Santana - War Chief of the Mescalero Apache
Almer N. Blazer
Edited by A. R. Pruit
Introduction by Jerry D. Thompson

Drawn from previously unpublished firsthand accounts of the years 1862 to 1880, this book tells the story of a great Mescalero war chief who was targeted for death by the U.S. military as a dangerous renegade. Because of his gifts as a leader and negotiator, Santana eventually won the confidence of the government, saved his people from extermination by the military, and secured a reservation on their traditional homeland in the mountains of south-central New Mexico. The manuscript on which this book is based--written by Almer N. Blazer in the 1940s--recreates the stories of both Santana himself and the beleaguered tribe that looked to his leadership during their gravest crisis. A neighbor and close friend of the Mescalero, Blazer writes sympathetically of the tribe's struggle for survival and gives detailed, authentic descriptions of Mescalero life before it was forever changed by contact with European culture.

Almer Blazer grew up at his father's mill, an isolated white outpost in Mescalero territory near Tularosa, New Mexico. The story of Santana's life and achievements comes from the recollections of the author's father, Dr. Joseph H. Blazer, who was Santana's close personal friend and his official mediator in important negotiations with the government. In his manuscript, Almer Blazer presented a vital picture of daily tribal life, customs, and religious beliefs. He faithfully transmitted what he saw, heard, and experienced, preserving oral history and cultural information that might otherwise have been lost during the Mescalero's brutal transition to "modern" life. The book includes rare early photographs of the Mescalero Apache, many of which are from the Blazer family collection. Also included is a recent photograph of rocking chairs used by J. H. Blazer and Santana, respectively, that still exist in the Blazer family collection.

Almer N. Blazer spoke the Mescalero language fluently from his early years and participated in hunting, tracking, and other activities with the tribe. Later in his life, he achieved a modest reputation as a writer but was acknowledged by historians Eve Ball and C. L. Sonnichsen as the foremost authority on the Mescalero Apache and their turbulent history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Editor A. R. Pruit, through archival research, substantiated Blazer's account of Santana's life and achievements and provided further documentation that was not available to the original author.

26 historic photographs 320 pages 5 x 8
ISBN: 0-9718658-1-7 (cloth) $24.95
ISBN: 0-9718658-0-9  (paper) $14.95
Publication Date: February, 2000