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165 Notes The map in this book was drawn by Gene Hall. All photographs are taken with permission from the archives of the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott, Arizona, with the exception of the photograph of Four Peaks on page 9 and of the Verde Valley on pages 20–21, which are by Gregory McNamee, and the photograph of Gen. George Crook on page 46, which is from the National Archives. Documents quoted in these notes that are without specific citations are also from the archives of the Sharlot Hall Museum and may be consulted there. vi  “the most signal blow ever received by the Apaches in Arizona”: Bourke, Diaries, 51. ix  “the narrator was allowed”: Opler, Apache Odyssey, 6. ix  “Opler also observed”: Opler, Apache Odyssey, 224. ix  “So much has been written of the Indians”: Farish, History of Arizona, 288. 1  “I belonged to an Apache Indian family”: Throughout his autobiography , Burns refers to himself as an Apache, as the Yavapai people were collectively called during the nineteenth century. The misnomer was applied by Americans who had trouble distinguishing the Athapaskanspeaking Apaches from their mountain- and desert-dwelling neighbors to the west. The Yavapais, variously called “Apache-Mojaves,” “Mojave Apaches,” “Apache-Yumas,” “Yuma Apaches,” “Tonto Apaches,” and so on, fell into four main groups: the Kwevkepayas, Mike Burns’s people, who lived along the Verde River and whose territory extended southeast to the Pinal Mountains around Globe; the Tolkepayas, who lived in the plateau and desert country between the Bradshaw Mountains and the Colorado River; the Yavapes, who lived in the area around Prescott and the Hassayampa River drainage; and the Wipukepas, who lived north of the Verde River between the Mazatzal Mountains and the Mogollon Rim. 1  “cave on the north side of the Salt River”: The place is called Skeleton Cave, so named for the material remnants of the fight that Burns describes . The Salt River lies about nine hundred feet below the cave, which is extremely difficult to reach. For this reason, the Kwevkepayas considered it a prime sanctuary. 166 notes to pages 1–4 1  “The place is on the north side”: Mike Burns believed that he was born at Fish Creek, the place the Kwevkepayas called Gagattavalva, “Steep Pass.” 1  “The Four Peaks were white with snow”: The Four Peaks, at 7,657 feet in elevation, lie at the southern end of the Mazatzal Mountains near presentday Roosevelt Lake. They are important in the practical and sacred geographies of several Native American groups in Arizona. 1  “I was taken to an officer”: James Burns, born in Ireland, immigrated to the United States and soon thereafter, on July 28, 1858, enlisted as a private in the Fifth Cavalry. He served in the Civil War, after which he was promoted to lieutenant and then posted to Arizona. 2  “I can only guess that I was born in 1864”: Some sources give 1862 as Mike Burns’s birthday, which would have made him ten at the time. 2  “she was pulled out and shot many times”: William Corbusier, an army doctor who edited a much-expurgated and never-published version of Burns’s memoirs, protests, “Our troops never intentionally shot at women and children, but at long range could not always distinguish them from the men. They always sympathized with their captives and shared their rations with them. They would take the disabled ones and the small children who were unable to walk on their horses, just as Mike was taken by Captain Burns. Probably other Indians were in the bushes and Mike’s mother was mistaken for a man.” It is for the reader to judge which account is the more accurate. 2  “old Fort Grant on the San Pedro River”: Originally established as Fort Arivaypa, Camp (then Fort) Grant was first located within Aravaipa Canyon , then in 1872 relocated to the east of the canyon, away from the San Pedro River. The original post was the site of the Camp Grant Massacre of March 1871; see pages 143–144. 3  “General George Crook, who was commanding the Department of Arizona ”: George Crook (1829–90) is considered one of the fairest-minded of the senior military commanders in the Indian Wars. Most of his long service in the military was spent in the West; his training fighting in California served him well while fighting Confederate guerrillas in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee during the Civil War. His bravery and efficiency led to his promotion to...

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