D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
December
2008
HIKING APACHERIA
I Hike Where They Lead Me
Getting to know Larry Foster, the current owner of the ranch that lies where Apache chief Mangas Coloradas once called home.
Story and photos by Jerry Eagan
Some people have asked me, "How do you wind up writing what you write?" In the case of writing about Mangas Coloradas and the Mangas Creek Ranch, the route was circuitous. Three years ago, while hiking the East Fork of the Gila River, I met a young man who spoke about hiking the Burros. He said the Burros had numerous Mogollon sites, and had once had plenty of water. Even before that encounter, I'd read about Dr. Michael Steck, the Indian agent who planned a reservation here, and the Apache warrior Mangas Coloradas.
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The view towards Greenwood Canyon from the eastern ranges of the Mangas Creek Ranch. |
Andrea Jaquez at WNMU's Miller Library had helped me secure many invaluable interlibrary loan requests from other libraries nationally. Of special interest were military and Bureau of Indian Affairs records, most of which are held by the National Archives in Washington, DC. For my work, the most important of these have been the microfilm records, which document either the military campaigns against the Apache, or records of interactions between Indian Agents and the Apache in Arizona and New Mexico. I've perused a hundred or so microfilm rolls, which are considered primary sources. I interpret what those resources reveal for me, and then I hike into places where I will find where the Apache were, based on those sources.
Spiritually, in less than three years, I believe I've been led closer and closer to Mangas Coloradas, actually hiking where he walked and lived — his Apacheria. In my mind's eye, I see a wide, sweeping arc of energy revealing more and more, as I experience Mangas himself.
Knowing my interest in Apacheria, Andrea asked one day if I'd like to meet the owner of the ranch where Mangas' village had been located. I said, "Hell, yes!"
And so, last November, after several exchanged email messages with Larry Foster, the current owner of Mangas Creek Ranch, he suggested we meet at the local "Wally World" parking lot. He would be driving a truck up from Las Cruces, hauling a large stock trailer, which he wanted to drop at his ranch — which he and his son, Dean, now call the "Flying U Ranch."
As we drove to his ranch, which is around 2,300 acres, to conduct what he called a survey of the condition of his grasslands, he pointed out various ranches along Hwy. 180 W. and who had or now owned them. Larry said he conducted his annual grass survey by photographing a dozen of so plots of grass, all of which were preregistered, and designed so he could place a homemade three-by-three-foot grid of PVC tube over each plot. His digital camera, with time and date stamps, could document any claims he might have with the Bureau of Land Management, if that was ever necessary. He could also evaluate the effects of the drought.
The conversation was easy enough. He spoke and I'd jump in and ask a question. He spoke slower than my mind and mouth raced, so it took most of that first meeting for me to slow down, and give him room to talk without interruptions. It was clear we moved on different speeds when it came to questions and answers.
Earlier, when we'd first exchanged emails, I'd told him that another historian, Keith Humphries from Las Cruces, had written a book about the Apache history of our corner of New Mexico, Apache Land: From Those Who Lived It. Was he aware of the "Apache site" Humphries said was on his land? Larry said he wasn't, nor did he know how or when Humphries had taken his photograph of the site. Since then, Larry has told me he believes Humphries was completely off the mark; he has a scientific reason for that conclusion, and I accept it. But, at the time, last November, this information had piqued Larry's interest. He said we'd go to that spot first, since it logical to start there, on the route he normally traveled for his grass survey.
Driving some distance, we went up a hill that looked down on the ranch proper. From where we stood, Larry said the current ranch house had eventually been adobed inside and outside and modernized. He told me the site was where his family had built a summer home used during the years he was growing up on the ranch (1944-1965) and when he came home from college. (He earned a BS from Colorado State University, then a MS and PhD from the University of Nebraska, in animal nutrition.) He said in the years before swamp coolers, much less air conditioners, the hill house was a welcome place to be when the normal afternoon breezes came up.
"Those summers were hot, but the breezes were also good, when they came," he said as we walked around the hilltop.
He pointed to a spot 20 yards away from where we stood, at the location of the house. "There's the old TV antenna we had up here. We got pretty good reception," he said, and we both reminisced about the rabbit-ears days of black-and-white TV.
I'd brought the Humphries book with me, and opened it to the photo of where Humphries claimed a woman named Rita was buried. Humphries wrote with a particular glow of reverence for the women in his stories. In Rita's case, she was a Hispanic woman who'd actually been abducted by Mangas Coloradas himself.
According to Humphries, Rita-Gonzalez Melendez and her Spanish family were one of 25 who lived and worked near the torreon-style presidio located near the Santa Rita del Cobre mine, in the early 1800s. During those years before this land passed from Spanish and Mexicanto American control, that small mining colonia was at the mercy of Mangas Coloradas. Rita, Humphries claimed, was born in 1818; Humphries added she was abducted "as a virgin of 14, for the third squaw (sic) of Mangas Coloradas, also known as Red Sleeves."
Humphries said Mangas was six-feet-five-inches tall, and the raid in which Rita was taken happened before he became "chief at age 42, in 1832." Her family was traveling to Apache Tejo, which today lies directly west and in front of the Hurley tailings, down in a cienega, on the east side of Hwy. 180, north of the road to the Grant County Airport. It's marked by a rusting, nearly unreadable metal sign over the access road, in an area is owned by Freeport-McMoran and posted with "No Trespassing" signs everywhere.
Humphries detailed in his book how Rita, prior to her death, asked to be buried at the spot where we stood that November morning (if, in fact, she or anyone else was actually buried there). There was no mistaking the general location, as we compared the photo to the spot. But the landmarks had changed, and the result was inconclusive.
It was nearly 3 p.m. when we returned to the Wal-Mart parking lot. During our drive together, Larry and I established that we were both historians, and roughly of the same age group. I sensed Larry was a product of a family that valued education. He had been employed by NMSU for more than twenty years as an extension beef cattle specialist. He'd traveled to every county and every reservation in New Mexico in those years, and gotten to know lots of ranchers.
Since that first meeting, we've gotten together at the ranch or his home in Las Cruces five times. I've met Larry's wife (who has the same name as my wife), his son, daughter-in-law and their child. I've offered to take them hiking around the Burros, to a few special places. I took Larry to two sites, one exclusively Mogollon, while the other has been confirmed as an Apache site. Larry, in spite of having grown up in the neighborhood, had never heard of or seen either site.