The General and the Jaguar (23 page)

President Wilson had a number of choices in responding to the raid, ranging from doing nothing to mounting a full-scale invasion.
He opted for something in between: a narrowly defined mission—a punitive expedition—whose purpose would be to seek out and
destroy Villa and his band. Following a cabinet meeting on March 10, the White House issued a carefully worded press release
designed to satisfy its domestic audience and reassure the Mexican government that the United States was not invading its
country. “An adequate force will be sent at once in pursuit of Villa with the object of capturing him and putting a stop to
his forays. This can and will be done in entirely friendly aid of the constituted authorities in Mexico and with scrupulous
respect for the sovereignty of that Republic.” Using a metaphor that spoke to a nation of small farmers, President Wilson
told reporters, “We have put our hands to the plow and must go to the end of the furrow.”

P
ANCHO
V
ILLA
had done a good job of boxing in his rival. If Carranza refused to let the U.S. Army into Mexico, he would be popular at
home but risked starting a war that he could not win and one that would undoubtedly topple him from power. If he simply acted
as a doormat, however, he might wind up losing the presidency anyway. Agents from the U.S. State Department delivered a tersely
worded message to the First Chief at his headquarters in Irapuato at four o’clock in the afternoon on the day of the raid.
“You may say to him,” instructed Secretary of State Robert Lansing, “that this appears to be the most serious situation which
has confronted this government during the entire period of Mexican unrest and that it is expected that he will do everything
in his power to pursue, capture, and exterminate this lawless element which is now proceeding westward from Columbus.”

Instead of offering condolences, Jesús Acuña, Carranza’s secretary of foreign affairs, told State Department representative
John Belt that the attack proved how strong the First Chief’s forces had become—the inference being that the Carrancista troops
were pursuing Villa so vigorously that he had crossed the border to escape capture. Taken aback, Belt then presented Acuña
with a list of questions drawn up by the State Department, which, among other things, inquired into the de facto government’s
knowledge of Villa’s whereabouts prior to the raid and what specifically had been done to capture him.

In his second communication with the State Department, Acuña was more sympathetic, saying that Carranza was “pained to hear
of the lamentable occurrence at Columbus, New Mexico.” But he did not back down from his initial remarks and pointed out that
twenty-five hundred soldiers under the command of General Luis Gutiérrez had been pursuing Villa when he crossed over into
Columbus. In an almost rambling aside, Acuña went on to say that the raid was similar to the Indian attacks of the 1880s when
Indians from reservations in the United States crossed the border into Mexico and attacked settlers in Chihuahua and Sonora:

In both these cases an agreement between the governments of the United States and Mexico provided that armed forces of either
country might freely cross into the territory of the other to pursue and chastise those bandits. Bearing in mind these precedents
and the happy results to both countries yielded by the agreement above referred to, the government over which the citizen
First Chief presides, desiring to exterminate as soon as possible the horde led by Francisco Villa, who was recently outlawed,
and to capture Villa and to adequately punish him, applies through you, Mr. Confidential Agent, to the government of the United
States and asks that the Mexican forces be permitted to cross into American territory in pursuit of the aforesaid bandits
led by Villa, upon the understanding that, reciprocally, the forces of the United States may cross into Mexican territory,
if the raid effected at Columbus should unfortunately be repeated at any other point on the border.

The reciprocity agreement clearly referred to some event in the future, but the Wilson administration chose to view it as
being applicable to the current situation. On the thirteenth of March, U.S. officials sent Carranza a memo acceding to the
arrangement and stating that they considered the agreement to be in effect immediately. The War Department promptly moved
ahead with preparations for the Punitive Expedition.

Newton Baker relied heavily on two imposing and white-haired generals to guide him: Major General Hugh L. Scott, chief of
staff, and Major General Tasker Bliss, his assistant chief of staff. Both were born in 1853 and had attended West Point, Bliss
graduating in 1875 and Scott the following year. As the years leached the color from their hair and the whiskers grew up around
their faces, the West Pointers had come to resemble two huge and gentle brothers. Although the Wilson administration had vowed
to catch Villa “dead or alive,” General Scott urged Baker to rethink that goal. After all, there was nothing stopping Villa
from boarding a ship and sailing to South America. Then what would the U.S. military do? Follow him? Baker saw the logic of
Scott’s argument and modified the expedition’s mission, saying its purpose was to pursue and disperse the bands that attacked
Columbus. Few, however, would remember that distinction when it came time to evaluate the expedition’s success.

