What mescal means here
In this context “mescal” refers to the roasted heart, or crown, of the agave plant, and by extension to the food prepared from it. It is not the distilled drink sold under a similar name today, and it is not the cactus called peyote. The word comes from a Nahuatl term that Spanish speakers carried north, and in the Southwest it became the common name for roasted agave. English-language writers still use it that way.
Several Apache groups relied on agave. It is especially associated in the literature with the Mescalero, whose name is generally understood to come from this food, and with the Chiricahua and some Western Apache groups. Information about specific communities is uneven, so what follows is a general outline.
The plant
Agave species such as those sometimes called Parry’s agave and Palmer’s agave grow on rocky slopes and ridges in the mountains and foothills of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico. An agave grows slowly as a rosette of thick, spiny leaves, and stores sugars in its core until it sends up a tall flowering stalk. Harvesters generally took plants shortly before this stalk emerged, when the stored sugar was thought to be at its highest. Because the plant often dies after flowering, the harvest timing is tied to the plant’s life cycle.
Conditions vary, but spring is the season most often named in accounts, which fits with the stalks beginning to rise.
Harvesting
The harvest involved cutting the plant free from the ground and trimming off the leaves to expose the heart. A long digging tool and a sharp implement are described in the literature, along with the heavy labor of the work. The trimmed crowns were then carried to the roasting place.
Crowns are heavy, and a family might bring in many at once. The work was shared, and groups often camped near the agave stands for the duration. Accounts describe it as a social season as well as a food-gathering one, but the details differ by community and by period. The practice sat within the broader Western Apache seasonal round and the comparable cycles of other groups.
Pit roasting
The agave heart is not edible raw in any pleasant sense; roasting breaks down starches and makes it sweet and soft. The general method documented in many Southwestern sources is as follows.
- A pit was dug and lined with stones.
- A fire was built in it to heat the stones thoroughly.
- The crowns were set on the hot stones, covered with green plant material and sometimes damp matting, and buried with earth.
- They were left to cook for a long time, often a day or more, before the pit was opened.
Anyone who has seen a modern earth-oven bake will recognize the principle. The long, slow, moist heat is what converts the plant. Roasting pits left behind by this activity are well known to archaeologists in the Southwest, sometimes called roasting features, and they are found over a wide area. They are evidence that agave processing has a long history, though the dating and the question of which peoples made which pits in which period are matters of ongoing scholarly work and should be treated cautiously.
Eating and storing
The cooked heart could be eaten on the spot. Accounts also describe pounding or pressing it into sheets and drying it, which produced a sweet, storable food that could be carried and kept for later months. Such preserved food was valuable on journeys and in leaner seasons, which is part of why mescal is often described as a significant food rather than a minor one.
Agave was also a source of material. Fibers from the leaves were made into cord, and the dried flower stalks could serve as lightweight wood. These uses connect agave to the wider set of materials discussed in the overview of Apache plant uses.
Mescal and identity
The Mescalero Apache people are the group most often tied to agave in popular writing. The name is a Spanish-era label, and the nation’s present-day account of its own history and names is best found through its official channels. For outsiders it is worth remembering that this was never the whole of any group’s diet; hunting, other wild plants and, for some, farming were all part of the year. Describing a people only by a single food is a simplification.
Agave today
Agave plants grow slowly, and stands can take many years to recover from heavy harvesting. Land change, grazing, and altered rainfall affect where agave grows and where people can reach it. Some communities have discussed or carried out efforts related to traditional foods, but specifics vary and change, so readers should check the nations’ own websites for current information.
This article does not describe ceremonial uses of agave or related plants, if any exist; such knowledge is not for public telling. It also avoids giving instructions for harvesting or roasting, because agave plants are protected in some areas and gathering on tribal land requires permission.