The War Chief

Burroughs' Apache novel is a genuine outlier in 1920s adventure fiction — the effort to portray Apache culture with respect and to critique the US government's exploitation of Native peoples is visible and meaningful, even if the adventure-novel conventions and period language show their era. The bicultural identity conflict at the heart of the story still resonates, and for readers who enjoy historical adventure fiction with moral texture, this holds up better than most of Burroughs' catalogue. Period racial framing should be read with historical awareness.