THE ENGLISH WESTERNERS' SOCIETY
JUNE 2009 BOOK REVIEW
This review first appeared in the Tally Sheet (Summer 2007, Volume 53, Number 3)
LIEUTENANT CHARLES B. GATEWOOD & HIS APACHE WARS MEMOIR
By Charles B. Gatewood. Edited with additional text by Louis Kraft. University of Nebraska Press, December 2005. 289 pages, including introduction, prologue, epilogue, appendix, notes, bibliography, index, map and illustrations. ISBN 0803227728 Hardcover $39.95.
The early death of Virginian Charles Bare Gatewood (1853-1896) curtailed any further writing on his Apache Campaigns experiences and ensured his recollections would not be published in his lifetime. His contemporaries, John Bourke, Thomas Cruse, and Britton Davis did see their accounts in print and the writings of John Bigelow, John Clum, Leonard Wood, and others, are also now available to readers interested in the events of that era. Gatewood's manuscripts were preserved by his son, Charles Junior, who collected together and added a great deal of associated material and correspondence, all of which is archived in Tucson as the Arizona Historical Society's "Gatewood Collection." Stored in ten archival boxes and subsequently made available on microfilm, that material became a valuable and popular resource for many students of the Arizona military campaigns - the present reviewer included.
None of those who accessed that collection has shown the enterprise and diligence that Louis Kraft has demonstrated in identifying, selecting, and organising the elder Gatewood's manuscripts into an accessible and published account of his experiences. It can have been no easy task, for there are several, different drafts on various topics and none of them are suitable to simply be transcribed and published. To ensure that what Gatewood wrote is comprehensible to modern readers required the editor not only to reorganise it but to provide a great deal of supporting material.
Charles Gatewood commanded Western Apache Indian Scouts, managed the affairs of the Cibicue and White Mountain Apaches under General Crook's regime, and played the crucial role in obtaining the final surrender of the Chiricahua Apache leader, Geronimo, in 1886. It is for the latter role that he received least credit in his lifetime but is most well known today. This memoir encompasses recollections of his experiences in all three capacities. He was plainly writing with publication in mind but, unlike Bourke, did not have voluminous, day by day diaries to consult or, like Davis, the additional resource of correspondence with fellow participants and access to the contemporary military records.. Any consequent errors and omissions are, however, identified by the editor.
Given that, as a lieutenant, Charles Gatewood commanded Indian Scouts in the field there is rather less here about that experience than can be found in the periodical articles by Bigelow, Tassin, and Von Schrader, or in Davis' book. Similarly, whilst Gatewood provides personal recollections of the Apache leaders Pedro, Alchesay, and Sanchez, and his interpreters, Severiano and John Conly, it is somewhat disappointing to find that there is no mention of so many of the other prominent Western Apache figures, or of any of the long serving American and Mexican-American quartermaster employees with whom he was associated between 1879 and 1886. The passages dealing with his management of the White Mountain and Cibicue Apaches provide a fresh and valuable firsthand account of the same period dealt with by Britton Davis. The broadest appeal of this book, however, will doubtless prove to be the material concerning Geronimo and the Chiricahua Apaches and, certainly, attracts the most illustrations and detailed notes from the editor. His versatility is evident in the map and his watercolour illustrations.
The more specialised reader must be cautioned that the main narrative - exclusive of all supporting material - occupies 157 of the 283 pages and that Charles Bare Gatewood's own writing is contained within some 89 of those pages. Nevertheless, this book provides, for the first time, ready access to Gatewood's own account of his experiences, supported by extensive editorial work and in a handsome, hardbound edition.
Allan Radbourne.
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