The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #148793   Message #3459839
Posted By: pdq
31-Dec-12 - 09:58 PM
Thread Name: BS: Geronimo
Subject: RE: BS: Geronimo
"Lozen (c. 1840-1890) was a skilled warrior and a prophet of the Chihenne Chiricahua Apache. She was the sister of Victorio, a prominent chief...{shortened to fit in a normal post}

Late in Victorio's campaign, Lozen left the band to escort a new mother and her newborn infant across the Chihuahuan Desert from Mexico to the Mescalero Apache Reservation, away from the hardships of the trail.

Equipped with only a rifle, a cartridge belt, a knife, and a three-day supply of food, she set out with the mother and child on a perilous journey through territory occupied by Mexican and U.S. Cavalry forces. En route, afraid that a gunshot would betray their presence, she used her knife to kill a longhorn, butchering it for the meat.

She stole a Mexican cavalry horse for the new mother, escaping through a volley of gunfire. She then stole a vaquero's horse for herself, disappearing before he could give chase. She also acquired a soldier's saddle, rifle, ammunition, blanket and canteen, and even his shirt. Finally, she delivered her charges to the reservation.

There, she learned that Mexican and Tarahumara Indian forces under Mexican commander Joaquin Terrazas had ambushed Victorio and his band at Tres Castillos, three stony hills in northeastern Chihuahua.

According to Stephen H. Lekson in his monograph Nana's Raid: Apache Warfare in Southern New Mexico, 1881, Terrazas, on October 15, 1880, 'surprised the Apaches, and in the boulders of Tres Castillos, Victorio's warriors fought their last fight. Apache tradition holds that Victorio fell on his own knife rather than die at the hands of the Mexicans. Almost all the warriors at Tres Castillos were killed, and many women died fighting; the older people were shot, while almost one hundred young women and children were taken for slaves. Only a few escaped.'"