D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
December 2011
Hiking ApacheriaNo Boundaries
Traveling into Mexican Apacheria recalls what all this area must have been like when only the Apache lived here.
by Jerry Eagan
"…the Apache people fought Aztecs, Pimas, Tarahumara and other people… [with the coming of the Spanish and their use of horses and armor and insatiable lust for gold] …the N'de sent runners to the settled peoples, demanding that all items with gold be discarded. Those who did not comply were annihilated. When the Spanish came, the People of the Rising Sun remained hidden and observed the Spanish and their ways with due caution. Thus, the Chiricahua bands remained unknown to the Spanish as a people for 'the lifetime of one man.'"
— The Chiricahua Apache, 1846-1876:
From War to Reservations by D. C. Cole
As Brian Huberman and I drove west towards Tucson — the second time in less than 96 hours — it came to me like the first scent of someone burning sandalwood incense, more in a soft rich sensation rather than words: For the first time since I began "Hiking Apacheria" in 2002, I realized I'd finally experienced Apacheria as it was, before Spaniards, Mexicans or Americans — those western European conquerors, intruders, interlopers, soul-stealers and treasure hunters — had first come to take the land from the Apaches with little regard for those who had been here for thousands of years.
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Photo taken near the so-called Conference Site where General Crook and Geronimo met, in Cañon de los Embudos, Mexico. (Photos by Jerry Eagan) |
Not that they were all Apaches, or always had been called Apaches, but these first-generation native peoples of various names by 1886, when they were called "Chiricahua," were ultimately driven east, to Florida, Alabama, Oklahoma and finally to Mescalero, NM, finally — places foreign to their mindset. The Apache called themselves "N'de" (NN-deh) or "The People."
Even though those who'd been here for that time said the Apache had always been here — which I can't agree with — there's plenty of evidence that the people we Westerners call "Apache" were nonetheless "first-generation" Americans. Perhaps 1,000 years ago, ancestors of the Athabaskan speakers were without doubt walking south, having crossed the Bering Strait who knows how long before that. Perhaps by 1300 to 1400 AD those Athabaskan speakers had begun to smash into the quieter, less war-like groups that had emerged in this part of the world as much as 1,000 years earlier. Those people we've called the Anasazi, Hohokam, Mogollon, Saladan and Sinagua were the ones who first felt the fate of clashing with those ultimately called N'de.
The last of the Athabaskan speakers, many believe, arrived between 1400 and the latter part of the 1600s. Many anthropologists and archaeologists place the people Western Europeans called Apache as arriving in the Southwest relatively close to the Spanish. D.C. Cole states in his book The Chiricahua Apaches, 1846-1876: From War to Reservations that the Chiricahua say they "watched the White Man for a generation before they came out of the rugged spaces from where they spied those Spaniards first."
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Sierra los Embudos from two miles north of the US-Mexico border. |
I'm not an anthropologist or archaeologist. Nonetheless, when I worked at Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument in 2002, we learned that some archaeologists placed the inhabitants of those dwellings as arriving in the latter half of the 13th century. Archaeologists also believed the inhabitants of the Cliff Dwellings were close in lifestyles to the Tularosa Mogollon and that artifacts found at the Gila Cliff Dwellings were similar to those found in Tularosa Cave, a few miles east of Aragon, NM.
In the 1960s, anthropologists Albert Schroeder and Harry Basehart scoured Spanish records as well as the oral traditions of first-generation peoples such as the Zuni, Hopi and Puebloan peoples for mention of their enemies and friends. The purpose was to establish an official government view on who was where and when in relation to tribal claims being made by many native groups in that decade. Schroeder laid out a grid in his book, A Study of the Apache Indians.
In 1770, according to author and historian David Brugge, the name applied to the peoples who were located in Southeast Arizona (whom we've called "Chiricahua") was "Segliande." In the Upper Gila, the peoples the Spanish encountered there were called "Chiquende," who evolved into the Mimbres Apache. Schroeder also applied the names "Iccujenne" and "Tecujenne" to the Mimbres Apache.
