WOAC: Bascom Affair

Apache Pass and Old Fort Bowie includes terms for Apache Pass, Bascom Affair, Butterfield Overland Station, California Column, Chiricahua Apache.

For a quarter century - 1861 to 1886 - the U.S. military attempted to subjugate one of the largest Indian tribes of what is today the American Southwest. "The Apache Wars" is the gripping tale of how, thanks to leaders such as Victorio and Geronimo, the Apache Indians held out longer than any other major U.S. tribe.

In addition to a close-up picture of a pivotal figure in western history, Cochise offers accounts of a vanished world from people who lived in that world.

This book provides essential information on major battles and military campaigns, treaties, significant sites, American Indian tribes, and notable military and political leaders, both Indian and white, presented in a handy, encyclopedic style.

In February 1861, the twelve-year-old son of an Arizona rancher was kidnapped by Apaches; a band of Chiricahua Apaches led by the infamous warrior Cochise was blamed for the attack. Lt. George Bascom organized a patrol and met with the Apache leader, who, not suspecting anything was amiss, had brought along his wife, his brother, and two sons. Despite Cochise’s assertions of innocence and his offer to help in the search, Bascom immediately took Cochise’s family hostage. An incensed Cochise escaped the meeting tent amidst flying bullets—and vowed revenge. What followed that precipitous encounter would ignite a Southwestern frontier war between the Chiricahuas and the US Army that would last twenty-five years. 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 the tradition of Empire of the Summer Moon, this is the stunningly vivid historical account of the manhunt for Geronimo and the 25-year Apache struggle for their homeland.

Apaches: A History and Culture Portrait, James L. Haley's dramatic saga of the Apaches' doomed guerrilla war against the whites, marks 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 lifeway of the Apaches--their mythology and folklore, religious customs, everyday life, and social mores. Haley then explores the tumultuous decades of trade and treaties 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. With a new preface that places the book in the context of contemporary scholarship, Apaches is a well-rounded overview of Apache history and culture.

An indispensable text for researchers, this book provides fresh insights into well-known army figures while rewarding a closer look at the courageous roles of lesser-known men.

Apacheria ran from the Colorado to the Rio Grande and beyond, from the great canyons of the North for a thousand miles into Mexico.

A first-person account into the end of the Indian Wars by an aide present at the final meetings with Cochise. A detailed foreward covers the Bascom Affair and the ensuing years of bloodshed but the descriptive passages of CPT Sladen share the culture of the military of the period and of the everyday Apache, illiciting nuances of a cultural understanding that, had it been present 12 years before, might have prevented the atrocities committed by both sides.

In this first full-length biography of the legendary chief, Edwin R. Sweeney vividly portrays the Apache culture in which Mangas rose to power and the conflict with Americans that led to his brutal death.

An account of the military career of Reuben F. Bernard draws from the general's official and personal correspondence, his diary, and the recollections of retired officers who served with him, to tell of his service in the Civil War and his participation in the Indian wars, including campaigns against the Apache, Modoc, and Paiute.

In a gripping narrative, Terry Mort explores the collision of two radically different cultures in a masterful account of one of the bloodiest conflicts in our frontier history.