A Long Journey Home

THE OVERLOOK

By Tom Clavin

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          During the past couple of weeks I have had the good fortune to go on and return from a tour to promote the publication of Follow Me to Hell, published April 4 and (ahem) already on The New York Times bestseller lists, at #11 in the Combined Print and E-Book category and #12 in the Print Hardcover category. And, I’m just informed, it will be on the April 30 list too.

          As I ricocheted between San Antonio, Dallas, Wichita, Denver, and Austin – the book is, after all, about the Texas Rangers – which required eight flights in eight days, I met many book-loving people and participated in fun events. Along the way, I heard some good stories or a name or event was mentioned and told it was worth further exploration. One of those stories that I have taken a bit of time to look into is that of a formidable Apache woman named Dilchthe. Her saga, I think, is quite cinematic.

          Sometime during the 1860s, a group of Sonoran mercenaries raided a small Apache town near the U.S.-Mexican border, near what are now the cities of Esqueda, Mexico, and neighboring Douglas, Arizona.  After slaughtering the captured males, they force-marched the surviving women southwest to the Gulf of California. Many of the women died during the ordeal. The raiders sold the rest into slavery where they worked in the fields of a local hacienda.

Among those enslaved Apache women was Dilchthe, a middle-aged grandmother from the Eastern Chiracahua nation. She and the others hatched a plan to escape and return to their tribe.  After surreptitiously gathering some supplies, they left the hacienda, fleeing east along the route they remembered traveling toward the Gulf.  Once their overseers discovered their disappearance, the hacienda owner dispatched vaqueros, or horse-mounted cattle herders, to track them down.  The group of women evaded the pursuit, which was eventually abandoned. Upon reaching the Gulf, they headed north along its shore.  After the food they brought with them ran out, they ate leaves and bugs.

Dilchthe and the other women traveled for nearly 300 miles up the coast, until they reached the mouth of the Colorado River.  None of the women could swim, so they had no direct way of crossing the great river.  Dilchthe requested the help of an old Mexican woman who lived nearby, who told the party of a shallow spot at the confluence of the Colorado and Gila Rivers far to the north, near present-day Yuma, Arizona.  Dilchthe led the group to the shallow spot and herself waded out into the Colorado River.  Discovering it was safe to walk across, she motioned the others to join her. Once all were on the other side, they continued east.  

The band of women followed the Gila River toward Apache land.  Despite the scorching heat in the Yuma Valley, Dilchthe persuaded them not to travel across the cooler, higher land because of the risk of encountering enemy tribes.  After three days of following the Gila, a party of Yuma warriors, enemies of the Apache, ambushed the women. Dilchthe and one other Apache woman escaped by hiding in some brush, but the Yuma captured one other woman and killed the rest.  Not surrendering to despair, Dilchthe and her companion continued their walk, past what is now Phoenix and Tucson.

Exhaustion, hunger, and thirst took their toll, but the women persevered. For a hundred miles, they could manage only a slow walk, and finally, they reached the limits of their endurance and collapsed on the side of a mountain near what is now the city of Safford. It seemed like their journey had finally come to an end.

However, peering through bleary eyes into the distance, Dilchthe could barely make out a heart-shaped mountain.  Being an Apache, she knew the mountains of the desert Southwest very well, and she recognized the one she saw at once -- it was near her home.  She built a smoky fire as a signal beacon, and she and her companion laid down on the earth, too tired to move.

Seeing the smoke of the beacon, several Apache warriors set off for it. They found the two half-conscious women lying on the rocky soil. By sheer coincidence, one of the rescuers was Dilchthe's own son-in-law.  In those days, it was customary for a man and his mother-in-law to avoid physical contact, but they ignored that custom and embraced heartily.  

After walking for more than a thousand miles through harsh desert terrain, with no map or weapons and almost no food, these two women made it back from a life of slavery to their tribe.  They welcomed Dilchthe and her companion home as a returning hero.

There are more stories to tell . . .

Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 18 books, including the brand-new Follow Me to Hell: McNelly’s Texas Rangers and the Rise of Frontier Justice, and, with Bob Drury, The Last Hill. To purchase a copy, please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com.