Borders drawn over Apache country
Apache nations did not appear on the maps that European and American governments drew. For centuries Spain, and then Mexico, claimed land across Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, and Apache communities lived and moved across much of it without regard to those claims. In the 1840s and 1850s the United States took over the claim, and the change set the terms of nearly everything that followed.
The Mexican American War and the 1848 treaty
The United States and Mexico went to war in 1846. The conflict ended in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in which Mexico gave up a vast area including present-day California, Nevada, Utah and most of Arizona and New Mexico north of the Gila River. Apache people were not parties to the treaty and were not consulted about it.
The treaty included a provision in which the United States promised to restrain Native raids into Mexico. For many Apache groups, whose relationship with Mexican communities involved cycles of trade and warfare, including the Sonora and Chihuahua raids that Mexican authorities complained of, this promise was impossible to carry out and became a source of Mexican complaint. Later, a further agreement removed the obligation, which shows how little the arrangement reflected the realities on the ground.
The Gadsden Purchase
In 1853 the United States agreed to buy an additional strip of land south of the Gila River, which became part of southern Arizona and New Mexico. The agreement was ratified in 1854 and is known as the Gadsden Purchase. A main reason was interest in a southern route for a railroad. The area was core Apache country, including land used by the Chiricahua and by Western Apache groups. As before, Apache people were not parties to the deal.
Settlers, miners and soldiers
After the treaties, American soldiers, stage lines, miners and ranchers entered Apache country, and the number of newcomers grew after gold and silver discoveries drew people to the region. Settlement affected water sources, game and the places where Apache families farmed or camped. The Army built forts, among them Fort Bowie at Apache Pass, to protect travelers and to control the area.
Settler encroachment brought both contact and conflict. Early relations in some places included trade and a degree of cooperation, including the supply of wood and hay to stage stations and posts. Incidents of mistrust, such as the Bascom affair of 1861, are widely seen as marking a hardening of relations with the Chiricahua. From there, conflicts became more frequent and more deadly. Historians generally link the rise of warfare in the 1860s to the pressure of settlement, the memory of earlier wrongs, and the actions of both Apache and American leaders, while noting that explanations differ.
Violence against Apache communities
Not all violence came from the military. Some settlers and others carried out attacks on Apache communities. The best-known example is the Camp Grant massacre of 1871, in which a group from the Tucson area attacked a village of Aravaipa and Pinal Apache people who had sought peace, killing well over a hundred people, most of them women and children. The event drew national attention and led to trials in which the attackers were acquitted. It is a reminder that the story of the West was not only a matter of Apache raids and Army campaigns.
Responses
Apache leaders and communities responded in varied ways: negotiating treaties and agreements, seeking peace and rations at military posts, withdrawing into remote country, or fighting. Cochise’s agreement in 1872 with an American envoy, which established a Chiricahua reservation for a few years, shows that diplomacy was part of this period too. The reservation was closed in the 1870s, and its closure contributed to later conflict.
Why this matters now
The borders and land claims of the 1840s and 1850s still shape the geography of Apache nations. Reservation boundaries, state lines, the international border with Mexico and land ownership in the Southwest all derive in part from these changes. For some nations, the border has divided kin and traditional territory, and communities and agencies continue to work through questions of movement and land. Readers should look to each nation’s official sources for current matters, and to the later parts of the history, such as the reservation system and forced relocation, for what came next.
Sources and care
Many records of this era were written by officials, soldiers and settlers, and they sometimes contradict one another about numbers and causes. Where details are uncertain, treat them as such. Apache oral history gives a fuller sense of what these years meant to the people who lived through them.