“They all started out together”
“They all started out
together. But soon they began to play
games. The others did not want to wait
and went on…At different places various groups wanted to remain, and they broke
away from the main group…Finally some reached the center of the earth. These are the Jicarilla Apaches.” Morris Opler, American Anthropologist
Throughout the prehistory of
Santa Fe – from the Paleoindians, to the
Archaics, to the Puebloans – Native Americans have hunted, foraged, and lived
in the city and much of its surrounding areas.
The modern Santa Fe property area that is the subject of my immediate
research – Rancho Viejo – was one part of the “mosaic of resources” utilized by
the Prehistory Indians for food and housing.
Better yet for my purposes, Pueblo Wells, better known as Chamisa
Locita, was almost certainly the first housing community in Rancho Viejo – predating
Marsha’s and my neighborhood by over six centuries.
Years after
these prehistoric visitors and inhabitants occupied this land, Indians such as Comanche,
Ute and Apache hunted, gathered, lived, and raided throughout northern New
Mexico and Santa Fe. However finding similar
evidence for the presence of any of these nomadic bands in or near our present
home area has proven even more difficult than it did for their pre-history
forerunners – who themselves “left relatively small amounts of stuff in the
archeological records, and much of the material that they created and used has
not been preserved” according to Jason Shapiro in his book Before Santa Fe.
But artifacts are not the only way to
reconstruct the comings-and-goings of Native American tribes. Unlike the Paleoindians and Archaics, current
indigenous people – such as the Athapaskan speaking Lipan Apache – have a
strong oral tradition from which to put forth what anthropologist B. Sunday
Eiselt calls “legitimate claims to specific places”
In her book
Becoming
White Clay Eiselt argues that “archaeological materials need not be present
in a given area to establish it as Apache cultural space…Apache people are
challenging archaeologists to interpret their materials from an Apachean and
Athapaskan perspective, one that privileges their legitimate claims to specific
places regardless of the presence or absence of material remains.” Apache (and Navajo) site identification will
continue to be “a perennial challenge given the ephemeral nature of Apache and
Navajo settlement and land use.”
Originally
local to Alaska and Northwest Canada, some sources place the arrival of Athapaskan
speaking Apachean people in the southern plains of the United States as early
the 1000 A.D. The result of this great
migration is seen in the three geographic groups of that make up the Athapaskan
language family: the “Northern” occupy an area from Alaska and Northern British
Columbia south to the northern potion of the Canadian Prairies provinces; the “Pacific
Coast” range from Oregon to northern California; and the “Apachean” or “Southern”
includes the Navajo, Chirichua, Western Apache, Mescalero, Jicarilla and Lipan,
in Nebraska, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico as well as the Kiowa
Apache of the adjacent northern and eastern plains.
The term
“Athapaskan”, meaning “scattered grass it is”, is an Anglicized version of the
Cree name for “Lake Athabasco” (at the adjoining corners of Saskatchewan and Alberta
Provinces in Canada) The name “Apache” itself comes from the Zuni word Apachu,
meaning "enemy." The Apache call themselves Ndee, Dine’e, or Dene – each
term meaning "the People."
The
Athapaskan migration did not end with Spanish contact, and the regional
movement of Southern Athapaskan populations within the Southwest intensified
during the historical period, which ended with the placement of these Indians
into reservations.
While the
standard view of the migration is that the Athapaskans moved through recently
abandoned areas following the buffalo herds as these wild oxen changed their
range from colder to warmer, southerly latitudes, Eiselt reminds the reader
that these “abandoned areas” were not totally devoid of residents. “Nor did the Apaches achieve their migration
without the benefit of alliance, marriage, and trade with neighboring
groups…This interpretation places greater emphasis on the migrating group, the
political dimensions of diplomacy and trade, and the capabilities of Apachean
peoples to shape their own destinies through strategic alliances and mobility.”
