The Apache Kid: Outbreak, Alcatraz, and Return to San Carlos

In November 1888 the Silver City *Enterprise* reported that the Kid and four other Apache Indians had been engaged in an outbreak “a year ago last spring”—roughly the spring of 1887—during which “Big-Foot Mike Grace and Diehl were killed” ^[4][3]. The five were apprehended and tried by court-martial, then sentenced to “different terms of imprisonment at Alcatraz” ^[4][3]. Yet by November 1888 the Kid and his companions had already been returned to San Carlos—a move the *Enterprise* editorialized as an unjustified pardon, calling them “these red handled devils” ^[4][3].

According to a report relayed by Captain Keys to the *Liberal* newspaper, the head scout of a pursuing party identified two Indians chased “down in the Hatchets” as “Kid and an old man” ^[2]. During the pursuit, the scouts reconstructed the pair’s movements from discarded items: “They took Williams’ saddle, and for miles kept throwing away pieces of leather cut in various shapes, such as circles, stars and strips, as though it had been done simply as a pastime” ^[2]. At a place called Rigg’s house they stole guns and “a lot of truck,” leaving behind a cache of cartridges but taking “a pillow”—an item the reporter found incongruously refined, remarking that “Kid is evidently pretty well civilized to want a pillow on a killing expedition” ^[2]. The two Indians killed two men and “secured several hundred dollars,” suggesting the raid was both violent and calculated ^[2]. In response, Captain Keys received orders from Colonel Bliss at Fort Bayard to draw thirty days’ rations and scout for Indians near Alamo Viejo, a settlement in the Sierra Madre foothills of Chihuahua ^[2].

In 1890, “sixty bucks, squaws and papooses” passed through Deming, New Mexico, on their way to Fort Union “to be ‘eddicated’” ^[1]. Among them was “[the] Kid’s family, who has been committing depredations in Arizona” ^[1]. The officer in command added that “there are seven Apaches on the war path, besides the renegades in Old Mexico,” underscoring the perception that the Kid remained a threat even as his dependents were removed to the boarding school system ^[1].