General Crook saw Apache warriors as "the world's finest infantry". In films, they are always shown mounted like Plains tribes. In reality though, a lot of times they were on foot. First of all, Apaches did not breed horses like the Comanche, Shoshone, et al. They acquired them through raids and warfare. Also, they fought hard and moved fast.
Theirs was guerilla hit and run tactics. They would ride their horses into the ground if needed and continue on foot. To give you an example: Ulzana's spectacular raid of November 1884. Totally disregard the ridiculous Hollywood version showing 9 warriors and all of them being killed, including Ulzana and his 14-year-old son. In real life, there were 11 warriors and one man got killed. He was wounded and left to fend for himself. It sounds cold, but that is understood in the Apache code.
A wounded man will slow the party down and eventually they all die. Back to reality: In three weeks, Ulzana and his men travelled 1200 miles, drove off 1200 head of cattle, and 300 horses. In the process, they wore out 200 horses and killed 38 people. Ulzana was deported from Arizona with Geronimo and his band to Fort Sill Oklahoma.
He died there in old age in 1909, the same year as Geronimo. The only realistic part of "Ulzana's Raid" is the portion showing the warriors being pursued on foot by mounted Cavalry troops. That happened a lot in reality. Apache bands with women and children covered 70 miles a day on foot and during the Geronimo Campaign, the US Army clocked an all-warrior group of Chiricahuas, travelling 100 miles in a single day.
Why so much footworks? It is simple. People can walk or run through terrain horses cannot. The receipt for that is: during the Apache Wars, mounted troops on both sides of the border eked out 45 miles a day which put them one day behind the warriors until General Crook brought in Apache scouts. Back to the topic of how they "vanished". This photo is a ca
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