A Story of the Apache Wars

I grew up in a family of readers, and everyone in my family had one or two authors who stood out as personal favorites. My mom adored Agatha Christie and Jane Austen, my dad Rex Stout. My brothers loved and Kurt Vonnegut or the classics, and my sister….romance? I actually don’t remember that one.

But the adoration that stands out most to me is my grandfather’s love for Louis L’Amour. He’d collected them all, and he’d read the man’s full bibliography a number of times by the time I found out about it. He kept those small paperbacks on his shelves in the cabin at the lake. I can smell them now.

I’ve tried reading those Westerns before, yet for some reason, I just personally never got into them. I don’t know what barred my imagination from falling in love with cowboys and cattle-rustlers as a man ought, but it had just never been my thing (the main L’Amour novel I did read and love was Last of the Breed set in modern Siberia).

This graphic novel, Indeh, by actor/creator Ethan Hawk and artist Greg Ruth now makes me wonder if I really was missing out on much by not reading mainstream Westerns. How accurate was L’Amour’s take on his “cowboys and Indians”? How historically sensitive were the massacres he portrayed? Indeh has got me thinking.

This book covers a slice of American history from the perspective of the Apache tribes of Arizona and the surrounding territories, giving context to the fighting that we don’t often hear. A people and its many tribes find themselves mistreated and sometimes massacred by invaders on their ancient land, both the Mexicans and the “white eyed.” The Mexican invaders kill and maim whole villages of women and children. The White-eyes lie and murder according to their highly skeptical “laws.” And for what? Land? yellow rocks? simple pleasure?

The dishonesty, thievery, and well-calculated manipulation by the white-eyes which eventually leads to the torture and murder of Apache warriors is palpable and real. The Apache response, given this context, is understandable. It was war, albeit one undeclared. Their offense was self-defense, self-preservation. The Apaches tribesmen sensed a filial duty to respond to the murders and massacres in kind, and the results were bloody and, ultimately, self-defeating.

Earlier this year, I started reading an alternate-history novel titled Apacheria: an epic alternate history by Jake Page (1998) in which the author considers what might have occurred had the Apache tribes strategically combined their efforts and won the war against the invading white men. The result was “Apacheria,” a nation of first-tribes on the western half of the continent. As interesting as this concept was, it could never have been, and Hawk pinpoints why:

We have killed ten White Eyes for every Apache, but when one white man dies, many take his place. When one Apache dies, there is no one to take his place. (213)

The decimation of the Apache people forced them to compromise, forced them into “peace” upon reservations of the American government’s choosing. While such violent expansion and subjugation of “first peoples” is the true tale of every nation and empire on the planet since the beginning, it doesn’t make it right. The methods and murder dehumanized the native peoples and it’s a scar of our past that ought never be forgotten.

This book was an eye-opening reminder of these truths for me. As horrible as it was to read at times, I found it a beautifully drawn account of our nation’s true history. I highly recommend it.

[Note that this book is violent and contains a fair amount of foul language.]

©2021 E.T.