Kidnapped by Apache | Two BRUTAL Stories of Being Captured by the DEADLIEST Indian Raiders

welcome to dates and dead guys the American frontier in the mid to late 1800s was a dangerous place for new settlers the Southwest was home to Native Americans like the Apache they were raiding people a brutal reputation and expertise and stealth made them terrifying and they would live up to their reputation if settlers were lucky they got away with their property or cattle before they even knew that they were there but many were not lucky rating societies inevitably have high mortality rates in order to sustain your population kidnapping your Rivals children becomes a viable option today we will explore the stories of two of the most significant kidnappings ever committed by the Apache the first is the story of Mickey free whose abduction caused a war between the Americans and the chiricawa the second is the story of Charlie McComas a young boy whose kidnapping remains one of the great Mysteries of the late 1800s but before we get started I research historical topics I find interesting and explain them in a way I would to my friends if that is your kind of thing please subscribe and leave a like on the video If you really like it share it it supports me and it will help grow the channel but let's get to our stories foreign was one of the most famous of the Apache Scouts look through the images he comes up constantly because between 1872 and 1886 he was present on the majority of major military campaigns at the time but despite living with the Apache and working with them as a scout Mickey free wasn't born one as a child his name was Felix Ward and he lived on a ranch in the sonosha valley in Southern Arizona that is where he was captured many settlers were taken by raids but this one was different his kidnapping was going to trigger the longest war in American history even more crazy is that Mickey free will help end the war 25 years later after the Apache found him hiding in that peach tree quote we can reasonably surmise young Felix State of Mind as his captors carried him away from the senosha valley in 1861. here was a skinny five and one half foot tall 13 year old boy his childhood made wretched by the constantly marauding Apaches now he found himself in the hands of Los barbaros the boogeyman of his youth he must have expected horrible torture in a lingering death end quote when Felix was 13 he was playing outside in a peach tree his stepfather John Ward was away on business this is not the first raid the ranch had experienced three times over the past few years they had been hit and their cattle had been stolen years later when asked about a subduction he said all he could remember was the long ride the Apache took him Road East and disappeared Without a Trace rage were part of Apache culture they took the resources they needed they also captured settlers and other Native Americans regularly and whether they would keep them alive though that was a legitimate question women and young children had a good chance of being adopted into the tribe or being held as slaves or for ransom men and teenage boys were almost always killed and the Apache could get creative Felix was 13. in most cases he should have been killed but he wasn't so why not he was small for his age and very skinny making him look younger than he was that definitely helped but it was probably because he was blind in one eye left that way from an infection they had when he was a baby the chief of the group that took him took pity on him because he happened to also be blind in one eye although that didn't stop him from selling him a few weeks later John Ward returned home the day after the raid had captured Felix immediately he goes to the military at nearby Fort Buchanan and they send out Lieutenant George Bascom and 54 men to go get the boy back Bascom finds a trail heading east to where the chirakawa Apache live and the Apache Pass which is actually my background for this episode generally no other group would go that way so Bascom incorrectly surmised the chiricawa were the group of Apache that took Felix what he didn't account for was that new Forge being built might cause groups to change the routes and travel to avoid the US military using Indian Scouts because you have to even find the Apache Bascom made contact with the chiricawa and they meet with chief Cochise in a military tent and some of his family members came along with him Cochise was willing to do this because at this time there was relative peace between the chiricawa and the U.S Bascom however works to change that he recklessly accused the chirokawa of taking the boy and demanded that he be returned he told Cochise that he was their captive until Felix would be brought back Cochise tried to reason with Bascom even going as far as to offer his services and helping them find him but Bascom wasn't having it realizing this was a dead end Cochise Springs up takes a blade out that he had concealed in a split second slices through the canvas of the tent and escapes into the mountains his brother and nephews didn't escape and the military was able to hold them hostage all further attempts at negotiation fail so Cochise goes hunting he finds some Americans to take hostage and offers bascoming exchange his hostages for his family back but Bascom hold his ground and says that he would only take Felix in exchange who Cochise did not and never had so what was Cochise to do well he got creative with his captives and Bascom found the mess after he had fled back into Mexico Bascom in retaliation hang his cochise's family members this event the Bascom Affair starts the 25-year long Apache Wars all over a boy Felix Ward so let's get back to him Felix Ward wasn't taken by the chirakawa and different sources say different things but he was either taken by the Pinal Apache or the aravapa but he will later be traded to the coyotero or White Mountain Apache with the coil tarot Felix was adopted we don't have a lot of information of what his childhood was like his adopted brother however famous in his own right John rope a Medal of Honor recipient said quote he was raised with me but we always treated him like he was one of us end quote we know that as an Apache he went on rage against both Native Americans and white settlers but it seems that he had very few run-ins with the US military that is until 1872 when George crook would force his group to Fort Apache and he would