October 1998

Looking out into the sea of Chiricahua and Anglo faces in the
darkened auditorium, I begin my presentation on the drawings and paintings done by Na-
tive American prisoners of war. Today is "'Ikéké Jagal, Cultural Continuance in a Tradi-
tional Chiricahua Community," an all-day seminar being held at the University of Arizona
in collaboration with the Chiricahua Apache Prisoners of War Descendants and sponsored
by the Arizona State Museum and the university. The great-great-great-grandson of Co-
chise and his family are in the audience. Others are direct descendants of the warriors who
rode with Geronimo and Naiche, Cochise's son. After their surrender in 1886, roughly 512
Chiricahuas, almost the entire population of all their bands, were shuffled from prison
sites in Florida to Alabama to Oklahoma as prisoners of war for twenty-seven years. In 1912
they were finally allowed to settle on the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico but
did not arrive until the following year. Today descendants of the two-thirds of the POWs
who accepted this offer still reside there.

To put the work of Naiche and other Chiricahua artists in a broader perspective, I am
describing artwork done by Plains Indian prisoners of war. Although I am speaking of
Zotom, a Kiowa warrior, the same spirit of fierce resistance and remarkable resourceful-
ness also burned in the hearts of the Chiricahua. The drawing projected on the screen be-
hind me depicts Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Comanche prisoners gazing out to sea,

-361-