THE MESCALERO APACHE LONG WALK:

It came to be called the Long Walk -- in the 1860s, more than 10,000 Navajos and Mescalero Apaches were forcibly marched to a desolate reservation in eastern New Mexico called Bosque Redondo. Nearly one-third of those interned there died of disease, exposure and hunger, held captive by the U.S. Army.

A new memorial center dedicated to remembering the tragedy that almost wiped out the Navajo Nation opened June 4 in New Mexico. The great-great grandsons and granddaughters of the survivors of the Long Walk were there to pay homage, to mourn the dead and celebrate the tribe's ultimate survival.

The Long Walk was largely ignored by a nation embroiled in the Civil War. Beginning in 1863, Gen. James Henry Carleton, commander of New Mexico Territory, decided to solve, once and for all, the "Navajo problem." Some Indians escape the brutal roundup in the Four Corners area, but most surrender.

Ragged queues of defeated Navajos left in batches from Ft. Defiance, Ariz. Men, women, children and the elderly walked 450 miles, in frigid winter and baking summer. Some drowned crossing the Rio Grande. Stragglers were shot and left behind.

Their destination was Fort Sumner and a camp called Bosque Redondo -- 40 square miles of shortgrass prairie and thorn desert, bisected by the Pecos River in New Mexico. The Navajo, and a smaller number of Apache, lived in crude shelters improvised from branches and tattered canvas. Pneumonia, dysentery and smallpox devastated their numbers.

After four years at Bosque Redondo, the Army considered it a failed experiment and escorted the survivors back to their homeland -- but only after an estimated 2,380 people died. But times have definitely changed: While it was the U.S. Army that almost obliterated the Navajo Nation, it was the Department of Defense that contributed most of the funds to build the Bosque.

 

Fort Defiance, Arizona’s first military post, the Town of Ganado, and Hubbell’s famous trading post (now a National Historic Site) are located in northern Apache County on the Navajo Reservation. Chinle, another Indian trade center, is the gateway to the spectacular Canyon de Chelly National Monument. Also in Apache County are the spectacular Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert, Window Rock, the Navajo tribal capital, and Casa Malpais Archaeological site. The Apache Indian Reservation, located in the White Mountains around the settlement of Fort Apache, includes excellent fishing lakes  a highly successful lumber mill and a casino.

Apache is a collective name given to several culturally related tribes that speak variations of the Athapaskan language and are of the Southwest cultural area. Closely related to the Navajo, both peoples separated from the Athapaskans in western Canada, migrating to the southwestern United States. Although there is some evidence Southern Athabaskan peoples may have visited the Southwest as early as the 13th century AD, most scientists believe they arrived permanently only a few decades before the Spanish.

The Zuni, a Pueblo people, gave them the name Apachu, meaning “enemy.” In their dialects the Apache call themselves Tinneh, Tinde, Dini, or one of several other variations, all meaning “the people.”Apache Before the Storm. Apache Before the Storm.

Early Apache were a nomadic people, ranging over a wide area of the United States and as far south as Mexico. They were primarily hunter-gatherers, with some bands hunting buffalo and some practicing limited farming. Men participated in hunting and raiding activities, while women gathered food, wood, and water. Western Apache tribes were matrilineal, tracing descent through the mother; other groups traced their descent through both parents. Polygamy was practiced when economic circumstances permitted and marriage could be terminated easily by either party. Their dwellings were shelters of brush called wickiups, which were easily erected by the women and were well adapted to their arid environment and constant shifting of the tribes. Some families lived in buffalo-hide teepees, especially among the Kiowa-Apache and Jicarilla. The Apache made little pottery, and were known instead for their fine basketwork. In traditional Apache culture, each band was made up of extended families with a headman chosen for leadership abilities and exploits in war. For centuries they were fierce warriors, adept in wilderness survival, who carried out raids on those who encroached on their territory.

Religion was a fundamental part of Apache life. Their pantheon of supernatural beings included Ussen (or Yusn), the Giver of Life, and the ga’ns, or mountain spirits, who were represented in religious rites such as healing and puberty ceremonies. Men dressed elaborately to impersonate the ga’ns, wearing kilts, black masks, tall wooden-slat headdresses, and body paint, and carrying wooden swords.