wind up on reservation when the Apache were forced to reservations usually their captives would be reunited with their families but that didn't happen for Felix his brother Santiago would find him but told him that while he was gone both his mother and his adopted father had died Santiago tried to get Felix to come home with him but he decided to stay with the apacheon reservation and become a scout in November 1872 General George crook starts trying to enlist Apache to work as Scouts for the U.S army it sounds strange but this appealed to many Apache men life on reservation was not suited to Warrior culture but being a scout who seeks out and fights the enemy was so even though they were pressured to the reservation by the military it gave them their best option the military was rather choosy in picking Scouts and in a practice we would find rather offensive today the soldiers would rename who got in because they had a hard time pronouncing Apache names when Felix was selected as a scout he still went by his original name it seems the Apache never renamed him which is strange but it didn't stop the soldiers from Doing It Felix was five foot seven and about 135 pounds he had fairer skin than the Apache and reddish brown hair it is commonly said that he was half Irish and half Mexican but that may or may not be true additionally his one Blind Eye gave him a menacing appearance it reminded the soldiers of a character from a popular book Charles O'Malley the Irish Dragon the character was a manservant named Mickey free and from that point on and for the rest of his life he went by that name and Mickey free would turn out to be a hell of a scout and an interpreter throughout the 1870s and 1880s Mickey free was constantly used by General George crook Emmett Crawford and Al sieber the military could never find Apache without the scouts making them very useful having never learned to read and write we have no documents written by him directly but those around us give us a sense of his reputation and he stood out a soldier Mickey worked with Tom Horn Infamous in his own right he probably killed a kid said quote he Mickey now spoke both Mexican and Apache like a professor end quote maybe not like a professor others said he had a hard time with Spanish verb conjugation so it was hard to tell if he was talking about something in the past present or future horn recalled quote and was the wildest Daredevil in the world at his time end quote there are stories like the ones from John Burke's journals about how Mickey would throw himself In Harm's Way by literally running out to the Apache that they were just in a gunfight with to start negotiating in Horn's eyes Mickey quote was thoroughly qualified for a typical Scout and guide in every sense except for the fact that he had never any regard for his own life end quote he was also disliked by many Apache especially on reservation with the chirakawa who he helped Force there as a scout he wasn't nice about his work and was once called perhaps the worst man on reservation but his last big adventure would come in 1885 when Geronimo and the chirakawa break out of San Carlos reservation One Last Time strangely enough Geronimo blamed Mickey free for the chirakawa leaving when the Americans were given reasons that the chiricahua fled the San Carlos reservation in 1885. they blamed Mickey free Mickey had arrested some of them for drinking which was illegal and for beating their wives which the Apache argued wasn't one Apache Chief Nana is quoted by the reservation authorities to have said of the situation and Mickey quote he can't advise me on how to treat my women end quote it's really strange but nana May technically be correct at least from his point of view the Apache were promised when they came to a reservation that they would not be prosecuted for such offenses but domestic violence was an ongoing issue on reservation and attended to tie directly into drinking their favorite beverage this one regardless in May about 150 Apache led by Geronimo had broken out of San Carlos and fled into Mexico what followed was a massive effort to catch them Mickey free initially works as a scout and interpreter in their efforts they were able to catch up and locate the band several times even getting very close to a few surrenders but the death of Captain Emmett Crawford in the pursuit in an alcohol and rumor-fueled failure to close the deal in 1885 led a general crook being replaced by Nelson miles he used Scouts far less aggressively than Crook and left Mickey free in a bit of a limbo that is until he sent into Washington to try to handle negotiations with the Apache from there in July of 1886 Mickey free in a small delegation of Apache were sent to Washington Washington wanted interpreters there so that when Geronimo was caught they would be able to understand and send messages via Telegraph among them was a scout named chado who I only bring up because he will be present in our next story from before he was a scout the trip is hampered by poor communication due to Broken Telegraph lines but by September geronimo's band had surrendered for the final time the remaining shirakawa were believed to be too dangerous to send to a local prison or to be allowed to return to San Carlos so they were sent to a more serious prison in Florida other Apache they felt were dangerous like cheetah even though he was now a scout were sent there as well Mickey free was sent one last time as an interpreter and for about a month he stayed at Fort Marion in Florida translating the end of a war that started with his capture as Felix Ward 25 years earlier Mickey free lived a long life after the end of the Apache Wars in 1886 but there is a lot we don't know he never learned to read and write so we don't have his thoughts about anything or his account of events he's a bit of a mystery but if you like Mysteries you're really going to like this next story in 1924 a group of Bronco Apache conducted a raid in New Mexico the last known Apache raid on American soil Apache went through the countryside killing a Rancher and stealing supplies in cattle before they slipped back into Mexico a white bearded man on Horseback was witnessed who was this white Apache Warrior a kidnapped child raised Apache well some said it was Charlie McComas Charlie was a six-year-old boy in 1883 he lived with his mother and father in Silver City New Mexico that year in late March his family was having a picnic