The Apaches: Fuego y Sangre (Fire & Blood)
It is better to have less thunder in the mouth and more lightning in the hand.
Apache Proverb
Ga’an. Or Gahe-nde: Or as its sometimes called, the Devil Dance. OR the Apache Crown Dance. But for us, the Apache Mountain Spirit Dance.
The cover of this episode is a Mountain Spirit Dancer that I drew from a statue in front of the Museum of American Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe. A lot of aficionados of the American Southwest and even just visitors have no doubt seen postcards or statues of the Ga’an dancers.
The dancers are different every dance and everywhere but they usually wear creepy hooded masks and elaborately painted crowns. Four of the masks are black and one is white. Often they wear a red sash around their face or neck or covering their eyes. The four with black masks paint their bodies black. The one with the white mask paints his body white. There is a deer painted on their chest as well. A big deer with antlers. Although sometimes it is not a deer. In the 1960s after an American Rocket launch, one dancer painted a shooting star and a half moon with the face of a man on it.
The dancers wield elaborately painted wands or swords or staves. These can be made from the long spiky leaves of the Yucca. Or from wood.
A loud strange whistle sometimes precedes their appearance.
They dance grotesquely, weaving and swaying and stomping their feet. They sing loud songs as drums beat ceaselessly. Cow bells or copper bells hang from their buckskin skirts and clang as they dance rhythmically. They dance around a hot, bright, towering fire, casting eerie shadows in all directions, thrusting their weapons towards each other or the fire, or the onlookers.
I mean no disrespect, but the Mountain Spirit dancers are quite scary and imposing looking. They are rather frightening in appearance. They look like someone or something out of a horror film or a scary story picture book for kids. It’s no wonder they’re sometimes called the Devil Dancers.
But that’s actually part of the point. They’re supposed to be scary. That way, the Mountain Spirit dancers can scare the sickness or bad spirit out of the afflicted. Or they can protect the people from future harm from disease or their enemies. You see, the Ga’an or Mountain Spirit Dance is a curing or healing or blessing ceremony. And the Apache dancers don’t just embody the Mountain Spirit, they become the Mountain Spirit. Much like Puebloan Kachina dances in a way.
To one Apache band, the Mescalero Apache Tribe, the sacred Mountain Spirit of Ga’an symbolizes protectorship, security, and confidence.
I mentioned there were four black painted and hooded dancers and one white painted and hooded dancer. Well, the white painted and hooded dancer is a dual natured messenger and they are quite sacred. And usually, they are young men or boys. These white dancers bring messages from the Spirits while they both scare away the evil and bring healing through laughter. They’re what’s known as a quote unquote clown. And much like the clowns of today, they’re still horrifying looking.
The four black dancers also represent the four Cardinal directions of the Apache. North South East and west. Although sometimes they can represent the four sacred mountains of a Tribe or band. And the dancers crowns, as I mentioned, will be elaborately painted with different colors and symbols like, animals, stars, crosses, circles, and others.
One story of how the Dancers came to be was told by Meredith Begay in Martin Ball’s SACRED MOUNTAINS, RELIGIOUS PARADIGMS, AND IDENTITY AMONG THE MESCALERO APACHE. Quote:
The people were up on that mountain top during the time of the floods. Many of the people were sick and they didn't have any food and all around them was water. Then, they saw the Mountain Spirit dancers. They came to the people walking across the water. With them they carried large burden baskets that were filled with foods and medicines. The dancers put these on the ground in front of the people and danced around them. As they danced, the Clown went and healed the people who were sick. When they were all healed the dancers went back out on the water.
Then the waters started to recede. The waters went back into the mountains, and into the Earth. They went back to where they came from. And the dancers went with the waters, back into the caves. They say that this is where it is easiest to find the dancers today. They can be found in the caves, or they may be heard or seen there. Sometimes they reveal themselves to people. They might take them into the cave and show them where they live and what their medicines are. This is the way that I was told about it. Now, there are many other stories about where the dancers come from and many different people have seen them, but this was the very first time. This is how it started- on top of Blue Mountain during the great floods. End quote.
There are may different versions of the story of where or when the Mountain Spirit dance originated but it always has the same meaning. The Mountain Spirit Dancers are dancing and singing to protect the people from evil, sickness, and the enemy as they frighten away those things, and bring healing.
A lot of this series is from the perspective of the people that fought against and sometimes with, but almost exclusively against, the Apache so there is a bias in nearly every aspect of discussing the Apache. We don’t get many or any, really, but there are few stories of families or migrations or of the Apaches beliefs. Especially in the very early days of the written history of the American Southwest. There are a few myths and beliefs and ceremonies that were recorded later and I will cover some of them. I already read one about the Mountain Spirits.
It’s tough to tell the history of a people when they didn’t write it down and they were adept at covering their tracks. Literally and figuratively. The Apache also have a habit of avoiding telling the unpleasant parts of their history and they avoid saying the names of those that have died… So most of this series will be from the perspectives of the Spanish, Puebloans, Mexicans, and Americans. But when I can, I include words and tales from the Apache.
As one white Mountain Apache woman named Eva Tulane Watt said to a researcher of the Camp Grant Massacre, an incident I will discuss in a later episode, but as Eva Tulane Watt said of her people’s past, quote, Lots is missing in those books because there’s hardly no Indians in there. You can’t see hardly nothing in there about how we used to live. End quote. That is true, but I will try my darnedest to highlight how the Apache see their own history. I will highlight how they lived although this series will mostly be about how they fought.
The Apaches… they don’t call themselves the Apaches, they call themselves the Nnee, which means the People. Almost all Athabaskan speakers call themselves the people. Think of the Athabaskan Navajos, cousins and neighbors to the Apache. They refer to themselves as Dine. The People.
The word or title, Apache, is actually of Zuni Pueblo origin. And, like so many names we use for various peoples around the world today, it means, the Enemy. So Apache means Enemy and I think that’s awesome.
In Paul Andrew Hutton’s massive and detailed The Apache Wars, the Hunt for Geronimo, the apache Kid, and the captive Boy who Started the Longest War in American History, a great book that I use quite a bit and will quote from a lot… in the Apache Wars, Hutton writes that the Apache were quote,
a people of mysticism and magic. Nature dictated the rhythms of their lives, and almost everything in it held spiritual meaning. Usen, the life giver, was the God they worshipped. Ghosts and witches moved among them. Coyote, the eternal trickster, was central to their cosmology—his loyalty to the people often fluctuated in an origin myth of a great game between the animals to determine if the Apaches were to live in perpetual darkness or not. Coyote, although often evil, nevertheless secured fire for the people, giving them light. End quote.
I recently picked up a great book from the Bookshop at the New Mexico Museum of Indian Arts & Culture titled Fossil Legends of the First Americans and it’s by Adrienne Mayor. In it, Adrienne tells this tale, one of many, but Adrienne tells this tale of fire and the Coyote’s role in bringing it to the People which is a little different than the one Hutton mentions. But a lot of Apache stories are like that.
The book describes how trees in the before time, were fireproof so the People had a hard time and lived without the warmth and light of fire since they couldn’t burn the wood. That is, until Coyote lit a torch with his magic and tied the torch to his tail and then he began running around the entire world. He set fire to everything he touched. The grasses, the bushes, the trees! Well, everything except the rocks scattered around the earth. But he finally caught the stubborn trees on fire, or most of them… but he finally burned the trees and the whole world turned black and burnt. In time the world would heal but at least now the people had fire.
And about those trees he missed with his fire tail… they are known to us as petrified wood, but they’re known to the Apache as the trees the coyote missed in his burning run. The trees of rock.
As author Karl Jacoby in Shadows at Dawn writes, the Apache people had an intricate cycle of stories and quote, telling these stories in the proper way constituted a central feature of the People’s oral culture. “In the old days when a person got ready to be told a story”, recalled Her Eyes Grey, a White Mountain Apache born in the early nineteenth century, “from the time the storyteller started no one there ever stopped to eat or sleep. They kept telling the story straight through till it was finished. End all quotes.
Some of these stories were sometimes too powerful for women and children, and were only shared with the men or if they were shared with the whole family, it would have been on winter nights when Jacoby writes, quote, dangerous powers such as the sun, snakes, and insects were less prevalent, end quote.
But many of the stories were about Coyote and his… amusing tales.
I have another book that highlights the role of coyote in the Apache way of life. That book is called American Indian Trickster Tales by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz. In that book there are two tales of coyote and his interaction with the people but unfortunately they are not fit to read in this history series. I’ll just give you the titles. Maybe I’ll read them for Roadrunners, but the titles are: Coyote Sells a Burro that Defecates Money. That story, actually both stories are from the Lipan Apache. I will talk about the different bands of Apaches shortly. The second story is titled: Coyote Keeps his Dead Wife’s Genitals.
Another legend that highlights the Apache belief system and tales, tales which are naturally similar to Navajo, since both are Athabaskan and were no doubt at one time, one people, but more on that in a minute. But the Apache have another story that highlights their relationship to the American Southwest. This is also from the Fossil Legends book. This story was told by a Jicarilla Apache woman by the name of Laforia in 1898.
Laforia tells of the killing of giant elk and giant eagle.
In the early days of man, giant monstrous creatures feasted indiscriminately on men, women, and children as they roamed the landscape. These beasts terrified the Apache people so one day, a brave warrior, a warrior with a difficult Apache name that I will butcher, but the brave warrior was named: Jonayaiyin, and this brave warrior decided he was going to do something about these massive roaming children eating monsters. Specifically, he was going to put the Giant Elk and the Giant Eagle, in their places. Which was under the ground.
Luckily for him, he found the Giant Elk lying in the desert south of the Apache’s land. There, he snuck up on it, and killed the big beast easily! He then took one of the dead Giant Elk’s monstrous horns to use as a weapon against the mighty Giant Eagle.
The Giant Eagle lived to the west of the Apache’s land, so off the brave warrior went but on his way… he got snatched up in the Giant Eagle’s talons and he was flown high up to an inaccessible spot on top of a butte where he was dropped into the Giant Eagle’s nest. The warrior was about to become dinner… unless he could beat the Giant Eagle to death with the Giant Elk’s horn!
Unfortunately, the mother Eagle did not stick around and instead flew off, leaving the warrior alone in the nest. At least until a thunderstorm drove the Giant Eagle back home. Obscured by the rain and the clouds, and the echoing thunder, the man snuck upon the Giant Eagle, and using the Giant Elk horn, he beat that Eagle to death! And the Giant Eagle then crashed to the ground below… I’m not actually sure how Jonayaiyin got back down but the proof of the Giant Eagle was still visible at that time, when the story was told in 1898!
This storyteller, Laforia, she told the listeners which probably included an anthropologist named Frank Russel, who wrote Myths of the Jicarilla Apache for the Journal of American Folklore, which is where this story originates, well, Laforia the Apache storyteller says that you can actually go see this giant wing! It was at Taos Pueblo.
You see, some Apache myths state that the Apache people actually originated at Taos. Not sure if that’s Taos Mountains or Taos Pueblo, most likely Taos Mountains, but, we’ll get to the Apache origin’s shortly… Is it possible though, that the giant wing that remained after the Giant Eagle was slain, is it possible that it was the mummified remains of a huge Pleistocene era bird?! Maybe a giant bird that lived long past the rest of the giant ice age creatures and mammals? Remember all those huge monsters I spoke of in my Mammoth Eaters episode?
