaning, have in their ignorance labeled it, the Black Legion.
I will miss my old friend Margarite Faras, but I am happy because I believe she is at peace in a much better place than where she left. She was a good lady who tried to make a difference on her reservation, fighting for those still living there in poverty and against the corruption that keeps them there.
I saw her nephew at the LAX airport in Los Angeles of all places the other day.
He told me the fight is not yet over !
PICKET POST , PINAL CITY
Picket Post Mountain viewed from the east.
In November 1870 the first significant settlement by white men was made in what was later to be called Superior. In that month General George Stoneman, commanding officer of troops in Arizona against the Indians, built a small camp at the base of what the Mexicans called "Tordillo" Mountain. The soldiers began calling the butte "Picket Post," because they used it as a sentinel point to guard their settlement. At the foot of Picket Post they began constructing a pack-mule trail towards the Pinal Mountains.
The troops started their mule trail at "Infantry Camp" at the foot of Picket Post and then extended it into Picket Post Creek (later called Queen Creek). The trail then crossed Devil's Canyon (named by the troops) and halted at a post they intended to build in what was then called "Mason's Valley" (later, Camp Pinal). The valley area is now known as "Top-of-the-World" or "Sutton's Summit."
By April 1871 the mule trail and post were both completed. General Stoneman planned on making Camp Pinal his headquarters, but the project was abandoned after General George Crook replaced General Stoneman because of the Camp Grant Massacre on April 1871. By August of that year General Crook abandoned the post, and only the mule trail was left to indicate the intended ambitious presence of U.S. soldiers.
Even today the only physical reminder of the early military history of the Superior region is the old mule trail. It was dubbed "Stoneman's Grade" by the troops and can still be seen across the gorge of Queen Creek from Highway 60. It was quite an engineering feat, but it takes sharp eyes to recognize it today.
The Cliffs in the foreground are known as Apache Leap
There is, however, still another, if not physical, reminder of the early presence U.S. troops in the region. The origins of the "Apache Leap" legend can be traced to these troops. Although no official record exists of a skirmish between troops and Indians at what is now called Apache Leap, it is very likely that the legend has basis in fact. The legend relates that "Apache" warriors were trapped on the large rock ledge by cavalry troops from Camp Pinal. Rather than surrender, however, about 75 of the warriors leaped off the cliff to their deaths. It was because of this incident that the cliff became known as "Apache Leap." Fragments of translucent obsidian embedded in perlite that can be found in abundance not far from the cliff are often called "Apache Tears" by residents of Arizona, in token of the legend.
Immediately after abandonment of the region by the military, prospectors and ranchers began to arrive. For example, Camp Pinal was resettled by the Craig family, and descendants of the family remained owners of that area for about 100 years. The original ranch house built by the Craigs in the 1870s still stands. Many tales are based upon incidents that occurred on the old ranch.
In 1875 the prospectors William Long and Isaac Copeland passed through the Superior area on their way to one of the earliest prospects in the Globe region the "Globe Ledge" (1873). On their way to the ledge they found a chunk of black rock and immediately recognized it as pure silver. The boom mine of Silver King, the richest silver mine in Arizona history, was thus born. By 1878 a town of about two thousand residents had grown up at the foot of Picket Post Mountain, and a smelter had already been constructed. In 1879 the town's name was changed from "Picket Post" to "Pinal," or "Pinal City."
Pinal City and the Silver King Mine became the destination of hundreds of miners. Among those who visited were some of the old West's most notorious characters, including Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.
Earp's consort at the time was Cely Ann "Mattie" Blaylock, and, for some reason, she wished to return to Pinal City in the last years of its existence (late 1880s). After the shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone between the Earps and the Clantons (and others) in 1882, the relationship between Wyatt and Mattie began to deteriorate. As Mattie became more and more dependent upon booze and "laudanum" (an opium-derived drug), Wyatt became more interested in another woman, Josephine Marcus.
Historical Marker on the south side of Hwy 60. Very difficult to read even up close.
