Captured By the Apaches, Forty Years with this Savage Band of Indians (eBook)

"e;According to...'Captured by the Apaches'...Stringfield grew up...rubbing shoulders with the likes of Geronimo and Quanah Parker."e; - Mavericks: A Gallery of Texas Characters (2008)"e;Just before Geronimo died he told 'Two Braids' that he would find his people 100 miles west of Corpus Christi....Last year he obtained a permit through the commanding officer at Fort Sill to go in quest of his people, and being partly successful he was granted complete liberty by President Taft."e; -Eagle Pass News-Guide, Aug. 19, 1910On Sept. 28, 1870, rancher Thomas Wesley Stringfield, his wife and their children were traveling in their wagon in McMullen County when a party of 21 Apaches and Mexicans surrounded them. The wife and children fled the wagon and ran to a nearby stand of brush.The father used his rifle to defend his family until wounded in his arm. The Apache band encircled them, eventually capturing 4-year-old Thomas who was given the name "e;Two Braids"e; and assimilated into the tribe of Apaches with whom he lived for 40 years.In 1911, Thomas Stringfield (born 1867) published "e;Captured By the Apaches, Forty Years with this Savage Band of Indians,"e; which covers his life as an Apache and his reemergence into civilization after forty years of absence.Looking, back Stringfield writes:"e;My heart and mind longs back among the Indians. I must say I am more than glad to meet all of my living relatives and friends, but on the whole, I am worse off than if I never had met any of them, both mentally and financially. Now I am confronted with a thousand or more questions asked me by disinterested people. I can realize my present condition much better than anyone else. I am 45 years old and unfitted for the ordinary occupations of this life by my long nomadic career among the Indians."e;