Frederick Funston, who commanded the army’s Southern Department, which had jurisdiction over a wide swath of border territory,
including Columbus, wanted desperately to head the expedition himself. At first glance, he seemed a perfect fit for the job.
He was fluent in Spanish and had gained a familiarity with Mexico while presiding over the military occupation of Veracruz.
Though he stood only five feet four inches tall and weighed little more than a hundred pounds, Funston was a towering figure
in the War Department and one of the army’s most colorful generals. Born in Ohio in 1865, Funston grew up in the small town
of Iola in southeastern Kansas. His mother, Ann, was a great-grandniece of Daniel Boone and his father, Edward Hogue Funston,
six feet two and weighing more than two hundred pounds, was a Civil War veteran and Kansas congressman known as “Foghorn”
Funston. The young Funston had helped write his father’s speeches, but politics held no interest for him. It was adventure
he craved, and while still in high school he applied to West Point. Unfortunately, he flunked the entrance exam and failed
to meet the minimum height requirement. Disappointed, he taught for a while at a little schoolhouse called Stony Lonesome
but soon grew bored with the job and returned to high school himself. Upon graduation, he enrolled in the University of Kansas
and became fast friends with an aspiring journalist named William Allen White. While still in college, the two worked together
briefly on a Kansas City newspaper. (“We roamed the city like sheep-killing dogs,” White would later say.) Funston was a competent
student but too impatient to finish his degree and he launched out into the world again, working as a surveyor, ticket collector,
and itinerant reporter, traveling as far north as the Arctic Ocean and as far south as Mexico.

In the early summer of 1896, at Madison Square Garden in New York City, he heard a rousing speech about the Cuban revolt against
Spain and decided to join the rebel cause. In his Cuban uniform, which consisted of a starred sash and soft battered hat,
Funston resembled a petite Shakespearean actor or a prince from some Lilliputian kingdom. He had porcelain cheeks, bowed red
lips, and a regal hauteur to his uplifted chin that would have been comical but for the deadly seriousness that blazed from
his eyes. Funston spent nearly two years in Cuba and fought in twenty-two battles. He was shot twice, almost died from malaria,
“and finally, in a cavalry charge, had large shards of wood thrust into his hips from the roots of an upturned tree when his
horse rolled over,” writes fellow Kansan Dave Young.

When he returned to the States, in 1898, he weighed eighty pounds. Upon his recovery, the governor of Kansas appointed him
colonel of the Twentieth Kansas Regiment and he shipped out to the Philippines. There, the members of his regiment participated
in nineteen battles and won three Medals of Honor. During a second tour, Funston came up with a daring plan to capture the
insurgent Filipino leader, Emilio Aguinaldo, in which he and several of his comrades would penetrate Aguinaldo’s lair disguised
as POWs. General Arthur MacArthur, Douglas MacArthur’s father, reluctantly approved the plan, saying, “Funston, this is a
desperate undertaking. I fear that I shall never see you again.”

But Funston’s plan succeeded brilliantly. Although he was greatly debilitated by the effort, he returned to the United States
a hero and was awarded a general’s star in the regular army. Almost immediately, he was enveloped in a swirling controversy
when soldiers testifying on Capitol Hill accused him of atrocities and the execution of prisoners in the Philippines. Newspaper
editors called for his court-martial and Funston fought back, suggesting that the editors be hung from lampposts. President
Theodore Roosevelt, whose jingoistic philosophy mirrored Funston’s, ordered him to be quiet and a letter of censure was placed
in his military file.

As he aged, Funston lost his haughty demeanor. His cheeks softened into jowls and his lithe little body grew barrel shaped.
Some of his wild edges had been smoothed out, but his memos still gave off sparks of anger and impatience that the more political
generals, steeped in history and cognizant of their place in it, were savvy enough to edit out. When it came to stamina, brains,
and reckless courage, Frederick Funston was certainly a match for Francisco Villa.

