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.
 |
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.
Several threads have run through what I've learned about the Fosters and the Metcalfes, who owned Mangas Creek Ranch before Fred Foster, Larry's father, married into the family (see "O Pioneers!," October 2008). The first is that the Metcalfes were true pioneers and, to some degree, explorers, too. James K. Metcalfe, his brothers, and father had all traveled to California, then even the Pacific Northwest, before returning to fight in the Civil War. James K. and Robert Metcalfe had then returned to New Mexico, as pioneers. While not as adventurous as the Metcalfes, the Fosters came west from Missouri, after the Civil War.
The second key characteristic was education. Orrick Metcalfe, James K.'s son, assumed ownership of the land when James K. died in 1910. Orrick Baylor Metcalfe was born in 1879 and died in 1936. In addition to being a part-time miner, Orrick was also a car dealer in Silver City. Orrick was a rancher, botanist, plant collector, plant ecologist and miner. He resided at the Mangas Creek Ranch, and then in Silver City, following his taking over of the ranch. Orrick collected plants in New Mexico's Black Range and Mimbres Valley, as well as near his Mangas Creek Ranch, in the years 1901-1904, as part of his studies.
Orrick gained his bachelor of science degree at New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts in Las Cruces (now NMSU). His senior thesis was "Flora in the Mesilla Valley" (1903). His master's thesis was on soil analysis and "the tension line in the Mesilla Valley between saltbrush (Atriplex canescens) and creosote bush." He also taught auto mechanics at what's now NMSU, entered the auto business in Silver City, and was often involved in mining activity. His son was killed in a mining accident, and Orrick was also killed in a bizarre mine accident near Pinos Altos.
The third characteristic of the early Metcalfes was that they got involved early in mining. James K. and his brother were credited with finding one of the more significant copper veins near present-day Clifton-Morenci, Ariz. Clearly, each used mining to supplement their ranching income. (The Fosters never were involved in mining.)
I spoke with Larry Foster most recently last month. I'd already hiked four times on the ranch land, and had gotten a grasp of the rough canyons and mountains that cover not only the Mangas Creek Ranch west of Hwy. 180, but also the vast Forest Service holdings from there to the Gila River.
Each time I've walked, Larry and his son Dean have briefed me on where the Foster properties are, where BLM or Forest Service lands are located, and where neighboring ranches are located. Larry has clarified the "trespass rules" in New Mexico for me.
Of course, by the time I met Larry, I'd already learned about stock-gate etiquette. Recently, taking a group of hikers through Cooke's Canyon, I saw how someone had come through who knew nothing about stock gates. Taking both ends of the gate out of the normal fence hooks, they'd just flung the gate onto the ground. Luckily, the cattle normally grazing there were a few miles to the east. This sort of thing infuriates ranchers. Why wouldn't it? Would you like rounding up your pets if someone let them out of your back yard?
There are no trails on the ranch for hikers. It's all running ridges, using maps, compass, and being mindful of how much daylight I have left. But there's history everywhere out there, and it's been a pleasure walking upon the lands where not only Mangas and his people lived, but the Mogollon peoples before them.
"I really appreciate your letting me walk your land," I've told Larry, more than once. In fact, every rancher who has allowed me to walk his land has given me such a wonderful gift; they may never know just how much it means to me to walk for miles at a time, uninterrupted. All of this space and emptiness, which Buddhists call "shunyata," has provided a physical and emotional healing space where I can be quiet and alone.
Larry Foster, I've learned, worked as a research scientist for Oregon State University, at the Eastern Oregon Squaw Butte Research station, near Burns, Ore. He left Oregon about the time I arrived to work on my own master's at the University of Oregon — the last day of December, 1973. There in Oregon in the 1970s, we both saw our first free-ranging buffalo herd, near John Day, Ore.
"I'll never forget how my wife and I watched that herd for an hour or more," Larry told me. "And all of that time, the leading edge of that buffalo herd grazed and walked, heads down, grazed and walk, until they had passed us, as we sat in the car, mesmerized by the sight."
