WE have been pencilling in another trip to the USA for next year but we have decided that we will revisit some of the places that so impressed us on previous trips. The problem is with the States, it is so vast, you can only nibble little bits at a time.

Ellie loves Arizona and it’s rocky dusty vistas and we may be going there again but back in 2011, we headed off the normal tourist trail into what was Apache country: the scene of wars involving the great Indian chiefs, Mangas Colorado, Cochise and Geronimo. As I will be back in England over the festive season, I thought I would take this opportunity over the next three weeks, to recall some of the highlights in stockpiled articles.

We arrived in the small town of Wilcox (pop 3,700), which seemed to sport a number of museums including the Marty Robbins Museum and the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame. Not really being too bothered as to which cowboy lasted longest on a bull, we moved on into the town and Chiricahua Museum, which was quite good and run by real enthusiasts.

I bought a local book written by the museum curator on the first trans-continental flight back in the early days of flying, which landed in Arizona. She explained it all with great enthusiasm and, knowing what it takes to write a local book, I bought her booklet and understood her delight at the concept of her writing being transported back to the UK.

We still had an hour of travelling left in us so we headed down towards our next destination and pulled off the road into Sunsites, which together with what is truly a ghost town of Pearce, has a population of just over 2,000.

What a nice little place, set up in 1961 with some tasteful and posh bungalows and a golf club. Ellie, who puts Arizona as her favourite state just ahead of South Dakota and New Mexico, was very enamoured; I could live here, she said. I reckon the lack of retail therapy might get her down.

The next morning we went 13 miles down a dirt road, which was better than some tarmac roads we have come across in the UK of late. On the way, we branched off for what was the highlight of the day: a trip up another dirt road to Cochise Stronghold.

The Chiricahua Apaches were at peace with the whites. They were led by the greatest of south west Indians, Cochise, who impressed every white man he met with his nobility, his truthfulness and his oratory. He was described as far above average height for an Apache possessing a noble face and great eloquence. However, he had one drawback in the eyes of the Americans: he was an Indian.

One day, in what was dismissively described as the Bascom Affair, a contingent of US cavalry led by an officer called Bascom, went out hunting for a Mexican boy, who, it was thought, had been stolen by Indians.

Happening on the peaceful Indians of Cochise near Apache Pass, he asked them to come to his camp. Cochise and a group visited Bascom, who accused them of taking the boy. Events proved Cochise was honest in replying he knew nothing about it. Bascom refused to believe it. Cochise was affronted but promised to put out feelers with other tribes to get the boy back. Bascom announced these men who had come in peace, were under arrest.

Cochise took out a knife, ripped through the tent and escaped, followed by some of his colleagues. He then captured some whites and offered them in trade for the Indians captured in the tent but the Bascomb refused and hanged Cochise’s brother and nephews. The Apaches responded in kind.

The result was war and 5,000 deaths and 25 years of fighting, while Bascom was regarded as unfortunate because you know what these savages are like. The Yanks discovered another side to Cochise, he was one hell of an adversary. Cochise agreed an honourable peace 12 years after the Bascom affair, although the honour was all on his side.

We were heading for his famed stronghold, which conjured visions of sandstone cliffs hazardous climbs and the like but the reality was somewhat different.

It was here that a white man, Tom Jeffords, went alone to speak to Cochise, high up in the granite ramparts of the Dragoon Mountains. His stage-line had lost eight men and he wanted to see if he could reach some accommodation with the chief.

Cochise was so impressed with the man’s bravery, he allowed the stage line to go through unhindered. Both men kept their word and Jeffords became his friend and his contact during several peace negotiations. Cochise had become chief of all Apaches in that area, following the death of Mangas Colorado.

Mangas had been invited in to talk about peace and the cavalry leader, who later became a respected Louisiana senator, ordered the chief taken prisoner immediately he arrived. Obviously such duplicity gets you places in the US or at the least it did for the officer.

