Following the trail of one very tough old man through New Mexico’s back country
Tim Hamilton has been kind enough to share some of his photos of the Bootheel country. I’ve posted them with his comments in The Warpath. He’s right that you really can’t understand the terrain from maps no matter how detailed, nor from even the best pictures. You have to experience it on the ground. Even so, he does a pretty good job of capturing the look and feel of the country, and he’s found a lot of hidden places over the years.
My latest column offered me the chance to pay a belated tribute to some men I knew many years ago.
I’ve added to the bibliography to reflect my reading over last couple of months. Of particular importance is Kuhn’s Chronicles of War, an invaluable resource both for tracing Nana’s Raid and for my Apache Trails project. “The nearly 4,000 entries in this meticulous compendium provide essential information on combatants, casualties, and locations of battles, skirmishes, and raids, along with the relevant sources for further research.” I doubt I could match his work even if I had another 30 years to spare. I’m in the process of going back and revising chapters of The Raid to include the wealth of new information I’ve gleaned from his book.
My latest column now up at Carlsbad Current-Argus
It’s been a hectic couple of months. Traveling along the border and into Mexico in September, followed by a number of distracting technical and physical challenges. As a result I’m well behind on a number of fronts. I’ve been fooling with my notes from my Mexican trip, but have finally decided to post chihuahua-9-16 as is (this is Field Notes, after all) so I can move on to other things.
In summary I would say the trip was well worthwhile even if we failed to reach our intended destination. Walking the ground at Tres Castillos was never really central to my goal. I wanted to learn more about the people and terrain of northern Mexico, and I have a clearer sense now of where Janos is, and CasasGrandes, and the city of Chihuahua. More important, I got a glimpse into the Apache Wars from the Mexican point of view.
My latest column for NM News is up at Carlsbad Current-Argus.
The site has been moribund for a month but help is on the way. I was traveling most of September and often off the grid beyond even cell phone range. Now my old computer has crashed and I’m trying to retrieve data and learn my way around a new Windows system.
I still watch VHS tapes and have trouble operating an ATM machine. For a long time I prided myself on being a 20th, or even 19th Century kind of guy, and I was comfortable with that. But it’s clear I need to up my tech game. Much as we’d like to, none of us now can avoid the 21st Century.
Fortunately, I have a computer expert flying in . Which reminds me of my days in cubicle land, when we used to “call the IT guy” in much the same spirit our ancestors summoned a priest or shaman, hoping he could sprinkle corn pollen on the problem and make it go away. I’m not sure we’ve advanced so much today. Probably not one person in a thousand among us could explain what radio waves are, or why we use AC/DC current. I know how an internal combustion engine works, and I might even be able to fix one at need. But to me a computer is a magic box; when I recite the proper incantations, it does what I want it to do.
Maybe it’s an inescapable part of the human condition: the more we learn, the more we don’t understand.
This day 140 years ago, Sept 4 1886, Geronimo surrendered for the fourth and last time. Nana had come in seven-and-a-half months earlier with nine women and children, acting as hostages for a surrender Geronimo had negotiated with Gen. Crook but later reneged on.
Here‘s the piece I wrote for NM News Svc on my visit to Fort Bayard. I can never keep track of when and where among the subscribers these columns appear.
I’ve added Chapter 7 to The Raid. As with previous chapters I’ve tinkered with it far too long. The last chapter will be still more difficult, since it deals with the aftermath of the raid, its possible connection to the subsequent scout mutiny at Cibecue, and the Chiricahua flight to Mexico. I’m very pleased to announce I have received a grant from the Historical Society of New Mexico to continue my research into Apache trails, I expect to be working in the NM Bootheel, SE Arizona and northern Mexico this fall.
Tracking Nana 