The Apache Diaries: A Father-Son Journey (review)

The Apache Diaries: A Father-Son Journey. By GRENVILLE GOODWIN and NEIL GOODWIN. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Appendixes. Index. xv, 284 pp. Cloth, $29.95.

The Apache Diaries is both a compelling mystery and a moving personal odyssey. This engaging book is actually two independent searches interwoven with intelligence, suspense, and great tenderness. One search is documentary filmmaker Neil Goodwin's quest to understand the father he never knew. The other search is for the illusive Apaches of the Sierra Madre, an investigation begun by his father, renowned ethnologist Grenville Goodwin. Diaries written by both the father and the son during their separate trips to Mexico are effectively juxtaposed to weave an entertaining adventure of historical significance.

The story unfolds in 1962 when 22-year-old Neil first reads his father's diary. "The diary is a big, leatherbound scrapbook. Pasted onto its pages are lined sheets of paper with his handwritten entries, photographs, watercolor drawings, maps, diagrams, and clippings" (p. 11).

"But the diary is more than a personal narrative. It is the only serious attempt to investigate and describe the Apaches of the Sierra Madre" (p. 11). This small group of Chiricahua Apaches remained hidden in their traditional mountain stronghold on the border between Chihuahua and Sonora long after Geronimo's 1886 surrender. Neil writes, "my father was the sole ethnographer to visit, survey, and inventory their campsites . . . I thought the diary should be published. It was an important piece of ethnography and history, and it was a powerful story. From a personal point of view, it was something my father began that I could finish" (pp. 11-12).

Neil followed in his father's footsteps and began keeping a diary of his own. He wrote,"eventually I realized that a book could be built from a dialogue between our two diaries. My father was there first, found the way, broke the ground. His diary records the stories when they were fresh. . . . My diary is another voice, a counterpoint to my father's, separated from his by fifty years of time" (p. 12). After Grenville's chronological entries introduce each subject, Neil's entries written over a 20 year period "finish the story, elaborate on the subject, speculate, interpret, or entertain" (p. 12).

Grenville's diary begins in 1927 with his first knowledge of the Sierra Madre Apaches. This was the year of the sensational murder of Sonoran María Fimbres and the kidnapping of her three-year-old son by Apaches. Her husband, Francisco Fimbres, led an expedition that resulted in the killing of his son and three Apaches in double acts of revenge. Apache children captives raised in Mexican families provided further evidence of the Sierra Madre Apaches. Grenville estimated that about 30 Chiricahua Apaches remained in Mexico, and he feared their extinction. He hoped that maybe they could be induced to join other Chiricahuas at the Mescalero reservation, but Grenville was not able to carry out this plan.

Grenville discovered two recently abandoned Apache camps on his second and final trip to Mexico in 1931, and the description of these camps forms the heart of the book. According to Neil Goodwin, "these two camps might be said to represent an undescribed lifeway-a post-surrender, Old Mexico way, adapted to an existence dependent on hideouts, stealing, raiding, and building occasional ties with non-Indian collaborators" (p. 180).

Neil determined to rediscover these camps when he began his journey in 1976, using his father's diary with its photos, maps and diagrams to guide him. Many of these reproduced drawings greatly enhance The Apache Diaries. Especially interesting is a cowhide soaking tub (33c). The colorful jacket displays cave petroglyphs that Grenville discovered in Sonora. Historical photographs and photographs of both authors, their traveling companions and Mexican informants also help to bring this fascinating story to life.

SHELLEY B. HATFIELD, Durango, Colorado

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