Stockel, H. Henrietta 1938–

PERSONAL:

Born January 14, 1938, in Perth Amboy, NJ; daughter of Henry S. (a factory manager) and Eva E. (a homemaker) Stockel; children: H. Henrietta, Teressa Stockel Matousek. Education: Columbia University, B.A., 1972. Hobbies and other interests: Tennis, photography.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Sierra Vista, AZ.

CAREER:

University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, special projects bibliographer at School of Medicine library; Cochise College, Sierra Vista, AZ, researcher on special projects. Albuquerque Indian Center, cofounder and member of board of directors; Rio Rancho Library, member of board of trustees.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Poetry awards; Zia Award for excellence in women's writing, New Mexico Press, 1990.

WRITINGS:

(With Bobette Perrone and Victoria Kreuger) Medicine Women, Curanderas, and Women Doctors, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1989.

Women of the Apache Nation: Voices of Truth, University of Nevada Press (Reno, NV), 1991.

Survival of the Spirit: The Chiricahua Apaches in Captivity, University of Nevada Press (Reno, NV), 1993.

The Lightning Stick: Arrows, Wounds, and Indian Legends, University of Nevada Press (Reno, NV), 1995.

(With Robert S. Ove) Geronimo's Kids: A Teacher's Lessons on the Apache Reservation, Texas A&M University Press (College Station, TX), 1997.

Chiricahua Apache Women and Children: Safekeepers of the Heritage, Texas A&M University Press (College Station, TX), 2000.

(Editor) LaDonna Harris, LaDonna Harris: A Commanche Life, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2000.

Shame & Endurance: The Untold Story of the Chiricahua Apache Prisoners of War, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 2004.

On the Bloody Road to Jesus: Christianity and the Chiricahua Apaches, University of New Mexico Press (Albuquerque, NM), 2004.

Salvation through Slavery: Chiricahua Apaches and Priests on the Spanish Colonial Frontier, University of New Mexico Press (Albuquerque, NM), 2008.

Contributor of articles to periodicals.

SIDELIGHTS:

H. Henrietta Stockel once told CA: "I published my first writings at the age of seven in one of the children's magazines of the day, and I have been writing ever since. Many of my articles are about the Southwest and its cultures. My books are about the Chiricahua Apaches, popularly known as Geronimo's band. By writing the truth, I hope to dispel many or all of the myths generated in America about this stalwart group of Native Americans. Most importantly, I hope my works will contribute to revising American history to improve its veracity. Survival of the Spirit: The Chiricahua Apaches in Captivity is with Peace River Films, awaiting funding to be made into a documentary film.

"When I write, it's often for long hours at a time to produce a first draft. Dan S. Thrapp and Eve Ball, both writers of books about Apaches, have been my mentors in nonfiction. In the world of fiction, James Michener is my model. In poetry, Adrienne Rich is my favorite. My advice to aspiring writers is: Unless you are committed to getting your material published, don't even try. It is a very difficult occupation. Earn a living at another occupation; writing pays very little, not enough to live on these days."

Chiricahua Apache Women and Children: Safekeepers of the Heritage presents a historically informed and intimate look into the lives of traditional women and children in this group. American Indian Quarterly reviewer Margaret D. Jacobs praised the book's "excellent descriptions" and noted that Stockel's inclusion of her personal interactions with Apache women further enriches the book. Stockel discusses important mythical figures, such as White Painted Woman, Ussen, and Child of the Water, and also describes the many jobs that women perform in traditional Chiricahua society: gathering food and medicinal plants; cooking; hauling water and firewood; tanning hides; weaving baskets; raising children. Though Jacobs felt that the book could have been improved with more extensive analysis of its material, the critic concluded that "Stockel has contributed a worthy book on a little-covered subject and modeled an ethical approach to research."

