The Apaches are a group of culturally related Native American tribes in the southwestern United States that include the Chiricahua, Jacarilla, Lipan, Mescalero, Salinero, Plains, and Western Apache. Apaches are distantly related to the Navajo, with whom they share the southern Athabaskan languages.
There are Apache communities in Oklahoma, Texas and reservations in Arizona and New Mexico. The Apache people moved throughout the United States and elsewhere, including urban centers. The Apache peoples are politically autonomous, speak several different languages and have different cultures. You can see photos of Apaches in this article.
Habitats
Historically, the Apache homeland consisted of high mountains, sheltered and flooded valleys, deep canyons, deserts, and the southern Great Plains, including areas currently located in eastern Arizona, northern Mexico (Sonora and New Mexico, West Texas and Southern Colorado). These areas are collectively known as Apacheria. The Apache tribes fought the invading Spanish and Mexican peoples for centuries. The first Apache raids on Sonora appear to have taken place in the late 17th century. The US Army found the Apaches to be fierce warriors and skilled strategists.
Name history
The people known today as Apaches are the people who first met the conquistadors of the Spanish crown. And so the term "Apache" has its roots in Spanish.
The Spaniards first used the term "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navajo) in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama region east of the San Juan River. By the 1640s they had applied the term to the South Athabaskan peoples from Cham in the east to San Juan in the west. The ultimate origin is unknown and lost to Spanish history.
Languages
Apache and Navajo tribal groups in the North American Southwest speak related languages of the Athabaskan language family. Other speakers in North America continue to reside in Alaska, western Canada, and the Pacific Northwest. Anthropological evidence suggests that the Apache and Navajo peoples lived in the same northern regions before migrating southwest between 1200 and 1500 BC. AD
The Apache nomadic lifestyle makes accurate dating difficult, primarily because they built less substantial dwellings than other southwestern groups. Since the beginning of the 21st century, significant progress has been made in dating and distinguishing between their dwellings and other forms of material culture. They left behind a more austere set of tools and we alth than other southwestern cultures.
Athabaskan languages
Athabascan speakerthe group likely moved to areas that were simultaneously occupied or recently abandoned by other cultures.
Other Athabaskan speakers, possibly including Southern speakers, have adapted many of their neighbors' technologies and practices into their own cultures. Thus, places where the early southern Athabaskans may have lived are difficult to find.
And even harder to identify as a southern Athabaskan culture. Recent advances have been made in regards to the far southern part of the American Southwest.
Apache History
There are several hypotheses regarding Apache migration. Some say they moved southwest from the Great Plains. In the mid-16th century, these mobile bands lived in tents, hunted buffalo and other wild animals, and used dogs to pull wagons laden with their possessions. A significant number of people and a wide range were recorded by the Spaniards in the 16th century. Apaches are an ancient free people who domesticated dogs long ago.
The Spaniards described Plains dogs as being very white with black spots and "not much bigger than water spaniels". Plains dogs were slightly smaller than those used for hauling loads by modern-day Inuit and northern indigenous peoples in Canada. Recent experiments show that these dogs could pull loads up to 50 pounds (20 kg) on long journeys at speeds up to two or three miles per hour (3 to 5 km/h). The Plains Migration Theory connects the Apache people with the culture of the Grim River -an archaeological culture known primarily from pottery and house remains dated 1675–1725 that have been excavated in Nebraska, eastern Colorado, and western Kansas.
16th century
In 1540, Coronado reported that present-day Western Apache territory was uninhabited, although some scholars have argued that he simply did not see the American Indians. Other Spanish explorers first mention "querejos" living west of the Rio Grande in the 1580s. For some historians, this means that the Apaches moved to their current southwestern homeland in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
Other historians note that Coronado reported that Pueblo women and children were often evacuated when his group attacked their dwellings, and that he saw that some dwellings were recently abandoned as he moved up the Rio Grande. This may indicate that the semi-nomadic southern Athabaskan warned ahead of their hostile approach and shied away from meeting the Spanish. Archaeologists find ample evidence of an early presence of the Proto-Apache in the southwestern mountain zone in the 15th century and possibly earlier. The presence of Apaches in the plains and mountainous southwest indicates that the people followed several early migration routes. Apaches are a people perfectly adapted to survival.
Relations with Spaniards
In general, the newly arrived Spanish colonists who settled in the villages and the Apache bands developed a pattern of interaction over several centuries. Both raided and tradedtogether. Period records seem to indicate that relationships depended on certain villages and certain groups that were related to each other. For example, one group might befriend one village and raid another. When war comes, the Spaniards will send troops; after the battle, both sides would "sign a treaty", and both sides would go home.
Participation in wars
When the United States went to war against Mexico in 1846, many Apache groups promised American soldiers safe passage through their lands. When the US took over the former territories of Mexico in 1846, the Mangas Coloradas signed a peace treaty with the nation, regarding them as the conquerors of Mexican land. An uneasy peace between the Indians and the new citizens of the United States held until the 1850s. The influx of gold miners into the Santa Rita Mountains led to conflict with the Apaches. This period is sometimes referred to as the Apache Wars.
Reservations
The United States reservation concept was not previously used by the Spanish, Mexicans, or other Apache neighbors. Reservations were often poorly managed, and groups that had no kinship were forced to live together. There were no fences to keep people in or out. It was not uncommon for the group to be given permission to leave for a short period of time. In other cases, the group left without permission, raided, returned to their homeland to forage or simply leave. The military usually had forts nearby. Their job was to keep the various groups inreservations, finding and returning those who left. Reservation politics in the United States created conflict and war with various Apache groups who left the reservations for another quarter of a century.
Deportation
In 1875, the US military forced the removal of approximately 1,500 Yavapai and Dilje'e Apaches (better known as Tono Apaches) from the Rio Verde Indian Reserve and several thousand acres of treaty land promised to them by the United States government. By order of the Indian commissioner L. E. Dudley, the US Army forced people, young and old, through winter-flooded rivers, mountain passes and narrow canyon paths.
They had to get to the Indian Agency in San Carlos, 180 miles (290 km) away. The campaign resulted in the death of several hundred people. People were interned there for 25 years while white settlers took over their land. Only a few hundred returned to their lands. On the San Carlos Reservation, Buffalo soldiers of the 9th Cavalry-replacing the 8th Cavalry in Texas-guarded the Apache from 1875-1881.
Freedom War
Starting in 1879, an Indian rebellion against the reservation system led to the "Victorio War" between the notorious Chief Victorio's band and the 9th Cavalry. Victorio went down in history almost on a par with the leader of the Apache Winnet.
Most United States histories of this era report that the final defeat of the Apache groupoccurred when 5,000 American soldiers forced Geronimo's group of 30-50 men, women and children to surrender on September 4, 1886 in Skeleton Canyon, Arizona.
25 The Army sent this group and the Chiricahua scouts who tracked them down to the Florida military detention facility at Fort Pickens and then to Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
Many books were written on the history of hunting and trapping in the late 19th century. Many of these stories involve Apache raids and the failure of agreements with the Americans and Mexicans. In the post-war era, the US government arranged for the removal of Apache children from their families for adoption by white Americans in assimilation programs.
