General Crook's campaign against the Yavapais and Apaches

Arizona's army exercised little control over both Indians and civilians. Dissension continued to wrack the federal government as the "peace party" and the "war party" savaged each other in the White House, Congress, and the press. General George Crook took command of the Department of Arizona in June 1871, siding with Oury and Elías against Whitman over the Camp Grant Massacre. He interviewed every officer in southern Arizona before deciding on a course of action and realized that the Yavapais and Apaches had to be pursued into every corner of their territory before they would accept confinement on reservations. He also recognized that neither soldiers nor civilians knew the Apachería well enough to make that pursuit successful. After experimenting with Navajos and Mexicans, Crook turned to the Apaches themselves and enlisted members of the White Mountain bands as scouts. Other Spanish, Mexican and American military commanders had used Apaches to fight Apaches, but Crook systematized that strategy until it became an essential part of his campaign.

In the fall of 1872, the federal government unleashed Crook and his troops. Three columns left Camp Hualpai northwest of Prescott to sweep the area from Camp Verde to the San Francisco Peaks. Two detachments from Camp Date Creek and two from Camp Verde pursued the Yavapais in the Hassayampa, Agua Fria, and Verde drainages. Other expeditions rode out from Camp Apache, Camp Grant, and Fort McDowell. By the end of the year, Crook had nine columns in the field. After scouring the margins of Yavapais and Apache country, the veterans slowly began to converge upon the Tonto Basin where the Tonto Apaches lived. Starvation and cold forced the Indians out of the desert and onto higher ground.

The offensive turned out to be a success. Although there were major battles such as the massacre at Skeleton Cave in the Salt River Canyon, where soldiers shot or stoned to death 76 Yavapais from the Kewevkapaya subtribe, most engagements were less decisive. A few Indian men would be killed and a few women and children captured if the soldiers spared them. More important to the outcome of the war than the body count was the destruction of weapons, clothing, and food supplies. During the winter, the Apaches and Yavapais subsisted almost entirely upon stores of cornmeal, dried meat, wild seeds, and roasted mescal that had been pounded into cakes and spread out to dry. Those caches were confiscated and burned, part of the concept of "total war" advocated by General William T. Sherman and General Phillip Sheridan during the Civil War.

By the spring of 1873, Yavapais and Western Apache resistance was broken. After months in the saddle and days on foot after an epidemic devastated army horse herds, Crook's cavalry had driven the Indians from the Bradshaws, Mazatzals, Sierra Anchas, Superstitions, Pinals, and the foothills of the Mogollon Rim. The last war chief to surrender was Delshay, a Tonto Apache from the Mazatzals.