A note on the title
The title repeats the word “Apache” through a quirk of wording. The topic is simply the early interaction between Apache peoples and Spanish colonists, mainly from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth century. It focuses on what moved between the two sides and on the conflict that accompanied it.
When contact began
Spanish expeditions entered the Southwest in the sixteenth century, and the first lasting colony in New Mexico is generally dated to 1598. Apache groups in the region, including ancestors of the Jicarilla and Mescalero in the north and east and others farther south and west, encountered Spanish colonists over the following decades. Contact was uneven. Some groups lived near Spanish settlements and missions, while others, such as many Western Apache, had far less direct contact until later.
Horses
The most famous item of exchange is the horse. Horses spread from Spanish settlements into Native communities across the West in the seventeenth century, through trade, theft and capture. For Apache groups on the southern Plains and in New Mexico, horses changed transportation, hunting and the ability to travel and trade over long distances. Their effects were uneven. The southern Plains horse era is often described as especially influential for Plains-oriented Apache groups, while mountain and desert groups used horses in different ways, and also ate them at times.
Horses also made conflict more dangerous, since mounted raiding could cover wide areas. Spanish authorities and Pueblo and Apache communities each experienced the changes differently.
Metal goods, cloth and new foods
Iron and steel knives, axes, kettles and other tools gradually became part of Apache households, and weapons changed hunting and warfare. Cloth and glass beads provided new materials for clothing and decoration. Apache groups obtained these items by trade, by raiding and through diplomacy, and sometimes by gift at peace agreements.
Foods also moved. Domestic animals such as sheep and cattle, and crops brought by Spanish colonists including wheat and peaches, spread through the region. Some Apache groups added livestock to their economies, while others focused on wild foods and, where they farmed, on crops such as corn that were already in the region. The balance varied by group, and specifics are hard to document.
Missions, captives and labor
Spanish colonization also included missions that sought to convert Native people to Christianity, and labor demands on Native and mixed communities. Apache people were sometimes taken captive and put to work in Spanish households, mines and fields, in New Mexico and in northern Mexico, and Spanish and Pueblo people were captured by Apache raiders in turn. Captive-taking on all sides led to families with mixed backgrounds, and to long-term grievances. It is one of the more painful parts of this history, and it should be remembered that the people affected were individuals with their own families.
Conflict and diplomacy
The relationship ranged from trade fairs and alliance to war. Spanish officials sometimes made agreements with Apache leaders, and there were periods of relative calm as well as periods of intense violence. In the late eighteenth century, officials in the northern provinces of New Spain set up what were called peace establishments, where some Apache groups were provided with rations near presidios. Historians debate how these arrangements should be understood: as a form of negotiated peace, as a means of control, or both.
Apache decisions in this period were strategic. Groups chose when to trade, when to move away, when to ally with Spanish forces against other Native peoples, and when to fight. Their choices were shaped by rivalry with other nations such as the Comanche, whose growing power on the southern Plains pushed some Apache groups south and west.
Lasting effects
The Spanish period left marks that are still visible. Spanish words, place names, foods and religious traditions became part of regional life, and families of mixed Apache, Pueblo and Hispanic heritage are part of the Southwest’s story. At the same time, the period began patterns of land pressure and violence that later colonial and American governments continued. The later impact of colonization on Apache societies built on these earlier patterns, which themselves rested on older trade between neighbors.