New Mexico Lit: Apache History

I've spent most of my year in New Mexico re-reading my cache of classic, paperback sci-fi novels. With that project complete (and the books now dispersed to the universe), I've turned my attention to New Mexico-centered literature.

Recently, I visited the Mescalero Apache Cultural Museum in Mescalero. The helpful curator there recommended a number of books on Apache history, some of which I include here: 

• Cochise, Edwin R. Sweeney
• From Cochise to Geronimo, Edwin R. Sweeney
• The Apache Indians, Frank C. Lockwood
• An Apache Life, Morris Edward Opler
• I Fought With Geronimo, Jason Betsinez
• Making Peace with Cochise [journals of the peace talks], J.A. Sladen
• Mangas Coloradas, Edwin R. Sweeney 
• Merejildo Grijalva : Apache Captive, Army Scout; Edwin R. Sweeney
• The People Called Apache, Thomas Mails
• Watch For Me on the Mountain, Forest Carter

There were many more on the curator's list, including some by well-known author on the Apaches, Eve Ball. Fortunately, the Alamogordo Library has a large collection of Southwestern materials, so I've created a to-read list.

Edwin R. Sweeney is from St. Charles, Missouri, by the way. I heard that when he was a young'n, he announced to his English teacher that some day he would write a book about Cochise, with whom he was fascinated. The teacher was a little skeptical, given the lackluster attention he gave to English in the classroom. 









  

The Slowest Parade in America

Mescalero Celebration Parade. Mescalero, New Mexico. July 2013. Credit: Mzuriana.

You know you're in a slow parade when:

• It stops in front of you and the first unit's occupants get out so they can take pictures of the units following
• You can walk up to the front of a unit and take photos, then to the side, then the other side, and then the front again, all at a leisurely pace
• The classic-car section of the parade appears to have had enough (maybe ran low on gas?) and it leaves the parade early via a highway exit
• There's so much of a gap between one unit and another that people think the parade is over and leave

The Mescalero Apache Celebration Parade in Mescalero, New Mexico, is that parade. The parade celebrates the Mescalero maiden puberty rites, and also coincides with Independence Day festivities.

Advance planning

This is what I saw when I thought I found the perfect spot for parade watching. It was kind of a hot day, and the breeze blowing through the shaded underpass looked like the perfect spot. My hunch was reinforced by the sight of all of those who had come before me to stake their territory.

My homestead is marked by the green chair in the foreground. 

Mescalero Celebration Parade. Mescalero, New Mexico. July 2013. Credit: Mzuriana.

By the time the parade started, it looked like this: 

Mescalero Celebration Parade. Mescalero, New Mexico. July 2013. Credit: Mzuriana.

Biology

Arriving early at a parade route makes it easy to find the best parade-watching spot and also the best parking spots. Arriving early at a parade that is scheduled to run about two hours means you'll likely have something to drink and maybe to eat, also. The yang to these yin is that it will be necessary to relieve yourself.

I was lucky. The first time I had to go - before the parade started - I walked up to the Senior Center, entered, walked down the hall, and used the restroom.  When I emerged, I discovered that the building was about to be closed up, and I was politely shooed out.

Later, during a lull in the parade, I walked up to the police station, entered the vestibule, then through another door, down the hall and to the restroom. When I emerged, a police woman who had been outside was now in the vestibule and she told me I wasn't really supposed to be there, that the door between the vestibule and corridor was usually locked.

Whoops.  


The medicine woman

One of my parade neighbors was a medicine woman, based in El Paso. She and her relatives have attended the Mescalero rites for eight years.

A congenial woman, she told me about two large women's gatherings, one already having occurred in El Paso this year, related to the sun; the next would be in Mexico, related to the moon. Both sounded exciting.

But do not get between this woman and pencils thrown out to the parade attendees. Someone could get hurt. 


The wax and gold

In Ethiopia, there is often more than one level of interpretation for what someone says or writes. The wax (sem) is the superficial message.  The gold (werk) is the true meaning of what was said or written. In its poetic form, this is called qene.

My first processing of the Mescalero parade was that it was just a parade, albeit with Apache notes.

But one of the floats had a sign referring to Edna Teenah Comanche, "the little girl who rides the train." Tracking down this reference a few days later took me down a path that gave me a greater appreciation of symbols that rolled by me in the parade, but which didn't make much of an impact at the time.

So there's more to come about this parade. 

In the meantime, a slide show:

  

#30

Take Me To Your Trogon

I poked around the New Mexico bootheel recently. I visited:

• Lordsburg, New Mexico
• Antelope Wells, New Mexico, border crossing
• Hachita, New Mexico
• Rodeo, New Mexico
• Portal, Arizona
• Cave Creek Canyon, Coronado National Forest, Arizona

As I drove on the Cave Creek Canyon road, I saw a homestead that identified itself as Trogon Ranch. And I thought, what? A science fiction fan? Or maybe there were Trogons in the J.R.R. Tolkien series? Or a subgenus of troglodytes?


I knew my guesswork was probably off track when I took a side road and saw a sign instructing people not to engage in recording, as it might disturb the trogons. Who were here. This was odd to me, because I couldn't figure out why a silent operation such as recording would disrupt anything. Maybe these trogons were such sensitive creatures they could "hear" the barely-perceptible air-disturbance of recording equipment in action? Did this include video recording from my point-and-shoot camera? For real? 

It wasn't til later, after I'd turned into the Southwestern Research Station, and asked the gift-shop woman about this recording business that she solved the mystery. The trogons are birds, much sought after for viewing by birders, which range from their northernmost point, in the Chiricahua Mountains, to Costa Rica.  As for the recording business, evidently birders will project previous recordings of, say, female trogons, in order to elicit the calls of male trogons. So the sign referred to the full process of recording  - the sending out of a false call in order to attract real trogons - that disturbs trogons. Ohhhhhhhh.

So now for the big reveal, I present an Elegant Trogon:

Elegant Trogon. Credit: Dominic Sherony via WikiMedia Commons

A few accounts about the trogons from birders:

Vera Walters tells an engrossing story of trogons in a 1997 issue of Bird Watching Daily: Searching for Trogons in the Chiricahua Mountains of Southeastern Arizona.

John Yerger, of Portal, Arizona, shares his experiences during the 2011 trogon count in his blog, Adventure Blogging, in this post: After the Fire: Cave Creek Canyon, Trogon Census.

Another Portal resident, Narca Moore-Craig, describes her delighted sightings of the trogons in this series of her blog, Art & Other Adventures with Narca. Her title painting is lovely.