The Legend of the Apache Maiden

BY: Leo W. Banks

A haunting tale of a Tonto Apache girl sentenced to die for love Ghost Dancer of the Mazatzals The daytime moon winked at us from the high blue

sky and said, "Tell me a story! I beg you, a tale!"

"Moon, dear moon," we answered. "The story we have for you is sad, too sad to tell."

"But I'm lonely up here, just watching the deer. Tell me, please, and shout it, so that I might hear."

So we indulged the pale, forlorn specter above us and recited the tale of the beautiful Tonto Apache maiden and her lover who, according to legendend, died long ago in this hidden meadow in the Mazatzal Mountains.

They were chased here, pursued by their own people. The maiden had been ordered by her father, a powerful Tonto chief, to marry a hard-hearted warrior.

But on her wedding eve, she ran off with a younger and gentler Indian to whom she'd previously promised herself.

In the morning, the warrior, the chief and others gave chase, and at a place called Singing Springs, they captured the unfortunate lovers. Following custom, the chief allowed the would-be husband to decide the maiden's fate.

The warrior's wounded honor could be appeased only by the death of the violators. He wished for the maiden and her lover to be tied to separate

Certain that we'd found the mountain meadow of legend, we carefully descended, remarking on the alligator juniper trees, some just a few feet apart. We wondered which ones might've been used to secure the runaways.

trees and allowed to perish from thirst or starvation or in the jaws of wild beasts.

The maiden's own father decreed that the warrior's wish be so, and the young couple were securely bound with thongs to trees a few feet apart. Facing each other, unable to touch except with their hearts, they were left to their destiny.

For weeks, birds brought food and dampened leaves to the pair, as the girl sang songs of encouragement and devotion to her love.

Then came a day when all the birds left the mountain, and a terrific snowstorm followed. Unable to free themselves from their tethers, the lovers perished from starvation and exposure.

Still today, preceding every snowstorm, the legend promises that the loyal maiden will return to the scene of her earthly misery to chant and dance in the dell, as if rejoicing at the couple's release from despair.

She is known as the Ghost Dancer of the Mazatzals.

In that meadow underneath Mazatzal Peak, the story seemed to us a fairy tale. Earlier in the day, it didn't seem that way at all.

Dawn was just filling the sky when we started hiking, in search of a faint thread from the past.

In 1891, the Arizona Weekly Enterprise published an account of the doomed lovers. The story had appeared originally in the San Francisco Examiner, and with its extravagant imagery and rich detail, it merited reprinting in Arizona Territory.

But as we walked into the Mazatzal Wilderness on the Barnhardt Trail south of Payson, we treated it as something other than a legend. We talked about these events as if they'd actually happened: Would the fleeing lovers have been on foot, or would they have had horses? What was their final destination? Where were they headed? Or was this simply an escape, desperate and spontaneous, fueled by the kind of emotional energy only the young can muster?

The terrain-plunging gorges, soaring rock cliffs, blind canyons and pockets of tangled rocks and cacti-gave us ideas. The trail hugs the mountainside, forming a shelf that at first curls up, then sinks, then angles up again. Strewn with rocks, including the ominous tailings of two big slides, it's wide enough to accommodate only one person, and someone not given to concentration lapses. Take a tired step on a jittery rock or gaze upward to admire the view and you could wind up riding thermals in the wideopen spaces below.

That possibility showed itself every time we booted a small rock, and away it would go, bouncing down the slope. The sharp "smack" of rock hitting rock seemed to carry forever on the thin air, a siren sound of danger on an otherwise tame fall afternoon.

The fleeing lovers must have felt the same type of fear.

"I don't think they could've gotten horses through here," said lead hiker Dave Engleman, a 72-year-old former National Parks Service employee of Utah and New Mexico. He's hiked Arizona's national forests for 14 years and knows the Tonto like his own back yard.

If they started out on foot, we figured they stayed that way. They probably were too spooked to wait for horses and just ran.

Walking, sweating, with the new morning at our backs, we also talked about the meadow in which they were captured.

The newspaper story said Singing Springs lies on the western slope of the Mazatzals, 1,500 feet below the summit of the chain. Described as picturesque and romantic, the meadow appeared as a grassy glade in a forest of pines.

Modern maps designate no place in the Mazatzals as Singing Springs. The range does have two places called Indian Springs, but for a variety of reasons, neither fits the description.

After poring over a Tonto National Forest map, and painstakingly eliminating additional possibilities, we found a spot underneath Mazatzal Peak that matched: Chilson Spring.

