Apaches - Spartans of the Southwest

As I "Hike Apacheria" for a seventh hear (actually, nearly 7.5 years), I marvel at the great and wondrous beauty that surrounds us.

In October, I've been different places in our southwest New Mexico and southeast Arizonan Apacheria. One of the reasons I can say are "true Apacheria," is, of course, because I've read about the historical events of the 18th and 19th centuries. My reading, I might add, goes far beyond so-called "secondary" historical sources. Several excellent sources for "primary" historical sources are found at http://www.archives.gov/ (the National Archives) and http://www.loc.gov/index.html, the Library of Congress.

I consider myself a true historical researcher, so reading "secondary sources," i.e., books published by individuals such as Edwin Sweeney and David Roberts, on the Apache, as well as many others who have written histories of the Apache based on their own extensive research. The books, themselves, however, constitute "secondary" historical sources, since the primary sources ... actual photographs, maps, reports, letters, etc., ... were created in then current times.

The primary sources I most rely on are found at the two government sites listed above.

It is possible, once you learn to navigate the very complex indexes of archival material at the National Archives and Library of Congress, to read actual "scout" reports, say, created each day. We'd call such endeavours, "patrols" today. My experience as an infantryman in South Korea ('65-'66), and South Vietnam ('66), showed me that daily reports were made of our progress as we marched around the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam each day.

In my time, reports were made via the radio, and someone back @ base camp wrote out a synopsis of the movement of the various platoons, companies, battalions operating in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam in 1966. There were "operations" that were launched periodically, that had a larger approach to ending Viet Cong or North Vietnamese intrusions or occupations of South Vietnam. Broken down to the infantry platoon level, though, that generally meant 25-40 of us, hiked around Vietnam, simply looking for the Viet Cong or North Vietnamese enemy soldiers, encampments, base camps, etc., which we could destroy or where we'd meet the "enemy."

The process was no different, really, with the Apache. The primary difference, though, was that the country, rather than being dense, sometimes impassable jungle, was open, but exceedingly rough. Mesas, cañons, side cañons, mountains, some forests, and vast open stretches of desert were the Apache homelands. The Apache knew those lands as intimately as you and I know, say, the places we live.

You know where the ATM machines are, if you need cash. That cash will allow you to buy just about anything you want. You know, in any given environment you navigate today, where water, food, bathrooms, gas stations, banks, ATMs, restaurants, grocery stores, etc., are located. The Apache knew, very certainly, where water could be found.

That might mean springs that ran intermittently, or ran full time. That might mean larger bodies of water, such as a cienegas, perenial running streams, rivers, where water stood, and could be drunk not only by humans, but by horses, dogs, etc. Water is the key to the desert southwest. Nothing can survive without water. Maybe for three days, but in the summer, the heat alone can kill a man or woman who has NO water, in a day. Apaches were trained to endure these deserts for more than one day without water.

They learned what plants might have some amount of moisture, which would keep their mouths and throats not so parched that they'd do things silly, or dangerous. They may have been more accustomed to drinking polluted water (water, say, where animals have defecated and urinated), than we. One day of drinking contaminated water for us would probably kill us, very quickly.

Sometimes, I've read, if an Apache could start a fire (without matches or lighters), he could heat some rocks, and then place them, for instance, in a hole in arroyo sand he or she had dug out, revealing water, and boil that water in place. Apaches could make some kind of dipping tool, I'm sure, out of the items around them, and transfer the water, say, from a hole in the sand, to a rocky hole in the stream bed. That way, they'd not get all the sandy grit in their water, and could drink clean-ER water. It still might not have been considered clean by US, but it certainly would be by them.

Apaches could eat many items from the land they traversed. They had no need to go to stores or restaurants. Given say, a blanket, and a knife, and perhaps a pouch with jerked meat, and a flint or some other device that could be used to start fires, the average Apache could survive in this country, regardless of day or night, or season.

We, on the other hand, have always needed supplies, and equipment, to survive this country. Because of that, and because the average soldier, even in peak condition, could only march or ride so far in one day, without being exhausted, or exhausting their horses or mules, a given # of miles. The average military patrol, or scout, or campaign, simply could never routinely run down a group of Apaches who had made up their minds to flee, say, from the U.S. into Mexico, or vice versa.

This, alone, has caused me to admire the Apache. The difficulties of the land and region only make survival even harder, and even more a feat worth admiration. So, our scouts would search for them, and if we were lucky enough to find them, to engage them in combat. Like the Viet Cong, Apaches more often than not would ambush an American or Mexican or Spanish force in a position where they were at an advantage, and the western forces chasing them was not.

Once an engagement began, the Apaches might choose to fight it out to the end -- i.e., killing all their enemies or capturing some -- or, they might decide to fight and run. The equation had to always be in the Apaches favor, if they initiated an ambush. If they had an ambush opened on them, then they would fight a rear guard action as long as they could, then they, like the Viet Cong, or the Taliban, or al-Qaeda (in today's definitions), would disappear into the terrain. If night fell while an engagement was under way, the Apaches would generally fall back, and disperse, sometimes into two person "teams."

Whether singly, or in two person teams, Apaches knew where the "rendezvous" point was -- i.e., where they had all agreed to meet later -- and they also knew how to survive until they met their comrades. If they were wounded, they also knew how to care for their wounds with herbs and plants available around them. They knew how to find water, or go without, for a day or two, and they knew where to go to make a crude shelter, even in winter, where they could stay warm and not freeze to death.

These skills make the Apache remarkable. Even the Viet Cong, or Taliban, have to have more to survive than the Apache. The Apache could survive, and live to fight another day, without much of anything we need today. This was quite a feat, but the women and children, above a certain age, could perform in this manner.

The Apache were, in my view, the "Spartans of the Southwest."