The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 81, July 1977 - April, 1978 Page: 115

Book Reviews

people. But the end was near. The signing and ratification of the Jerome
agreement signalled the beginning of individual allotments and the loss of
communal pastures, a process that was completed by 19o6.
The author's treatment is comprehensive and thorough, but it leaves
several questions unanswered. For example, the handling of the Dawes
Act is not exactly clear, particularly with regard to its use as a "threat"
in the Jerome negotiations. Also, some readers may yearn for a more pre-
cise assignment of blame for the increasing dependency of the Comanches
during the reservation years.
The volume is enhanced by four maps and twenty-four photographs.
Appended are footnotes, bibliography, and an index. Unfortunately, the
index is incomplete (omits McElroys, pp. 46-47; Koozers, p. 73; and
photos-for example, Tivis, p. 179). Although it presents a depressing
story, Hagan's study of the Comanches' experience on the "white man's
road" provides valuable insight into United States Indian policy during
the late nineteenth century.
University of Arizona HARWOOD P. HINTON
Geronimo: The Man, His Time, His Place. By Angie Debo. (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1976. Pp. ix+480. Preface, introduc-
tion, maps, illustrations, epilogue, bibliography, index. $14.95.)
How closely did Geronimo the man match Geronimo the myth? Not
very closely, as Angie Debo demonstrates. Using interviews with and rem-
iniscences by Apaches who knew him, Debo draws upon primary and
secondary material and Geronimo's own memoirs to describe a remarkable
and complex man who was perhaps the chief victim of his own myth.
To a great extent, this "life and times" biography is an account of the
"times," in which details of the "life" are often only inferred, but it still
gives a solid treatment of the protagonist. The book traces Geronimo and
his people from his birth in the early I820os, through decades of racial con-
flict, to his death in I909. The chapters on Geronimo in captivity are the
best. He appears a man of firm principles, considerable mystical powers,
humor, uncanny business acumen, and almost doting devotion to his fam-
ily. Geronimo seems a solitary figure frustrated by a world that never und-
erstood him.
Tragedy dogged his life, from the massacre of his first family through
the deaths of almost all his wives and children during more than a half
century. The impact on him must have been enormous. Perhaps the major
influences on the career of Debo's Geronimo were the misperceptions on

115