While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Chiricahua (Apache: `great mountain'). An important
division of the Apache, so called from their former mountain home in
southeast Arizona. Their own name is Aiaha.
The Chiricahua were the most warlike of the Arizona
Indians, their raids extending into New Mexico, s. Arizona, and N. Sonora,
among their most noted leaders being Cochise,
Victorio, Loco, Chato, Nachi, Bonito and
Geronimo. Physically they do not differ
materially from the other Apache. The men are well built, muscular, with
well-developed chests, sound and regular teeth, and abundant hair. The
women are even more vigorous and strongly built, with broad shoulders and
hips and a tendency to corpulency in old age. They habitually wear a
pleasant open expression of countenance, exhibiting uniform good nature,
save when in anger their face takes on a savage cast.
White thought their manner of life, general physique,
and mental disposition seemed conducive to long life. Their characteristic
long-legged moccasins of deerskin have a stout sole turning up at the
toes, and the legs of the moccasins, long enough to reach the thigh, are
folded back below the knee, forming a pocket in which are carried paints
and a knife. The women wore short skirts of buckskin, and the men used to
display surplus skins folded about the waist. Their arrows were made of
reed tipped with obsidian or iron, the shaft winged with three strips of
feathers. They used in battle a long spear and a slung-shot made by
inserting a stone into the green hide of a cow's tail, leaving a portion
of the hair attached. They possessed no knowledge of weaving blankets.
White (MS., B. A. E.) supposed that they had immigrated into Arizona from
New Mexico three or four generations back. Their camps were located on the
highlands in winter that they might catch the warm rays of the sun, and in
summer near the water among stunted trees that sheltered them from its
scorching glare. Their bands or clans were named from the nature of the
ground about their chosen territory. Both men and women were fond of
wearing necklaces and ear pendants of beads. The hair was worn long and
flowing, with a turban, to which was attached a flap hanging down behind;
they plucked out the hairs of the beard with tweezers of tin, and wore
suspended from their necks a small round mirror which they used in
painting their faces with stripes of brilliant colors. Strings of pieces
of shell were highly prized. Their customary dwelling was a rude brush
hut, circular or oval, with the earth scooped out to enlarge its capacity.
In winter they huddled together for warmth and, if the
hut was large, built a fire in the center. When they changed camp they
burned their huts, which were always built close together. They subsisted
on berries, nuts, and the fruit of various trees, mesquite beans, and
acorns, of which they were particularly fond, and they ground the seeds of
different grasses on a large flat stone and made a paste with water,
drying it afterward in the sun. They relished the fruit of cacti and of
the yucca, and made mescal from the root of the agave. Fish they would not
eat, nor pork, but an unborn calf and the entrails of animals they
regarded as delicacies, and horse and mule flesh was considered the best
meat. Though selfish in most things, they were hospitable with food, which
was free to anyone who was hungry. They were scrupulous in keeping
accounts and paying debts like many other Indians they would never speak
their own names nor on any account speak of a dead member of the tribe.
They tilled the ground a little with wooden implements,
obtaining corn and melon seeds from the Mexicans. In their clans all were
equal. Bands, according to White, were formed of clans, and chiefs were
chosen for their ability and courage, although there is evidence that
chiefship was sometimes hereditary, as in the case of
Cochise, son and successor of
Nache. Chiefs and old men were usually deferred
to in council.
They used the brain of the deer in dressing buckskin.
It is said that they charged their arrows with a quick deadly poison,
obtained by irritating a rattlesnake with a forked stick, causing it to
bite into a deer's liver, which, when saturated with the venom, was
allowed to putrefy. They stalked the deer and the antelope by covering
their heads with the skull of the animal and imitating with their
crouching body the movements of one grazing; and it was their custom to
approach an enemy's camp at night in a similar manner, covering their
heads with brush.
They signaled war or peace by a great blaze or smoke
made by burning cedar boughs or the inflammable spines on the giant
cactus. Of their social organization very little is definitely known, and
the statements of the two chief authorities are widely at variance.
