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Thunder Rides a Black Horse

Mescalero Apaches and the Mythic Present, Second Edition

Claire R. Farrer

The impressive four-day and four-night Mescalero Apache girls’ puberty ceremonial provides the structure for Farrer’s consideration of the ways in which old myths and legends inform contemporary actions and beliefs. Why people behave as they do is as much a focus as is their actual behavior. Through instructions given to Farrer by Bernard Second, her Apache teacher for fourteen years, students gain insight into the importance of narrative, not just in ceremony but especially in everyday living on a contemporary Indian reservation in the American Southwest. Sights and smells are almost palpable as the author provides the best in reflexive ethnography by allowing readers to see her as a person rather than an all-knowing anthropologist. She neither romanticizes nor patronizes the Apachean people, who are presented as people with foibles as well as possessing much worthy of admiration.
 

$14.95 list, 124 pages

10-digit ISBN: 0-88133-897-4

13-digit ISBN: 978-0-88133-897-3

© 1996

Self-contained study guide

“Foremost among the volume’s many strengths is its engaging, highly readable, reflexive writing style. Descriptions of sights, smells, sounds, and colors are vivid, and the people come alive.” —Charlotte J. Frisbie, American Anthropologist

“Farrer’s latest book crystallizes her previous work into its most powerful form to date . . . It comes as a surprise to recognize, after finishing it, how much deep knowledge it has imparted and how cleverly it is constructed. It creates the ambience for the reader to enter the Apache mythic present.” —Anthropology and Humanism

Table of Contents

1. The Mythic Present

2. Arriving

3. On Forming Women: Ceremonial Day One

4. “Ko’io!”/Go Around!: Ceremonial Day Two

5. “I will give you bow and arrow . . . a flint knife . . . I will make a horse for you . . .”: Ceremonial Day Three

6. “You are the mother of a people. Let no man speak ill of you.”: Ceremonial Day Four

7. Going Home

8. A Personal Epilogue