"Chief Victorio of the Warm Springs Apache has recounted the turbulent life of his people between 1876 and 1886. This eyewitness account . . . recalls not only the hunger, pursuit, and strife of those years, but also the thoughts, feelings, and culture of the hunted tribe. Recommended as general reading."—Library Journal "This volume contains a great deal of interesting information."—Journal of the West "The Apache point of view [is] presented with great clarity."—Books of the Southwest "A valuable addition to the southwestern frontier shelf and long will be drawn upon and used."—Journal of Arizona History "A genuine contribution to the story of the Apache wars, and a very readable book as well."—Westerners Brand Book "Shining through every page is the unquenchable spirit that was the Apache. Inured, indeed trained, to suffering, Apaches stood strong beside Victorio, Nana, and finally Geronimo in a vain attempt to maintain those things they held more dear than life itself—freedom, homeland, dignity as human beings. A warm and vital people, the Apaches had, and have, a great deal to offer."—Arizona and the West

A steadfast champion of his people during the wars with encroaching Anglo-Americans, the Apache chief Victorio deserves as much attention as his better-known contemporaries Cochise and Geronimo. In presenting the story of this nineteenth-century Warm Springs Apache warrior, Kathleen P. Chamberlain expands our understanding of Victorio’s role in the Apache wars and brings him into the center of events. Although there is little documentation of Victorio’s life outside military records, Chamberlain draws on ethnographic sources to surmise his childhood and adolescence and to depict traditional Warm Springs Apache social, religious, and economic life. Reconstructing Victorio’s life beyond the military conflicts that have since come to define him, she interprets his character and actions not only as whites viewed them but also as the logical outcome of his upbringing and worldview. Chamberlain’s Victorio is a pragmatic leader and a profoundly spiritual man. Caught in the absurdities of post–Civil War Indian policy, Victorio struggled with the glaring disconnect between the U.S. government’s vision for Indians and their own physical, psychological, and spiritual needs. Graced with historic photos of Victorio, other Apaches, and U.S. military leaders, this biography portrays Victorio as a leader who sought a peaceful homeland for his people in the face of wrongheaded decisions from Washington. It is the most nearly complete and balanced picture yet to emerge of a Native leader caught in the conflicts and compromises of the nineteenth-century Southwest.

In the 1940s and 1950s, long before historians fully accepted oral tradition as a source, Eve Ball (1890-1984) was taking down verbatim the accounts of Apache elders who had survived the army's campaigns against them in the last century. These oral histories offer new versions--from Warm Springs, Chiricahua, Mescalero, and Lipan Apache--of events previously known only through descriptions left by non-Indians. A high school and college teacher, Ball moved to Ruidoso, New Mexico, in 1942. Her house on the edge of the Mescalero Apache Reservation was a stopping-off place for Apaches on the dusty walk into town. She quickly realized she was talking to the sons and daughters of Geronimo, Cochise, Victorio, and their warriors. After winning their confidence, Ball would ultimately interview sixty-seven people. Here is the Apache side of the story as told to Eve Ball. Including accounts of Victorio's sister Lozen, a warrior and medicine woman who was the only unmarried woman allowed to ride with the men, as well as unflattering portrayals of Geronimo's actions while under attack, and Mescalero scorn for the horse thief Billy the Kid, this volume represents a significant new source on Apache history and lifeways. "Sherry Robinson has resurrected Eve Ball's legacy of preserving Apache oral tradition. Her meticulous presentation of Eve's shorthand notes of her interviews with Apaches unearths a wealth of primary source material that Eve never shared with us. "Apache Voices is a must read!"--Louis Kraft, author of Gatewood & Geronimo "Sherry Robinson has painstakingly gathered from Eve Ball's papers many unheard Apache voices, especially those of Apache women. This work is a genuine treasure trove. In the future, no one who writes about the Apaches or the conquest of Apacheria can ignore this collection."--Shirley A. Leckie, author of Angie Debo: Pioneering Historian

After the end of the U.S.-Mexican War in 1848, the Southwest Borderlands remained hotly contested territory. Over following decades, the United States government exerted control in the Southwest by containing, destroying, segregating, and deporting indigenous peoples—in essence conducting an extended military campaign that culminated with the capture of Geronimo and the forced removal of the Chiricahua Apaches in 1886. In this book, Janne Lahti charts these encounters and the cultural differences that shaped them. Wars for Empire offers a new perspective on the conduct, duration, intensity, and ultimate outcome of one of America's longest wars. Centuries of conflict with Spain and Mexico had honed Apache war-making abilities and encouraged a culture based in part on warrior values, from physical prowess and specialized skills to a shared belief in individual effort. In contrast, U.S. military forces lacked sufficient training and had little public support. The splintered, protracted, and ferocious warfare exposed the limitations of the U.S. military and of federal Indian policies, challenging narratives of American supremacy in the West. Lahti maps the ways in which these weaknesses undermined the U.S. advance. He also stresses how various Apache groups reacted differently to the U.S. invasion. Ultimately, new technologies, the expansion of Euro-American settlements, and decades of war and deception ended armed Apache resistance. By comparing competing martial cultures and examining violence in the Southwest, Wars for Empire provides a new understanding of critical decades of American imperial expansion and a moment in the history of settler colonialism with worldwide significance.

In a little-known mountain range in southern New Mexico is an unremarkable mountain called Victorio Peak. In a cavern in that mountain, it is rumored that billions of dollars’ worth of artifacts and thousands of gold and silver ingots and coins have been cached for decades, a treasure that dwarfs all others. Its existence, or the belief in its existence, has been responsible for millions of dollars’ worth of recovery efforts, blatant violation of laws and trampling of legal rights by the United States government as well as dozens of citizens, and the involvement of a wide variety of infamous characters. It has also been responsible for a number of deaths. For generations, people all over the world have been fascinated and enthralled by tales and legends of lost mines and buried treasures. There is something in the human DNA that embraces such things. North America has served as a setting for hundreds of such tales, and every now and then one of these treasures is found. Most can identify the Lost Dutchman Mine of Arizona’s Superstition Mountains and the so-called Oak Island Treasure in Nova Scotia as prominent examples of legends that have seized the attention of millions. If one were to write a mystery/thriller incorporating colorful characters, murder, unexplained deaths, intrigue, theft, deceit, and political and legal machinations, one need not look any further than the incredible treasure mystery associated with Victorio Peak. It is, in fact, one of the most bizarre and confounding mysteries in American history and involves what my well be the largest treasure cache known to man.