Apaches at War and Peace is the story of the Chiricahua Apaches on the northern frontier of New Spain from 1750 to 1858, especially those within the region of the Janos presidio in northwestern Chihuahua. Using previously untapped archives in Spain, Mexico, and the United States, William Griffen relates how Apache raids and other hostilities were the norm until Bernardo de Galvez, viceroy of New Spain, encouraged the Apaches to settle near presidios. By 1790 some Apaches were in residence at Janos, and intermittent periods of peace and conflict ensued until Mexican independence brought more radical changes in Indian policy (such as the state of Sonora's offer of bounties for Indian scalps). Griffen explores issues of changing Indian policy, Indian-Mexican relations, and the entry of the United States onto the scene after its invasion of Mexico. For this reprint he includes a new preface discussing recentresearch issues.

This book challenges long-accepted historical orthodoxy about relations between the Spanish and the Indians in the borderlands separating what are now Mexico and the United States. While most scholars describe the decades after 1790 as a period of relative peace between the occupying Spaniards and the Apaches, Mark Santiago sees in the Mescalero Apache attacks on the Spanish beginning in 1795 a sustained, widespread, and bloody conflict. He argues that Commandant General Pedro de Nava’s coordinated campaigns against the Mescaleros were the culmination of the Spanish military’s efforts to contain Apache aggression, constituting one of its largest and most sustained operations in northern New Spain. A Bad Peace and a Good War examines the antecedents, tactics, and consequences of the fighting. This conflict occurred immediately after the Spanish military had succeeded in making an uneasy peace with portions of all Apache groups. The Mescaleros were the first to break the peace, annihilating two Spanish patrols in August 1795. Galvanized by the loss, Commandant General Nava struggled to determine the extent to which Mescaleros residing in “peace establishments” outside Spanish settlements near El Paso, San Elizario, and Presidio del Norte were involved. Santiago looks at the impact of conflicting Spanish military strategies and increasing demands for fiscal efficiency as a result of Spain’s imperial entanglements. He examines Nava’s yearly invasions of Mescalero territory, his divide-and-rule policy using other Apaches to attack the Mescaleros, and his deportation of prisoners from the frontier, preventing the Mescaleros from redeeming their kin. Santiago concludes that the consequences of this war were overwhelmingly negative for Mescaleros and ambiguous for Spaniards. The war’s legacy of bitterness lasted far beyond the end of Spanish rule, and the continued independence of so many Mescaleros and other Apaches in their homeland proved the limits of Spanish military authority. In the words of Viceroy Bernardo de Gálvez, the Spaniards had technically won a “good war” against the Mescaleros and went on to manage a “bad peace.”

In the tradition of Empire of the Summer Moon, a stunningly vivid historical account of the manhunt for Geronimo and the 25-year Apache struggle for their homeland. They called him Mickey Free. His kidnapping started the longest war in American history, and both sides--the Apaches and the white invaders—blamed him for it. A mixed-blood warrior who moved uneasily between the worlds of the Apaches and the American soldiers, he was never trusted by either but desperately needed by both. He was the only man Geronimo ever feared. He played a pivotal role in this long war for the desert Southwest from its beginning in 1861 until its end in 1890 with his pursuit of the renegade scout, Apache Kid. In this sprawling, 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.

Based on exhaustive research, this graphic novel offers a remarkable glimpse into the raw themes of cultural differences, the horrors of war, the search for peace, and, ultimately, retribution. The Apache left an indelible mark on our perceptions of the American West; Indeh shows us why. The year is 1872. The place, the Apache nations, a region torn apart by decades of war. The people, like Goyahkla, lose his family and everything he loves. After having a vision, the young Goyahkla approaches the Apache leader Cochise, and the entire Apache nation, to lead an attack against the Mexican village of Azripe. It is this wild display of courage that transforms the young brave Goyakhla into the Native American hero Geronimo. But the war wages on. As they battle their enemies, lose loved ones, and desperately cling on to their land and culture, they would utter, "Indeh," or "the dead." When it looks like lasting peace has been reached, it seems like the war is over. Or is it? Indeh captures the deeply rich narrative of two nations at war -- as told through the eyes of Naiches and Geronimo -- who then try to find peace and forgiveness. Indeh not only paints a picture of some of the most magnificent characters in the history of our country, but also reveals the spiritual and emotional cost of the Apache Wars.

Following Geronimo's final surrender, nearly 400 Chiricahua Apaches were uprooted and exiled from their San Carlos, Arizona home--moved first to Florida, then to Alabama and finally to Fort Sill Oklahoma. The author discusses the conflicting interests of the war and interior departments that held them hostage there, as well as the campaign for their release from military custody, their efforts to retain Fort Sill as their permanent home, and the outcome of the Chiricahua's 27-year captivity. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

As a definitive study of the poorly understood Apaches de paz, this book explains how war-weary, mutually suspicious Apaches and Spaniards negotiated an ambivalent compromise after 1786 that produced over four decades of uneasy peace across the region. In response to drought and military pressure, thousands of Apaches settled near Spanish presidios in a system of reservation-like establecimientos, or settlements, stretching from Laredo to Tucson. Far more significant than previously assumed, the establecimientos constituted the earliest and most extensive set of military-run reservations in the Americas and served as an important precedent for Indian reservations in the United States. As a case study of indigenous adaptation to imperial power on colonial frontiers and borderlands, this book reveals the importance of Apache-Hispanic diplomacy in reducing cross-cultural violence and the limits of indigenous acculturation and assimilation into empires and states.

