My Life Among the Apaches
My Life Among the Apaches by John C. Cremony
This book is an interesting counterpoint to the Apache accounts of their relations with whites in the SW US. In the 1850s Cremony served with Bartlett and his Mexican counterpart, Garcia y Conde, on the boundary commission surveying the line between the US and Mexico demarcated by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and was stationed at "the Coppermines": Santa Rita del Cobre, where he got to know the Mimbres (Bedonkohe) Apaches under Mangas Coloradas pretty well. He later fought with the California Volunteers at the landmark battle of Apache Pass, then was part of the military contingent that held the Navajos and Mescalero Apaches under pretty desperate conditions at Bosque Redondo (Fort Sumner), New Mexico, in the 1860s. Most of his knowledge of the Indeh came from the latter experience, where he really did live amongst them, learned their language (he compiled the first Apache-English vocabulary) and had extensive discussions with informants about their culture, history and viewpoints.
Cremony's overall assessment of the Apache can be summarized as follows: On the one hand, they were intractable raiders, thieves and liars who would never willingly submit to white civilization because they considered themselves inately superior to whites, as well as to all other peoples. He argued that in order for the Southwest to be habitable by whites, the Apache must be completely defeated militarily, then whatever remnant forced into a self-supporting agrarian lifestyle. On the other hand, he admired their incredible bravery, tenacity, toughness and endurance. He also freely admitted that their suspicion and distrust of whites was fully justified based on the double-dealing, lying, cheating and corruption entirely evident in the treatment they had received at white hands, especially in the case of civilian Indian agents and the Indian Ring that they were beholden to.
Overall, this is a good read. While I initially thought it to be just another chauvinistic and triumphalist 19th C Anglo screed on Native Americans, by the time I'd finished I had to give Cremony credit for a much more balanced view of the Apache...maybe as balanced as was possible given the place and time. This ranks up there with Gatewood's account in terms of valuable information on Apache culture during the thick of the Apache wars.
