They’re Not Very Good Looking, Are They? by Ellen O'Connell

Victorio

 Have you ever sat at a traffic light and watched pedestrians cross in front of you and looked for that one guy who could be a romance hero? How about when you’re waiting in line at the grocery store? He doesn’t show up very often, does he? So far as I’ve heard no one has ever done a survey to see what percentage of the human race is blessed with the kind of looks that abound in romance novels, but my guess is it’s not a high percentage.

So when one of my first readers for Dancing on Coals was so intrigued by the story she surfed the web, looked at photos of Apaches from those days, and called me and said, “They’re not very good looking, are they?” she made me laugh.

My guess is the percentage of knock your socks off good-looking people in every group is about the same—and never very high. In an Author’s Note at the end of Dancing, I mentioned that what inspired the story was a sketch of Victorio, Chief of the Warm Springs or Mimbreño Apaches. The image here is the one I originally saw. This sketch, drawn in pencil from life, is the only image of Victorio ever made, but several different versions of it can be found on the Internet.

When I was researching for Dancing, I came across one version that had the light gone from the eyes. Everything that attracted me disappeared with that light. When Regan Walker posted a review of Dancing on her blog, she found a colorized version of the sketch, and it too killed everything that originally appealed to me. The version here is the one I first saw and never forgot, and I believe it’s a true copy of the original sketch.

Naiche

However, during my research, I also came across several photos of Cochise’s son, Naiche. Victorio was killed by the Mexican army in 1880, although he did spend time on a reservation before that, which is when the sketch was done. Naiche lived to surrender to the U.S. Army and then lived through the 27 years the U.S. Government imprisoned the Chiricahua as prisoners of war in Florida, Alabama and Oklahoma, so there are quite a few photos of him. It’s hard to believe a grown woman could have a crush on someone who has been dead almost a hundred years because of an old photo, but that’s the effect those photos of Naiche had on me.

In my research I came across a sentence that slapped me with the reality of the depth of racial prejudice of the times. I didn’t write it down exactly, but from memory: “This is a photo of Naiche, the son of Cochise the Apaches consider handsome.” I don’t know about you, but while someone could certainly say, "I prefer blonds," or pug noses or whatever, anyone being honest would have to admit Naiche was handsome—very handsome—and like his father, he was that romance hero 6 feet tall.

Little Wolf

Last, here is a reservation-era photo of Little Wolf of the Cheyenne. He was one of the chiefs portrayed in the movie, Cheyenne Autumn. I can’t say that when I wrote Eyes of Silver, Eyes of Gold, I pictured Cord Bennett, who is half-Cheyenne, as looking like this, but I did picture him as having ancestors on his mother’s side who did.

These photographs and the sketch are all in the public domain.