Winner of the 2011 New Mexico Book Award in the multi-cultural catagory Jlin-tay-i-tith, better known as Loco, was the only Apache leader to make a lasting peace with both Americans and Mexicans. Yet most historians have ignored his efforts, and some Chiricahua descendants have branded him as fainthearted despite his well-known valor in combat. In this engaging biography, Bud Shapard tells the story of this important but overlooked chief against the backdrop of the harrowing Apache wars and eventual removal of the tribe from its homeland to prison camps in Florida, Alabama, and Oklahoma. Tracing the events of Loco’s long tenure as a leader of the Warm Springs Chiricahua band, Shapard tells how Loco steered his followers along a treacherous path of unforeseeable circumstances and tragic developments in the mid-to-late 1800s. While recognizing the near-impossibility of Apache-American coexistence, Loco persevered in his quest for peace against frustrating odds and often treacherous U.S. government policy. Even as Geronimo, Naiche, and others continued their raiding and sought to undermine Loco’s efforts, this visionary chief, motivated by his love for children, maintained his commitment to keep Apache families safe from wartime dangers. Based on extensive research, including interviews with Loco’s grandsons and other descendants, Shapard’s biography is an important counterview for historians and buffs interested in Apache history and a moving account of a leader ahead of his time.

This book challenges long-accepted historical orthodoxy about relations between the Spanish and the Indians in the borderlands separating what are now Mexico and the United States. While most scholars describe the decades after 1790 as a period of relative peace between the occupying Spaniards and the Apaches, Mark Santiago sees in the Mescalero Apache attacks on the Spanish beginning in 1795 a sustained, widespread, and bloody conflict. He argues that Commandant General Pedro de Nava’s coordinated campaigns against the Mescaleros were the culmination of the Spanish military’s efforts to contain Apache aggression, constituting one of its largest and most sustained operations in northern New Spain. A Bad Peace and a Good War examines the antecedents, tactics, and consequences of the fighting. This conflict occurred immediately after the Spanish military had succeeded in making an uneasy peace with portions of all Apache groups. The Mescaleros were the first to break the peace, annihilating two Spanish patrols in August 1795. Galvanized by the loss, Commandant General Nava struggled to determine the extent to which Mescaleros residing in “peace establishments” outside Spanish settlements near El Paso, San Elizario, and Presidio del Norte were involved. Santiago looks at the impact of conflicting Spanish military strategies and increasing demands for fiscal efficiency as a result of Spain’s imperial entanglements. He examines Nava’s yearly invasions of Mescalero territory, his divide-and-rule policy using other Apaches to attack the Mescaleros, and his deportation of prisoners from the frontier, preventing the Mescaleros from redeeming their kin. Santiago concludes that the consequences of this war were overwhelmingly negative for Mescaleros and ambiguous for Spaniards. The war’s legacy of bitterness lasted far beyond the end of Spanish rule, and the continued independence of so many Mescaleros and other Apaches in their homeland proved the limits of Spanish military authority. In the words of Viceroy Bernardo de Gálvez, the Spaniards had technically won a “good war” against the Mescaleros and went on to manage a “bad peace.”

Borderlands violence, so explosive in our time, has deep roots in history. Lance R. Blyth’s study of Chiricahua Apaches and the presidio of Janos in the U.S.-Mexican borderlands reveals how no single entity had a monopoly on coercion, and how violence became the primary means by which relations were established, maintained, or altered both within and between communities, to include the Spanish-Mexican settlement of Janos in Nueva Vizcaya, present-day Chihuahua, and the Chiricahua Apaches. For more than two centuries violence was at the center of the relationships by which Janos and Chiricahua formed their communities. Violence created families by turning boys into men through campaigns and raids, which ultimately led to marriage and also determined the provisioning and security of these families, with acts of revenge and retaliation governing their attempts to secure themselves even as trade and exchange continued sporadically. This revisionist work reveals how during the Spanish, Mexican, and American eras both conflict and accommodation constituted these two communities that previous historians have often treated as separate and antagonistic. By showing not only the negative aspects of violence but also its potentially positive outcomes, Chiricahua and Janos helps us to understand violence not only in the southwestern borderlands but in borderland regions generally around the world.

This is the story of the Chiricahua Apaches on the northern frontier of New Spain from 1750 to 1858, especially those within the region of the Janos presidio in northwestern Chihuahua. Using previously untapped archives in Spain, Mexico, & the United States, William Griffen relates how Apache raids & other hostilities were the norm until Bernardo de Galvez, viceroy of New Spain, encouraged the Apaches to settle near presidios. By 1790 some Apaches were in residence at Janos, & intermittent periods of peace & conflict ensued until Mexican independence brought more radical changes in Indian policy (such as the state of Sonora's offer of bounties for Indian scalps). Griffen explores issues of changing Indian policy, Indian-Mexican relations, & the entry of the United States onto the scene after its invasion of Mexico. For this reprint he includes a new preface discussing recent research issues. "A landmark work that is sure to become a standard source for the story of Apaches in Northern Mexico." - ETHNOHISTORY. "A solidly researched study that adds to our knowledge of Indian relations on the Spanish borderland frontier." - AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW. William B. Griffen is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Northern Arizona University & the author of UTMOST GOOD FAITH: PATTERNS OF APACHE-MEXICAN HOSTILITIES IN NORTHERN CHIHUAHUA BORDER WARFARE, 1821-1848.