Apparently, Daniel Boone claimed and wrote that he saw a gigantic bird of prey or raptor on the Tennessee River! Remember, Thomas Jefferson had heard stories that there were still giant Lions and Mammoths roaming the west… stories still trickle down that there are sightings of giant birds of prey today, especially along the Rio Grande River. I’m not saying the sightings are… true and that there are still giant creatures out there, but we do know that Mammoths lived a lot longer than previously thought. Especially on coastal islands. I fully believe that humans hunted out the giant megafauna and it wasn’t the end of the ice age that did them in so what if a few escaped and survived for thousands of years, isolated on mountain peaks? Those giant islands in the sky that dot the American Southwest. Like the Chiricahua, Henry, or Sacramento Mountains… As I will go into extensively, and as the Ga’an dance demonstrates, the mountains and the caves in those mountains are powerful places for the Apache.
Now, the author of Fossil Legends of the First Americans, Adrienne Mayor, did ask the Taos Pueblo historian, a Joe Sando, which I’m pretty sure I have quoted from before somewhere along the line, but the author asked Joe Sando if he knew of any preserved wing and Sando said that he did not… but, quote, oral tradition may have similar stories being handed down by individual elders. End quote.
As we have discussed… oral traditions can be… finicky.
And the Apache have many differing and always evolving Oral Traditions and stories. Most of them are meant to teach a lesson.
Back to the fossils though, It’s not too probable that the Apache and Navajo saw fossilized flying dinosaurs because their bones don’t preserve well and not many have been found in the American Southwest. So maybe this wing was a mummified wing of a giant bird of prey that maybe survived in a cave somewhere. Adrienne Mayor says of this possibility, quote, The giant bird wing displayed at Taos may have been a naturally mummified specimen from a dry cave. Raptors from 12,500 years ago have been preserved in desert caves littered with fresh-looking dung pellets and the bones of extinct mammoths, horses, and camels. According to Pleistocene bird specialist Tommy Tyrberg, a Teratornis fossil preserved in a dry desert cave could have cartilage and feathers. "Even a wing of Gymnogyps (californianus) amplus, the large Pleistocene subspecies of the California condor, could be described as having man-sized bones. Remains of this bird have been found in at least six New Mexico caves." Several very well-preserved Teratornis merriami remains have also been discovered in Dry Cave, Eddy County, and other caves in southern New Mex-ico, and teratorn skeletons have turned up in southern California, Nevada, Oregon, and Florida. End all quotes.
The American Indians found amazing things in the desert just like we do today. Probably at a much higher rate, too!
Stories of Southwestern natives visiting caves with mummified remains circulated when early anthropologists collected stories. These people would bring twig figures and grass bundles to these caves, as offerings. Offerings to these mummified giants. Wether they were birds, cave bears, lions, or mammoths.
It’s truly amazing to think about how the giant creatures were around not that long ago… and so many stories may have been passed down about their slaying.
And many Apache stories tell of caves having supernatural powers where songs are emitted from and where sand paintings become impossible to wipe away.
The author of the fossil book then pointed something out to me I had totally missed in my own adventures even though I have seen this exact piece of rock art myself and I have even recreated it!
There’s a petroglyph on the quote unquote newspaper rock near the ruins of the Puerco Pueblo in Petroglyph National Park, in Arizona and this petroglyph shows a bird with what I thought was a frog in its mouth… I have even recreated it, like I said, and I even put this recreation on my webpage for the Chaco Anasazi series. It’ll be on the page for this episode.
But the thing is, the frog in the giant bird’s mouth, isn’t a frog… Adrienne Mayor quotes a Hopi elder who says that the thing in the bird’s mouth is a child and stories the Hopi told would say, be on the lookout for the giant bird that comes every now and then and steals the children… Like the Giant Eagle the Apache Monster Slayer killed.
The Apache and Navajo aren’t Hopi or Ancestral Puebloan but they have lived in close contact with them and traded and mixed and fought with them and against them for half a millennia so there’s bound to be similar stories, myths, and legends… or… similar shared experiences throughout the American Southwest.
Apache Athapaskan language is related to people in the far far north, the dark and cold subarctic Canada and Alaska region: people like the Chipewyan, Tlicho Yatii (formerly Dogrib), Gwich’in, and Koyukon, among others. Many of these tribes even call themselves, quote unquote, the people, like the Apaches and Navajos. A map of the Athabaskan language distribution will be up at the site on the page for this episode.
These Athapaskan languages are completely unrelated to the Uto Aztecan that we’ve talked so much about thus far. Like the Hopi and probably the Chacoan Anasazi. That means the Athabaskan speakers of the American Southwest are quite isolated and far from the origin of their native tongues.
A researcher from Norway in 1945 published a book about his time with one of these Athapaskan tribes, the Chipewyan. This author, Helge Ingstad, remember, he’s from Norway, he was speaking with an old chief named Tijon who told Ingsted of the Chipewyan people’s past greatness in defeating all the tribes of the north and ruling over them. Well, one tribe didn’t like that, so they left. Here’s the discussion between Ingsted and Tijon:
“How did the tribe lose its power?” Ingstad asked.
“Long ago,” said Tijon, “many Indians traveled away. This was before the white people came to the country.”
“Where did they go?”
“South,” answered the chief pointing with a wave of his hand.
“How do you know this?”
“The Old ones say so.”
End all quotes.
So the Athabaskan speakers like the Apache and Navajo may have been one group long ago that left the northern cold lands and headed south where they stopped and made their new homelands amongst the ruins of the Anasazi. Curiously, there are also isolated Athapaskan speakers on the northwest coast of California as well. But they make more sense as they can just travel down the coast.
So is that the answer to where the Athabaskans came from? Is it that simple? They didn’t want to be ruled over so they headed south, following the mountain ranges and ending up in the Great Plains and the American Southwest?
I keep mentioning the Apaches and Navajos together even though this is a series over the Apache, and I keep doing that because it’s very likely that they were once one and the same but over time, they separated into two distinct groups, much like the Apaches will later separate into separate bands. Some of these bands I’ve mentioned like the Mescalero or white mountain and the Jicarilla. Again, we will discuss that shortly. But the Apache and Navajo came down or, arrived, and were once one people.
What if the Western Apache and Navajo had always been here though? What if they were truly people of the American Southwest who just merely adopted a new language from a tribe who fled from the north and they only did this AFTER the Chacoan Anasazi ruled over the Four Corners with their warriors and man corn?
I am now going to quote at length a passage from Podcast favorite, David Roberts. Before he passed away he wrote a great book called the Bears Ears, and it’s obviously about that place I love so much and The Bears Ears a human history of americas most endangered wilderness by David Roberts will be quoted from a lot in the upcoming Anasazi revisit series. But for now, we will talk about the Dine or Nnee athabaskan people and their possible origins into the American Southwest. In this quote, Roberts is talking about the Navajo but again, I’m including the early Apache into that Dine group, as does many archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians. Don’t get me wrong, they are a distinct people NOW like the French and the German are a distinct people now. But at one time, it is my belief that they were a united or very closely related group.
Roberts writes that, quote, no conclusive proof of a Navajo presence in the Southwest before AD 1500 has been established. Partisans of an earlier arrival would push that date back by one or more centuries.
The inevitable conclusion, then, is that when the Navajo arrived in the parts of the Southwest they would make their new homeland, the Anasazi had already departed. Much Diné lore reinforces that idea, as the newcomers muse on abandoned homes and a vanished people. Yet at headlong odds with this version of history is the bedrock Navajo belief that they have always ("since time immemorial") lived within the quadrangle defined by the four sacred mountains. Other legends dramatize Navajos witnessing the Anasazi abandonment of the Colorado Plateau.
On a couple of occasions, I challenged my Navajo guides with this paradox. In Canyon de Chelly in 2008, on a blissful hike down the White Sands trail with Kalvin Watchman in charge—a hike I could not have undertaken without a Navajo guide—I queried him out of the blue:
"How long have the Diné lived in Canyon de Chelly?" Without missing a beat, Kalvin answered, "Since the 1300s."
I probed on: "Were the Anasazi still here when the Navajo arrived?"
"No, said Kalvin.
"What happened to the Anasazi?"
"They angered the Holy Ones."
In my smug reportorial brain, I was putting Kalvin down. The earliest tree-ring dates retrieved from hogans in Canyon de Chelly hover in a cluster no earlier than AD 1750, and few anthropologists would place the Diné in the Southwest as early as the 1300s. But I kept my silence.
It was a good thing I did so. At the end of two happy days hiking into little-known corners of the twin-pronged canyon, as Kalvin and I edged toward a friendship, I asked him, "Do you ever get clients you just can't stand?"
"Yes," he said.
I imagined spoiled kids with no attention spans, or obese adults who couldn't handle the steep trails. "What are they like?" I asked.
"Folks who say, "That's not what I've read in books? They think they know more about the place than I do." End all quotes.
Well… that absolutely puts me in the camp of worst clients. Although, I don’t say things like that in person, just on my podcast!
My wife and I toured the Puye Cliff Dwellings west of Santa Fe a year ago and I had a similar instance when the guide said something that quote unquote wasn’t in the books I read, but I kept my mouth shut and I’m glad I did. It was a good tour, and in the end, it doesn’t matter anyways, wether I am right or wrong.
To further elaborate on this possible quite early origins of the Athabaskan speakers to the American Southwest, Roberts talks to the preeminent non-Navajo expert on Navajo History, a man named David M Brugge. Brugge, at 85 years old, had published a paper doubting some of the old longstanding theories that the apache and Navajo and other Athapaskan speaking peoples just came south.
I will now quote Roberts again and he will quote Brugge, quote:
Among the Athapaskans in the Southwest (Navajo, Jicarilla Apache, Lipan Apache, Western Apache, Mescalero Apache, and Chiricahua Apache), the Diné have a far stronger genetic overlap with Puebloan peoples than any other group though only in the mitochondrial DNA of their maternal line.
The second observation has to do with clans. Among Southwestern Athapaskans, only the Navajo and the Western Apache have clans at all, while that form of social organization is central to Puebloan culture.
Moreover, none of the northern Athapaskan peoples have clan systems of any kind. Even more strikingly, writes Brugge, "the Navajo clan system seems to derive from the Western Pueblo [i.e., Hopi, Zuni, and Acoma] of the Southwest"
The third anomaly that Brugge highlights has to do with Navajo creation stories, of which there are two distinctly different versions. The first has the people emerging from a hole in the surface of the earth, though in the Diné version, that place lies not in the gorge of the Little Colorado River, but at a location called Hajinái in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. But in the second origin story, the world is created by Changing Woman, the most important Navajo deity. The first humans given life by Changing Woman are the ancestors of the four to six original Navajo clans.
It is out of these baffling elements that Brugge builds his theory. As he writes, "The two creations suggest two creation stories from two different peoples that merged to found the Navajo Nation." And here's the startling hypothesis: "that the early Navajo were not initially Athapaskan speakers but instead originated with the hunting-and-gathering cultures already in the Southwest.” End all quotes.
Again, this is about the Navajo but I am trying to piece together a story of how the Athabaskan speakers got down here to the American Southwest from the far and cold north, and this is extremely compelling stuff.
