The Wrath of Cochise: The Bascom Affair and the Origins of the Apache Wars
by Terry Mort
Pegasus Books, 2013
303 pages
The Apache warriors Geronimo and Cochise have become icons in the American psyche, representing the brutal retaliations of native people driven off their ancestral lands by the encroachment of white settlers. None was more feared than Cochise, who ranged across southern Arizona and into Mexico, robbing, raiding, kidnapping and slaughtering many whites and Mexicans, including women and children. His legend was formed during the 25-year frontier war between the Chiricahua Apaches and the US Army, during which thousands of innocents lost their lives and the Chiricahua way of life was forever extinguished.
Local author Terry Mort (who won widespread praise for his earlier book, The Hemingway Patrols) has written an account of the events leading up to the incident that ignited the Apache wars. His book masterfully describes the three main groups of players in the drama – the white settlers and the Army charged with their protection; the Mexicans living on both sides of the border, caught up in political and economic difficulties of their own; and the Apache civilization, made of a complex set of tribes with customs, beliefs, and culture so foreign to the white newcomers.
The reader’s perspective is often like a bird’s eye, shifting from one side to the other, examining the various circumstances that caused each faction to behave in the way it did. We are shown the training of a typical Army officer, Lt. George Bascom, beginning at West Point and then traveling to the very edge of the Western frontier where daily existence was fraught with illness, hardship and mosquitoes, and the rigorous West Point training often proved irrelevant. We look into the harsh lives of the settlers trying to eke out a living and merely survive amidst drought and constant danger. And, most important, we are given a meticulously researched understanding of how an Apache warrior such as Cochise was raised and trained, what his beliefs were, why his unthinkably cruel actions were justified in his own mind.
To his credit, Mort takes no sides. He goes to great lengths to present each viewpoint with equal weight and detail. And because we are aware from the outset that the many strands of the narrative are building toward an explosive finale, the book reads like a thriller, with mounting tension as the incompatible ways of the white and the Apaches are presented in juxtaposition. Drawing from firsthand accounts and secondary materials, Mort describes the kidnapping of Felix Ward, the son of a local farmer living near Sonoita, by Indians – no doubt Apaches. The conviction of the boy’s father that it had to have been Cochise was understandable – but as it would turn out, mistaken. However, events were set into motion when Cochise was accused, his family kidnapped and held hostage, and a series of escalating attacks from both sides shattered the fragile peace in the area and led to decades of slaughter.
Locals will appreciate descriptions of many places familiar to us, such as Fort Buchanan, now a part of the Crown C Ranch. And all readers will come away enriched by a deeper understanding of the mindset of the Apaches, so often presented as two-dimensional villains in the tragedy that unfolded after the kidnapping of Felix Ward.