This is a part of my Women's History Month project where I post about one woman in history every day for the rest of March. Feel free to request a specific woman to profile!

Lozen was born into the Chihenne, Warm Springs Apache band, during the late 1840's in a section of New Mexico/Arizona/Northern Mexico known at that time as Apacheria. She was the sister of Warm Springs Chief Victorio, and the most famous of the Apache War Women.

She learned to ride a horse at age seven and soon became one of the best riders in the band. She loved the rough games of the boys and more times than not beat them at their own games.

At her puberty ceremony, Lozen was given the power to find the enemy which she did by going alone to a deserted spot. She would stand with her arms outstretched and her open palms heavenward, chanting a prayer [to Ussen], and slowly turning around:

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.

As she prayed, she turned until she felt a tingling in her palms and knew that she had found the direction of the enemy. She could tell the distance of the enemy by the intensity of the tingling.

Lozen fought beside Victorio when he and his followers rampaged against US Federal troops, who had appropriated their homeland in west central New Mexico’s Black Mountains and had tried to confine her people, first, to Arizona’s San Carlos Reservation then to New Mexico’s Mescalero Apache Reservation.

As the band fled U S forces, Lozen inspired women and children, frozen in fear, to cross a surging Rio Grande. "I saw a magnificent woman on a beautiful horse—Lozen, sister of Victorio. Lozen the woman warrior!" said 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 grandmother. "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.

One of the most important objectives of the Apache raids was to steal the horses of the enemy, and Lozen was a master at stampeding and capturing the panicked animals during the heat of battle. In addition to her considerable skill as a warrior, Lozen was also a skilled reconnaissance scout and clever battle strategist. She took part in warrior's ceremonies, sang war songs, and directed the dances of the war parties before going into battle

According to accounts, she fell in love with a Confederate deserter who had been sheltered by the Apaches. When a wagon train came along headed for California’s gold fields, he left, breaking Lozen’s heart. She never married, devoting herself instead to using her unusual powers to sense danger and heal her people. She never married, and devoted her life to the service of her people. She was the only Apcahe woman allowed to ride in a war as a warrior without a husband at her side.

Victorio is quoted as saying, "Lozen is my right hand . . . strong as a man , braver than most, and cunning in strategy, Lozen is a shield to her people."

Legend has it that Lozen powers helped each Band that she accompanied to successfully avoid capture. No Band was ever caught unguarded when Lozen was riding with them. Lozen was not with Victorio's band when Mexican army trapped them in the Tres Castillos Mountains, she had left to escort a mother and her newborn infant across the Chihuahuan Desert from Mexico to the Mescalero Apache Reservation and many believed the band would not have been ambushed if Lozen had been with them.

After Victorio's death, Lozen continued to ride with Chief Nana, and eventually joined forces with Geronimo's band, eluding capture until she finally surrendered with this last group of free Apaches in 1886. The group was taken to Florida then transported to Mount Vernon Barracks outside Mobile, Alabama, where she died of tuberculosis at the approximate age of 50.

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Posted by: Trinity at March 20, 2005 1:14 PM

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