• Cochise was a Chiricahuna Apache leader. • The Apache lived by raiding sheep, cattle and horses from their neighbors (first Mexicans, then Americans). • In 1861 Cochise was accused by Lieutenant George Bascom of stealing farm animals. • Cochise protested his innocence; still, Bascom arrested him, but he managed to escape, and that's was the beginning of the Apache wars. • Until 1861 Cochise was friendly with the Americans, but when his relatives were hanged by the US soldiers for a crime they didn't commit, he fought against them a relentless war and became noted for his courage, integrity and military skills. • In 1871, Colonel George Crook employed a number of native Indians to track down Cochise, and he persuade him to negotiate a peace settlement. • When Cochise knew that the agreement was to put his people in a harsh dismal reservation in New Mexico, he renounced the agreement. • In 1872, and after eleven days of negations between Cochise and General Gordon Granger, commander of the district of New Mexico, they agreed that Cochise and his people might live on a reservation along Apache Pass, in southeastern Arizona. • Henry Stuart Turrill, a retired general of the US Army, who was a young solider when Cochise made the speech to the Americans, attempted to recreate Cochise's speech "after a lapse of thirty-five years". • In the beginning of the speech Cochise talks about the country of his people and how they fought for their independence from the Mexicans, Spanish and Americans. • Then, he explained how his people and Americans lived in peace together. But when they arrested him in spite of his innocence, the war began. • When Cochise realized what the war did to his people, he decided to save the people who remained by making peace with the Americans.