The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 96, July 1992 - April, 1993 Page: 605

Book Reviews

been presented before. It is an absorbing account. His is a judicious, illuminat-
ing narrative, well annotated, glossing no gaps in the record, and conceding that
there remain problems and anomalies.
For example, "the deepest division among all Athapaskan languages is the sep-
aration of [southern Alaskan] Tanaina ... from all the rest" (p. 56), despite the
logical presupposition that the reverse should be true. Perry devotes attention to
Athapaskan snowshoe technology, but Hodge (Handbook of American Indians,
Vol. II, p. 607) reports that snowshoes of presumed Athapaskan Pacific coast
tribes "approximate most closely to the eastern Asiatic forms," which is at least
an interlinear curiosity given Athapaskan migration routes. Still another puzzle
stems from heavy Athapaskan reliance upon annual salmon runs, as compared
with the complete Apache avoidance of fish. The fact that fish were no longer a
staple for the Apache is understandable, but aversion?
Perry's book begins and ends at San Carlos Reservation where he has done
much primary research and found culture aspects that "still echo their common
heritage from the Eyak of southern Alaska, and probably have been retained
from the period before the Eyak-Athapaskan split" in Siberia (p. 193). His work
is marvelously interesting and informative, deserving of wide attention and circu-
lation.
Tucson, Arizona DAN L. THRAPP
Cochise: Chzricahua Apache Chief. By Edwin R. Sweeney (Norman: University of Ok-
lahoma Press, 1991. Pp. xxiii+5o01. Acknowledgments, black-and-white pho-
tographs, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $27.95.)
The name of Cochise struck terror into the hearts of settlers along both sides
of the U.S.-Mexican border in the mid-nineteenth century. So notorious did this
Apache warrior become that the deeds of other Indian leaders were often attrib-
uted to him. It was difficult, in fact, to determine where the truth ended and the
legend began. The passage of over a century since his death has not made this
chore any easier, but Edwin R. Sweeney has attempted to do so.
Cochise first comes to the notice of history in the early 183os, and from that
time until his death in 1874 he spent most of his life at war with the Mexicans
and Americans he found intruding into the Apacheria. His raids into Chihuahua
and Sonora were made easier by internal political dissension in Mexico, and
sparse settlement in southern New Mexico and Arizona assured his success
there.
Apache forays north of the border were encouraged by the withdrawal of
troops during the Civil War, and later attempts to bring the Apaches to peace
were hindered by an American policy that seemed, at times, to be working at
cross purposes. Indeed, it seemed to a contemporary newspaper correspondent
to be "sheer madness vacillating so long between the policy of Extermination
and... Reservation" (p. 343).
The major difficulty in writing a balanced biography of Cochise, as with al-
most every other Indian leader, is the necessary reliance on non-Indian written

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