One name, several homelands
“Apache” is a name used by outsiders for several related peoples who spoke closely related languages but lived in different countries and followed different ways of life. Their group territories stretched from the southern Plains of Texas to the mountains of Arizona and from southern Colorado deep into northern Mexico. The boundaries were not fixed lines on a map. They were areas that groups used, travelled through and defended, which shifted over time and sometimes overlapped.
The summary below goes roughly from north to south and east to west. It describes the country that each group is most closely associated with in the 1700s and 1800s, before the reservation era. Scholars sometimes differ on the exact limits, and they use different names for subgroups.
Jicarilla: northern New Mexico and southern Colorado
The Jicarilla are most closely associated with the mountains and valleys of northern New Mexico and the adjoining parts of southern Colorado. Their country lay along the eastern slope of the Sangre de Cristo and beyond, touching the Plains and Pueblo communities such as Taos. Historians often describe the Jicarilla as combining Plains and mountain ways, with bison hunting on one side and gardening and trade with Pueblo neighbours on the other. The modern Jicarilla Apache Nation holds a reservation in northern New Mexico.
Mescalero: the mountains and basins of south-central New Mexico
The Mescalero are associated with the mountain ranges of south-central and southeastern New Mexico, including the Sacramento Mountains, as well as areas to the east and south toward the Pecos country and parts of west Texas and northern Mexico. The name refers to the mescal, the roasted agave that was an important food. Their present reservation lies in the Sacramento Mountains area.
Lipan: Texas and northern Mexico
The Lipan Apache are associated with south and central Texas and with parts of Coahuila and neighbouring areas in northern Mexico. They lived at times near Spanish missions and presidios, hunted bison on the plains, and were pressed by Comanche expansion and later by Texan settlement. Today, the Lipan Apache descendants include communities in Texas and members of other nations, and recognition status varies. Readers should consult the groups’ own sources for current information.
Plains Apache: the southern Plains
The Plains Apache, historically often called the Kiowa Apache, lived on the southern Plains in close association with the Kiowa. They are now centred in southwestern Oklahoma, where the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma is based. Their language belongs to the Apachean family and is distinct from those of their Kiowa neighbours.
Chiricahua: southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico and Mexico
The Chiricahua country covered southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico and northern Sonora and Chihuahua. Sources usually describe three main bands, the Chihenne (Warm Springs), the Chokonen and the Bedonkohe, and often a fourth, the Nednhi, who lived mostly in the Sierra Madre of Mexico. Terms and numbers vary by source. The Chiricahua mountains and the ranges around them were central to the Chokonen homeland, while the Black Range area of New Mexico was central to the Chihenne. The Chiricahua exile in the 1880s and after is why the modern Fort Sill Apache Tribe is in Oklahoma, and why some descendants live with the Mescalero in New Mexico.
Western Apache: central and eastern Arizona
The Western Apache is a collective term for several groups in central and eastern Arizona: the White Mountain, Cibecue, San Carlos, and the Northern and Southern Tonto. Their country ran along the Mogollon Rim, the White Mountains and the river valleys of the Gila and Salt. Many Western Apache groups combined seasonal movement with farming plots along streams. Their modern communities include the San Carlos Apache, the White Mountain Apache, the Tonto Apache and the Yavapai-Apache Nation, the last a community that also includes Yavapai people.
Western Apache social life was organized around local groups and clans, which is a subject with its own detailed literature.
What shaped these differences
Environment mattered. Bison, mountain game, mescal, acorns, cactus fruit and maize were available in different mixes in different places. Nearby peoples, whether Pueblo, Comanche, Spanish or Mexican communities, differed too. A group on the southern Plains lived in a different political world from a group in the Arizona mountains.
The Navajo, who speak a related language, are a separate nation and live to the northwest of most Apache homelands.
Homelands and reservations are not the same
Reservation boundaries today do not match older territories. Some nations live on land inside their traditional country, while others, such as the Fort Sill Apache Tribe, are located far from the places their ancestors knew as home. The old territories are still remembered in place names, stories and ongoing cultural ties. For current boundaries, governance and visitor information, the nations’ own official websites are the reliable source.