Roberts continues, quote:
But if Brugge was onto the truth, I could no longer visualize those Old Ones as seamlessly evolving into the Puebloans who grew corn and beans and squash and built villages of shaped stone and mud.
I had instead to imagine a certain population of early Southwesterners being, as it were, "left behind." They would have clung to the hunter-gatherer life even as their neighbors created a sedentary civilization.
In Brugge's view, “They may well have been peoples who were in many ways still Archaic in culture who lived in the hinterland around and about the developing pueblos, probably trading the products of hunting and gathering to those engaged in farming as their major economic activity... They did not participate fully in the cultural changes leading to the modern Pueblo societies, and in addition to having a simpler way of life, they were poorer and not nearly as numerous as the Pueblo peoples.” Then the Athapaskans who left their subarctic homeland began to arrive in the Southwest. For whatever reason, by whatever process, the "left behind" indigenes assimilated with the migrants from the north, learned their language and gave up their own, and gradually became the Navajo.
Is this what happened? The verdict is out, and Brugge has his naysayers. But those who propose alternative theories of Navajo origins will have to explain the nagging and persistent evidence of cross-cultural affinities between Puebloan and Diné cultures.” End all quotes.
So while again, that was mostly over the Navajos, a very similar origin story may exist for the Apache who were eventually pushed out onto the Great Plains and around the southern portion of the American Southwest and the northern Portion of the Mexican northwest. But it is ESPECIALLY true for the Western Apache. After being pushed out, The Apache formed their own distinct identity from the Navajo… again, except for the very similar Western Apaches.
For what it’s worth, podcast favorite and somewhat of a mentor to myself, Steve Lekson, told Roberts that quote, I think Brugge’s probably right. End quote.
A slightly outdated but still possible explanation for the split between the Athabaskans that produced the differences between the Navajo or Above People, as the western Apache call them, and the Apache themselves comes from Frank C Lockwood’s 1938 The Apache Indians. This is a fantastic book, if not a little dated, although, some of these older theories are indeed coming back into vogue. As is so often the case with revisionist anthropology. But Lockwood speculates on this separation between the Navajo and Apache, quote, It may be that the latter were ejected by the Navajos because of their mischief-making proclivities and excessive turbulence. On the other hand, the Apaches may have withdrawn on account of their desire for a more roving and adventurous way of life. End quote.
The Apache adopted and absorbed, much like the Navajo, many Puebloan rites and ceremonies altho not as much as the Navajo. The Navajo also kept more northern Athapaskan traits than the Apaches. And again, a lot of this talk is about the western Apache, more so than the Plains Apache.
Enough from the Anglos about the Navajos, what do the Apache say their origins are?
One story told to anthropologist Grenville Goodwin in the 1930s is pretty typical of origin stories told by Apaches. Especially western Apaches.
Quote:
Some people started from gutalba kowà ("dance camp") and came south this way to mb sizin ("owl standing"). They moved on from there to tik'à dàdèsgai, then on to where two hills come up together and where there is an old stone house. Then they moved to leyt'ú ("water in ground" and then to tséyàná" l'ở ("he smokes under a cliff"). From here they went to where three white cottonwoods stood at the place called t'is'oa ("cottonwood standing alone"); and from there they came to ts jò toờ ("large rock slide"), where there is a big rock with a trail going through it. Then they went on to sisnandié ("belt given away"), where there was a stone house. From that place they went to t'isted nayé ("cottonwood extending to the water") above mứ siné ("owl song"). The people settled in these different places, where canes were growing and there were cliff dwellings. Then all came down together. Now at the last place they became t'isted naid'n ("cottonwoods extending to the water people"). Before that they had no name. End quote.
There are many legends and stories told like this and with them, there seems to be one single narrative thread that ties them all together… the people moved from the north, somewhere in the north, to the American Southwest.
Another major narrative thread that unites the stories is that, as the Apache moved south, they incorporated other Indigenous peoples into their own families and groups.
Indeed, Spanish chroniclers in the 1600s will name tribes that simply disappear but who in reality, probably blended in with the Apaches. Some of these groups are the Manso, Janos, Jocomes, Sumas, Chinarras, and others.
I mentioned not that long ago that the Apaches didn’t settle and farm but that’s not quite true. The western apaches, having incorporated sedentary peoples into their ranks, did in fact pick up the three sisters of corn beans and squash. And they did plant them much more so than say, the Chiricahua Apaches. But don't let that fact fool you, the western apaches still derived most of their sustenance from hunting and gathering, and raiding.
This gathering though, it looked like your typical American Southwest gathering of seeds, acorns, roots, and wild plants that lived high in the mountains. The women and children were the primary, or probably sole gatherers for the Apache. These were all collected in the warmer months.
In the colder months, when they had to leave the sky islands of mountains and head to the valley, the Apaches turned to their quote unquote preeminent source of wild food, the Agave cactus or mescal.
Karl Jacoby in Shadows at Dawn, an apache massacre and the violence of history, another fantastic source I used for this whole series, In shadows at Dawn, Jacoby breaks down a particular massacre against the Apache by first telling the history of the American southwest through the eyes of the Spanish, then the O’odham, then the Mexicans, and then the Americans before diving into the history of the Apache themselves. All of these peoples were instrumental in the events that led up to the camp grant massacre we will discuss later. But in Shadows at Dawn, Jacoby writes of this process of eating the Agave:
The Nnee pried the mescal plant from its roots and buried it in a large earthen pit lined with mesquite branches. At sunrise, a specially selected woman would light the wood on fire, starting rom the pit’s eastern side and reciting a prayer that Coyote had taught to the People. After the fire had been allowed to burn for two days, the women would pound the now tender mescal into thin sheets. Dried and wrapped in bear grass, these sheets could last for over a year, making them a durable, easily transportable food. End quote.
So while the women did the work of gathering and burning and stomping, the men were naturally out hunting. The Apache hunted in the mountains, the valleys, the plains, everywhere there were good animals to eat and to use their hides and skins. But eventually, this hunting would turn, into raiding. Especially after the Apache got a taste of beef, and their favorite, horse meat.
We shall return to raiding shortly.
I keep mentioning these Western Apache, but what exactly does that mean?
Paul Andrew Hutton describes the Apache as being all united as Apache but divided into bands. He writes, quote, To the east, in New Mexico's Sierra Blanca and on the buffalo grasslands of Texas, lived the Mescaleros. Their close cousins, the Chiricahuas, lived in the Gila and Dragoon mountains of western New Mexico and southeastern Arizona as well as the Sierra Madre of Sonora and Chihuahua. The Jicarilla lived far to the north, ranging from the mountains of northern New Mexico all the way eastward onto the plains. The more distant Lipans lived along the Pecos River in Texas. End quote.
Hutton then goes on to describe the division of the Western Apaches who were indeed, quite divided. There were up to 20 bands of Western Apaches north of Tucson or in the eastern and central mountains of Arizona by the mid 19th century alone. Hutton writes, quote, These Western Apache bands, unlike the eastern Apaches, separated into clans and, like the Navajo, practiced some agriculture. It is possible that these Apache migrants had divided in prehistoric times, with the ancestors of the Western Apache moving through the mountains while the ancestors of the Mescaleros, Jicarillas, Lipans, and Chiricahuas followed the front range south to New Mexico. The Mescaleros, Jicarillas, and Chiricahuas had considerable contact with the Pueblo tribes of the Rio Grande, even adopting several of their ceremonies and dances. The Western Apaches were far less influenced by the Pueblos and their Spanish overlords. Nevertheless, they also embraced, as did their eastern Apache cousins, a devotion to the cult of the warrior and an adherence to raiding as a primary source of economic sustenance. End quote.
Jacoby in Shadows at dawn, when he begins talking about the Nnee or Apache, he reminds the reader that although all the Apache call themselves the same thing, the People, it’s better to remember that quote, for much of their history the Nnee might be better described as a constellation of distinct communities. Each community stood at the center of its member world yet possessed subtle connections outwards to other groups of Nnee. End quote.
The Apache are organized matrilineally and have the family as the most important unit of group membership. When a man marries an Apache woman, the man moves near his wife’s family and supports them through hunting and working and raiding. This was mediated through something known as Mother in law avoidance. Not something I'd advocate for my Anglo listeners, despite some wishing it were a cultural trait, not me though, but for the Apache, the son in law and mother in law according to Jacoby quote, almost never addressed one another directly or inhabited the same dwelling. End quote.
In Western Apache Language and Culture by Keith Basso, he goes a little bit more in depth with this mother in law avoidance and he even tells a great story that the Apache tell to remember the proper way to act.
For the first year of marriage its actually customary for the bride’s mother to request certain tasks of her new son in law and she can even criticize and instruct him. But this is only allowed for the first year. After that, the daughter and her husband move away where they live on their own where the mother’s influence is limited and the avoidance comes into play.
Here’s a story narrated by a Mrs Annie Peaches that helps the listener to remember this important societal rule.
It happened at 'big cottonwood trees stand spreading here and there'.
Long ago, the Pimas and Apaches were fighting. The Pimas were carrying long clubs made from mesquite wood; they were also heavy and hard. Before dawn the Pimas arrived at Cibecue and attacked the Apaches there. The Pimas attacked while the Apaches were still asleep. The Pimas killed the Apaches with their clubs. An old woman woke up; she heard the Apaches crying out. The old woman thought it was her son-in-law because he often picked on her daughter. The old woman cried out:
"You pick on my child a lot. You should act pleasantly toward her." Because the old woman cried out, the Pimas learned where she was. The Pimas came running to the old woman's camp and killed her with their clubs. A young girl ran away from there and hid beneath some bushes. She alone survived.
It happened at 'big cottonwood trees stand spreading here and there’. End quote.
This story was told to remind the mothers not to interfere after that first year of marriage. Otherwise, the O’odham can come with big clubs and bash your brains in.
One quick sidenote. The Apaches invoke something called stalking with stories. That’s when someone in the group makes a mistake or breaks a customary rule or does something taboo, the rest of the group will follow that person around or take time out of their day to tell them a story that is related to the rule they broke. They’d slip a story in while going for a hunt. They’d tell a tale while gathering plants and food. They’d stalk the rule breaker with stories until the person breaks and apologies or fixes the wrongdoing. This story of the mother in law being beaten to death by the enemy is one of those stories that would be told while stalking the offender. In this case, a mother in law who may have scolded her son in law. Stalking with stories. Guilt tripping by another, better name.
A bunch of extended families would organize themselves into something called a gotah or family cluster and they would be led by a nohwa goyaahi or a headman. I will not be attempting that Apache word again. The Apache language, is quite difficult and full of 40 different sounds and nasally speak that’s hard for my southern brain to wrap around. Not to mention, it’s a tonal language. Like Mandarin, for instance.
So the families group together and are a led by a headman. This headman is usually not even related to the matrilineal group he has joined but instead is revered for his wisdom or skills or warrior status. Then these family groups are arranged into Local groups so the family clusters are then organized into family groups and these are led by a chief who is one of the family cluster’s headman. Jacoby describes this chief well when he writes, quote, these chiefs did not possess absolute authority over their followers, but rather led by displaying the qualities- generosity, eloquence, industriousness- prized by the People. (The people are the Apache). Above all, through his prowess in hunting, raiding, and other activities, a chief demonstrated mastery over some of the diyih, or supernatural power, that, in the people’s view, suffused the universe. End quote.
