Mickey Free and the Bascom Affair
By the time of the American Civil War the captivity narrative was a common genre in American fiction. Fiction, because many accounts of captivity of White settlers by Natives that were once factual, including those by Mary Jemison, Hannah Dustin and other, had gone through several editions. Editors added in additional details, often distorting the original narrative. The capture of a young Mexican boy in Arizona in 1861 added a new wrinkle to the captivity cycle. His capture would spark a war with the Apaches that lasted over 25 years in some of the most brutal fighting in the west. Mickey Free, 1847-1914, was the son of Jesusa Martinez and Santiago Telles. Telles refused to marry Jesusa, so her son was often known by her name as Feliz Martinez, in addition to his father's name of Telles. Rumors, but not fact, indicated that Felix was in fact half Apache, but likely that was a detail added later in his life. Eventually, Jesusa and her children...