Kitikiti'sh: The Wichita Indians and Associated Tribes in Texas, 1757-1859 (review)

4o8Southwestern Historical QuarterlyJanuary into raiding because some of their best lands (especially for the Western Apache along the Aravaipa River), were taken by successive waves of colonization. Besides the detailed description of how Western Apaches lived off the land by farming, gathering, and hunting, Record uses oral history and primary sources to document how Tucson merchants, who tended to live off the U.S. Army, stirred up antagonism against Apaches to the point where Tucsonans took the law into their own hands and organized a punitive exhibition against the Western Apaches. Military expenditures were the largest part of the Arizona economy in the 1870s, with one tenth of the U.S. Army stationed in the state. The immigrant merchants, miners, and ranchers advocated genocide, but the U.S. government and the Army, backed by eastern humanitarians, sought peace—not at the expense ofhalting the encroachment onto Apache lands, however, which was die major cause ofApache resistance. When the Army persuaded a relatively large group of Western Apaches to halt hostilities and gather near Camp Grant under the nominal protection ofthe army, Tucson merchants organized a party of six Americans, forty-seven Mexicans, and ninety-two O'odhams who launched a surprise attack on April 30, 1871, that killed more than one hundred Apaches, mostly women and children, who were gathered together under a truce with the U.S. Army near Camp Grant (2 13). The O'odham warriors were responding to centuries of Apache depredations. A mockery of a trial of the massacre instigators in Tucson ended with no convictions. The Camp Grant massacre marked the end of the traditional Western Apache life style as they were placed on the San Carlos Reservation. While protected there from further raids, they continued to suffer under the supervision of "unscrupulous reservation superintendents" (32). Record notes that the lives of the Western Apache "far more than legendary figures such as Gerónimo and Cochise, epitomize Apaches' common experience" (11). While giving extensive information on how Apaches lived off the land, Record provides almost no discussion of Apache religion. He concludes with a brief coda of life on the San Carlos Reservation today. At a 1 984 commemoration by the descendente of the survivors of the Camp Grant massacre, he quotes Philip Cassadore, "Although the Camp Grant massacre will live forever in the memory of the Apache people, we are gathered here neither to forgive nor to condemn. The past is gone" (220). Northern Arizona UniversityJon Reyhner Kitikiti'sh: TL· Wichita Indians and Associated Tribes in Texas, 1757—1859. By Earl H. Elam. (Hillsboro, Tex.: Hill College Press, 2008. Pp. 456. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 9780912172446, $30.00 cloth.) In 1971, Earl H. Elam earned his Ph.D. in history from Texas Tech, producing a dissertation on the history of the Wichita Indians from 1541 to 1868. At the time, Elam's work provided the only scholarly overview of the entire Wichita tribe—consisting of various groups, including the Taovayas, Tawakonis, Kichais, and Wacos—from first contact with Europeans in the sixteenth century until their 2010Book Reviews40g setdement on a reservation in western Oklahoma in the nineteenth century, where most tribal members still reside today. Although Elam became a professor and academic administrator at SuI Ross State University, it took him nearly four decades to turn his dissertation into a book, following his retirement and relocation to Hillsboro , where he is now a historian and editor in the Texas Heritage Museum at Hill College. In die updated version of his dissertation, Elam has narrowed the scope of his study, concentrating on the Wichitas from their participation in the attack on die Spanish mission at the San Saba River in 1758 to their forced removal from Texas to Indian Territory in 1859. Elam's new account of the Wichitas is very reminiscent of his dissertation, providing a straightforward narrative history of their relations with Euroamericans and other Indians based mainly on published primary sources in English or translated from Spanish. Whereas forty years ago, his dissertation was groundbreaking since no other work on the Wichitas existed, Elam's new book is rather outdated, as a number of scholars have written innovative studies of the...