I mentioned this supernatural power earlier with Hutton’s quote. Although, Jacoby continues:
This supernatural power often assumed quite distinctive forms: Horse Power, for example, gave one skill in managing horses, running power allowed one to cover great distances quickly, and enemies-against power, protected one from harm while on raids or on the warpath. End quote.
Also important among the Apache was someone in the local group known as the Headwoman. She gave advice and coordinated important activities like food gathering. The Apache, for most of their history, that we know of, were nomadic and not planters of crops.
Outside of the Local Group, there really wasn’t another formal organization of the Apache. Although, anthropologists today say that the Apaches belong to certain bands. The Apache, until rather recently, didn’t really see themselves that way. Organized into bands, I mean. But the local groups did have intermarriage and trade agreements and joint ceremonies that kept them in close contact. As you’ll later learn, these groups will have different accents and dialects that some outsiders are able to pick up on, surprisingly. Given how hard the language is.
Now having said all of that, the Western Apaches are slightly different… as Hutton mentioned earlier, they organized themselves into Clans and these clans were also matrilineal. These clans described the family relations, their history, their narratives, and their origins.
Despite covering a huge area of land that would later be called Apacheria, the Apache, the people, at their peak, only contained about 8-10,000 people at one time. For a people with such a small population, they truly have an enormous impact on history. Hence why I am having this series over this awesome group.
I mentioned earlier that the Apache Athabaskan language is quite difficult to speak. And that’s especially true for European language speakers. The language is tonal and it can be difficult to hear the differences in the tone when the language is spoken. And then, on top of that, the language can express a very complex thought in a single word, which of course, then, has a tone on top of it.
One of the most important aspects of the Apache language, especially western Apache, at least according to linguistic anthropologist Keith Basso, the most important part of Western Apache language is describing the landscape. No story can accurately be told without first accurately describing the landscape. If you’ll recall the story I told earlier about the mother in law getting clubbed to death by the O’odham, that story opened and closed with the exact and specific location that the story took place.
At the University of Oklahoma, for one of my linguistic courses in anthropology I read a book titled Western Apache Language and Culture, Essays in Linguistic Anthropology. And like most books in college, I kept it and now it’s useful for my podcast. Again, like so many books I am thankful I have lugged across the country with me… three times.
Well in one of the essays, Basso writes, quote, Nothing is considered more basic to the effective telling of a Western Apache 'story' or 'narrative' (nagoldi'é) than identifying the geographical locations at which events in the story unfold. For unless Apache listeners are able to picture a physical setting for narrated events (unless, as one of my consultants said, "your mind can travel to the place and really see it"), the events themselves will be difficult to imagine. This is because events in the narrative will seem to 'happen nowhere' (doohwaa 'ágodzaa da), and such an idea, Apaches assert, is both preposterous and disquieting. Placeless events are an impossibility; everything that happens must happen somewhere.
The location of an event is an integral aspect of the event itself, and therefore identifying the event's location is essential to properly depicting—and effectively picturing-the event's occurrence. End quote.
He goes on to write that all stories must be anchored with a place name. A landscape marker. Ni’bizhi’ or land names.
All that to say, the landscape and the area of the American Southwest is integral to the Apache, especially the western apache. The people are tied to the land so much so that they cannot tell stories without affixing the story to the land itself.
It doesn’t matter when the Apache arrived or from where, because once the people became a part of the landscape, their entire narrative and daily life was centered around it. That being said, The Apache do continually push out others who probably had a similar affinity for the land around them, like the O’odham, say, in Aravaipa Canyon. But... that is the story of all of human history, really. But especially so for the Apache.
I mentioned in the Anasazi series, the Migration episode, that it’s quite possible that the Apache burned out the people who were living at Montezuma’s Castle National Monument.
Here’s the piece I quoted from in that episode. It’s called Revisiting Montezuma Castle by Eric a Powell. Quote:
At Montezuma Castle National Monument in central Arizona, a village composed of two cliff dwellings was abandoned sometime in the fourteenth century. Archaeologists who dug the dwellings in the 1930s found evidence for a destructive fire, but concluded that the village burned long after it was vacated. This interpretation clashed with Native American accounts. Hopi people with strong ties to the site recount that their ancestors were attacked and forced to flee, while local Apache oral history holds that ancestral Apaches and their allies stormed the village and set it ablaze.
National Park Service archaeologist Matthew Guebard recently collected new data at one of the dwellings, and reviewed the original excavation reports in an effort to reconcile the conflicting accounts. Dating of charred plaster walls determined that the fire occurred sometime between 1375 and 1395, and analysis of pottery demonstrates that some of the ceramics found there had been made during this period. That led Guebard to believe that the village had been occupied until the time it was destroyed. His reexamination of the remains of four people unearthed in the 1930s shows they have skull fractures, cuts, and singe marks that indicate they were likely killed during an attack that coincided with a catastrophic fire. “The abandonment of the site was inextricably tied to a violent event,” says Guebard, who believes the archaeological evidence supports the Native American version of the ancient village’s demise. End all quotes.
So that puts the Apache in the American Southwest as early as 1375. I have no reason to doubt that’s the case. If they were there that early to burn out the Hopi’s ancestors, then they were probably there for a little bit before that. It isn’t likely they just showed up and burned em out. There must have been more history we’re not yet privy to.
But that does put the Apache in the American Southwest after the Civil War and abandonment of the Four Corners area by the Mesa Verdeans and Chaco Anasazians. It puts them in the region a full century after the Great Migration to Rio Grande and Mexico. At least by the ones who did not stay, like the Hopi. And the Zuni. The Zuni, by the way, were known to the Western Apache as Enemies Painted Black or Nasht’izhe.
Most records and accounts paint the Apache as unflinchingly fierce towards the puebloans who greatly feared the People. Frank Lockwood in The Apache Indians even quips that the Apache were the quote unquote original bad man of the southwest.
He also quotes the famous Southwestern archaeologist Bandelier, who leant his name to Bandelier National Monument. Bandelier states that the Apache, quote, stood toward the land-tilling Indians in the relation of a man-eating tiger to the East Indian communities. Nobody knew, even if there were but a single enemy in the neighborhood, where he might strike next. One Apache could keep a pueblo of several hundred souls on the alert, and hamper them in their daily work. He had nothing to attend to but his purposes of murder, rapine, and theft, which were his means of subsistence, whereas the others had their modest fields to till, and in the performance of such duties danger was lurking unseen, always likely to display itself when and where it was least expected. End quote.
It seems the Apache stopped the eastward expansion of the Puebloans. Which if you are a subscriber and listened to the llano Estacado episode, you would know, since I hinted at that possibility.
When Coronado first hit the plains there were small groups of Puebloan people farming in modern Texas and far eastern New Mexico. But then early Apaches came and ended that expansion. Those people weren’t spoken of again and it was guessed at by the Spanish that they went back west and joined their Puebloan brethren. Most likely in the Salinas pueblo region.
This also cut the Mississippians and puebloans off from one another and it forced the Puebloans to trade for the buffalo hides. Buffalo hides they probably previously sent their own hunting parties out to retrieve for themselves.
I have no doubt that the Rio Grande Puebloans held on to that knowledge of the eastern plains and the Llano Estacado. That’s why a few of them fled the Spanish and headed to Kansas at El Quartelejo. But more on that later.
The Apaches have also been known to drive tribes into the arms of larger neighboring tribes which caused the smaller tribes to eventually completely lose their identity. Lockwood points out an example of this with the Sobaipuri who united with the Papagos or the people we call today, the Tohono Oʼodham. The peoples that weren’t driven before the Apache were either killed or absorbed into the Apache, as mentioned earlier.
It’s easy to understand how the first anthropologists and archaeologists of the American Southwest thought that the Anasazi were driven out, burned, and killed by invading tribes from the north which they thought were the Navajo and Apache. If the Apache’s history taught them anything, it’s that they were not to be messed with and pueblo walls, Spanish guns and horses, and American fighting spirit could not tame them. How on earth would the Anasazi have been able to? But I don’t believe that interpretation is correct. Although, maybe we’ll get more on that in my Anasazi revisit soon.
After the migration of the Puebloans and Anasazi, but before the arrival of the Spanish, The Apache would trade with the Puebloans. They would trade hides and dried meat for corn, blankets, and turquoise.
In Andrew Knaut’s the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, a book I quoted from at length for the series over that Spanish timeframe, well in The Pueblo Revolt, Knaut wrote, quote, Cochiti and Zia traded with Jicarilla Apaches for buffalo chin beards and coiled baskets, respectively, for use in their naming ceremonies. Similarly, people from San Juan and Santa Clara traded goods to the Jicarillas for Osha, an important medicine plant and charm. End quote.
But as hinted at, it wasn’t all trading and puebloan mystique rainbows. Eventually, the entire way of subsistence for many Apache became raiding. Most of the early raids were against the Puebloans.
Hutton describes these raids well when he writes, quote:
Raids were conducted by small armies usually numbering under a dozen warriors; the purpose was not to kill but to acquire plunder or prisoners to adopt or enslave. Raids were carefully planned by warriors; the fighters scattered if pursued, and plunder was quickly discarded or destroyed if the pursuers came too close. After all, there was always more to be taken later. Much of this booty was traded away for weapons, food, and clothing. They did not want to kill the people who tended to the fields and flocks, and haughtily referred to the Spanish as their “shepherds." End quote.
If the Apache killed the people tending the fields and flocks, that would leave no one to raise the food which the Apache wanted to steal.
Raiding parties against the Puebloans by the Apaches rarely had more than 10 people in them. The Apaches plan back in the olden times was to slip into a pueblo at night unseen, take what they wanted, and slip away peacefully.
Usually a call for a raid was suggested by a head woman when she saw that supplies were low. This suggestion would then entice a warrior to volunteer to lead a raid so that they could gather animals to eat.
The warriors who led raiding parties weren’t just any ole Apache men, they had to have completed the necessary training first. And usually this training was to quote Jacoby, quote, a period of tutelage under an older man in the proper way to behave while on attacks against the Naa ch'üdn ("Enemy ghosts," the raiding and warfare term for enemy). End quote.
These warrior men would announce the time and target and the men who had the training could accept the invitation to raid or decline as they saw fit. BUT, if you decided you wanted to take part in the raid, then the warrior had to follow eery single command from the raid’s leader without complaint, during the duration of the raid. And sometimes those raids lasted a long time and covered a great distance. And sometimes the participants would not be able to eat or sleep along the way. And then they would often wait to strike when a full moon was out so they could see better.
An Apache man who had participated in many such raids in the 1800s spoke about them and Jacoby quotes one of his great stories in Shadows At Dawn. The Apache man’s name was Palmer Valor and he said after one such long and arduous and grueling raid that covered hundreds of miles, quote, some of the men, while they still had meat in their mouths and were sitting there chewing it, went to sleep right there. This was because we had been traveling steadily for five nights and days... never stopping to sleep or eat. End quote.
But sometimes, raiding parties ended in a death which would result in a later war party and elevated levels of violence and death.
It is important to differentiate between these raiding and warring parties.
Hutton writes, quote, War was for revenge and revenge only. End quote. And these war parties consisted of more warriors than the raiding parties but were less frequent. Sometimes these groups could reach to the hundreds and included multiple group clans and families. And they were almost always for vengeance or revenge.
