Mescalero

Mescalero Apache

Mescalero Apache Tribal Administrative Offices and Community Center in Mescalero, New Mexico
Total population
3,156
Regions with significant populations
Languages
Mescalero, English, Spanish
Religion
Indigenous Religion, mescalero
Related ethnic groups
Western Apache, San Carlos Apache, White Mountain Apache, Navajo

Mescalero or Mescalero Apache is an Apache tribe of Southern Athabaskan Native Americans. The tribe is federally recognized as the Mescalero Apache Tribe of the Mescalero Apache Reservation, located in south central New Mexico.

In the nineteenth century, the Mescalero opened their reservation to other Apache bands, such as the Mimbreno and the Chiricahua, many of whom had been imprisoned in Florida. The Lipan Apache also joined the reservation. Their descendants are enrolled in the Mescalero Apache Tribe.

Reservation

Two Mescalero women, with tipis and ramada (to the left).

Originally established on May 27, 1873,[1] by Executive Order of President Ulysses S. Grant, the reservation was first located near Fort Stanton. The present reservation was established in 1883. It has a land area of 1,862.463 km² (719.101 sq mi), almost entirely in Otero County. The 463,000-acre reservation lies on the eastern flank of the Sacramento Mountains and borders the Lincoln National Forest. A small unpopulated section is in Lincoln County just southwest of Ruidoso. U.S. Route 70 is the major highway through the reservation.

The tribe has an economy based largely on ranching and tourism. The mountains and foothills are forested with pines; resource and commercial development is managed carefully by the Mescalero Apache Tribal Council. The Mescalero Apache developed a cultural center near the tribal headquarters on U.S. Route 70 in the reservation's largest community of Mescalero. On display are tribal artifacts and important historical information. The tribe also operates another, larger museum on the western flank of the Sacramento Mountains in Dog Canyon, south of Alamogordo.

The tribe developed and owns the Inn of the Mountain Gods Resort and Casino ("IMG") within Lincoln National Forest. As part of the IMG operation, the tribe also owns and manages Ski Apache under contract as a concession with the US Forest Service. It is the southernmost major ski area in North America. In January 2012, Ski Apache celebrated its 50th anniversary.

The ski area is situated adjacent to the massive peak of Sierra Blanca a 12,003-foot (3,659 m) mountain.[2] It is the southernmost alpine peak in the Continental United States and is part of the Sacramento Mountains. Using the EPA's Level III Ecoregion System, derived from Omernik, this mountain is included in the "Arizona/New Mexico Mountains," which is south of the "Southern Rocky Mountains" of northern New Mexico.[3] Sierra Blanca peak, located on the reservation, is sacred ground for the Mescalero Apache Tribe. They do not allow access without a permit.

Tribal government

The Mescalero Apache Tribe holds elections for the office of president every two years. The eight Tribal Council members also are elected for two years. Election for the Council is held every year, when one half of the members are up for reelection. The reservation had a population of 3,156 according to the 2000 census.

In 1959, the tribe elected Virginia Klinekole as its first woman president.[4] She later was elected to the Tribal Council, serving on it until 1986.[5] The tribe repeatedly re-elected Wendell Chino as president; he served a total of 43 years, until his death on November 4, 1998.

Soon after Chino's death, the late Sara Misquez was elected as president. Chino's son, Mark Chino, also has been elected and served as president.

New officers have served in the 21st century. On January 11, 2008 Carleton Naiche-Palmer was sworn in as the new president of the Mescalero Apache tribe.[6] Since 2014 Danny Breuninger has served in office, now in his second term. Gabee Aguilar is Vice President.

Culture and language

The Mescalero language is a Southern Athabaskan language which is a subfamily of the Athabaskan and Dené–Yeniseian families. Mescalero is part of the southwestern branch of this subfamily; it is very closely related to Chiricahua, and more distantly related to Western Apache. These are considered the three dialects of Apachean. Although Navajo is a related Southern Athabaskan language, its language and culture are considered distinct from those of the Apache.

The Mescalero Apache were primarily a nomadic mountain people. They traveled east on the arid plains to hunt the buffalo and south into the desert for gathering Mescal Agave. Spanish colonists associated them with this plant and named them Mescalero Apache. The Mescalero Apache, along with the other Apache groups, lived by traditional hunting and gathering. If conditions were poor, they raided other tribes, and Spanish, Mexican and American settlers to survive.

Origin of name

The Mescalero's autonym, or name for themselves, is Shis-Inday ("People of the Mountain Forests") or Mashgalénde (“People close to the mountains”).[7] The Navajo, another Athabascan-speaking tribe, call the Mescalero Naashgalí Dineʼé.[8] Like other Apache peoples they often identify simply as Inday / Indee ("The People"). Neighboring Apache bands called the Mescalero Nadahéndé ("People of the Mescal"), because the mescal agave (Agave parryi) was a staple food source for them. In times of need and hunger, they depended on stored mescal for survival. Since 1550 Spanish colonists referred to them as the Mescalero.

