Apache History: The Impact of the Apache Wars on the Tribe's Identity

What the name covers

“Apache Wars” is a label that historians and later writers use for a long series of conflicts between Apache groups and the United States, with Mexico often involved on the other side of the border. The period is usually given as roughly the 1850s to 1886, although the start date is debated. Apache peoples had already been in conflict, trade and uneasy peace with Spanish and then Mexican authorities for generations before the United States took control of the region after the war with Mexico in the 1840s.

The single name can mislead. It suggests one war with one enemy and one outcome. In practice there were many separate conflicts, in different places, with different Apache groups, and for different reasons. Many Apache families spent most of these decades trying to avoid fighting, farming where they could, or living near army posts under agreements they hoped would hold.

Many peoples, not one

“Apache” is a family of related nations, and their wartime experiences were not the same. Brief examples show the range:

• The Chiricahua, living in what is now southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico and northern Mexico, were in sustained conflict with American forces from the early 1860s. The incident usually called the Bascom affair of 1861 is often named as the start of that conflict, though sources differ on how much weight it deserves.
• The Western Apache, including the White Mountain, Cibecue, San Carlos and Tonto groups, experienced military campaigns, forced moves to reservations, and tensions inside the reservations. The Cibecue Creek incident of 1881 is one of the best-known episodes.
• The Mescalero and Jicarilla in New Mexico faced their own campaigns and removals. Many Mescalero were held at Bosque Redondo in the 1860s, a period covered under Mescalero at Bosque Redondo.
• The Lipan in Texas and northern Mexico and the Plains Apache in what is now Oklahoma had different histories again, shaped by the southern Plains rather than the desert Southwest.

Avoid assuming that a leader, a battle or a surrender speaks for every Apache nation. Each had its own leaders, homelands and decisions.

A rough sequence

Dates and details vary by source, but the broad outline is generally agreed:

1. After 1848 and the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, American settlers, miners and soldiers entered Apache country in growing numbers.
2. In the 1860s, army posts such as Fort Bowie were built, and campaigns and retaliatory cycles of violence followed. Apache Pass and Fort Bowie remains a symbol of this era.
3. In 1871, at Camp Grant in Arizona, a group of Aravaipa Apache, mostly women and children, were attacked by a force from Tucson. Well over a hundred people are generally said to have died, and many children were taken captive.
4. In the early 1870s, the United States created reservations and began concentrating groups there. The Rio Verde removal of 1875 moved Yavapai and Apache people to San Carlos, and the broader reservation system pressed unrelated and sometimes hostile groups into shared space.
5. Through the late 1870s and 1880s, individual leaders and bands left reservations or resisted. Victorio’s campaign of 1879 to 1880 and the Geronimo campaigns of the 1880s are the best-known examples.
6. In 1886 the last Chiricahua fighters surrendered. Soon afterward, the army sent not only those who had fought but also Chiricahua who had stayed peaceful, including men who had served as scouts, to captivity far from home. These Chiricahua prisoners of war were not freed until 1913.

For a fuller dating of individual events, see an Apache Wars chronology; here the focus is on what the period meant for the people who lived it.

How the period shaped identity

The effects were different for different communities, and no single account captures them.

Chiricahua. Their experience of exile is central to how the Chiricahua understand their history. Families were separated, children were sent to distant boarding schools, and generations grew up away from the mountains of their homeland. After 1913 the community divided between New Mexico and Oklahoma, which is why descendants today belong to the Mescalero Apache Tribe and the Fort Sill Apache Tribe. Both carry the memory of that period.

Western Apache. For the Western Apache the reservation years meant being grouped with people they had not always lived near. Communities such as the San Carlos Apache and White Mountain Apache nonetheless kept distinct names, places and family ties, and they remain separate nations today. Clan and local group identities continued to matter even under pressure.

Other communities. The Mescalero, Jicarilla, Lipan and Plains Apache each remember removals, lost lands and lasting reservations in their own way. Different histories explain why attitudes toward the army, the scouts and the era itself are not uniform.

Memory and difficult questions

Apache scouts served in the army during the campaigns, sometimes against other Apache. Their reasons were varied, and the story is still discussed with care; the part played by scouts in the 1886 campaign is one example of how a single episode can be remembered differently by different families. Some descendants honor them; others stress that the scouts were later imprisoned alongside those they had pursued.

Written records from the period were largely produced by soldiers, officials and journalists, so they reflect outside viewpoints and sometimes outright bias. Apache oral histories, family accounts and later writing by Apache authors offer other perspectives. Apache Wars historiography has changed over the decades as historians have taken those voices more seriously, and readers are better served by comparing accounts than by relying on any single memoir or report.

Some knowledge held within families and communities is not shared publicly, and it is appropriate to leave it that way.

Living nations

The wars are sometimes treated as the end of Apache history. They were not. Apache nations govern their own communities today, run schools and language programs, and manage land and enterprises. The wars are one chapter, painful and formative, in a much longer story that continues. For current information about any nation, consult its official website rather than outside summaries.