The Mescalero Apaches

Although Frederick Webb Hodge once remarked that the members of the Eastern Apache tribe called the Mescaleros were "never regarded as so warlike" as the Apaches of Arizona, their history clearly belies that statement. The record is one of hardship and oppression alternating with wars of revenge. They were friendly to the Spaniards until victimized by them. They were also friendly to the Americans until they were betrayed again. For three hundred years they fought the Spaniards and Mexicans. For forty more they fought the Americans, before subsiding into a long period of lethargy and discouragement. Only since 1930 have they made real progress. In the early days their principal range was between the Rio Grande and the Pecos in New Mexico, but it extended also into the Staked Plains and southward into Mexico. They moved about freely, wintering on the Rio Grande or farther south, ranging the buffalo plains in the summer, following the sun and the food supply. They owned nothing and everything. Now they are in a precarious economic condition, but at least they are American citizens and still own their reservation in the Tularosa country of New Mexico. Their children are beginning to go away to college and prepare themselves for leadership, and while in many ways they have not bridged the gap between their old life and the new, they have made amazing progress. Their story is told here from the earliest records to the present day, from the Indian's point of view. Cruel and revengeful as these Indians were at times, they always had more than sufficient provocation, and a catalog of the sins committed against them is revealing, even appalling, to a white reader.