Drusilla Claridge has combined a fascination with history and an appetite for the outdoors since coming to New Mexico 23 years ago. She has participated in reenactments of the Rocky Mountain fur trade rendezvous, wearing authentic period Cheyenne clothing, and sleeping in a teepee. She has handled horses since she was a teenager, and has travelled horseback in the Gila Wilderness. She frequents New Mexico's hot springs, and has participated in a sweatlodge ceremony conducted by a Jicarilla Apache.
Dru worked on the Gila National Forest as a fire lookout in 1979, 1988, and 1989. The journal she kept was excerpted in a piece published by Stackpole Books. The book, Go Tell It On the Mountain, an anthology of lookout writing, includes the works of Edward Abbey, Doug Peacock, Jackie Johnson Maughan and others. In the summer of 1996 Claridge went back to tower work.
Dru worked on the historic districts of Silver City, New Mexico, reading nineteenth century newspapers, conducting oral history interviews, and photographing historic adobe buildings. Her work, writing technical documents on the history and architecture of Southwest New Mexico, allowed significant properties to be listed with the National and State Registries of Historic Places.
In the late 1980s, she lived in remote Quemado, New Mexico, and reported for the Catron County Courier. She also visited every lookout tower on the Gila National Forest, photographing them for the U.S Forest Service.
Her historical novel, Peacock Ore, is now available from 1st Books Library. The book depicts two cultures and their fight over the Mogollon mining district in the 1870's. On one side was the great Apache chief Victorio, with his sister Lozen, warrior and medicine woman; on the other was Sergeant James Cooney, with his Irish miners. The Silver City Daily Press pronounced it a "must read for Southwest history buffs." To order a copy, call 1-888-280-7715, or visit www.1stbooks.com .
In addition to writing, Dru also creates desert landscape pastels.
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Victorio, born sometime in the 1820s conflicts, grew up in an era of escalating conflicts between Apaches, Mexicans, and American settlers. That he did not declare war on the whites until 1879 is proof of his leadership and integrity. Victorio's efforts as leader of his people were conciliatory until the end. He co-operated with U.S. agents and the military, but he did not associate with them.
Thrapp says, in Victorio and the Mimbres Apaches, "Even in the disputes and differences around Ojo Caliente, Victorio made it a practice to remain beyond reach until the way was safe. He might remain aloof on a mountaintop until he was very sure. Never was Victorio a lounger around the agency or military posts. He remained apart, ever vigilant, wary, even when nominally at peace. He could not be surprised . . . No white man knew him well, although many made contact with him frequently."
Much of what we know about Victorio is from Thrapp's studies of military records. Officers who fought in Victorio's War averred that he "displayed great military genius." Major Andrew Jackson McGonnigle (an obscure soldier to be sure, but one who fought in the Civil War, and subsequently with both Sioux and Apache) "considered Victorio the greatest Indian general who ever appeared on the American continent."
Victorio was an able general, and was also greatly loved by his own people. Early in 1880 he was wounded in the leg during a fight which took place on the east side of the Black Range, not far from Ojo Caliente. The party of scouts, led by H.K. Parker, cut down the Apaches in a deadly crossfire. Parker called to the women to come out of the Apache camp, so as not to be hurt. The women replied that they would stay with Victorio because if he died, "they would eat him, so that no white man should see his body."
Thrapp says, "Surely he held great devotion from his followers."
Victorio's life is one to be pondered from the point of view of the culture which he personified. His decision to go to war came after many years of astute leadership in the face of white encroachment and racism. It came after the news that their Warm Springs Reservation would be taken from them. Some say what finally goaded him to war was a warrant for his arrest sworn out in Grant County, New Mexico. That warrant would have been issued in Silver City.
His declaration of war would destroy what was left of the Mimbres Apaches. The war lasted one year, threw the Southwest into chaos and alarm, and ended on a rocky hillside in Mexico in the fall of 1880. Victorio, caught by Mexican militia, out of ammunition, died in battle. A Tarahumara Indian claimed to have fired the killing bullet. Victorio's people, who survived in captivity in Mexico, claimed Victorio took his own life, with a knife in the gut.