Essays

Moseying: History of the Southern Llano Estacado

Ipa of the Lipan Apache
May 12, 2004

As the Sibley Center developed historical programs on the Llano Estacado, we began to maintain a timeline. Every time we reviewed a book, any historical information about human involvement with the regional landscape was entered into a computer file. As the information collects and is reviewed, possible connections between disparate sources can crystallize. One of our focuses of the project is the pre-Anglo settlement history – to try to make sense of Indian relations and Spanish-Indian relations as recorded not only by early Anglo explorers, but also by Spanish governmental officials, and the published analyses of Spanish text diaries, epic poems, and books recently translated by scholars.

This process leads to “creative historical reconstruction,” or in other words, the “making up” of stories. Part of becoming a “native” is to learn “stories of place,” or the legends and myths of one’s home ecoregion. Indian stories were oral, and their collection by the ethnographers of the early 20th century is prone to the cultural biases of the time. The translation of the Spanish literature is also open to interpretation – each translator may phrase things differently. History is always a “story” and the only “facts” are the dates of an occurrence. To have stories of place, sometimes it is necessary to “re-create” them.

For example, consider the following sources notated over several years time. A number of years ago we became interested in a Lipan Apache by the name of Magoosh, because his name popped up in six different books of Texas and New Mexico history. This led us to find a number of publications on Lipan Apaches, and to create a timeline of their history. This information, after being utilized for the creation of a number of stories about Magoosh, lay dormant in a file. In the last two years, as the historical timeline began growing, the Lipan file was merged with it. Recently we reviewed the timeline and a fanciful speculation crystallized.

The Comanche Indians, after receiving guns from French traders, and after becoming well-adept at hunting and warring from the back of a horse moved south into Texas about 1700. A number of references indicate that the Comanches fought the Apaches of the breaks of the Llano Estacado in a storied nine-day battle in the 1720s. Lipan Apache legends relate that a group of Apaches, led by “Ipa” led part of the Apaches south. The Lipan Apache name for themselves was Ipa-nde, which means “the people of Ipa.” Other Apaches moved west and became Jicarilla Apaches (one of their two major divisions is known as the “Llaneros,” indicating their origin.) The Apaches had been in the region since the time (if not before) of Coronado (1540s) who had called them “Querechos.”

From the official correspondence of Colonel Ranald Mackenzie during the final days of the wars against the Comanche, we discovered that his Lipan Apache scouts had said that the region around Muchaque Peak and the headwaters of the Colorado River was their old homeland. The Lipan Apaches had treatied with the Spanish in San Antonio beginning the mid-1700s, and had even convinced the Spanish to build the San Saba mission so they could have some protection from the Comanches in the 1750s. This would seem to indicate that if the Lipans had long-lasting memories of the region around Muchaque Peak their time of residence would have to be during the time period from the 1720s to the 1750s. This leads to the following question -- what could have happened in that time period at that location?

A possible answer might come from the old Comanche name for the peak. In 1875, J.J. Sturm and three Comanches rode along the eastern edge of the Llano Estacado delivering Mackenzie’s ultimatum terms of surrender to the Comanches at Mow-way’s camp on the headwaters of the Brazos River downstream from Lubbock, and Quanah Parker’s camp on Bull Creek near Muchaque Peak. Sturm, the post interpreter of Fort Sill, kept a journal of the journey. It included the Comanche names for the landmarks along the way. In Comanche the peak is named “motso’ kue,” and the journal only notes that the name referred to an old man that sat on its summit plucking his hair or beard. This does not tell us much, but modern ethnologist Gary Barsho wrote about how Indian place names are basically titles for a story of what happened at each place. So, what is the story behind “an old man plucking his hair or beard?

This is where the “reconstruction” gets totally speculative – in fact it gets just out-and-out creative!

What if Ipa brought his people to the area around Muchaque, and as long as he lived, he refused to let the Comanches drive him further from his old home? What if he cut his hair in a certain fashion in mourning his lost home and lost tribal members? The French botanist Jean Louis Berlandier traveled with Manuel de Mier y Teran (who was analyzing the needs of the northern reaches of the new country of Mexico) in the mid 1820s, and met Lipans in the region from the Edward’s Plateau to Matamoros. Frederick Law Olmstead (later the master landscape designer of Central Park) met Lipans along the southern edge of the Edwards Plateau to Del Rio in the 1850’s. Both noted that Lipan men wore their hair short on one side of their head, and never cut it on the other side. The long side they would roll up and stuff inside a bag that rested on their shoulder. Why would they do that?

Could the answer be – they did it in honor of Ipa? Did Ipa start the trend? The tribe took its name from him, so could not a hair fashion been worn for the same reason? Why would Ipa cut his hair in such a fashion? Among many Indian tribes a sign of mourning was to cut off all of one’s hair. It might be that he just cut it off on one side to indicate mourning, and left it long on the other to indicate his determination to resist the invading Comanches.

It is for certain that Ipa was a seminal figure in Lipan Apache history – a founding father, like George Washington, for example. Such a leader, one who saved his people, and led them on an “exodus” would become a figure of legend. Succeeding generations would tell his story. The last of the people able to relate even a portion of his story told what they could remember to Maurice Opler in the 1930s. There are no full-blood Lipan Apaches today – the handful that Magoosh brought out of Mexico to the reservation near Ruidoso at the turn of the century intermarried with Mescalero and Chiricahua Apaches or people of other cultures, and the stories of Ipa have been forgotten by the descendants, as far as we can find out.

So… the next time you drive past Muchaque Peak and through Gail, Texas, have a chuckle about this speculative myth – and wonder, as we do… is Ipa buried up there on the peak?