When it acquired New Mexico and Arizona, the United States inherited the territory of a people who had been a thorn in side of Mexico since 1821 and Spain before that. Known collectively as Apaches, these Indians lived in diverse, widely scattered groups with many names—Mescaleros, Chiricahuas, and Jicarillas, to name but three. Much has been written about them and their leaders, such as Geronimo, Juh, Nana, Victorio, and Mangas Coloradas, but no one wrote extensively about the greatest leader of them all: Cochise. Now, however, Edwin R. Sweeney has remedied this deficiency with his definitive biography. Cochise, a Chiricahua, was said to be the most resourceful, most brutal, most feared Apache. He and his warriors raided in both Mexico and the United States, crossing the border both ways to obtain sanctuary after raids for cattle, horses, and other livestock. Once only he was captured and imprisoned; on the day he was freed he vowed never to be taken again. From that day he gave no quarter and asked none. Always at the head of his warriors in battle, he led a charmed life, being wounded several times but always surviving. In 1861, when his brother was executed by Americans at Apache Pass, Cochise declared war. He fought relentlessly for a decade, and then only in the face of overwhelming military superiority did he agree to a peace and accept the reservation. Nevertheless, even though he was blamed for virtually every subsequent Apache depredation in Arizona and New Mexico, he faithfully kept that peace until his death in 1874. Sweeney has traced Cochise’s activities in exhaustive detail in both United States and Mexican Archives. We are not likely to learn more about Cochise than he has given us. His biography will stand as the major source for all that is yet to be written on Cochise.

In February 1861, the twelve-year-old son of Arizona rancher John Ward was kidnapped by Apaches. What followed would ignite a Southwestern frontier war between the Chiricahuas and the US Army that would last twenty-five years. In the days following the initial melee, innocent passersby would be taken as hostages on both sides, and almost all of them would be brutally slaughtered. Thousands of lives would be lost, the economies of Arizona and New Mexico would be devastated, and in the end, the Chiricahua way of life would essentially cease to exist. In a gripping narrative that often reads like an old-fashioned Western novel, Terry Mort explores the collision of these two radically different cultures in a masterful account of one of the bloodiest conflicts in our frontier history.

In this biography, author and historian Peter Aleshire provides the first Apache view of a crucial period in American history - and offers an intimate glimpse of the intriguing man behind the legendary warrior."--BOOK JACKET.

In the decade after the death of their revered chief Cochise in 1874, the Chiricahua Apaches struggled to survive as a people and their relations with the U.S. government further deteriorated. In From Cochise to Geronimo, Edwin R. Sweeney builds on his previous biographies of Chiricahua leaders Cochise and Mangas Coloradas to offer a definitive history of the turbulent period between Cochise's death and Geronimo's surrender in 1886. Sweeney shows that the cataclysmic events of the 1870s and 1880s stemmed in part from seeds of distrust sown by the American military in 1861 and 1863. In 1876 and 1877, the U.S. government proposed moving the Chiricahuas from their ancestral homelands in New Mexico and Arizona to the San Carlos Reservation. Some made the move, but most refused to go or soon fled the reviled new reservation, viewing the government's concentration policy as continued U.S. perfidy. Bands under the leadership of Victorio and Geronimo went south into the Sierra Madre of Mexico, a redoubt from which they conducted bloody raids on American soil. Sweeney draws on American and Mexican archives, some only recently opened, to offer a balanced account of life on and off the reservation in the 1870s and 1880s. From Cochise to Geronimo details the Chiricahuas' ordeal in maintaining their identity despite forced relocations, disease epidemics, sustained warfare, and confinement. Resigned to accommodation with Americans but intent on preserving their culture, they were determined to survive as a people.

November is Native American Heritage month! Osceola, Cochise, and Tecumseh are three Native American heroes who fought valiantly for their land and for their people. This book is divided into three parts--each part recounting the life of one of these great heroes. Their true stories are emotionally gripping and tragic, and Ann McGovern handles delicate topics, such as violence and racism, expertly for young readers. The narrative text is supplemented by black-and-white original source materials throughout (i.e. photographs, maps, portraits, a newspaper article).

During the westward settlement, for more than twenty years Apache tribes eluded both US and Mexican armies, and by 1886 an estimated 9,000 armed men were in pursuit. Roberts (Deborah: A Wilderness Narrative) presents a moving account of the end of the Indian Wars in the Southwest. He portrays the great Apache leaders—Cochise, Nana, Juh, Geronimo, the woman warrior Lozen—and U.S. generals George Crock and Nelson Miles. Drawing on contemporary American and Mexican sources, he weaves a somber story of treachery and misunderstanding. After Geronimo's surrender in 1886, the Apaches were sent to Florida, then to Alabama where many succumbed to malaria, tuberculosis and malnutrition and finally in 1894 to Oklahoma, remaining prisoners of war until 1913. The book is history at its most engrossing. —Publishers Weekly