In January of 1863, Chief Mangus-Colorado received word that Captain Edmond Shirland wanted to discuss peace. His men feared a trap and insisted on sending fifteen warriors with him for his protection. As they reached the soldier’s camp, they were met by an interpreter who said the chief must enter the camp alone. The chief insisted they raise a flag of truce over the camp first. When that was done, his men turned back and he went on alone. As he neared the camp, a dozen soldiers leapt out of hiding and aimed their cocked rifles at him. Daniel Conner, a prospector traveling with the soldiers explained, “We hurried Mangus off to our camp at old Fort McLean and arrived in time to see General West come up with his command. The general walked out to where Mangus was in custody to see him, and looked like a pigmy beside the old chief, who also towered above everybody about him in stature. He looked careworn and refused to talk and evidently felt that he had made a great mistake in trusting the paleface on this occasion.”
Two soldiers were designated to guard him for the night. One soldier later reported that he heard General West tell the guards to shoot the chief if he tried to escape, saying, “I want him dead or alive in the morning. Do you understand? I want him dead.”
Conner later saw the two guards tormenting the old chief, who was in his seventies, as he tried to sleep by heating their bayonets in the fire and making him flinch by applying the hot metal to his feet and legs. He endured this several times and then, according to Conner, he sat up and “began to expostulate in a vigorous way by telling the sentinels in Spanish that he was no child to be playing with. But his expostulations were cut short… when both sentinels promptly brought down their minié muskets to bear on him and fired, nearly at the same time, through his body.”
The guards emptied their pistols into him. One soldier took his scalp, while another cut off his head, boiled the flesh off his skull and later sold it. The chief’s skull was later put on display in the Smithsonian. This renewed the desire of Cochise, Geronimo, and the Apache warriors to rid their territory of whites and hostilities escalated.
Bonus
Drawing of Skull of Mangas Colorados from 1873 book "Human Science" p. 1196 by Orson Squire Fowler
Source:
Stephens, John Richard. “Alternative Views.” Weird History 101: Tales of Intrigue, Mayhem, and Outrageous Behavior. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2006. 56. Print.
Further Reading:
La-choy Ko-kun-noste, alias "Red Sleeve" (Mangas Coloradas) / Dasoda-hae ("He Just Sits There")
Cochise / Cheis / A-da-tli-chi (“Oak”)
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