The Chiricahuas

Their five year bloody resistance was the last American Indian war fought on U.S. soil. The Chiricahua were the last remaining Indian group still free from the whites in that they hadn't surrendered to the reservations. I thought it was really horrible how the American government treated these people, holding them as prisoners of war for 27 years. The remaining four hundred left of the Chiricahua were deported to Florida on a train. There they suffered greatly from the vastly different climate-humidity, different insects,etc. It was interesting to me how within the Chiricahua way of life there was a complete reliance upon raiding other people instead of providing for oneself in more traditional and self-sufficient ways. It seems to me that this dependence upon taking from others and what they have created and provided for themselves, makes it seem to me a sure-fire way of always accumulating enemies. They were always stealing from one town and then trading with another. I guess you can rationalize that they were a hunting and take-what-we-need type of people. Looking at all the pictures of their people, it's hard to believe that they deserved the level and degree of brutality that they received at the hands of the whites.