The wrath of Cochise [the Bascom affair and the origins of the Apache wars]

T. A. Mort

Book - 2013

In February 1861, the twelve-year-old son of Arizona rancher John Ward was kidnapped by Apaches. Ward followed their trail and reported the incident to patrols at Fort Buchanan, blaming a band of Chiricahuas led by the infamous warrior Cochise. Though Ward had no proof that Cochise had kidnapped his son, 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 that he had not taken the boy and his offer to help in the search, Bascom immediately took Cochise's family hostage and demanded the return of the boy. 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. In the days following the initial melee, innocent passersby -- Apache, white, and Mexican -- would be taken as hostages on both sides, and almost all of them would be brutally slaughtered. Cochise would lead his people valiantly for ten years of the decades-long war.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 a gripping narrative that often reads like an old-fashioned Western novel, Terry Mort explores the collision of these two radically different cultures in a masterful account of one of the bloodiest conflicts in our frontier history.

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Subjects
Published
New York, NY : Pegasus c2013.
Language
English
Main Author
T. A. Mort (-)
Item Description
Subtitle from p. 1 of cover.
Physical Description
xiii, 322 p., [16] p. of plates : ill., maps, ports. ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (p. 304-313) and index.
ISBN
9781605984223
  • Some awful moment
  • The Mexican War and its aftermath
  • Hatred
  • Miners at the tip of the spear
  • The education of a warrior
  • Bascom's Commission
  • Bascom goes West
  • Rising tensions
  • From Fort Buchanan to Apache Pass
  • Meeting the other
  • Retribution
  • Aftermath.
Review by Choice Review

This discursive book begins with a narration of the 1861 Bascom Affair in southern Arizona. That event pitted Lieutenant George Bascom against the Chiricahua Apache leader Cochise. Investigating an Apache kidnapping, the officer accused the chief and tried to seize him. Cochise fled; both sides took hostages, killed them, and started a decade-long war. With this focal point, Mort effectively compares and contrasts the two leaders' experiences and motivations in the context of 19th-century US western history. The author's objectives are clear, but he tends to stray from them repeatedly. Douglas C. McChristian's Fort Bowie, Arizona (CH, Sep'05, 43-0528) relates much of the same story more effectively, using a tighter focus. For readers unfamiliar with the situation in the Southwest after the 1840s war with Mexico, Mort offers a full context. Mexicans, miners, Mormons, scalp hunters, local developers, US officials, and army officers all receive attention. Mort depicts Bascom as less reckless than he is usually portrayed, and he traces Cochise's evolution as an Apache leader. Despite its overblown title, the book is readable, if prolix, and brings together many threads in western history. Summing Up: Recommended. General, public, and undergraduate libraries. R. L. Nichols emeritus, University of Arizona

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review

In 1848, as a result of victory in the Mexican War, the U.S. acquired vast lands in the Southwest, but the U.S. government also inherited a chronic problem that had plagued Mexico for decades: the inability to contain the constant raiding and other depredations by various bands of Apaches. For the U.S., the problem would ebb and flow but would not be fully resolved for another four decades. Perhaps the most well-known and even admired Apache leader in this struggle was Cochise, who led the Chiricahua band. His particular dispute with Americans was supposedly triggered by a young and inexperienced lieutenant, Charles Bascom, who unjustly accused Cochise of kidnapping a young boy. Mort has written an absorbing and balanced account of the origins of the conflict that moves past much of the mythology surrounding it. For example, Cochise, though certainly a charismatic leader of his people, was also a brutal warrior who endorsed torture and the murder of innocents. The U.S. government and white settlers were equally capable of savagery. This is a well-done chronicle of a harsh war fought in a harsh environment.--Freeman, Jay Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This enthralling chronicle of cultural misunderstandings far surpasses the title's parameters. Mort (The Hemingway Patrols) examines the 1861 kidnapping of the 12-year-old son of a white Arizona rancher, the U.S. army's efforts to find him, and the decades of cross-cultural violence that ensued when the army blamed the wrong guy. The author contends that Lt. George Bascom's mistaken conviction that local native chief Cochise ordered the kidnapping was a result of Bascom's ignorance of power dynamics between groups of Chiricahuas, one of many populations whites referred to as "Apache," a term without organizational meaning for those to whom it was ascribed. Mort is as equally thorough in describing white society's views of the natives as he is in illuminating the complex Chiricahuas, their precise and imagery-laden language, leadership structures, and ideas about revenge. He daringly pushes past conflicting historical records, but is always cautious to clearly signal narrative flourishes. Beyond the thrilling tale of the kidnapping and the Apache Wars, Mort's history is also a meditation on the metaphysical underpinnings of each belligerent's ways of thinking, and how the differences between them contributed to the viciousness of the conflict. 16 pages of b&w photos. Agent: Don Fehr, Trident Media Group. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Cochise was a Chiricahua Apache leader who rose to prominence among his people in the 1850s for his skills as a warrior, which he prominently displayed in raids into Mexico. Although in a constant state of war with Mexicans, the Chiricahua Apache remained at peace with the United States until February 1861, when Lt. George Bascom falsely accused Cochise of kidnapping an American boy. Cochise offered to help Bascom locate the child, who, Cochise believed, had been kidnapped by the Coyotero Apache. Bascom refused the offer and instead kidnapped members of Cochise's family, eventually executing Cochise's brother and two nephews. Mort (The Hemingway Patrols: Ernest Hemingway and His Hunt for the U-Boats) examines how Bascom's ignorance of the Apache led him to begin a war with both Cochise and Mangas Coloradas that lasted more than 25 years and cost the lives of many. VERDICT Although Mort chronicles only the incident that sparked the conflict, he offers vivid insights into not only the subsequent wars with the Apaches, but also into how other conflicts in the West were exacerbated by the inexperience and arrogance of officers in the U.S. military. Recommended for all readers interested in the conquest of the American West.-John R. Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Second-tier, oddly old-fashioned military history by former naval officer Mort (The Hemingway Patrols, 2009). In February 1861, a young Anglo boy disappeared from a ranch near the borders of New Mexico, Arizona and the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua, territory that was home to several Apache bands. Suspicion fell on the closest of them, led by the well-known fighter Cochise, who had long distinguished himself in battle against the Mexican army. An American officer named George Bascom questioned Cochise and, not believing what he heard, took several of Cochise's family members hostage. Cochise escaped in a hail of gunfire. It turned out that Cochise's band was not at fault after all, but the damage was done, and the Bascom Affair touched off the Apache Wars, which would last off and on for more than half a century. The Bascom Affair is a fixture in every history of those wars, and Mort doesn't turn up much that is new. Indeed, his approach reads as if written half a century ago, before ethnohistorical research helped establish the Apache point of view on such matters; his bibliography lacks some central texts, and so it is that he is given to pat explanations--writing, for instance, that the Apaches raided because "they simply liked it," and not, as Grenville Goodwin and other anthropologists have observed, because it was an enterprise as much cultural as economic and military in nature. Just so, he perpetuates tales about gruesome torture that have long been revealed to be canards--although, to be sure, ugly behavior took place on both sides. Mort's history, overall, is of the Zane Grey school, readable enough but more yarn than true history. Readers with an interest in the subject would do better to begin with David Roberts' far superior Once They Moved Like the Wind (1993).]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.