By John P. Langellier, Ph.D.

In December 1872 a young Yavapai named Hoomothya was present as his father, siblings, grandparents, and other members of his extended family were killed by U.S. Army troops with the support of Indian scouts. There, in a remote cave that even today is isolated and difficult to locate, he was orphaned.

The lad may have been no more than seven or eight years old when the only world he knew was swept away as part of the government’s efforts to conquer Arizona Territory for white settlement. This tragic event had unexpected consequences, because the boy was taken in by his army captors and given a new name, Mike Burns. He remained with various military men for many years as ward, servant, mascot, and eventually as an Indian scout.

His path crossed with numerous western figures, from General George Crook to William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody. Burns’ life during these years reads much like a dime novel of the era but with more pathos than romance. At a tender age he was present at many events that have become part of western lore, including the 1876 campaign on the Great Plains where George Custer’s Seventh Cavalry met its fate at Little Bighorn, and later he played a role in the campaign that finally brought Geronimo to bay. These and other travels exposed him to experiences far beyond that of the typical post–Civil War American.

Mike Burns as a young adult in uniform as an Indian Scout (Photo Courtesy Sharlot Hall Museum – Call Number: MS-8-002).

Additionally, Burns’ odyssey led him to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, as one of the first students to attend that renowned Indian school, and to Highland University in Kansas. In the process Burns acquired more education than many Americans of the era by the time he returned to his homeland nearly a decade and a half later. This exposure to the white man’s school should have served him well. Regrettably, his thirst to learn did not bring the future he wanted for himself and his family. Yet through it all Burns was proud of his Indian heritage as well as his military service.

Indeed, Burns was of two peoples, and he was never completely accepted by either the whites or the Indians. Ironically, this precarious position afforded him an unequalled viewpoint, and in some ways inspired him to seek out the past that was stolen from him. In so doing he became part eyewitness, part oral historian, part ethnographer, and all storyteller. His poignant, personal perspective now comes to life in this transcription of his own memoir.

This last point is pivotal since personal stories of Arizona’s nineteenth-century Indians largely have gone untold, dying with their owners and leaving no record that either ever existed. There has simply been no Indian voice to tell their side of what happened after Arizona Territory was founded in 1863.

Burns’s desire to share his perspective started even while Arizona was still a territory. As early as January 6, 1910, he wrote from Phoenix to Miss Sharlot Hall, a poet, the territorial historian, and later the founder of the Sharlot Hall Museum, in care of Mr. J. P. Dillon, an attorney in Prescott: “I am an Apache Indian of this Territory and received a little education at Carlisle Indian School of Penna. Will you give me the address of a man or a magazine to whom I can send letters about a little history of the Apaches? And including my own history. . . .”

A few years later he wrote to his friend Dr. Carlos Montezuma, a fellow Yavapai Indian educated as a doctor and practicing in Chicago, Illinois. In this January 7, 1913, letter he confided, “I am going to tell the White People that they have heard only one side of the stories about how bad the Apaches were to the whites.” He went on to say, “It will be a long time yet before I can get to that as you call it The Bloody Cave Massacre and I will tell something about my capture.” Yet, he had already been writing for some time when he made this statement to Dr. Montezuma.

Next Sunday: Dr. Langellier tells of Mike Burns’ long struggle to have the Indian point of view published.

(Days Past is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners, International. The public is encouraged to submit articles for Days Past consideration. Please contact Assistant Archivist, Scott Anderson, at SHM Archives 928-445-3122 or via email at archivesrequest@sharlothallmuseum.org for information.)