Stories as a form of teaching
In Apache communities, stories have long been a way to teach children and adults how to behave, how to understand the places they live, and how to remember what has happened. This article describes that role in general terms. It relies on published scholarship, and in particular on the work of the anthropologist Keith Basso with the Western Apache of Cibecue, Arizona, and on earlier collections made by researchers such as Morris Opler. It does not retell sacred narratives, and some stories are not shared outside the community at all.
Apache storytelling is not one tradition. The Western Apache, Chiricahua, Mescalero, Jicarilla, Lipan and Plains Apache each have their own narratives, tellers and customs, though they share themes and some characters. Care is needed when a description from one group is applied to another.
Different kinds of stories
Researchers who worked with Apache speakers have noted several broad kinds of narrative. There are origin and creation accounts, stories of the beings and events of the early world, tales with animal characters, and accounts of events in the more recent past, often tied to named places or families. Each kind tends to carry its own expectations about who may tell it, when and why. Some can be told widely, while others belong to certain people or occasions.
These differences matter because they show that storytelling is not only entertainment. It is a structure for knowledge, in which the right story is told at the right time to the right listeners. Apache oral traditions in this sense act as a library, a school and a legal memory together.
Teaching conduct
Many Apache stories deal with how people should live, including respect for relatives and elders, restraint, generosity, caution and the consequences of foolish behavior. Instead of stating a rule, a story shows what follows from an action, and listeners draw their own conclusions. Stories and moral teaching often go together in this way, and the lesson is left for the listener to work out, which treats the audience as capable of thought.
Basso described how, among the Western Apache of Cibecue, a person who has acted badly might be reminded of a story connected to a particular place, told without naming them directly. The story was meant to bring a person back to better conduct without public shaming. This account appears in his published writing and is summed up here only in general terms. Whether a given community uses stories this way today, and how, is something only its members can say.
Stories and the land
Basso’s best-known book on the subject, Wisdom Sits in Places (1996), is based on his work with Western Apache speakers and shows how stories are attached to named locations. According to his account, a place-name can bring to mind an event, a lesson and a way of acting, so that walking through a landscape is also a form of remembering. These place-based stories do much of the work of teaching history and values, and they make the land itself into a record. Western Apache place-names, in this sense, are compact reminders of longer narratives.
This helps explain why removal and the loss of land were so serious for culture as well as for livelihood. When people were separated from places that held stories, the stories remained in memory but the landscape that prompted them was far away. It also helps explain why access to such places remains a concern in many communities today.
The winter custom
A frequently reported custom is that certain kinds of stories, especially tales with animal characters such as Coyote, are told only in winter. Published collections and ethnographies for several Apache groups, including the Chiricahua, Mescalero and Jicarilla, note that tellers followed seasonal rules. The reasons given differ in the sources, and in some communities these customs are still observed in some form, while in others they are less strictly kept. This winter storytelling season gave the long evenings a purpose, brought families together, and set certain narratives apart as special. There are separate articles on Coyote narratives themselves, so only the custom is noted here.
If a family or nation observes such a rule, it is a courtesy for visitors and researchers to follow it as well, and to ask before recording or sharing anything.
Language and the future of stories
Storytelling in Apache language carries meanings that translations often lose, since word choice, sound patterns and place-names are part of the effect. For that reason, language programs and storytelling are often linked: recorded stories can serve as teaching material, and learners can hear how the language is used by fluent speakers. Communities control which recordings are made and who may hear them.
Stories also continue in new forms. Elders still tell family and community narratives, and younger Apache writers and filmmakers write books and make films in English and in Apache languages. Some of this material is meant for the public, and some is not.
Reading published collections carefully
Collections made in the early twentieth century were assembled by outsiders working through interpreters, who often chose what to record, translated it into English, and removed it from the setting where it would normally be told. A printed story is therefore a trace of a performance, not the performance. Readers should remember that many versions exist, that a printed version is not “the” version, and that tellers have always made stories their own. The best way to understand Apache stories remains to listen to Apache storytellers, when community members choose to share them.