Displacement, not decline
The word “decline” suggests that a people weakened on their own, as though something inside a culture failed. That is not what the evidence shows. Apache nations were affected by a set of outside pressures, each documented and each driven by decisions made by governments, companies and settlers. The Apache peoples survived those pressures and are present today as living nations, so this article treats the topic as one of displacement and survival.
Settlement and settler encroachment
After the United States took control of the Southwest in the late 1840s, and especially after the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, farmers, ranchers and traders began to arrive in places Apache families had used for generations. Water sources such as springs and rivers, which were central to both Apache and settler life, were a particular point of friction. Settler encroachment often meant that the best-watered valleys were claimed first, leaving less land for seasonal gathering, planting and hunting. Settlers’ livestock also changed the vegetation and game around camps.
None of this was seen by the newcomers as taking land from anyone, because the United States claimed the territory by treaty with Mexico, and Apache nations were not parties to that treaty. This gap between what Apache people understood as their homelands and what governments understood as available land is at the heart of many later disputes.
Mining
Mineral discoveries drew large numbers of newcomers. Copper at Santa Rita in New Mexico, gold and silver finds in various ranges, and later copper and silver districts in Arizona brought prospectors, camps and, soon after, demands for military protection. Mining camps needed wood, water and food, and they sat in mountain country that mattered to Apache groups for hunting, gathering and refuge.
Reservation boundaries were sometimes redrawn when valuable minerals were found nearby. Parts of the San Carlos reservation were removed from it after mineral discoveries, and similar pressure affected other reserves. Where such changes occurred, they reduced land that had been set aside only a short time before.
Military campaigns and forts
The army built posts across Apache country, including Fort Bowie at Apache Pass, and conducted campaigns against groups it identified as hostile. Campaigns destroyed camps and stored food, and sometimes killed people who were not combatants, as at Camp Grant in 1871. Operations in northern Mexico added another front, since Mexican states had their own campaigns, and some offered payments for scalps at various times.
Military action also interrupted the rhythm of life. A band that left its fields to avoid soldiers might lose its harvest, and a group moving to avoid trouble might be treated as hostile for doing so.
Policy and the reservation system
Policy mattered as much as force. From the 1870s the federal government pursued a policy of concentrating Native groups on a small number of reservations. At San Carlos, people from different Apache groups, and Yavapai people as well, were gathered in one agency area. The Rio Verde removal of 1875 is a well-known example of this approach. Some groups were moved more than once as policy changed, which is part of what makes forced relocation such an important theme in the history of the period.
The reservation system also limited movement. Leaving without a pass could be treated as an act of rebellion. Seasonal travel to traditional places, a normal part of life, became hard to continue without permission. Later laws, including the Dawes Act allotment policy in some regions, further changed how land was held and what remained in communal use.
Changes beyond Apache control
Other factors were not directed at Apache people but affected them just the same. Railroads reached the Southwest in the 1880s and brought more settlers and cattle. For Plains groups such as the Plains Apache, the near-elimination of bison herds in the 1870s ended a major food source and changed the economy of the southern Plains. Epidemic disease affected many Native communities in the region. These pressures piled onto one another and left smaller margins for the groups they touched.
Why “survival” is the better frame
In every region, Apache people responded actively. They negotiated, moved, farmed, worked for wages, served in the army as scouts, hid in the mountains, or fought, and they often did several of these in a lifetime. Their languages, clans and ceremonies continued, and populations that fell during the worst years later grew again, a recovery often discussed as Apache population recovery.
The result is that most Apache communities today live on a small fraction of the territory their ancestors used. The land that was lost is a matter of continuing concern, and questions of Apache land rights and claims are still debated. For current information about reservation lands and policies, the official websites of the individual nations are the best source.