The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American History

Now in paperback, and in the tradition of Empire of the Summer Moon, a stunningly vivid historical account of the manhunt for Geronimo and the twenty-five-year Apache struggle for their homeland, now in paperbac

They called him Mickey Free. His kidnapping started the longest war in American history, and both sides-the Apaches and the white invaders-blamed him for it. A mixed-blood warrior who moved uneasily between the worlds of the Apaches and the American soldiers, he was never trusted by either but desperately needed by both. A fellow scout described him simply as half-Irish, half-Mexican, and all son-of-a-bitch. He was the only man Geronimo ever feared. He played a pivotal role in this long war for the desert Southwest from its beginning in 1861 until its end in 1890 with his pursuit of the renegade scout Apache Kid.

This is Mickey Free’s story but also the story of his contemporaries- the great Apache leaders Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, and Victorio; the soldiers Kit Carson, O. O. Howard, George Crook, and Nelson Miles; the scouts and frontiersmen Al Sieber, Tom Horn, Tom Jeffords, and Texas John Slaughter; the great White Mountain scout Alchesay and the Apache female warrior Lozen; the fierce Apache warrior Geronimo; and the Apache Kid. These lives shaped the violent history of the deserts and mountains of the Southwestern borderlands-a bleak and unforgiving world where the one-eyed, deeply scarred Mickey Free was at home.