The Mescalero Apache and Zuuniidu, 1400-1845

Fort Stanton lies at the center of the traditional homeland of the Mescalero Apache, a people notable for their resilience and adaptability. The ancestral Mescalero, along with other Apache groups and the Navajo, were part of a broad group of Athabascan-speaking peoples who migrated from presentday northwestern Canada into the Southwest. The date of their arrival, however, is uncertain. Some evidence suggests that Puebloan peoples encountered and displaced Apache groups from the Rio Grande Valley in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Most scholars, however, believe that Athabascans first arrived in the Southwest around 1450.

When the Spanish first entered the region in the sixteenth century, the Apache and the Navajo were well entrenched around Puebloan settlements in the Rio Grande Valley and further west in present-day Arizona. These areas became known broadly as Apachería, the land of the Apache. Within Apachería, the Mescalero occupied the area around the Organ Mountains, Sierra Blanca, Sacramento Mountains, and Guadalupe Mountains, which would remain the core of their territory.

The Mescalero, like other Apache groups, were decentralized and matrilineal. When a couple married, the husband moved into his wife’s camp. Camps usually consisted of four or five households, which included an older couple, their unmarried children, and the families of their married daughters. Every camp was under the leadership of a headman. Multiple camps, in turn, formed a local group under the leadership of a chief (nantan). United through kinship and culture, but nevertheless remaining autonomous under their chiefs, several groups together formed a tribe or band. The inability of U.S. officials to understand this social structure would later play a key role in the establishment of Fort Stanton.

When the Spanish first arrived in the sixteenth century, the Mescalero primarily were hunter-gatherers who used dogs to transport their goods. The Mescalero's range extended north from their mountainous strongholds in present-day southeastern New Mexico, where they hunted deer and elk, into the eastern portion of the Great Plains known as the Llano Estacado, where they hunted bison. They also collected agave hearts and roasted them in large pits. This activity led the Spanish to label them "Mescaleros" from the Spanish term "mescal" for the agave plant and the suffix "ero" meaning "person who makes." The roasted and dried agave heart was a sweet food that, along with animal hides, became important goods that the Mescalero traded with the Pueblo peoples. The Mescalero learned from the Pueblo Indians, in turn, how to grow maize, beans, and squash, which they grew along mountain streams and river valleys. As the largest river valley within the Mescalero's mountainous territory, zúuníidu was uniquely suited to these pursuits. It provided a safe and reliable place for the Mescalero to hunt, roast agave, and farm.

After the Spanish occupied the northern Rio Grande Valley in 1598 and established the Kingdom of New Mexico, they began to raid the Mescalero and other Apache groups for captives. Apache captives became an important commodity and the Spanish sent many to work in the silver mines of Nueva Viscaya in modern-day Chihuahua, Mexico. Around the middle of the seventeenth century, however, the Mescalero were among earliest indigenous groups—and perhaps the first—in the Southwest to acquire and learn how to ride horses. The adoption of this European technology transformed the Mescalero into mounted hunters and warriors. They displaced non-Apache tribes in the southern Great Plains, in the process seizing large numbers of captives, dominating bison hunting, and gaining control of new fertile areas to farm. The Mescalero also began to raid Spanish and Pueblo settlements. In the 1670s, they forced the abandonment of the Spanish-allied Tompiro pueblos, known today as the Salinas Pueblo Missions. They also helped drive the Spanish from New Mexico by allying with Pueblo revolutionaries during the 1680 Pueblo Revolt.

Mescalero power declined dramatically over the following century. In 1692, the Spanish reestablished their control in New Mexico and continued to wage war on the Apache. Around the same time, a new foe arrived in the region: the Comanche. The Comanche and their Ute allies waged a ruthless war against the Mescalero and other Apache groups, displacing them from the southern Great Plains by 1730 and taking large numbers as captives. The Comanche sold so many Apache captives to the Spanish that they eventually formed as much as fifteen percent of the Spanish population in New Mexico. The surviving Mescalero, in turn, retreated into their mountain strongholds from the Sierra Blanca to the Guadalupe Mountains. Cut off from the bison herds they previously relied on for food and trade and vulnerable to further Comanche and Spanish attacks, the Mescalero fell into poverty and hunger. Many nevertheless adapted and found ways to survive. Zúuníidu and other mountain valleys offered deer, nuts, berries, and most of all agave that provided them with sustenance.

In 1786, the Spanish and Comanche struck an alliance and coordinated their efforts against the Apache. They launched a series of campaigns during the 1790s that proved catastrophic for the Mescalero. The Spanish and the Comanche killed or captured 750 men, women, and children, which likely comprised the majority of the tribe. Among the surviving Mescalero, some chose to remain in the mountains and maintain their perilous autonomy. The majority relocated near El Paso and accepted Spanish suzerainty. In return for protection and rations, the Mescalero served the Spanish as guides against other Apache groups. The Spanish eventually allowed the Mescalero access to their mountainous homeland to hunt and in 1810 formally recognized the region from the Sierra Blanca to the Guadalupe Mountains as Mescalero territory.

Mexican independence in 1821 transformed conditions for the Mescalero. The Mexican government lacked sufficient resources to administer the northern frontier, which included providing rations to the Mescalero. As a result, the Mescalero absconded from El Paso and returned to the mountains. Armed with new cavalry tactics and geographic knowledge honed during their time as guides, Mescalero warriors, often accompanied by their wives, began to raid Mexican communities in Chihuahua and Sonora for captives and livestock. Mescalero raiders, along with other Apache and Comanche counterparts, forced the abandonment of settlements across northern Mexico. Mexican officials in Chihuahua and Sonora retaliated by offering rewards for Apache scalps.

During this period, New Mexicans and the Mescalero maintained peaceful relations. New Mexican governors sought to cultivate the Mescalero as a buffer against Texas, especially after the Texas-Santa Fe Expedition in 1841. New Mexico, in fact, became an important market for the goods that the Mescalero seized in their raids. New Mexican officials disobeyed orders from the Mexican government to bar the Mescalero from local trade fairs. Merchants from Santa Fe, in turn, periodically traveled into Mescalero territory to exchange weapons and tools for recently captured livestock. Based once again in their mountain strongholds, the Mescalero had reestablished their autonomy.

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