Dissertation Information for Victoria A. O. SmithNAME:
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SCHOOL: ADVISORS: COMMITTEE MEMBERS: MPACT Status: Fully Complete Title: White eyes, red heart, blue coat: The life and times of Mickey Free (Arizona, Geronimo) Abstract: When Generals Crook and Miles conferred with Geronimo in 1885 and 1886, respectively, to negotiate terms of surrender for the renegade chief and his remnant band of Chiricahua Apaches, Geronimo claimed that he had repeatedly fled the reservation because of intimidation by a man named Mickey Free. Though Free had long been dubbed by Arizona historians as "the boy who started a war," little else was known about him until English Westerner Allan Radbourne published two journal articles in the 1970s on Free's life. Radbourne clarified the parental origins of Free, an Apache captive, and established a basic timeline for Free's subsequent career as an Apache scout, guide and interpreter. Radbourne, however, did not explore the dynamics of the relationship between Mickey Free and Geronimo. Historians have long believed that Geronimo was lying about Mickey Free, but a close review of documentary and scholarly sources reveals a much more complex relationship between Free and the Apache chief than has previously been understood. A reexamination of the ethnographical work of Grenville Goodwin, the premier Apache anthropologist of the 1930s, combined with more recent analysis of Indian scouts by scholars Thomas Dunlay and David D. Smits sheds new light on the nature of the antagonism between Free and Geronimo. This work concludes that the Western Apache clan system played a central role in constructing the antagonistic relationship between Geronimo and Mickey Free. Furthermore, the life of Mickey Free offers students of American Indian history insights into the phenomena of Indian police and interpreters, as well as the role of Indian women in the transition from pre-contact to reservation life. Additionally, Arizona historians may find that the life of Mickey Free affords opportunity to expand their understanding of many integral, but often overlooked, American characters who participated in the Apache wars. Perhaps most importantly, this work explores internal Western Apache power relations and sheds new light on the history of the Western Apache tribe, a history that has long been overshadowed by the more sensational history of their southern neighbors, the Chiricahua Apaches of Cochise and Geronimo. |
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