Victorio Fought to the Death for Homeland The Zuni called them Apache, meaning enemy. They called themselves Nde or the people. The Chiricahuas, one of six regional groups of Apaches, were mainly hunters and supplemented their diet with cacti, fruits and other wild plants. They had battled the Spanish, the Mexicans and, finally, the white settlers who increasingly encroached upon their hunting grounds. They protected their mountain territories with their great warrior skills and the guidance of several brave leaders, among them Mangas Coloradas, Geronimo, Cochise and Victorio. The origins of Victorio, like other legendary men, are controversial. Beduiat, his Apache name, was presumably born in the Black Range area of Southern New Mexico around 1825. However, Mexican legend says that he was born in Chihuahua, then kidnapped and raised by Apaches. His Apache family, along with prominent experts Eve Ball and Dan Thrapp, negate this theory, stating that Victorio was pure Apache. Apache leader Victorio and his small band fought to remain on ancestral grounds. In 1837, Mimbreño Apache leader Mangas Coloradas combined his band with the Warm Springs Apaches on the Gila River in Southwestern New Mexico in an attempt to gain a peaceful life for his people. After the death of Mangas Coloradas in 1863, Victorio echoed his cry for peace and humane treatment of the Apaches. On Nov. 1865, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Lt. Col. N. H. Davis, held a conference in Piños Altos, N. M. with several tribal leaders, including Victorio. A war, led by Mangas Coloradas nephew, Cochise, was well underway, and Davis intended to convince the Apaches to move calmly to Bosque Redondo in Southern New Mexico. Davis promised to supply them with enough food and clothing if they agreed to the relocation, or they would endure a continuing war. In his book on the Apaches, Donald Worcester quotes Victorio as saying, I and my people want peace … we have little for our families to eat and wear … we want a lasting peace, one that will keep. We would like to live in our country, and will go onto a reservation where the government may put us, and those who do not come, we will go and help fight them. In 1870, after several requests by Victorio, President Ulysses S. Grant set aside a reservation for them at Ojo Caliente, or Warm Springs, their favorite area in Southern New Mexico, north of present-day Truth or Consequences. Ball tells us that it was a much smaller area than what Victorio considered Warm Spring territory, but he agreed peacefully, claiming it the ancestral homeland of the Warm Spring Apaches...
Posted on: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 00:37:01 +0000
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