Chiricahua Apache Enduring Power: Naiche's Puberty Ceremony Paintings (review)

T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 226 Chiricahua Apache Enduring Power: Naiche’s Puberty Ceremony Paintings. By Trudy Griffin-Pierce. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006. xvii, 185 pp. $75.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-8173-1544-6. $32.95 (paper). ISBN 08173 -5367-4. The author’s substantial research into the Chiricahua Apaches’ twenty -seven years of imprisonment by the United States government is impressive . However, while citing works of respected researchers, she offers nothing new in the raw facts of that abominable experience. Instead, she skillfully applies modern-day, sophisticated interpretations retrospectively to Naiche, who lived in a markedly different cultural milieu more than one hundred years ago. Whether this is appropriate is a matter of opinion. Griffin-Pierce’s conclusions about prisoner-of-war Naiche’s paintings of the highly spiritual (religious) Chiricahua Apache Puberty Ceremony—that they brought order to his life amid the chaotic conditions of incarceration, and that they represented a yearning to return to a better place and time, among others—could have been supported or refuted by Naiche’s granddaughter, Elbys Hugar, who is currently living on the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico. Had Hugar been consulted, her comments might have offered a familial counterpoint to Griffin-Pierce’s premises, thus balancing this work by providing an essential Apache dimension. In the absence of an opposing view or a Chiricahua voice, however, the author parades Naiche, his art, and his people through multiple academic analyses, bringing to mind Indian authors Clara Sue Kidwell, Homer Noley, and George E. Tinker’s statement in A Native American Theology: “western categories do not work for identifying, describing, naming, or explaining Indian religious realities” (New York, 2001). I agree. Unfortunately, the book contains a number of errors. For example, a major problem occurs immediately, in the foreword, by J. Jefferson Reid and Stephanie M. Whittlesey, who claim Naiche painted and commemorated the “nai’es, a set of community and secret rituals highlighted by the public Sunrise Dance” (p. xvii). But, Naiche’s artwork does not depict the Western Apache Sunrise Dance. Instead, he painted the Chiricahua Apache girls’ puberty ceremony, clearly evidenced by the unique and distinctive style of the Mountain Spirit Dancers’ headdresses. Chiricahua and Mescalero Apache headdresses are pointed; Western Apache headdresses are fan-like, a distinction magnified by the different processes comprising each ritual. J U L Y 2 0 0 7 227 Another problem appears when the author mistakenly remarks that the Chiricahua Apaches were “the only group . . . that was never allowed to have a reservation in their homeland” (p. 1). On the very next page, the lower Figure 1 map shows the original 1870s Chiricahua Apache Reservation in southeastern Arizona, definitely part of the group’s homelands. Other factual errors appear. For example, Victorio did not kill himself (p. 4) according to his contemporary direct descendants, although that tragedy remains controversial. James Kaywaykla was not with Geronimo (p. 23). The caption on the upper photo (p. 106), misidentifies the site as Fort Marion; it is the Carlisle School. Most Christian or “given” names were assigned at Fort Marion, the Carlisle School, or at Fort Sill by the Dutch Reformed Church’s missionaries during baptisms, not in Alabama (p. 114). Kaywaykla was not Juh’s son (p. 138). Ski Apache is not in Ruidoso, New Mexico, but is on the Mescalero Apache Reservation (p. 164). The Apache Gold Casino is on the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona, not Mescalero (p. 164); that particular casino is not a Mescalero enterprise. These mistakes undermine the author’s thesis. Some matter-of-fact generalizations also raise concerns. On page 163, for example, she states, “after living in houses at Mount Vernon Barracks, [the Chiricahua Apaches] found that they preferred houses to wickiups when they moved to Fort Sill.” One wonders where that information originated and how the author achieved consensus among the long dead Apaches. Power (pp. 158–64) is an area of Chiricahua Apache spirituality that is best left to tribal members to discuss, if they are willing to do so. Few outsiders are able to grasp...