Apache, The Long Ride Home, A Novel

By Grant Gall

"An Apache warrior bent down from his horse, its glossy black flanks still heaving from exertion, to pick me up. As his hand grabbed my arm I bit hard into the flesh of his forearm. It was a deep bite and he shouted with pain. The other Apaches laughed loudly at his discomfort. He reached down again. I tried the same tactic but this time he was too quick. He jerked me upwards onto his horse and sat me in front of him. I fought like a cornered bobcat, spitting, biting and clawing. He struck me on the back of the neck. A vivid flash, then darkness." Thus begins the saga of Pedro Bautista captured by the Apache Indians when he was nine years old after a raid on his Mexican village. Adopted into the tribe, he absorbed their culture and survived their eventual confrontation and defeat by American troops. "Denver Westerner's Roundup" said "This work offers the reader some understanding of tribal organization, courtship, and the raiding way of life of these people. Short novels such as Apache serve a most useful purpose by appealing to those readers who are not likely to sit down and wade through a long scholarly work on the Apache or other topics. This is an interesting story that reaches an important audience." * * * * * Grant Gall, a former news reporter and news editor, is one of England's foremost authorities on Western American history. He has appeared on BBC television and radio programs dealing with the Apache Indian Wars.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0865341052
• ISBN13: 9780865341050
• Release Date: July 2016
• Publisher: Sunstone Press
• Length: 114 Pages
• Weight: 0.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Just as expected

I found this little book to be just what I expected, an entertaining, well-written short novel from the Apache side. This is not an scholar book, but it manages very well to avoid the traps of 'political correctness'; it highlights the cruelties of both sides (three in fact, as the Mexicans are playing in their own league) and while an effort is made to give reasons (from the Apache point of view) for their ruthless depredations, they are not silenced or denied. Perhaps it's best summarized in a speech by an Apache war chief: 'They [Americans] cared not whom they slew [in a recent attack]. Women, children, old men. It mattered not to them. Neither will it concern us whom we kill as long as they are Americans.[...] It will be a raid that will forever live in the minds of those who afterwards see the bodies of all who come into our hands. For their dying will not be easy.' These few sentences are a good resume of the tragic strike-counterstrike-revenge dynamic that made peace in Apacheria an impossible thing. I have to mention the disconcerting use of some Spanish words; some of the Apache main caracters wear Spanish names (Cuchillo, Cabeza...) just as the real-life people did (i.e. chief Mangas Coloradas -'Red Sleeves'); however one of the main characters wears the odd name 'Coletto Negro', which in Spanish makes no sense at all (I'm a Spaniard, BTW). But this is just a small point. I enjoyed the book, which reads very quickly, and I learned from it more interesting details on Apache ways that from some more expensive and 'serious' books.