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Apache Voices: Their Stories of Survival As Told to Eve Ball
Apache Voices Their Stories of Survival As Told to Eve Ball Author:Sherry Robinson In the 1940s and 1950s, long before historians fully accepted oral tradition as a source, Eve Ball (18901984) was taking down verbatim the accounts of Apache elders who had survived the armys campaigns against them in the last century. These oral histories offer new versionsfrom Warm Springs, Chiricahua, Mescalero, and Lipan Ap... more »acheof events previously known only through descriptions left by non-Indians. A high school and college teacher, Ball moved to Ruidoso, New Mexico, in 1942. Her house on the edge of the Mescalero Apache Reservation was a stopping-off place for Apaches on the dusty walk into town. She quickly realized she was talking to the sons and daughters of Geronimo, Cochise, Victorio, and their warriors. After winning their confidence, Ball would ultimately interview sixty-seven people. Here is the Apache side of the story as told to Eve Ball. Including accounts of Victorios sister Lozen, a warrior and medicine woman who was the only unmarried woman allowed to ride with the men, as well as unflattering portrayals of Geronimos actions while under attack, and Mescalero scorn for the horse thief Billy the Kid, this volume represents a significant new source on Apache history and lifeways. Sherry Robinson went through seventeen unsorted boxes of Balls papers left at Brigham Young Universitys Harold B. Lee Library, realizing that Ball had not used all her transcripts in her published books. She also found that the generous, energetic, and strong-willed Eve Ball was as fascinating as her subjects, and she provides lively glimpses into Balls relationships with fellow Apache scholars Angie Debo and Dan Thrapp.« less