The Chihenné Apache — Sacred Ground of the Warm Springs People

The Apache band known as the Chihenné, which means red painted people, lived in the mountains and valleys of southwestern New Mexico for generations before the American period. Soldiers and settlers who encountered them used several names for this group, including Warm Springs Apaches and Mimbres Apaches, pointing to the two most important water sources in their territory. The hot springs at this location were among the most significant places in Chihenné life.

Local tradition describes the springs as a sacred neutral ground, a place where groups at war observed a truce and could bathe and tend to their wounded without fear of attack. Among the most remarkable figures associated with this band was Lozen, the sister of the war chief Victorio. Born around eighteen forty, she was described by Apache accounts as a warrior who rode and fought alongside her brother.

She was said to possess a power to sense the location of enemies by extending her arms and feeling a sensation in her palms. Victorio is said to have relied on her as his right hand. When the American government began forcing the Chihenné onto distant reservations in the eighteen seventies, Lozen rode with the resistance.

She later rode with Geronimo after Victorio's death and was taken into custody after his surrender in eighteen eighty-six. She died in captivity in Alabama in eighteen eighty-nine. The Chihenné's connection to this valley, to these springs, and to the mountains around them endured as a living memory long after the band itself was destroyed as an independent people.