In the middle of the 1600s, one Spanish soldier recorded what happened after some Apaches were killed during a raiding party, quote:
Two heathen Indians from Los Siete Rios having arrived at nightfall at the pueblo of Cuarac, the Indians of that pueblo, understanding that they were enemies, killed one of them and wounded the other. Thereupon the Apaches of Los Siete Rios who had been friendly made demonstrations, desiring to come and attack the pueblo and avenge the killing. End quote.
Jacoby writes well of the war party so I’ll let him tell it:
From the time the war party started until it got back," recalled one Ngee, "the men in the party had all kinds of gudnisi ['taboos] to observe. Mostly, these were about how they had to talk. There were sacred names for many things, and a man had to know these and use them, for if he didn't something bad would happen to him and to all the other men that were with him.” End all quotes.
The main purpose of a warring party was to Take death from the enemy or kill the enemy. Inflict as much damage as one could. But another goal of warfare was to take captives. Often the captives would be young and they were meant to replace the loss of a loved one. That’s why they would be distributed amongst the living women relatives of the men who had been killed before or during the war party.
If the Apache took male prisoners, it was to placate the women of the group. Essentially, they’d bring back the man, tie him up, and let the women beat him to death. Or shoot arrows at home or throw spears. The women would take turns doing this.
It seems through ethnographic sources and Spanish writings that for the Apache, mercy… was NOT a virtue. And on top of that, torture was practiced religiously. Especially against the Spanish.
Hutton writes, quote, torture had long been a common practice among the Apaches, but they practiced it on the Spanish with a vengeance. End quote.
I’m getting ahead of myself by talking about the Spanish but it’s important to understand the fear that the Apaches inflicted upon their Puebloan and Spanish and even later neighbors.
Hutton continues:
A chief of the Aravaipa Apaches once bragged of how he had buried a captive alive up to his neck and then watched the ants devour his head. Prisoners were often staked out on anthills with their mouths propped open to allow ravenous insects easy entry. Men were tied naked to cactus or thorn-laden trees and then skewered with lance and arrow. Teamsters were tied upside down to their wagon wheels with hot coals placed under their heads. Men were flayed alive until they slowly bled to death. Female relations of slain warriors were given captives to torture to help assuage their grief. They proved particularly ingenious at this work, often ornamenting the mouths of male victims with their own penises. "Every expression of pain or agony is hailed with delight," noted a frontier soldier, "and the one whose inventive genius can devise the most excruciating kind of death is deemed worthy of honor." It was not good to be taken captive by the Apaches. End all quotes.
As we will discuss later with the O’odham, it was important to take your enemies power when you killed him and a big way for the Apache to achieve this was through mutilation of the living. Which heightened the spiritual power of war for the Apaches.
Although, like their Athabaskan brothers, the Navajo, the Nnee were very afraid of ghosts and walking spirits, and like the Navajo, The Apaches would not touch those who had fallen, even among their own people. So at first, they didn’t scalp the dead. Well, at least not until the Spanish introduced it to them, according to Hutton.
The Apaches called scalping, Bitsa-ha-digihz or his head top cut off. The Apaches would then parade the scalps in a victory dance. But they wouldn’t dance too long and they would discard the evidence quickly lest the ghost sickness affect them. Not sure how they justified this practice. Maybe they had a 5 minute rule. But no, they did what I talked about the Navajo doing in my Everett Ruess series and the Apache also would perform purification ceremonies to ward off the dead and its disease.
While raiding clearly occurred with the puebloans and other tribes and while it was very important, the nature of raids changed dramatically with the arrival of that strange creature, the horse. Andrew Knaut in Pueblo Revolt of 1680 wrote and quoted other historians when he discussed this fact. Quote:
As Elizabeth John has pointed out, so long as Apache and Navajo raiding parties had been limited to forays carried out on foot, the amount of booty a raider could steal had been limited to what he could comfortably carry away himself. This limitation had to some degree checked the desirability of committing such depredations against the pueblos. With the arrival of horses, mounted raiders could now strike the pueblos with greater speed, more frequently, and to greater avail than ever before. End quote.
In Shadows at Dawn, Jacoby quotes from several oral stories that talk about the allure of the horse and other livestock had over the Apaches. In two of the stories he cites, the Apache claim that their entire way of life changed once the horse arrived. One of the stories has the hero, Slayer of Monsters, probably a similar or the same character as the warrior who slayed the Eagle and the Elk, but Slayer of monsters goes to the sun and asks for a horse. Jacoby quotes a Western Apache man named Henry Irving who said, quote, we were getting on all right, but slayer of monsters went to his father, sun, and got a horse from him. From that time on trouble started. End quote.
The first sign of trouble for the Apache’s came with the face of a Spaniard. The Apache would call them Innaa. Enemy.
While the Apache may have known about the coming of the Spanish, the Spanish did not know about their new foe, the Apache for quite some time. The first encounter between the Spanish and the Apache most likely happened near a place called Chichilticali, which has been guessed by the famous archaeologist Bandelier, but he guessed Chichilticalli is around modern day Fort Thomas in Arizona. Which itself is northeast of Tucson near Mount Turnbull on Arizona 70. The Spanish met them at an infamous place known as Red House. Castañeda writes that this red house must have quote, been destroyed by the people of the district, who are the most barbarous people that have yet been seen. They live by hunting. End quote.
Podcast alumni, Juan de Oñate was the first to name the Apaches, from that Zuni word for Enemy, but Castañeda was the first to write of them. The first time he wrote of them was in his The Journey of Coronado in 1540. Castañeda called them Querechos.
The Querechos Apaches wore tanned skins and lived in tipi like tents on the plains of the Buffalo Kingdom. I talked at great length about these Querechos in my subscriber only episode over the Llano Estacado so if you’d like to hear that over 3 hour episode of a fascinating and overlooked place adjacent to the American Southwest, sign up to be a roadrunner!
In John Miller Morrises El Llano Estacado, he writes that the Querechos were quote, nomads, los naturales of Lo Llano, who traveled, said Castañeda, and now he’s quoting the Spaniard, who traveled, quote, like the Arabs, with their tents and troops of dogs loaded with poles. End all quotes.
Castañeda also wrote that these Querechos made everything out of Buffalo. Their shoes, clothing, tents, everything. And the Querechos, as the quote suggested, used big dogs as beasts of burden, like horses or mules. The Querechos tied saddles and poles to their sturdy dogs which then dragged 30 to fifty pounds of their belongings around. Apparently, the dogs were so well trained at this that when the saddles and loads came askew or fell or began to drag funny, the dogs would stop and howl so that someone would come and fix them. And then the whole gang would be on their way again.
Morris, in El Llano Estacado goes on to describe these Querechos Apaches further:
Although relative newcomers to the Southern Plains, eastern Apaches were an adaptive, highly skilled hunting people. They had traded the flat expanses of the north for those of the south, and their skills in roaming the plains were second to none. End quote.
These Apaches traded hunted the bison proficiently and traded their pelts with the Puebloans for food. They ate raw Bison flesh, gathered crawfish and wood from the canyons and creeks, they drank blood, and had peculiar habits but they were a kind people and not cruel. Although it was already known that they were good fighters. Castañeda wrote of these Eastern Apache, quote, they have better figures than the pueblo Indians, are better warriors, and are more feared. End quote.
The next mention of the Apaches was when they got their name, the Apaches, and that was in 1569 when Oñate, the conquerer of New Mexico came into contact with them on his travels through the land. In one source they were written down as Apaches and in another, it was Apiches. And like I said in the beginning, that name is Zuni in origin and it means enemy.
The last known time that Querechos is used, that I know of, was in 1583, when they were described as plaguing the people at Acoma Pueblo. That won’t be the last time they plague the Puebloans.
Despite King Felipe the II 1573 Comprehensive Order for New Discoveries, which forbade the usage of the word conquer, and instead suggested the historians write the word pacifications instead, despite that lofty proclamation, the Spanish, by the end of the 16th century, newly in the area of the American Southwest, the Spanish were about to set out to conquer the Apache. They would never achieve that goal. Although they’d sure make life hell for the Apache.
The first mention of Apache aggression towards the Spanish was in 1606 or 1607 near present day Española in New Mexico. Not far from Santa Fe. And that reference was in regards to a raid on that Spanish Settlement.
Not long after that raid by Apaches, Juan Martínez de Montoya, one of the conqueror Oñate’s lieutenants, led two punitive expeditions against the Apaches. And a third expedition was led by Oñate’s own son, Cristóbal.
The mere fact that the Spanish had arrived threw a monkey wrench into the delicate balance the Puebloans, plains Indians, and apaches had. Once the Puebloans had to give tribute instead of trade with the Apaches, the Apaches came and took more often than they previously had since the items they sought and had received through trade for hundreds of years was now gone. The Spanish also introduced a slew of shiny and new and tasty things that the Apaches now wanted.
At the end of the year of 1607, a Fray Lázaro Ximénez was sent to the capitol of New Spain with the message that, quote, the Spaniards and the Christian and peaceful natives of New Mexico are frequently harassed by attacks of the Apache Indians, who destroy and burn their pueblos, waylay and kill their people by treachery, steal their horses, and cause other damages, and that, as a result of ineffective measures to remedy this situation, the teaching of the gospel, the Spaniards, and everything connected with them are despised by the natives and produce much scorn and criticism. End quote.
This fear of the Apaches, despite the Fray thinking that it would drive away the Puebloans, this fear of the Apaches actually drove the Puebloans into the arms and protection of the Spanish during the early colonial period of New Mexico.
In The Pueblo Revolt of 1680, Knaut wrote of this, quote, Whether or not they recognized the Spaniards as the ultimate source of the heightened aggressions in the region, the Pueblos quickly realized that if they hoped to survive, Spanish military protection was something that they could not do without. End quote.
Eventually, many of the Pueblos on the periphery, the ones that weren’t decimated and destroyed, but many pueblos on the outskirts of New Mexico, they began to side with the Apaches. Like when in 1609, the pueblos of Taos, Picurís, and Pecos allied themselves with the Apaches AGAINST Tewa Pueblos near the Spanish city of San Gabriel.
These Tewa puebloans had been the closest to Santa Fe and therefore had been the most Christianized and Spaniardized. And now, the Apache Pecos Pueblo alliance threatened to kill any Christian Puebloans and burn the Christian pueblos if the Spanish ever left Nuevo Mexico.
Part of the problem was that The Spanish attempted to keep separated the civilized Puebloans and the barbarous, as the Spanish saw them, Nomads like the Apaches. They didn’t want the baptized Puebloans who were working for the crown to get sick of the religious and the rules and to leave the Pueblo and live with the Apaches. This policy further exacerbated the relationship between the Puebloans and the Apaches and made the Apaches more violent towards the Puebloans, the people they once had a usually good relationship with.
In the next episode we’ll learn about the Quartelejo Apaches and how when some Puebloans left to live with them over in Kansas, the Spanish sent a force to retrieve the wayward Taos Puebloans lest they become idolatrous like the nomads. Or at least that’s how the Spanish saw it.
Another problem for the Spanish with keeping the two groups, the Athabaskan nomads and the Puebloans apart was the fact that this forced more raiding to the west of the Puebloans as well. In the land between the Rio Grande valley and the Hopi villages, where the Spanish wished desperately to convert and build missions.
