We’re collating data on American settlement along the Santa Cruz River, in an area called ‘Arizona’ in New Mexico Territory, between 1855 and 1861, and our chronological view is from the middle. As most data are provided by the settlers, and many of the contemporary records are about raiding, we have to look to separate, largely anthropological, data to find more dispassionate information on general and manso Apache culture.

But our interest is in data, not entertainment. There is no narrative.

Usually when someone lathers on about the importance and complexity of the ‘narrative’, his ideas are about as stable as a one-legged dog. Our hero the explainer is driven by ideology and politics and just can’t help himself.

A dispassionate reader will follow events.

We document events, and direct the reader to our sources, through the citations and notes, for more information. It’s up to the reader to decide whether the data meets the description, or if they lead to a different conclusion. With the accumulation of information — in all its complexity and contradiction — the reader must ultimately decide what happened. There is no ‘right side’ to events; understanding them requires thinking.

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