Apaches: A History and Culture Portrait

Apaches: A History and Culture Portrait, James L. Haley's dramatic saga of the Apaches' doomed guerrilla war against the whites, was a radical departure from the method followed by previous histories of white-native conflict. Arguing that "you cannot understand the history unless you understand the culture," Haley first discusses the "life-way" of the Apaches - their mythology and folklore (including the famous Coyote series), religious customs, everyday life, and social mores. Haley then explores the tumultuous decades of trade and treaty and of betrayal and bloodshed that preceded the Apaches' final military defeat in 1886. He emphasizes figures that played a decisive role in the conflict: Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, and Geronimo on the one hand, and Royal Whitman, George Crook, and John Clum on the other.