Unlike Eskiminzin, whose people had been shatterd by the Camp Grant Massacre, the Chiricahua chiefs had not yet been broken by the new order taking shape in Arizona, and they despised Clum's arrogance. They also hated San Carlos, where they first experienced malaria. Most of all they had loved how their mountain homelands gave them access to both the United States and Mexico, allowing them to retreat to Mexico when pressure in the U.S. became too intense. Because Mexico had recovered from the revolution and the Mexican War by the early 1870s, many chiefs, including Cochise, were ready to talk peace.
According to legend, the key figure in these negotiations was Thomas Johnathan Jeffords, a redheaded steamboat captain on the Great Lakes who had drifted into Arizona during the Civil War. While working for the Southern Overland Mail, Jeffords supposedly rode into Cochise's camp alone in the early 1860s to persuade the chief to stop killing his riders, and Cochise was so impressed with his bravery that they became close friends. The Bascom Affair had made Cochise hate Anglos and his friendship with Tom Jeffords made him trust them again. This moral fable was simplified for the movie myths of Blood Brother and Broken Arrow and other Western novels and Hollywood movies.
The Jeffords myth overemphasized the role of Anglo Americans in Arizona and ignored the roles of Mexicans in Apache wars. Cochise's biographer, historian Edwin Sweeney, concludes that Jeffords and Cochise probably did not meet until the early 1870s when Cochise was already beginning to talk with U.S. authorities at the Cañada Alamosa Reservation in New Mexico. Cochise trusted Jeffords and arranged with him to negotiate with the U.S. military, but he did so because he and his people were being harassed from all sides by Chihuahuan scalp hunters, Sonoran soldiers, O'odham revenge parties, and Manso Apaches from Tucson bankrolled by merchant Estevan Ochoa.
Peace was not easily achieved. Cochise first met with army officers in late September 1871. The army wanted Cochise and other Chiricahuas to settle at Tularosa, New Mexico. Cochise refused. A year later, General O.O. Howard met with Cochise, accompanied by Jeffords, two Chiricahuas, and his aide, Lieutenant Joseph Sladen. The party rode into the Dragoon Mountains east of the San Pedro River on September 30, 1872. The next day, Cochise came to the general's camp with his youngest wife, his youngest son, and his sister, a fifty-year-old widow who was one of his most trusted advisors.
Howard offered to meet Cochise's earlier demand and allow the Chircahuas to move to Cañada Alamosa near the Black Range in New Mexico. Cochise countered with a proposal that surprised the party. He said, "Why not give me Apache Pass? Give me that and I will protect all the roads. I will see that nobody's property is taken by the Indians." Howard agreed to a reservation in Chokonen Chiricahua territory, one that ran from the Dragoon Mountains on the west to the Peloncillo Mountains on the east. It included the Chiricahua Mountains and ran south to the Mexican border. Howard offered promised rations of food and clothing to be distributed by Jeffords. Chokonen depredations in southern Arizona ceased, but the Chiricahuas continued to raid Sonora and Chihuahua just as they always had. Cochise himself did not join the raiding parties, but neither he nor Jeffords did much to discourage them.
By then Crook had launched his campaign against the Yavapais and Western Apaches and was searching for a legitimate excuse to take up arms against Cochise as well. He formulated a plan to provoke Cochise by demanding that the Chiricahuas submit to a daily roll call. If they refused, he wrote Governor Pesqueira of Sonora, who was complaining bitterly about Chiricahua hostilities in his state, "I will commence hostilities against them without delay." Cochise and Jeffords were able to fend off Crook and by the end of 1783, Cochise had convinced many of his own people and some of the Nednhi Chiricahuas living on the reservation to stop their Mexican raids.
Cochise died of a stomach ailment complicated by heavy drinking on June 8, 1874. Jeffords lived on for two more years, but did not have the influence over the Apaches that Cochise had. Many Americans, including Crook, did not trust him either. When the government cut Jeffords's beef ration from 889,000 to 650,000 pounds (403,000 to 295,000 kg) in the spring of 1876, a few Chiricahuas resumed raiding in southeastern Arizona. Then Nicolas Rodgers sold whiskey to a Chiricahua named Pionsenay and several companions at the Sulphur Springs state station. Pionsenay killed him and his cook after Rogers refused to sell more.
John Wasson, editor of the Tucson Weekly Citizen , thundered that Jeffords was an "incarnate demon" and accused him being a drunkard, being in collusion with whiskey peddlers and ammunition dealers, and receiving gold and livestock stolen by the Chiricahuas in Mexicos. Jeffords denies the accusations, but on May 3 the government ordered Chum to suspend Jeffords and, if "practicable," transfer the Chiricahuas to San Carlos.