Louis Kraft
Författare till Gatewood and Geronimo
Om författaren
Writer, historian, and lecturer Louis Kraft is the author of four books, including Custor and the Cheyenne and Gatewood and Geronimo, and winner of the Western Heritage the National Cowboy Western Heritage Museum.
Verk av Louis Kraft
Associerade verk
MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History — Winter 2002 (2001) — Author "Between the Army and the Cheyennes" — 7 exemplar
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Associerade författare
Statistik
- Verk
- 5
- Även av
- 1
- Medlemmar
- 42
- Popularitet
- #357,757
- Betyg
- 3.6
- Recensioner
- 2
- ISBN
- 9
Be that as it may, if I could rewrite Geronimo’s history, I would wish that he never surrendered. Better to die in his beloved homeland or in the mountains of the Sierra Madre than to be betrayed by the General Miles and the U.S. Government and spend the rest of his life as a prisoner of war. He was lucky to not be murdered while in custody like Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, although he probably didn’t consider that lucky when looking back at his incarceration. He was not charged with any crimes, the “war” that he was a “prisoner of” ended when Gatewood convinced him to come in. He was not beaten despite the best effort of both the U.S. and the Mexican armies. He was not captured. He simply turned himself in when he saw that his people seemed to wish it and with assurances that they would be reunited with their families. Rewrite of history or no, one thing is for sure. He was a Bedonkohe Apache to the end.
Louis Kraft’s book does a great job of getting past the spin and relying on facts to give credit where credit is due for ending the Apache wars. Using archival material, he recreates the final campaign in which Gatewood did what the U.S. Army could not. He firmly places the credit to Gatewood without embellishing his character. Charles Gatewood was a complex human being caught up in a no-win situation between the Apaches he knew and respected, the army he made his life, and the people of Arizona and New Mexico. He had his flaws like anyone else but he pushed through them to come to that final settlement with Geronimo. It is nice to see Kraft give him the credit that he never received in his day. All of us know Geronimo’s name; hopefully this book will mean that more of us know Gatewood’s.… (mer)