A regional story
The desert and mountain country of Arizona and New Mexico was home to several Apache nations, and it was here that a great deal of nineteenth-century conflict took place. This article looks at the region as a whole: how newcomers arrived, where the key flashpoints were, and how the map of reservations took shape. It does not try to retell every campaign. Other articles in this cluster cover the end of the wars and the later history of the Chiricahua prisoners.
The region before the 1860s
The mountains of this region are often called sky islands, separated by dry valleys, and they supported Apache families through seasonal movement: gathering in some places, hunting in others, and farming in some Western Apache valleys. The rivers, including the Gila and Salt rivers, were important for farming and travel.
After 1848 the area passed to the United States, and in 1853 the Gadsden Purchase added southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. Mining camps, ranches and stage routes followed. Apache Pass, a mountain gap with a reliable spring on an important route, became one of the early points of contact and friction.
Apache Pass and the 1860s
The army built Fort Bowie at Apache Pass in 1862, after fighting there with Chiricahua leaders that included Cochise and Mangas Coloradas. Troops from California were then passing through the region during the Civil War. In the years that followed, the post served as a base for campaigns across southeastern Arizona. Apache Pass and Fort Bowie have been preserved as a historic site, and are still often used to explain this period.
In New Mexico, meanwhile, campaigns against the Mescalero and Navajo in the early 1860s led to their confinement at Bosque Redondo on the Pecos River. Mescalero people left in 1865, and the Navajo were allowed to return to their homeland in 1868.
Camp Grant in 1871
One of the most widely remembered episodes took place on April 30, 1871, near Camp Grant in southern Arizona. A group of Aravaipa Apache, who had come to the military post seeking peace and rations, were attacked at dawn by a force from Tucson that included Anglo, Mexican American and Tohono O’odham men. Estimates vary, but over a hundred people are generally said to have died, most of them women and children, and many children were taken captive.
The event drew national attention. A federal trial in Tucson later found the accused not guilty. Many historians treat Camp Grant as a clear example of how local settler violence and weak accountability could ruin fragile peace efforts. Its impact on Apache memory is long-lasting.
Campaigns and reservations
Army operations in the early 1870s, led by General George Crook in Arizona, relied on Apache scouts and on pressure to bring people onto reservations. Crook’s campaigns against Yavapai and Tonto Apache people in the Tonto Basin ended with many people moving to reservations. The Rio Verde removal of 1875 then sent Yavapai and Tonto people on a march to San Carlos, covering a considerable distance.
The creation of reservations in the region followed no single plan:
- The San Carlos Apache and the White Mountain Apache each have a history tied to the San Carlos and Fort Apache areas of east-central Arizona.
- A Chiricahua reservation in southeastern Arizona was created in 1872 and closed in 1876.
- A Warm Springs reservation in New Mexico, created for the Warm Springs Apache, was closed in the late 1870s and people were sent to San Carlos, which led some to flee.
- The Mescalero reservation in the Sacramento Mountains region of New Mexico was established in the 1870s and still exists.
- The Jicarilla in northern New Mexico moved among several places before their reservation was created in the 1880s, a long process described in Jicarilla reservation history.
The policy of consolidating groups at San Carlos meant that unrelated Apache and Yavapai groups lived together in one area with limited resources. Tensions rose, and some people left to find safety or to continue to resist, which led to further campaigns.
Wars of the late 1870s and 1880s
Warm Springs Apache leaders including Victorio left the reservations in 1877 and again in 1879. The campaign that followed ended in 1880 and is part of a longer period of unrest. The Cibecue Creek incident of 1881, involving Western Apache people and army soldiers, led to further military action. The final phase of the wars involved Chiricahua leaders, mainly Geronimo and Naiche, and ended in 1886.
What the pattern shows
A few features stand out across the Southwest: the use of army posts as bases for repeated campaigns, the speed with which settlement outpaced treaty-making, the reliance on reservations as a tool of control, and the repeated reversals of policy. The result was a map in which the shrinking Apache territory of earlier years became a handful of reserved lands, many of which are still home to Apache nations.
For present-day information on these reservations, consult the official websites of the nations that govern them.