Grenville Goodwin was one of the leading field anthropologists during a crucial period in American Indian research—the 1930s. His letters from the field provide original source material on Western Apache beliefs and customs. They also reveal the attitudes and methods which made him so effective in his work. A dedicated and thorough ethnographer, Goodwin became familiar with every aspect of Western Apache culture.

During this same period, Morris Opler was studying the Chiricahua and Mescalero Apache in New Mexico. In order to exchange information about their studies, Goodwin and Opler began corresponding. Both men were convinced that a long-overdue, systematic comparison of Apachean cultures would yield significant results.

Presents an in-depth historical reconstruction and a detailed ethnographic account of the Western Apache culture based on firsthand observations made over a span of nearly ten years in the field

The Social Organization of the Western Apache is still one of the most comprehensive descriptions of the social life of an American Indian tribe. Grenville Goodwin knew the Western Apache better than any other ethnographer who ever lived. And he wrote about them from the conviction that his knowledge was important—not only for specialists interested in the tribes of the Southwest, but for all anthropologists concerned with the structure and operation of primitive social systems.