Dispatches from the Fort Apache Scout

Book excerpt: In the 1970s, the White Mountain Apache Tribe and the Arizona Historical Society began working together on a series of innovative projects aimed at preserving, perpetuating, and sharing Apache history. Underneath it all was a group of people dedicated to this important goal. Dispatches from the Fort Apache Scout is the latest outcome of that ongoing commitment. The book showcases and annotates dispatches published between June 1973 and October 1977, in the tribe’s Fort Apache Scout newspaper. This twenty-eight-part series of articles shared Western Apache culture and history through 1881 and the Battle of Cibecue, emphasizing early encounters with Spanish, Mexican, and American outsiders. Along the way, rich descriptions of Ndee ties to the land, subsistance, leadership, and values emerge. The articles were the result of the dogged work of journalist, librarian, and historian Lori Davisson along with Edgar Perry, a charismatic leader of White Mountain Apache culture and history programs, and his staff who prepared these summaries of historical information for the local readership of the Scout. Davisson helped to pioneer a mutually beneficial partnership with the White Mountain Apache Tribe. Pursuing the same goal, Welch’s edited book of the dispatches stakes out common ground for understanding the earliest relations between the groups contesting Southwest lands, powerfully illustrating how, as elder Cline Griggs, Sr., writes in the prologue, “the past is present.” Dispatches from the Fort Apache Scout is both a tribute to and continuation of Davisson’s and her colleagues’ work to share the broad outlines and unique details of the early history of Ndee and Ndee lands.