Life among the Apaches
1985; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 9; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/1183579
ISSN1534-1828
AutoresDonald E. Worcester, John C. Cremony,
Tópico(s)Archaeology and Natural History
ResumoJohn C. Cremony's first encounter with the Indians of the Southwest occurred in the early 1850s, when he accompanied John R. Bartlett's boundary commission surveying the United States-Mexican border. Some ten years later, as an officer of the California Volunteers, he renewed his acquaintance, particularly with the Apaches, whom he came to know as few white Americans before him had. Cremony's account of his experiences, published in 1868, quickly became, and remains today, a basic source on Apache beliefs, tribal life, and fighting tactics. Although its original purpose was to induce more effective military suppression of the Apaches, it has all the fast-paced action and excitement of a novel and the authenticity of an ethnographic and historical document. Like most frontiersmen of the mid-nineteenth century, John C. Cremony looked on Indians as unredeemable savages. But he knew first hand and was a keen and highly literate observer. For all its ethnocentrism, his narrative remains unsurpassed for accuracy and vivid detail among contemporary views of the Apaches. In the literature of the American West, Life Among the Apaches endures as a classic. - Robert M. Utley.
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