On 4 July 1888 Mattie Blaylock, age 38, was found dead in her apartment in Pinal City, after she had spent the night drinking and dosing on the laudanum. An empty bottle of the drug was found at her side. She had died alone, spurned and forgotten, in a town that was itself to disappear that very same year. The Silver King had "played out," and Pinal City was no more by the end of the year.
There was, however, another mine not far from the Silver King that did not fail in the 1880s. The Silver Queen had begun in 1881 as a silver mine also, but it gradually became a better producer of copper. A settlement formed around the mine, and by 1900 the townsite of Superior was laid out by George Lobb.
In 1904 the town had many tents and a few primitive board houses. In 1910 the Magma Copper Company took over the Silver Queen properties and began to develop them into large-scale producers. A huge smelter was constructed in 1914 and continued successful operation until 1981, when copper mining began to diminish in the Superior area. Copper mining finally ceased altogether in Superior in 1995.
One of the most interesting spots in Arizona is located near Superior (in fact, on the exact location of old Pinal City). In 1923 one of the mining engineers of Magma, Boyce Thompson, moved to Superior to better oversee operations. He purchased the land where Pinal City had been and initiated a pet project of his own: an arboretum. Some residents of nearby Superior felt he was trying to gain control of a vast mineral treasure that they believed lay under Picket Post Mountain . But, Thompson's arboretum has become a real treasure of its own. The Boyce Thompson Southwest Arboretum was created between 1923 and 1929, but it has been continually improved since. It is now recognized as one of the world's most important arboretums. More than 6000 plant species from every continent can be found there. It is also a refuge for 150 kinds of birds and 40 other wildlife species. It is truly one of the great treasures, among many, located near the Pinal Mountains
Renegades: Massai, The Apache Kid and Rowdy
Apache Renegades Attack !
By Forscher
It was the end of May in 1892 and Charlie Dobie had just started his summer vacation. Two weeks prior he had traveled the 25 miles to spend his time with his Uncle Sim Neighbors. Uncle Sim was working cattle and the caretaker at Jack Frazers place in the Superstition Mountains. At the time, Charlies father was working at the Silver King mine out past the Superstition Mountains some 40 miles east of their Tempe home and 15 miles west of the JF Ranch. Charlie was a strapping boy of 13 and was spoken well of by all who knew him. Sunday the 29th of May, Jack Frazer had left for Florence to perform his civic duty on a federal grand jury. Arrangements had been made for the boy to travel up to Reavis Ranch where his Uncle Sim was on Rodeo. This was to ensure the boy did not have to be left alone at the ranch.
The next day when the Charlie had not arrived as expected, Sim rode back to the ranch. He later reported that he found the ranch had been pillaged, all the provisions gone and things had been scattered about the house. The boy was missing but his hat was on the floor. The horse, which the boy had been using, was also gone.
Sim rode hard to Florence making the trip in five hours over the rough and broken country. He arrived early on the afternoon of the 30th and went straight to Jack Frazer. Those two in company with Jim Thomas and P. R. Young returned to the scene at once.They arrived at the ranch at 4 a.m. of the 1st and waited until daylight to search for the boy. They didnt have far to search. About 50 yards from the house lay poor Charlie Dobie dead and brutalized.
Thoughts at once turned to Apache raiders since the ransacking of the house and the method of the killing was in keeping with the renegades way. The Apache Kid was the primary suspect. A week before a prospectors camp was robbed near Marlowes ranch by Indians. Two Indians were seen by him as they made their escape. The day before, The Kid had ridden past some cowboys in Globe. He waved as he passed by.
A rider was dispatched to the Silver King with the awful news. J. P. Carson, a justice of the peace from Reymont, impaneled a coroners jury that same day consisting of Frank Marion, Peter R. Young, James D. Thomas and Francisco Charcon.
