About Apache Dwellings

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Nancy Minor, the tribal historian of Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas. With me today is Robert Sotto, our vice chairman and he's going to tell you about Apache dwellings, particularly Lipan Apache dwellings. A long time ago when I was a little boy, I used to go down to the areas where some of my ancestors where, where living and of course we saw a lot of different dwellings. Some of them live in adobe houses or mud houses and some were living in, it's kind of stockle houses with wood but one of the ones that I kind of always fell in love with, with the fascination, fascinated with was the wickiup. The wickiup was kind of one of our old traditional dwellings. That was something that was, they could be done with just about anywhere; there was grass or even palm leaves or even, even branches because it rain very little in the dessert; usually we didn't have to worry about water protection and play it was mostly a shelter to keep us away from the sun and just protect us from the sun. At the, and so the difference between through this one here, I always had a vision of, of of creating one and so when the opportunity to open this museum came, it was the first thing that I thought, I should learn how to make a wickup and then, and set it up. I use basic kind of material in here. This is what you call Johnson Grass which grows pretty wild in the, in the perris or the tall grasses to grow around here and then we'll use a willow tree. Other trees were used but among our passe people, one of the other trees that was very common was the stalk of a Yaka plant 'cause those stalks will grow up in really tall and we're very flexible when they're green. And so, and some of the other things that were used; like some of the traditional people that live out there in places where wild onions used to grow, they used to pull the wild onions out when they were; they were, they're ready to be harvest and they will cut the fruit off and allow the leaves to fall on; the leaves will become the covering and so that was one of the other things that was used in here. This one is, it's just a standard home; usually they were a little bigger than this one. If you could, if you could be in here, you'll notice there's a hole up there and the hole was up that way because there's always a camp fire inside the wickiup and there would just to be an escape for the smoke to go up that way to and but sometimes the wickiups were as big as to allow maybe two or three families to go on one weekend. There were easy; when we were ready to move on, we just discard of our materials. Sometimes we just burn them down or and move on and then build another one whenever we got there. It was not something like the other tribes will pack up there teepees and just go on to the other place. And for us the wickiup was very disposable way that we could just dispose of it and then, and then build another one when we got there. If you had been in South Texas about a hundred years ago or longer, you probably would have seen dwellings much like the one that Robert made which we're standing in. "Well thank you Robert". "You're welcome". And goodbye and we thank you; and danzo. Bye."