The twin-birth of Apache’s twenty-seven year exile and Ledger Art
Raul is a member of the Mescalero Apache Tribe. He was born and raised in the mountains of Mescalero where he acquired a love for the outdoors. His mother the late Vickie (Chino) Davis was born and raised in Mescalero. Raul’s dad, Jimmy Davis Jr., is African American from Sweetwater, Texas. Growing up Raul experienced many hardships, however, instead of focusing on his challenges he has chosen to grow strength from his adversities. Raul gains his inspiration from his Apache ancestors knowing their survival tactics and fierce fighting abilities. He also recognizes African American ancestry because they too suffered and persevered through being oppressed.
He started painting with watercolors as a little boy. He is still inspired by his older brother Rueben Chino, who in Raul’s eyes was the best artist ever. In the late 1990s, Raul worked as a wild land firefighter where he ran a chainsaw for a number of years. With his chainsaw experience he taught himself how to carve statues, bears, bowls, etc. Raul’s love for the outdoors took him out hiking and gathering elk and deer antler sheds. He taught himself how to make elk and deer antler furniture.
Since Raul has worked with several different mediums, he is concentrating on Apache Ledger Art. Ledger art finds its roots in the artwork that used to adorn tipis, clothing, shields and drums. Ledger art is a term for narrative drawings or painting on paper or cloth. He combines ledger art and historical documentation. His works often reveal political commentary about the past, providing food for thought and a sense of humor. His drawings tell a story, perhaps of a battle or other significant event, religious or otherwise. Raul has traveled across the country and scours antique stores to find old documents that form the backdrop for his work. These may be pages of diaries, bank notes, recipes or sheet music. Each of his documents come with a certificate of authenticity. The text inspires the art. Davis says the art and the document are interconnected.
Raul preserves the ancestral history of his people by bridging the gap through his ledger art. It is his intent to convey Apache history because so much of it is not taught in schools, nor do people remember how the Apache suffered. His focus is not how his people suffered but how they overcame and how they thrived. Native Americans are underrepresented throughout America and he, not only sheds light on the past, but shares his faith in our bright future.
Artist Statement
Bringing creations to life through a multitude of art forms is my passion. Art enables me to take the best of both worlds and apply characteristics of being Mescalero Apache and African American. My success as an artist hinged on being given a second chance at life and overcoming major obstacles. Arising from such a dark place in life fueled my desire to live my dreams and never settle for mediocrity. My late mother and late sister were my number one fans and my late brother was the best artist I knew as a child. I am inspired by their love and passion to share and bring joy to others through my art.
My focus is currently ledger art which consists of antique ledger paper and acid free oil based colored pencil and my imagination that depicts Apache history and culture. I use acrylic and latex paint to create Apache Paintings and Drip Paintings. My earliest forms of art consisted of elements from the Mescalero Reservation which were elk and deer antler furniture, wood and stone sculpturing, as well as wood burning. I also etch glass and make jewelry, specializing in wire wrapping. My expertise in chainsaw carving stems from experience as a wild land fire fighter. I have also mastered drawing and creating art on delicate antique documents. Making fashionable Native American jewelry has always been my specialty.
I create Mescalero Apache artwork to reach the younger Native American generation and to inspire them to chase their dreams. More importantly, I feel that it is of extreme importance that we never forget Apache history and how our people overcame and triumphed through the toughest circumstances. My greatest joy is for my art to stop someone dead in their tracks and for them to tell me that they are moved by something I created with my own hands and God given talent. I truly believe that the higher you soar the more beautiful the view.
—Raul Davis
Raul Davis’s paintings of strong, powerful Apache women are a didactic series reflecting on the matriarchy he was born into at the Mescalero Apache reservation. A direct descendent of famed Chiricahua Apache chiefs Cochise and his son Naiche, the spirit of a people going back thousands of years lives on to this day much in part to visual narrators like him.