These raids made it even more difficult and dangerous to reach the Hopi because along the way you could run into Apache or Navajo raiders. This fact most likely helped the Hopi never be fully lorded over by the Spanish and it made the Hopi mesas the haven for Puebloans fleeing the Spanish that it occasionally became.
The first time the Apaches get separated into their infamous bands was by Fray Alonso Benavides in 1630. He was under orders for the King of Spain to compile a record of the people outside the Pueblos in New Mexico. If you’ll remember the D&E expedition, the Crown was always concerned with the territory and the people and learning more and the Franciscan missionaries were always the ones to compile said reports.
Well, in 1630 it was up to Fray Alonso Benavides to compile the report and he gave us a ton of information on the Apaches as they existed at that time. He also separated them into the Gila Apaches, Navajo Apaches, and Apaches Vaqueros.
He mentions that although they give the Puebloans and other tribes trouble, they had yet to bother the Spaniards. He also, falsely claimed they were no doubt the largest tribe in the world. This is no doubt on account of their constant movement. Their nomadic way of life. They were seemingly everywhere. A fact that would soon haunt the Spanish… and every nation that fought the Apaches afterwards. And that included at this very time, the Puebloan peoples.
Here’s a great quote from Benavides himself about the fact that the Apaches surrounded the Puebloans and that impact. Benavides says of the Apache Nation, quote:
It is a people very fiery and bellicose, and very crafty in war. Even in the method of speaking, they show a difference from the rest of the nations. For these speak rather softly and deliberately, and the Apaches seem to break their heads with the words.
They do not dwell in settlements, nor in houses, but in tents and huts, for as much as they move from mountain range to mountain range, seeking game, which is their sustenance. However, each hut of a principal or individual has its recognized land on which they plant corn and other seeds. They go clad in skins of deer, very well tanned and adorned in their fashion, and the women gallantly and honestly clad. They have no more idolatry than that of the Sun, and even that is not general to all of them, and they scoff much at other nations that have idols. End quote.
I’m just going to continue reading what Benavides says here, cause it’s great stuff…
Quote: They have as many wives as they can support; and upon her whom they take in adultery they irremissibly execute their law, which is to cut of her ears and nose; and they repudiate her. They are very obedient to their elders and superiors and hold them in great respect. They teach and chastise their children differently from other nations, who have no chastisement whatever. They pride themselves much on speaking the truth, and hold for dishonored him whom they catch in a lie. The tongue varies somewhat, as they are a great nation, though each can understand the other. They occupy a vast expanse of country. . . . It is a nation so bellicose, all of it, that it has been the crucible for the courage of the Spaniards. End all quotes.
What prophetic writing there at the end, a nation so bellicose, that it has been the crucible for the courage of the spaniards, meaning, the Apaches are a people so aggressive, that they have severely tested the courage of the Spanish… just y’all wait.
After Benavides wrote his report for the king in 1630, for the next twenty years or so, the Apaches themselves grew even more bellicose, to use his term, and more violent. Not just to the Puebloans, but slowly towards the Spanish as well.
It didn’t help that during the 1600s, the New Mexican governors, just add this to their many faults, but the New Mexican governors during the 1600s completely failed to alleviate, and even further aggravated tensions between the Puebloans, the Spanish, and the Apaches. Most of this was due to the fact that the governors wanted cheap labor, obviously in the form of slaves, so they allowed the Spanish and Puebloans to go on raids against the nomadic Apache.
These Apache were then used in the various mines down south in Old Mexico. Although, a surprising amount of these Apaches would escape and make the long trek back.
Because of these slave raids, the Apaches would counter raid. But often times these counter raids were more caused by massive famines. Like the one I talked about in the Spanish Southwest series in 1640. Knaut writes of this famine and the Apaches reaction to it when he wrote, quote, During the difficult year of 1640, for example, apache raiders plundered a total of more than 20,000 fanegas (52,000 bushels) of corn throughout the province.
He goes on to say, quote, similarly, the severe drought and famine of 1666-70 brought starving bands of athapaskans in from the plains in droves, touching off half a decade of unprecedented violence in New Mexico from which European authority would never fully recover. By April 1, 1669, Fray Juan Bernal could write that
He’s now quoting Bernal, quote, the whole land is at war with the widespread heathen nation of the Apache Indians, who kill all the Christian Indians they can find and encounter. No road is safe; everyone travels at risk of his life, for the heathen traverse them all, being courageous and brave, and they hurl themselves at danger like people who know no God nor that there is any hell. End all quotes.
I actually quoted that one in my Spanish Southwest series, I believe. But it’s just as poignant now.
This unprecedented and widespread violence that resulted from the horrible 1660s famine would cause the direct abandonment of many of the easternmost Pueblos, eastern and southernmost pueblos, the ones furthest from Santa Fe and the Spanish protection.
Many of these are the famous Salinas Pueblos that you can visit today consisting of Abo, Gran Quivira, and Quarai in New Mexico. These are not far from my new home in the Manzano Mountains, actually! And if you’re ever in the area, it is worth visiting the Salinas Mission Pueblos national monument. I have a page for them all up at my website, the American southwest dot com.
In 1670, due to the famine and the toughness that the 1600s had brought, the Spanish could only muster 170 soldiers for the defense of the colony… only 170… and you wonder why the Revolt happened only ten years later!
But that 170 number wasn’t the standing army… that was the TOTAL. Usually, after a surprise guerrilla style attack on the Puebloans or the Spanish, the governor couldn’t gather but 20 men! Only 20 men to go ride out and slay the Apache enemy! According to Bernal, quote, when the governor has occasion to pursue the enemy after they have committed some sudden outrage, he can scarcely gather twenty men, for most of them live on the frontiers and on farms. Because of such delay the enemy is usually able to escape in safety. End quote.
In 1673, Apache Indians attacked and burned the Zuni town of Hawikuh. But it was much more devastating than a fire… the Apaches managed to kill 200 Zuni puebloans, they killed the Spanish Friar, and they carried away a thousand more residents and their livestock… a thousand Zuni Indians turned into slaves and either kept or sold to the Spanish down south.
And those Salinas pueblos i mentioned earlier, while three are part of the national monument, at the time, in the 1670s, there were six. Knaut sums up perfectly the slaughter and terror the Apache were able to rain down upon the inhabitants of Nuevo Mexico.
At Senecú, Apaches killed Fray Alonso Gil de Avila in his own convento, with five arrows to the chest. At Abó, they sacked and burned the convento after slaying Fray Pedro de Ayala, "stripping him of his clothing, putting a rope around his neck, flogging him most cruelly, and finally killing him with blows of the macana; after he was dead they surrounded the body with dead white lambs, and covered the privy parts, leaving him in this way.” End all quotes.
With no other choice, the inhabitants of these pueblos, both Spanish and Puebloan, fled for either El Paso or the Pueblos around Santa Fe. These six pueblos were known as Chililí, Tajique, Tabira, Quarai, Abo and Gran Quivira or Las Humanas. Those last three, make up the Salinas Mission Pueblos National Monument of today. Quarai, Abo, and gran Quivira.
It really cannot be overstated how important these Apache raids and the subsequent abandonment of the Pueblos were to the Puebloans in Taos and around Santa Fe. They saw the weakness of the Spanish in the face of their enemy the Apache and they realized they could probably strike pretty effeciently at the Spanish and force them to leave the territory forever. And more importantly, they could connive their fellow Puebloans to join in the revolt. At least, a lot of them.
If not for these Apache raids on the Salinas Pueblos, I’m not sure the Pueblo Revolt in 1680, only a few years after the abandonment of these pueblos, I’m not sure the Revolt would have ever happened.
The Apache have steered the ship of history quite significantly throughout the American Southwest…
There wasn’t always fighting amongst the Apache and the Spanish though. In 1660, we get a little glimpse into an Apache ceremony when it was visited by the mayor of Santa Fe.
Alcalde Ordinario of the villa of Santa Fe, a man named Diego Romero was sent by then Governor Lopez de Mendizábal, who I talked about a lot in my Spanish Southwest series, but Diego Romero and five other men were sent to the Great Plains to trade for buffalo and antelope hides with the Jicarilla Apaches.
Once among the Apache encampment, Romero used sign language to convey to the Apaches that his father had left a son with these Apache Indians, did they remember him? Or.. something to that effect, I can’t quite tell. Anyways, the Apaches responded and all of this culminated in a ceremony which was described by a Nicolas de Freitas in 1661. I will now quote from Freitas:
At about four in the afternoon they brought a tent of new leather and set it up in the field; they then brought two bundles, one of antelope skins, and the other of buffalo skins, which they placed near the tent. Then they brought another large new buffalo skin which they stretched on the ground and put Diego Romero upon it, lying on his back. They then began to dance the catzina, making turns, singing, and raising up and laying Diego Romero down again on the skin in accordance with the movement of the dance of the catzina. When the dance was ended about nightfall, they put him again on the skin, and taking it by the corners, drew him into the tent, into which they brought him a maiden, whom they left with him the entire night. On the next day in the morning the captains of the rancherias came to see whether Diego Romero had known the woman carnally; seeing that he had known her, they anointed Diego Romero's breast with the blood. They then put a feather on his head, in his hair, and proclaimed him as their captain. End quote.
I can’t help but think catzina and kachina are the same words but they don’t mean the same thing. The Spanish were just interpreting as best they could what was going on.
20 years after that catzina ceremony with Diego Romero and the Jicarilla Apaches, the Pueblo Revolt shakes and burns New Mexico which is retaken by the Puebloans… with the help of their brief but effective Apache allies.
As Otermín fled Santa Fe, he got word that the Puebloans had recovered from the devastating defeat, the one he inflicted as he burst out of the city. Well now, the Puebloans had been reinforced by… the Apaches. Not much is known about these Apaches but Otermín greatly feared them and this news forced him to head south a little faster.
After the Revolt we get this quote from a Hispanic veteran of many an Apache encounter who describes what the Spanish did to the Puebloans who merely allied with the Apaches. This third person account is from Hispanic Soldier Juan Domínguez de Mendoza:
From the time of General Alonso Pacheco de Heredia [1642-44], during whose term he [Mendoza] entered this kingdom as a child of twelve years, he has seen fourteen señores governors who have governed this kingdom, and they have always taken action against the natives of all nations due to their idolatries and evil customs. He knows particularly that Don Fernando de Argüello in his time [1644 47] had twenty-nine Jemez Indians hanged in the pueblo of Los Jemez as traitors and confederates of the Apaches, and that he had imprisoned a number of them for the same crime and for having killed Diego Martínez Naranjo. And in the time of Señor General Hernando de Ugarte y la Concha [1649-53] there were hanged as traitors and confederates of the Apaches some [Tiwa] Indians of La Isleta and of the pueblos of La Alemeda, San Felipe, Cochití, and Jemez, nine from the said pueblos being hanged. The common people of this kingdom have always been punished as idolaters, and in particular in the time of Señor General Don Fernando de Villanueva [1665-68], in the province of Los Piros, some were hanged and burned in the pueblo of Senecú as traitors and sorcerers.
It clearly did not pay to be a Puebloan allied with Apache before the revolt. And that’s because since the 1660s, most likely due to that famine, the Apaches had stepped up their attacks on the Spanish.
