Food belongs to a place
For Apache peoples, as for many Native nations, food is closely tied to particular places. Knowing what grows where, when it is ready, and which slopes, springs and valleys are reliable is knowledge built over generations. This article looks at how that link between food and homeland worked for different Apache groups, and at how people are reviving traditional foods today. It describes patterns found in published sources, not the views of any single nation.
Homelands and what they offered
The Apache homelands cover a large and varied region, and the foods differed accordingly.
Mountains and canyons of Arizona. The Western Apache, with groups such as the White Mountain and San Carlos peoples, lived in country that ranges from high forest to desert. Documented foods include agave, acorns, juniper berries, walnuts, game such as deer, and crops planted in suitable valley soil. Moving between elevations allowed access to different plants as they ripened.
Southern New Mexico and the borderlands. The Chiricahua, and the Mescalero in the Sacramento and Guadalupe Mountains area, lived in dry mountain and basin country where agave was abundant and widely used. The Sacramento Mountains homeland remains important to the Mescalero Apache. The pit-roasting of agave left traces in the landscape that archaeologists continue to study.
Northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. The Jicarilla lived where mountains meet plains. Accounts describe hunting in the mountains and on the plains, gathering wild plants, and growing some crops, along with exchange with Pueblo neighbors. The Jicarilla Apache people therefore drew on both plains and mountain ways.
Southern Plains and Texas. The Lipan and the Plains Apache lived in grassland and river-valley country, where bison, other game, and plants such as wild fruits and roots mattered, along with some farming for certain groups at certain times. The Lipan Apache history in Texas and northern Mexico is discussed more fully elsewhere on this site.
These are broad summaries. Groups moved, and boundaries shifted, so even this regional picture is simplified.
Knowledge held in places
The knowledge that allowed people to eat well from the land was usually specific. It included where a certain plant grew thickly, how a given spring behaved in a dry year, and which areas were best at different seasons. This kind of knowledge lives in names, stories and teaching, and it is a recurring theme in how Apache storytelling connects events and lessons to named places. Land and food were not separate subjects; a place name could carry information about what could be found there.
What removal and confinement did
When Apache peoples were confined to reservations in the late nineteenth century, many were separated from the lands that held this knowledge. The Chiricahua were held as prisoners of war far from their homelands for many years. Others were moved onto reservations that did not always include their gathering areas. Under the reservation system, rations replaced much of what people had harvested themselves, and restrictions on movement made it harder to carry out the yearly round of gathering and hunting.
Historians describe the loss of access to land as a loss of food, health and knowledge together. This is one reason that questions about land, sacred places and protection of landscapes, such as those discussed under Oak Flat and Apache landscapes, are sometimes linked to food and plant-gathering as well as to ceremony.
Reviving traditional foods
Today, many Native communities, including Apache communities, are working to bring traditional foods back into everyday life. The efforts reported in general terms include:
- gathering trips and harvest days that bring families and youth together;
- community and school gardens that grow traditional crops;
- classes and informal teaching in which elders and others share plant knowledge;
- work to protect gathering areas and to secure access to them.
Specific programs and their names change often, and this site does not list current ones. Readers who want to know what a particular nation is doing should check its official website or cultural office.
A caution on stereotypes
Describing food as rooted in the land is not the same as saying Apache people lived without change. Apache peoples have long adapted, adopting crops, animals and tools when it made sense, and trading widely. Today most Apache people shop at grocery stores, as people elsewhere do, and also may gather, hunt or grow traditional foods when they can. Traditional foods are one living part of identity, not a frozen picture of the past.