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Tom Jeffords and Sonseehray.


Was this part of the story true?

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No. Jeffords apparently never married. There WAS an Apache woman named Sonseehray, or "Morning Star", but she is known only from one historical record. In his book, Life Among the Apaches (published in 1868), John C. Cremony mentions her as a young woman of about 18 or 19, who steadfastly refuses all offers of marriage. He describer her appearance in very flattering terms, so she was apparantly a young woman of surpassing loveliness. It is widely believed that the author of the book from which the film was made used the historical young woman as the inspiration for the character in the book and film. I recommend Cremony's book highly. He was a man of the 19th century, but his treatment of the Apaches in the book, while slightly colored by his own culture, is still surprisingly even-handed. Modern reprints are available from Amazon.

"It ain't dying I'm talking about, it's LIVING!"
Captain Augustus McCrae

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