In 1672, the Apaches raided a church at Zuni and killed a few friars. Four years later they repeated this attack throughout New Mexico, killing even more Spanish friars and soldiers. Also at this time, in the 1670s, they were at open warfare with the Puebloans. Making the friars just collateral damage, no doubt. Or maybe the Apaches knew the relationship between the Puebloans and the Spanish and wanted to strain that relationship. Or again, maybe as Benavides said, the Apache just abhorred idolatry.
But these remote Spanish enclaves amongst the Puebloans stood no chance at this time in 1676. Lockwood states that the Spanish usually provided only around 5 poorly armed Spanish soldiers, with no horses sometimes, and that was all that was allocated to protect the Spanish religious and the Puebloans against the Apaches. They were totally unmatched against the swift Apache raiders.
But then it seems the Apaches allied briefly with the Puebloans for the Revolt of 1680 and the Spanish were driven from New Mexico. What happened during that era is largely unknown to nonPuebloans, as I discussed in that episode, but what is known is that the Apache did not cease to raid their Puebloan neighbors as they sensed that things had changed and chaos reigned.
I actually picked up a great quote that I wish I had had in the Pueblo Revolt or the Reconquest episode. I read it in The Pueblo World Transformed, alliances, factionalism, and animosities in the northern rio grande from 1680 to 1700 by Matthew Liebmann, Robert Preucel, and Joseph Aguilar. The quote is from a Zia war captain who was taken during the Reconquest. His name was Captain Bartoleme de Ojeda. He spoke about what had happened since the Revolt. I’ll quote the whole things which also quotes Ojeda:
The Keres, Taos, and pecos fought against the Tewas and Tanos.” Reported Ojeda, while, quote, The Keres and Jemez finished offf the Piros and Tiwas. End quote. The pueblo of Acoma had split into factions. The Zunis battled the Hopis. Apaches, quote, inflicted all the damage they could, end quote, at the pueblos of their enemies. End all quotes. He goes on to describe more battles with the Utes and other pueblos but according to this Zia warrior, during the years after the Pueblo Revolt, the Apaches inflicted all the damage they could.
The Apache killed, raided, scattered cattle, stole horses, and just genuinely made life difficult, quite difficult for the Puebloans. And all while the Puebloans themselves were clearly torn apart in a civil war. Farming slowed down so the Puebloans took to hunting. This further limited the availably of game for everyone in the Southwest. And the wildlife itself was still suffering from the drought which was still raging. And then of course if the puebloans are not producing a lot of food, there’s nothing for the Apache to steal. The land was in turmoil and the Apaches and the Puebloans animosity grew even more fierce. At least for most of them.
On the flip side, as the Apache are so adept at doing, they also adopted many Puebloans who fled their communities in search of another life. This is most likely when the Apache gained many of their puebloan characteristics.
But it seems, for the most part, the Apaches made life hell for the Puebloans during the revolt.
From that same paper, the Pueblo World Transformed, I read another quote by a Puebloan about the semi civil war happening among the Pueblos before the Spanish returned. Quote:
As the testimony of another Indio ladino (a Spanish speaking native who had been educated in a mission by Franciscan friars) indicated to the Spaniards in the early 1680s: quote, he said that it is true that there are various opinions among them, most of them believing that they would have to fight to the death with eh said Spaniards, keeping them out. Others, who were not so guilty, said, we are to blame, and we must await the Spaniards in our pueblos. And he said that when the hostile Apaches came they denounced the leaders of the rebellion, saying that when the Spaniards were among them they lived in security and quiet, and afterwards with much uneasiness. End all quotes.
Remember when Diego De Vargas showed up to the walls outside Santa Fe during his reconquest and the Puebloans inside believed he and his forces were Apache? This is a quote by me from that episode,
For whatever reason, the Puebloans along the ramparts thought the invading force of Spanish were Apache Indians… Apaches and some quote unquote liars from Pecos Pueblo. Which, really does go to show the amount of battling and infighting the Puebloans must have had with the outside raiders and themselves. It does seem there truly was a breakdown of the alliance once the Spanish left. End quote.
Well, during the Reconquest, the Apaches attacked the Spanish at every opportunity. Both in New Mexico and in New Spain. According to Lockwood, Sonora and Nueva Viscaya suffered immense attacks by the Apache towards the late 1690s.
It was’t just the Apaches that attacked. The whole northern frontier had been inspired by the success of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in New Mexico to create their own revolution and kick out the Spanish. Unfortunately for these northern Indians, they mostly failed to unify, therefore they just attacked presidios and towns at random. Then the Spanish retaliated violently.
At this time there were two forts, or garrisons or presidios, and these presidios were in this area of northern Old Mexico. One we have talked about, the place where Maria y Pacheco got married and the place where Dominguez died. That place is Janos. The other is Frontéras.
The Apache would swoop down into this area, kill, burn down buildings, drive off livestock, take slaves and trophies, and then disappear northwards again. Classic Apache. The Spaniards would be slow to respond, and then chase the raiders to no avail, only to return back south again with nothing or very little to show for their dangerous desert jaunts.
In 1690, a podcast veteran, and Indian fighting veteran, Don Domingo Jironza Petriz de Cruzate or Jironza for short, he would succeed the disgraced Otermín as governor of New Mexico. He’d then head up the Rio Grande to retake it, the second attempt after the revolt and.. he’d be repelled.
Jironza would then whip up a larger fighting force to finally take back New Mexico once and for all! Except… the Indians in northern Mexico, attempting their own Revolt, would force him to fight them instead of fighting the reconquest.
Well, fast forward 3 years to 1693, and Jironza was still fighting the Indians in the area. And those Indians included the Apache!
These battles in Northern Old Mexico truly began in the 1680s when the Apaches and other Indian allies fought and killed quite a few Spaniards and their Indian allies. Again, in an attempt to replicate the Pueblo Revolt. The spaniards would constantly have to retreat and then go from village to village telling the widows of the Indian auxiliaries that their husbands wouldn’t be coming home.
Something had to be done.
In 1690, the Viceroy or leader for the King, essentially, of New Spain, a man named Gaspar de la Cerda Silva Sandoval y Mendoza, 8th Count of Galve, Lord of Salcedón and Tortola… or just Viceroy Galve, he ordered a presidio or fort built in Sonora to protect the frontier. And with that same decree, or at least at that same time, he also ordered the formation of the campañias volantes. The flying companies.
At first it was argued that many presidios be built to deal with this threat, but that would come at great cost and the apache and other Indians, they raided so quickly that an expedition from the presidios would never reach the enemy in time.
Don Maria y Pacheco would fight in this area many years later but he too, if you’ll remember would suggest presidios be built all over the land he and the expedition covered. Of course, they were never built for the same reason. They come at great cost. Of course, if you’ll remember, he said to mitigate that cost, they just use Indian Labor but…
So instead of expensive forts across the frontier, an elite group of fast commandos were created to ride throughout the countryside and hunt down Apaches and other Indians who perpetrated violence against the Lord’s people.
One of the men in charge at this time, a Captain Juan Fernandez de la Fuente decided he was going to wage a massive war of fuego y sangre… or fire… and blood.
Which brings us back to Jironza in 1694 when he led a flying company on two missions deep into the heart of Apacheria to hunt down the raiders.
In that same year, the Apaches had come swiftly down into the territory and had stolen thousands… of horses from the Spanish. That simply could not stand. Responding quickly, Jironza chased the marauders, killing thirteen of them and capturing seven.
Not long afterwards, Jironza led his flying company, as well as many Pima warriors, or what we would call today the Akimel O’odham, who are most likely the descendants of the Hohokam that did not go south with the Anasazi, well Jironza, his flying company, and his Pima allies won a battle against 600 Apaches. Something that was rare in those days.
Emboldened by this victory, Jironza, joined now by Fuentes, and combined with their Pima allies, they all ventured deep into Apacheria to exact more vengeance in Fuentes’ campaign of fire and blood. But this time, they weren’t overly successful.
Not only did the Spanish believe, despite killing hundreds of the enemy, but not only did the Spanish think that these military campaigns against the Apache were NOT successful, but in typical Spanish thinking, the Religious campaign of converting the Indians wasn’t very successful either.
Jironza’s nephew, who rode with him, kept a journal at this time and said something to the effect that, even though it is very hard to instill the Christian faith into the hearts of the Apaches, once the impression is made, it will be as if stamped on bronze… Wishful thinking. The Apache would never really take to Catholicism.
There were a lot of these kinds of skirmishes that occurred during this time that saw many Apaches killed and many Spaniards slain. Even commanders and their families. Many horses were stolen and distributed throughout the west and the plains and amongst the Indians of northern Mexico.
Jacoby writes that some of these punitive Spanish attacks of this era would see up to 700 Apaches slain and most of their food and livestock destroyed. The Apache, Jacoby surmises, may have reached starvation levels. Which, obviously forced them to do more raids! The cycle constantly repeated itself.
These were truly brutal campaigns that the Spanish and Apache both suffered on. But it’s important to mention that when the Spanish fought the Apache at this time, it was so much more difficult for them than for later Euro-Americans who attempted to fight the Apache.
The Spanish weapons were cumbersome and difficult & time consuming to reload and heavy and long. The Apache could fire anywhere from four to ten arrows in the same amount of time it took one Spanish soldier to reload his muzzle loading firearm. One Spanish soldier said, quote, The first arrows shot from it carry a powerful force, which many times neither the shield, nor the leather accept can withstand. End quote.
Remember, I talked about those leather jackets in the Maria Y Pacheco story.
The Apaches would also, to make the arrow more dangerous and lethal, the Apache would dip their arrows into poison collected from venomous snakes or poisonous plants. Or they’d stick the arrow into the decaying bodies of animals or pockets full of bile. Or feces.
A Spanish Viceroy once complained about the difficulty in killing the Apache because they had quote, no towns, castles, or temples to defend they may only be attacked in their dispersed and movable rancherias. End quote.
The mountains which the Apache had already called their home for most of the year became their castles and temples. The mountains became their refuge and their saviors when the Spanish appeared. And they’d stay that way for centuries.
To the Mescalero Apaches near modern day Ruidoso in the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico, to the Mescalero, there are four mountains within the range that sits east of White Sands, but there are four mountains that, to them, represent the Four Directions of the Universe. To many Apaches, the Mountains we call Sky Islands for their biodiversity, but to many apaches, these rich and diverse mountains were what’s known as Medicine Mountains. Especially to the Mescalero. And these medicine mountains held great power. It’s said that in the beginning before there was man, the whole earth was flooded except for at the tops of mountains which is where the spirits congregated when they weren’t floating around. To this day, the clouds still get stuck on the tops of the mountains. The mountains have great power. Also water and springs and food and wood. Life, essentially.
Sierra Blanca, or White Mountain, for the Mescalero is where their creator, Usen, gave them life. It is where the White Painted Woman gave birth to the hero twins Child of Water and Killer of Enemies during a violent thunderstorm. She raised them to be brave and strong and to slay the giant enemies of the earth, like Giant Elk and Giant Eagle. And they would slay them, too. Much like in the story I told earlier.
The mountains not only fed and sheltered the Apache, but the mountains and sky islands allowed the Apache to hide from the invaders. The Apache would often build hastily crafted fortifications in the mountains or on rocky hillsides when outnumbered. The Spanish would refer to these as refugios. Obviously, they weren’t easy to assault or make war against.
The mountains offered great views to see approaching enemies. There were caves and canyons and rock outcrops that allowed the Apache to not only hide themselves and their families but also food and weapons and stolen loot. The mountains slowed the Apache’s pursuers. The Mountains became the Apache’s haven.
