A Ballard author has published a new book that reveals the life of an Apache warrior who fought along side Geronimo and Cochise and who later joined the U.S. Army as a scout.
John Sandifer recently self published the book “Chatto’s Promise,” which documents the life of Chatto, a Chiricahua Chieftain, who became a U.S. scout and traitor in the eyes of his tribe. Though not regarded with the iconic recognition as his Apache comrades, his story is entangled with theirs and is equally compelling.
Chatto fought alongside Apaches warriors such as Cochise and Geronimo, and it’s said that he was responsible for one of the worst raids on American settlers during that era. However, when faced with recovering his wife and child from the Mexican army and the demise of his entire tribe, Chatto became a peacemaker and scout for the U.S. military. Later the U.S. betrayed Chatto and imprisoned him for 27 years with 500 other Apache in Florida. When Chatto was released he was not allowed to go back to his home in Arizona and died on a reservation in New Mexico at the age of 80.
Sandifer, who has had a lifelong career in investigative journalism, pieced together Chatto’s story. Sandifer is a digger. He enjoys research and telling stories and spent over 40 years doing it. Much of that time was with King-TV (KING 5). Sandifer retired from broadcasting in 1994. But he wasn’t done digging. With his innate proclivity for investigation, Sandifer wrote three books – counting “Chatto’s Promise” – devoted to historical investigation. His other two books explore the Civil War and WWII eras.
“Reporters like to poke into stuff, and I spent my entire career as a reporter. I can’t stop digging into things.”
These days Sandifer spends his time writing and painting, and he leaves his home in Ballard to go to Arizona for half of the year. It was in Arizona when he was first piqued to investigate Chatto’s life. Sandifer first set off to paint a portrait of Cochise. He found an image online and started painting. Later he found out there were no photographs of Cochise ever taken and that he was actually painting Chatto. He eventually finished the painting and sold it to a woman who wanted to know more about Chatto. Sandifer also wanted to know more. He started digging.
“The Apache Wars are a huge subject, and Chatto would pop up here and here and here, but the trouble was they never really told me anything about him.”
Sandifer said he read through well known historians’ writing about the Apache Wars and that they would mention Chatto, but there was never a whole text or body of documentation devoted to him.
Chatto is commonly mistaken for Cochise, because Cochise was ever photographed. Photo courtesy of John Sandifier.
“I realized he (Chatto) rode with Cochise when he was a teenager. He rode with Geronimo. He was a real nasty son-of-gun. … The more I looked into him, the more I could start to piece together a picture and really came to the conclusion – with my notes being so thick – that there was a book in here. Chatto had never been written up, and I thought that he really deserved to be.”
Sandifer said that after a life long career in telling stories, one major lesson he has learned is that an investigator needs to visit the place(s) where the story happened.
“You’ll always learn more if you go stand on the land. Go where the action took place and you always learn something. If you go there and look around and smell it and feel the wind and the rain, you’re going to learn something. ”
Sandifer said that he visited every location mentioned his book, including battle sites and lands considered sacred by the Apache in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. However, Sandifer said he never went to Mexico in his research, “Because frankly Mexico scares me these days.”
Sandifer was also born in Texas and lived there until he was in his teens before moving to Skagit County. He said that his connection to the Southwest spurred his interested in Chatto’s story.
“It was a great deal of interested to me while I was traveling around in my home state. … I travelled as part of the process of writing.
Sandifer went to Silver City, Pinos Altos, Chiricahua Mountains and the Dragoon Mountains, which is known as Cochise’s Stronghold. Sandifer said that while in the Dragoon Mountains –where Cochise is buried – the question of how U.S. forces needed an Apache to find the Apache came to him.
“I went and climbed into those mountains – rattle snake infested as they are – and asked myself, “Why is this called a stronghold?” and, well, when you stand in there, you know. Nobody can get in there. It’s high rocks and terribly rugged terrain. You can see how they couldn’t find Cochise.”
Traveling to Pinos Altos also shaped Sandifer’s perception on the Apache’s view of the land, and he said he could identify with why they fought. According to Sandifer, back in the later 1800s American minors discovered gold, copper and silver in the Pinos Altos Mountains and had taken the land as there own to mine. The move angered the Apache because they considered the land sacred.
“Pinos Altos is one of those outstanding, beautiful, awesome high points in New Mexico where you can stand amid pine trees and look out beyond the horizon as far as you can see. It’s just awesome when you’re up there, and the Apache must have felt that way about it, but I wouldn’t have known that unless I had gone there.”
Looking at the horizon, Sandifer said he conjectured reasons the Apache fought so hard to protect the land.
“This was a really good example of why this was sacred territory to them and why they were willing to risk the lives of everyone in the tribe going after these minors to get them the hell off off there.”
Sandifer also said that his research influences his opinion of the U.S. government and the American culture.
“We Americans have this sort of inbred belief that in order to exploit the land or the company or the corporation for economic purposes we have to have complete control and domination. The Apaches didn’t believe that. They believed the land was there; it was God given; and it was for the use of everyone to sustain their lives; but you didn’t have to own it and you didn’t have to control it. Well that’s the diametrically opposed proposition that led to their demise, and I don’t know if we (Americans) aren’t still that way.”
Through his research Sandifer also started to identify with Chatto, not only as a warrior in the face of a wave of white Americans that kept coming, but as a peacemaker who made a choice for his people. According to Sandifer, with the disintegration of the Apache tribes looming and his wife and child captured by the Mexicans, Chatto opted to make peace with the Americans, not war, like Geronimo.
“He was ostracized by his own tribe and considered a traitor by becoming a scout.”
In his investigation of Chatto, Sandifer also went to the Mescalero Reservation near Ruidos, New Mexico where Chatto died in 1934. Sandifer went to the cultural center there and asked a man at the reception desk about Chatto. The man revealed that he was the great grandchild of Chatto and a relative of Cochise. Sandifer spent some time with the man learning about the customs and history of both Cochise and Chatto, which helped him clarified and corrected some information in his book.
Sandifer eventually finished his manuscript last summer. He decided to self publish using Amazon’s CreateSpace.
“I found out over the course of time more and more people are self publishing, and frankly I did not want to go through the pain and strain of a traditional publishing company.”
Reflecting on the book now that it’s published, Sandifer said he has a great appreciation for Chatto as a man and that hearing his story and the stories of the Apache is important to our lives today.
“I think Chatto’s story is valuable to us in how it shows our own government mishandled an aboriginal people…and I think it continues to resonate through the years in how duplicitous a government can be with its own people or with a different culture. … I think it’s stuff we need to know.”
For now, Sandifer is not writing another book, but he said his urge to dig up information and tell a compelling story is still something he cant shake.
“I’m not in broadcasting anymore. I’m too old. I’m too bald. I’m too tired of it, but I can’t get the idea of collecting facts and information out my registry. I write almost everyday.”
For more information or to check out Sandifers book, go to http://www.johnsandifer.com
