Trade, not “business ventures”
Before the reservations of the late nineteenth century, Apache peoples did not run businesses in the modern sense. What they did have, across different regions and centuries, was exchange: relationships with Pueblo, Plains and Spanish-colonial neighbors through which goods, and sometimes people, moved in both directions. Apache is also not one group. The Jicarilla, Lipan and Plains Apache lived along the edge of the southern Plains, while the Western Apache and Chiricahua groups lived farther west and south. Their trading opportunities were quite different, and the records are uneven, so this account stays general.
Pueblo neighbors
For eastern groups, the best-documented trade was with the Pueblo towns of the Rio Grande region. Taos Pueblo in particular was long known for gatherings at which Plains peoples came to exchange. Apachean groups such as the ancestors of the Jicarilla are generally described as bringing bison meat, hides and other Plains products and receiving corn, woven cotton goods and pottery in return. Pecos Pueblo played a similar gateway role between the Plains and the Rio Grande. This particular relationship is explored in the discussion of Jicarilla and Pueblo trade.
Such exchange was not always peaceful or equal. Relations between Apache groups and Pueblo communities included trade, alliance, intermarriage and conflict at different times, which is part of why historians avoid simple labels. The wider story of early contact is told under Apache and Pueblo contact.
For Western Apache groups, farming and wild plant gathering supplied much of their food, and the evidence for trade with western Pueblo peoples such as the Zuni and Hopi is thinner. It is reasonable to say that contact and exchange occurred, but sources differ on how regular it was.
Plains partners
Plains exchange grew more complex after horses spread north from Spanish settlements in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. During the Southern Plains horse era, groups such as the Plains Apache and Lipan moved across wide territories, hunting bison and trading hides and meat. Over the eighteenth century, the rise of the Comanche shifted the balance of power on the southern Plains. Some Apache groups moved south and west under that pressure, and relations among Apache, Comanche and others shifted between conflict and, at times, trade and truce, as discussed under Apache relations with Comanche.
The Plains Apache, long called Kiowa Apache by outsiders, are generally described as having a close alliance with the Kiowa. Alliances like this shaped who traded with whom.
The Spanish colonial frontier
Spanish colonists established settlements in what is now New Mexico from 1598, and later presidios, or garrison posts, across the northern frontier. Apache and Spanish relations included raiding, warfare, diplomacy and commerce, sometimes in the same decade and sometimes involving different groups at the same time. Apache goods that colonists sought included hides, and Apache groups obtained horses, metal tools, cloth and other items, whether by exchange, gifts or capture.
Captives also moved in several directions, among Apache, Pueblo, Spanish and Plains communities, and this is a painful part of the record that should not be glossed over. Captives were sometimes taken into households and sometimes sold or exchanged, and it affected many peoples, not just Apache communities.
In the late eighteenth century Spanish authorities adopted a policy of peace establishments, in which groups that agreed to settle near presidios received rations and sometimes goods. Historians discuss how well these arrangements worked and for whom. The longer story of the Spanish presidio frontier is told elsewhere; the economic point here is that for some Apache bands, a relationship with a Spanish post became a source of food, tools and trade, and a way to reduce conflict.
What moved, and why it mattered
Goods commonly mentioned in the sources include:
- From Apache groups: bison and deer hides, meat, and sometimes crafted goods.
- From Pueblo communities: maize, woven cloth, pottery and other farm products.
- From Spanish colonists: horses, iron tools, cloth and other manufactured items.
Horses are the most consequential single item. They changed how far people could travel, hunt and trade, and they became valuable property in themselves. Acquiring and holding them was part of the economy, as was the movement of livestock more generally.
Reading the evidence carefully
Most surviving written records come from Spanish, Mexican and later American observers, who often wrote about trade only when it intersected with their own interests, treaties or complaints. Apache oral traditions and archaeological evidence offer other perspectives but are not always specific about dates. For that reason, careful writers say “generally” and “often” when describing early exchange, and avoid inventing a single Apache trading system. The picture that emerges is of regional networks, with different groups, partners and rhythms of trade.
Trade of this kind was woven into a broader life of farming, gathering and hunting. For the other side of that economy, including the place of raiding and reciprocity, see the companion discussion of the early Apache trade economy.