Apache
culture was matrilocal – that is, the husband went to live with the wife’s
community – and society was divided into a number of matrilineal clans. Eiselt attributes matrilocalism as one of the
reasons the, “Proto-Apachean populations arrived in the Southwest with alliance
practices that fostered (and even required) interactions with settled horticulturalists
[such as Puebloans]…Family structure was centered on groups of related females who
were organized into cooperative units to maximize craft output for exchange,
making trade a necessary component of the proto-Apachean economy.”
This
“Pueblo-Plains Interaction” took various forms depending upon, e.g. the length
of the agricultural growing season and access to Athapaskan hunters – long
season and low access as in the Tewa and other low-elevation Pueblos – or more frequent
Plains Indian interchanges but shorter growing seasons such as at Pecos and the
higher elevation Pueblos. These
relationships began before the arrival of the Spanish (“pre-contact”) and
evolved post-contact with some being strengthened and some weakened by the
presence of the European Colonists.
“At the most general level, Plains-Pueblo
mutualism helped to balance inter-pueblo competition and access to regional
resources from other ecological zones, but at the local level the eastern
frontier Pueblos and their Plains Apaches neighbors were the only groups to
develop truly independent economies…Cooperative patterns of mutualism developed
out of tangible environmental and economic needs.” (B. Sunday Eiselt)
According
to the paper Plains Indians in New Mexico
by Russell M. Magnachi of Northern Michigan University, “When the Spaniards
under Francisco de Coronado reached the Great Plains in the 1540s, they found
an inhospitable environment. The Plains
Apaches dominated the area from the Nebraska Sandhills to the Pecos River in
West Texas until the close of the seventeenth century.” The Spanish were hoping to find stable and
cohesive communities “upon which Spanish institutions could be imposed.” And they did find them to a degree in the
form of the Pueblo Indians. But they
also found the Plains Apaches – whom they termed “uncivilized” nomadic tribes, which
they then attacked and forcibly enslaved.
(Statue of Popé, or Po'Pay, now in the national Statuary HallCollection
in the U.S. Capitol Buildings one of New Mexico's two statues.)
The Pueblo
Revolt of 1680 (also known as Popé's Rebellion) drove the Spanish from New
Mexico. Most analyses of this uprising
attribute its cause to the years of religious suppression of the Puebloans by
the Spaniards. But Sunday Eiselt asserts
that Spanish abuse of the Apache was also a major motivating factor. Pecos Pueblo for example was initially undecided
on participating but when Commanding General (Maese de Campo) Francisco Javier
seized a camp of Apaches at Pecos the Puebloans decided to join the rebellion.
“Beneath this argument for Puebloan
[religious] ideology, however, is the economic foundation of religious
ceremony. Without the trade of the
Athapaskans, the acquisition, production, and circulation of the Plains items
that were required for Puebloan religious practices were endangered as well. Threats to other aspects of trade and to
personal safety caused by Spanish abuse of Apache were also motivating
factors…numerous first-person accounts attest that Spanish treatment of the
Apache was a major factor.”
The ReConquistadors, led by Don
Diego de Vargas took back Santa Fe in 1692.
As a result of their expulsion, the Spanish government felt compelled to
reassess the way in which they had interacted with the native people. New Mexico was now literally surrounded by
hostile tribes of Indians: Comanche and Jicarilla Apache along the northern and
eastern borders; Utes to the north and northwest; Navajo to the northwest; and
various other Apache tribes to the south, southeast and southwest. So the Colonialists realized that they needed
the cooperation of their Pueblo neighbors in order to defend their holdings
against the various groups that besieged them from all directions.
Then
according to Russell Magnachi, “in the early eighteenth century, the Comanches appeared,
far from their homes in north central Colorado and determined to make the
southern Plains their new home. They
proceeded to drive the Utes and Plains Apaches from their territory and by
midcentury [1750s] dominated the Plains with French firearms and ammunition
readily available [to them] through Wichita middlemen.” (The Wichita Indians of Oklahoma had been
trading with French explorers Bernard de la Harpe and Claude Charles Du Tisne. Robert Torrez, writing on
newmexicohistory.org, says, “because of the expanding influence of the French,
English, and Russians in North America, New Mexico developed into a defensive
zone against these enemies of the Spanish Crown.”)
