John C. Cremony
| John Carey Cremony | |
|---|---|
Cremony in 1873
|
|
| Born | 1815 Boston, Massachusetts |
| Died | August 24, 1879 San Francisco, California |
| Years of service | 1861–1872 |
| Rank |
 Major
|
| Unit | 2nd California Cavalry Regiment |
| Commands held | 1st California Cavalry Battalion |
| Battles/wars | |
| Other work | author |
Mexican American War
American Civil War
Apache Wars
Major John C. Cremony (1815 – August 24, 1879) was an American soldier who wrote the first dictionary of the Apache language and later became a newspaperman in San Francisco.
Cremony was born in Boston in 1815 and claimed to have been of Cuban descent. He ran away to sea where he bore witness to piracy and the slave trade.
He enlisted in the Massachusetts Volunteers in 1846 at the onest of the Mexican–American War, and served as a Spanish-language interpreter and rose to the rank of lieutenant. After the war with Mexico, Cremony returned to Massachusetts and briefly worked as a newspaper reporter until 1850 when he returned to the west and served as a Spanish-language interpreter for the U.S. Boundary Commission which laid out the Mexican and United States Border between 1849–1852. When the Boundary Commission returned to the East, Cremony remained in San Diego, California and sought his fortune as a miner and prospector.
With the outbreak of the Civil War, Cremony joined the California Volunteers. In 1861 as a captain in Company B, 2nd Regiment California Volunteer Cavalry a unit of California Volunteers, he arrived in the New Mexico Territory as part of the California Column.
He eventually achieved the rank of major in 1864 and commanded the 1st Battalion of Native Cavalry, California Volunteers until 1866.
Cremony served most of his military career in the Southwest and personally knew Apache Chiefs Mangas Coloradas and Cochise. He was the first white man to become fluent in the Apache language, learning it in his role as an interpreter, and publishing the first written compilation of their language as a glossary for the army. As a result, Cremony was often able to resolve numerous issues between the military, reservation authorities, and the Apache tribes. Not all of Cremony's discourses with the Apache were peaceful, however. He killed one warrior in a grueling knife fight and chronicled a non-stop 21-hour chase when he was pursued by a band of Sierra Blanca Apache (White Mountain Apache) for some 125 miles (201 km) through the desert of New Mexico while on horseback, 70 miles (110 km) of which were at a full gallop. Cremony authored Life Among the Apaches, published in 1869, in which he described his experiences with the tribe.
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