Al Sieber, Chief of Scouts by Dan Thrapp
Thrapp is one of the most cited historians of the Anglo conquest of the SW US and Sieber was one of the key players in that drama. He was a German immigrant who, after a stint in the Civil War Union Army, spent most of his life in Arizona, and most of that scouting for the US Army in its campaign to concentrate and/or exterminate the Apaches.
Under the leadership of Sieber, together with Archie McIntosh, Tom Horn, Mickey Free and others, the corps of Native Scouts was amongst the keys to General George Crook's ultimately successful strategy of corralling the Apaches on what is today the San Carlos and White Mtn Reservations, hunting down and killing those who wouldn't go there and stay there.
Sieber was one of the few Whites who learned elements of Apache culture, possibly some of their language (though the rather disreputable Mickey Free was usually his interpreter) and tracking methods. Anglo authors, like Thrapp, claim he was as good or better than they were at their own game and that the Apaches liked and respected Sieber. Primary Apache sources I've read make it sound more like he was feared and loathed. Sieber's death in 1907 is cloaked in this same duality. The facts are that he was crushed by a boulder dislodged at a construction site where he was supervising a crew of San Carlos Apaches on the road north of the Roosevelt dam site, up Tonto Creek. While claimed to be an accident in some sources, in others it is portrayed as an intentional act by Sieber's old enemies, the Apache.
While Sieber's service record was generally commendable, he made one enormous mistake that probably prolonged the Apache war a year longer than needed, caused the unnecessary deaths of many Natives, Anglos and Mexicans and the end of General Crook's career. For reasons unknown, in May, 1885, he caused to go un-retransmitted a telegraph from Britton Davis, Commander at Ft Apache, to General Crook requesting help with a group of surly Chiricahua who had held a tiswin drunk, against Crook's orders. Davis had jailed a group of the worst offenders and the rest were appealing for the latter's release; he agreed with them to put the matter before the General. When Crook never replied, because he'd never received the message, the Chiricahua got nervous and 136 of them fled the reservation. This was Geronimo's last breakout and led to a hard year of campaigning in the Sierra Madre of Mexico by Crook, then Miles, before Geronimo's final surrender at Skeleton Canyon in the Peloncillos, on September 4th, 1886.
On a side note, Sieber was a prospector and miner as well, and had a gold mine called the Delshay, located in the Sierra Ancha SW of Young, which would be interesting to try and track down some time.
Overall I'd qualify this as a good read, with the proviso that it should be balanced with counter-doses of the few Apache accounts of the same events, specifically: Geronimo, Kaywaykla, Betzinez and Daklugie (as related in Ball). Thrapp ties together a lot of archival source material in an enjoyable narrative to paint a thorough picture of Sieber's life and times. His biographical notes on all the players (major to bit) in Sieber's lifelong drama are extensive and reflect Thrapp's enduring interest in Western biography. Thrapp's writing is less in the triumphalist mode of many of his mid-20th C Anglo historian peers but, as might be expected, some of this still seeps through.
