the WRATH of COCHISE

I like my history written with a little pizzazz, but unfortunately this book had a drowsy effect on me. Many reading sessions ended with my eyes trying to close. The book was informative and well written, but Terry Mort has to learn how to stimulate the reader. If you write a 303 page book about The Bascom Affair, don’t wait till the last 63 pages to tell the reader what actually happened. In between the incident and the ensuing ten years the reader learns more about the Mormons, the stagecoach, the Chiricahua  Apache lifestyle and West Point than the actual skirmish. A lot of the text was repetitive observations. Okay, enough is enough, I know the Chiricahuas don’t plant crops. They raid, steal, and murder...I get it. I think Terry Mort has talent, but he needs to learn how to tell a story with more fluidity. On the other side of the coin, I found the Indian Wars leading into the Civil War to be very illuminating. Did Cochise really think he won the war when the US Army left to fight the Confederacy? The style Mort used to write this book didn’t give this reader that commiserating feeling that I got reading Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee . The Indian tribes mentioned in this book come across to me as vicious murdering aggressors. Even though Mort wrote about the white man’s attacks against the Indians, the real atrocities that Mort relayed to the reader were done by the various Indian tribes. Did Cochise’s Apaches really tie-up people upside down on wagon wheels over a slow burning fire and cook the victim’s brain while still alive? Did he really spreadeagle his victim and start a campfire on his stomach? If the white man did things other than hanging and shooting Indians, he didn’t mention it, save a occasional scalping.

The tale starts off in 1861 with Apaches attacking the John Ward ranch in the Sonoita Valley in Southern Arizona. Ward goes to Fort Buchanan to complain. The Army sends 2nd Lt. George Bascom and a patrol out to find the perpetrators. Ward says that Cochise took cattle and his twelve year old stepson. Cochise’s people live seventy miles away in Apache Pass between Mexico and Arizona. They alternately attack Mexico and Arizona and make off and on treaties with both countries. The patrol sets up camp by the stagecoach station and sends word that they want to talk to Cochise. On the second camp day, Cochise, his brother, one of his wives, nephews, and a few warriors show up at 2nd Lt. Bascom’s camp. Inside the tent, Bascom accuses Cochise of attacking Ward’s ranch and kidnapping the boy. Unbeknownst to Bascom, that accusation is a huge insult to a Apache. Since Cochise is listening to a broken Spanish translation from Ward, he is paying close attention to demeanor, tone of voice, and body language. Then, the shavetail ( a newly commissioned officer with no experience ) Lieutenant tells Cochise that they are prisoners until his Apaches find Ward’s boy and the cattle. Cochise tells him he didn’t do it and slashes his way out of the tent. All of this happens in the first seventeen pages, and doesn't get back to the scene until chapter eleven, page 237. This incident starts a ten year war between the Indians of the Southwest and the US Army, miners, and settlers.

According to Mort: ”Congress had a long standing aversion to the idea of maintaining a professional army of any size.” The US Army only had 31,024 officers and troops, while State volunteers numbered 73,532. Since Congress didn’t take the Indian problem seriously, it was allowed to fester for years. West Point grad, George B. McClellan ( yes, that McClellan ), said of the volunteers: “ They are useless, useless, useless, expensive, wasteful and good for nothing.” Three years before the incident (1858 ), the army only had 16,367 people, and only a small portion protecting our western expansion against savy ambushing Indian tribes. The author covers a lot of ground in this book including the lengthy so-called Mormon Wars. Mark Twain once visited Utah and saw Mormon women and: “He thought they were homely creatures and opined that a man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of open handed generosity.” Twain was known to be against what he called “ the savages “ and the writings of James Fenimore Cooper. I guess he didn’t like The Last of the Mohicans or The Deerslayer . By the way what does all those quotes from The Iliad by Homer have to do with this book. Okay, I get that the Troy and Indian Wars lasted ten years, but that’s it. This was an educational book, but if you have read my previous reviews, I like my non-fiction to read like fiction and this book was far from it. I have to put my neutral face on and say “huh?” I was taking a nap.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: I’m not surprised about Mark Twain’s comments, since he was a known racist. To criticize the great books written by James Fenimore Cooper is sacrilegious poppycock. I know, I know, Twain was a great writer and only reflective of his times, but his thoughts could have been kept to himself, and I’m a big fan of his novels. So who else do I think was a great western writer?

