Álvaro Enrigue’s novel is framed by the Apache Wars, a series of intermittent conflicts spanning roughly from 1849 to 1886 between various Apache groups and the United States. In the wake of the Mexican-American War, which lasted between 1846 and 1848 and was focused around the annexation of several Mexican frontier territories into the United States, the American government sought to enforce the 1830 Indian Removal Act in its new states. This catalyzed hostilities between the US Army and the Apache tribal confederations settled in these territories, as the former sought to displace the latter by moving them into designated reservations outside of their native homelands.

The resulting wars were characterized by guerrilla tactics, brutal raids, and deep cultural misunderstandings. Though the American government tried to broker peace treaties in the wake of the Mexican-American War, various incidents between white American settlers and the Apaches ensured continued hostilities. The first of these conflicts was the 1849 Jicarilla War, which kicked off when Apaches and Utes attacked several groups of white American settlers who crossed into New Mexico. Later, in 1851, American miners attacked Apache tribal chief Mangas Coloradas, provoking the Apaches into fighting back. A key event that ignited decades of intense conflict was the 1861 Bascom Affair, which the novel revisits as an event called “Cut the Tent” (240). The incident began after a band of Coyotero Apaches raided the ranch of John Ward and abducted his stepson. An inexperienced US Army lieutenant, George Bascom, wrongly accused the Chiricahua chief Cochise of the crime. During a parley at Apache Pass, Bascom attempted to take Cochise and his family hostage. The chief famously escaped by slicing through the canvas of the army tent, but his family and several warriors were captured. The affair quickly escalated into a deadly cycle of retaliation, as both Americans and Apaches executed their respective prisoners. This context is important to understanding the novel’s depiction of the deep-seated mistrust and violence between Apaches and Americans. The book portrays the affair as the tragic end of a period of relative peace, when Cochise viewed the Americans as potential allies against Mexico. Bascom’s blunder, rooted in his inability to distinguish between different Apache groups, exemplifies the cultural ignorance that fueled the conflict. These events kicked off the Chiricahua Wars, initiating the “ten bloodiest years of war between the U.S. Army and the Chiricahua nation” (240).

The novel also dramatizes the final phase of this struggle, culminating in the surrender of the Chiricahua war shaman Goyahkla, known as Geronimo, the last holdout among the Apache military leaders. His surrender effectively marked the end of the Apache Wars. While Geronimo surrendered multiple times, the novel focuses on two key events: his March 1886 surrender to General George Crook in Mexico’s “Cañón de los Embudos” (40) and his final, definitive surrender to General Nelson A. Miles in September 1886 at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona. Enrigue portrays the surrender to Crook as a key moment of documented defeat, captured by photographer Camillus Fly, where Geronimo allegedly stated, “Once I moved like the wind. Now I surrender to you and that is all” (46). This context illuminates the novel’s central theme of resistance and collapse. The decades-long fight emphasizes the Chiricahuas’ fierce determination to preserve their way of life against overwhelming force. Following their final surrender in 1886, Geronimo and the last free Chiricahuas were designated as prisoners of war. They were ultimately relocated in 1894 to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where they remained for the rest of their lives. As the novel notes, they were never “declassified as prisoners of war” (101) and were forbidden from returning to their Arizona homeland. This period of confinement, depicted in the novel, represents the melancholic aftermath of the wars.The novel recounts the persistent, well-documented claim made by Geronimo’s descendants that in 1918, Prescott Sheldon Bush, grandfather of one US president and great-grandfather of another, “stole Geronimo’s skull from the tomb to be used in initiation rites of Skull and Bones, the secret society he belonged to at Yale” (128). This episode emphasizes the novel’s lament that even in death, the Chiricahuas could not escape being treated as trophies by their conquerors.