Thunder Rides a Black Horse: Mescalero Apaches and the Mythic Present.

Thunder Rides a Black Horse: Mescalero Apaches and the Mythic Present. Claire R. Farrer. Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press, 1994. x + 113 pages. $9.95 paper.

Time, in all of its possible meanings and implications, serves as the central focus for Claire Farrer's ethnographic study of contemporary Mescalero Apache reservation culture. Having spent over thirty years visiting and living with Apache friends and acquaintances on their reservation in south central New Mexico, Farrer has collected a wealth of rich personal experience to share with her readers--notions about food, daily practices, commonly held beliefs and opinions, social customs, child rearing, and all of the small details that go together to make up the fabric of individual human lives. And yet, as she reveals her detailed stories, readers learn that in terms of myth, legend, and time concepts, contemporary Apaches live simultaneously in two worlds, the Anglo and the traditional. Over and over again, Farrer illustrates and discusses how her Apache friends and teachers hold to lives in both worlds; the secret of their ability to do so is their sophisticated ability to move smoothly and comfortably between two time worlds, Anglo absolutist time, and Apache mythic time. Using the anthropological term "ethnographic present," or the fusion of several separate but related incidents into one narrative incident for the purpose of clarity in presenting her ideas and theories, Farrer explains her decision to combine and collapse individual stories and events, in order to delineate Mescalero concepts of time as relative and fluid, based on the natural rhythms of the earth and the changing cycles of days and seasons.

The clearest expressions of Apache views on time come about as a result of Farrer's studying Apache culture with Bernard Second, her Apache teacher for fourteen years. Farrer learns that Apache astronomy directs and elucidates daily Apache actions and behavior, yet this knowledge takes years to learn and is in danger of being lost, as those who serve as repositories die (Bernard Second died in 1988). And Farrer wonders how it is possible for this knowledge to be transmitted to the young, who must attend school and spend much of their early years away from the traditional elders.

Much of what serves as the focus of Farrer's explanations of Apache time concepts also revolves around her combined and condensed memories of actual experiences, when she participated in several Apache girl's puberty ceremonies. As the young women reenact the stories of the founding of their people and the arrival of the White Painted Woman, this four-day ritual involves the entire community, makes heavy financial and personal demands on the immediate and extended family, and serves a traditional focus for the retelling of old and highly valued myths and legends, as well as personal and family histories. Most important of all, Farrer also explains the concept of "ceremonial time," that way of viewing the works that is relative and based on one's ability to perceive and "read" the heavens, not on the absolute reading of a wrist watch, as one performs the various parts of a preordained ritual.

Above all else, Mescaleros admire balance and harmony in life, and Farrer illustrates this value by her discussion of traditional basket-making and basket patterns. Every step of the process, and every part of the basket, operates in harmony to reflect and underscore beliefs important to Mescalero culture. This same concern for balance and order also extends to Farrer's discussions of tribal government, the importance of family, and the role of friendship. As she describes driving through the reservation, Farrer also builds detailed pictures of the reservation landscape, the stories associated with it, and its history. She often must leave her Mescalero friends and lands and return to her Anglo life; but while she is away, both people and place constantly pull her back to New Mexico and the reservation.

Farrer also includes in this short book several black and white pictures, graphs and tables, a glossary of Mescalero terms used in her text, and a brief bibliography.

Nancy Lang Marshall University