A skirmish has broken out in Vulture City just on the outskirts of Wickenburg.
This 19th century gold mining ghost town — founded by a German prospector in 1863 before shuttering during World War II — is where a faux battle between the U.S. Cavalry and Apaches is playing out on a Saturday afternoon in January.
And this time around, the Apaches won.
That abandoned area roughly 70 miles west of Phoenix also resembles the set of a Spaghetti Western. And like those frontier flicks that featured feuding cowboys and Indians, everyone has somewhat of a script to follow, including 80-year-old David Kampf, who is portraying a U.S. Army cavalryman.
“Here come the dredges. They are renegade Indians,” Kampf told the crowd of a few dozen spectators. “They are outlaws, gun runners, train robbers, cattle thieves, sheep rustlers. The absolute gutterscum of the West: drunkards, bums, ne’er-do-wells, the garbage of society. Look at them. Give them a boo; give us a cheer.”
Leading the Indigenous resistance during this reenactment is Massai Leon, who identifies as Chiricahua and Mescalero Apache.
“So here in the Arizona Territory, they would hire us, or try to kill us, or whatever,” Massai said of his character.
What’s unique about Massai and his family is that they're not only reenactors, but this to them is all about reliving their literal history. Their ancestor, Charles Martine, enlisted in the U.S. Army as an Indian Scout.
He was essentially a hired gun to hunt down renegades like Chiricahua Apache leader Geronimo after the Civil War. They were guides, trackers and warriors, assigned reconnaissance and combat duties.
In 1866, Congress passed the Army Reorganization Act, letting up to 1,000 American Indians enlist. Pawnees, Crows, Shoshones and many more signed up, but Apaches became arguably the most iconic fighters among their ranks.
Brigadier Gen. George Crook, who once served as commander of the Arizona Territory, took deep pride in recruiting Apaches from San Carlos and White Mountain to combat Chiricahuas. He believed there was no better tactic but to task an Apache in tracking another Apache.
Ten of Crook's Apache scouts — including Sgt. William Alchesay — were even given the Medal of Honor “for gallant conduct during the campaigns and engagements with Apaches.”
“The best Native scouts are the Apaches,” Massai said. “They’d run in front of danger. You can tell them to do anything. They could live off the land. They could travel 100 miles a day on foot — you give them horses, travel 200 miles a day.”
Today, these scout reenactors are dashing all around Vulture City in regalia.
Bringing this fast-paced clash to life took a toll on Massai’s towering uncle, Edmund “Guido” Arguello, who is Mescalero Apache. As well as his size 13 feet, which were crammed inside a pair of cactus kickers – traditional Apache-style moccasins with curled toes, designed to shield sharp rocks and cactus spines.
“Especially running moccasins with rocks,” said Arguello, as he chuckled. “I wouldn’t recommend it — unless you’re used to it. Practice definitely. I can’t even fit socks in these things, so I’m barefooted.”
Massai’s brother, Martín Leon, is named after his famed Apache relative. Unlike Massai with his short haircut, Martín wasn’t sure what other role he could possibly play because he has much more of it — almost like the mane of a horse.
“I couldn’t really use my long hair for, like, any other reenacting. I put on the white paint and it was a really cool experience,” said Martín. “We’re also really big history nuts, and we really like the hobby.”
For Martín, it’s all about remembering Apaches were on both sides of the conflict.
“Apaches did work with the government — and we did scout — but we also were fighting them off at the same time,” he added. “Some people, kind of also just don’t grasp that — whether it’s fighting against government, fighting with government: we’re fighting for our people.”
That heritage is something the nonprofit Arizona Civil War Council respects.
“We’re not just here like a Wild West show,” Massai said. “They know that we’re related to these people. Because they didn’t want to convey the message of, ‘We’re a bunch of hate-mongering people who want to shoot at Indians.’”
“That was not what they were about.”
Dave Williamson, the council’s president, cares about authenticity, saying “I mean, it’s not a bunch of white guys dressed up in war paint. These are actually Chiricahua.” And as the head of the nonprofit, Williamson stressed it’s their duty to share this complicated past responsibly.
“Because this is our history,” said Williamson. “Indian Wars has always been, ‘Oh, you know, it is a football,’ same thing with the Confederates. And, I mean, I get it, but we can’t say it didn’t happen. And everybody’s got their own point of view. It can’t be a single-sided narrative. It has to be the whole picture.”
As for Indian Scout Charles Martine, who was recruited by Lt. Charles Gatewood alongside another Chiricahua Apache named Kayitah, they succeeded in their mission of convincing Geronimo to surrender at Skeleton Canyon near Douglas, Arizona.
Brigadier Gen. Nelson Appleton Miles, who tapped Gatewood to find Geronimo, promised great riches to his pair of scouts, including “a large sum of money, many horses, mules and a lifetime pension.”
But in doing so, the only reward they got was being mislabeled by the U.S. as hostiles and becoming prisoners of war exiled to Florida. A year later, they were released and allowed to resettle the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico.
Decades later, the local Bureau of Indian Affairs superintendent from Mescalero would ultimately triumph in lobbying the then-War Department to “keep these promises” to the pair of Chiricahua Apaches for proper compensation, penning in a 1925 letter: “It does seem that a real injustice was done to these two old scouts, who risked their lives and were largely instrumental in bringing in Geronimo.”
Also in their defense was their commanding officer.
The then-retired Maj. Gatewood wrote in a 1926 letter that “the war would certainly have continued an indefinite time,” noting “these two Indians, no less than the white men who went into Geronimo’s camp, took their lives in their hands, undergoing very great risk of death in order to deliver their message.”
Yet Martine, Kayitah, Geronimo and his band boarded that train bound for Florida from Fort Bowie near modern-day Willcox on Sept. 8, 1886. As they did, the 4th Cavalry Regimental Band played the tune “Auld Lang Syne” as a farewell to the Apache campaign in the Southwest.
Almost 140 years later, the war reenactors and the crowd in Vulture City carried that very tune as led by U.S. cavalryman Kampf: “Do we all know the words to that? Let old acquaintances be forgot and never brought to mind. Goodbye.”