Compared with the newspaper description, the main discrepancy was elevation. At 6,000 feet, Chilson Spring sits 400 feet lower than the Enterprise had placed it. Other than that, it had what we were looking for, including the spring. Until a serious drought that began a few years ago, its water rippled out from the hillside, sometimes with such force it rolled across the meadow. In the legend, this rush of water produced a beautiful musical sound.

With that information, and confirmation from Tonto elders that such a legend exists -however faintly, due to fading memories and the oral recording of stories-we set out for Chilson Spring.

We knew we were following the thinnest of threads, but still talked as if the story had happened yesterday.

"Those youngsters didn't know where they were going. I'm sure of that," said Engleman. "They probably carried knives, maybe a bow and arrow, and-like all Apaches in those days-they knew how to follow the water. But they were just running wherever their legs took them."

Up the mountain we trekked, over one switchback and another and another. As we got up into the pine trees, we could look back to the tiny community of Rye, faintly visible under the mountain haze along State Route 87.

We tried to figure out how long it would have taken the fleeing Tontos to get this far. “A week,” Engleman speculated. “There were no trails back then. Well, maybe five days. Remember, Apaches are runners.” We reached the crest of the trail after more than 7 miles of hard walking. To our left, a flat grassy plain formed an unlikely and strange sight in a landscape of mountain, rocks and manzanita bushes. The ridge leading down to the plain was so steep we had the sense of being airborne, of almost floating above it.

Certain that we'd found the mountain meadow of legend, we carefully descended, remarking on the alligator juniper trees standing in the open space, some just a few feet apart. Since junipers live an average of 500 to 600 years, we wondered which ones might've been used to secure the runaways.

“They didn't plan to come here. No, sir, this was purely a chance stop,” said Engleman. “They were still running when they were captured.” Then he parked his hands on his hips and took a long look around. “We've found the 'hanging' trees,” he said, nodding slowly.

But, oddly, as we sat down in the shade against our backpacks, the Arizona Weekly Enterprise's lurid account began to seem less and less real, more like a fairy tale.

A gentle breeze whispered. Mazatzal Peak watched over us from the southeast. Deer began to step near.

The dell was casting its spell.

The Enterprise also told of hunters camping at this place in October 1885.

One night as they returned to camp, they heard a strange sound. At first it seemed like flowing water. Coming closer, they peered around a tree and saw the Tonto maiden.

heard a strange sound. At first it seemed like flowing water. Coming closer, they peered around a tree and saw the Tonto maiden.

She was clad in a skirt of fantastic colors elaborately ornamented with rare stones, her long jet-black hair partially concealing her shoulders. Gently swaying back and forth, she danced, the bracelets on her arms flashing and glittering under the moon.

In life she had been among the most beautiful Tonto women, but she wasn't beautiful any more. She was horrible. Her cheeks were hollow, her lips drawn back, exposing her teeth, and her tongue hung from her mouth.

The eyes were the worst. They bulged from their sockets and held a fixed glare that emitted rays of phosphorescent light as she sang, her voice a soft, anguished monotone.

The author of the newspaper story, Charles Mosher, wrote, “No grinning skull could compare in hideousness with the face of the solitary dancer.” Yet the grass did not bend under her feet. She was flesh and spirit, real and unreal, a vision and a nightmare.

One of the hunters knocked his rifle over and it discharged. When the men raised their eyes again, the apparition was gone.

A heavy snowfall had blanketed the mountain in the hours after her appearance. It was unheard of, such an early snow. When it melted, a spring burst from the mountain directly between the trees where the young Tontos met their end.

What poured forth, though, was the blood of the pair, and the musical sound of its flow was the loyal maiden's death song.

Mosher had written that with word of the dancer spreading far and wide, no Indian would dare drink from the water of the spring, or even enter the little dell. To do either would result in an instant death.

But we saw and heard no such things. No strange music, no ghost dancer, surely no blood spurting from the ground. No menace of any kind.

All we had was the grass, those alligator junipers, the wind sweeping through leaves just beginning to carry the color of autumn and the deer moving ever closer, silent and fearless, as if from a fairy tale. A fairy tale of funny little characters lying against their backpacks in a lonesome dell and telling the moon a story of Apache lovers who went to their glory. AH Tucson resident Leo W. Banks says the site of this remarkable Tonto legend is one of the most magical he has seen in Arizona.

Having driven by the Mazatzals hundreds of times, Phoenix-based David Elms Jr. appreciated the opportunity to explore the ruggedly beautiful area.