LAND OF THE APACHES…

Over the past couple of months I’ve been traveling with my Gypsywagen in southern and central Arizona, camping in the high mountains, sheltered valleys, deep canyons and deserts that were once the homelands of the Apaches.

Traveling is an excellent form of education, and I’ve learned a little about the history of the peoples who once lived in this part of the earth. Like the Navajo, the Apaches were immigrants to the Southwest. They were originally Athabascan peoples who lived in western regions of present day Canada. During the 13th Century the native invention of the snowshoe brought a cultural shift, enabling nomadic groups to migrate south in search of new food supplies. The people who became the Navajo moved into areas already occupied by Pueblo settlements. There they formed alliances and lived in relative harmony. The bands who became the Apaches continued a nomadic lifestyle, ranging and occupying areas abandoned by other cultures.

In modern American culture, most people can identify only one or two personalities from the historical Apache peoples. The most well known was Geronimo, an Apache warrior who engaged in guerrilla warfare in the 1800s with the Mexican and United States armies for more than 35 years. Ultimately captured by US forces, he survived as a prisoner-of-war for another 25 years. When he was quite old, Geronimo dictated his autobiography to a reservation school teacher, Stephen Barrett. This is a fascinating account Geronimo’s life and times, and is highly readable.

Another well known Apache figure was Cochise, a chief of the Chiricahua Apaches. Tall, muscular and highly intelligent, he was a natural leader who, like Geronimo, engaged in protracted warfare with the Mexican and American armies. Also like Geronimo, he became a prisoner-of-war. In the end, as he was dying of abdominal cancer, Cochise made his way to his former Stronghold where he passed away, being secretly buried by his friends.

For a few days, I encamped at the Cochise Stronghold, experiencing a sense of peace and wholeness. Going there after my stay in Tombstone, I found the contrast between the two places as different as noise and light. As a boy, I used to hear stories about the “American Indian”. Those stories always filled me with wonder and a desire to somehow travel through time and be “one of them”. Now in my advanced years and having the privilege to visit these hallowed grounds, the sense of wonder I feel is no less palpable, and I still wish somehow that I could have lived in those times with those peoples.