But this expedition was going to be extremely delicate; one misstep could result in an all-out war. President Wilson was already
trying hard to reassure the highly nationalistic Carranza that the United States was not launching an invasion or an intervention,
but simply sending a few thousand men into Mexico’s heartland to disperse some bandits. Little Freddy Funston could disrupt
the delicate, diplomatic minuet. In addition to his being too hotheaded and blunt spoken, Scott and Bliss thought it was best
that Funston remain at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio to keep tabs on the entire border. The field assignment, they declared,
should go to one of his subordinate officers. Perhaps Brigadier General John Pershing?

Newton Baker knew nothing about Pershing but if the old generals thought Pershing was the best man for the job, then Pershing
it was. On March 10, he sent General Funston the official orders:

You will promptly organize an adequate military force of troops under the command of Brigadier General Pershing and will direct
him to proceed promptly across the border in pursuit of the Mexican band which attacked the town of Columbus. . . . These
troops will be withdrawn to American territory as soon as the de facto government of Mexico is able to relieve them of this
work. In any event the work of these troops will be regarded as finished as soon as Villa band or bands are known to be broken
up. . . .

With his lean body, erect posture, riding boots and crop, Pershing seemed the very image of what a soldier should be. He was
dry-looking physically and dry in some deeper way, too, as if a small banked fire within him had burned off all his emotions.
His hair was sandy colored, his skin the color of sand, and deep drought lines ran from the corners of his eyes and down his
cheeks. He had a thin, down-turned mouth that in another man might be interpreted as disappointment but in Pershing signaled
only determination. Scott and Bliss were confident that Pershing, a disciplinarian and a highly competent general, would be
able to maintain firm control over his men and hold his temper in the tricky business ahead. But there was another reason
why the two kindly old generals wanted him to lead the expedition: the assignment might ease his crushing grief.

The eldest of nine children, Pershing was born in 1860 in Laclede, Missouri, a town of six hundred residents. He was a descendant
of Frederick Pfoerschin, an indentured servant who emigrated to the United States from Europe in 1749 and changed his name
to Pershin, then added a
g
to give it a ring. When John was just twelve, his father lost everything in the 1873 depression and he pitched in to keep
the family afloat, working as a farmhand and schoolteacher. When he saw a notice of a competitive examination for West Point,
he decided to take it, even though a military career did not really appeal to him. “No, I wouldn’t stay in the Army,” he told
a friend. “There won’t be a gun fired in the world in a hundred years. I’ll study law, I guess. But I want an education and
now I see how I can get it.”

He took the exam, beating out the nearest contender by scoring one point extra in the grammar section of the test. Pershing
was already twenty-two—the cutoff age for cadets entering West Point. To get around that obstacle, he lied about his age,
pushing his birth date back by nine months. Once admitted, he proved to be a competent student, graduating thirtieth in a
class of seventy-seven. Upon receiving his diploma in 1886 from General William Tecumseh Sherman, he left for the western
frontier where the U.S. cavalry was in the process of subduing the last of the Indian tribes. He was assigned to the Sixth
Cavalry in New Mexico and participated in General Nelson Miles’s campaign to round up Geronimo. Later the regiment was sent
to South Dakota to help suppress the last great uprising of the Sioux, which culminated with the massacre at Wounded Knee.
Though Pershing’s regiment did not participate in the massacre, it was part of the cordon that subsequently kept the Indians
from escaping the reservation.

In 1891, he exchanged his saddle for a slot at the University of Nebraska, where he taught military science and tactics and
earned a law degree. Upon promotion to first lieutenant, in 1895, he went west again and this time joined the Tenth Cavalry,
one of the six all-black regiments authorized by Congress following the Civil War. Commanded by white officers, the black
troops consisted of two cavalry and four infantry regiments. The Indians called them Buffalo Soldiers because they wore jackets
made from buffalo hide and had hair that was similar to the animals’ curly coats.