Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.