The Apache wars were a serious of wars waged by the forces of American against a strong tribe that ruled Arizona. In February of 1861 a lieutenant named George Bascom tried to arrest a Apache war chief of kidnapping without a shed of proof and what transpired was a brutal guerrilla war for a decade between Apaches and White invading settlers. The Apache war leader was named Cochise and the book called "The Wrath Of Cochise follows this story intricately and the carnage that lasted made the Southwest a dangerous pace for any ethnic group. The Chiricahua Apaches hung on becoming a tough utter foe to the White man in this war with thousands of lives lost and the economies of Arizonan and New Mexico were devastated as settlers were driven off for a brief time. The Apaches were always limped together by Mexican and American thought and this lead to far more conflict and tragedies as Apaches never has a unified agenda and armies usually got the wrong tribe in retaliatory attacks. The Spanish treatment of Indians in the Southwest was based often on slave labor and brutal rule toughening the ones that resisted and lived in bitter regions. The legacy of this treatment would be remembered as Americans swarmed into the homelands of Cochise and his people with a culture with a totally opposite viewpoint. Miners degraded Apache lands and served as a symbol of Americans greed and irreverence. George Bascoms illogical move would lead to major attacks and Bascom would die in the civil war and never live to see the completion of the war he help create with his budgeting move to hold Cochies's family hostage and kill some in the encounter. This book goes into much of this idiot and his career in the US army and it is a shame Cochise couldn't of avenged the insult and murder of his relative with a nice shot arrow into George Bascom's lung. Author Terry Mort gives out much information on the Apaches in this book and recounts around battles and massacres that occurred in this ten year period of strife on the New Mexican and Arizona borderlands with each other and Mexico. This book is full of history a d ends with the encounter again between Bascom and Cochise in 1861. Eventually Cochise would come to peace with the Americans but the war would restart following his death and the Apaches would be routed and thrown onto a reservation and their raiding days came to an end.
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