Apache indianere helge ingstad biography

Table of contents :
Cover
A GRAND ADVENTURE
Title
Copyright
Dedication
CONTENTS
Translator’s Foreword
Preface
Introduction: The Assigned Task
1 Boyhood
2 The Land of Feast and Famine
3 East Greenland
4 Svalbard
5 Out West
6 The Apache Nation
7 Anne Stine
8 A Young Romantic
9 War Breaks Out
10 Liberation and Peace
11 Nunamiut
12 Still Together, Despite It All
13 Expedition to Southwest Greenland
14 We Find Vinland
15 Envy, Intrigue, and Further Expeditions
16 New Storms
17 Life after Vinland
18 Old Age
19 Legacy
Afterword
A Word of Thanks
Notes
Appendix: Publications in English by Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad
Index

Citation preview

A GRAND ADVENTURE

A GRAND ADVENTURE The Lives of Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad and Their Discovery of a Viking Settlement in North America

Benedicte Ingstad Translated by J.K. Stenehjem

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston | London | Chicago

© Benedicte Ingstad 2017

isbn 978-0-7735-4968-5 (cloth) isbn 978-0-7735-4969-2 (epdf) isbn 978-0-7735-4970-8 (epub) Legal deposit second quarter 2017 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Ingstad, Benedicte, author A grand adventure : the lives of Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad and their discovery of a Viking settlement in North America / Benedicte Ingstad ; translated by J.K. Stenehjem.

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper. This English translation is a combined and condensed version of two original books in Norwegian: Eventyret: En Biografi om Helge Ingstad © Gyldendal Norsk Forlag as 2009, isbn 978-82-05-39064-5 and Oppdagelsen: En Biografi om Anne Stine og Helge Ingstad © Gyldendal Norsk Forlag as 2010, isbn 978-82-05-39554-1 www.gyldendal.no Unless otherwise stated, the photographs in the book belong to the Ingstad family private archives. The author has received funding from th

The Sierra Madre Occidental in Northern Sonora and Chihuahua Mexico is vast and extremely rugged. The interior consists of high lave rock plateaus covered with fertile soil, thick pine and oak forests, and deep river canyons, including magnificent Copper Canyon, four times larger than Arizona’s Grand Canyon. People could get lost forever in such a place.

In fact, that is exactly what the last remnants of the Chiricahua Apaches did after Geronimo and Chief Naiche surrendered to General Miles in September 1886. All of their people that the U.S. Army knew about, including the Army’s Chiricahua scouts, were shipped to prisons in Florida as prisoners-of-war. And prisoners they were for the next 27 years.

But the last remnants, perhaps 100 individuals, mostly women and children, continued to live free and raid in Northern Mexico, Southeastern Arizona, and Southwestern New Mexico well into the 1930’s.

How long the Chiricahua Apaches lived in the Sierra Madre and used these mountains as a natural fortress against both Mexican and American soldiers and civilian militias, no one knows. Several hundreds years, for sure. This was the home land of the Nednhi band of Chiricahuas. From here, they could raid towns and ranches on both sides of the border and then disappear back into the Sierra Madre. As General Crook, then General Miles, discovered, if the Apache don’t want to be found, it is all but impossible for Americans to find them, let alone subdue them.

In the 1870’s and early 1880’s, Juh (pronounced Ho’) was chief of the Nednhi band of Chiricahua Apaches. The Nednhi lived in the northern Sierra Madre, a hundred miles or so south of the International border.

Juh and Geronimo were close childhood friends. In time, Juh married Geronimo’s favorite sister. Geronimo’s favorite sister was also Juh’s favorite wife. She was mother to Asa Daklugie who, in the early 1950’s, finally revealed the story of the Apache Wars from the Chiricahua perspective th

In the 19th century, the Sierra Madre Occidental was a prime hiding spot for all manner of outlaws and misfits. The “mother mountain range” in Mexico is 1,500km of canyons, valleys, high plateaus and folded mountains. This vast and confusing network of hiding places allowed various groups to evade law enforcement and conduct guerilla warfare. The fierce Chiricahua Apache, especially, used these lands against Mexican and American forces.

Alone among all the warring native peoples, the Apaches generated almost supernatural awe and terror. At the same time, their activities are the most poorly documented — full of opinion, myth, and hearsay.

Despite their fabled resourcefulness, the Chiricahua of the Sierra Madre suddenly vanished from the history books. Rumors spread of their demise. But what really happened to them?

Tensions and war

Tensions between the Chiricahua and Americans began around 1848, after the Mexican-American War. Foreigners poured into Chiricahua territory. The U.S. Army fought the Chiricahua, and many hostile incidents occurred on both sides.

It was a genuine clash of cultures for which history offers no answer. The Apaches were warriors and raiders. To the ranchers, farmers, miners, and settlers of northern Mexico, this meant murder and theft.

Eventually, the Chiricahua adopted a lifestyle of restriction and confinement on reservations. But treaties and truces could not keep the resentment toward the Americans at bay. Conflicts culminated in a guerilla war.

The Chiricahua hid in the Chiricahua Mountains, the Dragoon Mountains, the White Mountains in Arizona, and eventually the Sierra Madre. In 1886, the leader and medicine man Geronimo, along with Chiricahua Chie