Eve Ball
In the 1940s and 1950s, long before historians fully accepted oral tradition as a source, Eve Ball (1890–1984) was taking down verbatim the accounts of Apache elders who had survived the army’s campaigns against them in the last century. These oral histories offer new versions—from Warm Springs, Chiricahua, Mescalero, and Lipan Apache—of events previously known only through descriptions left by non-Indians.
A high school and college teacher, Ball moved to Ruidoso, New Mexico, in 1942. Her house on the edge of the Mescalero Apache Reservation was a stopping-off place for Apaches on the dusty walk into town. She quickly realized she was talking to the sons and daughters of Geronimo, Cochise, Victorio, and their warriors. After winning their confidence, Ball would ultimately interview sixty-seven people.