LOT Brian Lebel's Old West Events  /  Brian Lebel's Old West Auction  / 

180

Rare Texas-Collected, Mescalero Apache Collection

Currency:USD Category:Western Americana / Collectibles - Old West Start Price:150,000.00 USD Estimated At:200,000.00 - 250,000.00 USD
Rare Texas-Collected, Mescalero Apache Collection
Contact Brian Lebel's High Noon Auction prior to bidding if you have a lot inquiry.
Mescalero Apache Collection – Shirt, Shield, Leggings, Bow Case & Quiver Set

a) Native tanned hide shirt, with traces of yellow and green ochre. Fringe decorations, with minimal beadwork in blues and white on bib, shoulders and arms. 61” wide, 24” long.

b) Hardened buffalo hide shield with leather shield cover. Deer hide shield cover, painted in red, black and yellow with a variety of symbols, including a centipede and a dragonfly, around a central four-pointed star. The shield interior appears to be undecorated. 20” diameter, ¼" thick.

c) Bow case and quiver of beaded hide with trade cloth trim and fringe. Remnant hair on the hide. Quiver is 27 ½” long without the fringe, bow case is 42” long. Single curve type wooden bow.

d) Leggings with white edge beading along the outside and lower edge of the flap; outside flap lined in a lane of blue, white and navy stacked triangles with circles in navy and white with red centers. Right leg (as worn) 36”; left leg 38”.

Collected circa 1870s, held in a single family for 140+ years.

Mescalero Apache Objects, Collected in 1870, Private collection, Texas / Oklahoma.
The Mescalero Apache warrior culture was forged amidst a complex geopolitical arena. Named after the mescal agave on which they subsisted, the Mescalero Apache were some of the fiercest warriors in the Southwest and Southern Plains. They were the mountain vanguards of the eastern Apacheria – a territory that overlapped with the Comancheria, spanning Northern Mexico, Eastern New Mexico and West Texas. Their boundaries were continuously threatened, especially by the Kiowa and Comanche.

Consequently, Mescalero Apache warrior equestrian culture developed alongside these larger neighboring cultures in the 18th and 19th centuries. According to Thomas E. Mails, author of The People Called Apache (1974), “the Mescalero warrior picked up most of the war customs of the [Southern] Plains. He employed the painted hide shield with medicine appendages, the lance, the bow and arrow with a Plains-style bow case and quiver.” Like their notorious neighbors, the Apache had learned to use these instruments with devastating efficacy.

The Mescalero items presented here – a shirt, a shield, a bowcase and quiver and a pair of leggings – were the principal tools of a Southern Plains warrior. These objects, while seemingly primitive to Euro-American eyes, had halted the advance of western civilization for centuries. It was not until the second half of the 19th century, with the arrival of repeating firearms, that the tides began to turn. That these four items were reportedly collected by a military family stationed near the Guadeloupe Mountains, in Western Texas, and then Fort Sill, Oklahoma, over 140 years ago, further suggests that they were battle-tested during the Indian Wars.

Shirts and shields, in particular, had special reverence on the Plains. Shirts advertised social rank and visually demonstrated a warrior’s military prowess. Shields, on the other hand, were far more personal. Both objects demonstrated something important and unique about the wearer, both internally and externally. That the shirt, for example, is ochre-stained to appear green is rare on the Southern Plains. The large inclusion of the color on the shirt suggests something unique about the wearer: that he had the means and the social-standing to successfully wear it.

Leggings and quivers are also hallmarks of the Southern Plains warrior tradition. They proved exceedingly effective in guerilla warfare. Riding at a full gallop, a Southern Plains warrior could loose multiple arrows with deadly accuracy. (This rendered single-shot muzzle loader rifles obsolete.) Constructed from either cowhide or horsehide – likely procured from raids in Texas cattle country – the Apache quiver featured here embodies the Southern Plains style, particularly with its red cloth trim and beaded accents.

Few warrior ensembles, like the one presented here, become available on the market. What makes this collection particularly special is that the objects were collected simultaneously, in the period, and may well have belonged to the same owner – a Mescalero Apache warrior, who resided somewhere in the Guadeloupe Mountains of Western Texas.
Sign In to Bookmark Lot