35 pages • 1 hour read
Wisdom Sits in Places
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Maps
Maps offer a material representation of the difference between Anglo-American and Apache ways of viewing the land, a disconnect that has historically disadvantaged Indigenous people: On Anglo-American maps, Native American place-names, and their claims to the land, disappear. The need for Apache maps, with Apache place-names, is the driving force behind Basso’s exploration of sense of place among the Western Apache, and throughout the book, maps serve as a representation of how culture informs the ways in which people relate to the land.
Basso’s mapping trips, in the company of Apache consultants, informed how he moved across the land, and as such, they shape the structure of the book. Though the book does not include the Apache map Basso helped create (a deliberate exclusion, at the request of the Western Apache), Basso’s description of the region around Cibecue as dense with dots indicating place-names—looking as though “they were blasted with a shotgun” (23)— invites us to envision a landscape laden with moral significance.
By discussing maps, Basso also highlights a feature of his role in the community. In addition to conducting research, Basso was a friend to many in Cibecue, and occasionally an advocate for them in litigation over land claims and water rights. The remapping project gave Basso the theoretical grounding to participate as an expert witness in these proceedings, paving the way for a favorable judgment—and helping to reverse some of the oppression caused by the original imposition of Anglo-American maps.
Water
Basso writes that it is unsurprising that water would feature prominently in the metaphors and cultural constructs of the Western Apache, given that they have survived for centuries in a dry region. Water figures in many of the historical tales Basso recounts in the book—underscoring the relationship between those tales and place—and provides the metaphors by which several of the elements of Apache selfhood can be understood. With their dense, visual imagery, Apache place-names are like photographs; in some cases, they evoke a landscape that appears in front of the viewer exactly as described, and in others they show how much a landscape has changed. Traveling with Apache historian Charles Henry, Basso visits places that have clearly become much drier than they were when the ancestors found them: “and this would have been interpreted as a punitive response, wrought by Water itself, to something the people had done” (16). Therefore, the presence—or absence—of water highlights how place-names serve not only as historical documents, by describing how the land was and how it has changed, but also illustrates how place-names have moral meaning, pointing to the consequences of disrespecting tradition.
Water also features prominently in depictions of the process whereby Apache acquire wisdom. Dudley Patterson tells Basso that just like people need to drink water to stay alive, they also need to drink from places. Basso notes that this idea is supported by the fact that the verb used in Apache to describe how wisdom “sits in places” is typically applied to watertight containers; like a durable container holds water, places safeguard a steady supply of wisdom. Similarly, wisdom moves like water, as a smooth-minded individual and a wise story character “flow swiftly together” (140), confirming that a story is helpful in a given situation.
Hunting
As an activity, hunting plays an important role in many of the places Basso discusses in the book and their associated stories, whether when a place-name evokes how the ancestors found a place and identified it as good for hunting, or when a place-name speaks to an act of disrespect while hunting that nearly cost a character his life. By its repeated inclusion in place-centered narratives, the act of hunting reveals a fundamental feature of how Apaches relate to the land.
As a literary device, the metaphor of hunting reveals something even more important, about how place-names fulfill their moral function. When someone who’s behaved badly is “shot” by a historical tale, they experience anguish and move to change their behavior. Long after the person who recounted the historical tale is gone, the place associated with the historical tale will continue to watch over the former social delinquent. This metaphor also helps illustrate the reciprocal relationship between landscapes and people that Basso describes at various points throughout the book: As people vest landscapes with meaning, they also work those meanings into their own senses of self.
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