The Geronimo Campaign

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Oxford University Press, 27. 5. 1993. - 256 страница
The surrender of the great Apache leader Geronimo to U.S Army Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood in August of 1886 brought to an end a struggle that had begun in the early years of the century, and had figured prominently in the western campaign of the Civil War. The words addressed by Gatewood to Geronimo as they met along the banks of Mexico's Bavispe River echoed those spoken in many such a meeting between victorious American commander and vanquished Native American. "Accept these terms or fight it out to the bitter end," said Gatewood. The terms were forced relocation to Florida and the ceding of the ancestral homeland of the Apaches to white settlers; the bitter end was, quite simply, annihilation. In The Geronimo Campaign, Odie B. Faulk, a leading historian of the American Southwest, offers a lively and often chilling account of the war that raged over the deserts and mountains of Arizona, New Mexico, and northern Mexico in the mid 1880's, and traces its legacy well past the ultimatum delivered to Geronimo on August 25, 1886. Faulk is especially concerned with the campaign's wider historical setting and significance, and with the sad record of betrayal of the Native American by the U.S. Government. In a very real sense, it is the stuff of Greek tragedy. Here among the mesas of the Southwest was inevitable conflict and inevitable defeat, with both sides losing and yet surviving their loss. The Apaches were forced to endure years of captivity and humiliation, and--like the Sioux, Comanche, and Nez Percé before them--the obliteration of their traditional way of life. The Army, seemingly the winner, was torn by conflicting claims of glory by its hubristic leaders. And Americans lost much that Apache culture might have contributed to their country, as well as more than a measure of American self-respect. Few emerge from Faulk's riveting account with their dignity and stature intact: only the titanic figure of Geronimo, and to a lesser extent the two men he knew and trusted among his opponents, Gatewood and General George Crook, retain a semblance of honor. Faulk shows that neither side wanted war, that both sides believed in the righteousness of their cause, and that the real instigators of the conflict were rapacious American settlers--the "Tucson Ring" of merchants--who sold grain, hay, and other provisions to the troops as well as to those living on the Indian reservations. Faulk's realistic and colorful narrative highlights many of the campaign's ironies as well as its dangers and vicissitudes. In addition, it vividly recreates life in an Army command post on the western frontier, offers an exceptionally clear and sympathetic life history of Geronimo, and sheds new light on the conflict through many hitherto unknown documents originally collected by Gatewood's son. Also included is a brief history of the Apache people, a full bibliography and notes, and many vintage photographs which lend a rare immediacy to this tragic story. The Geronimo Campaign ends with the great chief hundreds of miles away from his ancestral home, Crook relieved of his command, and Gatewood largely forgotten in the honors and awards bestowed by the Army in recognition of Geronimo's capitulation. A true American saga, this is a book for anyone who wishes to understand the roots of, and the reasons for, the tragic Indian Wars of the nineteenth century, a tragedy whose repercussions are still felt today.

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THE ARMY
26
CAUSES OF THE OUTBREAK
41
IN PURSUIT MAY 1885DECEMBER 1885
57
IN PURSUIT DECEMBER 1885MARCH 1886
74
MILESS CAMPAIGN TO CONQUER
97
GERONIMOS FINAL SURRENDER
132
THE BETRAYAL OF THE APACHES
152
THE FIGHT FOR GLORY
176
GERONIMOS TRIUMPH
205
NOTES
221
BIBLIOGRAPHY
229
INDEX
237
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Страница 91 - What the others say I say also. I give myself up to you. Do with me what you please. I surrender. Once I moved about like the wind. Now I surrender to you and that is all.
Страница 44 - Tiffany could a proper idea be formed of the fraud and villany which are constantly practised in open violation of law and in defiance of public justice. Fraud, peculation, conspiracy, larceny, plots and counterplots, seem to be the rule of action upon this reservation. The Grand Jury little thought when they began this investigation that they were about to open a Pandora's box of iniquities seldom surpassed in the annals of crime.
Страница 95 - If offensive operations against the Indians are not resumed, they may remain quietly in the mountains for an indefinite time without crossing the line, and yet their very presence there will be a constant menace, and require the troops in this department to be at all times in position to repel sudden raids ; and so long as any remain out they will form a nucleus for disaffected Indians from the different agencies in Arizona and New Mexico to join. That the operations of the scouts in Mexico have...
Страница 122 - Surrender, and you will be sent with your families to Florida, there to await the decision of the President as to your final disposition. Accept these terms or fight it out to the bitter end.
Страница 13 - We ought, in justice to our murdered dead, to dump the old devrl into the shaft of some mine,- and pile rocks upon him until he is dead. A rascal who comes here to thwart the efforts of military and citizens to conquer a peace from our savage foe, deserves to be stoned to death, like the treacherous, black-hearted dogthat he is," &c., and told him I had no hankering after that kind of
Страница 3 - When the child was larger he would not always stay in the cave, for he sometimes wanted to run and play. Once the dragon saw his tracks. Now this perplexed and enraged the old dragon, for he could not find the hiding place of the boy; but he said that he would destroy the mother if she did not reveal the child's hiding place.
Страница 26 - I desire to say with all emphasis, what every army officer on the frontier will corroborate, that there is no class of men in this country who are so disinclined to war with the Indians as the army stationed among them. The army has nothing to gain by war with the Indians; on the contrary, it has everything to lose. In such a war it suffers all the hardship and privation, exposed as it is to the charge of assassination if Indians are killed, to the charge of inefficiency if they are not; to misrepresentation...
Страница 44 - While many of the details connected with these matters are outside of our jurisdiction, we nevertheless feel it our duty as honest American citizens to express our utter abhorrence of the conduct of Agent Tiffany and that class of reverend peculators who have cursed Arizona as Indian officials and who have caused more misery and loss of life than all other causes combined.
Страница 44 - Government tools and wagons are used in transporting goods and working the coal mines, in the interest of this close corporation, and with the same result. All surplus supplies are used in the interest of the agent and no return made thereof. Government contractors, in collusion with Agent Tiffany, get receipts for large amounts of supplies never furnished, and the profit is divided mutually and a general spoliation of the United States Treasury is thus effected. While six hundred Indians are off...
Страница 3 - Usen taught him how to prepare herbs for medicine, how to hunt, and how to fight. He was the first chief of the Indians and wore the eagle's feathers as the sign of justice, wisdom, and power. To him, and to his people, as they were created, Usen gave homes in the land of the west.

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О аутору (1993)

Odie B. Faulk, Professor Emeritus of History at Northeastern University, has written numerous books, among them, North America Divided: The War With Mexico, Tombstone: Myth and Reality, and Land of Many Frontiers: A History of the American Southwest.

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