How about the great Zane Grey ( 1/31/1872-10/23/1939 ). Here is a man that went to the University of Pennsylvania on a baseball scholarship. He actually played one game in the major leagues, but ultimately became a dentist. He started to write as he was quickly bored with dentistry. He once said “ The Indian story has never been written. Maybe I am the man to do it.”

Zane’s greatest book is Riders of the Purple Sage ( 1912 ). Wikipedia says: “Riders of the Purple Sage tells the story of Jane Withersteen and her battle to overcome her persecution by members of her polygamous Mormon Church, a leader of which, Elder Tull, wants to marry her. Withersteen is supported by a number of Gentile friends, including Bern Venters and Lassiter, a famous gunman and killer of Mormons. Throughout most of the novel she struggles with her "blindness" in seeing the evil nature of her church and its leaders, trying to keep both Venters and Lassiter from killing her adversaries, who are slowly ruining her. Through the adoption of a child, Fay, she abandons her false beliefs and discovers her true love. A second plot strand tells of Venters and his escape to the wilderness with a girl named Bess, "the rustler's girl," whom he has accidentally shot. While caring for her, Venters falls in love with the girl, and together they escape to the East, while Lassiter, Fay, and Jane, pursued by both Mormons and rustlers, escape into a paradise-like valley by toppling a giant balancing rock, forever closing off the only way in or out.” The Mormon theme seems to be popular.

Another great book by Zane was The Long Star Ranger ( 1915 ). Wikipedia says: “Buck Duane is the son of a famous outlaw. Though an outlaw is not always a criminal, if the Rangers say he is an outlaw, its just as bad – he's a hunted man. After killing a man, Duane is forced to 'go on the dodge'. Duane turns up at an outlaw's hideout, still revolting at the idea of outlawry. Worse still, all the men he kills haunt him, for years. At the outlaw hideout, he meets a kidnapped, beautiful young woman and desires to see her free. In the second part of the book, Duane joins the Rangers, who want him to clear the frontier of outlaws, in return for the governor's pardon of his illegal deeds.” A great novel!

The third novel to talk about is Tonto Basin ( 1921 ).  Wikipedia says: “The story begins with 24 year old Jean Isbel in the last stages of a multi-week trip from Oregon to the frontier in Arizona where his family had moved four years earlier to start a cattle ranch. As he nears his destination he meets a woman in the woods, and falls in love at first sight. As they part they learn that they are mortal enemies. She is Ellen Jorth, and her family is locked in a deadly feud with his.

Jean dreads the part his father, Gaston, wants him to play in the feud. He can’t get Ellen out of his mind. They meet again and his words awake in her doubt and fear that her father, Lee Jorth, is not an honorable man but in fact a horse thief and cattle rustler. As events unfold her fears are proved true. Through thick and thin Jean Isbel defends Ellen’s honor and believes the best of her.

The feud erupts into fatal gun battles, first at the Isbel ranch house, and then at the general store in the nearby town. Most of the Isbel and Jorth clans are killed, with several of their allies. The remnant of the Jorths flee with Ellen in tow to a hide-out hidden in a deep box cañon.

Jean and his allies track them and there is a deadly gun battle in the woods nearby. Ellen is forced by one of the three remaining Jorth allies to flee once again. During their flight their horse is shot out from under them. Ellen now on foot meets one of the dying Isbels and finally learns the certain truth that her father, family, and their allies were horse thieves and cattle rustlers as she feared.

When she finally makes her way back to the hide-out, she arrives just after Jean has been forced to take refuge in the loft, unknown to her. One of the two remaining rustlers attacks her with rape in mind but is interrupted by the arrival of the other rustler. Ellen discovers Jean during this interruption. When the rustler returns a few minutes later, Ellen is forced to kill him to protect herself and Jean. A minute later Jean kills the last rustler.

The story ends with Jean and Ellen declaring their love for each other.”