In Geronimo's Kids: A Teacher's Lessons on the Apache Reservation, Stockel and coauthor Robert S. Ore describe life at the Chiricahua Apache settlement of Whitetail, New Mexico, where Ore taught school in the late 1940s. Ore reminisces about his young students and their struggles to hold onto a traditional culture that was still part of the living memory of their grandparents, who had known a life of freedom before the tribe surrendered to the U.S. Army in 1886 and was incarcer- ated. Yet as Victoria Smith pointed out in a review in American Indian Quarterly, the memoir is more about Ore than about the Apaches. "One cannot help but wonder," commented Smith, "why Stockel, who owes her career to the people who have shared their lives with her, would choose to emphasize the experiences of the colonizer over the colonized." For Smith, Geronimo's Kids represents a missed opportunity to write "a valuable study of Indian education in the 1940s or an opportunity to write the history of Whitetail." A writer for Publishers Weekly, however, considered the book a "delightful" memoir.

In Shame & Endurance: The Untold Story of the Chiricahua Apache Prisoners of War, Stockel chronicles the difficult fate of Geronimo's Apaches after they surrendered to the U.S. Army in 1866. They and their families were removed from tribal lands in the southwest and relocated first to Florida and then to Alabama. Almost half of them died within a few years, succumbing to infectious diseases. Many of the children were sent to Indian schools in Pennsylvania. Not until 1894, after intense pressure from lobbyists and activists, were the surviving 260 prisoners relocated to Oklahoma. Steve Leonard, writing in Military Review, called the book "the most raw, most comprehensive account of the twenty-seven-year imprisonment of a proud people and the unforgivable policies that plagued their postsurrender existence."

Stockel examines the religious conflict between Native inhabitants and European colonizers in On the Bloody Road to Jesus: Christianity and the Chiricahua Apaches. She explains the Chiricahua Apaches' belief in the creator, Ussen, and argues that the Chiricahua "lived with the sacred every moment" and practiced tolerance of other worship traditions. She describes European missionaries as intent on domination, and motivated primarily by the need to create "tax-paying citizens who would contribute—literally and figuratively—to the expansion of [the Spanish] empire." Stockel argues that the Apaches perceived Christianity as an existential threat and vigorously resisted conversion; even communities that did convert to Catholicism, she writes, remained connected to the religion of their ancestors.

Christopher Vecsey, writing in Church History, questioned Stockel's objectivity in this book. "Her presentation of traditional Apache life gushes with sentimentality, her treatment of Euro-Americans borders on diatribe, and her emphasis on heroic Apache resistance to Christianity oversimplifies the historical record," observed Vecsey. "The fact is that Apache religious history—like traditional Apache religion and Euro-American Christianity—is enormously complex…. Lacking enough analytical distance, for all her good will, Stockel has failed to do this complexity justice." International Bulletin of Missionary Research contributor Bonnie Sue Lewis made a similar point, quoting Chiricahua Apache Franciscan Sister Juanita Little's comment—"You can be Indian and you can be Catholic"—to suggest that Stockel's conclusions do not tell the whole story.

A second book focusing on religion, Salvation through Slavery: Chiricahua Apaches and Priests on the Spanish Colonial Frontier, expands on Stockel's previous thesis and argues that Franciscan missionaries among the Chiricahua Apaches forcibly converted the Indians and sold them into slavery to shore up the dwindling coffers of the empire.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Anthropologist, March, 1993, Claire R. Farrer, review of Women of the Apache Nation: Voices of Truth, p. 215.

American Historical Review, February, 2006, review of On the Bloody Road to Jesus: Christianity and the Chiricahua Apaches, p. 190.

American Indian Culture and Research Journal, winter, 1994, Margaret Connell Szasz, review of Survival of the Spirit: The Chiricahua Apaches in Captivity, p. 205, Philip J. Greenfeld, review of Women of the Apache Nation, p. 228; summer, 1996, Raymond Wilson, review of The Lightning Stick: Arrows, Wounds, and Indian Legends, p. 211.

American Indian Quarterly, fall, 1994, Junella Haynes, review of Women of the Apache Nation, p. 579; spring, 1999, Victoria Smith, review of Geronimo's Kids: A Teacher's Lessons on the Apache Reservation, p. 90; fall, 2000, Margaret D. Jacobs, review of Chiricahua Apache Women and Children: Safekeepers of the Heritage, p. 641.

Biography, January 1, 2006, Roger L. Nichols, review of On the Bloody Road to Jesus, p. 264.

