Apache Days and Tombstone Nights: John Clum's Autobiography, 1877-1887

It has been said that two sagas of the Southwest stand out above all others: the Apache Wars and the turbulent years of Tombstone, Arizona, in the early 1880s. No one was more intimately involved in these events than John Clum. As an Indian agent, Clum was decades ahead of his time. He respected the Apache and, years before Buffalo Bill Cody, took a number of them to the Eastern states as part of a Wild West road show. He was also an Indian fighter who out-foxed Geronimo and took him prisoner at the Warm Springs Reservation in New Mexico. Later he would serve as mayor of Tombstone, and he would found the most famous newspaper in the West, the "Tombstone Epitaph". During his Tombstone years, Clum would befriend the Earp brothers and would support them in their feud with the Clanton gang. The autobiography and related memoirs collected here have not previously been published in book form. Carefully annotated by Neil Carmony, "Apache Days and Tombstone Nights" offers John Clum's singular view of notable events in Southwest history.