I Fought a Good Fight: A History of the Lipan Apaches

38. We, the Apache Tribe

374 As schools improved and education became a useful tool in the Apaches’ entry to modern life, students wanted to attend school, and the community at Elk Canyon got its own day school. An educated younger generation, impatient for modern governance, organized a Business Committee in 1918 with representation by Mescaleros, Lipans and Chiricahuas; its president became the tribe’s leader.2 “[W]e finally got rid of the chiefs, who were getting old and feeble . . . We needed leaders, and the young educated people thought we should have a business committee,” said Solon Sombrero. The surviving chiefs approved.3 The Business Committee wasn’t immediately effective because the agent’s power was undiminished. After logging began on Elk and Silver creeks in 1923, bringing new revenues to the reservation, the committee struggled to gain control of reservation resources, but income from timber sales and grazing still funneled through the government. In 1934 the Wheeler-Howard (Indian Reorganization) Act gave tribes the right to organize and adopt a constitution and bylaws. Mescalero ’s residents voted that year to accept the act and two years later adopted a constitution and federal charter that made the ten-person 38 CHAPTER We, the Apache Tribe The whole state of Texas is the Lipan Nation. We had a lot of people then. The army kept killing them. Disease kept killing them. — Meredith Magoosh Begay1 We, the Apache Tribe 375 Business Committee the official governing body. The new tribal constitution began: “We, the Apache Tribe of the Mescalero Reservation,” but the inclusive wording masked divisions. “[N]ot one but three distinct tribes of Apache [are] represented on the Mescalero reservation, and . . . there was, too often, no love lost between the members of these ethnic groups,” wrote Morris Opler in 1936. “The truth is that there is just enough similarity between Apache tribes so that the differences stand out like sore thumbs in the native mind.” They didn’t expect white people to understand their customs, but differences in beliefs with fellow Apaches weighed heavily.4 Time and intermarriage would melt those barriers. “My grandfather [Willie Magoosh] talked to me in Lipan, my grandmother [Hallie Magoosh] talked to me in Mescalero, and my other grandparents spoke Chiricahua. I had to be Apache trilingual,” said Meredith Magoosh Begay with a chuckle.5 Q R The new tribal administration, led by Victor Dolan (his maternal grandfather was Blanco, a Lipan, and his paternal grandfather was Chief Plata, a Llanero), borrowed from a new federal revolving loan fund to build homes, barns and poultry houses and buy implements and livestock . A Cattle Growers’ Association managed reservation stock for new owners. Mescalero cattlemen terminated range leases to outsiders and began to graze their own cattle. The agency cut timber, sawed it and built four-room houses. By 1942 every family had a house.6 During World War II, many young Apaches served in the military; others found wartime employment off the reservation and lived for the first time in towns and cities. Richard Magoosh, grandson of the chief, learned welding at Holloman Air Force Base in nearby Alamogordo and later worked at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio. When the war boom ended, these young people returned to the reservation with new attitudes. Solon Sombrero, president of the Business Committee 376 I FOUGHT A GOOD FIGHT in 1943 and 1944, and Richard Magoosh, president in 1952, helped the people enter a new era.7 Q R With the Indian Claims Commission Act of 1946, tribes could sue for any wrong or the taking of their land by the United States. On February 3, 1948, the Apache Nation (Lipans, represented by Pedro Méndez and Philemon Venego, and Mescaleros, represented by Solon Sombrero, Fred Pellman, Eric Tortilla and Victor Dolan) filed a claim saying they had aboriginal title to a vast area in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and portions of adjoining states. Their attorney was Abe Weissbrodt, whose firm was one of the best Indian claims firms in Washington, D.C.8 Cloaked in noble sentiment, the claims commission was actually one facet of a larger scheme to terminate tribes: The government intended to compensate Indian people for lands taken and then close their reservations. The melting pot would complete the process, as liberated Indian people took their places in American society. The government gained clear title at bargain prices. In its thirty-year existence , the commission settled 484...