Eskiminzin ( ''Ndee biyati' / Nnee biyati: "Men Stand in Line for Him"; or ''Hashkebansiziin'', ''Hàckíbáínzín'' - "Angry, Men Stand in Line for Him", c. 1828–1894) was a local group chief of the Aravaipa band of the San Carlos group of the

Western Apache The Western Apache are an Indigenous people of North America, and a subgroup of the greater Apache identity, who live primarily in east central Arizona, in the United States and north of Mexico in the states of Sonora and Chihuahua. Most live ...

during the

Apache Wars The Apache Wars were a series of armed conflicts between the United States Army and various Apache tribal confederations fought in the Southwestern United States, southwest between 1849 and 1886, though minor hostilities continued until as l ...

. Eskiminzin was born around 1828 near the Pinal Mountains as a Pinaleño/Pinal Apache, through marriage into the Aravaipa, he became one of them and later their chief. He desired a lasting peace between the indigenous peoples of America and the whites. In 1871, Eskiminzin and the Pinaleño/Pinal band of the San Carlos Apaches under Capitán Chiquito accepted an offer by the

US Government The Federal Government of the United States of America (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States. The U.S. federal government is composed of three distinct branches: legislative, execut ...

to settle down and plant crops in the vicinity of Camp Grant, a fort near modern-day

Tucson Tucson (; ; ) is a city in Pima County, Arizona, United States, and its county seat. It is the second-most populous city in Arizona, behind Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix, with a population of 542,630 in the 2020 United States census. The Tucson ...

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

. This resettlement plan was short-lived; on April 30, 1871, a band of anti-Apache American civilians under William S. Oury, Mexican civilians under Jesús María Elías, and Tohono O'odham warriors under their chief Francisco Galerita launched a merciless assault on the settlement without warning. In the process of what became known as the Camp Grant massacre, 144 occupants (almost entirely children and women) were indiscriminately butchered and mutilated in the space of less than an hour, nearly all of them scalped. Twenty-nine children had been captured and were sold into slavery in Mexico by the Tohono O'odham and the Mexicans themselves. Eskiminzin survived the tragedy. However, later in life he was suspected of sheltering his son-in-law the Apache Kid, was imprisoned without a trial, and soon after his release, died in 1894.

References

External links

David Leighton,"Street Smarts: Adventurous life led Oury here," Arizona Daily Star, July 23, 2013
1820s births 1894 deaths San Carlos Apache Tribe people People from Arizona Territory Native American leaders Native American people of the Indian Wars Native American people from Arizona {{NorthAm-native-bio-stub