Women’s History Month: Lozen the Apache War Prophet
Lozen fought against Mexican and American forces for 30 years, earning the nickname “Apache Joan of Arc.”
Lozen was born around 1840 into the Chihenne Apache band of Ojo Caliente, New Mexico, during a time of constant conflict. At least seven Apache bands, spread across a vast area known as Apacheria, fought with each other as well as with the Mexican and American settlers new to the territory.
The Chihenne band, also known as the Eastern Chiricahua or ‘Red Paint People,’ worshipped a deity called the ‘White Painted Woman,’ who gives birth to legendary warriors to protect humanity from evil monsters. Apache girls undergo a four-day puberty rite ceremony, ‘transforming’ them into the White Painted Woman.
“The Apaches always had a woman with them, she stood right behind the man with a knife or gun,” said Joey Padilla, a medicine man and museum curator at the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico, to History. “If the man went down, you had to deal with the woman too. Women also hid the children from enemies.”
Lozen means “horse thief,” and no doubt she inherited that name by terrorizing enemies. She was the sister of Apache Chief Victorio who was rumored to have said, “Lozen is my right hand. Strong as a man, braver than most and cunning in strategy. She is a shield to her people.”
“Lozen began fighting Mexican soldiers and scalping hunters when she came of age… After Americans arrived in 1849 to lay claim to her homeland, she battled then as well,” wrote Peter Aleshire in Warrior Woman: The Story of Lozen, Apache Warrior and Shaman.
As early as the age of 12, it was rumored that Lozen had supernatural powers that helped her defeat her enemies.
Harlyn Geronimo, the great-grandson of Geronimo, said Lozen would lift her hands, walk in a circle, and chant until the veins in her arms turned dark blue, indicating the direction from which the enemy would approach. 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.
During the Apache Wars, which began in 1862, she was initially imprisoned at the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona. In 1877, she and her brother escaped, leading a group of women and children to Mexico.
James Kaywaykla, a child in the group, recounted the story of riding behind his grandmother when they saw a ‘magnificent woman’ on a beautiful horse, holding a rifle above her head.
Another story tells of Lozen helping a young pregnant woman cross the Chihuahuan Desert in Mexico, equipped with a single rifle, a cartridge belt, a knife, and a three-day supply of food. Legend says she hid the mother, delivered the baby en route, killed and butchered a longhorn cow, and captured two horses for their journey.
After her brother Victorio’s death, Lozen joined Geronimo’s army in 1882 in a raid that freed 600 people from San Carlos. After Geronimo’s surrender in 1886, Lozen and many other warriors were imprisoned in Florida. In 1889, she died in Alabama at the age of 50 from tuberculosis.
The Mescalero Reservation continues the women’s coming-of-age traditions that Lozen participated in more than 180 years ago and celebrates the legacy of Lozen, the Apache Joan of Arc.
“The descendants of Lozen’s family are here with us today in our community,” Padilla said.
Go riding.
Amanda Uechi Ronan is an equestrian, authors, and wannabe race car driver. Follow her on Instagram @amanda_uechi_ronan.
