The Apaches are alive and well

Yes, the Apaches are alive and well, and they haven't forgotten what the white man did to them.

No, not in the least...

I once picked up a load of stereo systems in New York City bound for Chula Vista, California, down on the Mexican border. That's about 3090 miles, or 4980 Kilometers. I had the same problem that I'd had on the trip I wrote about called "A Wild Ride", namely that taking the freeway across the country was the long way, New York being in the Northeast and Chula Vista being in the Southwest corner of the United States.

Yet once again there was a small, two lane road leading through the wilderness. It connected Interstate 40 to Interstate 10, cutting off maybe 200 miles from the trip. You have to be cautious with an 18-wheeler so I tried to find other drivers who had been that way, but found nobody. I called my company's safety officer and asked if he had any information about that road. He didn't.

Well, being alone out in the desert is just my thing. So let's go.

I left the freeway just south of Amarillo, up there in the Texas Panhandle, and headed out into the desert on a lonely, two lane road. I seem to remember it taking me like 24 hours or so to get across that stretch of desert and back on the freeway down south, but it's been too long and I'm not 100% sure anymore. I remember leaving Amarillo sometime in the morning and hitting I-10 in the early morning hours. I saw maybe 3 other cars on that stretch of road, so it wasn't quite as lonely as that other ride that I wrote about here on my blog ("A Wild Ride"). And it wasn't nearly as dangerous either.

A stretch of that road went through a large gorge, as if God had taken a giant sword when he formed the earth and cut a jagged slash in the desert. Down at the bottom of that gorge ran a wild river with lots of white water rapids. The road either wound along that river on the floor of the gorge, or was like tacked to the rock wall where there wasn't enough room next to

the river. The whole gorge was lush and green. I drove with my windows down despite the heat because I wanted to feel and smell the country, to be one with it. There was no question of music because there was no radio that far out into the desert. I wanted to be one with the land as much as possible. Riding through there on a horse would have been the best way to be one with the land, of course, but that wasn't possible at that time in my life.

Interesting! Down in that gorge everything was lush and green, as I said, but a few hundred feet above me the desert floor was barren and forbidding.

I must admit that in all of my travels through raw, untouched areas of the earth I was always just a touch sad to return to civilization. Being out in the wilds of nature- the real thing as opposed to taking a hike on wood chip trails in a national park- stirs something primeval within the very core of my existence. The raw, untouched wilderness calls to something deep within my soul, and in some inexplicable way it feels like a call to come home...

At some point, after having left that beautiful gorge hours before, I saw signs of some kind of civilization far off in the distance. The closer I got the more it began to look like a town. It turned out to be an Apache Indian reservation, right in the middle of some of the most forbidding desert a body could imagine.

Now we all know that the Indians were not treated well by the white man back in the days. We know that they were almost wiped out. 

Yet the whole story of what went on back in the days is never told, and the parts that are told are cut to fit a certain narrative, a narrative that almost paints of picture of peaceful Indians planting flowers and gathering nuts and berries on "their" land, when suddenly a horde of bloodthirsty white men ride into camp and slaughter them all with utmost brutality, simply because they're Indians and because they wanted "their" land.

So let's start by taking a look at some facts. There are currently some 562 federally recognized Native American Tribes. It is estimated that there were up to 2400 different tribes at the time the first white man set foot upon the continent- before many of them were exterminated by the Spanish and the Portuguese, and many others by the illnesses that Europeans brought with them. While a handful of those tribes did have a kind of primitive sense of land ownership and engaged in farming, most were stone-age hunters and gatherers who had no concept of land ownership and lived by the law of "kill or be killed". The Apaches, for example- as were many other tribes- were roving marauders. Anyone they met anywhere they went who did not belong to their group was an enemy, and hence fair game to be attacked and slaughtered and have their possessions stolen from them. For them that was morally right.

Then along came the white man...

The white man brought things with him that the Indian could not make for himself. Wonderful things like rifles and knives made of steel, pots and pans,, sewing needles, and the list goes on. Since survival of the fittest was the only law that the Indians knew they considered it morally right to kill the settlers and take their possessions, that is the things the settlers had that the Indians could not make for themselves.

There was, for the most part, no such thing as the Indian "defending his land" against an invading white man.

Another thing: it's become the fashion to call them "Native Americans" but Adam and Eve were the only "natives" to have ever existed in the history of mankind. Ever since then peoples have driven other peoples out from places, only to be driven out themselves by other peoples later, who are then in turn driven out by others. It is an endless cycle. Our "Native Americans" are the first to admit that they came from somewhere else and drove another people out that had been there before them.

So back to the Indian reservation in the middle of the New Mexican desert.
The sign said Mescalero Apaches. Now the Mescaleros were some of the toughest of the Apache tribes, and it's no wonder that they were. They lived a hard life in a hard, unforgiving land, moving back and forth with the seasons- in rather small groups- from Canada to Mexico, and living off the land all the while. Those were hard men, tough men. They had to be excellent hunters to provide for their families in country where game was scarce- and very dangerous. They had to be mighty warriors in order to defend their families in a land where everyone but the members of your little group was an enemy who wanted to kill you and take everything you had- including your women and children. Those were people who were born and raised, and lived their whole lives in the desert, without any modern conveniences, and their world was filled with violence and danger long before the white man set foot upon their shores.

