From over seventy-five years of notes, Chief Red Fox, with the help of Cash Asher - journalist and former Executive Director of the American Indian Defense Association - has given us a remarkable record of the Red man's fight for survival, the loss of his rights and his identity. In doing so, he forces us to recognize what we have done and what we must now do to alter our course: "The Indian people you put here weep for what has happened. The have a sturdy background of morality and discipline. Forgive those who tried to remake them in to the image of the White man, and let the wealth of their heritage be preserved as a vital force in the world, and not entombed in museums or consigned to oblivion."

    Such an exceptional man is Ciye 'Nino' Cochise, grandson of the legendary Chief Cochise who lead the Chiricahua Apaches until his death. Now nearly ninety-eight, Nino is blessed with a memory that limns in detail an untold and hitherto mostly unknown segment of American Indian life. He was only two years old in 1876 when the Chiricahua Apaches were removed from their homeland reservation by a force of U.S. Cavalry and scouts to the desolate San Carlos Reservations. During the night, his father's clan made a break for freedom - thirty-eight men, women and children - including his mother and the tribal shaman. After incredible hardships along the way, they built the rancheria they called Pa-Gotzin-Kay on a secluded shelf in the Sierra Madre of Northwest Mexico. Official Army reports give little or no notice to these escapees. Among Reservation Apaches they were merely 'The Nameless Ones', so-called to protect them from discovery. The panorama opened by this biography is wide, its sweep inspiring as a deep breath of wine-sharp desert air. In these pages authentic - albeit personal - pages of history appear many famous people: Tahza, father of Ciye Cochise; Geronimo, an uncle; Naiche, also an uncle; Tom Jeffords, blood-brother of Chief Cochise; Teddy Roosevelt, both as Colonel and President; Pancho Villa; President Diaz of Mexico; Colonel Greene, the Copper King, and dozens of others who are viewed from a new perspective. Here, too, is the tender and touching tale of Nino's marriage to his lovely 'Golden Bird', daughter of a chief of the Tarahumamari; the deep tragedy of her untimely death and hosts of other incidents, some tragic, many hilarious and all deeply moving. Much tribal lore and culture is revealed in this saga of this wiry, tough-spirited native American."

    The former tells of "the period of migration and the last great fight for the bison pastures between the invading white race and the Sioux, the Cheyenne, and the Arapahoe," while the latter concerns "the conquered people and the worldly end of the last great dream." It closes with the battle of Wounded Knee, ending Indian resistance on the Plains.