Apaches! The name is seldom mentioned, even in thought, without an exclamation point. What is the reality behind the term? Are they really the bloodthirsty, heathen savages described in frontier novels and portrayed in Hollywood and spaghetti Westerns? And, indeed, do they still exist? These often-asked questions have simple answers: No, they are not as described in the media, and yes, they do exist. But there is a complexity behind the simple answers.
In the past twenty years there have been many changes on the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation, a preserve of over 460,000 acres in the mountains and high plains of south central New Mexico. Most of the changes are improvements, whether the perspective is that of Indians or Anglos, a term used in the Southwestern part of the United States to characterize non-Indian, non-Hispanic, non-black people. With the ever-increasing standard of living on the reservation, there are also fears that the traditional ways and culture will be lost in the headlong rush to modernization. Maintaining the precarious balance between living within the confines of the larger, mainstream American culture and living according to ancient dictates presents the tribe with perhaps its greatest challenge.
Challenge or no, the people remain as they have always been. Most are generous and proud, with a finely honed sense of humor and hospitality, but some are hostile, tending toward verbal or physical abuse, usually when drinking. They are, as are all humans, a mixture of the desirable and shadowy aspects of potential human characteristics. More saliently, they have endured centuries of efforts to force them to assimilate and programs designed to eliminate them entirely. Their endurance, the people themselves say, is based upon the solid foundation of their own native religion and recently learned business management acumen. They are warriors, as they have always been, but they now battle the United States courts and hold skirmishes over the tourist dollar. Yet neither tourism nor precedent-setting lawsuits proceed without religious blessing.
The outsider visiting the reservation is greeted with an ambiguous message of both welcome and reserve; the ambiguity has its basis in history. The message "WELCOME TO THE HOMELANDS OF THE MESCATFRO APACHE TRIBE" is emblazoned on colorful signs, which lie at the borderline alongside each road leading onto the reservation. The signs, also found at the intersections of highways on the reservation, depict a Mountain God Dancer, the most visible tribal symbol. The Mescalero Apache people have been greeting visitors since Coronado's 1540 expedition, and probably years before then as well.
Scholars agree that at least since the sixteenth century Apachean peoples lived on the Llano Estacado, or Staked Plains, that vast arena of open plains fanning out to the east as well as north and south from present-day Roswell, New Mexico. Some aver that Apacheans were in the Southwest centuries prior to the 1500s. Nonetheless, they were there to greet Coronado and his curious band. In the sixteenth century those ancestors of today's Apaches practiced a hunting economy, with the bison forming the staple commodity for food, clothing, tepee coverings, tools, and even thread. No part of the animal was wasted, as the people followed their lumbering supermarkets across the plains.
While hunting was the primary responsibility of men, women gathered vegetable, nut, and seed foods
...
Read Full Article
|
