Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The last of the unsurrendered Apaches

This information as presented by Richard Grant in his 2008 account of his travels in Mexico's Sierra Madres as presented in "God's Middle Finger: Into the lawless heart of the Sierra Madre".

Early on in the introductory chapter.....

The Sierra Madre Occidental was the last refuge for the Apaches, some of whom were still living free and raiding Mexican homesteads into the 1930's, and in the last thirty years it has become one of the world's biggest production areas for marijuana, opium, heroin, and billionaire drug lords. It was my bright idea to travel the length of the Sierra Madre and write a book about it....



Later on in the book, the author visited a Mexican family who had hosted a delegation of Chiricahua Apaches come down from Oklahoma in 1988 to search for their lost kin....

I dug around in my backpack and found a copy of The Apache Indians by Helge Onstead..... In 1937 he recruited two Apaches from the Mescalero reservation in New Mexico, including one of Geronimo's old warriors, to show him around the Sierra Madre and find the Apaches that were still up there.

They came across fresh signs of them and heard them once, but never managed to establish contact. Apaches had always been renowned for their uncanny ability to hide.... any Apaches left up in the Sierra by 1937 would have been incredibly wary and secretive. And most of them would have been women....


The author then goes on to decribe his hostess, who he descibes as probably the most informed living person on the topic, who had travelled deep into the mountains, looking for people who had known of these last few Apaches first-person....

This was Nelda's great talent as a historian. The old people in the remote Sierra villages would talk to her because Nelda was from the Sierra herself and they all knew her family, at least by reputation....

In addition to her interviews, Nelda had also read just about every published scrap of information about the Sierra Madre Apaches.... and had hunted through civic records offices and local newspaper archives. She had no formal training as a historian. Nor did she have the protective, proprietary attitude that one finds so often among professional academics.

Nelda wasn't trying to build a career out of it. She was happy to meet someone who shared her interest in the subject and share what she knew. All she asked in return was that you got it right. The was a shy self-depreciating quality about Nelda.... but she had a steel-trap memory when it came to names, places, dates and family trees and she corrected me firmly when I made mistakes...

At the turn of the Twentieth Century there were roughly a hundred Apaches left up in the Sierra... They ranged through an area of mountains seventy-five miles wide and two hundred miles long and sometimes descended to steal horses and cattle.... In the remote bootheel of New Mexico the livestock raids continued into the 1920's...

Armed robbery is always a dangerous business, especially when the people getting robbed are armed too..


..and of the visit by the Oklahoma Chiricahuas...

"I tried to explain that there hadn't been any sightings or incidents since the 1930's but they weren't having any of it" said Nelda. Her tone was kind, forgiving, slightly perplexed and gently amused.

" 'You don't know our people.' they kept telling me, 'They can be there but you can't see them.' They said..... we would find them where the wild horses ran free....."

Nelda explained that rugged and remote as the mountains looked, all the land was owned and fenced by private ranchers or ejidos. There were no wild horses, and it was impossible for anyone to live in the Sierra undiscovered. The Apaches weren't having any of that either...

They didn't find any Apaches...

The author does go on to relate tragic stories of a determined extermination campaign against the surviving remnants, almost all women and children, by area ranchers in the 1930's, too sad to relate here.

Birdwatcher

And your point is - ????

No point, the specifics were new to me, thought they might be so to others too.

Couple of other points though... the author has it that up until about 1900 the northern 250 miles of the Sierra really were uncharted territory, it was simply too dangerous to go up there, that changing with the decline of the Apaches.

Enlightening and sad all at once that pretty much ALL of the Sierra Madre has since been fenced and cut over.

Geronimo could still disappear into the mountains on our side of the line, but down there now he'd prob'ly need an AK-47 and have to deal in drugs.

Birdwatcher

Good Yarn, Birdy, ....thanks.

GTC

A lot of Apache's where I grew up not far from Fort Sill. Kiowa's and Comanche's too as this was their reservation. Very closed mouth the Apache's seemed. Neat story Birdy...

Great read!

I love hearing about the past, especially when its about the Apache.

Had two minds about posting on this, to some folks after all I'm posting about their family business. But, its already out there in the books, part of history now.

According to Nelda's accounts, at least one of the Apaches still raiding in the 1900's spoke fluent English, prob'ly down from up north, a full twenty years after Geronimo's time. Then, as now, there's a bunch we outsiders dont hear so hopefully more'n a few of those last few holdouts quietly slipped out, maybe to kin up north.

When they were gone, people moved in and the logging and clearing started in earnest....

Birdwatcher

I too am obliged for the post .

I'm betting they got the plot for, "The Last of the Dogman" from this.


Really good movie if ya'll haven't seen it.

