Catherine Robles-Shaw 62 Award-winning Artist 303/258-0544 Special Orders for Altarscreens www.catherineroblesshaw.com NICholas HERRERA PO Box 43 El Rito, New Mexico 87530 505.581-4733 www.nicholasherrera.com TRADICIÓN October <strong>2012</strong>
The Mescalero Basketmakers by Joan M. Jensen Sometime between 1891 and 1903, Martha Goss and her husband, Arthur, a chemistry professor who taught at the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (now New Mexico State University), made the 110 mile trip east from Las Cruces, New Mexico, to the Mescalero Indian community. Mescalero, which means “people of the Mescal,” referred to their use of the Agave, or century plant, as a staple food. Their tribal territory in the early nineteenth century had stretched along the Pecos River from central New Mexico south into Coahuila, Mexico, but by the 1890s, most lived at the head of the Tularosa River Canyon in the Sacramento Mountains, on about 500,000 acres of land reserved for them by the United States government. Arthur had purchased a camera and he took a photograph of Martha negotiating the purchase of one of the large woven trays offered by Mescalero women for sale to tourists. The two young women, astride their horse, squint into the sun as they negotiate with the carefully dressed middle-class tourist. The basket, a large coiled tray by its outline under the wrapping, was probably woven by one of the older women, but young women often took the baskets to the agency to look for tourists who might pay in cash instead of to the nearby store where they could only get credit. In 1904, the governor reported Fig. 1. Martha Goss negotiating purchase of a large basket tray with young Mescalero women on the Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico, ca. 1891-1903. HHUA: 03830020 that Mescalero Apache had sold $1,320 worth of “curios” that year. Basket-making, along with beadwork, accounted for most of these sales. Today these baskets are still little studiedand scattered across the country in countless collections, only a few of which are identified as the work of Mescalero basketmakers. They remain a remarkable physical presence of the beautifully expressive culture of these Mescalero artists created amid difficult conditions in south central New Mexico. 1 A caution to the reader of these images and words: they introduce us to Mescalero women through the eyes of the beholder. All im- ages were framed by outsiders who happened to have cameras, and the words are based upon documents mainly written by officials and other Anglos who happened to share a space and time with individual Native people who lived on the Mescalero reservation at one particular time. Today, tourists still visit the Mescalero in southern New Mexico, although they most often come for the calm retreat at the Inn of the Mountain Gods, to golf, fish, or gamble at the casino. This history is a reminder of the first tourist industry created by the Mescalero in their successful effort to remain in their mountain homelands, a place of great beauty, but little economic TRADICIÓN October <strong>2012</strong> 63
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