Following the Year
Before the reservation era, many Apache families organised the year around where food would be available at each season. This pattern, usually called a seasonal round, meant moving between camps at different elevations or locations to meet ripening plants, game, water and farm plots. It was not aimless wandering: families knew their territories well, and the sequence of moves was largely set by long experience and by the calendar of the land.
The details varied a great deal. A Western Apache family with fields along a river had a different year from a Chiricahua family ranging through mountains and desert basins, and both differed from a Lipan or Plains Apache family that followed bison. This article outlines those patterns in general terms. Sources, including historical accounts and ethnographic studies, differ in specifics, and no single schedule fits every group or every decade.
Why the Seasons Mattered
The Southwest has hot summers, cold winters at higher elevations, and a rainfall pattern that often includes a summer rainy period and a lesser winter one. The Southwest monsoon seasons bring storms in summer that can green the landscape and fill streams, while spring is often dry. Plants ripen at different times at different elevations, so a family that moved up and down could extend the period during which it could harvest food. Water and shelter were always considerations, and winter generally pushed people toward lower, warmer or more sheltered locations.
Western Apache Pattern
Western Apache groups are among those best known for combining farming with movement. A commonly described cycle runs roughly as follows.
- In spring, families planted corn and other crops at farm sites in river valleys or side canyons, and gathered early wild plants. Agave was harvested and cooked by some groups at this time of year.
- In summer, they tended crops and moved to higher, cooler country to hunt and gather, returning to look after the fields.
- In autumn, they harvested crops and collected foods such as acorns and piñon nuts, a significant activity in the uplands. Details of acorn and pinon gathering depend on the area and on whether the trees fruit well in a given year.
- In winter, families camped in milder locations, living on stored food and hunting game, often with the telling of stories.
Water control mattered to farming. Western Apache irrigation, using ditches to bring stream water to fields, is documented in some areas. Local groups and bands differed in how much they depended on fields.
Chiricahua and Mescalero Pattern
Chiricahua and Mescalero groups lived in country of mountains, high desert and basin and range terrain, with farming less prominent in the sources than gathering and hunting, although some farming is recorded. Agave, known as mescal, was a major food. The plant’s heart was cooked in large earth ovens for a long time, which turned it into a sweet, storable food. Mescal roasting was usually a communal effort in late spring or summer, and the Mescalero are named after the practice. Sources describe how cooked mescal could be dried and stored for later use.
Other foods included mesquite beans in lower country, cactus fruit, seeds, nuts and berries, as well as deer and smaller game. People moved to higher elevations in summer and lower ones in winter. Chiricahua groups are also described as moving across wide areas that included parts of what is now northern Mexico. The Mescalero also made trips onto the Plains to hunt bison, according to historical accounts.
Plains-Oriented Pattern
Jicarilla, Lipan and Plains Apache peoples had a closer relationship with Plains hunting, which changed after the horse arrived. A typical pattern, as described in historical sources, involved hunting trips to find bison herds in suitable seasons, followed by processing meat and hides, with other seasons spent in more sheltered river valleys and foothills. The Jicarilla are often described as including both people who focused more on the Plains and those who combined mountain hunting and gathering with farming near Pueblo neighbours, a division associated with the names Llanero and Olleros in some sources. Sources differ about how rigid the divisions were.
Trade with farming communities and others also fitted into the year, with goods moving between groups at seasonal gatherings.
What Moved, What Stayed
Seasonal movement did not mean carrying everything. Families used stored caches, left heavier items at base camps and rebuilt shelters as needed. Dwellings were built from local materials, and the household work of moving was shared across the family. The calendar also carried social events: families met at harvest sites, shared food, arranged marriages through relatives and exchanged news. Ceremonial activity had its own seasonal timing in some communities, but its details are not discussed here.
Change and Continuity
Warfare, the reservation system and restrictions on movement disrupted these cycles, often severely. Confinement to defined areas limited access to traditional gathering locations and changed diets, and Apache land loss made old patterns impossible in many places. Even so, knowledge of plants and places has not disappeared. Some communities hold gathering trips, farming and food programmes, and teach younger people the timing of the season. Drought and a changing climate pose new questions for traditional foods, a subject many communities discuss for themselves. Current details are best found through each nation’s own sources.