Editorial Reviews
From the Publisher
"Hidden in archives for decades and now expertly brought to light by writer and editor McNamee, Burns’ memoir is a compelling account of Indian-white relations during the tumultuous pre-reservation years." —Booklist
"Orphan, captive, servant, scout, and witness to the contagion of violence that drove the westward expansion: Mike Burns saw it all. The Only One Living to Tell is a crucial piece of American history—a firsthand account of the heartbreaking Skeleton Cave Massacre and its catastrophic consequences, a debunking of the romance of the nineteenth-century 'Indian fighter,' and a closely observed ethnography compiled by a man who almost singlehandedly preserved his people's heritage for posterity." —Margot Mifflin, author of The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman
"What gives this memoir its peerless value is the potency and immediacy of the observations." —Kirkus Reviews
"This is a profound, important, and powerful book that will grab your heart and arouse your mind for years to come. Beautifully written, it should be read by anyone who cares about Native Americans or being human." —Jerry Ellis, author of Walking the Trail: One Man's Journey along the Cherokee Trail of Tears
Library Journal
Before he died in 1934, Yavapai Indian Burns wrote down his experiences, especially during the Indian wars that raged in Arizona from 1872 to 1886. His memoir has finally found a publisher, thanks to McNamee (Otero Mesa: Preserving America's Wildest Grassland). Burns begins with his childhood, when he was named Hoomothya. He was captured by the Fifth U.S. Cavalry and watched the soldiers and their Akimel O'Odham, Apache, and Maricopa allies slaughter his people at the Skeleton Cave Massacre. While growing up, he was assigned by the soldiers to multiple roles, from cleaning out stables to spying on other Yavapais. After a brief stint at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, he became an Indian scout, helping the cavalry subdue other native peoples. Obviously conflicted by this role, Burns repeatedly observed that all Native Americans, be they allies or victims, were mistreated and that the United States kept no promises to them. After his services were no longer required by the military, he was abandoned to life on the reservation. His manuscript ultimately arrived at Arizona's Sharlot Hall Museum. VERDICT McNamee has rescued a moving memoir from obscurity. Essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the Southwest and its native peoples as conveyed by a native writer.—John Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY
Kirkus Reviews
One shattered life in what was to become Arizona in the second half of the 19th century, on a personal scale and from a native perspective. Burns started life as Hoomothya, aka Wet Nose, a child of one of the tribal branches gathered under the name Yavapai. In 1872, when he was about eight years old, his family was murdered at the Skeleton Cave Massacre, and Hoomothya was taken by Capt. James Burns, in whose home he fell somewhere between a ward and a servant, and renamed Mike Burns. This is the story of a swath of his life, though concentrating on the years 1872–1886, and told in his words. Aided by Bloomsbury Review and Encyclopaedia Britannica contributing editor McNamee's (Aelian's On the Nature of Animals, 2011, etc.) light editorial touch, those words have an unfiltered, sand-blasted polish, spare and well-chosen and strung with piquant atmospherics and a decided sense of transport. "Burns lived in two worlds, and he was at home in neither," writes McNamee, but he did spend many years as a scout for the United States military, where he took part in the push westward. There is plenty of mayhem and bloodshed, but what gives this memoir its peerless value is the potency and immediacy of the observations. This might be as quotidian as herding chickens, or as appalling as a man shot at such close range his clothes caught on fire, or as evocative as the place descriptions, moving camp, "following a big wash upstream toward the Superstition Mountains near the Gold Field." Threaded throughout is the mistreatment and murder of native populations that Burns, despite being a scout, could or would hardly ignore. An ethnographic and historical prize from "that anthropological desideratum above all others--the native point of view."
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