The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American History

Abstract

The U.S.-Apache wars in the Southwest borderlands may have constituted the longest war in U.S. history, and they certainly have captured the attention of generations of novelists, filmmakers, and historians. The eminent military historian and professor of history at the University of New Mexico, Paul Andrew Hutton, has penned not so much a revisionist account but an intense, fast-paced, and vivid retelling of a familiar story to those versed in the history of the Apache conflict. After introducing the violent history of the Spanish, Mexicans, and Apaches in the borderlands, Hutton starts his discussion from 1861. He brings us Cochise and the Bascom Affair and the betrayal and murder of Mangas Coloradas during the Civil War years. The Camp Grant massacre (1871), General George Crook's Western Apache and Yavapai campaigns, President Ulysses S. Grant's “peace policy,” and the establishing of reservations constitute the essentials in the following chapters. He also covers the concentration of Apaches at San Carlos, Victorio's wars, and the religious revivalism that exploded into violence at Cibecue. The final third of the book follows the dwindling resistance of the free Chiricahuas in the 1880s, the U.S. Army's penetration of the Sierra Madre, and the hunt for Geronimo and glory by Generals Crook and Nelson Miles. Unlike most historians, Hutton does not stop there. He instead narrates the exploits of the “outlaw” Apache Kid, thus stretching out the wars for a few years.