University of New Mexico Press

Thomas Britten has taken up the task of bringing the Lipan Apaches to the attention of scholars and general readers alike in The Lipan Apaches: People of Wind and Lightning. For over half a century, the best source of information on the Lipan Apaches were three articles written by William Edward Dunn, published in the Texas Historical Quarterly and the Southwestern Historical Quarterly in the early 1900s. Dunn, however, only covered the eighteenth century. Although dated, these articles are still the basis for any research on the Lipan Apaches. Dunn scoured the archives of Spain and Mexico for information. In fact, over half of the endnotes in Britten’s work that cover the period Dunn covered reference Dunn’s articles. But, of course, the Lipan Apaches did not disappear during the eighteenth century. Britten’s work continues the story of this important and neglected tribe to the present. Only one other book has been devoted to the Lipan Apaches, Thomas Schilz’s The Lipan Apaches in Texasand it is but a brief overview.

The Lipan Apaches were an important factor in preventing the Spanish from colonizing Texas to a larger extent than they did. They were also influential during the Mexican and Republic of Texas time periods up until the early twentieth century. While Britten admits to no new eye opening revelations concerning the Lipan Apaches, he has successfully accomplished his goal of providing readers with a wide ranging study concerning the Lipan Apaches culture, history, and relationships with a wide variety of cultures.

Britten begins each chapter with a story from Lipan Apache oral tradition that he then ties into the chapter which follows. Each chapter focuses on a time period and a crisis faced by the Lipan Apaches and how they attempted to resolve the issue in order to survive. A lengthy introduction introduces the reader to the culture of the Lipan Apaches and emphasizes their adaptability, which is one of the themes of Britten’s work. A nice discussion of foods, weapons and warfare, and social culture lays out a nice foundation for discussion of the Lipan Apaches history.

The first chapter gives a brief overview of the Athapaskan migration from the northwest corner of North America southward, with those who would eventually become the Lipan Apaches arriving in Texas. Britten describes the difficulty in deciding which native groups to include as Lipans as the Spanish, the first Europeans to encounter them, often used aberrant spellings of tribes they encountered and often used different names when discussing the same group of natives. Britten does a nice job of sorting through the plethora of Spanish names and explaining and justifying which groups he considered pertinent to the background or “genesis” of the Lipan Apaches.

The next three chapters deal with the Lipans in Spanish Texas from 1700-1800. The Spanish time period is probably the best documented time for the Lipan Apaches as the Spanish in Texas left voluminous documents recording their efforts to make peace with the Lipans, missionize them, and eventually attempt to exterminate them, all unsuccessfully. Britten gives a good overview of this time period but does not give the detail one expects from a monograph focusing on the Lipan Apaches. For example, he says nothing at all concerning the Lipans apparent attempted assassination of Texas Governor Raphael Martinez Pacheco.

Chapter 5 covers the period from 1800-1845, including the last years of Spanish Texas, as well as the Mexican and the Republic of Texas periods. This chapter is disappointingly brief for the multitude of events it covers; the Lipans dealing with the weakening Spaniards, their Mexican successors, and the Anglo-Texans in the Republic of Texas. Excluding the last dismal years of Spanish hegemony, which should rightly be included in the preceding chapter, the Mexican and Republic of Texas periods garner a mere twenty-five pages. The last chapter brings the story to 1905 where the Lipans more or less disappear from recorded history as the few surviving Lipan were shipped to the Mescalero Apache reservation where they tended to intermarry with their Mescalero kin, blurring their distinction as a separate entity.

A short epilogue brings the Lipan story to the present, however, with a brief discussion of Daniel Castro Romero and his Lipan Apache Band of Texas, Inc. and its more recently established rival organization the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas, Inc. Both organizations are legally eligible to enlist members, although individuals can only be members of one of the two organizations and both are actively seeking federal recognition of the Lipan Apache as a viable and sovereign tribe and/or nation. As of the publication date, the issue was unresolved.

While Britten has not written the definitive history of the Lipan Apache people his work is without doubt the best published to date. Much work, however remains to be done before a definitive history can be written. The Spanish period has been fairly well researched, although with the collapse of Spanish power in Texas, their records concerning the Lipans also decreased. The Mexican and Texas Republic periods both need to be researched more thoroughly and hopefully scholars will be able to locate new sources in Mexican archives in the future. One weakness of Britten’s work is a lack of Spanish and Mexican sources. He uses the Bexar archives translations but little from the untranslated Bexar archives. Finally, much work still needs to be done to flesh out the period from 1905 to the present. Hopefully scholars will be encouraged to research more deeply into the history of the Lipan Apaches and Britten’s The Lipan Apaches: People of Wind and Lightningwill give them a good starting point to give this significant tribe the attention they so richly deserve.

Reviewed by Jeff Carlisle, Professor of History, Oklahoma City Community College

Make a difference. Know the history. Change the future.

Find other great books on Indigenous Peoples via our Secure Bookstore.

Tags: Texas  Mexico  books  Apache