The eastern side of Apache country
The title of this article names the “Southwest and West,” but the groups it covers lived mainly on the southern Plains and in Texas, a region usually treated as the southern Plains and the borderlands of northern Mexico. The nations most closely tied to this area are the Lipan Apache and the Plains Apache, who were long called Kiowa Apache. Their histories overlap with Mescalero and Jicarilla history, which are treated in other articles, and they are quite different from the mountain-and-farming histories of the Western Apache.
Spellings and group names vary in older records, and scholars sometimes disagree about which early bands belonged to which later nation. Where sources differ, it is safest to say so.
The horse era and the southern Plains
Spanish colonization of New Mexico and Texas brought horses into the region, and during the 1600s and 1700s horses spread across the Plains. Apache groups on and near the Plains were among the early peoples to use them. Many combined bison hunting with some trade and, in places, farming. This is often discussed under the Southern Plains horse era.
By the 1700s the situation changed as the Comanche expanded onto the southern Plains. Many Apache groups were pushed south and west by Comanche pressure, which was one of several forces moving people around the region. Historians stress that this was a time of shifting alliances, not simple frontier lines.
The Lipan Apache
The Lipan Apache lived mainly in Texas and northern Mexico. Over the 1700s they dealt with Spanish authorities, who set up missions and presidios in Texas, and with Comanche and other neighbors. Some Lipan groups made agreements with Spanish and later Mexican officials. Later in the 1800s, with Texas statehood and the arrival of many settlers, Lipan people faced increasing hostility, land loss and military pressure. Many moved into Mexico, and some joined other Apache communities. In the early 1900s a number of Lipan families moved to the Mescalero reservation in New Mexico, where their descendants live today among the Mescalero Apache Tribe.
Lipan descendants also live in Texas and elsewhere. Questions of recognition and community organization are complex, and groups differ in legal status. Readers can look at what Lipan Apache descendants say about themselves on their own organizations’ websites, and at the Lipan Apache history written by Lipan authors where available.
The Plains Apache
The Plains Apache (Kiowa Apache) lived on the central and southern Plains and were for a long time closely allied with the Kiowa. The Kiowa Apache name came from that association; they are a distinct Apache-language people, and their own name for themselves differs. Treaties signed at Medicine Lodge in 1867 placed the Plains Apache, Kiowa and Comanche on a shared reservation in what is now southwestern Oklahoma. In 1901, the federal government allotted the reservation lands to individuals and opened the surplus to settlers, a change that sharply reduced the community’s land base.
Today the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma is the federally recognized nation of the Plains Apache. It is separate from the Fort Sill Apache Tribe, whose members descend from the Chiricahua prisoners held at Fort Sill, even though both are located in the same part of Oklahoma. This is one of the most common sources of confusion for readers new to the subject.
Struggles
For these nations the major hardships included loss of land through Texas settlement and Oklahoma allotment, pressure from several larger neighboring powers, disease, warfare, and the era of boarding schools and assimilation. Lipan people in particular faced violence and displacement that left their communities scattered, and the question of who counts as a community member can be complicated today.
Triumphs
Survival is the main one. The Plains Apache nation maintains its own government and community life in Oklahoma, and Lipan descendants in several places work to keep family histories, language knowledge and ties among relatives alive. Lipan and Plains Apache people have also joined other Apache communities, sometimes through marriage and relocation, and those links form part of the wider network of Apache kinship. Language and cultural programs, where they exist, are run by the communities themselves.
Reading carefully
The southern Plains have attracted a great deal of writing that treats Native peoples as part of a “frontier” story. Many accounts of the Texas frontier were written by soldiers, officials and settlers, and the details of dates, names and numbers vary from one source to the next. When evaluating a claim, note who wrote it and what they would have known. Oral histories and community-held records can fill gaps that official documents leave empty.