Media Center Home

Source:  McIntire, Suzanne, ed. American Heritage Book of Great American Speeches for Young People. 
New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2001.

Cochise,. Chiricahua Apache Chief
"We Will Remain at Peace with Your People Forever"
Canada Alamosa, New Mexico March 20-21, 1872

This for a very long time has been the home of my people.... We came to these mountains about us; no one lived here, and so we took them for our home and country. Here we grew from the first feeble band to be a great people and covered the whole country as the clouds cover the moun­tains. Many people came to our country. First the Spanish, with their horses and their iron shirts, their long knives and guns, great wonders to my simple people. We fought some, but they never tried to drive us from our homes in these mountains. After many years the Spanish soldiers were driven away and the Mexican ruled the land. With these, little wars came, but we were now a strong people, and we did not fear them.

At last in my youth came the white man, under your people.... I have fought long and as best I could against you. I have destroyed many of your people, but where I have I have destroyed one white man many have come in his place; where an Indian has been killed, there has been none to come in his place, so that the great people that welcomed you with acts of kindness to this land are now but a feeble band that fly before your soldiers as the deer before the hunter, and must all perish if this war continues. 

I have come to you, not from any love for you or for your great father in Washington, or from any regard for his or your wishes, but as a conquered chief, to try to save alive the few people that still remain to me.  I am the last of my family a family that for very many years have been the leaders of this people; and on me depends their future, weather they shall utterly vanish from the land or that a small remnant remain for a few years to see the sun rise over these mountains, their home.

I here pledge my word a word that has never been broken, that if your great father will set aside a part of my own country, where I and my little band can live, we will remain at peace with your people forever…I have spoken.