After interviewing Jack Frazer, Sim Neighbors and Peter Young the jury found as follows:
We the Coroners Jury being duly sworn by J.P. Carson Justice of the Peace ex officio Coroner, after hearing testimony of several witnesses, and after carefully examining the body of deceased. Find that Charles Mallet Dobie came to his death by wounds inflicted upon his person, at the hands of some person or persons unknown to this jury. Said wounds consisting of a pistol or rifle shot entering at the left side below the heart and coming out the same side about 4 inches from place of entering and also from his skull and face being crushed by a large stone which was found at his side covered with blood. This jury believes from the fact that Apache Indians were seen in the vicinity within the last 3 or 4 days, and from the manner the deceased met his death, and also from the manner which the house was ransacked, that deceased was murdered by these Apache Indians.
Andrew Dobie
Tempe
Charlie Dobie was killed by the Indians at Frazers ranch the thirtieth body was this morning taken to the King for burial and rushed to telegraph you
W.G. Truman
Sheriff
Immediately the deed fell onto the Apache Kid, whom not long ago committed some depredations perhaps fifty miles from the scene of this affair. Had the Kid struck again? Many Anglos believed that was a disticnt possibility.
The whole Territory was in an uproar and the military was called to the trail. By Saturday June 4th, Lieut. Fuller with twenty troops, four Indian trackers and a pack train was headed out. Sim Neighbors with twenty cowboys was already on the trail and vowed revenge. The possed tracked the renegades relentlessly, trailing them northwards.
On the 11th, Sim found the partially eaten remains of the boys horse near Four Peaks. This discovery incriminated the Kid even more.
Frustration over the inability to apprehend the killers lead to the following scathing editorial.
June 1892 Tombstone Epitaph Editorial -
According to the statement of reliable persons who were present, the pursuit of the murder or murderers of Charlie Dobie, as far as the military party was concerned, was simply a farce. While the Kid was retreating at from thirty to fifty miles a day, the party in pursuit managed to make about ten miles a day. The scouts would be sent on ahead to follow the tracks, and made to come back and report daily. Camp was pitched early each day-from ten in the morning to two in the afternoon. From this can be seen the utter futility and nonsense of employing the military in pursuit of Indians.
At such a rate they could not overtake a cripple, hobbling ahead on crutches, much less the agile and wily Apache. And when settlers are killed, mutilated and plundered, the only way to capture the murderers will be to depend on individual exertions and to avoid the folly of calling on the military. The late tragedy it too solemn a matter, too far reaching in its effects on the general public, to permit this wanton trifling.
The Kid and the killing were also included in the 1892 Secretary of War Annual Report:
By his conduct he has caused much anxiety to white people living near the boarder of this reservation, as well as to the Indians who have homes upon the same. It is reported that this Indian killed an Apache woman on the 17th of May, on south side of Black River, escaping with the daughter of the murdered woman. Troops and Indian scouts were unsuccessful in capturing him. On the 30th day of May last he killed a young boy named Dobie, 30 miles north of Florence, Ariz. Upon receipt of news of the killing, two scouting parties were at once started from San Carlos upon the trail of this fugitive, commanded by experienced officers, accompanied by Indian scouts and trailers. Neither of those parties succeeded in overtaking the renegades.
The Apache Kid
Did the Kid actually kill Charlie?
Five years later Sim Neighbors still thought so and confessed to a reporter that he is engaged in the accumulation of Indian hair for a lariat he was making. Was this Sims way of avenging Charlies death?
In 1932, while sitting at the counter of his Mesa drugstore, Jack Frazer added the following to the tale :
At last, in one of the Indian camps the Sheriff found the fancy lap-robe given me for a present and he also found a young squaw much the worse for wear, who, the other Indians said owned it.
Pinned down with this evidence the squaw then told her story :
She said the Kid had taken her. One morning very early they had gone to the ranch and the Kid, with her by his side, had looked in. Just then the other door opened and a white boy looked in, saw the Kid and ran past the corral. The Kid shot him and he fell about fifty feet from the house. The boy was not dead yet, so the Kid made her take a stone and crush the boys head in.
No one was ever apprehended for the crime. So ended the last documented attack in the Superstition area by Apache renegades.
