Lozen (c. 1840-1889) was a skilled healer and a fierce warrior who led the charge in the Apache resistance to US occupation in the late 1800s.
Lozen (c. 1840-1889) was a skilled healer and a fierce warrior who led the charge in the Apache resistance to US occupation in the late 1800s.
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Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I’m Jenny Kaplan. This is Womanica.
This month, we’re highlighting Indigenous women from around the globe.
Today, we’re talking about a skilled healer and a fierce warrior. She led the charge in the Apache resistance to US occupation in the late 1800’s.
Let’s talk about Lozen.
Lozen was born in the early 1840’s, into the Chihenne band of the Chiricahua Apache. Her brother Victorio was the chief of the band.
Around the time Lozen was born, violence against the Chiricahua Apache was swelling. The Mexican government had started paying for Apache scalps. After the Mexican-American war, US settlers and soldiers began seizing Apache land, stealing their food, and killing them for money.
Growing up, Lozen displayed a natural physical talent. She was athletic, a skilled marksman, a born strategist, and learned how to ride a horse at only seven years old. The name we know her by, Lozen, means ‘dexterous horse thief.’
Her brother Victorio recognized her abilities, and began to teach her how to be a warrior.
He compared her to his right hand, saying that she was “strong as a man, braver than most, and most cunning in strategy. Lozen is a shield to her people.”
During her coming of age ceremony, Lozen was also gifted the ability to heal people, and detect approaching enemies. To do this, she would pace in a circle, with her face and palms turned towards the sky. Her hands would start to tingle - and if her palms turned purple, it meant that enemies were approaching. She could even tell the direction they were coming, and how far away they were.
Her detection skills made her an invaluable warrior. As the Apache were brutally attacked by American and Mexican soldiers, massacred and enslaved by the thousands, Lozen was at the forefront of their resistance.
In 1869, Victorio and a group of neighboring chiefs came to a tense truce with the US government. Theyagreed to settle at Ojo (oh-ho) Caliente in New Mexico, which was within traditional Chiricahua homelands. But in 1877, the U.S. forced all Apaches to move to a single reservation in San Carlos, Arizona.
The reservation was dirty, crowded, and filled with disease. The Apache were not allowed to hunt, and the food they were given was meager.
Lozen, Victorio, and the entire Chihenne band fled. They lived undetected by US soldiers for three years - in large part because Lozen would alert the group when enemies were coming, and tend to the wounded and sick.
But in 1880, Lozen left the band to help a woman give birth, and then escorted the woman and her newborn baby through the desert up to the Sacramento mountains. While she was gone, Victorio and the band were ambushed. 78 Apaches, including Victorio, were killed, and 100 women and children were captured and sold into slavery. Only 17 people escaped.
Afterwards, Lozen joined Geronimo, another famed Apache leader. Along with other Apache warriors, they fought the US cavalry for two more years, until they were captured and returned to the San Carlos reservation.
But two years after that, Lozen, along with 42 warriors and 92 women and children, escaped again. Thousands of US troops were deployed to find them; the remaining Chiricahuas were sent to prison in Florida to prevent them from joining the escapees.
Eventually, Lozen helped negotiate Geronimo’s surrender in 1886. Geronimo, Lozen, and other members of their band were loaded into cattle cars and taken to Alabama as prisoners of war. The camps they lived in were inhospitable, and full of disease. Three years later, Lozen died of tuberculosis, and she was buried in an unmarked grave with over 50 other Apache people.
The US government imprisoned the Chiricahua Apache for another 27 years. In 1913, some of them were allowed to return west, to New Mexico.
All month we’re talking about indigenous women.
Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator.
Talk to you tomorrow!