Both our imaginations had been fired by watching that buffalo herd. It was my first insight into how such herds were, in and of themselves, living entities, and suddenly made clearer to me why the buffalo were sacred to Native Americans. Lewis and Clark, Oate and Coronado all talked about the countless buffalo they'd passed through for days, as they penetrated North America.
One of Larry's older brothers, Bob Foster, had been a "spook" stationed with the Army in Germany during the Cold War. I got the impression Bob had been Army Intelligence. Once, Larry said, Bob told him one of the highlights of his tour was "stealing a Russian tank and taking it into West Germany," for analysis.
Bob died in 1984, Larry told me. Bob had returned to the States after his Army enlistment, and done other things. Bob apparently drank. Whether the drinking had been triggered by what he did in the Army, Larry didn't know. Bob lived in the bunkhouse near the original "Metcalfe place."
Larry's other older brother, Don(ovan), died in 2003. Larry said he'd led a successful life, first as a computer engineer, then in a position that was more economic and business related in nature. Like Mollie Metcalfe, daughter of James K., Don Foster left a substantial estate to Stanford University.
With the passing of two older brothers, Larry Foster was left solely to tend to the ranch that had been in his family since the death of the last Metcalfe.
Orrick Metcalfe had taken over the ranch in 1910, upon James K.'s death. The Depression caused plenty of ranchers to lose their ranches, or mortgage them to the hilt. Orrick never lost the Mangas Creek Ranch, but he did lose part of it when he'd borrowed money from another locally well-known rancher. On the day the loan was due, the money was on a train sitting at Deming. For whatever reasons, Orrick hadn't been able to get to the money that day. The man who'd loaned Orrick the money called in the loan; Orrick couldn't pay the loan off the day it was due, and lost that portion of the ranch.
I asked Larry if the family was bitter about that.
"Oh, for awhile, I think there were hard feelings," he replied, "but after awhile, it didn't matter."
In 1936, Orrick died in a mine accident. "They didn't use hard hats, like now," Larry said. Orrick apparently reared up and bashed his head into some of the support beams on the mine's ceiling. He must not have thought about being checked out. He went home at lunch, and apparently died of a brain hemorrhage later that day.
With Orrick Metcalfe and Orrick's son gone, Fred Foster, Larry's father, took over the ranch. He'd married into the Metcalfes, and as Orrick had no other successor, Fred was the next male willing to take the ranch and work it. As before, the ranch was never large enough to make a full living. In his turn, Larry has done much the same thing, working full-time as a consultant for NMSU and ranching on the side. His son Dean works at WNMU, and works the ranch now, too.
Larry and I have never hiked his 2,300 acres of Apacheria together. I've asked if he'd get permission from the current owner, his neighbor, to go down Mangas Creek, so we could experience that beautiful place. I am not sure what Larry would say about those lands. At one time, they belonged to the Metcalfes, too, but the ranch has since lost those sections.
"I guess we've just decided losing land doesn't have to mean the end of the world," Larry said. That comment racks up for me as yet another positive characteristic: proportionality, or lack of envy. However he meant it, I took it to mean that acquisition of more and more land has never driven the Melcalfes and Fosters.
In our most recent talk, I asked Larry what he was reading. On two previous trips to his home in Las Cruces, I'd looked over his books. Like me, he was an avid reader of history. He said he'd been reading The Western Paradox, edited by Bernard DeVoto — who, Larry said, was one of the earliest and most salient critics of so-called "welfare ranchers and welfare ranching." Larry said DeVoto was among the first environmentalists to call western ranching a form of "welfare."
"Why read him?" I asked
"Well, it's sort of like 'know your enemy,'" Larry replied. He didn't elaborate, but I took it as an example of how Larry has used his education to inform himself with information that often runs counter to his own views.
I can't explain how walking in these vast empty spaces helps me, but I think he "gets it." This land is special to Larry Foster, too. It's not about dominating the land, or possessing it. I think it's just more a sense that all the history that has passed over it has left an energy there that is ephemeral and transitory in nature. In that way, "getting it" is as elusive as grabbing a fistful of air.
Jerry Eagan is always interested in visiting places connected to Apache history. He can be reached at skymindgraphics@zianet.com This is the 14th article in his "Hiking Apacheria" series; to read the complete series, see www.desertexposure.com/apacheria