Sources:
Superstition Mountain Historical Society, Dobie File
Arizona Republican, June 2,3,5, 1892, June 10, 1897
Arizona Daily Gazette, June 4,5,10,11,12, 1892
Arizona Silver Belt, June 4,11, 1892
Tempe News, June 7,11, 1892
Arizona Weekly Enterprise, June 9, 1892
Phoenix Daily Herald, June 6,14, 1892
Coroner Verdict; Chas. M. Dobie, June 1, 1892
Telegraph; Truman to Dobie, June 2 1892
The Apache Kid, Phyllis De La Garza
History of Fort Huachuca
Native Tales of New Mexico, Frank G. Applegate
The next day the Pinal County Sheriff sent the following telegram from Florence:  |
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The Legend of the Black Legion
By The Ghost Horse
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One of the most pervasive myths surrounding the Superstition Mountains to this very day is the legend of the Black Legion. Does a secret society of present-day warrior Apache still exist in this day and age, guarding mythical hordes of gold and the sacred burial places of their ancestors? Do these Apache dress in black, wear tennis shoes and stalk the solitary peaks and lonely mountainsides where few white-eyes dare to roam? Do  they flock to their sacred areas during certain times of the year and phases of the moon?
Who can say for certain?
As with all things having to do with the Black Legion, even the origin of the name is in question. Some think it can be traced back to the Apache Scouts of the 1870s and 1880s who wore black tunics and red headbands to distinguish themselves from the hostile bands that they helped the US Cavalry pursue. The moniker seems to have become a popular one in the mid 1930s and early 1940s. One cannot find many references to the Black Legion before the 1930s. What brought on the common usage of the name? During the Depression, several offshoots of the Ku Klux Klan were referred to as the Black Legion. In fact, a popular film of 1937 with Humphrey Bogart in one of his first feature roles was called "The Black Legion." One can't help but wonder if this popular film caught the attention of someone in Arizona, someone who perhaps had dealings or run-ins with Amerindians in the Superstitions, and so the name of a legend was born.
The Black Legion has become the stuff of popular culture. Fictional Apache Legionnaires stalk the pages of novels, comic books and the Internet. Even video games have gotten into the act as Lara Croft -Tomb Raider encounters the Black Legion (who have morphed into mystical spirit-warriors that span both time and space) in one of her adventures. In fact, Black Hawk, Apache Warrior, a member of the fierce Black Legion Tribe whose home is the Sacred Mountain in the Arizona Territory, has become a friend and ally of none other than Batman himself...go figure.
Well, the above is all very nice, but does the Black Legion REALLY exist?
In a word: NO. Not as the legend exists. Sorry folks, but to my knowledge there are no Apache running around the Superstitions dressed in black, wearing tennis shoes and waylaying solitary hikers and prospectors who end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Stories handed down through the years tell of snakes in hotel rooms, cryptic warnings, campers finding footprints of tennis shoes beside their tent in the morning, and even car chases involving these mythical Indians. Are any of these stories true? Probably not. 
If the legend is somewhat trumped up, what about the reality? Do ANY Apache have any ties to the Superstitions? Over the years it is said that various artifacts have been found in remote areas of the mountains. Crosses, feathers, ritual weapons and the like have all supposedly been found in the interior of the mountains. If this is true, just who has been leaving these articles in remote, lonely places? Are these offerings to the Thunder Gods ? And what about the "Thunder Gods"? Do Apache believe the mountains are their home...or is something entirely different at work here? Who can say for sure.
Do some "traditional" Apache families practice the Old Ways in the Superstitions...the worship of Yoosen (Usen) as handed down through the years by the descendants of the old warriors? Perhaps. I WILL say this. If you are in a remote , lonely place in the Superstitions and do come upon something that might look Native-American related, I'd be respectful, and simply move on. If there ARE Mountain Spirits out there, they are probably happiest being left in peace...