These injuns was in the Sierras too

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara

The Apache are my favorite, most like to laugh and appreciate a bad joke...

Kent

Good story!

Kind of wonder what the Oklahoma Chiricahaus thought after the failed search.

Probably had hoped that somewhere out there Apache tribesman were living free and wild in the old ways. And then to find out there was nothing left but ghosts and graves.

Chuck

My sentiments exactly.

Thank you Birdwatcher

If you are familiar with the case of Ishi, that last Indian in California who came down out of the mountains in 1912, last of his kind, then you know the sort of existence apparently endured by the last Apache fugitives in the Sierra.

Ishi, his mother and sister had been living a fantastically secretive existence for some years, always afraid of discovery by armed cowboys. Just the three of them, cut off from all knowledge of any friends or relatives that might still be alive.

When the Mexican ranchers were hunting down/driving out the Apache remnants, they would keep those children small enough to be captured. It would be a mistake to say these children always became "slaves" or even "servants".

If you are familiar with the story of Chato, the Chiricahua who guided for Crook, you may have heard that his children, adopted by a Mexican family, were treated well and that his wife, also caputured, ended up staying in Mexico with her children by choice.

According to the book, at least one of the captured children from the very last days of the Apaches was adopted by an American couple, ended up thoroughly acculturated, attended college, and became a nurse. She died unexpectedly in Italy in the 1960's, where she had moved by choice.

Again according to the book, there were apparently very few Apaches left in the Sierra by the 1920's. One of the last we know about was a certain "Apache Juan", a known outlaw who is infamous for killing a rancher's wife in 1927 and stealing a small boy, son of the rancher. This in revenge for the fact that the rancher himself had taken in a captured Apache child from Juan's band.

Juan was hunted down and killed, the women in Juan's little band killing the captured boy in reprisal and leaving his body where it would be found. The bereaved rancher himself went on to become among the most implacable proponents of extermination.

But here's a thought.... since we can be reasonably sure that the capture of infants and small childen during these extermination hunts was going on into the 1930's, it is still possible that a couple of these children may yet be living.

Birdwatcher

The Tarahumaras are still very much alive and kicking (well, running actually), as are the Huichols further south again.

The name of the book comes from an old statue of God the author saw used in a Tarahumara celebration, most of the fingers knocked off of one hand.

In the book the author relates some funny stories of when a couple of Tarahumaras, world famous distance runners, were invited to compete in an ultramarathon up in Colorado.

In 1993 an American photographer and outdoor guide called Rick Fisher took a group of Tarahumara runners to the annual hundred-mile ultramarathon in Leadville, Colorado. Running in sandals cut from old tires and stopping in for beers at the eighty-seven mile mark, they finished first, second and fifth and blew the collective mind of American ultrarunning.

The winning Tarahumara, Victoriano Churro, was fifty-five years old and he ran the hundred miles of rough mountain trail, ranging in elevation from 10,000 feet to 12,640 feet, in twenty hours and three minutes....

The next year Fisher took seven runners and I went with them. When we got to Leadville, the Tarahumaras went to the city dump and cut themselves some new running sandals from old tires. Then they sat around for several days smoking cheap, harsh, filterless cigarettes, grumbling that they weren't allowed to drink more Budweiser and refusing to do any training for the race....

Nor did they do any stretching or warming up on the morning of the race. They stood there in the predawn darkness, wearing their loincloths and loose white tunics, silent and perfectly still, looking like men from another time.

They were surrounded by hundreds of professional and amateur ultrarunners in polypropelene clothing and state of the art running shoes, yelling last minute instructions to their support crews and talking to the TV cameras about total dedication, positive mental attitude, short-twitch muscle fibers and the importance of a strict nutritional regimen....

When I told the other runners about the tire-tread sandals and piles of cigarette butts and beer cans in the Tarahumara quarters, some of them smiled, sighed and shook their heads. Others turned sour and hostile, saying the Indians were getting "special treatment", and destroying the sense of "community" among ultra-runners.

Yer gonna have to buy the book to see how the race came out...


...and someone oughtta go down and find that nice lady Nelda, and record all that oral history she has accumulated about the Sierra Madre Apaches over the years.

Birdwatcher

I think I'll read that. Just found it on kindle....

Makes a guy wonder what would be possible without the substance abuse and poor nutrition. The current course record at leadville is under 16 hours.

A hundred miles of mountains in sixteen hours?

It might be that they have finally found the limits of human performance, even if it did involve media hype, spandex, hi-tech sneakers, and "positive mental states".....

There is a very talented group of young runners out their right now. Records are falling in major events that have been around for awhile and draw deep talent. If Krupicka runs at leadville this year I would expect to see something in low 15 range.

Did they ever find the Fugawees??????