Living Names and Dead Traditions: Commentary on Indeh Review

Abstract

following comments I take issue both with the book itself and with Dunaway's review of it. My comments are not mere pique but are based upon more than 25 years of fieldwork with the of the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation in south central New Mexico, an understanding of the language, and thoroughgoing knowledge of both the documentary resources and also the resources available through long-term, firsthand experience on the reservation. Dunaway's reference to a historian from the Chiricahua Apaches (JAF 104:411) demands more information. Which Chiricahua historian? From what place? There are descendants of Chiricahua people in Oklahoma (the Ft. Sill Apaches), at Mescalero in New Mexico (living on the Mescalero Apache Reservation but still maintaining their Chiricahua ethnicity), and in various places in Arizona as well as throughout the country. There is, however, no corporate body known as the Chiricahua Apaches. And, as to the matter of lying, it is continuing problem of fieldwork; veracity is tough issue to resolve, although there are certainly ways to mitigate its effects (see, for example, the discussions of questioning in Farrer 1991). Eve Ball, compiler of Indeh, despite her long years of living in Ruidoso, New Mexico (next door to the Mescalero Apache Reservation), did not know an Apachean language-Mescalero, Lipan, Chiricahua, or any of the other languages (or dialects, as some prefer to term them) spoken and understood on the Mescalero Apache Reservation. Thus, to the continuing annoyance of most Apache people I know (several hundred of them), she seriously misinterpreted the title of her book. She grievously mistranslated indeh, her idiosyncratic spelling ofnde (syllabic n pronounced with high tone; d pronounced as in English; e high tone e pronounced as short English a--orthography follows 1975 Mescalero Apache Tribal Language Committee recommendations). nde is the Eastern Apachean name the people give to themselves; it is cognate with Navajo dine, and other Athabaskan words, such as tinne. nde means The People (caps intended). No matter how nde is spelled, it most certainly does not mean as Dunaway, following Ball, maintains: It is not accidental that the work is titled Indeh, the Apache word for the (p. 411). The word for dead is chuendi or X= (standing for first name or circumlocution) lenndi. The word for death is dqqitdqq,. There are other ways of referring to the dead, death, ghosts, souls, and so on; none of them remotely resemble nde, or indeh, as Ball has it. Wendell Chino, longtime president of the Mescalero Apache Tribe and Tribal Council, and one who has Chiricahua antecedents, has been quoted (at recent interdisciplinary meeting on held in New Mexico) as asking, What sensible people would name themselves dead? when referring to Ball's