They Never Surrendered: Bronco Apaches of the Sierra Madres 1890-1935 (Great West and Indian Series ; Vol. 59) [Hardcover]

Douglas V. Meed (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 10, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0870260863 | ISBN-13: 978-0870260865 | Edition: First edition, second printing

This is the story of those Apaches who never surrendered; and of Francisco Fimbres, a Sonoran rancher who relentlessly pursued; and of the men who flocked to the border in the midst of the Great Depression to participate in the sanguine carnival of the last Apache campaign.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 205 pages
• Publisher: Westernlore Pr; First edition, second printing edition (June 10, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0870260863
• ISBN-13: 978-0870260865
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,308,649 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Chronicle of Late Apache Wars, December 21, 2007

By 

Robert Ruman (Silver City, NM USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: They Never Surrendered: Bronco Apaches of the Sierra Madres 1890-1935 (Great West and Indian Series ; Vol. 59) (Hardcover)

The first study of the little known fact that numerous Apache warriors did not surrender with Geronimo in 1886, and until as late as 1935 they created havoc in Northern Mexico and the South Western United States. Meed chronicles these bands and their raids and the counter campaigns by the U.S. and Mexican Armies.

...................... 1993, hard bound in dust jacket, . 6 x 9, ix, 205 pages, illus, notes, bibliog, index.

4.0 out of 5 stars The last "hurrah" for the Old West, November 8, 2011

By 

Efrem Sepulveda "history geek" (Tempe, AZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: They Never Surrendered: Bronco Apaches of the Sierra Madres 1890-1935 (Great West and Indian Series ; Vol. 59) (Hardcover)

Douglas V. Weed, who passed away in 2005, wrote many volumes on Texas history and a volume on the Comanches. In this book, he wrote about the last Apache holdouts who still recked havoc along the U.S.-Mexican up until the mid-1930s. The author contends that the Indian Wars did not technically end with the surrender of Geronimo in 1886 and stated that many residual Apaches retreated shortly thereafter into the Sierra Madre Mountains which are located in Mexico between the states of Chihuahua and Sonora.

The book talks about alleged sitings of Charlie McComas, whose parents were killed by Chato's Apaches along the Silver City-Lordsburg road in 1883. It was said that Charlie was captured and raised among the Apaches and grew up to conduct raids in Mexico well into the 1920s. Some other historians disputed this storyline and contended that Charlie died shortly after General Crook's raid into the Sierra Madre in 1885. The book also spends a lot of time covering the revenge expedition of Francisco Fimbres into the Sierra Madre in the late 1920s; most of his family was killed by the "bronco" Apaches and his son captured and taken into the mountains. His expeditions took on a circus-like atmospehre with his call to people on both sides of the border to convene in Douglas, Arizona to conduct a raid with over 1,000 people to kill the indians and take back his son. However, the American and Mexican governments scotched the idea as being to stressful to diplomatic relations and that the Mexican anxiety of "gringos" coming south of the border to hunt for the renegades mdae them uncomfortable.

After numerous forays into the moutains, the Mexicans finally gave the renegades the final coup de grace by the mid-1930s. The author concludes the book by stating that the descendents of these bands no longer conduct raids on cattle or townsfolk in the valleys below, but rather are in the more modern business of shipping drugs into the United States and are in a battle with drug enforcement detachments in Mexico and the U.S. There is still violence in those valleys. The book was written in 1993 and the drug war mentioned in the last chapter still rages today with the rise of the fierce Zetas.

The book contains 157 pages of text, an appendix containing documents relating to the Fimbres expedtion, end notes, a bibliography and an index. In looking at the end notes, there is a heavy reliance on the local newspapers of southeast Arizona of that time as source material. More collaboration of these stories could have been obtained to establish the facts of the stories in this book.