Although the names of the great Apache chiefs Cochise and Geronimo are widely recognized, another powerful war shaman fought relentlessly at their sides, a warrior whose story is rarely told. Sister to Apache chief Victorio, Lozen played a crucial role in the Apache Wars by wielding her supernatural abilities to protect her people. Her followers believed that the great creator Ussen had given her the power to understand and control horses, the skill to heal wounds, and the uncanny talent to sense the presence of her enemies. This remarkable warrior woman stood as the shield of her people, successfully evading the military might of the United States for more than thirty years.
Although not much is known about her early years, most historians believe that Lozen was born sometime in the late 1840s in traditional lands of the Chiricahua Apaches located in southwestern New Mexico. With her father as one of the leading members of the Chihenne band (also known as the Warm Springs band), as his father was before him, Lozen grew up with the training of a warrior. By the age of seven, she was riding horses, and before long, she was known as one of the most capable riders in the band. Not only could she mount her steed in a smooth jump from the ground to the beast’s back, but she was also able to control her horse with just a rope bridle and her knees. And, although her small frame disqualified her from being able to best the boys at wrestling, her agility and speed put her at the top of the list when it came to footraces.
During her youth, the Chihenne called the Animas Mountains home and lived under the direction and guidance of a warrior named Juan José Compa. Seduced by the promise of gifts and friendship, Compa allowed a group of Mexicans to build the small settlement of Santa Rita in Apache territory. Compa’s desire for trade with these new people became his undoing, and he and many of his people were murdered at a gathering turned ambush. Mangas Coloradas, one of the more wary warriors of the band, was able to save a group of survivors including Lozen and her brother Victorio. The revenge wrought by Coloradas quickly taught Lozen the art of Apache retribution.
When Lozen finally came of age, she retreated to the mountains alone to pray to White Painted Woman for the power to help her people. During her meditation, she received a vision. When she finally left the mountains and returned home, she did so as a changed woman. Not only had she been given the ability to understand and control horses, but she had also been given the gift of healing and the ability to locate her enemies. When Lozen shared all that she had learned with her brother Victorio and her friend and mentor Nana, it was decided that she would not take her traditional place within the band, but that she would undertake the training of a warrior instead.
As early as 1852, Mangas Coloradas began negotiations with miners, settlers, and soldiers who arrived from the east. Trapped between continuing antagonism with the Mexicans to the south and demands from the United States military, Coloradas and other Apache leaders signed treaties with the United States government in hopes of avoiding wars on two fronts. Unfortunately, independent Apache raids were seen as a violation of the peace treaties and, in 1861, Mangas Coloradas joined forces with Cochise, and later with Geronimo, in hopes of driving both the Americans and the Mexicans from their lands.
By this time, Victorio had become a leader in his own right. He was advised by Nana, who had deferred his own leadership to the younger warrior, and his powerful sister Lozen. At first, the Apache campaigns against the American soldiers appeared to be successful, but by 1863, U.S. forces fortified their presence in the region and Mangas Coloradas decided to try once again to negotiate peace. In return, the soldiers tortured and killed the Apache leader and the other members of his party, inciting desire for vengeance in the hearts of remaining Apache including Victorio and his warriors.
Utilizing Lozen’s power to locate their enemies, Victorio and Nana evaded the American soldiers and kept themselves hidden in the remote San Mateo Mountains. However, in 1869, the Warm Springs band joined with other groups of Apaches in an encampment near Canada Alamosa. The Apache people were moved from reservation to reservation and, by 1876, Lozen and her people had been sent to the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in southeastern Arizona. Tensions mounted, and Victorio, along with several other leaders, planned an escape for their people. Aided by Lozen’s supernatural ability to sense the presence of soldiers sent against them, Victorio led his people back to their homeland.
In 1879, Victorio defied orders to relocate his band and, instead, launched a bloody campaign against the Americans that lasted for two years. Time and time again, Lozen would sing her song of power as she slowly turned in a circle. When she was facing the direction of her enemies, Lozen’s hands would heat up—the hotter the sensation, the closer the enemy.
Upon this earth
On which we live
Ussen has Power.
The Power is mine
For locating the enemy.
I search for that enemy
Which only Ussen the Great
Can show to me.
—Lozen’s chant
Comprised of seventy-five warriors and almost twice as many women and children, Victorio’s band fled south toward Mexico. Along the way, they killed every white settler and soldier they encountered. On their journey south, Victorio’s band joined forces with Geronimo and his band of Chiricahua Apaches. That summer, they raided settlements on both sides of the border, moving from mountain to mountain. At the end of the summer, Geronimo and his warriors parted ways with Victorio’s band.
In August 1881, Lozen left the band to accompany a pregnant woman among them to her tribe at the Mescalero Apache Reservation. Two months later, bereft of Lozen’s power to plan safe passage, Victorio and a large portion of his band were surrounded and killed by Mexican soldiers in the Tres Castillos Mountains located in northern Mexico. The women and children who were not killed were enslaved. Nana and a small contingent of warriors, who had been off on a raid at the time of the attack, were the only ones to escape. Together with the remaining members of their decimated band, Lozen and Nana engaged in a two-month-long, bloody campaign of vengeance before slipping back into life at the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation.
In 1885, Lozen left the San Carlos Reservation for the last time, joining forces with Geronimo on what would become the final campaign of the Apache Wars. Geronimo and his followers were pursued, but the band successfully evaded capture for more than a year. However, Lozen used her powers less and less. There was no need to search for her enemies; she and the other remaining fighters of the resistance were completely surrounded. Hopelessly outnumbered, Geronimo finally surrendered to American troops in Skeleton Canyon, Arizona, on September 4, 1886. General Nelson Miles accepted Geronimo’s surrender, finally ending the Apache Wars and Native American resistance in the Southwest.
Now labeled a prisoner of war, Lozen was separated from the other Apache warriors and was sent with the other women and children to Fort Marion, Florida. She was later moved to the Mt. Vernon military reservation in Alabama where she died of tuberculosis sometime after 1887. Although Lozen never saw her beloved homeland again, her skills as a warrior and her prophetic powers are remembered and honored by her people to this day.
Carina Bissett
See also Chief Joseph; Crazy Horse; Geronimo; Legends; Shamans
Further Reading
Aleshire, Peter. 2001. Warrior Woman. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Ball, Eve. 1972. In the Days of Victorio: Recollections of a Warm Springs Apache. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Lekson, Stephen. 1987. Nana’s Raid: Apache Warfare in Southern New Mexico, 1881. El Paso: Texas Western Press.
Roberts, David. 1994. Once They Moved Like the Wind: Cochise, Geronimo, and the Apache Wars. New York: Touchstone.
St. Clair Robson, Lucia. 2008. Ghost Warrior. New York: Forge Books.
Thrapp, Dan L. 1979. The Conquest of Apacheria. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.