Bloomsbury Review, July, 1991, review of Women of the Apache Nation, p. 16.

Bookwatch, August, 1991, review of Women of the Apache Nation, p. 4.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, December, 1991, review of Women of the Apache Nation, p. 659; October, 1993, review of Survival of the Spirit, p. 332; October, 2000, N.C. Greenberg, review of Chiricahua Apache Women and Children, p. 396; March, 2005, R.A. Bucko, review of On the Bloody Road to Jesus, p. 1292; June, 2005, G.H. Davis, review of Shame & Endurance: The Untold Story of the Chiricahua Apache Prisoners of War, p. 1886.

Church History, March 1, 2005, Christopher Vecsey, review of On the Bloody Road to Jesus, p. 184.

Citation, summer, 1995, Cynthia Myntti, review of Medicine Women, Curanderas, and Women Doctors, p. 1054.

International Bulletin of Missionary Research, October 1, 2005, Bonnie Sue Lewis, review of On the Bloody Road to Jesus, p. 209.

Journal of American Ethnic History, summer, 1992, Howard I. Kushner, review of Medicine Women, Curanderas, and Women Doctors, p. 111; spring, 2001, Devon A. Mihesuah, review of Chiricahua Apache Women and Children, p. 180.

Journal of American History, June, 2005, Catherine A. Corman, review of On the Bloody Road to Jesus, p. 230.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, autumn, 2005, David J. Weber, review of On the Bloody Road to Jesus, p. 286.

Journal of Military History, January, 2005, Frank Kalesnik, review of Shame & Endurance, p. 247.

Journal of the West, July, 1991, Grace Mary Gouveia, review of Medicine Women, Curanderas, and Women Doctors, p. 106; October, 1995, Frank L. Kalesnick, review of Survival of the Spirit, p. 98; fall, 2001, Bev Atwell, review of Chiricahua Apache Women and Children, p. 100; winter, 2006, Marcia Clouser, review of On the Bloody Road to Jesus, p. 102.

Kliatt, July 1, 2006, Patricia Moore, review of LaDonna Harris: A Commanche Life, p. 32.

Library Journal, April 1, 1991, Mary B. Davis, review of Women of the Apache Nation, p. 139; March 15, 2000, Mary B. Davis, review of LaDonna Harris, p. 96.

Military Review, January 1, 2006, Steve Leonard, review of Shame & Endurance.

New Directions for Women, March, 1992, review of Women of the Apache Nation, p. 22.

Pacific Historical Review, November, 2005, Roger L. Nichols, review of On the Bloody Road to Jesus, p. 624.

Publishers Weekly, August 4, 1989, review of Medicine Women, Curanderas, and Women Doctors, p. 79; September 15, 1997, review of Geronimo's Kids, p. 57.

Reference & Research Book News, November, 1993, review of Survival of the Spirit, p. 10; November, 2004, review of Shame & Endurance, p. 55.

Roundup Magazine, October, 1995, review of The Lightning Stick, p. 29.

Roundup Quarterly, summer, 1991, review of Women of the Apache Nation, p. 48.

Southwestern Historical Quarterly, January, 2003, Sandra K. Mathews-Lamb, review of Chiricahua Apache Women and Children, p. 485; October, 2005, Sandra K. Mathews, review of Shame & Endurance, p. 296.

Times Literary Supplement, September 4, 1992, Dell Hymes, review of Women of the Apache Nation, p. 12.

University Press Book News, December, 1991, review of Women of the Apache Nation, p. 11.

Western Historical Quarterly, May, 1992, Valeria Sherer Mathews, review of Women of the Apache Nation, p. 242; autumn, 1994, Rebecca Bales, review of Survival of the Spirit, p. 386; spring, 1996, review of The Lightning Stick, p. 108; autumn, 1998, Donald E. Worcester, review of Geronimo's Kids, p. 398; summer, 2001, Jacqueline K. Greb, review of Chiricahua Apache Women and Children, p. 232; autumn, 2005, Jay Precht, review of On the Bloody Road to Jesus, p. 288; spring, 2006, Stefanie Beninato, review of Shame & Endurance, p. 69.