Mescalero Apache bands were often referred to by European colonists and settlers by different names, some related to their geographic territory. They were recorded in documents by a wide number of names: Apaches de Cuartelejo, Apaches del Río Grande, Apachi, Faraones, Mezcaleros, Natage (more correctly, one of the Lipan Apache subdivisions, along with the Nahizan), Natahene, Querechos, Teyas, Tularosa Apaches, and Vaqueros. They were also distinguished as Sierra Blanca Apaches, Sacramento Mountains Apaches, Guadalupe Mountains Apaches, Limpia Mountains Apaches. according to their homelands in northern or southern Mescalero territory.

Tribal territory

Originally the different Mescalero bands and local groups ranged in an area between the Rio Grande in the west and the eastern and southern edge of the Llano Estacado and the southern Texas Panhandle in Texas in the east; from present-day Santa Fe in the northwest and the Texas Panhandle in the northeast, down to the Big Bend of Texas and what became the Mexican provinces of Chihuahua and Coahuila to the south. The diverse landscape of this area has high mountains up to 12,000 feet, as well as watered and sheltered valleys, surrounded by arid semi-deserts and deserts, deep canyons and open plains. The Mescalero Apache Reservation is located at geographical coordinates 33°10′42″N 105°36′44″W / 33.17833°N 105.61222°W / 33.17833; -105.61222.

Since each band of Mescalero had the right to use the resources of deer and plants of the neighboring groups, the different bands felt at home in any area of their wide tribal territory. The Mescalero bands often ranged widely for hunting, gathering, warring and raiding. They called their home Indeislun Nakah ("people, forming a group, when they are there," "place where people get together"). When many Mescalero bands were displaced by the enemy Comanche from the Southern Plains in northern and central Texas between 1700–1750, they took refuge in the mountains of New Mexico, western Texas, and Coahuila and Chihuahua in Mexico. Some southern Mescalero bands, together with Lipan, lived in the Bolsón de Mapimí, moving between the Nazas River, the Conchos River and the Rio Grande to the north.

Bands

Mescalero painted boy; photo entitled Long Walk of the Navajo. After being defeated by United States military forces, most of the Navajo were marched over 350-mile (560 km) during the winter of 1864 and incarcerated at Bosque Redondo, New Mexico with the Mescalero Apache.

The Natahéndé had had a considerable influence on the decision-making of some bands of the Western Lipan in the 18th century, especially on the Tindi Ndé, Tcha shka-ózhäye, Tú é diné Ndé and Tú sis Ndé. To fight their common enemy, the Comanche, and to protect the northeastern and eastern border of the Apacheria against the Comancheria, the Mescalero (Natahéndé and Guhlkahéndé) on the Plains joined forces with their Lipan kin (Cuelcahen Ndé, Te'l kóndahä, Ndáwe qóhä and Shá i`a Nde) to the east and south of them.

In August 1912, by an act of the U.S. Congress, the surviving members of the Chiricahua tribe were released from their prisoner-of-war status. They were given the choice to remain at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where they had been imprisoned since ?, or to relocate to the Mescalero Apache reservation. One hundred and eighty-three elected to go to New Mexico, while seventy-eight remained in Oklahoma.[9] Their descendants still reside in both places.

Notable Mescalero

Historical chiefs and headmen

Gorgonia, Sierrablanca Mescalero medicine man

Other notable Mescalero

See also

Notes

  1. Banks, Phyllis (2002). "Bent and Mescalero — home of the Mescalero Apache". southernnewmexico.com. Archived from the original on 2006-11-15. Retrieved 2006-12-01.
  2. "National Geodetic Survey of Sierra Blanca"
  3. "Level III Ecoregions of the Continental United States" (PDF). BLM.gov. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
  4. "Miscellany, Feb. 9, 1959", Time Magazine, February 1959, accessed 1 August 2011
  5. "Obituary of Virginia Shanta Klinekole", LaGrone Funeral Chapel of Ruidoso Website, accessed 1 August 2011
  6. Stallings, Dianne (2008-01-17). "New Mescalero Apache tribal officers take oaths". Alamogordo Daily News.
  7. Languages of the World
  8. Navajo Clans
  9. Debo p.447-8
  10. James L. Haley: Apaches: A History and Culture Portrait (1981/paperback 1997), University of Oklahoma Press, ISBN 978-0-8061-2978-5
  11. Mescalero Apache History in the Southwest
  12. [J. P. Dunn: Massacres of the Mountains, Volume II: A History of the Indian Wars of the Far West: v. II, 2001, ISBN 978-1-58218-204-9]
  13. Chinati derives from the Apache word ch'íná'itíh, which means gate or mountain pass
  14. Luis López Elizondo and Franklin W. Daugherty, "Documentos de la genealogía y la vida de Alsate, Jefe de los Apaches de los Chisos", Relaciones XXIII(92) 2002, ISSN 0185-3929 (pdf) (in Spanish)
  15. [Dan L. Thrapp: Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography, Volume 1: A-F, University of Nebraska Press (August 1, 1991), ISBN 978-0-8032-9418-9, p 18-19]
  16. Encyclopedia of World Biography: Wendell Chino

References

Bibliography

St. Joseph's Catholic Church, Mescalero, New Mexico ca. 1975 Mountain Spirit Dancers painted on altar
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