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8 books match the query 'Apache Indians'

cover of A Fateful Day in 1698: The Remarkable Sobaipuri-O’odham Victory over the Apaches and Their Allies

A Fateful Day in 1698

The Remarkable Sobaipuri-O’odham Victory over the Apaches and Their Allies

Deni J. Seymour

University of Utah Press, 2014

In 1698, the Apache and their allies attacked a sleeping Sobaipuri-O’odham village on the San Pedro River at the northern edge of New Spain, now in southern Arizona. This book, about one of the most important Southwestern battles of the era in this region, reads like a mystery. At the same time, it addresses in a scholarly fashion the methodological question of how we can confidently infer anything reliable about the past.
 
Translations of original Spanish accounts by Father Kino and others convey important details about the battle, while the archaeological record and ethnographic and oral traditions provide important correctives to the historic account. A new battlefield signature of native American conflict is identified, and the fiery context of the battle provides unprecedented information about what the Sobaipuri grew and hunted in this out-of-the-way location, including the earliest known wheat.
 
That this tumultuous time was a period of flux is reflected in the defensive, communal, and ceremonial architecture of the O'odham, which accommodated Spanish tastes and techniques. Practices specific to the O’odham as they relate to the day’s events and to village life illuminate heretofore unexplained aspects of the battle. The book also records a visit by descendant O’odham, reinforcing the importance of identifying the historically documented location.
 
A Fateful Day in 1698 will be of significant interest to archaeologists and historians.
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cover of Among the Mescalero Apaches: The Story of Father Albert Braun, O.F.M.

Among the Mescalero Apaches

The Story of Father Albert Braun, O.F.M.

Dorothy Emerson

University of Arizona Press, 1973

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cover of Apache Reservation: Indigenous Peoples and the American State

Apache Reservation

Indigenous Peoples and the American State

By Richard J. Perry

University of Texas Press, 1993

"Indian reservations" were the United States' ultimate solution to the "problem" of what to do with native peoples who already occupied the western lands that Anglo settlers wanted. In this broadly inclusive study, Richard J. Perry considers the historical development of the reservation system and its contemporary relationship to the American state, with comparisons to similar phenomena in Canada, Australia, and South Africa.

The San Carlos Apache Reservation of Arizona provides the lens through which Perry views reservation issues. One of the oldest and largest reservations, its location in a minerals- and metals-rich area has often brought it into conflict with powerful private and governmental interests. Indeed, Perry argues that the reservation system is best understood in terms of competition for resources among interest groups through time within the hegemony of the state. He asserts that full control over their resources—and hence, over their lives—would address many of the Apache's contemporary economic problems.

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cover of Apachean Culture History and Ethnology

Apachean Culture History and Ethnology

Keith H. Basso

University of Arizona Press, 1971

This volume grew out of a symposium held at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in November 1969 at New Orleans, Louisiana. The "Apachean Symposium" was designed to provide an opportunity for scholars engaged in research on southern Athapaskan cultures to report upon their findings, and wherever possible, to link them to known fact and existing theory. The diverse work presented here will add significantly to the knowledge about Apachean cultures, and each of contributions also pertains directly to wider spheres of anthropological concern.
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cover of Kiowa, Apache, and Comanche Military Societies: Enduring Veterans, 1800 to the Present

Kiowa, Apache, and Comanche Military Societies

Enduring Veterans, 1800 to the Present

By William C. Meadows

University of Texas Press, 1999

A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Book

For many Plains Indians, being a warrior and veteran has long been the traditional pathway to male honor and status. Men and boys formed military societies to celebrate victories in war, to perform community service, and to prepare young men for their role as warriors and hunters. By preserving cultural forms contained in song, dance, ritual, language, kinship, economics, naming, and other semireligious ceremonies, these societies have played an important role in maintaining Plains Indian culture from the pre-reservation era until today.

In this book, Williams C. Meadows presents an in-depth ethnohistorical survey of Kiowa, Apache, and Comanche military societies, drawn from extensive interviews with tribal elders and military society members, unpublished archival sources, and linguistic data. He examines their structure, functions, rituals, and martial symbols, showing how they fit within larger tribal organizations. And he explores how military societies, like powwows, have become a distinct public format for cultural and ethnic continuity.