By 1874, in a report on the status of the men, women and children he was responsible for at the Southern Chiricahua Apache Agency, Tom Jeffords called those people "Cochise's Band." In 1890, Captain John Bourke called the Southern Apache people "Nindehe" and the Apaches of Southeastern Arizona "Chokonni," which meant "juniper people." Another translation of "Chokonen" is "People of the Rising Sun." The Eastern Group Bourke called "Chie" or "Red Paint People." In 1907, Curtis labeled the Apaches of northern Mexico "Nde Ndai," which meant "half Apache-half Mexican." By 1941, Morris Opler called the Apaches of Mexico "Ndendai," or "Enemy People." Schroeder's grid notes too the "Ndendai" and "Ndein dai" were the Apaches of Northern Mexico, and he listed a variety of other names for other groups of Apaches.
I've always believed the Apaches are the only ones with the right to decide what to call themselves. Colonialism wrongly conferred to the colonialist the task of "naming" indigenous peoples. Even so, American scientists have learned as much as possible through talks with Apaches who were confined to the reservations in Florida, Alabama, Oklahoma and New Mexico who had been among those exiled to those places beginning in 1886 — the living Apaches survivors of the American, Mexican and Apache Wars of the 19th century. They learned Apache oral traditions that defined their roots. Men like Schrader, Basehart, Bourke, Goodwin, then, were lucky in that they talked with Apache men and women who'd heard those stories from others who went further back into the earliest days of the 19th century.
This process isn't unique to American archaeologists and anthropologists. The same phenomenon has occurred worldwide as nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples have been overrun and confined. Always the more powerful, more numerous finally say where these previous nomads will live after being conquered.
Because northern Mexico today is so similar now to what it was in 1886, when the majority of the Apache were subdued and sent into exile, I sensed before our departure that Brian and I were going to get closer to places where the Apache lived in periodic peace with the Mexicans. As a result, we were poised for a true adventure.
For four years, Texas-based filmmaker Brian Huberman (see "From Water to Water," August 2011) had badgered me about going to Mexico. He was obsessed with visiting Cañon de los Embudos, which straddles the north-south line between Chihuahua and Sonora. Less than 30 miles south of the American-Mexican Border, Cañon de los Embudos is clearly more than just the place where Geronimo first attempted to surrender in 1886. Of course, it was easier for me to state that so clearly since I'd been there in 2007. Brian hadn't first contacted me until later in 2007, when I'd come back from that trip; now he seemed determined to go there, even though there'd been enormous changes in Mexico since 2007.
In 2009, an acquaintance had sent me photos of a slaughter that one group of drug cartelistas had wrought upon some victims — whether police, soldiers or other "sicarios" (thugs or hit men) was unclear. He suggested I think twice before I opened the link to those photos. "They're damned grim, Jerry," he'd added.
Having seen the carnage of war, I went ahead and opened the dozen photo attachments he'd sent. He was right — the scene was something I'd never seen before: bodies packed like cordwood in a newer model Dodge van. It reminded me of the days in the 1950s or early 1960s when college kids stacked as many bodies as possible in a Volkswagen or phone booth. Those college kids had attempted to set new world records of such feats. Somehow, I doubted the sicarios who'd perpetrated this violence cared about setting some new grim Guinness record.
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An Apache stronghold, two miles north of the border. This position allows for a distant view of Sierra los Embudos and could have allowed Apaches to provide a fighting or holding position whereby women and children could enter Mexico if being pursued by American forces (or vice versa). |
All the bodies had been dismembered. The cuts were smooth, clean, not ragged — as if they'd been made by a surgical saw, not a chain saw. I hoped those beastly surgeons hadn't performed their grizzly work on people still alive — but while I hoped that, I sensed that probably wasn't the case. In other scenes, the torsos lay in two separate lines, and in some photos men with their faces blacked out were trying to rearrange the body parts with the torsos based on clothing. There were no heads.
Brian later told me that somehow, using Google Images, his engineer had found those photos on the web, and that he'd been able to see the heads/faces of those poor human beings who'd been cut apart.
Nonetheless, as each year ticked by, Brian still wanted to go to Mexico. I'd learned more about the mayhem in Mexico and everything I'd read was punctuated by those photos of those dismembered bodies. Even so, I had an interest in returning to the Cañon. The experience of being at Cañon de los Embudos in 2007 had fired my mind with possibilities. I'd have returned immediately, but that wasn't possible. As months turned to years, the chaos in Mexico worsened. I talked with law enforcement sources, then to friends of friends whom I knew visited Mexico often.
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