Mescaleros - Culture and Language

Culture and Language

The Mescalero language is a Southern Athabaskan language which is a subfamily of the Athabaskan and Dené–Yeniseian families. Mescalero is part of the southwestern branch of this subfamily; it is very closely related to Chiricahua, and more distantly related to Western Apache. These are considered the three dialects of Apachean. Although Navajo is a related Southern Athabaskan language, its language and culture are considered distinct from those of the Apache.

The Mescalero Apache were primarily a nomadic mountain people although they went east on the arid plains to hunt the buffalo and south into the desert for gathering mescal from which they take their Spanish name. The Mescalero Apache along with the other Apache groups were living by hunting and gathering who went on raiding to supplement their existence by depredating initially other Indian tribes and then adding the Spanish, Mexicans and Americans.

Read more about this topic:  Mescaleros

Famous quotes containing the words culture and, culture and/or language:

    “Culture and possessions—there is the bourgeoisie for you.”
    —Thomas Mann (1875–1955)

    “If you’re anxious for to shine in the high esthetic line as a man
    of culture rare,
    You must get up all the germs of the transcendental terms, and plant
    them everywhere.
    You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of your
    complicated state of mind,
    The meaning doesn’t matter if it’s only idle chatter of a
    transcendental kind.”
    —Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)

    “Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence.”
    —Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)