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Santana:
War Chief of the
Mescalero Apache
About
the book
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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from previously unpublished firsthand accounts of the years 1862 to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
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