And if you ever do end up on a certain mountain, perhaps during the night of a full moon, just before moonrise, and happen to "feel" something moving nearby...don't worry, it is only the gentle night wind.
Isn't it?
Yoosen shi'ke' a gahn de' Yoosen
Yavapai: People of the Sun
By Forscher
For some, the Superstition Mountains are the home of the Apache. They hear of Thunder Gods, the legend of the Black Legion and assume the mountains were the haunt of fierce Apaches intent on the destruction of anyone who would enter their home range. Fostered by the term Mohave-Apache, is almost believable. But its simply not true.
There were no Apache bands living in the Superstitions for extended periods of time unless through marriage. Actually, an entirely different tribe of people populated the Mountains we all enjoy. These mountains were actually the home of the Yavapai.
The Yavapai called all of Central Arizona home in the mid-nineteenth century and were divided into four subdivisions. The breath of their influence and impact on the white settlers is reflected in the name of Yavapai County.
The Tolkepaya (Western Yavapai) included the Hakupakapa, Hakehelapa Wiltaikapaya, and Haka-whatapa bands. The Tolkepaya lived in the deserts and mountains of western Arizona.
The Yavepe (Northeastern Yavapai) included theYavepe proper and Mat-haupapaya bands who resided in the area of Prescott.
The Wipukpaya are in the northeast part of the State.
The Kewevikopaya (Southeastern Yavapai) included the Walkamepa. A band which resided in the area along Route 60 between Miami and Phoenix. Also the Wikedjasapa who resided from Phoenix to Roosevelt Dam along the Apache Trail. 
As you can see, the Kewevikopaya Yavapai were the primary residents of our area of interest prior to the early 1870s. So as not to mislead, it must be pointed out the nature of the Yavapai. All four subdivisions of the tribe never exceeded 1500 people and that estimate was well before the Anglos arrived.
The social organization of the Yavapai included several extended families that would camp together during times of the year when resources could be gathered, grown and hunted efficiently. It was not uncommon for up to ten families to camp and travel together. The arrangement of local bands was flexible so that individuals and families who might have disagreements could leave and join other bands in which they had relatives.
Before Anglo-American settlement of the area in the 1860's, the Yavapai had active contact with their native neighbors. During the early nineteenth century, the Yavapai had hostile relations with their neighbors the Walapai and Havasupai, and their southern neighbors the Papago, Pima, and Maricopa. Hostilities with the people in the south had also been typical in the eighteenth century. The Yavapai did trade mescal and buckskin for woven blankets and silver jewelry with the Navajos and Hopi peoples, but the meetings between the tribes were less than friendly. Relations with the Mohave and Quechan on the Colorado River were relatively peaceful, but perhaps their most important relations were with their eastern neighbors the Apache. There are many similarities between the Yavapai and Apache cultures, so much so that the Yavapai have often been mistaken for Apache.
Although the Yavapai were primarily hunters and gatherers, their subsistence cycle followed the ripening of different wild plant foods.
Between 1870 and 1873, the tribe endured several major defeats in battle, the most famous of which is the massacre of Skeleton Cave, which occurred in December of 1872. By April of 73 the tribe had surrendered en mass and was Reservation bound.
So when you think of the massacre,the first discovery near Bulldog, the Vulture mine, the Bradshaws, the Peralta mines, and the travels of one Jacob Waltz also think of the Yavapai. In fact, considering the demise of the tribe in 1872 is possible to relate that time frame to Waltzs recovery of gold?
Reference Materials:
Colling, Jerold L. "From Foundations Past." Harmony by Hand: Art of the Southwest
Indians. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1987, 20-40.
Khera, Sigrid, and Patricia S. Mariella. "Yavapai." Handbook of North American
Indians. San Francisco: Oxford University Press, vol. 10, 1998, 38-54.
Pritzker, Barry. The Native Americans: An Encyclopedia of History, Culture, and
Peoples. Santa Barbara: Oxford University Press, vol. #1, 1998, 136-138.
Thomas Edwin Farish .History of Arizona,
Digitized by the University of Arizona
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