Apaches at War and Peace: The Janos Presidio, 1750-1858.

Abstract

Nineteen eighty-six marked the centenary of the surrender of Geronimo and his Apache band to the U.S. military, the formal end of the Indian wars in this country. The late nineteenth-century Apache conflicts in the American Southwest have probably been the subject of more Hollywood films, dime novels, newspaper articles, and good and bad scholarship than fighting involving any other Indian group. Thus a large segment of the general public perceives the Apache as bloodthirsty savages in New Mexico and Arizona who could be conquered only by the likes of John Wayne and Burt Lancaster. The fact is, Apaches were numerous and very active south of the U.S.-Mexico border, and both parallels and differences can be drawn between their experience and that of Americans in the Southwest. Few laymen, indeed few scholars, seem to realize this. The importance of this book is that Griffen is the first anthropologist or historian (he is both) to intensively study Apaches outside the U.S. and to do so by meticulously using the primary record. That record is the archive of Janos, in the extreme northwest of Chihuahua, Mexico. In the course of nearly two centuries numerous papers accumulated at Janos, mainly the documents generated by the presidio (military garrison) there. It is the finest historical record of its type in northern Mexico, and one of which scholars are only now becoming aware. Griffen examined practically every page in the archive, and in places he translated the rich information almost verbatim. Two other scholars also deserve credit for preserving the documents at Janos and facilitating their use. Some years ago Nettie Lee Benson, director of the Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin, was offered a tow sack of papers pilfered from Janos, and those are now securely housed there. While conducting archaeological excavations in the 103