Chiricahua Apaches were “put on the map” in mainstream consciousness by those above-mentioned two leaders who, together with medicine man and leader Geronimo, evaded white settler armies for decades. They are also famously known to be the last great warrior chiefs to resist the incursion of endless invaders who felt a need to subdue these proud bands. The Apaches, along with their Creator-bestowed buffalo friends, were rulers of vast lands between North-West Arizona, all the way to Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Mexico.
The final capture of those three leaders, along with Victorio’s sister–female warrior, medicine woman and prophet Lozen, lead to the entire tribe of Chiricahua’s along with those that preferred peace or even helped the Anglos capture some of the renegates–to be transported in exile within cattle wagons toTexas, then Alabama and Florida for a full twenty-seven years. Upon returning to New Mexico, the Chiricahua Apache’s were directed to share space on the Mescalero reservation by the government. The confined area of about half a million acres, to this day consists of a mix of Chiricahua, Mescalero and Lipan Apache people that co-exist peacefully while keeping their own traditions alive in some way. The majority of members have converted to Christianity. There are seven churches, including a Bahai and Mormon church. The challenge is to remember the past that will always be part of who the Apachean soul, while embracing a Future that is inclusive of mainstream culture.
(Recommend further reading on the exile internment period: In the Land of the Mountain Gods: Ethnotrauma and Exile among the Apaches of the American Southwest, by M. Grace Hunt Watkinson.)
While in exile, there was no paper for the prisoners so they could draw to even try to visually communicate untold stories or even enjoy the therapeutic effects of art-making. But then, prison guards threw away huge amounts of accounting papers and it is these discarded pieces of ledgers that watchful people fished out so that they could try to heal by telling their story visually. Ledger art became both an outlet for artists as well as a historical record of the times in exile. Ledger Art has become artistic genre for many modern-day Native Americans. Raul Davis is one of the highly regarded artists in the field of ledger art within New Mexico.
To view some of Raul Davis’s creations or contact him, check out his online store here.
—JLE
The following excerpt from Claire R. Farrar’s book, Living Life’s Circle: Mescalero Apache Cosmovision mirrors Raul Davis’ painted women series:
Mescalero Apache men say that women have all the power. In traditional times, and to a significant extent now as well, women owned houses and all the goods within them except for a man’s hunting gear and his personal clothing, jewelry, and other minor possessions. Although it is technically no longer legally possible, women could divorce their husbands merely by placing the husband’s goods outside the house. Apache women enjoyed freedom in other areas as well and were never restricted to the hearth or home; they could even be warriors or hunters, if they so chose. Indeed, there are many Apache stories of women who were superb warriors, hunters, peace emissaries, and diplomats—especially during the times of harassment by the Spanish, Mexican, or American armies. Women seldom held political authority, but nonetheless made—and make—their personal views known both in public and in private. There are those who maintain that today no man is ever elected to the Tribal Council at Mescalero without a coalition of matrilineages backing him and his position. Should he fail to represent the interests of those matrilieages, and especially if its perceived that his actions may redound to the detriment of either the matrilineages or the tribe as a whole, he will not be supported for reelection. Mescalero Apache women have power and importance in life in general; they certainly are not second class or the second sex, as is common in Western European-derived cultures.
Nor is the term “elder” reserved only for men of wisdom. Elderly women are considered repositories of cultural knowledge and folklore today, as they were in the past. The place of women in Mescalero social life was, and is, important.
About Warrior Woman Lozen
from Wikipedia.com
Lozen (c. 1840-June 17, 1889) was a female warrior and prophet of the Chihenne Chiricahua Apache. She was the sister of Victorio, a prominent chief. Born into the Chihenne band during the 1840s, Lozen was, according to legends, able to use her powers in battle to learn the movements of the enemy.[1] According to James Kaywaykla, Victorio introduced her to Nana, “Lozen is my right hand … strong as a man, braver than most, and cunning in strategy. Lozen is a shield to her people”.[2]
Victorio’s Campaign
In the 1870s, Victorio and his band of Apaches were moved to the deplorable conditions of the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona. He and his followers left the reservation around 1877 and began marauding and raiding, all while evading capture by the military. Lozen fought beside Victorio when he and his followers rampaged against Americans who had appropriated their homeland around west New Mexico’s Black Mountain.
