The humidity of coastal Florida was particularly devastating.

Tuberculosis, which the Apache called the “white man’s disease,” spread rapidly through the population.

Children were particularly vulnerable — many of those who had survived the wars and the capture died in Florida of respiratory disease.

The cultural violence was as severe as the physical.

Children were sent to Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, where they were subjected to the “civilization” program that Richard Pratt, the school’s founder, summarized in the phrase “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” The program was designed to eliminate Apache language, dress, culture, and identity and replace them with the forms of Euro-American civilization.

Children were forbidden to speak their language, forced to wear Western clothing, renamed with English names, and trained in the agricultural and domestic skills that the school’s administrators considered appropriate for the roles they were expected to occupy.