near Thompson Canyon a choke point that forces Travelers on a specific route unbeknownst to them a sub-chief named chato LED an Apache raiding party of nearly 30 men they knew of the choke point and were waiting for the unsuspecting Travelers hours later the results of the raid were discovered it appeared from the evidence that the Raiders were basically on top of the McComas family before they even knew they were there Charlie's father Hamilton McComas appears to have handed over the reins of their horse-drawn Buckboard to his wife juniana he then grabbed his rifle jumped out of the Buckboard and tried to make a stand while she and young Charlie made a run for freedom his body was found with seven bullet holes despite the heroic efforts of her husband Juliana didn't make it far she was overtaken by the Raiders she grabbed Charlie and tried to get away on foot but was caught and bludgeoned to death probably with the butt of a rifle what was missing from the scene was Charlie it was clear to those searching that the Apache had taken him before the locals or military were able to rally and take on the band of Raiders they had slipped back into Mexico this was a common tactic used by the Apache the U.S military was not permitted to cross the border so border hopping was very useful in conducting raids it plagued American efforts for years however just two months later in May a new international treaty gave the U.S military permission to pursue hostile Indians into Mexico General George crook took action immediately the purpose of the mission was not solely to go find Charlie but it was one of their objectives these missions always included Indian Scouts there was never any finding Apache without them and in just a few weeks the scouts and military forces found chado's Rancheria and wouldn't you know it one of the leaders of the scouts was Mickey free a fight breaks out many Apache Escape but nine are killed and five captured of those killed they are not just Warriors some are women young and elderly when the captured or question about Charles one of the women said he was taken away when the scouts were first detected but when many of the nearby Apache began to surrender to the Army Charlie never showed up and the Apache there said in the chaos he had gotten away and ran off John G Burke an officer with the Army wrote about it in his account called an Apache campaign in the Sierra Madre he wrote quote Charlie McComas was never found if you recall was an assist and I think truthfully that he was in the Rancheria destroyed by Crawford that he escaped Terror stricken to the depths of the mountains that the country was so rough the Timber and Brushwood so thick that his tracks could not be followed even had there not been such a violent Fall of Rain during the succeeding nights all accounts agree in this end quote so according to the chirakawa Charlie Got Away in the mountains and in the dense vegetation and with the rain he was just gone well that's what they said but that's not what happened we can say very confidently that with the chirakawa told the Army in the May of 1883 was a lie but there are two likely possibilities to what actually happened one explanation comes from Jason betzennis an Apache Warrior who fought against the U.S in the 1880s he wrote a book called I fought with Geronimo that was published in 1959. he wrote that after Charlie's capture he began to quickly learn the Apache language in that he was treated kindly between March and may an Apache family had taken him in and effectively adopted him they expected him to become a full member of the tribe in time but in May when the Apache Scouts had attacked the Rancheria many Apache fled taking Charlie with them in the fighting the scouts had killed an elderly woman the mother of an Apache Warrior named Speedy who had already escaped when Speedy discovered the death of his mother he went into a rage and bludgeoned Charlie to death with a rock now bedzinis says very clearly he wasn't there for this but a woman named Ramona who he knew was an eyewitness who had told him the only reason that it took 80 years to come out was because bedzenes wasn't willing to tell the story until everyone involved had passed but was the story true maybe but the Army searched for Charlie for quite some time and they never found a body there is one more explanation in the decades that followed the Apache were the last holdouts to life on reservation although the vast majority had already resigned there by the mid-1880s isolated groups of them called Bronco Apache existed in the Sierra Madre for years there were strange sightings and stories of a bearded white man among them they come from many sources as recent as 1924 in a raid in New Mexico or one even later in 1930 when a Mexican Village was attacked by these Broncos then in 1940 a woman who had been captured was interrogated she claimed that the white bearded Apache people had seen had been killed just a few years before that he was stabbed to death in a fight over a girl she said his body was thrown into a pit she even led a team of archaeologists to it the remains were taken for examination and it turned out to be a white man with blue eyes and red hair just like Charlie so was this Charlie McComas unfortunately will probably never know thanks for watching I'm sorry these videos take so long to come out uh they take a lot of research and I am just not a fast reader if you want to see more stories like this one be sure to check out the other videos on the channel I have been on a bit of an Apache kick recently so a lot of my recent ones are on topics just like this the recent growth the channel has just been awesome so if you like the content please don't forget to like comment subscribe or share it really helps I have a few more topics I would like to cover with the Apache before I move on so if you have any suggestions please leave that in the comments and maybe I'll add it to the list

Channel: Dates and Dead Guys

Views: 184,896

Keywords: Apache, Arizona, Cochise, Comanche, Empire of the Summer Moon, Geronimo, History, Indians, Mexico, Native Americans, New Mexico, Top 10, Weird History, Man Hunt, Hide and Seek, Sierra Madre, Reservation, San Carlos, Wild West, History Channel, Diabolical, Old West, Raid, Aztec, Apache Kid, Massai, Herman Lehmann, Quanah Parker, cowboys, Mickey Free, Charlie McComas

Id: ck6-Hmf8O_E

Length: 19min 29sec (1169 seconds)

Published: Sat May 06 2023