Trade was established between the long established Pueblo peoples and the Southern Athabaskans by the mid 16th century, exchanging maize and woven goods for bison meat, hides and material for stone tools.
The Apache and the Pueblos managed to maintain generally peaceful relations; however this changed with the appearance of the Spaniards.Arriving in the mid 1500s, the first Spanish intruders drove northward into Apache territory disrupting the Apache trade connections with neighboring tribes.
In April 1541, while traveling on the plains east of the Pueblo region, Francisco Coronado wrote: “After seventeen days of travel, I came upon a rancheria of the Indians who follow these cattle [bison.] These natives are called Querechos. They do not cultivate the land, but eat raw meat and drink the blood of the cattle they kill. They dress in the skins of the cattle, with which all the people in this land clothe themselves, and they have very well-constructed tents, made with tanned and greased cowhides, in which they live and which they take along as they follow the cattle. They have dogs which they load to carry their tents, poles, and belongings.”

When New Mexico became a Spanish colony in 1598, hostilities increased between Spaniards and Apache. One source of the friction with the Spaniards was with the slave traders, who hunted down captives to serve as labor in the silver mines of Chihuahua in northern Mexico. The Apache, in turn, raided Spanish settlements to seize cattle, horses, firearms, and captives of their own. Before long, the prowess of the Apache in battle became legend. The Apache were not so numerous at the beginning of the 17th century; however, their numbers were increased by captives from other tribes, particularly the Pueblo, Pima, Papago, and other peaceful Indians, as well as white and Spanish peoples. Extending their depredations as far southward as Jalisco, Mexico, the Apache quickly became known for their warlike disposition.
An influx of Comanche into traditional Apache territory in the early 1700s forced the Lipan and other Apache to move south of their main food source, the buffalo. These displaced Apache then increased their raiding on the Pueblo Indians and non-Indian settlers for food and livestock.

 Apache raids on settlers and migrants crossing their lands continued into the period of American westward expansion and the United States acquisition of New Mexico in 1848. Some Apache bands and the United States military authorities engaged in fierce wars until the Apache were pacified and moved to reservations.

 The Mescalero were subdued by 1868 and placed on a reservation at Fort Sumner in eastern New Mexico with the Navajo. The Western Apache and their Yavapai allies were subdued in the U.S. military’s Tonto Basin Campaign of 1872-1873.

The Chiricahua Chief Cochise signed a treaty with the U.S. government in 1872 and moved with his band to an Apache reservation in Arizona. But Apache resistance continued under the Mimbreno Chief Victorio from 1877 to 1880.
Geronimo was one of the fiercest Apache Chiefs that ever lived.

The last band of Apache raiders, active in ensuing years under the Chiricahua Warrior Geronimo, was hunted down in 1886 and sent first to Florida, then to Alabama, and finally to the Oklahoma Territory, where they settled among the Kiowa-Apache.

The major Apache groups, each speaking a different dialect, include the Jicarilla and Mescalero of New Mexico, the Chiricahua of the Arizona- New Mexico border area, and the Western Apache of Arizona. The Yavapai-Apache Nation Reservation is southwest of Flagstaff, Arizona. Other groups were the Lipan Apache of south-western Texas and the Plains Apache of Oklahoma .

The White Mountain Apache Tribe is located in the east central region of Arizona, 194 miles northeast of Phoenix. This group manages the popular Sunrise Park Ski Resort and Fort Apache Timber Company. The Tonto Apache Reservation was created in 1972 near Payson in eastern Arizona. Within the Tonto National Forest, northeast of Phoenix, the reservation consists of 85 acres, serves about 100 tribal members, and operates a casino.

 Noted leaders have included Cochise, Mangas Coloradas, Chief Victorio and Geronimo, who the U.S. Army found to be fierce warriors and skillful strategists.

In 2000 U.S. census about 57,000 people identified themselves as Apache only; an additional 40,000 people reported being part Apache. Many Apache live on reservations in Arizona and New Mexico. Farming, cattle herding, and tourist-related businesses are important economic activities. The modern Apache way of life is a mixture of traditional beliefs and rituals, such as mountain spirit dances, and contemporary American culture.

 Kathy Weiser,owner and editor kathy@legendsofamerica.com

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