Grenville Goodwin's authorship in the late 1930s of The Social Organization of the Western Apache made him a major figure in North American ethnology by only scratched the surface of his profound knowledge of the Apache. A New Yorker by birth, Goodwin's understanding of Apache ways came not from schooling but from living over a period of eight years with the Apaches on the San Carlos Reservation. The keenness of his perceptions and his empathy with his subjects made him an authority and friend respected by both Apache tribal members and leading anthropologists the world over. In 1940, death interrupted Goodwin's plan to write a series of additional monographs on other aspects of Western Apache life. So voluminous were his field notes, however, and so meticulous his recording of events and transcription of language, that since the late 1960s a rich harvest of his work has been in process.

Keith H. Basso is University Regents Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico, where he teaches alternate semesters. He is the author of Cibecue Apache, Western Apache Witchcraft, and most recently, Wisdom Sits in Places: Language and Landscape among the Western Apache, which was awarded the Western States Book Award for Creative Non-Fiction. He also assisted Eva Tule Watt in the recording of her story for the award-winning Don't Let the Sun Step Over You.