White Mountain Apache Reflections‪.‬

Two time-honored techniques used by anthropologists to gain information about a people are participant observation and ethnographic interview. To a great extent, the many months I spent crisscrossing the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, involving myself in the lives of the people and asking questions, are but examples of the usefulness of these methodologies. I spent the majority of my early years as a participant among the White Mountain Apache Indians of east central Arizona. How I, a white person, came to be born and reared on the reservation is a story in itself. Suffice it to say that my family had been living among the Apaches since 1911. My grandfather and my uncle were Christian missionaries. My father ran a cafe for the tribe and later worked in a sawmill on the reservation.