lieutenant faison’s strongaccountstrong of the geronimo campaign.pdf

Lieutenant Faison’s Account of the Geronimo Campaign By Edward K. Faison Introduction The Sky Islands region of southeastern Arizona and northeastern Sonora consists of 40 wooded mountain ranges scattered in a sea of desert scrub and arid grassland. To the west is the Sonoran Desert. To the east is the Chihuahuan Desert. To the north are the Arizona–New Mexico Mountains, and to the south is the Sierra Madre Occidental Range where elevations rise almost 10,000 feet from canyon floor to forested ridge. This “roughest portion of the continent,” in the words of General George Crook, was the setting of the Apache Wars—an American Indian–US Army conflict (1861–1886) unparalleled in its ferocity, physical demands, and unorthodox tactics. For a young lieutenant raised on North Carolina’s coastal plain and 1 schooled in traditional warfare, Arizona in the 1880s was no ordinary place to embark on a military career.    From this formative experience came this memoir by Lieutenant Samson L. Faison, which chronicles his eleven months of service in the Southwest during the Geronimo Campaign of 1885–1886. He wrote it in 1898 while serving at West Point as senior instructor of infantry tactics. It was never published.2 Faison’s account begins two days after the May 17, 1885 breakout of Geronimo, Natchez, Nana, and 140 Chiricahua Apache followers from the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona. Along the way, we revisit important milestones such as the death of Captain Emmet Crawford at the hands of Mexican militia, the surrender Faisons 1883 West Point Graduaon Photo conference between Geronimo and General Crook at Cañon de (USMA photo