According to White, the children belong to the gens of the father, while
Bourke asserts that the true clan system prevails. They married usually
outside of the gens, according to White, and never relatives nearer than a
second cousin. A young warrior seeking a wife world first bargain with her
parents and then take a horse to her dwelling. If she viewed his suit with
favor she would feed and water the animal, and, seeing that, he would come
and fetch his bride, and after going on a hunt for the honeymoon they
would return to his people. When he took two horses to the camp of the
bride and killed one of them it signified that her parents had given her
over to him without regard to her consent. Youth was the quality most
desired in a bride. After she became a mother the husband might take a
second wife, and some had as many as five, two or more of them often being
sisters. Married women were usually faithful and terribly jealous, so that
single girls did not care to incur their rage. A woman in confinement went
off to a but by herself, attended by her women relatives. Children
received their earliest names from something particularly noticeable at
the time of their birth.
As among the Navaho, a man never spoke to his
mother-in-law, and treated his wife's father with distant respect; and his
brothers were never familiar with his wife nor lie with her sisters and
brothers. Faithless wives were punished by whipping and cutting off a
portion of the nose, after which `they were cast off. Little girls were
often purchased or adopted by men who kept them until they were old enough
for them to marry. Often girls were married when only 10 or 11 years of
age. Children of both sexes had perfect freedom, were not required to
obey, and never were punished. The men engaged in pastimes every day, and
boys in mock combats, hurling stones at each other with slings. Young
wives and maidens did only light work, the heavy tasks being performed by
the older women. People met and parted without any form of salute. Kissing
was unknown.
Except mineral vermilion, the colors with which they
painted their faces and dyed grasses for baskets were of vegetal
origin-yellow from beech and willow hark, red from the cactus. They would
not kill the golden eagle, but would pluck its feathers, which they
prized, and for the hawk and the bear they had a superstitious regard in a
lesser degree. They made tizwm, an intoxicating drink, from corn, burying
it until it sprouted, grinding it, and then allowing the mash diluted with
water to ferment.
The women carried heavy burdens on their backs, held by
a strap passed over the forehead. Their basket work was impervious to
water and ornamented with designs similar to those of the Pima, except
that human figures frequently entered into the decorative motive. Baskets
2l ft. in length and 18 in. wide at the month were used in collecting
food, which was frequently brought from a great distance.
When one of the tribe died, men carried the corpse,
wrapped in the blankets of the deceased, with other trifling personal
effects, to an obscure place in low ground and there buried it at once,
piling stones over the grave to protect it from coyotes or other prowling
beasts. No women were allowed to follow, and no Apache ever revisited the
spot. Female relatives kept up their lamentations for a month, uttering
low wails at sunset. The but in which a person died was always burned and
often the camp was removed. Widows used to cut off their hair and paint
their faces black for a year, during which time the mourner lived in the
family of the husband's brother, whose wife she became at the expiry of
the mourning.
They had a number of dances, notably the "devil dance,"
with clowns, masks, headdresses, etc., in which the participants jumped
over fire, and a spirited war dance, with weapons and shooting in time to
a song.
When anybody fell sick several fires were built in the
camp, and while the rest lay around on the ground with solemn visages, the
young men, their faces covered with paint, seized firebrands and ran
around and through the fires and about the lodge of the sick person,
whooping continually and flourishing the brands to drive away the evil
spirit. They had a custom, when a girl arrived at puberty, of having the
other young girls lightly tread on her back as she lay face downward, the
ceremony being followed by a dance.
In 1872 the Chiricahua were visited by a special
commissioner, who concluded an agreement with Cochise, their chief, to
cease hostilities and to use his influence with the other Apache to this
end. By the autumn of this year more than 1,000 of the tribe were settled
on the newly established Chiricahua reservation, southeast Arizona.
Cochise died in 1874, and was succeeded as chief by his son Taza, who
remained friendly to the Government; but the killing of some settlers who
had sold whisky to the Indians caused an intertribal broil, which, in
connection with the proximity of the Chiricahua to the international
boundary, resulted in the abolishment of the reservation against their
will. Camp Apache agency was established in 1872, and in the year
following 1,675 Indians were placed there under; but in 1875 this agency
was discontinued and the Indians, much to their discontent, were
transferred to San Carlos, where their enemies, the Yavapai, had also been
removed. For further information regarding the dealings of the Chiricahua
with the Government, see Apache.
The members of Geronimo's hand, which was captured in
1886 and sent by the War Department in turn to Florida, Alabama, and
Oklahoma, are now at Ft Sill, Okla., where they number 298. The remaining
Chiricahua are included among the Apache under Ft Apache and San Carlos
agencies, Ariz. The Pinaleño are that
part of the Chiricahua formerly residing in the Pinal Mountains.