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cover of Massacre at Camp Grant: Forgetting and Remembering Apache History

Massacre at Camp Grant

Forgetting and Remembering Apache History

Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh

University of Arizona Press, 2007

Winner of a National Council on Public History Book Award

On April 30, 1871, an unlikely group of Anglo-Americans, Mexican Americans, and Tohono O’odham Indians massacred more than a hundred Apache men, women, and children who had surrendered to the U.S. Army at Camp Grant, near Tucson, Arizona. Thirty or more Apache children were stolen and either kept in Tucson homes or sold into slavery in Mexico. Planned and perpetrated by some of the most prominent men in Arizona’s territorial era, this organized slaughter has become a kind of “phantom history” lurking beneath the Southwest’s official history, strangely present and absent at the same time.

Seeking to uncover the mislaid past, this powerful book begins by listening to those voices in the historical record that have long been silenced and disregarded. Massacre at Camp Grant fashions a multivocal narrative, interweaving the documentary record, Apache narratives, historical texts, and ethnographic research to provide new insights into the atrocity. Thus drawing from a range of sources, it demonstrates the ways in which painful histories continue to live on in the collective memories of the communities in which they occurred.

Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh begins with the premise that every account of the past is suffused with cultural, historical, and political characteristics. By paying attention to all of these aspects of a contested event, he provides a nuanced interpretation of the cultural forces behind the massacre, illuminates how history becomes an instrument of politics, and contemplates why we must study events we might prefer to forget.
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cover of Putting a Song on Top of It: Expression and Identity on the San Carlos Apache Reservation

Putting a Song on Top of It

Expression and Identity on the San Carlos Apache Reservation

David W. Samuels

University of Arizona Press, 2004

As in many Native American communities, people on the San Carlos Apache reservation in southeastern Arizona have for centuries been exposed to contradictory pressures. One set of expectations is about conversion and modernization—spiritual, linguistic, cultural, technological. Another is about steadfast perseverance in the face of this cultural onslaught. Within this contradictory context lies the question of what validates a sense of Apache identity.
 
For many people on the San Carlos reservation, both the traditional calls of the Mountain Spirits and the hard edge of a country, rock, or reggae song can evoke the feeling of being Apache. Using insights gained from both linguistic and musical practices in the community—as well as from his own experience playing in an Apache country band—David W. Samuels explores the complex expressive lives of these people to offer new ways of thinking about cultural identity.
 
Samuels analyzes how people on the reservation make productive use of popular culture forms to create and transform contemporary expressions of Apache cultural identity. As Samuels learned, some popular songs—such as those by Bob Marley—are reminiscent of history and bring about an alignment of past and present for the Apache listener. Thinking about Geronimo, for instance, might mean one thing, but “putting a song on top of it” results in a richer meaning. Samuels also proposes that the concept of the pun, as both a cultural practice and a means of analysis, helps us understand the ways in which San Carlos Apaches are able to make cultural symbols point in multiple directions at once. Through these punning, layered expressions, people on the reservation express identities that resonate with the complicated social and political history of the Apache community.
 
This richly detailed study challenges essentialist notions of Native American tribal and ethnic identity by revealing the turbulent complexity of everyday life on the reservation. Samuels’s work is a multifaceted exploration of the complexities of sound, of language, and of the process of constructing and articulating identity in the twenty-first century.
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cover of They Sang for Horses: The Impact of the Horse on Navajo and Apache Folklore

They Sang for Horses

The Impact of the Horse on Navajo and Apache Folklore

LaVerne Harrell Clark

University Press of Colorado, 2001

No Native American groups placed more emphasis on the horse in their lives than did the Navajo and Apache of the Southwest. They Sang for Horses, first published in 1966 and now considered a classic, remains the only comprehensive treatment of the profound mystical influence that the horse has exerted for more than 300 years.

In this completely redesigned and expanded edition, LaVerne Harrell Clark examines how storytellers, singers, medicine men, and painters created the animal's evolving symbolic significance by adapting existing folklore and cultural symbols. Exploring the horse's importance in ceremonies, songs, prayers, customs, and beliefs, she investigates the period of the horse's most pronounced cultural impact on the Navajo and the Apache, starting from the time of its acquisition from the Spanish in the seventeenth century and continuing to the mid-1960s, when the pickup truck began to replace it as the favored means of transportation. In addition, she presents a look at how Navajos and Apaches today continue to redefine the horse's important role in their spiritual as well as material lives.

This classic work is a must for historians, readers interested in Native American folklore and mythology, and anyone who has ever been captivated by the magic and romance of the horse.

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