The Apache Wars [Blu-ray]

In the tradition of Empire of the Summer Moon, Paul Hutton's monumental work unfolds the story of the longest war in American history – the 25-year Apache struggle for their homeland. At the center of this sprawling narrative is the mixed-blood warrior known as Mickey Free, a man who moved uneasily between the worlds of the Apaches and the American soldiers, trusted by neither but desperately needed by both.

The story begins with Mickey Free's kidnapping, an event that sparked the conflict between the Apaches and the white invaders. Both sides blamed him for the war that followed, a war that raged from 1861 until its end in 1890, when Mickey Free played a pivotal role in the pursuit of the renegade scout, Apache Kid.

Through the eyes of the men and women who lived this violent history, Hutton paints a stunningly vivid account of the last war for the West. Alongside Mickey Free, we are introduced to 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; and the fierce Apache warrior Geronimo.

These individuals shaped the history of the deserts and mountains of the Southwestern borderlands, a bleak and unforgiving world where the Apaches would make a final, bloody stand against an American war machine bent on their destruction. Mickey Free, the man Geronimo ever feared, was a central figure in this long and brutal conflict, playing a pivotal role in the ongoing struggle for the Apache homeland.

Hutton's vivid historical account captures the complexity and violence of this era, as the Apaches fought to preserve their way of life against the relentless encroachment of the white settlers and the American military. Through the stories of these remarkable individuals, the reader is drawn into the heart of a conflict that would ultimately decide the fate of the Southwest and the people who called it home.

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