Mescalero Apache stirrups; wood, rawhide; h. 13.5 cm., w. 15 cm.; ca. 1880.<BR> These stirrups have a wood foundation encased in rawhide that was stitched in place while wet and shrank as it dried, creating a strong, rigid sheath. The covering obscures the joints, and it is uncertain whether the foundation was assembled from separate pieces of wood, or from a single piece, kerfed and bent to shape (cf. Wissler 1915:14-17). One stirrup retains the strap with which it was tied to the saddle. They were purchased in Santa Fe in July 1883 from a merchant who obtained them from Mescaleros who had been at the Tertio-Millennial Exposition. The museum catalog card includes a notation by Ten Kate that this type of stirrup was also used by Navajos, Pueblos, and Zunis.<BR> While, in pre-reservation days, lost horses could be replaced by stealing more, horses were certainly considered valuable, and all Apache groups cared for their horses, making a variety of horsegear, usually modeled on Spanish and Mexican equipment. Considerable effort could be lavished on saddles, wooden spurs, quirts, ropes, rawhide horseshoes, tack and saddlebags, and Ten Kate collected several of such artifacts: four saddlebags from different groups, rawhide horseshoes or boots at San Carlos, Mescalero stirrups, and a rawhide rope and two quirts (horse whips) which may be either Apache or Navajo, but are listed as Apache in the Leiden inventory, based on Ten Kate's notes. All of these articles, as well as simple rawhide hobbles, were undoubtedly made on similar patterns by several Southwestern groups, and it is often impossible to know if examples obtained from a group were made by them, or obtained in trade from another. The horseshoes are of a simple style known to have been made by several Apache groups, Navajos, and various Puebloan tribes, all of whom almost certainly were copying those used by early Spanish explorers (Clark 1963:246). The stirrups and rawhide rope are both known to have been made by various Southwestern groups, and Ten Kate (2004:206,244) specifically mentions stirrups for both the Apaches and Navajos. And again, the braided leather, and braided horsehair, quirts are known to have been made by various groups, but their specific origin is uncertain. The importance of the two specimens collected by Ten Kate, regardless of which group made them, is that they document that both techniques were fully known and in use in 1883; braiding of horsehair hatbands and curios among Western Apaches may be a later introduction (Ferg 1987:99,102).<BR> Ten Kate scorned romantic novelists' notions of the Apaches possessing splendid horses, and was unimpressed by the animals he observed at San Carlos. They were of small but robust stature, bred for physical endurance, and appeared poorly cared for. Riders seemed to have little regard for their mounts and often rode them to death on raiding expeditions when spare animals were also taken along, making them move swiftly over large distances. Ten Kate did not think the Apaches were very good riders, and remarked that their wooden stirrups were short and thus rode with their knees drawn up. Ten Kate found the riding style of the Apaches inelegant, with their trunks and heads in perpetual motion, and their arms flapping up and down their bodies.<BR>