Governor Juan
Bautista de Anza was tasked by the Spanish government with implementing an
aggressive policy to defeat these unfriendly tribes and obtain peace treaties with
them. In 1779 de Anza surprised and
killed the most influential Comanche Chief, Cuerno Verde (Green Horn), in what
is now Pueblo Colorado, and defeated his warriors. A treaty with the Comanche was signed in
1786, giving the Spanish a new and valuable ally against the Apache.
“Apache at heart, [with a] a smorgasbord of adopted habits and
traditions.
I did not however
find information that directly tied any of the Plains Indians to the part of Santa
Fe now known as Rancho Viejo until our son Bram mentioned my research project at
a social gathering in his area of town, where his neighbor Oscar Rodriguez suggested
that I contact him. By email Oscar told
me that the narrow plains which stretch from the village of Cerrillos, directly
east to the Pecos River was once known as Llano de los Lipanes (Lipan Plains). Thus the presence today of sites such as Canyon
del Apache, Apache Springs, and Apache Mesa in the area.
The
distance from Cerrillos, NM to Pecos National Historical Park – the site of the
Pecos Pueblo – is twenty-six miles “as the crow flies” according to the eponymous
website. And while that straight line
does not run directly through Rancho Viejo, it is only about three miles south
of the property – certainly close enough to be able to logically assume that
our new home could have been part of the old Llano de los Lipanes.
According
to Oscar Rodriguez the Lipan Plains was part of circular migration pattern of
sharing land – one group moving in as another moved out – of the Culcah-endes
(Tall Grass) Apache. Culcah-endes were members
of a Native American Confederacy that controlled the Southern Great Plans from the
late-1400s until 1806, when their then leader, Strong Arm Lipan, was killed in
battle against the Comanche Alliance (Comanches, Wichitas, Kiowas, etc.).
Starting in
the 1870s, the Tall Grass were dispersed to various reservations: Jicarilla and
Mescalero in New Mexico or Comanche, and Kiowa Apache in Oklahoma. Many stayed
in place in Kansas, Texas, New Mexico and Mexico.
The Lipan in
particular came to be associated with this eponymous narrow plain because they
were close allies of, and intermarried with, the Pecos, Picuris, and Taos
Puebloans. The Tall Grass had already
been dislodged from the Pecos region by the American Period (1846-68 et seq),
although many settled in their traditional camps and tried to be seen as
Mexicans in order to avoid expulsion, or worse.
Some of those communities such as Ocate, Petaca, and La Cueva, are still
inhabited today by descendants of these people.
Oscar
concluded, “the sources where you can verify this story are old maps. I don't believe the deeds in that region will
carry past the American Period [mid-1800s].
But it might. The typical
narrative in these spaces are that the Spanish and, after them, the Mexicans
went around Indian communities, which left them open for expropriation by the
Americans who came later.”
Marsha and
I moved out here from Wethersfield, Connecticut – that state’s first
incorporated town (1634) and the site of one of the pivotal events of the
Pequot War when on April 23, 1637, with Pequot help, Wongunk chief Sequin
attacked the town, killing six men and three women, a number of cattle and
horses, and taking two young girls (the Swaine sisters) captive. Even though the site of the Swaine house is clearly
identified in the town’s historical district, along with other pre-colonial
homes and events, I always had difficulty imagining the Indian’s presence in
the small, now-suburban village.
Here in
Santa Fe however, perhaps because I’ve seen too many western movies (some maybe
even filmed around here), it is easy for me to envision the Lipan tribesmen galloping
across the then unspoiled scrub desert/plains through which Marsha and I walk
most days. However, unlike the
occupants of Chamita Placita Pueblo who left clear archaeological evidence of
their Rancho Viejo residency – I suspect the proof of the Lipan Plains presence
at this site will consist mainly of oral history and inference.
