Cochise Facts
Cochise Facts
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Interesting Cochise Facts: |
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Cochise's first battles against non-Indians were during raids on Mexican settlements and ranches. |
As a young man in his teens and twenties, Cochise would raid with his father and his warriors in Sonora, Mexico and then retreat to the Dragoon Mountains in Arizona. |
Like Geronimo, Cochise developed a hatred early in his life for Mexicans. Mexican soldiers killed Cochise's father during a raid. |
Cochise was captured during a raid on a Mexican fort in 1848, but was given his freedom in a prisoner exchange. |
After the Americans acquired the southwest in the Mexican-American War in 1848, the Apaches' raiding began to focus on American targets. |
Cochise began his war against the United States Army when he was wrongly arrested for kidnapping an American rancher's son. |
The Apaches massacred numerous ranchers and defeated Army detachments until the late 1860s. The Apaches essentially conducted a guerrilla warfare campaign against the government. |
Cochise fought in and helped lead one of the only true Apache head to head battles against the Army, known as the Battle of Apache Pass on July 15-16, 1862. The battle took place when Cochise and the Apaches attacked a detachment of California volunteers on their way to New Mexico to prevent Confederate attacks. The Californians won the battle with only two men killed in battle; the Apaches never again attempted to fight the Army in a head on battle. |
Cochise led raids claimed the lives of hundreds of settlers and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage. |
Cochise was said to be about six feet tall. |
He surrendered to the Army on October 12, 1872 and was allowed to retire to the Chiricahua Reservation in New Mexico. |
Cochise died in 1874, in his late sixties, on the reservation and was later buried in the Dragoon Mountains. It is believed he died of stomach cancer. |
Interest in Cochise was rekindled in the United States during the mid-twentieth century when frontier culture became a fad. He was portrayed in numerous movies and television shows of the period as a sympathetic character. |
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