When the tide of Spanish settlement in America reached the range of the Apache nation, it was abruptly halted. For two centuries marauding Apaches baffled the defending Spanish troops and exacted a fearful toll from the terrorized colonists.

This book relates how Commandant General Jacobo Ugarte faced the problem and the extent to which he was able to solve it, using a new Indian policy adopted by Spain in 1786. Political circumstances prevented Ugarte from completing the pacification of the Apaches, but it is significant that his stratagems were essentially the same as those employed with complete success by the Americans a century later.

Ugarte himself was an unusual Spanish administrator, a soldier by profession but a diplomat by inclination. The courage of his convictions bordered on insubordination, but in the end history proved him right.

Utilizing correspondence from officers in the field, post commanders, governors, viceroys, and royal administrators, the author reveals how the policy of 1786 worked in practice and how the Apaches reacted to it.