Apache warrior

Sadness clouds much of the recorded history of Apache Indians in the Southwest since the arrival of white settlers and troops. The government broke treaties with the Apache, hunted them down and confined them to reservations. Officials exiled many, including Geronimo, to a prison camp in Florida. Hundreds of Apache children had to leave their homeland and attend boarding school in Pennsylvania, where educators forced them to abandon traditional practices.

Although modern descendents of the defeated Apache have assimilated American culture, they haven’t forgotten that once their ancestors roamed defiant and free. This statue of a mounted Apache warrior with drawn bow seems to symbolize that image. While staying at the RV park at the Apache Gold Casino Resort on the San Carlos Indian Reservation in Arizona, I took a walk and noticed the statue on a rise overlooking the golf course. An Apache employee of the resort, talking about the statue, jokingly told me that “he comes alive at night.”

I wanted to believe him.