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Significance and Identity
The research for this project was done collaboratively with my professor and mentor, Dr. Regina McManigell Grijalva, an Apache woman who had worked on this topic prior to my involvement. I served as Grijalva’s research assistant as we traveled together for grant funded archival research. Though we have now published separate works,3 we began by looking at the same questions about Coloradas; most of our findings are pulled from the same sources, and we worked cooperatively to analyze information. Dr. Grijalva’s input and guidance were instrumental to my understanding of the nuance of this subject as a white woman and an outsider to the field of Native American studies. Throughout my involvement with this project Dr. Grijalva continuously engaged with my own work, encouraging me to write, rewrite, and submit this paper for publication in Xchanges.
On the topic of the death of Mangas Coloradas, one of the more cited works is by historian Lee Myers, who compiles several accounts of this event from the military and miner perspectives. Myers has done very important work in bringing together different narratives, but while he frames his work as presenting “a summary of the conflicting evidence” (2) so that readers may come to their own conclusions, he fails to mention any Apache accounts. Without including Apache narratives, an instrumental piece of that evidence, and all additional context that comes with it, is lost. This analysis will, first and foremost, bring Apache narratives into the consideration of what happened leading up to Coloradas’s death.
In addition to the overall exclusion or derision of an entire group of histories, the present body of literature surrounding these narratives, including by Myers, lacks in-depth rhetorical analysis. Furthermore, the analysis that does exist tends to fall victim to the “discipline’s tendency to prioritize so-called objective approaches to knowledge and Euro-American narratives of rhetorical practice, a tendency that discourages the inclusion of American Indian voices or misrepresents them” (King et al. 4). Malea Powell expresses a similar sentiment to King et al., that typical rhetoric and composition studies draw too heavily off “The Rhetorical Tradition” (Powell 397). These Native American scholars, as well as many others, critique traditional rhetorical analysis for the way it leaves Indigenous peoples behind in its considerations.4 While Fisher’s heuristic does not inherently depart from a Western, Eurocentric focus, it does provide a different form of analysis that employs tactics more similar to those called for by scholars of Native American studies discussed above, and it leads to the conclusion that Apache stories in this instance are largely credible in terms of their fidelity and coherence. The narrative paradigm puts stories into a rhetorical lens, a pedagogical practice also called for by King et al. in Survivance, Sovereignty, and Story, which argues that “by recognizing story as a meaningful, theory-full practice, we can responsibly engage indigenous rhetorical practices as we find them, not only as the genres Euro-American education might validate” (King et al. 9). Including Apache stories in the discussion surrounding Coloradas’s death and engaging with them on a deeper level than just stating that they exist adds to our understanding of the event, while also giving Native voices sovereignty over their own narratives.
Though, as previously mentioned, Grijalva’s paper and mine use the same primary sources to come to similar conclusions as to the credibility of Apache accounts, my paper provides a more detailed analysis of each narrative, and is primarily concerned with the specific event itself, whereas Grijalva uses the event as an example for ethical storytelling and its importance in teaching. My work uses the same rhetorical paradigm as Grijalva’s, while also drawing from the structure of Myers’ paper, to present the various narratives as to provide a comprehensive account of the event. More so than Grijalva or Myers, I focus my paper on weighing the various accounts in attempt to establish, if not what happened, at least a more accurate depiction of the death of Mangas Coloradas than currently exists, both through the incorporation of the Apache narratives and through the use of Fisher’s heuristic to cast doubt on military and miner perspectives.
[3] Her paper from this project, “The Ethics of Storytelling: Indigenous Identity and the Death of Mangas Coloradas,” was published in the September 2020 issue of College Composition and Communication.
[4] See Stromberg 2; Lyons Rhetorical Sovereignty 458-459; Kennedy 2-3; McManigell-Grijalva 34; Wieser 7-12; Womack 11-12; Powell The X-Blood Files 88-92 for critiques of traditional rhetoric and composition or calls to alternative approaches to rhetorical and literary analysis.