The Apache Wars
The Hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American History
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- USD 4.99
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- USD 4.99
Descripción editorial
A stunningly vivid account of the manhunt for Geronimo and the Apaches’ decades-long struggle for their homeland—a vibrant saga of blood, power, family, and revenge from the renowned historian and author of The Undiscovered Country
“An epic tale filled with Homeric scenes and unforgettable characters.”—Chicago Tribune
They called him Mickey Free. He was the only man Geronimo ever feared. And his kidnapping in 1861 started the longest war in American history: the brutal struggle between the Apaches and the U.S. government for the control of the Southwest. When the Apache Wars finally ended in 1890, the western frontier had closed, and the once powerful Apaches had been imprisoned far to the east or corralled on reservations.
In this critically acclaimed, monumental work, Paul Hutton unfolds over two decades of the last war for the West through the eyes of the men and women who lived it. This is Mickey Free’s story, but also the story of his contemporaries: the great Apache leaders Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, and Victorio; the soldiers Kit Carson, O. O. Howard, George Crook, and Nelson Miles; the scouts and frontiersmen Al Sieber, Tom Horn, Tom Jeffords, and Texas John Slaughter; the great White Mountain scout Alchesay and the Apache female warrior Lozen; the fierce Apache warrior Geronimo; and the Apache Kid. These lives shaped the violent history of the deserts and mountains of the Southwestern borderlands—a bleak and unforgiving world where a people would make a final, bloody stand against an American war machine bent on their destruction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hutton (Phil Sheridan and His Army), a professor of history at the University of New Mexico, relates a sprawling, fascinating tale of conflict in the late 19th-century American southwest. In January 1861, a band of Apache raiders hit Johnny Ward's 160-acre ranch in Arizona's Sonoita Valley, carrying away 20 head of cattle and Ward's 11-year-old stepson, Felix. The kidnapping was part of escalating hostilities in an area riven with violence. Apaches attacked American and Mexican settlements, stealing property and resisting the growing authority of the U.S. government. Warfare continued for 25 years. Hutton moves beyond standard descriptions of battles between Apache warriors and American troops (though there are plenty of those) to paint a larger, more detailed picture of Southwestern life: slavery, gold mining, territorial politics, and the creation of reservations. Fascinating people flit in and out of the story, including the Apache warriors Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, Lozen, Victorio, and Geronimo, and American scouts Kit Carson and Al Sieber. What happened to Felix Ward is less important to the larger historical picture than how the situation with the Apaches was resolved, but Hutton provides an unexpected twist that keeps the story fresh until the end. Illus.