He then told his men he wanted that old man dead by morning. It is said they inserted a red-hot bayonet up his anus but even the soldiers did admit to burning the soles of his feet with said red-hot bayonet, trying to force him to run.

By morning the 70-year-old was dead, as ordered, shot while trying to escape, being the euphemism, although this did not explain why he was scalped, mutilated, his head cut off and boiled and the skull sent to a phrenologist in New York, from where it was sent to the Smithsonian who have no trace of it.

And the Indians were savages? Faced with the option of talking peace to forked-tongues, Cochise carried on. His stronghold was a wooded valley, far more like the ambush canyon in films, but superbly peaceful, populated by all manner of trees and bushes.

When Cochise finally came in on his terms, he took a couple of cavalry commanders to Cochise Stronghold and they conceded they had no chance getting to him. He could see them coming for ten to 20 miles.

It is so peaceful, so beautiful and we walked the Cochise Trail, which had signs outlining details of his fight and his qualities. Then we took another, which highlighted all the various plants and trees, such as the Aligator Juniper, Mescal, Emory Oaks, Century Plant (Agave), Yucca, Pignone, and many different grasses. We had moved from cacti to wild yucca country, which were everywhere: their roots provided a soapy substance, the Apache used for bathing.

It was really a magnificent, peaceful yet awe-inspiring place nestling below a mountain with a view across to Apache Canyon Mountains more than 40 miles away. The tranquilllity of that sunny morning impressed us and we left with some reluctance, returning to the dirt road and, after about an hour, we arrived in Tombstone.

We perused through the many shops, then saw the original Bird Cage theatre from the 19th century, superbly preserved, with the bordello behind, along with gaming tables including one preserved under glass, once used by the intellect of the Gunfight at OK Corral, Doc Holiday.

It was one of the best pieces of yesteryear we have seen in the US, with plenty of old photographs, which we both love. We then shot down the street to witness a re-enactment of the Gunfight, with depictions of the build-up that led to it. We also saw a film and diorama of Tombstone’s history, and picked up a copy of the local newspaper reporting on the gunfight. All of it cost us just $10 dollars a head – about six pounds.

Of course the gunfight is famous because it was the template for Hollywood’s imaginary west, where men faced each other off in the centre of the street and waited for the other to reach for is gun. We have seen it so many times on celluloid but it is a fantasy for it seldom if ever happened and OK Corral was the nearest to a face off, hence its fame.

It provided the basis for Mr Darling Clementine when a Wyatt Earp biography was written after the man died in 1929, after a life that included refereeing a world heavyweight contest. There were some 30 shots exchanged, mainly at a distance of six feet. Two ran, three were killed and the Earps suffered two wounds. So not great sharp-shooting.

Ironic to think when we were playing cowboys and Indians as children, we would claim when someone shot at you: “You missed me.” It was a claim founded on great probability.

One of the stumbling blocks to Cochise coming in and agreeing to peace, was that the Apaches were only offered the dreaded San Carlos reservation. Cochise stuck out and he was finally given what he wanted, a very large reservation near his Stronghold. His friend Jeffords helped to negotiate the peace and Cochise came in.

For years US newspapers had criticised the government for not making up their minds on the twin alternatives of extermination or reservation. Many advocated extermination as the logical and most economic option while trumpeting Christian ethics from the editorials and pulpits.

It would have been interesting if Cochise had lived but he died in 1874 of stomach cancer. Jeffords, who Cochise had insisted would be the Indian agent on the reservation, attended the chief’s secret burial, along with the burial of the chief’s favourite horse and dog, near the Stronghold. No one divulged where the burial took place and, as with Crazy Horse, the other revered Indian many miles to the north, his grave remains unknown.

Two years after his death, the US reneged on the treaty and sent the Chiricahua Indians off to the dreaded San Carlos, which Cochise had been assured in the treaty, would never be the case.

Understandably, the Apaches were very annoyed about this and none more so than a skilled fighter called Geronimo who opted not to go to San Carlos and fought on until 1886 and became the last Indian war leader in the US. It was a costly reneging for the US.