When the Chiricahuas raided up from Mexico in the spring of 1882 to get “LOCO“ and his people, they met and killed Judge McComas (a prominent attorney of Arizona) and his wife near Clifton, Arizona, and carried off as a captive their little son (Charley McComas) a child of about five years of age. When Crawford attacked Benito's camp in the Sierra Madre at the time of General Crook's expedition, the child was in that camp. But in the excitement of the fighting the little fellow either wandered off and starved to death in the mountains or was killed by one of the squaws - the latter we believed was his fate as it ws the practice among these Indians. When the main body of the Indians returned to the Reservation with General Crook after Crawford's fight, they brought with them a small boy whom at first was thought to be Charlie McComas; but he was later identified as a Mexican and restored to his family in northern New Mexico.
Judge McComas of Silver City, New Mexico, was killed by Chatto's Indians in the Spring of 1883.
He was on his way from Silver City to Lordsburg and had foolishly taken his wife and child along with him.
Mrs. McComas was killed and the child was carried off and never seen again.
McComas knew very well that hostile Indians were within thirty miles of his road; and one would think that, under such circumstances, he would have left his wife and child at home.
He and his wife, however, were both of that foolish class of people who held the Indians in supreme contempt and thought themselves a match for all the Apaches in the mountains.
Chatto said afterwards that if McComas had kept quiet the Indians would have crossed the road a half mile away from him and never have known he was there; but, at the sight of them, he whipped up his horses and tried to get by which started the chase and the shooting.
|
)