One more
aside. When Marsha and I first came on
vacation to Santa Fe and Taos New Mexico in 1982 we were told that we were
going to the “high desert.” And for the
intervening years between then and now we heard the same geographic description
of what is now our new homeland. Since
we have moved out here however we have several times caught references to Santa
Fe being on the plains – including the above mention of Llano de los
Lipanes. And the truth it seems is that we
are actually in both. A desert is
defined by the amount of water it normally gets – in our case out here, not very
much. (And this year even less.) A plain
is a large area of flat land with few trees.
We’ve got that too. So, a desert
can be a plain – and a plain can be a desert – and each can be both.
Or perhaps
the term desert in this instance is connotative rather than denotative. To paraphrase Dr. Tom Chavez from his lecture
on “New Mexico History” given to members of El Rancho de las Golondrinas, living
history museum – when the settlers from the east coast came upon this dry,
treeless land, which they could not figure out what to do with, they decided it
was a “just a desert” passed through, and moved on to the west coast.
As I
researched further into this tribe of Apaches of which I had never heard, I
read Sherry Robinson’s "I Fought A Good Fight - A History of the Lipan
Apaches", which says indirectly that I shouldn’t feel bad about this lack
of knowledge. “Lipans are some of the
least known, least understood of the Southwest’s Apache bands…as clever,
fearless, and resourceful as their better publicized cousins to the west and,
as a group, more diverse.”
Unfortunately
for my purposes, most of their history took place in Texas – and the vast
majority of the writings about them (including the Robinson book) focus on
their activities in that territory/state to New Mexico’s south and east.
“I Fought A
Good Fight” however does report briefly on the cooperation between Lipans and
several New Mexican Pueblos in fighting against the Spanish, whom Robinson
refers to as “the parasitic conquerors.”
Quoting Father Francisco de Valasco in April 1609 she writes “Picuris,
Taos, Pecos, Apaches and Vaqueros…have formed a league among themselves and
with other barbarous nations to exterminate our friends [e.g.. Puebloans such
as the Keres who were close to the Spanish]…Anthropologists believe the
Cuartelejo Apaches learned farming and pottery-making from their Pueblo guests,
and the practices spread to other Apache groups…As unrest grew, the Spanish
repeatedly punished Pueblo people severely ‘as traitors and confederates of the
Apaches.’”
According to lipanapache.org the name Lipan means
“The Light Gray People” – and is made up of the Lipan word for a light gray
color (kleh-pai) and the word for The People or The Tribe (indeh or ndé).
“Yet, it is
more than just a tribal name, for it contains a code which commemorates the
Lipan Apache’s ancient journey from the McKenzie Basin of Canada to their
eventual homeland of Texas. The Lipans, and all Apaches, see the Earth as a
circle suspended in space at the four points of the compass. Each direction is
represented by a color.”
When the ancient Lipan Apaches migrated
from the north and then moved east into Texas, they were moving from the white
of the north toward the black of the east. On a color palette, if you mix a little
black with white, you get the color gray.”
Lipan
Apaches were traditional hunters and gatherers who practiced a limited amount of
agriculture, which they may have learned from the Puebloans with whom they
traded and, at times, allied with. Although they predominately lived this
hunting and gathering lifestyle, the Lipan Apaches were also mounted warriors
who sometimes raided homes and ranches for cattle and sheep.
The
Light-Gray People also traded buffalo and deer hides for sugar, tobacco and
chile peppers with the Spanish at the Pecos Pueblo near Santa Fe, and in Texas at
San Antonio. But the Spanish would not
trade firearms so, in order to be able to defend themselves against their
Comanche enemies, Lipans created a shadow economy with many Indian tribes of
east and southeast Texas wherein they traded stolen horses and cattle for guns,
which had been provided to these tribes by French traders along the Red River. After
Spain took control of southern Louisiana and began to provide East Texas tribes
with Spanish weapons, the Lipans continued their covert horses-for-guns trade
with these eastern clans.
