Apache Land

Description: Ross Santee (1888 – 1965) was born in Iowa but his boyhood ambition was to become an artist and cartoonist. Even after he studied at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he found no demand for his work. In 1915 unemployed and discouraged, he found himself in central Arizona where he found work on a major cattle spread as a cowboy. The life of a horse wrangler gave him a new opportunity to put pen to paper and his western-themed drawings were purchased by magazines and he was given commissions by book publishers. “Apache Land” was Santee’s first book written and illustrated and published in 1947 by Charles Scribner’s Sons of New York. Illustrated with over 100 original drawings, in text and full page, and text it is the story of the years he lived on the Apache Reservation – he ran wild horses with the Apache, he drank their tulapai, and he made close friends among them. Santee “liked and respected the Apaches, he came to know them intimately, their customs and their history.” Critics classify his work as in line with literary realism rather than romanticism. Santee closes with the last paragraph, “Cars driven by Apaches and whites either streak or rattle along the main highways that lead through the reservation but on the reservation itself, the horse is still king. And if one rides a pony on a moonlit night he will find tepees, ghostly in the moonlight; above the slow, steady beat of drums he will hear an Apache voice in song, rising and falling in cadence, no unlike that of the singer’s brother, the coyote. For is still Apache Land.” Lyrical and moving this is a book that transports the reader to another time and place. Truly a wonderful First Edition (with Scribner’s seal and “A”) book for the Western library.

Price: 88 USD

Location: Fort Collins, Colorado

End Time: 2025-01-06T17:59:12.000Z

Shipping Cost: 0 USD