As the band fled American forces, Lozen inspired women and children, frozen in fear, to cross the surging Rio Grande. “I saw a magnificent woman on a beautiful horse—Lozen, sister of Victorio. Lozen the woman warrior!”, remembers James Kaywaykla, a child at the time, riding behind his grandmother. “High above her head she held her rifle. There was a glitter as her right foot lifted and struck the shoulder of her horse. He reared, then plunged into the torrent. She turned his head upstream, and he began swimming”
Immediately, the other women and the children followed her into the torrent. When they reached the far bank of the river, cold and wet but alive, Lozen came to Kaywaykla’s mother, Gouyen. “You take charge, now”, she said. “I must return to the warriors”, who stood between their women and children and the onrushing cavalry. Lozen drove her horse back across the wild river and returned to her comrades.
According to Kaywaykla, “She could ride, shoot, and fight like a man, and I think she had more ability in planning military strategy than did Victorio.” He also remembers Victoriosaying, “I depend upon Lozen as I do Nana” (the aging patriarch of the band)
Late in Victorio’s campaign, Lozen left the band to escort a new mother and her newborn infant across the Chihuahuan Desert from Mexico to the Mescalero ApacheReservation, away from the hardships of the trail.
Equipped with only a rifle, a cartridge belt, a knife, and a three-day supply of food, she set out with the mother and child on a perilous journey through territory occupied by Mexican and U.S. Cavalry forces. En route, afraid that a gunshot would betray their presence, she used her knife to kill a longhorn, butchering it for the meat.
She stole a Mexican cavalry horse for the new mother, escaping through a volley of gunfire. She then stole a vaquero’s horse for herself, disappearing before he could give chase. She also acquired a soldier’s saddle, rifle, ammunition, blanket and canteen, and even his shirt. Finally, she delivered her charges to the reservation.
There, she learned that Mexican and Tarahumara Indian forces under Mexican commander Joaquin Terrazas had killed Victorio and most of his warriors in the Battle of Tres Castillos, fought on three stony hills in northeastern Chihuahua.
End of Apache Wars and Lozen’s later years
Knowing the survivors would need her, Lozen immediately left the Mescalero Reservation and rode alone southwest across the desert, threading her way undetected through U.S. and Mexican military patrols. She rejoined the decimated band in the Sierra Madre (in northwestern Chihuahua), now led by the 74-year-old patriarch Nana.
Lozen fought beside Geronimo after his breakout from the San Carlos reservation in 1885, in the last campaign of the Apache wars. With the band pursued relentlessly, she used her power to locate their enemies—the U.S. and Mexican cavalries. According to Alexander B. Adams in his book Geronimo, “she would stand with her arms outstretched, chant a prayer to Ussen, the Apaches’ supreme deity, and slowly turn around.” Lozen’s prayer is translated in Eve Ball’s book In the Days of Victorio:
Upon this earth
On which we live
Ussen has Power
This Power is mine
For locating the enemy.
I search for that Enemy
Which only Ussen the Great
Can show to me.
According to Laura Jane Moore in the book Sifters, Native American Women’s Lives: In 1885 Geronimo and Naiche fled their reservation with 140 followers including Lozen after rumors began circulating that their leaders were to be imprisoned at Alcatraz Island. Lozen and Dahteste began negotiating peace treaties.[8] One of which was that the Apache leaders would be imprisoned for two years then would have their freedom. The American’s leaders dismissed the peace treaty and Lozen and Dahteste continued to negotiate. The Apache rebels believed they had strong resolve until it was revealed all the Chiricahuas had been rounded up and sent to Florida. If they wanted to rejoin their kin, the Apache needed to head east. The Apache warriors agreed to surrender and laid down their arms. Five days later they were on a train bound to Florida.
Taken into U. S. military custody after Geronimo’s final surrender, Lozen traveled as a prisoner of war to Mount Vernon Barracks in Alabama. Like many other imprisoned Apache warriors, she died in confinement of tuberculosis on June 17, 1889.