Attempting Apache history

Press, 29 March 1980, Page 17

Attempting Apache history

Watch for Me on the Mountain. By Forrest Carter. Hamish Hamilton, I 1979. 305 pp. 517.95.

(Reviewed by John Wilson)

“Watch For Me On The Mountain - ’ .proclaims itself a “novel” of Geronimo and the Apache nation, but'it is a most unsatisfactory book if this claim Is taken at its face value. It lacks any well-constructed plot or carefully thought out line of narrative. It contains a medley of characters whose random appearances in the narrative seem often to have little bearing on the portrayal of Geronimo’s character or the illumination of Apache experience. At times, “Watch For Me on the Mountain” reads more like a work of history. But it lacks the authentication expected of serious historical works and strays often into fields that are more legend and folklore than history. The book’s worth will only be apparent to those readers who take seriously fhe claim that the author is a transmitter of an oral _ tradition, rather than a novelist or historian in conventional terms. For the book is in its own way a brilliant, and only sometimes flawed, attempt to overcome what should be recognised

as a major historical problem — how to introduce into “world history” the experience of people who left almost nothing in the way of sources on which Western historians have relied so heavily in their efforts to recreate the past. The author-; himself states the problem explicitly: “The heroic struggle of the Apaches, a people with no political power, no financial influence and no friends in the press, is missing from the pages of history." He goes on to claim, in effect, that their story must be told if our understanding of history is to be adequate. It needs to be remembered that the Apaches were only one of thousands of groups who, over five centuries of European expansion, fought for their survival, fought On their own ground for their right to live their own lives. It is a difficult assignment to draw the story of these peoples into the common narrative of the history of mankind, but one which increasing numbers of writers are tackling from different sides.. Forrest Carter has tackled it with marked success although his success will only be recognised by readers willing to reappraise their thinking about “novels” and “history.