Who the Mescalero are
The Mescalero Apache are an Apache people whose historical homeland lay in south-central New Mexico and adjoining parts of Texas and northern Mexico. Today they are represented by the Mescalero Apache Tribe, a federally recognized nation with a reservation in the mountains of south-central New Mexico. The Mescalero speak a Southern Athabaskan language, and their language is closely related to that of the Chiricahua.
Like other Apache peoples, the Mescalero were not a single unit in the past. Historical accounts describe a number of bands or local groups that moved through a large territory according to the seasons. Historians do not always agree on how these groups were organised, and the names used by Spanish and American writers do not always match how Mescalero people described themselves.
The name
The word Mescalero is Spanish. It is generally explained as referring to mescal, the roasted heart of the agave plant, which was an important food. Spanish observers used the term for Apache groups who gathered and cooked agave, and it later became fixed as the name for this people. The Mescalero have their own names for themselves, and the Spanish term is an outsiders’ label that has become standard in English.
Mescal roasting was a major activity. Agave hearts were typically cooked for a long time in earth pits, and the result was a sweet, storable food. The practice involved communal work and was tied to particular seasons and places, and it remains an important part of the history of Apache plant use. It is not unique to the Mescalero, but it was prominent enough in their way of life to give them their name.
Mountains and surrounding lands
The Mescalero homeland included the Sacramento Mountains, the Sierra Blanca, and the desert basins and ranges around them, and the people used higher and lower elevations in different seasons. They hunted deer and other animals, gathered plants such as agave, acorns, berries and seeds, and also traded and raided. Some groups ranged east onto the Plains edge to hunt bison. The landscape itself is discussed in the article on the Sacramento Mountains and the Mescalero Escarpment. Specific details of seasonal movement varied by band and by period.
Spain, Mexico and the United States
The Mescalero’s contacts with Europeans began in the 1500s and 1600s, when Spanish expeditions and settlements entered New Mexico. For much of the colonial and Mexican periods, relations ranged from trade and temporary peace to warfare. After the U.S. takeover in the late 1840s, settlers and soldiers arrived in increasing numbers, and conflicts over land and livestock led to military campaigns in the early 1860s. In that period many Mescalero people were confined at Bosque Redondo, as described in the article on the Bosque Redondo years.
Founding of the reservation
After leaving Bosque Redondo in 1865, the Mescalero lived under continuing pressure. A reservation in the Sacramento Mountains area was established by executive order in 1873, generally dated to that year. Its boundaries were adjusted over the following decades. The reservation brought a measure of security but also federal control of daily life, including agency rules, ration systems and schools aimed at assimilation.
How the reservation became shared
The Mescalero reservation did not remain home to the Mescalero alone.
Chiricahua people. In the 1880s, the U.S. Army sent most Chiricahua people, including those who had not fought, to prison in Florida, Alabama and then Oklahoma. After many years as prisoners of war, they were released in 1913, and a portion chose to move to the Mescalero reservation, while others remained in Oklahoma. Warm Springs and other Chiricahua groups already had ties to the Mescalero by geography and family. This is part of the wider story of the Chiricahua prisoners of war and of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe, the Oklahoma nation descended from those who stayed.
Lipan people. Lipan families from Texas and Mexico joined the Mescalero community in the early 1900s, generally dated to about 1903. Their history is covered in the account of the Lipan Apache of Texas and northern Mexico.
As a result, the Mescalero Apache Tribe today includes people with Mescalero, Chiricahua and Lipan ancestry, and sometimes several at once. Each family’s background differs, and the tribe, as a sovereign nation, decides its own membership.
Culture and community
Mescalero people maintain ceremonies, languages, crafts and community events. Some of these are public in a limited way, but many aspects of ceremonial life are private and are not described here. The Girl’s Sunrise Ceremony is a well-known coming-of-age tradition among Apache peoples, but visitors should never assume they may attend or photograph a ceremony, and should follow the tribe’s official guidance.
Governance and the present
The Mescalero Apache Tribe governs through an elected council under its own constitution and manages its lands, services and enterprises. This article does not give current details, since they change. For up-to-date information about visiting, services, events and tribal programs, readers should consult the tribe’s official website.
Avoiding old stereotypes
The Mescalero are often mentioned only in connection with the Apache Wars, but their history also includes farming, craft, mountain stewardship, diplomacy and survival of confinement. They are a living nation, not a people of the past.