Santana: War Chief of the Mescalero Apache

Drawn from previously unpublished firsthand accounts of the years 1862 to 1880, this book tells the previously unpublished story of a remarkable Mescalero war chief who had the foresight to recognize that continued armed resistance to the Anglo horde engulfing his homeland would lead to the Mescaleros' annihilation as a people, and who had the presence and the will to discipline his own people to give up their warring ways and learn to live as treaty terms demanded. Because of his gifts as a leader and negotiator, Santana eventually won the confidence of the US government, saved his people from extermination by the military, and negotiated a reservation in their traditional homelands in the Sacramento 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 of the beleaguered tribe that responded to his leadership during their gravest crisis. Fluent in Apache 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.

Who was Santana?
Anonymity is often the fate of peacemakers. And so, until now, Santana, among the most brilliant of all the war chiefs of the Mescalero Apache, has been virtually unknown in recorded history. Known to the US Army in his early years as the most cunning and vicious of the Mescalero leaders waging war against the Anglo invaders, it is ironic that Santana's most notable contribution related to making peace rather than war. He understood in the 1860s, earlier than most of his contemporaries, that the probable ultimate result of continued struggle with the white man was the annihilation of his people. Recognizing that he would be among the first to die as punishment for his warlike behavior, he disappeared into the mountains for 10 years, until the heat was off and the Army's attention was focused on a new generation of war chiefs. After his reappearance, he led his followers into peace to prevent their disappearance as a people and negotiated for them a reservation in their traditional homelands in the Sacramento mountains of south-central New Mexico.

When he decided to come out of hiding, Santana needed a friend from whom he could learn about the ways of the white world and who would intercede for him with the alien culture. He found that friend in J. H. Blazer, who operated a mill, La Manquina, later to become known as Blazer's Mill, on the Rio Tularoso at a site one-half mile downstream from the present-day Mescalero Agency. After a tension-fraught initial meeting in late 1867 or early 1868, the two men learned to like and respect one another and developed an abiding friendship that lasted until Santana's death from pneumonia in the winter of 1877.

Santana was a remarkable man for any age or time. Recognizing his own limitations in dealing with an Anglo juggernaut bent on overwhelming and destroying his culture and his people, he was able to step outside his cultural heritage of war and conquest and use his exceptional skills as a tactician, negotiator, and leader to find a way to preserve both with a minimum of bloodshed. In this age of increasingly violent cultural and religious conflicts in many parts of the world, surely his story deserves substantial recognition.

About the Author
Almer Noel Blazer arrived in New Mexico at age 14, the year following Santana’s death, and grew up at his father's flour 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 US 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 and Spanish (the language favored my numerous older Apaches) 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 both as an inventor and as a writer. He was acknowledged by historians Eve Ball and C. L. Sonnichsen as the foremost Anglo authority on the Mescalero Apache and their turbulent history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

About the Book
The manuscript contains both accounts of J.H. Blazer's interactions with Santana and descriptions of certain aspects of Mescalero life and culture supplied from the experience of the author and from stories from the author’s Mescalero acquaintances, some of whom were contemporaries of Santana.

This is not an academic history. Any reader expecting such an account will be disappointed. Many of the events and conversations related herein cannot be verified because they come from the memories of people who had no written language (and who, it should be noted, had far better memories as a result). Yet what has resulted is a very believable account, verifiable in many important particulars, of a remarkable man and certain aspects of the Mescalero culture which spawned and shaped him.

Perhaps it should be more correctly be called an oral history. Like the Mescalero people he lived among, Almer Blazer was a storyteller. Like all good storytellers, he, by his own admission, sometimes fleshed out stories with elements derived from his experience that seemed reasonable and appropriate, with the purpose of making the fundamental elements of the story more comprehensible to his audience. While these characteristics may disappoint the academic-minded, a different kind of reader may find the manuscript more alive and hence more appealing than a conventional historical account.

Santana's absence from the historical accounts of the time led to numerous early rejections from publishing houses. "Did Santana even exist?" they asked. In the late 1980's, A. R. Pruit, assisted by Dr. Jerry Thompson, successfully undertook the task of investigating Army archives not available to the original author to document Santana's existence after his disappearance into the mountains in 1868. Dr. Pruit's comments and biographical notes on both A.N. and J.H. Blazer are incorporated in the current volume.