Fort Bowie Post Cemetery Bowie, AZ February 12, 2011

On this particular Saturday, 400 visitors (including me), 34 reenactors, and 16 National Park Service staff celebrated at the former site of Fort Bowie the 150^th anniversary of the Bascom Affair. No, all these people didn’t get together to celebrate a romantic tryst of Mr. Bascom from 1861. This affair was an incident the sparked the Apache Wars of America’s southwest.
Race relations gone extremely bad. It was an affair like this that spawned the cinematic tales of western classics and The Cowboy and Indian Icon Found Art Project for that matter.
Lt. George Bascom apparently tried to arrest the Chiricahua Apache, Chief Cochise on a trumped up charge. Bascom accused Cochise and his Apaches of stealing his cattle at the same time they allegedly kidnaped the son of a Mexican woman who lived with him.
The Chiricahua Apaches stated that their beloved chief escaped his wrongful imprisonment by cutting through the tent which was used as a jail. When it was all said and done the Apache Wars raged on intermittently for the next 10 years.
Since there were casualties of this war, there was also a cemetery at Fort Bowie. The remains of the deceased were buried there between 1862 and 1894. In March of 1895, the graves of army officers, enlisted men and their dependents were moved to the National Cemetery in San Francisco. Only 23-33 graves remained at Fort Bowie.
I wanted to place a cowboy and indian icon art piece at the cemetery in honor of the remains left behind. I placed, photographed and documented #88 at the grave site of Little Robe. It was believed that this young brave probably died of dysentery. He was part of a group of Apache prisoners, women and children, captured near Nacori, Mexico on August 7, 1985. This group included 2 of Geronimo’s wives. Little Robe was identified as one of Geronimo’s children.
Traditionally, the Apaches buried their dead by sealing them in crevices or small caves. The body would be placed with the head toward sundown. The burial would then be concealed by covering it up the rocks, sticks and foliage from the area. It was unusual for an Apache to tell anyone else where a person was buried.
This Indian boy’s life was a casualty. The settler’s son, whose kidnaping started the Apache Wars, was later reunited to his family. Both suffered because of prejudice and revenge.
Later on in years, little boys and girls would have playful skirmishes - some playing cowboys with toy guns while others played indians with toy tomahawks, bows and arrows. All whimsically reacting probably some scene they saw in a western film at a Saturday matinee.
Maybe they might even grow up to be an artist like me - gluing plastic figures on numbered rocks and leaving them in forlorn locations in the American west - still haunted by memories of prejudice and revenge. Now quite a few are tourist attractions where souvenirs, made in China, glorify the "old days." Emotional memories wiped clean by progress and technology.