The visions we have of them today have all been conjured up by soft, plump people sitting on their couches eating a bag of chips. People who just about have a nervous breakdown when someone says something a little bit mean to them!

Being that they had such a hard life and had to be so tough, the Apaches had a few neat "tricks" they liked to "play" when they caught a prisoner in order to test whether he was a real man or not- and it did not matter if it was a white man or another Indian that they had captured. They would strip him naked and tie him down, spread-eagle, to four posts they had driven into the ground- and that next to a fire ant hole. Now getting bitten by a fire ant, or even several, hurts very badly but is not life-threatening, but getting bitten by hundreds of fire ants is deadly, and it's an extremely painful way to die. So they would tie their prisoner naked and spread-eagle next to a fire ant hole, and spread something to attract the ants all over his body. Then the whole tribe, including women and children, would sit down all around him and watch the show! If the man died bravely without uttering a sound he was buried with honors. If he died screaming and making a fuss they'd cut his body in pieces and spread the pieces all over the desert, and maybe even urinate on them to show their contempt for him!

Now the Apaches don't do things like that anymore, of course, so I wasn't worried as I drove into that reservation in that big Kenworth Anteater that day. All I could think of was the growling in my stomach. I was so hungry that my stomach was almost convinced that someone had cut my throat! Lo and behold, what did I see there in the middle of that reservation? A restaurant. "I wonder what Apaches eat?", I thought to myself. "Well, I guess I'll go in and find out."

I pulled that 18-wheeler off to the side next to that restaurant and pulled the brakes, hearing the gush of escaping air all around the truck, and seeing the little puffs of dust whip up from under the truck reflected in the side mirrors. I could see five young Indian braves sitting at a table inside the restaurant, watching me intently through the window, but I didn't really think about it much. I stepped out of that truck in my snakeskin cowboy boots and big black cowboy hat- the epitome of all that those Indians hated- and went on into that restaurant, still curious as to what they would have on the menu. It turned out that they served mostly Mexican food. Now those five Indian braves watched my every move as I walked into that place and found a table. A beautiful young Indian woman with long black hair and the most fascinating, deep, dark eyes came to the table to take my order. I ordered a pitcher of ice tea and a burrito.- and told her to make the burrito nice and spicy hot. I like my food really spicy hot, and I can take a lot of it, believe me. One of those braves got up and followed her as she went off with my order, but I didn't think much of it. I thought maybe the bathroom was off that way or something.

Later, much later, I realized that he must have followed her and had a word with the cook...

I ignored all that was going on around me, eased my chrome-plated 380-automatic to a more comfortable position behind my belt, pulled a Louis L'Amour book out of my pocket, and began to read.

The waitress brought my burrito sometime later, and man did it look good. I was so hungry! I took that fork and knife in my hands, cut off a bite-sized piece and went to put it in my mouth, when I noticed a movement out of the corner of my eye- over there where those five men were sitting. They had stopped talking and were all watching me intently as I was getting ready to take that first bite! Now what in the world...???

I knew what was up the moment I put that first bite in my mouth...

I thought a bomb had gone off in my mouth!!!

I don't know what they put in that burrito but it was pure, unadulterated fire. I immediately broke out into a sweat and it seemed like fire consumed my entire body in an instant- and those men watched with intense interest every second. Visions of that naked man tied to those posts next to the fire ant hole in the desert danced in my head as I desperately fought not to let the pain I was feeling show. I was determined not to give them the satisfaction! It took me a long, long time, and I ended up drinking two gallons of ice tea, but I ate that whole thing, and I think I did a good job of not letting the pain show. Well, I must admit that my taste buds, along with all the nerves in my mouth, my throat, my stomach, and likely my whole body, became completely numb after about four or five bites.

Those Indian braves? They got bored pretty quickly after they realized that I wasn't going to break down and cry or anything, and went back to their conversation. When the waitress came back to get my plate and asked how my food had been, I told her (as best I could talk) that that had been one of the best burritos I had ever eaten, except for the fact that it could have been a little hotter...

I got back in my truck in a lot of pain but feeling like a real man, let off the brakes, pulled onto the road, and drove back out into the desert. Sometime in the early morning hours I reached the freeway, and was somewhere in the deserts of Arizona when the sun came up the next morning. Suddenly I felt a really funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. That feeling quickly began to spread, soon encompassing my entire body. I knew I had go, and I had to go now! I jacked that wheel around and pulled off the road emergency style, grabbed the roll of toilet paper that every truck driver has stashed in his truck- just in case- and away I ran out into the desert, limping and squeezing my butt cheeks as hard as I could, trying to get somewhere as hidden from the road as possible. I finally got behind a big rock and just barely got everything open and pulled down and it went "BOOM". There I was, half bent over, dripping with sweat, burning with almost unbearable fire at one end. I half turned and looked behind me and couldn't believe what I saw: the desert behind me was totally covered for about two meters...

It wouldn't surprise me if nothing grows there to this day, and I'm willing to bet that animals still make a wide detour around that spot...