The University of Arizona Press
The Only One Living to Tell
The Autobiography of a Yavapai Indian
Mike Burns—born Hoomothya—was around eight years old in 1872 when the US military murdered his family and as many as seventy-six other Yavapai men, women, and children in the Skeleton Cave Massacre in Arizona. One of only a few young survivors, he was adopted by an army captain and ended up serving as a scout in the US army and adventuring in the West. Before his death in 1934, Burns wrote about the massacre, his time fighting in the Indian Wars during the 1880s, and life among the Kwevkepaya and Tolkepaya Yavapai. His precarious position between the white and Native worlds gives his account a distinctive narrative voice.
Because Burns was unable to find a publisher during his lifetime, these firsthand accounts of history from a Native perspective remained unseen through much of the twentieth century, archived at the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott. Now Gregory McNamee has brought Burns's text to life, making this extraordinary tale an accessible and compelling read. Generations after his death, Mike Burns finally gets a chance to tell his story.
This autobiography offers a missing piece of Arizona history—as one of the only Native American accounts of the Skeleton Cave Massacre—and contributes to a growing body of history from a Native perspective. It will be an indispensable tool for scholars and general readers interested in the West—specifically Arizona history, the Apache wars, and Yavapai and Apache history and lifeways.
"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
