Cochise

Cochise was a leading chief of the Chiricahua Apache whose resistance shaped conflict in Arizona and New Mexico during the 1860s. The Bascom Affair of 1861, in which he was wrongly accused of kidnapping, helped trigger years of warfare. In 1872 he negotiated a peace with General Oliver O. Howard that established a reservation in the Chiricahua homeland.

Cochise and his followers used the mountain borderlands of the Southwest to resist United States military campaigns for more than a decade. The violence intensified after the Bascom Affair, but Cochise eventually entered negotiations through the intermediary Thomas Jeffords and General Oliver O. Howard. The 1872 settlement allowed his people to remain temporarily on a reservation in their Chiricahua homeland, where Cochise died in 1874.

Hourly History’s Apache Wars follows leaders including Cochise, Victorio and Geronimo and the campaigns that ended with the surrender of the Chiricahua in 1886. Hourly History’s The Apache also considers leaders including Cochise and Geronimo while carrying the story beyond warfare to cultural survival, political organisation and contemporary Apache communities. Cochise is treated fictionally in Lucia St. Clair Robson’s Ghost Warrior and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The War Chief.