“Cochise, Geronimo, and the Apache Wars” with Gregory McNamee

PRESENTATION DESCRIPTION

Their names resound in Arizona history and pepper the of the state map, but few people know well the tangled history that surrounds the so-called “Apache Wars”, when fully half of the active U.S. Army descended on the territory to combat a relative handful of Indigenous warriors. Ironically, the Apache peoples of the Southwest had once welcomed the arrival of the Americans as a buffer against Mexico, which regularly attached Apache settlements—but then American miners and loggers began to encroach, and a defensive war turned into a terrible guerrilla campaign that lasted a quarter-century. In this talk, Gregory McNamee, who has written about the Apache Wars for Encyclopaedia Britannica and other publications, unravels the complex story of the conflict and the decades of uneasy peace that followed.

This program is cohosted by the Coolidge Public Library.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Gregory McNamee is a prolific writer, editor, photographer, and publisher. He is the author of forty-five books and numerous articles and other publications. McNamee is a contributing editor to the Encyclopædia Britannica and a research fellow at the Southwest Center of the University of Arizona. For more information visit McNamee’s web page at www.gregorymcnamee.com.