Born in present-day Arizona, he led the Chiricahua band of the Apache tribe during a period of violent social upheaval. In 1850, the United States took control over the territory that today comprises Arizona and New Mexico. In 1861, after a decade of relative peace, Cochise was falsely imprisoned on charges of kidnapping a white child. He escaped and joined his father-in-law, Mangas Coloradas, in a guerrilla struggle against the American army and settlers.The capture and murder of Mangas Coloradas in 1863 left Cochise as the Apache war chief. His band continued their sporadic attacks but gradually retreated to a remote mountainous region. The U.S. Army captured him in 1871 and prepared to transfer the Chiricahua to a reservation hundreds of miles away, but he escaped again and renewed the resistance campaign. The following year, after negotiating a new treaty which allowed the band to stay in their homeland, Cochise surrendered and retired. He died peacefully on the newly formed reservation.
SOURCES: Webster's American Biographies; Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography.
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