Eve Ball (1890–1984)

"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
James Kaywaykla lived longer to recount Apache history than any of his fellow tribesmen. In his later years, he often stayed in the author’s home to unwind more continuously the thread of narrative. On the warpath in the 1880s with his chieftain elders, shipped with his people to Florida in 1886, Kaywaykla later was a member of a committee that selected Mescalero as the home of the Chiricahuas and the Warm Springs.… (más)

A fascinating study of a young Native American of Apache extraction who found himself caught up in white America's hubristic approach to “civilizing” Native Americans by forcibly separating them from their native culture, cutting their hair, dressing them in white men's clothes, and sending them off to boarding schools. As much as the shameful history of American–Native American relations, you will learn what approximates Native American (or at least Apache) thinking by internalizing the protagonist's reactions to Western/American/Christian ideas and methods.… (más)