Book excerpt: Something about the Southwest draws people who are independent. From the Apaches who migrated south six hundred years ago to the Spanish exploring north Mexico not much later to the Anglo American who ventured west, these were people who wanted to live, as one Comanche leader said, "where the wind blows free and there is nothing to break the light of the sun." A History of the Southwest explores these people, their clashes with each other, with the environment, and finally with the forces of an increasingly complex economy. Thomas Sheridan takes the behavior of individuals--Geronimo, Wyatt Earp, Theodore Roosevelt--and local cultural groups--Pueblo Indians, southern European miners, ranchers--and shows how it was acted out on the lager stage of the environment, economics, and politics.