Work on the Apache Pass Trail - Southern Trails Chapter

Book Review
Massacre at Camp Grant: Forgetting and
Remembering Apache History
by Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh
Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-2585-0. 159 pages: maps,
charts, photographs, bibliography, index.
Paperback, $17.95.
On April 30, 1871, a group of Anglo-Americans
and Mexican Americans from Tucson, together
with Tohono O’odham allies, massacred more
than a hundred Pinal and Aravaipa Apache men,
women, and children near Camp Grant on the
San Pedro River. Somewhere between eleven and
thirty-five Apache children were also stolen. Under
the leadership of haské bahnzin (Eskiminzin), these
Apaches had recently surrendered to the U.S. Army
and were living as prisoners of war near the camp.
Colwell-Chanthaphonh argues that the official
history of the massacre is one-sided because it
is taken solely from Anglo-American sources,
sources which discount Apache perspectives.
From Helen Hunt Jackson’s A Century of Dishonor
(1881) to Larry McMurtry’s Oh What a Slaughter
(2005), authors have used non-Apache sources
to document the event. In Massacre at Camp
Grant, Colwell-Chanthaphonh, examines six
Apache narratives to provide new insights into
the massacre. These narratives, he argues, are
critical for understanding the massacre because
they offer accounts from the standpoint of the
Western Apache. Three of these accounts are
oral histories, eyewitness accounts which come
from the unpublished notebooks of ethnographer
Grenville Goodwin. The other three accounts
are oral traditions that were passed from mouth
to mouth, for a period beyond the lifetime of
the informants. These later oral traditions come
from a discontinued magazine, an obituary, and
an interview. Taken together, the six narratives
provide glimpses of the massacre in its particulars:
the coming into Camp Grant, the celebration on the
night prior to the massacre, the attack itself, and
the escape to the mountains after the attack.
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An anthropologist, Colwell-Chanthaphonh
uses an interdisciplinary approach, combining
anthropology, history, and archaeology. In addition
to the Apache narratives, Colwell-Chanthaphonh’s
story of the massacre incorporates ethnographic
and archaeological research, documentary sources
including army records, newspaper articles, military
and civilian maps. These allow him to look at the
massacre in new ways. For example, he counters the
accusation that the Aravaipa were raiding during the
period they were prisoners of war at Camp Grant by
comparing the dates and locations of the raids to the
dates they were in camp receiving rations.
Since an overview of the history is not given
until Chapter 3, the book will be easier to follow
for those who have some prior knowledge of the
massacre. The history and ethnographic material is
framed by an extensive a meditation on the making
of history, the ways in which history is used as
a political tool, and a plea for the incorporation
of multiple viewpoints when reconstructing past
events. While this material is typical of academic
discourse, it is well-written without excessive jargon
and will be accessible to the general reader.
The Camp Grant Massacre was one of the worst
massacres in the history of the American West,
but one of the least studied. Expanding on our
understanding of the massacre, Chip Colwell-
Chanthaphonh’s Massacre at Camp Grant provides
readers with an opportunity to rethink the event
from the Apache viewpoint. This book will appeal
to anyone interested in the history of the Southwest,
but it will be essential reading for those interested in
the complex history of nineteenth-century frontier
massacres.
Deborah and Jon Lawrence
Look for our interview with Chip
Colwell-Chanthphonh in the
upcoming issue of Desert Tracks
Desert Tracks, December 2007