When the tide of Spanish settlement in America reached the range of the Apache nation, it was abruptly halted. For two centuries marauding Apaches baffled the defending Spanish troops and exacted a fearful toll from the terrorized colonists.

This book relates how Commandant General Jacobo Ugarte faced the problem and the extent to which he was able to solve it, using a new Indian policy adopted by Spain in 1786. Political circumstances prevented Ugarte from completing the pacification of the Apaches, but it is significant that his stratagems were essentially the same as those employed with complete success by the Americans a century later.

Ugarte himself was an unusual Spanish administrator, a soldier by profession but a diplomat by inclination. The courage of his convictions bordered on insubordination, but in the end history proved him right.

Utilizing correspondence from officers in the field, post commanders, governors, viceroys, and royal administrators, the author reveals how the policy of 1786 worked in practice and how the Apaches reacted to it.


About the Author
Max Moorehead was David Ross Boyd professor emeritus of history at the University of Oklahoma. He was the author of The Presidio:Bastion of the Spanish Borderlands and editor of Josiah Gregg's Commerce of the Prairies, both published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

Reviews
Moorehead is to be commended for his impeccable research and his organization . . . a well-written, readable narrative. . . . The findings are of sufficient significance to call for the insertion of some new pages in histories dealing with the colonial era in the American Southwest."" - The Journal of American History



Book Information
ISBN 9780806113128
Author Max L. Moorhead
Format Paperback
Page Count 340
Imprint University of Oklahoma Press
Publisher University of Oklahoma Press
Weight(grams) 409g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm * 21mm