Eve Ball (far right) visiting with Percy Big Mouth (from far left), an unknown man, Old Crookneck and an unknown lady friend. Percy was the son of Scout Big Mouth, a survivor of the Bosque Redondo POW camp on the Pecos River. His father, with Percy translating, told of how he had seen bodies floating in the Pecos River, bodies of Navajo and Apache who had died from pestilence passed on to them in the crowded conditions of their camp. Soon thereafter the Mescalero Apaches left that hellhole on their way back to the sacred White Mountain (Sierra Blanca). The U.S. Army closed the camp. Images courtesy Lynda A. Outlawministries Sanchez Eve Ball (1890-1984) Many of you have seen in my writings the name Eve Ball. I feel it is fitting that we include some information on her in this group. Had it not been for her, many of you would not know some of the great stories about those great fearless Apaches who suffered and endured so much to make it possible for you to be here today. She was also a dear friend to these people. In 1942 Eve moved to Ruidoso, New Mexico. In 1948 she purchased an entire block near the Ruidoso Downs, the famous horse-racing track. There she built an adobe house. Her house was only one mile from the Mescalero Apache Reservation. Eve wrote, “When I came here, I was way out in the country, the road was not paved way up her. June is a hot, dry month, and Apache women wore long skirts dragging the ground, and they had cradles on their backs and babies in the cradles and maybe two or three little children hanging on to their skirts. Nobody in a car ever picked one up. They would have walked ten or twelve miles by the time they got here and would be exhausted. Well, they would walk up this hill, and they’d stop out there and send a child to the door. They would ask very timidly if they might have a drink of water. I had a table and chairs out in the yard under the tree, and I would fix them a pitcher of ice water. Sometimes I would make iced tea or lemonade. I would go out and sit and ask questions, and I would get answers “yes’ or ‘no,’ but that was about the only response. They all looked alike to me then. I couldn’t tell the difference in them. “I said to a woman, ‘You’ve been here before, haven’t you?’ She said, ‘Five times.’ She said, ‘I’m going to bring my husband the next time.’ I said, ‘Well, fine. I’d like to meet him.’ I think there were five or six old broken down cars on the reservation; there may have been more. But most of the Indians had wagons and teams, and they just got to coming here, but nobody would come into this house. They had heard about the white women. They weren’t going to take any risks. “They finally began coming in and talking pretty freely, and I learned a little bit about the situation over there from them. I found that the fewer questions asked, the more they would tell me. And I was trying to find out who the king pin was up there and , of course, I expect it was two years or so before I discovered that Asa Daklugie was in charge.” Eve goes on to write, “But the Apaches are people and many of them very fine people. They are a proud and sensitive folk, and when they do give their friendship, it is amazing and touching to find the extent of their confidence.... Some of these people I have known for twenty years. They come to me with their troubles and sorrows, and they ask me to share in many of their social affairs.” As time passed on, these visits became interviews. One day she had a new visitor, James Kaywaykla, the nephew of Victorio and grandson of Nana. He had come to Mescalero from Oklahoma to be on hand for the July puberty ceremony. Getting an interview with Ace Daklugie took four years and then only with much help from two of her good friends, Ramona who was Ace’s wife and their daughter Maude Geronimo. Daklugie detested white people. However, Eve was successful with Ace and his story is the basis of her book An Apache Odyssey Indeh. One week before he died, Ace brought to Eve his papers. And from her friendship with James Kaywaykla, she was able to bring to us his story as told In The Days Of Victorio. Eve was able to interview sixty-seven elderly Apaches and get valuable oral history. Eve said she learned to speak a little Apache but not fluently. “Eugene and Ace tried hard to teach me, and I have a vocabulary of perhaps 500 words. By waving my arms and speaking very slowly I can make some thing understood.” Eve began speaking out about the conditions on the reservation. She was often the target of criticism along with Vic Lamb who was the editor of the Ruidoso News. As the word spread, Eve became a channel for charitable activities. Finally in 1957 the Senate did an investigation of the poverty on the reservation and the Walker Air Force Base in Roswell sent a truckload of food. She also received clothing, food, and money for the Apache people. An artist in New York, Henry Schnautz, began sending blankets, clothing, and shoes for the Apaches. Eve became a one-person distribution center for these donations that were being given for the Apache poor. From just one shipment she filled a box for each of the twenty-seven needy families. Eve wrote, “I think you would have to see these people open one of these boxes to know what a warm garment means to them... “The down comforter I’m taking to Isabel Enjady, who is a tubercular patient, very emaciated, and unable to be comfortably warm. It will give warmth without weight.” “I am sorry you could not see the happiness people exhibited at having a pair of shoes or a dress.” It is so sad to see that the names that appear in her books of the tellers of heroic tales often appeared in her letters in a different context. She gave a Mexican blanket to Christian Naiche “who is also in pitiful position and is seventy-one. The grandson of Cochise!.” “Yesterday May Second, daughter of Peso, last Mescalero chief, came, and the beautiful blue boucle coat fitted her. A dress, too, was right. She was so happy she cried.” Despite her modest income, Eve’s personal giving was above and beyond. She bought firewood for Eugene Chihuahua. For Isabel Enjady, daughter of Geronimo’s warrior, Perico she purchased cortisone. Isable was about seventy and badly crippled with arthritis. Eve also bought a cookstove for a family who lost their home in a fire. About Alverta Begay, daughter of Massai, she wrote, “is almost blind; had cataract operations but is not greatly improved. So I gave her the money I got for the story.” Eve sold artwork donated by the artist Schnautz to buy a bed, blankets, and a cookstove for a medicine woman, Catherine Cojo, who was nearly eighty. Eve wrote, “The aged get $17.50 a month from the tribe. They manage to eat, but can buy little clothing or blankets.” By 1961 conditions on the reservation had begun to improve a little. Eve had a lot of trouble getting her books published. Publishers did not think highly of oral history and many refused to publish her books. She finally succeeded and we now have a wealth of information about these great people. Eve died on the morning of Christmas Eve 1984 at the age of ninety-four. Her memorial service was held at the Mescalero’s St. Joseph’s Mission. Joe Welch wrote this of Eve, “Eve Ball has made tracks during her life which will be here a long time. Maybe forever.”
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 16:59:56 +0000