Lipans were
a tribe based on common territory, language, and culture who spoke a dialect of
Southern Athapaskan. They were
characterized as being handsome people who wore well-cured, skillfully made
buckskin clothing. The men were nearly
six feet tall, towering over other Apaches; used a base ten number system;
could count to one thousand; and predict eclipses and other astronomical
events; and displayed, according to a Spanish officer, “a certain neatness and
martial bearing that differentiates them markedly from the other nations.”
Politically
they had no central political authority but relied instead on localized group
leadership. Chiefs enjoyed authority
because of their personal qualities, such as persuasiveness and bravery, often
in addition to ceremonial knowledge. Decisions were taken by consensus and one
of the chief’s most important functions was to alleviate friction among his
people. Like Apaches, in general Lipans respected
the elderly and valued honesty above most other qualities.
Sherry
Robinson describes them as “Apache at heart, but as a result of their long
history of befriending or absorbing other groups, their cultural table was a
smorgasbord of adopted habits and traditions.
Unlike other Apaches, they farmed; ate fish and bear; used sign language;
and counted coup [showed bravery by charging a live enemy on foot or horseback
to get close enough to touch or strike him with the hand, a weapon, or a "coup
stick."] They spoke good
Spanish. They lived in artfully painted
tipis on the plains, wickiups [huts consisting of an oval frame covered with
brushwood or grass] in the mountains, and jacales [adobe style housing] in
Mexico.”
Lipan
people ended up in various reservations, also but remained in villages like La
Cueva, and even further south as far away as Mexico. Some of the old Culcah-ende communities still
remain in Nebraska, Kansas, and Chihuahua as well. Even with this dispersion, the Lipans are one
of the most populous of the 10 surviving Apache tribes. Oscar Rodriguez says, “We are still very
close with our kin the Jicarilla, Mescalero, and Kiowa Apache, and we generally
consider ourselves a Plains people, like the Kiowa, Comanche and Sioux.”
When Marsha
and I moved to Santa Fe we were looking for some place in a “mixed
neighborhood” with fellow residents of varying ages, ethnicities, family
situations, etc. The Village at Ranchi
Viejo seems fit that bill – both now, and apparently in the past with its
former eclectic collection of Paleoindians, Archaics, Puebloans, and Plains
Indians that have passed through or stayed here. The Lipan – part time inhabitants like many others
in our current community – I think would have made particularly interesting
neighbors. Although our nearby friends
in Eldorado and Lamy might not appreciate all of the commuter traffic on Llano
de los Lipanes.
Additional Notes:
Chief Strong Arm Lipan
Strong Arm
Lipan (c.1740 to c. 1806c), known as El Calvo (The Bald One) to the Spanish
military, was the last leader of the Plains Apache Confederacy – presiding over
a mobile village of several thousand that circulated from Llano de los Lipanes
in our backyard, south to the Atascosa River on the Texas Gulf Coast, and west
to the Santa Rosa Mountains in Coahuila Mexico.
Strong Arm Lipan’s political stature among native tribes in Coahuila so
concerned the Spanish Governor in Saltillo that he tried turn the Lipan Chief
against his allies in order to undermine the confederacy. When this plan
failed, the Spanish appealed to the Comanche Alliance, made up of the various
Comanche, Kiowa, and Wichita bands, to help them pressure and diminish Strong
Arm Lipan’s influence. Instead, his successful defense of the Southern Great
Plains against the Comanche Alliance, and the Rio Grande River Valley against
the Spanish helped to define the line where the US-Mexico border would be
established.
