Through the constant depredations carried on against the Mexican settlements in northern Sonora and Chihuahua, under the leadership of Juan José, an Apache chief educated among the Mexicans, those two states were led, in 1837, to offer a bounty for Apache scalps. The horror of this policy lay in the fact that the scalp of a friendly Indian brought the same reward as that of the fiercest warrior, and worse still, no exception was made of women or children. Nothing could have been more effective than this scalp bounty in arousing all the savagery in these untamed denizens of the mountains, and both Mexico and the United States paid dearly in lives for every Apache scalp taken under this barbarous system. Predatory warfare continued unabated during the next forty years in spite of all the Mexican government could do. With the consummation of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in 1848, the Apache problem became one to be solved by the United States as well.
In 1864, under General James H. Carleton, the "war of extermination" was begun in a most systematic manner. On April 20 this officer communicated a proposal of co-operation to Don Ignacio Pesqueira, Governor of Sonora, saying: "If your excellency will put a few hundred men into the field on the first day of next June, and keep them in hot pursuit of the Apaches of Sonora, say for sixty or ninety days, we will either exterminate the Indians or so diminish their numbers that they will cease their murdering and robbing propensities and live at peace."
This request was met. The settlers in Arizona, under agreement, placed a force in the field provisioned with army supplies. Several hundred Pima, Papago, and Maricopa Indians also were supplied with guns, ammunition, and clothing, and pressed into service; but a year’s effort netted the combined forces little gain. Although two hundred Apache were killed and many head of stolen stock recovered, practically no advance toward the termination of hostilities was accomplished.
In April, 1865, Inspector-General Davis arranged a conference at the Copper Mines in New Mexico with Victorio, Nané, Acosta, and other chiefs, among whom were Pasquin, Cassari, and Salvador, sons of Mangas Coloradas, through which he learned of the existence of dire destitution among the Apache and a desire for peace on condition that they be permitted to occupy their native haunts. But the Government had adopted a policy of removal by which the Arizona Apache desiring peace should join the Mescaleros at the Bosque Redondo in New Mexico. To this they flatly refused to agree, and the warfare continued.