12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
35 years later, February 22, 2005
This review is from: The Conquest of Apacheria (Civilization of American Indian) (Paperback)
Dan L. Thrapp has been dead for 10 years or so, but this first big book of his on Apacheria from 1967, is still to be found in almost every footnote or bibliography of books written on the Apache. Following on the heels of his 1964 biography of Al Sieber, this is an epic book. His writings helped give birth to many of today's writers scholarship and contributions concerning this area of study. Both Dan Thrapp and The University of Oklahoma have a classic study with this book; a definite milestone of publishing for its time.
I've read this book several times, and still can remember obtaining it back in the late 1960s; there just wasn't much available in this field of study containing good, solid, comprehensive history on the Apaches. Since that time, and I attribute it directly to Dan's reseach, much material has been published not only specifically on the Apaches, but also the Arizona Territory in general.
Though this wonderful volume is now only mostly available in trade paperback, and costs several times what the original hardcover cost, it is a study still most essential for anyone's library who reads on the Apache and the Indian fighting army of those years, in that area.
The word 'classic' can today be overused, but this book truly is in any sense of the word, a major classic.
Semper Fi.
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15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Still a classic 40 years later, February 20, 2006
This review is from: The Conquest of Apacheria (Civilization of American Indian) (Paperback)
Dan Thrapp, who passed away in 1994, remains the preeminent Apache historian of the twentieth century. The former religious editor of the Los Angeles Times, Dan became interested in the American West, particularly the Apaches, in the early 1950s. He faced a daunting challenge. Unlike other Indian tribes, the Apache story had not been told. What was known looked like a puzzle with its frame formed but without the interlocking pieces. Thrapp quickly realized there was a treasure chest of unpublished material from Western historical societies and the National Archives that no one had mined. The fruits of this research led to books that advanced our knowledge by light years over what had been written: Al Sieber: Chief of Scouts (1964), Conquest of Apacheria, (1967), and Victorio and the Mimbres Apaches, (1974). These peerless works provided interested readers with new information about the Apaches' struggle in survive against overwhelming odds. And, although in print for over forty years, each has stood the test of time.
Dan Thrapp was honest and objective about the frontier characters whom he wrote about-whether Indian, American, or Mexican. Ethnicity did not matter. He sympathized with Apaches who fought to preserve their cultural identity and ancestral homelands. And he was partial to men of integrity and honor. He was not an Apache "wanna-be," though he obviously admired many of the Chiricahua Apache leaders during the period he wrote about. He clearly respected Cochise, Victorio, and Juh; he had little respect, however, for Geronimo, who has become the symbolic leader of the small band that surrendered in 1886. He made no apologies for his opinion.
One critic sites Dan's treatment of Geronimo to disparage his entire body of works. He claims that comments made by Asa Daklugie, a relative of Geronimo, who was the main source of Eve Ball in her book Indeh, as proof that the Chiricahuas take issue with Thrapp's view of Geronimo. Yet Asa Daklugie does not speak for all Chiricahuas in his remarks that glorify and exaggerate Geronimo's skills, and influence. In fact, the majority of those Apaches who knew and rode with Geronimo did not share Daklugie's sentiments. Many blamed him for their twenty-eight years as Prisoners-of-War.
It might be appropriate to point out that Morris Opler, the foremost Apache anthropologist of the twentieth century, agreed wholeheartedly with Thrapp. Opler had interviewed two hundred Chiricahuas on the Mescalero Reservation in the early 1930s. Of these, many had served as scouts against Geronimo during the final outbreak, and thus had little sympathy for him. Opler concluded that "no Chiricahua of his general age group who had been in engagements with him, represented him to me as a particularly able or effective fighter." In an article that Opler published in 1948, he expanded on his feelings: "Geronimo was not a tribal chief or leader. Moreover, he was not a particularly outstanding warrior." Two of Opler's principal informants were Perico (Geronimo's second cousin who was with him at the final surrender) and Chatto. Perico is quoted as saying that "he and the other warriors did all the fighting while Geronimo stayed behind." And Chatto, who led the Chiricahua scouts against Geronimo in the 1885-86 campaign, said: "I have known Geronimo my whole life and I can't say anything good about him." Even Chihuahua and Ulzana, two fearless Chiricahua warriors, had vowed to kill Geronimo because he "had told [us] so many lies" to persuade them to leave the reservation in the final outbreak. Geronimo avoided their wrath by fleeing before they got to his camp. Lt. Britton Davis, the Chiricahuas' agent in 1884-85, saw Geronimo often during this time. He characterized him as a "thoroughly vicious, intractable, and treacherous man. His only redeeming traits were courage and determination. His word, no matter how earnestly pledged, was worthless."
Here we have the opinions of the foremost Apache anthropologist, the American military officer who knew Geronimo the best, and the statements of four prominent Chiricahuas of the 1880s (associates of Geronimo) who agreed completely with Dan Thrapp. Their views certainly deserve the same consideration as Daklugie, who was a teenager at the time of the last outbreak. He was with Geronimo for less than three of the eighteen months of hostilities. Daklugie was too young to have fought during the Apache Wars. During the reservation years, he was not a chief in the traditional manner and never had much of a following.
Conquest of Apacheria tells the complete story of the military struggle to defeat the Western and Chiricahua Apaches. Thrapp's unsurpassed material, unequalled knowledge of his characters, and supreme understanding of the terrain in Apacheria, are apparent throughout the book. His unique grasp of his subject allows him to analyze and interpret the cause and effects of military conflicts. American Indian policy, establishment of reservations, and the government's ill-fated concentration polity to remove Apache bands from their ancestral homelands to the hated San Carlos Reservation in Arizona. Conquest of Apacheria remains a seminal work today, the best book for anyone interested in understanding the full story of the Apache resistance in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
Ed Sweeney, author of Cochise: Chiricahua Apache Chief, and Mangas Coloradas: Chief of the Chiricahua Apaches.
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