Lozen

The title of this article is ambiguous. For the mountain in the Antarctic Victoria Land see Mount Lozen .

Lozen ( = clever horse thief ) (* in the late 1840s; † June 17, 1889) was a warrior of Chihenne - Apaches . She was the younger sister of Chief Victorio . The Chihenne with the Bedonkohe , Chokonen and Nednhi are often referred to collectively as Chiricahua , while the Chihenne acted completely independently of the other groups (Gotahs).

The young Lozen was courted by many warriors. She was around 16 years old when a stranger showed up in her village with whom she fell in love. But he left the village again and Lozen vowed never to marry. Instead, she was one of the few Apache women to choose a path as a warrior. She was superior to many warriors especially in dealing with horses, but also in lassoing and stealing horses . In addition to her warlike skills, she is said to have had the ability to predict the location of the enemy and heal the sick, so she had Inda-ce-ho-ndi ( Enemies-Against-Power ). Lozen had the status of a holy woman with the Apache and was accepted into the council of warriors.

After a long fight against the advancing US troops, the Chi-hen-ne-Apaches moved to the San Carlos Reservation in 1871 . In 1880 they fled, half starved. Lozen is said to have stolen the horses required for this. That same summer, the Chi-hen-ne suffered great losses in a fight with the whites. Victorio was also fatally injured. Years of a final desperate war against the whites followed. Lozen sometimes fought together with the Bedonkohe shaman Geronimo in his group. In September 1886 they had to surrender. Lozen was banished to Florida with other Apache warriors .

literature

• Veronika Ederer: Lozen - Apache warrior. An Indian woman at Geronimo's side , in: Magazin für Americanistik, Issue 2 and 3, 2000
• James Brave Wolf: From now on I am a warrior . Goettingen 1992.
• Lucia Saint Clair Robson: The Apache's sister
• Ernst Probst: Super women from the Wild West , Grin Verlag 2008, ISBN 3-640-12597-5