B. Sunday
Eiselt reports that El Calvo (whom she calls a Llanero leader – the Llanero
being “especially intimate with the Lipan, given their common history on the
Plains) had close martial ties with the Mescalero, with he and the Mescalero’s
principal leader each having married a sister of the other. Eiselt also attributes El Calvo’s year of
death as 1801.
Chief Magoosh
In 1850, a
severe smallpox epidemic in San Antonio, Texas caused a small Lipan ranchería (a
small rural settlement or native village) led by Chief Magoosh to seek refuge
with the Mescalero Apaches in New Mexico. This group formed the core of what
later became the Lipans living at the Mescalero Apache Reservation. Other
rancherías, such as the group led by Venego, joined the Mexican Lipans near
Zaragosa (Coahuila). The Venego group joined the Magoosh group in 1904 on the
Mescalero Reservation and formed the core of the modern Lipan Apaches of New
Mexico. Descendants of Magoosh still
live at Mescalero.
Genizaros
Slaves were
a valuable commodity to the Spanish whose laws when they first came to New
Mexico forbid servitude – but nonetheless allowed the capture and enslavement
of unconverted Indians. Robinson says,
“Nearly every Spanish home had some of these servants (called genizaros), but
the biggest profiteers were the governors, who sold hundreds of slaves to the
southern mines.”
In 1627/28
Spanish Governor Phelipe Sotelo Ossorio sent a expedition to the plains that ended
up killing an Apache chief who was already a Catholic convert and “who held out
the rosary he was wearing as he pleaded for his life…In 1638 a party sent by
Governor Luis de Rosas attacked friendly Apaches who customarily traded at
Pecos, killing some and taking others captive.
Rosas kept a few laborers in his Santa Fe weaving shop and sold the
rest.” As a result of these and other
instances of Spanish Gubernatorial greed such as that of Bernardo Lopez de
Mendisabal who in 1659 supplied over seventy Indian men and women to the mines
at El Parral one Spaniard wrote that the Apaches “conceived a mortal hatred for
our holy faith and enmity for the Spanish nation.”
In an
article posted at NewMexico.org Malcolm Ebright discusses Genizaros, who
“according to the traditional short definition, are Indian
captives sold to Spaniards who then became household servants. Most Genízaros in New Mexico were Plains
Indians captured by other Plains tribes and then sold to individual Hispanos or
Pueblos – e.g. eighty pesos and fifteen mares (about one hundred fifty pesos)
was paid for Apache captive Pedro de la Cruz.
The Spanish
who returned to New Mexico after being driven out by the Pueblo Revolt of 1680
we reluctant to enslave or otherwise exploit the Puebloans – but a revision to
Spanish law provided a new justification for the same practice.
The legal
basis for this policy would be found in the Recopilacíon de Leyes de Reynos de
las Indias 1681, which justified the purchase of captives under the Christian
obligation to ransom captive Indians.
The practice was given further sanction in 1694 when a group of Navajo
brought Pawnee children to New Mexico to sell to the Spanish. When the Spaniards refused to purchase the
captives, the Navajos beheaded the children!
After this, Charles II, King of Spain from1665-1700, ordered that, if
necessary, royal funds be used to purchase captives to avoid such an atrocity.”
The Spanish
government authorized this practice as a means of saving the souls of the
heathen Indians by converting them to Catholicism. However local governments and landowners seemingly
placed more value on the amount of work performed by the slaves than their
religious upbringing – as did some members of the clergy.
Over time
some Genizaros settled into the Spanish household and communities within which
they worked – sometimes marrying into their owner families. “Genízaros would eventually refer to
themselves as Spaniards, especially after they were freed and had married. The
term ‘Genízaro’ gradually disappeared as a designation of casta (caste),
although the practice of Hispanic households keeping such Indian servants
continued into the late nineteenth century.”
Sources:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1968.70.6.02a00070/pdf
I
Fought a Good Fight: A History of the Lipan Apaches, Sherry Robinson
Becoming
White Clay: A History and Archaeology of Jicarilla Apache, B. Sunday Eiselt
