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/or language:
“When we want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves, nor operatives, but men,—those rare fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is ... in every child a painstaking teacher, so skilful that he obtains identical results in all children in all parts of the world. The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!”
—Maria Montessori (1870–1952)