BY STEPHEN AYERS
Staff Reporter / Verde Valley Independent

On a cold and windy January night in 1871, a battle was fought between troops of the 3rd Cavalry attached to Fort Verde and a group of Yavapai warriors attached to a band of approximately 150 men women and children.

The date marked the approximate halfway point between the time in 1865 when white farmers from the Prescott area first came to settle in the Verde Valley and the date in 1875 when the aboriginals would be forcibly removed.

The battle also typified how relations between the two cultures had degenerated in the short five years in which they had been living among one another.

The whites' ideas of land ownership, cultivation of crops and the harvest of minerals were concepts that flew directly in the face of a native culture that saw the land as a living thing and the idea of a stationary lifestyle to be repugnant.

Hit-and-run attacks against the whites, designed to discourage permanence, had resulted in the permanent stationing of troops.

By 1870, the Native Americans were using every resource available to delay and undermine ultimatums and attempts to make them stay put.

However, it seemed that each action on their part resulted in an opposite and all too often unequal reaction from the whites.

Somewhere around New Year's Day 1871, two miners were killed on Ash Creek, in the mountains south of Camp Verde. A third miner escaped and fled to Fort Verde, telling a tale of unprovoked ambush at the hands of Yavapai Indians.

Just days before, 1st Lt. George W. Cradlebaugh, a West Point graduate and surveyor by trade, had set off from the fort in command of 20 enlisted men, a scout and the fort's surgeon, Alonzo Steigers.

Cradlebaugh's mission was to meet with Yavapai leaders and negotiate peace.

When Cradlebaugh received word of the miners' deaths, his mission turned from peace to pursuit. He was soon on the trail of what appeared to be a sizable band of Indians and the small heard of cattle they had taken from the miners.

The trail took him east toward the rugged country leading to the Verde Rim.

On the evening of Jan. 6, aware he was closing in on his quarry, Cradlebaugh was forced by darkness and cold weather to bed down for the night. The spot he chose was just below the ridgeline of Marlow Mesa, on the western precipice of Chalk Tank Canyon.

You would need a topographic map to locate the spot. Suffice it to say it was not an ideal defensive position to try to hold, even under the best of circumstances.

The precariousness of their position and the closeness of their prey would both become evident in the cold, dark predawn hours of Jan. 7.

Around 3 a.m., the silent path of an arrow cut the night air and found its way through the fleshy cheeks of Pvt. Thomas Meyers, a 21-year-old New York native whose job it was to keep an eye out while the others slept.

The placement of the arrow effectively silenced Pvt. Meyers.

Immediately, "a terrible volley of bullets and arrows poured into their midst," according to a report in Prescott's Arizona Weekly Miner. The troops scrambled for whatever cover they could find.

A bullet shattered the arm of the surgeon, Steigers. On contract to the Army, it would be the first and last time he would see action.

For the next four hours, until just before sunrise, the two sides sniped, exchanging over 1,000 rounds of ammunition from a variety of weapons that included percussion cap muskets, 50-70 carbines, .44 caliber pistols and Henry repeating rifles, along with an undetermined number of arrows.

In spite of the lengthy exchange, the only casualties among the troops would be Meyers and Steigers. Indian losses were unknown but it was reported that blood had been found on the Indian side of the skirmish line.

By the time morning light broke the sky, the Indians had disappeared into the rocky canyon from which they had emerged and were continuing their flight to the east. The troops, light some 22 horses and six mules killed in action, were beginning to assess their damages.

Lt. Cradlebaugh made the decision to burn and bury a cache of tack and tents. He then gathered five wounded but usable mules to haul off the wounded men and what little equipment was deemed worth keeping.

The troops then made a 28-mile forced march home to Fort Verde, arriving at 9 p.m. that evening.

Where the Yavapais went is anyone's guess.

The day after the troops arrived at Fort Verde, a detail of 50 soldiers was sent in pursuit. They reported skirmishing with a band of Yavapais on the East Verde. No casualties were reported from that engagement.

The attack on Cradlebaugh's troops by the Yavapai was clearly a delaying action. Realizing that the soldiers had inadvertently camped next to them, and that by first light they would be right on top of them, they did the only thing they could.

The decision to engage their enemy at night and the length of time in which they chose to keep the soldiers pinned down shows they were trying to give their families as a big a head start as possible.

In many ways it was a typical engagement. Others have noted that nighttime battles and this one in particular, were unusual. Perhaps so, but it remains typical in the sense that it followed the usual Indian strategy of trying to run the soldiers' horses out of grain.

The troops could only carry a 14-day supply. It was therefore, typical to instigate a rear guard fight to delay the soldiers and keep them away from their grain supplies for as long as possible.

It also followed the Indian notion of only fighting when they were sure they could win. And in this case, they were the clear victors.

The guerrilla tactics employed by the Yavapai demonstrated their ability to play the game as well as the white soldiers only with scant resources.

But their delaying tactics, in the end, only put off the inevitable. The soldiers' ability to successfully defend against the hit-and-run required sheer numbers, secure supply lines and the ability to keep the Indians on the move and away from their supply of food.

It was starvation as much as anything that brought about the their eventual capitulation.

Within a year of the Cradlebaugh fight, the military would move into permanent facilities at Fort Verde. Its establishment would signal their resilience and the whites' determination to establish themselves in the Verde.

On Feb. 27, 1875, troops from Fort Verde would escort 1,476 Yavapai and Apache out of the Verde Valley and onto the San Carlos Reservation.

The war of attrition had come to an end in the Verde Valley.