And then to make the Apache more of a menace to the Spanish, their fragmented political authority and low population density made them seem impossible to find and track down. They had no factories of production or supply lines to disrupt. And when their population got too low, it seems the Apache were adept at just adopting whole peoples into their ranks. Peoples like the Janos, Jocomes, and Sumans.
The Apache had no central decision maker which made it harder for the Spanish to hold a hostage or hold someone accountable for the raids that continuously rained down upon them.
All of this and other factors combined to make the Apache the hated, feared, and storied enemy of the Spanish, Mexican, and later Americans. Jacoby writes of this dynamic, quote:
The People's flexible blend of old and new left them well suited to the disruptions of European colonialism. Indeed, not only did the Ngee preserve their autonomy in the face of the Enemy's arrival; they expanded their sphere of operations, developing raiding corridors deep into Spanish-ruled Sonora and Chihuahua. The success of such raids and the People's other efforts to remain beyond the margins of Innaa control, however, transformed them into the targets of the Enemy's efforts at extermination in a way that the Sáikiné (Tohono O’odham) never experienced. Nnee evasion of this intended annihilation-and the People's exercise, in turn, of violence against the Spanish-speaks volumes as to the brutal forces shaping the borderlands at this time. End quote. The Innaa is enemy in Apache. The enemy of the Apache were both the Spanish, and the O’odham.
A lot of these battles were taking place in modern day Arizona. As can be guessed at by the fact that Pima Indian allies accompanied the Spanish flying companies.
And the Pima Indians also suffered greatly from the Apache attacks during this time. It wasn’t just the Spaniards being constantly marauded against. The Pimas had corn and livestock and were easier targets than the Puebloans, and Spanish pueblos and presidios.
In Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman’s Missions, Livestock, and Economic Transformations in the Pimería Alta, Barnet argues, quote, Apache raiding may have more significantly altered the daily life of the O’odham people than Spanish colonialism itself. End quote.
The Pimas or to themselves, the O’odam or simply, the people, they were enemies of the Apache. That is an understatement. The Apache called them either Sáíkiné, the sand House People, or Kełtł’ah izláhé which means Rope under their feet people, for their sandals.
The Pimas or O’odam became allied with the Spanish pretty quickly after the missionaries arrived. The missionaries in the 1680s, thought they were bravely going into unknown isolated desert communities of the Tohono O’odam or their Sand People neighbors the Hia-Ced O’odam but instead, they found a people who were using European steel, knew some Castilian, and even held out crosses to the newcomers. Clearly they knew who the Spanish were before the Spanish even knew they existed. But once the Spanish arrived with their diseases and the O’odam were decimated, like everyone in the new world, unfortunately, but the O’odam welcomed the Spanish. Who, brought with them old world crops that grew quite well in their desert soil. Crops and livestock that flourished. These were of great benefit to a people in such a harsh climate. The harsh desert Climate of the American Southwest and Mexican Northwest. The O’odham also greatly enjoyed some Spanish protection against the Apache.
While the O’odham had some skirmishes with the Spanish, after the Spanish pretty soundly defeated them, the O’odham sided with the Spaniards. And in turn, the Spanish requested that the O’odham proved their loyalty by fighting the Apaches.
By this time in the 1680s and 90s, the Apaches were burning many churches. Killing many of the religious. They destroyed many a town. Towns with names like Arispe, Cocospera, Rancheria Santa Cruz, which is where Fairbank Arizona is today. Which is itself very near Tombstone.
In 1698, in Rancheria Santa Cruz, a mostly Pima or O’odam village, the Apaches descended upon the town and killed the village’s chief. Along with some of his lieutenants. The Father at the Rancheria, an accomplished Jesuit Missionary to the Pima named Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino, he corralled the survivors of the attack to his adobe house as the pursuing Apaches, who now had an arquebus, threatened more death. Which they brought. They slaughtered the animals, killed more men, and began burning down the house with the village’s people and padre Kino still inside.
Thinking their work was done though, the Apaches began feasting on the fruits of their labor… only to be rode upon fiercely by a Pima warrior named Captain Coro. He was accompanied by a large number of other Pima warriors and traders who had been in his village, only about 3 miles down river, but he was accompanied by a large group of Pima who were quite ready to extract some vengeance on the Marauding apaches who were led by a man named Capotcari.
From here the story gets quite exciting and I am going to let Lockwood tell it.
Capotcari was the name of the Apache leader. He was a bold, capable wight and, withal, an insolent one. In the parley that took place after Coro arrived on the scene Capotcari made fun of Coro and his band, calling them women, and declaring that the Spaniards, with whom they were allied, were poltroons. He said he had killed many Pimas and Spaniards, and dared Coro, instead of fighting a general battle, to match ten Pimas against ten of his party and fight it out in this way. Nothing daunted, Coro accepted his proposal and picked ten brave Pimas to meet Capotcari's ten. Capotcari, as daring as he was abusive and boastful, led his band in person. The Apaches were very effective in offensive warfare, with spears and bows and arrows, but they were not so good at warding off the missiles of their foes.
The Pimas were good both in defensive and in offensive battle.
Very soon nine of the Apaches were either killed or out of the fighting; so Capotcari was left to bear the brunt of the fight. He was so skillful that he could catch with his hand the arrows that were launched at him. But when the antagonist who had engaged him saw this, he rushed upon him, threw him to the ground, and pounded him to death with a stone. End quote.
First of all, a poltroon is a quote unquote utter coward. So the Capotcari called the Captain Coro and his men a bunch of yellow bellied cowards.
Secondly, I’m not sure if Capotcari really caught arrows with his bare hands but that’s pretty awesome to imagine.
Apparently after this small fight, the rest of the Apaches were hunted down and many were killed. It was an impressive victory for the Pima and a sad defeat for the Apache. Apparently 300 Apaches were killed and 300 surrendered at the nearest Presidio.
In 1694, in the O’odham village of Quiburi, scalps were seen hanging from poles in the center of the village. Author Karl Jacoby in his Shadows at Dawn writes of this and another similar incident of observation when he wrote, quote,
In the village of Quiburi along the San Pedro River, observers noted that, quote, and he’s now quoting the observers, quote, hanging from a high pole in the center of the village were 13 scalps, bows, arrows, and other spoils taken from the many Apache enemies they had slain. End quote from the observer.
At the town of Jiaspi, commentators found, quote, scalps of six apache enemies, who they, the people, had filled recently, and two young apache prisoners. End all quotes.
While the O’odham understand that war and violent death had to occur and was now a fact of life with the Apaches, who had probably been fighting with the O’odham since the 1400s, or at least the O’odham’s ancestors. And 1400 would have been after the breakup of the Anasazi and Ancestral Puebloans, but the O’odham knew that war was necessary. But they had beliefs to keep it in check. Although, that was proving hard with the fierce Apache.
Karl Jacoby, although he is writing about the Apache, he does go into extremely interesting detail about the O’odham, whom, I believe are related to the Anasazi of Chaco and the Four Corners. But he mentions things about how they fought, especially in regards to how they fought against he Apache. It’s really awesome stuff and so I’m going to go a little off topic and talk about the O’odham for just a minute.
The O’odham believed that the Apache, their bodies, their belongings, held significant and dangerous power. Jacoby writes, quote,
The impact of touching the Enemy was so profound that upon killing or otherwise coming into contact with one, a now-weakened O’odham was expected to withdraw immediately from the field of combat, taking but a single trophy—a scalp, a weapon, or a piece of clothing—tied to a long pole to keep it at a safe remove from the rest of the party. Those who slew an Enemy might also paint their face black—a color that warned others not to approach them and that, because it summoned up images of drunkenness and dizziness, embodied for the People the disorienting passions released in warfare. As the ritual oration from one Tohono O'odham village put it:
My desire was the black madness of war.
I ground it to powder and herewith painted my face.
My desire was the black dizziness of war.
I tore it to shreds and herewith tied my hair in a war knot. End all quotes.
If a warrior O’odham touched an Apache he had killed during battle, he had to seclude himself form the rest of the people, he had to fast, and he had to ritually bathe. Meanwhile, the rest of the tribe would perform special dances around the scalp that had been retrieved. The scalp, thus cleansed, could now be used by the tribe to heal and provide fertility to the people and their crops.
This somewhat reminds me of the Zuni scalp ceremony…
Despite the restrictions and the cleansing and the reverence of the enemy and their belongings and their bodies… the O’odham were fierce warriors, taught how to fight from a young age. They were skilled with the bow and arrow and they were adept with their hide shields and their clubs of either mesquite or ironwood.
After reading that, I looked at my awesome ironwood carved figurines from Mexico a little differently… knowing they aren’t always carved into the ones I have like my roadrunner, coyote, wolf, bison, cowboy boot, or saguaro cactus, oh no.. they used to be carved into clubs with which to bash in the skulls of their enemies. And to the O’odham, who would fight them for hundreds of years, that enemy was the Apache.
By 1699, the Spanish were in southern Arizona converting the O’odham and building them villages. These proved to be great places to raid and the O’odham were the first line of defense for this far northern area of new Spain for the Spanish. The first line of defense. And the first target for the Apache.
Who, within the first few decades of the 1700s, would become so fearful, that according to Frank c Lockwood in his the Apache Indians, by 1724 quote, the Apaches had become so aggressive that it looked as if white civilization in northern Mexico would be wiped out. End quote.
In the next episode, I will cover the Apaches and their interactions with the people of the American Southwest and its borderlands throughout the 18th Century. Pretty much from 1700 until around the mid 1800s. But it will start in the mid 1600s with a group of Apaches that lived on the Great Plains. I will also cover the Apaches interactions with the Spanish, the Mexicans, and then finally, the Americans.
I still don’t know how this series is going to look or how long it will be but I plan on talking about the key Apache figures like Red Sleeves, Cochise, Geronimo, Victorio, and others. Many of them overlap and many of the stories are spread out so… who knows how I will map it all out but I’m excited. Before I started this series I knew very little about the Apache. Next to nothing really. But as always, the more I learn, the more awesome it is and the more excited I am to learn more.
So stay tuned, and I’ll see you again soon, in the American southwest.
Selected Sources:
The Apache Indians by Frank C Lockwood
Once They Moved Like The Wind by David Roberts
The Bears Ears by David Roberts
The Navajo by Clyde Kluckhorhn & Dorothea Leighton
Fossil Legends of the First Americans by Adrienne Mayor
Frontiers: A Short History of the American West by Robert V Hine & John Mack Faragher
From Cochise to Geronimo: The Chiricahua Apaches 1874-1886 by Edwin R Sweeney
Shadows at Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the Violence of History by Karl Jacoby
Western Apache Language and Culture by Keith H Basso
The Indian Frontier of the American West 1846-1890 by Robert M Utley
A Portal to Paradise by Alden Hayes
The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American History by Paul Andrew Hutton
Revisiting Montezuma Castle by Eric a Powell
Apache Legends and Lore of Southern New Mexico by Lynda A Sanchez
The Sacred Clown of the Chiricahua and Mescalero Apaches by L. Bryce Boyer, Ruth M. Boyer
https://www.maskmuseum.org/apache-gaan-post/
https://www.archaeology.org/issues/250-1703/trenches/5293-trenches-arizona-hopi-montezuma-castle