Leaders, not “chiefs” in the usual sense
The men most often named in books about the Apache Wars were Chiricahua Apache leaders: Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, Victorio, Juh, Geronimo and Naiche. The Chiricahua are one of several Apache peoples, alongside the Western Apache, Mescalero, Jicarilla, Lipan and Plains Apache, and what follows concerns only them.
The word “chief” comes mostly from American and Mexican officials who wanted one person to deal with. Among the Chiricahua, leadership was generally earned through judgment, generosity, skill and the willingness of others to follow, and it was usually limited to a local group or a particular undertaking. Geronimo, for example, is often called a chief, yet he is better described as a medicine man and war leader, which is part of the Geronimo chief misconception.
The four Chiricahua bands
Chiricahua people are commonly described as four bands, each with its own homeland, though the lines between them were flexible and marriages joined families across them:
- The Chokonen, whose country centered on the Chiricahua Mountains in what is now southeastern Arizona. Cochise led this band.
- The Chihenne, also called the Warm Springs people, centered on the Black Range and the hot springs country of what is now southwestern New Mexico. Mangas Coloradas and Victorio are associated with them.
- The Bedonkohe, whose homeland lay near the upper Gila River. Geronimo was born into this band.
- The Nednhi, who lived largely in the Sierra Madre of northern Mexico. Juh led them.
Spellings and band names vary between sources, and writers sometimes disagree about which band a particular person belonged to.
Mangas Coloradas and Cochise
Mangas Coloradas, a Chihenne leader who also had ties to the Bedonkohe, was among the most influential Apache figures of the mid-nineteenth century. His life spanned the Mexican period of the Southwest and the arrival of the United States. He was killed in January 1863 after being taken captive under a flag of truce. His son-in-law Cochise, a Chokonen leader, took on much of the leadership role in the following decade.
Cochise is tied to the 1861 Bascom affair at Apache Pass and Fort Bowie, an episode of mistrust and hostage-taking that widened into years of fighting. He negotiated a peace in 1872 and died in 1874.
Victorio and the Warm Springs fight
Victorio, a Chihenne leader, is remembered for the effort to keep the Warm Springs homeland. When the United States moved Warm Springs people to San Carlos in the late 1870s, many were unwilling to stay in a place far from their own country. Victorio led a group that left, and after repeated flights and returns he fought a campaign across New Mexico, Texas and Chihuahua in 1879 and 1880. He was killed in October 1880 at Tres Castillos in Chihuahua by Mexican forces. Nana, an older Chihenne man, continued the struggle afterward, and the woman Lozen is remembered as a fighter and a member of Victorio’s following.
Juh and the Nednhi
Juh led the Nednhi from strongholds in the Sierra Madre, and he is often linked with Geronimo in the early 1880s. Sources on him are thin and written mostly by outsiders, so much of his life is uncertain. His people faced Mexican campaigns for years, part of the long pattern of Sonora and Chihuahua raids and counter-raids that shaped the border country.
Geronimo and Naiche
Naiche, a son of Cochise, became the leading Chokonen figure after his brother Taza died in 1876. Geronimo, whose Apache name is generally given as Goyahkla, was a Bedonkohe man who lost family to a Mexican attack in the mid-nineteenth century and fought against Mexican forces for decades. In 1886, after months of pursuit by thousands of troops, Geronimo and Naiche surrendered to General Nelson Miles. Their surrender is often treated as the end of the Apache Wars, though the chronology of the whole conflict is more complicated than one date can show.
Imprisonment and the people behind the names
The surrender did not bring peace for the Chiricahua. Hundreds of people, including many who had not fought and some who had served the army as scouts, were sent east as prisoners. The story of the Chiricahua scouts imprisoned alongside those they had been sent to find is one of the harshest ironies of the period. Captive Chiricahua were held at Fort Marion and Mount Vernon Barracks, and later at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, until 1913. The Chiricahua prisoners of war included children sent to boarding school.
When release finally came, some families chose Mescalero in New Mexico and others stayed in Oklahoma, which is why the Fort Sill Apache Tribe and the Mescalero Apache Tribe both include Chiricahua descendants. These are living nations, and their own official websites are the best sources for how they describe their history and present.
Reading about these leaders
Most surviving accounts were written by soldiers, officials, journalists and anthropologists, often with translators between the speakers and the page. Descendants’ accounts and Apache oral histories offer other perspectives, and the two do not always agree. Treat dramatic nicknames and words like “notorious” or “fierce” as clues about the writer rather than facts about the person.