Victorio: Apache Warrior and Chief by Kathleen P. Chamberlain (review)

ous historiography by Nolan, therefore, would help the reader understand the relationship between his work and McCarty’s. On another matter, the author on page 95 uses a photograph of a stagecoach from his own collection and identifies it as Cape Willingham’s Mobeetie and Las Vegas Mail Line. Actually, this is a February 1879 picture of Eli Bates and F. C. Taylor aboard a San Antonio and El Paso Mail Line Celerity coach at Concho Mail Station in Benficklin, Texas. This photograph has been previously published in a number of books, including those by Wayne Austerman and the Tom Green County Historical Preservation League. These two points aside, Tascosa is a lively, entertaining study that makes an important contribution to our understanding of Texas’s nineteenth-century ranching and Old West history. Texas Tech University Press has produced a handsome book. The sophisticated, mood-setting cover design is eye-catching. Tascosa is also blessed with numerous photographs, many of them from the Haley Library in Midland, that help the reader get an authentic period feel for the people , the town, and the surrounding Panhandle region. The book’s impressive footnotes are an extra bonus and should not be overlooked as they are an engaging read unto themselves. Texas Christian University Glen Sample Ely Victorio: Apache Warrior and Chief. By Kathleen P. Chamberlain, foreword by Richard W. Eutalin. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007. Pp. 254. Illustrations, maps, bibliographic essay, index. ISBN 978-0-80613-843-5. $24.95, cloth.) Victorio has not been given the attention he deserves, with no biographies before this current one by Kathleen Chamberlain. The reasons why would themselves make a fascinating study focusing on how most earlier white historians considered a Native leader to be important based only on how much they interacted with whites or how much he could be turned into a symbol of the Vanishing Indian. Chamberlain’s book aims to fill this gap, a very worthy goal. In writing her biography of Victorio, Chamberlain acknowledges that virtually everything written on the Chiricahua military genius is on the last three years of his life while fighting the U.S. military. She promises to make up for that imbalance by using Apache oral accounts, something I applauded and looked forward to with great interest. Victorio still holds a great place within Apache memory as a symbol of resistance. Even today, an Apache activist protesting against the efforts by the University of Arizona to desecrate Mount Graham, Western Apaches’ most sacred site, chose to use the name Victorio when speaking with reporters. The resulting book has mixed results, though parts of it are of great value. Chamberlain is handicapped by a lack of written sources for most of Victorio’s life. She does seem to have put in a valiant effort, and even uncovered a previously little-known peace agreement that Victorio signed. (I would have liked to 2009 Book Reviews 331 *jan 09 11/26/08 12:00 PM Page 331 see interviews from Victorio’s descendants today used as sources.) Most of the first half of Chamberlain’s book is based on extrapolation of what was likely to have been his experiences growing up and as a young man. Much of the material is likely to be too general for the reader already knowledgeable about Apache history, and Western history buffs are certain to make up much if not most of the audience for this book. At times the work can even be a little dry and come close to a recitation of older works. Chamberlain also states her desire to move beyond straightforward military history and the biases in materials written by white agents, missionaries, and army officers. Unfortunately she is not entirely successful. Language reminiscent of the romanticizing of “noble savages” creeps into her writing a number of times. In sympathizing with Victorio, Chamberlain also holds the Apache scouts in low regard. It might surprise Chamberlain to know that many Chiricahua honor the memory of the Apache scouts, the very ones she mildly disparages in the passages in which she discusses them. On the San Carlos Reservation and elsewhere, Apache scouts are viewed today as part of a noble...